Home > assh > RDR > Vol. 8 > Iss. 1 (2022)
Abstract
In the article, “Film Bodies: Gender, Genre and Excess” (1991), Linda Williams defines as body genres the film genres that are based on stimulating certain physical reactions in the bodies of spectators. These are fear (horror), sexual arousal (pornography), and tears (melodrama). All three genres share, “an apparent lack of proper aesthetic distance, a sense of over-involvement in sensation and emotion. We feel manipulated,” by them. The bodies of whoever watches these films are involved in an “involuntary mimicry” of the body on the screen. During a talk at the 2016 Third Coast Conference, radio producer Eleanor McDowall inquired about the equivalent of body genres in audio storytelling (radio, podcast, and other forms of audio narratives). What are those sound works that engage the bodies of their listeners, not by merely talking about bodily reactions, but by actually provoking them?
