Animal body modification bring to mind the action movie RoboCop (1987) and its 2014 remake, Neill Blomkamp’s Elysium (2013) shows some of the positive outcomes of body modification that line up with those used by the looper caterpillar: self-defense. Max (Matt Damon) is fused with a robotic exoskeleton to defend himself rather than disguise his body, but the purpose behind his choice are similar. Using one character’s plight in a post-apocalyptic future, the film condemns huge disparities between rich and poor and the environmental and social problems they promote.
As in Blomkamp’s District 9 (2009), Earth has become an environmental disaster plagued by overpopulation and the crime and starvation it produces. Only the rich can escape the polluted planet by purchasing access to an orbiting space station with forests, green lawns, golf courses, and oversized homes—shown in glorious CGI. And only a human machine can bridge the gap between rich and poor they enforce.
Despite the film’s failure to address environmental racism and justice issues on Earth, Elysium provides an optimistic view of technology and the cyborg as a solution to at least some of the externalities human overconsumption has created. Although Elysium does not address the environmental degradation on Earth’s surface, we assume the robots that once controlled humans will now clean up their waste.
Although the film's plot-line is confusing, Elysium demonstrates how humans (especially men) may benefit from merging with technology. By donning a mechanical exoskeleton, Max saves those he loves, freeing Earth’s poor in the process. Like the looper caterpillar’s added flowers, an external body modification helps Max thwart a despotic government. He may not survive, but his friends will.
Although focused primarily on separating humans from nonhuman nature, Etcoff also notes that at least one animal “exhibits a form of dressing” (6): the bowerbird which builds and decorates a bower to attract a mate. Etcoff’s admission in some ways contradicts her assertion that the adornments of dress are uniquely human. It also broaches questions that may connect our evolutionary paths more explicitly to those of the animal world: Are there other species of animals that use ornaments outside their bodies for decoration or disguise? And do these examples begin to redefine our own connections to the natural world and evolution? Do they also reshape the purpose behind the changes we make to our bodies and selves?
For us, the body modifications explored in American Mary do not separate humans from nature. They demonstrate all too well our connections to it.
The multiple species of the male bowerbird, for example, build bowers consisting “of a thatched twig tunnel forming an avenue” decorated with bones, shells, berries, nuts, and stones the male displays to potential mates. They arrange the objects in regular patterns, creating an illusion that seems to increase their size, according to biologists Laura Kelley and John Endler. The bowers are works of art meant only for seducing female bowerbirds, not for nesting and clearly require objects external to the birds to build them. David Attenborough’s documentary, Bowerbirds: The Art of Seduction (2012) highlights the behaviors of multiple species of bowerbirds and demonstrates how deliberately the birds place their artifacts. In one scene, for example, Attenborough moves objects, and a male bowerbird immediately replaces it.
Other animals decorate their bodies rather than create external bowers. Sandhill Cranes preen their feathers with mud, turning their gray bodies red or brown during spring and summer. The purpose behind the preening may be related to breeding because it ends when the feathers molt in the fall. And the looper caterpillar ornaments its body with plant parts from the flowers on which it is feeding. According to Dr. Miklos Treiber, the loopers change the flower parts when they move to another flower, as well. Here the plant pieces act as camouflage. Dr. Treibe hypothesized that the looper’s ability to change disguises allows it to have a much more varied diet than some other caterpillars because it isn’t restricted to eating only those flowers or plant parts that it resembles in appearance. Multiple videos document the looper’s amazing camouflage.
Anthropologists explore body modification in relation to a variety of cultural practices. In “Enhancement Technologies and the Body” Linda Hole asserts, “Humans have always modified their bodies. What distinguishes these techniques is that bodies and selves become the objects of improvement work, unlike previous efforts in modernity to achieve progress through social and political institutions” (695). Steven W. Gangestad and Glenn J. Scheyd’s “The Evolution of Human Physical Attraction” explores the question, “can human standards of physical attractiveness be understood through the lens of evolutionary biology?” (523). And Rosemary A. Joyce examines the body as a “site of embodied agency” (139) that changes in response to individual and cultural experiences rather than remaining static.
Anthropologist and museum curator Enid Schildkrout suggests that body art and the body modification it involves is universal. In fact, “There is no culture in which people do not, or did not, paint, pierce, tattoo, reshape, or simply adorn their bodies.” According to Shildkrout, “Body art communicates a person’s status in society; displays accomplishments; and encodes memories, desires, and life histories.”
