INTRODUCTION

Depictions of the human body as raw material are common in the cinema, stimulating a wide variety of disparate responses in audiences. To portray the human body as raw material is to show it as a ‘thing', as an object suscepti-ble to the impersonal, natural forces of cause and e'ect. Purely physical objects may be modi£ed, manipulated, stimulated, torn asunder and sewn back together according to any logic consistent with the laws of physics, and when the human body is depicted in this way, it becomes a potential object of fas-cination, disgust, horror, and sometimes even sexual titillation. Portrayals of this kind are reminders of our brute, corporeal nature, which is not governed by intellect or free will, but by the push and pull of physical impact; of violent forces having nothing at all to do with our own personal hopes or desires. Such imagery provokes us to consider the implications of embodiment and to re¥ect on the latent vulnerabilities - as well as the potentialities - of ¥esh and blood.

In this chapter I shall investigate the varied, and sometimes incongruous, reactions that audiences experience when viewing cinematic depictions of the human body as raw material. My investigation will proceed, £rst, by explicat-ing an ontological distinction between being-in-itself and being-for-itself, which will allow for a clari£cation of the processes involved in the objecti£cation of other human beings, both men and women. Following this, I shall then argue that in £lms such as The Human Centipede, Nymphomaniac and Videodrome, where the boundaries of bodily objecti£cation are pushed to a nihilistic extreme, a strange thing occurs. Rather than simply resulting in the debase-ment of the bodies of men and women, the extremity of objecti£cation in these £lms opens an empathetic potential in audiences that is related to, but not distinct from, other horri£c, humorous and erotic sorts of feelings. I conclude that the objecti£cation of human bodies in £lm is not only unavoidable, but also a potentially positive and productive moral exercise for audiences.

THE BODY AS AN OBJECT

Over the years, much scholarly attention has been (and continues to be) brought to bear on the objecti£cation of human bodies - in particular the bodies of women ff in the popular media (Bordo 1993, Brunner 2003, Kaplan 1983, Mulvey 2009, Tasker 1993, Williams 1999).