Cabin Fever: Bodily and Psychic Transfigurations in the Dehumanizing Landscape

This paper refers to the cultural and architectural relationship between humans and the “landscape” in the collective imaginary – narrative and cinematic – where the architectural archetype of the cabin in the woods serves as a machine for the psychic and bodily transfiguration of its inhabitants. The roots of this theme can be traced back to Georg Simmel’s The Philosophy of Landscape (1913), which reopens the debate on the objectivity of the landscape, a topic still central to the contemporary discourse on the end of anthropocentrism. The theme focuses on the issue of recognizing the landscape as a self-conscious and objective entity, capable of influencing human behavior and transfiguring the body, and serving as a metaphor for a painful and troubled desire for reconnection. The paper is articulated in three parts that describe the process of bodily mutation put into action: ‘The Cabin in the Woods (The Trap of No Return),’ ‘Stimmung (Chaos Reigns),’ ‘Dehumanization (The Corrupted Body and the Process of Assimilation).’ The key focus is the desecration and mutation of the body as a metaphor for the downfall of anthropocentric dominance in favor of a rejoining with the landscape, which is not without compromises. The cabin in the woods assumes the role of an architectural archetype, identifiable as a sort of “trap of no return,” which, driven by degenerative natural forces, initiates the bodily transformative process, acting as a conduit to a new psychophysical condition for its inhabitants. The grotesque aspect of bodily mutation can be identified with the choice to be overwhelmed by the landscape entity, in pursuit of an intimate, physiological, sexual, and unsettling connection.