Permeable Bodies

Abstract

Permeable Bodies is a body of work exploring the potential for catharsis from trauma within the aesthetics of violence while unpacking notions of the house in horror. The summer between my first and second year of my MFA many things happened. COVID hit, my partner and I bought a house and I found out I was pregnant. These mingled circumstances meant that I was to quarantine in my house in Pittsburgh for my thesis year. This provided a rich context for me to understand, embody and unpack the context of domestic within horror movies as well as how the female body is rep- resented in horror through the tropes of Final Girl, The Bad Mom and horrors of pregnancy. My pregnancy opened me up to the reflections of myself that I saw in these representations and made me receptive to exploring the vulnerability of my painful history of sexual assault and its surprising impact on my relationship to the genre of horror.