A Planetary Grotesque

This chapter reconsiders the grotesque in the light of European sensibilities of transgression and abnormality. Querying to what extent the grotesque can challenge and unsettle modern and supposedly rational (European) sensibilities through its insistence on the overflow and unruliness of the body, the chapter starts out by a reading of the film Midsommar (2019). The chapter then proceeds to unearth the grotesque as an aesthetic term from its medieval and classical roots in order to perceive it in the light of a modernity that has attempted to regulate and eradicate premodern worldviews. From here, it examines the grotesque through a theoretical genealogy of Wolfgang Kayser, John Ruskin, Mikhail Bakhtin and Michel Foucault. It then engages in a reading of texts in light of both their national, regional and planetary contexts, such as Canadian David Cronenberg’s film Videodrome (1983, Dutch Michel Faber’s Under the Skin (2000), and Argentinian Agustina Bazterrica’s Tender is the Flesh (2017). The chapter concludes by considering the implications of a global, environmental or planetary grotesque.