Beyond the body : shock aesthetics and corporeal horror in Martyrs

Abstract

This paper will examine the threads of shock aesthetics and corporeal horror in Martyrs, focusing on how Laugier's narrative methodologies and filmic techniques serve to alter the relationship between the diegetic space of the film and the material one of the viewer. The modulation of perspective in Martyrs hinges on a subversion of the viewer's expected experience of the world around them, both in terms of how it is presented to them physically, and in terms of how it evokes an emotional response in them. Laugier's Martyrs is both repulsive and riveting, both horrific of the body and of the mind. What ultimately emerges from this expression of brutality is an existential melancholy that is inherently pessimistic, yet captivatingly energetic in its offering of a novel lens through which the world can be experienced across its broadest spectrum.