Monstrous Masses: The Human Body as Raw Material

This chapter examines The Human Centipede, Nymphomaniac, and Videodrome; films that push the boundaries of human objectification. The chapter draws on the works of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Jean-Paul Sartre, highlighting an ontological distinction between being “in-itself” and being “for-itself.” It is argued that though the objectification of key characters in these films, on the one hand, promotes a sort of nihilistic reduction of humans to meaningless bodies in motion, on the other hand, this same reduction potentially provokes a sense of sympathy in viewers who are also embodied, and thus can see their own condition reflected in the experiences of the characters who suffer on screen. Depictions of others as meaningless matter remind audiences of their own corporeal nature (being in-itself), disgusting, titillating, and amusing them, but also potentially moving them to empathize with the consciousnesses presumed by analogy with themselves to exist within the bodies depicted on screen (being for-itself).