Episode 74: Disobedient Bodies
In Steven Universe Future, Steven’s body starts to get out of control as his powers (and trauma) grow
Science fiction and fantasy are full of bodies that just won't behave. Either they're overpowered, or they're trying to consume everything in the world. We talk about why some bodies are so problematic in science fiction. Plus we talk to Meg Elison, author of the new novel Find Layla, about fatphobia and fat-fetishism.
Notes, citations, & etc.
Meg Elison, author of The Book of the Unnamed Midwife and Find Layla
Overpowered characters are a big deal in anime, especially My Hero Academia, which features the "all for one" power.
Jean Gray becomes the over-powered scary dangerous Dark Phoenix and in the movies, Professor X places limits on her mind when she's a child to contain her
Wolverine's power violates his own body over and over.
Society is a bonkers horror movie where the rich eat the poor, and rich people's bodies melt into a big sludge.
Horror movies of the 1980s and early 1990s were full of body horror
Vampires and zombies are ravenous and insatiable
Jennifer's Body is an amazing movie about a woman who can't stop eating people
In Dawn of the Dead, zombies go back to the mall because they can't stop consuming
Certain Dark Things by Silvia Moreno-Garcia has a great take on vampires and their hungers.
In True Detective season one, the rich are monstrous but the true monster is a victim.
Isaac Asimov and George R.R. Martin edited a book called The Science Fiction Weight-Loss Plan
Stephen King has a lot of themes of fatness and weight loss in his work
In The Witch, the biggest horror is a naked fat old woman
Something similar happens in Hereditary.
Duke Harkonnen in Dune and Jabba the Hutt in Star Wars are monstrously large villains
In Saturday Night Live, Pat's fatness is de-gendering
Game of Thrones features King Robert and Varys, whose fatness emasculates them
In Lord of the Rings, Denethor can't stop eating
Nightbreed features a fat body alongside various extreme perversions
A World Made By Hand includes an obese woman fed by drones
In Cats, Rebel Wilson eats tiny people
Meg Elison and Marianne Kirby taught a class for Writing the Other about Writing Fat Characters