Plant Horror: Love Your Own Pod

The sixth chapter moves into the world of “plant horror” to explore the ways in which the plant becomes a figure for both cinema itself and for life under global capitalism, inspiring fear and desire all at once. The B movies examined in this chapter posit vegetality as the experience of all beings under capitalism. They visualize the dark side of a global modernity that is vegetal in essence, yet still generates human interest and even fascination. This critique of capitalism is coupled with an attempt to project a view of a purely material reality—that is, the reality of the plant on film. Such a projection represents not just a horrifying loss of human authenticity, but a pleasurable cinematic experience that foreshadows a new materialist approach to the interpenetration of bodies. This chapter presents an analysis of the two film versions of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (appearing in 1956 and 1978, respectively) to show how these films foreground vegetal alterity and challenge the basic premises of realism. Long interpreted as promoting paranoia, plant horror can instead introduce us to a world which does not recognize humans as individuals but nonetheless allows them to become affectively involved with it.