Gross! Grody! Disgusting.
“If I cannot horrify, I'll go for the gross-out. I'm not proud.” -- Stephen King
I'm not sure I need to give content to this post. . . the title says it all! One reason some of us read King is because he is gross -- disgusting -- can't believe someone wrote that. Of course, with the disgusting come violence, monsters and buckets of blood.
So, Stephen King readers are supposed to play cool and pretend the horror isn't the real reason we enjoy him. We're supposed to say it's literature or something like that; but the truth is, many of us like the blood and guts!
There is a naughty feeling to reading Stephen King. He's like the kid who sits in the school cafeteria with a little group huddled around him as he tells you the most nasty, disgusting stories you can imagine. There is giggling and jabbing, but for the most part, everyone is quiet because they want to hear what happens next.
- A stranded man cuts off body parts and eats himself to stay alive.
- A girl is covered in pigs blood.
- A corpse rises out of a bathtub.
- A car driven by a ghost runs teens off the road.
- A Anti-Christ crucifies people in Las Vegas.
- A monster devours little kids.
- Two women hack each other up in the middle of Main Street, Castle Rock.
- An electrocution goes wrong, and fire bursts from the condemned mans head.
- A boy shoots himself in the head.
- A cat comes back from the graveyard, but smells like death.
- A cat is nailed to a sign post.
- Aliens are inside you, and they want out!
- A fat kid creates total Barf-O-Rama at he local pie eating contest.
- A man tried to swallow a cat. (noticing a lot of bad stuff happens to cats)
Okay, tell me what absolutely disgusting scene King has given us that you love!
The Stand - dark tunnel full of crashed cars where you must keep moving while stepping on mushy dead people.
ReplyDeleteI can't remember of any moment of grue in a King book where I ever thought it in such terms. I don't know if I started reading him for the grue, if so, it got old quick, all I know is that's not why I read him now. J.R.R. Tolkien has more to do with that reason, come to think of it, that's the real reason I started reading King.
ReplyDeleteWhen it comes to violence and gore in horror fiction I'm with author William F. Nolan (an unjustly neglected master of the form) who is of the less is more school. Nolan;s idea is , yes have gore and blood, but there is a way to make it artistic and not condescending towards your audience.
I almost can't believe I just wrote the above paragraph, nonetheless anyone who's read certain passages from King, Matheson and Poe (or for that matter Nolan) will realize I'm telling the truth.
In all of King's fiction, no moment has taken me aback quite so much as a certain scene in the short story "Dedication." So as not to offend anybody, I'll be nonspecific and simply say that to my teenaged brain, that scene definitely fulfilled the gross-out.
ReplyDelete"Survivor Type" is high on the gross-out list for me! Also, eating pie with blood in it. Ew.
ReplyDelete