Body modification may be ephemeral, as with body painting, makeup and hairstyles. But it may also include more permanent changes, such as body shaping, scarification, tattooing, and piercing. Directed by Jason Gary and Greg Jacobson, the 2005 documentary Modify reinforces Shildkrout’s definition with images of the varied forms of modification and testimony from those who personally modify their bodies and the artists and surgeons who modify them. The documentary asserts that there are four reasons for body modification: aesthetics, sexual augmentation, shock value, and spirituality. For most of the experts documented in Modify, body modification is body art and includes hair color, ear piercing, and body building, as well as tattooing, body piercing, and plastic surgery.
What elements separate films of this sub-genre from other
types of films or media? Other horror films or media?
4. What do these films or media tell you about the qualities of this sub-genre?
5. How do you account for the differences among these film/media?
6. How well received would a film be if it deviated too greatly from your expectations for that sub-genre? For example,
how would audience members react if they went to a
movie billed as a comedy, and the film did not have a
happy ending?
7. How important are audience expectations? How much should writers consider their audience(s), when they are
beginning to write?
8. How does knowing a text’s genre help you as a reader?
First think of a favorite movie and consider where you
might find it on Netflix or other streaming service, if it were
not a new release:
It could be categorized as a comedy, a romantic comedy, an
action/adventure film, a drama, a horror film, or a
science fiction/fantasy film. It might also be an
animated film/children's film, a documentary, or a
classic or a foreign film, etc.
Once you determine the category heading under which the
movie would be placed in the store, you can get together with
peers who have favorite films in the same category and begin
analyzing the characteristics films in your category share—
plus ones that seem unique to your particular film.
In groups arranged by genre, or movie category, answer
questions like the following to outline the characteristics of your
movie's genre:
What is the setting (time and place) of the film like?
What is the plot like? Is there a happy ending? Is there an indication that a sequel might be possible? Are there recurring storylines?
What are the characters like? Are there stock characters? If so, what are they like? Are the characters well developed? Or is the movie more driven by the plot or story?
What kind of special effects are there in the movie? What purpose do they serve?
How does the cinematography contribute to the film & its content?
At a turning point in the contemporary feminist “Frankenstein” film American Mary, Ruby (Paula Lindberg)—one of Mary’s future body modification clients—explains why she wants to change her appearance: “I don’t think it’s really fair that God gets to choose what we look like on the outside,” she proclaims. Ruby’s declaration at first seems to align well with scholars’ assertions that humans decorate and modify their bodies to separate themselves from the animals and nature, for, as genetic researcher Gillian M. Morriss-Kay argues, “Creating visual art is one of the defining characteristics of the human species.” Morriss-Kay agrees, suggesting, “The earliest known evidence of ‘artistic behaviour’ [sic] is of human body decoration, including skin colouring [sic] with ochre and the use of beads, although both may have had functional origins.”
Ruby’s desire to determine what her body looks like on the outside seems to take this characteristic just a little further, since, as anthropologist Enid Schildkrout of the Smithsonian states, “there is no logical reason to separate permanent forms of body art, like tattoos, scarification, piercing, or plastic surgery, from temporary forms, such as makeup, clothing, or hairstyles.” More extreme forms of body modification convey information about a person’s identity in ways similar to the more traditional and temporary choices people make to color their hair and shave their faces.
For Ruby, a fashion designer and owner of Ruby Real Girl designs, surgically changing her body provides some of the same results as fashion and makeup, except that those changes are more permanent. It seems to separate her from her natural “God-given” form and from the natural world it represents and inhabits. The claim is that animals change their appearance only because evolution has determined those changes ensure survival, both physical and sexual. And those changes rely on internal biological responses rather than deliberate additions from the external environment. A cuttlefish may change the color and shape of its skin and body to hide from predators, hypnotize prey, and seduce potential sex partners, but these survival adaptations are evolutionary rather than learned behaviors and draw on biology rather than the incorporation of external objects.
Yet we argue that this separation between humans and animals rests on a limited perspective of the natural world. Although the body modification illustrated in American Mary may amplify the drive for individuality found in makeup and hair changes, it does not necessarily separate humans from animals. Instead, it replicates the behaviors of animals from the bowerbird to particular species of spiders and caterpillars. When characters in American Mary modify their bodies to express their individuality and survive, they don’t separate themselves from nature; instead they align themselves with the animal world. When either animals or humans change their appearance, they gain an evolutionary advantage that assures their reproductive and biological persistence.
