colqhoun having tuberculosis before turning is really significant to me bc its associations in art tend to include a heightened sense of vitality and eroticism.
in illness as metaphor susan sontag writes that ‘TB was - still is - thought to produce spells of euphoria, increased appetite, exacerbated sexual desire… Having TB was imagined to be an aphrodisiac, and to confer extraordinary powers of seduction.’
watching ravenous with this in mind, we see a lot of parallels between the popular depiction of TB (esp. following the quote above) and the vampiric cannibalism of this film. so its another metaphor the audience can view the film through. its also worth tying the erotic depictions of TB to how we view colqhoun and boyds sexuality. cannibalism is interlinked with erotic desire in ravenous. colqhoun relishing in it, and boyd repressing it. notably depictions of TB in art often create metaphors of BOTH an excess or heightened state of eroticism AND a repression of sexuality. (again read illness as metaphor and the magic mountain if you are incherested…)
i think its significant that colqhoun brings up his diagnosis in the first seduction scene, hes contrasting the suffering he felt inside the illness with how comparatively ‘virile’ and alive he feels now, but he still relishes vocalising every syllable of the word and presenting boyd with his story of a typically romanticised illness. using TB as a tool to seduce. (‘…TB was also thought to make the sufferer sexy.’ sontag)
being purposeful w my language because i dont really want to romanticise the illness in my own reading of this film. just because. i dont wanna. but i found the connections interesting
