“The bodily lower stratum of grotesque realism still fulfilled its unifying, degrading, uncrowning, and simultaneously regenerating functions. However divided, atomized, individualized were the “private” bodies, Renaissance realism did not cut off the umbilical cord which tied them to the fruitful womb of earth. Bodies could not be considered for themselves; they represented a material bodily whole and therefore transgressed the limits of their isolahon. The private and the universal were still blended in a contradictory unity. The carnival spirit still reigned in the depths of Renaissance Literature.” (Bakhtin, 24)
In this passage, Bakhtin’s idea of grotesque realism mixing with the cranival spirit stood out to me. Originally I was going to post about The Monkey (2024), a graphic horror comedy as many scenes could fall under this idea, but I was (unfortunately) eating my dinner when this YouTube video popped on to my autoplay, and I realized that many aspects of the video alined with Bakhtin’s ideas far too much for me to not comment about it. So, I present to you a r/CreepyPM’s reaction video. CONTENT WARNING: graphic language, sexual (online) content, creepy people doing creepy things, and everything else that falls inline with this reddit strand.
This video features CoopNoop (the youtuber) dramatically reading posts that wound up on r/CreepyPMs while simultaneously reacting to them. These posts follow Bakhtin’s idea of the grotesque as they are quite degrading to the women reciving them, and bring the idea of “private” bodies into the public forum. That these private messages are posted online by those who recieve them as a way of shaming the messagers and for commiseration and comedic purposes, both those posting and those messaging are bringing the private body and private language into the public eye. CoopNoop’s dramatization of these messages is a way of uncrowing and bringing down to earth the people who send these crass unsolicited messages in the first place. By pointing out and dramatizing how grotesque these messages are– in both their language, intent, and general ideas– and then acting it out, CoopNoop creates comedy through the grotesque. The viewer (and myself) can be extremely grossed out and horrified by these messages, but CoopNoop’s presentation of them makes them (somewhat) more palatable, and morbidly intriguing. The carnival aspect comes from the idea and function of social media. Almost everyone involved (outside of CoopNoop) has their identity masked by the online forum. Of course there are still handles and usernames, but nothing of substance to find out the real identities of these people, which seems to be what makes these creepy people send their creepy messages in the first place. In a carnival anything goes, because everyone is masked. Anything can happen in a carnival even if that becomes something grotesque. While many films try to create grotesque realism, and CoopNoop as well in his dramatizations, the grotesque realism here is not realism, but simply real, and that subsequently makes the video more grotesque.