CW: Spoilers for To Be Hero X up to Episode 5. Discussion of body horror, ableism, loss of autonomy, loss of consent, mental illness, trauma, canonical suicide, systemic injustice, vaguely medical horror and similar themes.
I just wanna say, as a lover of body horror, To Be Hero X does body horror RIGHT.
Often what's labelled "body horror" is just ableism, pointing at a physical or mental condition ppl have and saying "oh wow this is horrific, how could anyone live like this?? I'd kms honestly". Which is fucked up, incorrect, and NOT BODY HORROR.
What TBHX hits on is body horror is fundamentally autonomy horror. Changes enacted upon you without your consent. Your physical vessel being made into both prison and hostage. Knowing that you are undergoing metamorphosis, altered irreversably, at the behest of an Other without any way to prevent it. Even your ability to consent being altered. It's alienation. Derealization. Entrapment.
Think about the cyberpunk genre! What the best of cyberpunk get right is that being a cyborg, using prosthetics and aids, or altering yourself isn't the horror.
The horror is when your arm runs on a monthly prescription; the medicine you need to live is made scarce and expensive to keep you compliant; you're lied to about what those meds DO; or you're manipulated by a corporate entity into agreeing to treatment/contracts that are deliberately unclear because the system has made you so desperate to survive. (The horror is ca– [zapped]).
The horror is when your body isn't your own and never will be.
And that fits PERFECTLY with how TBHX's creators have made the show's superpowered society analogous to idol culture. The heroes are altered in real time by the beliefs of fans they rely upon for financial and domestic security. Whether through trust or fear.
(Fear being another kind of trust. Trust that you will hurt me. Trust that you are evil and unsafe and wrong. I can't speak on Chinese culture but Wreck talking like a jilted lover feels so much like subtextual homosexuality during the Hays Code).
And those alterations happen in horrifically literal ways. If all your fans believe you stand tall in the face of adversity, you will never be able to sit again unless that belief is broken.
And Lin Ling (who is totally Little Plum in episode 5 kuro FIGHT ME) is excellent at marketing. He knows from the beginning the importance of propaganda in a hero's career when their powers come from the beliefs of their supporters. But it is such a fundamental part of their society (ep 1 is 41 YEARS after the Commission's founding) that he understands the propaganda and still believes in it.
Let's be honest, he conceptualized all of Moon's commercials. He had a fixation for her and a direct hand in advertising that could literally alter her body and mind. I'm not saying he's a bad dude, obvs. He ends up using his skills and professional knowledge to free her once he understands that she's unwilling. Trapped and having her consent stripped from her. What I'm saying is that TBHX's horror isn't just how people are physically altered by outsider perception. It's also about how completely that power system and its abuses have been normalized. It's not a flaw in the design, it IS the design.
It's horrific not just that you have no say, but that you'll yearn for it. Ask for it. Want it until you understand it's fucking horrifying, and at that point you can't even escape it. Not truly and not ever, ever the same as you once were.
The horror of the Original Nice (and of idols and wartime posterboys) is that his existence became propaganda for the very career that made him fucking kill himself. The only way he could reject his tormentors was to, as his final act, reject the ability they gave him. To fall from grace when he'd been given the ability to fly.
And even that was taken away. His one last "fuck you" was covered up because the ideal of perfection is not allowed to die. There's so many lucrative careers banking on it. His body was too valuable, his image too profitable, his likeness too marketable. So his manager forced it on a no-name marketer.
Lin Ling is VERY poignant body horror for me because his unconscious psyche changes even while he has conscious awareness & cognitive control. His very mental makeup is rewritten to fit into Nice's corpse. His OCD, whether suddenly developed or a worsening pre-existing condition, crops up in such subtle ways Moon has to point it out to him. And isn't that so very much like the mental illnesses developed in a longterm traumatic situation?
It went pretty quickly and a lot of the focus was on him bonding with Moon, but they were fucking trapped in an apartment ALONE. FOR MONTHS. Denied any outside comforts or contact in order to fucking pressure them into signing even more of their autonomy away. They're prisoners in that condo. In their bodies. In their relationship and their abilities. I remember lockdown, people were clawing at their walls at the 2 week mark. And lockdown was for a good reason.
