Grotesque

In Philip Thomson’s The Grotesque: The Critical Idiom, the word ‘grotesque’ was originally ‘crotesque’ before it changed in French and English around 1640. Grotesque art became popular mostly in Italy during the 16^th Century, whereas grotesque literature was only in France during this time. It was not until the 18^th Century when ‘grotesque’ literature came to England (1972:13), when it spread the word “took on a broader meaning” (13).

According to P. Thomson, the grotesque has a number of elements: disharmony (conflicts, unresolved), the comic (vulgarly funny), the terrifying (uncanny, supernatural to disgusting and repulsive), extravagance and exaggeration (extremeness), abnormality (such as physical features) and lastly, the satiric and playful (1972:20-28). The abnormality of the grotesque would be funny (strange/amusing), fearsome and disgusting; people fear the unfamiliar, look down on other’s failure “to conform to accepted standards” (1972:24) or the norm. Thomson believes the grotesque as being paradoxical; he describes an applicable situation in order to explain his thoughts in relation to this. He explains what he means through small children’s behaviour; Thomson describes that when an adult pulls a face at a child they will laugh, however, once the face becomes distorted the child will cry in fear (1972:24-25). This is like the grotesque, it is the point where something normal and enjoyable goes too far and becomes abnormal.

Philip Thomson also discusses the ‘functions and purposes” (58), on which he has written five: ‘aggressiveness and alienation’, ‘the psychological effect, ‘tension and unresolvability’, ‘playfulness’ and ‘the unintentional grotesque’ (1972:58-70). Under each category he explains grotesque as being used to bewilder, shock and disturb; it is also liberating but creates tension through its tasteless nature of being “aesthetically […] blatant and crass” (69).

Bakhtin

Mikhail Bakhtin is one of the original authors of the criticisms on the grotesque and the carnivalesque.  According to him, “the grotesque starts when the exaggeration reaches fantastic dimensions” (1984:315), for example the features that protrude from the body are changed and exaggerated. Exaggerated body parts would hide any normal parts, “there are men with disproportionate phalli […] and others with unusually large teste” (1984:328).  Noses, ears and head can be change into that of animals; the transformation of human to animal is a combination that is “one of the most ancient grotesque forms” (1984:316). The mouth also plays a big role in the grotesque, such as the ‘gaping mouth’, Bakhtin calls it a “wide-open bodily abyss” (1984:317), the hole can be viewed as an erotic image, as something to be filled, penetrated, even if it cannot be. The anus is like a ‘gaping mouth’. Bakhtin describes the grotesque body as being unfinished, that it is still in the process of ‘becoming’, of procreating and conception. 

According to Barbara Creed,

when male bodies become grotesque, they tend to take on characteristics associated with female bodies; in this instance man’s body becomes grotesque because it is capable of being penetrated 

                                                                                          (1993:19)

Creed also discusses pregnancy of a woman, as well as birth, the swelling of the woman’s stomach (in grotesque terms this would be the exaggeration, especially in artwork), when the woman gives birth it creates the ‘gaping hole’. According to Creed, men become attracted to and yet fear the woman’s ‘sexual other’ (1993:57), the pregnancy.  Furthermore, according to Mary Russo, the female body becomes grotesque when addressing the “pregnant body, the aging body, the irregular body” (1994:56). Russo makes a point to describe the female grotesque as being “repressed and undeveloped” (1994:63). According to Gamble, Russo “characterises the grotesque body as associated with ‘the lower body stratum’ connected with animals, degradation, filth, death and rebirth” (2001:125).

According to Bakhtin, the grotesque body mimics three main life acts: sexual intercourse, death and giving birth (1984:353); life and death, two separates coming together in one body. Bakhtin discusses how the three main life acts draws out “exterior symptoms and expressions” (1984:354) such as spasms, tensions, sweating and convulsions which Bakhtin relates to the mimicking of death and the resurrection of the body after death. Bakhtin talks about life and death as if it is one, he talks about how death itself is an act of life, as well as the body’s role in the acts, “speaking with the tongue of the body itself” (1984:359). Another ancient grotesque concept is the dismemberment and the study and detailed presentation of the anatomy through deaths and wounds.