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"There is no accounting for taste, especially in the realm of the 'gross'"-Linda Williams
In the context of her 1991 essay, "Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess," Linda Williams explores the use of the term "gross" as a way of describing cultural attitudes towards pornography, horror, and melodrama. Recognizing that gross signifies the rank, obscene, foul or tasteless, Williams focuses primarily on how the "gross" genres of pornography, horror, and melodrama illustrate the role that excess plays in reflecting cultural attitudes. Her point is that by categorizing certain genres as excessive, cultural collateral can in turn be denied (141).
Looking at Hollywood cinema twenty years later, it is possible to see a key link between blockbusters and Williams's analysis of pornography, horror, and melodrama. If gross is a way to describe excess, then blockbusters could arguably be classified as gross as well. That connection throws into relief another way of looking at the argument Williams makes about the low cultural status of what she terms "body genres" (144). If blockbusters contain parallels with the three body genres that Williams analyzes, then it is possible that those connections are the basis for blockbusters' low cultural status. Granted, blockbusters' wide audience and huge box office ensure that there are distinct differences between the moderate visibility of pornography, horror, and melodrama on the one hand, and huge visibility of blockbusters on the other, but analyzing the blockbuster genre alongside porn, horror, and melodrama sheds new light on the ways that blockbusters fail to conform to middlebrow concepts of taste and art.
As a possible case study, Avatar (James Cameron, 2009) works well to illustrate the connection between body genres and blockbusters because the film fits the quintessential definition of the Hollywood blockbuster. To date, the film has grossed over $2.78 billion worldwide (boxofficemojo.com). Its original marketing campaign plastered every surface with images taken from the movie. Television sets blasted the movie trailer hourly. Within days of the initial release, the internet was glutted with "How to speak Na'vi" websites that also sold T-shirts and sports cups. Later, some grocery chains had displays of DVD carousels devoted to the movie and tables set up with blue plates, blue forks, blue cupcakes (imprinted with tiny avatar heads), blue glasses, and...