I'm rambling but the physical confinement, being made to volundie and put on an act for thousands, and being heavily controlled and gaslit by management creates a ripe environment for mental illness. I imagine he'll develop PTSD if he ever actually reaches the Post part of the diagnosis (rip ep4 ending). But the mental illness superpower analogue is BRAIN. BODY. HORROR. Not that Lin Ling has OCD, but that it's a normalized part of the career he was manipulated into. That others knew it would happen, how it worked out for the last guy, and morphed Lin Ling into Nice anyways.
That he was forced to volundie after witnessing OG Nice kill himself and yet believes in the system so much to think that it's worth it. That he wants it. Body horror is autonomy horror. Body horror is consent horror.
And Lin Ling's final form is so beautifully metaphorical. Perfect. That streak of white? CHEF'S KISS WITH TONGUE You can escape, but not unchanged. You are free, but you're not the same you anymore.
You died a long time ago. Nice died a long time ago— but no he didn't... that suicide was of some Nice fan. That splattered corpse was Lin Ling. There was an article on it and everything (it only got 1 view).
Lin Ling doesn't belong to himself anymore. He has no identity outside of the one he announced on camera. Lin Ling isn't a man's name anymore, it's a hero's title. He sold himself to a system to protect a girl running from that system so desperately she landed on a deserted island.
If Lin Ling isn't dead and Lin Ling isn't alive... what is he?
Property.
(BODY HORROR DONE FUCKING RIGHT. HIS FANS DIDN'T WANT HIM TO GO SO HE COULDN'T. I might rant more later. I MUST)
What I have gathered from watching a few scenes of Hamlet adapted into film is that some usually fail at soliloquies- or more like, they take away the crucial element that makes it so entertaining, which is the breaking of the fourth wall. The soliloquy may be Hamlet talking to himself or thinking but- and that is the important thing- in its original theatre version Hamlet tends to talk to the audience.
It’s usually why long monologues work in plays- in my limited experience, my monologue (in another play, but it was quite a similar emotional journey) became so much better when I interacted with the audience. When I told them about my pain, asked them questions and ultimately spiraled because I started accusing them, the only people in the play that were actually listening to me but not doing anything. And it slaps so bad. It’s so great. They become part of it. That’s the element that makes it so hard to look away.
When you take that away in adaptations? Raw text, the actor just talking to themselves?
Eh, can be done right but there’s a great risk it’ll be extremely boring.
I’m gonna hazard a guess and say that people not only liked BBC’s Hamlet with David Tennant so much because well, he’s David bloody Tennant but because they kept those elements. Hamlet talks to the camera. He glances at it. And it’s just- wow.
Like, why would you take that away? We know traditional immersion in film, but „theater“ immersion in film is so much more fun. Just the main character yapping and glancing at you can make everything a whole lot less boring and more… magnetic I guess? Also it has a certain charm. People loved Fleabag, and Fleabag converted the original element of Fleabag talking directly to the audience to talking to the audience through, well, the camera.
Just saying, adapt more plays into film in a way that keeps the spirit of it being performed as a play, and I don’t only mean the fourth wall! Don’t strip the spirit of that „play energy“ and press it into a bland regular movie mold!
Point is, if I were to try to adapt Hamlet into a film medium I fucking would make him talk to the audience. Roll his eyes at us when Polonius is talking for too long.
Grin and shoot a glance at us when making a stupid joke.
Asking us, the audience in his soliloquies.
Maybe make the normal interactions fairly regular and soliloquies the original, long and eloquent speeches. Very much „me constructing an argument in my head vs. me actually talking“
And maybe we won’t realize that while he seems to bare certain parts only to us, he’s also overplaying it to us (himself?). Because he’s denying shit! And maybe, just maybe when there’s blood on his hands he’ll look up at us and we’ll realize we also have been tricked by him and that he might just be a little bit insane.
There still somewhat newish (several months old) but I haven't been able to get a picture of them before!! LOOK AT THE BABY!!
Also to any who has unrelenting joint pain like me! I put kinesiology tape on my shoulder and it crunchs a LOT less! Like it still crunchs but just the sounds of my shoulder poping in and out not weird joint poping sounds!! I genuinely forgot how much tapeing a joint helps when the pain is worse! So ya know. If it helps might as well share! Ok thats all!
