The images flicker through my memory as half-remembered snatches of youth, a childhood where my church hall was television and my icons were superheroes crushed by fate and rebuilt by mad science.
"I can't hold her, she's breaking up, she's break --"
"Dr. David Banner, searching for a way to tap into the hidden strengths that all human have. Then an accidental overdose of gamma radiation alters his body chemistry ...
"The television screen is the retina of the mind's eye."
I get circumspective about my son's cancer roughly three times a year: in May, around the diagnosis anniversary, when we discovered stage-4 neuroblastoma at the age of 2; in late November, remembering the deep dark days of stem cell transplant; and in September, which kicked off the hardest three months of my son's cancer treatments and is also Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. And when I get circumspective, I get writing.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, body horror took hold in the popular consciousness, even if sometimes people didn't really think of it as body horror. The concept of one's own flesh turning against them, warping in the wake of forces not entirely understood. On TV, the likes of "The Six Million Dollar Man" or "The Incredible Hulk" delved deep into the subconscious fear of the body torn apart and reassembled, sometimes by the very same aspects of science, week in and week out.
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