My Body is a Haunted House
Sung to the Tune of "Your Body is a Wonderland"
There’s a moment from The Haunting of Bly Manor that I revisit often. It’s the reason I’ve watched the last episode countless times, sobbing through each watch. After taking the spirit of the lady in the lake into herself to protect those around her, Dani describes the feeling of being watched, of knowing that her time will someday run out.
“I have this feeling like I’m walking through this dense, overgrown jungle, and I can’t really see anything but the path in front of me. But I know there’s this thing hidden. This angry, empty, lonely beast…And at some point, she’s gonna take me.”
I remember watching this scene for the first time. Dani’s beast in the jungle, her lady in the lake, reminds me so much of my own beast in the jungle. This ominous, threatening spirit is sometimes how I imagine my chronic illnesses. Simply by existing in this disabled body, I often feel as though, like Dani, I am waiting for the end, ever unsure when it will be or what it will look like. In response to Dani’s fears, Jamie asks only, “Do you want company? While you wait for your beast in the jungle?” She doesn’t make a promise she can’t keep. She doesn’t promise it will be okay. She offers the only things she can: companionship and time, whatever they have left of it.
While Dani’s haunting isn’t necessarily a disability, it is one of the most perfect metaphors for it that I’ve found, particularly if viewed through the scope of mental illness. In that last episode, The Haunting of Bly Manor became more than just a tragic, sapphic ghost story. It became something that I could carry with me when the fear of the future gets too loud. Now, as I continue venturing further into horror, it’s a reminder that disability - even when it’s merely symbolic - doesn’t need to come hand in hand with ableism.
Perhaps naively, I hadn’t realized how deeply horror as a genre relies on disability as a creator of fear and discomfort. In so many of the movies that I’ve watched, physical disfigurements are used as oddities or markers of evil, with little room for nuanced character building. Jennifer’s Body, one of my personal favorites thus far, was exquisitely entertaining. It was exaggerated and silly and truly a delight to watch. The primary teacher in the movie, Mr. Wroblewski, is an amputee with a robotic arm, burn scars, and a limp. I waited for his disability to be incorporated into the story. I wondered whether perhaps the actor himself was disabled. When I sat down to write this, I decided to delve deeper. As someone who isn’t an avid horror viewer, I assumed that there may have been a piece to the storyline that I missed. The first article I read was a negative review of the film in which the writer had similar questions as me: why the robotic arm? Why the scars? What was the purpose? The second link I clicked was an interview with the actor, JK Simmons, by SciFi Now. When asked about the role, he responded by saying that, “he has a gnarly, robotic arm and walked with a limp…and I ended up coming up with the whole backstory that informed why Mr. Wroblewski is the way he is, why he’s such a dork.” He continues by saying that the further he delved into the character, the more physical characteristics were added, like an “outrageous seventies hairpiece” and “strange burn scars.” When I see disabled characters portrayed in media, I often interrogate the relationship ableism, both internal and external, has on the lens through which they’re viewed. Sometimes, disabled people can just exist within stories like this one. There doesn’t need to be a reason given for this teacher’s limp. The viewer isn’t entitled to the history of his scars. Still, it didn’t take much digging to learn that these characteristics were added as a backstory to inform, as the actor says, why the character is such a dork. This teacher isn’t evil. This isn’t an example of a disabled character used as a way to frighten the viewer. His disabilities are, however, used as visual cues to the viewer that this character is goofy, strange, and a bit unusual.
When I was in middle school and just dipping my toe into being chronically ill, I spent some time in an in-patient pain clinic. I was young enough that I didn’t have a cell phone. Facebook wasn’t even a blip on my radar. There were so few ways to share what I was going through that the easiest choice was to not tell anyone. My friend group at the time consisted of girls who made fun of me relentlessly but invited me to their birthday parties and sleepovers, which is to say that I didn’t trust them with the intimacies of my newly sick body. Occasionally, one of them would call me on the landline to share gossip or talk about the boy in our class that everyone was obsessed with. I remember coming home from the hospital and talking to one of these friends on the phone. I was standing in my brothers’ room, staring out the window into the woods behind our house, when she asked how my kidney transplant went. She thought it was gross, she told me, but she wanted to hear all about it. I was confused. I knew nothing about kidney transplants, and I certainly didn’t need one. I hadn’t had surgery at all. I told her so, and in return I learned that someone had spread the rumor around our school (which was small, Catholic, and insufferable) that I had been absent for a transplant. The rumor didn’t hurt me the way others later would, but it was the first time that someone leveraged ableism against me. It was harmless, a humorless middle school joke, but it was a reminder that being chronically ill made me goofy, strange, and a bit unusual. On a much smaller scale, this rumor served the same purpose as the added disabilities to the teacher in Jennifer’s Body.
The Midnight Club, Mike Flanagan’s latest Netflix series, takes place in a hospice for terminally ill teens. Though it isn’t without its flaws, Flanagan did precisely what I think more horror creators ought to do: he used ableism as a tool. It wasn’t the ghosts or the handful of jump scares that put me on edge while watching. It was the naturopathic cult follower who insisted on finding a cure. It was the desperation for healing. It was the denial of disability. The characters are given room for the full scope of emotions that comes with living in a disabled body. There is room for hope and heartbreak, grief and anger. And in the end, disability was never the enemy. Illness wasn’t demonized, and it wasn’t the ultimate Big Bad. Instead, the ableism found in the desire to eradicate illness in favor of perfect health was the biggest nightmare of them all.
My body is a haunted house. It’s often unpredictable, scary, melodramatic. There are jump scares lurking around every corner. My body is a haunted house, but it’s made scarier not by its symptoms, but by the ground upon which it’s built. There are bodies buried beneath the house - disabled ancestors, those without access to medical care, people left behind. We live in a deeply ableist society, and it can make existing terrifying. I’m scared of doctors and academia and politicians and well-meaning people who tell me to “feel better.” I’m scared that people won’t stay while I wait for my beast in the jungle. I’m terrified that someday, perhaps sooner rather than later, I will be too sick to support myself, and as the ground shifts beneath me, I may not be able to rely on our incredibly flawed systems.
There are so many aspects of existing in this world as a disabled person that are fodder for horror stories. My disabled body, however, isn’t the ultimate horror. Ableism is.
Question Corner (for your own introspection:)
If you’re a horror fan, consider some of your favorite movies and shows. Do they utilize disability as a tool? In what ways is it used?
How do you feel when you see a disabled person? How does that change depending on the disability?
What are some of the differences in the representation of invisible vs. visible disabilities in movies and TV?
Links:
Recommended Reading: Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space by Amanda Leduc and It Came from the Closet edited by Joe Vallese
JK Simmons Interview: https://www.scifinow.co.uk/interviews/jk-simmons-talks-jennifers-body/
i love this piece so, so much, Autumn. 'my body is a haunted house' could be the perfect title for your future book of essays :)
As always, you make my world a better place with your words