Curly & Body Horror - Ableism in Fandom

ORIGINALLY WRITTEN: December 2024

NOTES: There will be discussions of ableism, self harm, and gore, though in passing. Reader discretion is advised.

The more people I see refer to Curly's state as body horror the more pissed off I get.

It irks me that people do tbh.

The fate of a character (Curly) is just him becoming disabled by an event that happens at the start of the game... He's your typical severe burn victim (missing flesh/exposed musculature/etc).

And I know this is the "Pissing on the poor" website, but can we… Stop… Calling depictions of injury and disability body horror?

Body horror itself is such a specific artistic decision (which, granted, stems from a long lineage of ableism toward those who are physically disfigured by said disability/disabilities). Some reading on that:

• Normal People Don’t Scare Me: A History of Ableism in the Horror Genre [LINK]
• The Presence of Disability in Horror Films: Ableism and Counter Discursivity [LINK]
• Villainizing Bodies and Minds: Ableism in Horror Movies [LINK]

And there are some horror elements re: the care of him (administering pills/feeding him/etc)... but Curly himself existing is not an example of "body horror".

In fact, the horror around his care is not even body horror itself. It is a showcasing of the corporate, capitalist disregard for human life. The lack of preparation and accessibility to proper care despite knowing the dangers of the environment they produce (re: all of the Polle posters).

,The worst, genuine example of body horror re: Curly, imho, is the artistic segment involving feeding him his own leg and you see his guts as galaxies. And some segments where you can see his eyes following your character (Jimmy) around on screens or in tunnels 🤷

If you really want to tag your Curly fanart... the more appropriate tag (depending on the level of depiction of his burned status) is gore. It's exposed flesh and musculature. It's depiction of medical reality (lest we forget, burn victims... exist as real people and not some fictional narrative).

And to distinguish the two... here is a (hopefully) less ableist definition than that which many are used to:

Body horror is transformation; it is where something horrific (and fantastical/not grounded in reality) is happening within the body itself.

Gore is a bloody nose, cuts, wounds, injuries etc.

Scars, limb differences, or visual disabilities are neither.