Body Horror vs Extreme Horror

Recently I heard someone refer to Extreme Horror and Splatterpunk as “body horror” and my head just about exploded. I have gotten used to the idea that terms like Splatterpunk and Extreme Horror have basically switched definitions in modern genre lexicon, but let's not get ridiculous. Please forgive me if that comes off rather curmudgeonly, but some words really need to stay as they are. Changing “Splatterpunk” to “Body Horror” makes as much sense as calling all motor vehicles Jeeps. So, I thought I would explain what body horror is and is not.

Body horror, or biological horror, is a subgenre of horror fiction that centers around often gross, grotesque, or psychologically disturbing transformations of the human body. Though it may involve the destruction of the human body, it is typically focused more upon the corruption or degradation of the human form through things like surgery, scientific experimentation, diseases, viruses, infections, demonic or alien possession, or parasites. It can generally be described as an assault from something within the victim's body rather than from an external antagonist, and is often an affliction the victim has caused themselves, intentionally or otherwise.

Now, Splatterpunk or Extreme Horror may contain body horror, but it just as often may not. Likewise body horror may often be Extreme or Splatterpunk, but also may not. A good example of body horror that is not Extreme Horror or Splatterpunk would be Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis, about a man who wakes up to discover he has turned into a cockroach. Or even something like William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist. While Gord Rollo's Jigsaw Man or Rowland Bercy's Dr. Parasite would be examples of body horror that is also Extreme Horror. Stephen King's Thinner is definitely body horror that straddles the Splatterpunk line.

The 1958 film, The Fly, directed by Kurt Neuman and starring David Hedison, about a man who steps into a teleportation device with a fly and comes out half human/ half fly was definitely body horror, but far from Extreme. While David Cronenberg's 1986 remake starring Jeff Goldblum was both body horror and Splatterpunk and Extreme as fuck. See the difference? Kevin Smith's 2014 horror comedy, Tusks, is another example of body horror that no one would confuse with Extreme Horror.

So, while I grudgingly accept that words may change meanings over time, some words just don't make sense to change. If we call all Splatterpunk or Extreme Horror “body horror”, what do we call actual body horror? How do we distinguish Splatterpunk or Extreme Horror novels that actually do feature the transformation of the human body from those that don't? I have personally never written a true body horror novel and I have been writing Extreme Horror for a very long time. So, you can call Extreme Horror Splatterpunk, but how about we just let the definition of body horror stay what it has always been? It just makes better sense that way.