13/06/2013
Gore Magazine IV features the most bizarre, twisted, gory, humorous satire in the history of all horror stories. It's called Designer Dentata -- an examination of the depravity of reality shows with a surgically enhanced blood-chomping twist that will leave you cringing yet unable to stop reading. The author, Shaun Avery, gives us an in-depth look at the gears in motion that brought his piece to life:
Introduction to Designer Dentata
I’m a big fan of the late crime maestro Ed McBain (as everybody should be) and back when I was completing my collection of his seminal 87th Precinct series, I used to love it when I came across an entry for which he’d written an introduction or an afterword.
The Orion edition of a novel called “The Mugger” features one of the former, and it contains a comment that the author often used to start a story with nothing but the title, and then make his way from there. And I was always jealous of that idea, wishing I could break free from the straightjacket of planning and do the same.
With “Designer Dentata,” I eventually managed.
The title is obviously a play on words (I love those, too) of the myth of Va**na Dentata. The term came to me when I was trying to sleep one night, and as A) a lover of the genre ‘body horror’ and B) the proud owner of a very sick and warped sense of humor, I knew instantly that I had to pin a story to a title so cool. But what kind of story, I wondered, would it be?
Let me provide a few clues via the medium of the FAQ . . .
Q: Why do you take such delight in ridiculing reality TV?
A: Because it’s cheap and nasty television featuring cheap and nasty people, and it’s taking work and attention away from people who are actually, you know, talented. And because I know they’d never let me have my own show.
Q: So what would you prefer to see on TV?
A: Um . . . more cop shows? More horror-based shows? Probably just anything, really. I mean, a whole new generation might not be able to remember a world when there wasn’t reality TV. Scary thought, right?
Q: Do you really think people would tune in to watch a live maiming, like in your story?
A: Take a look at a TV listings magazine for the week, try to project your mind a few years into the future, and then ask me that question again.
Q: Do you believe that people being obsessed with TV stars is truly such a bad thing?
A: Not just TV stars – music stars and film stars, too. Really just stars in general. Maybe it’s not such a bad thing talking with a friend about some guy off TV perhaps that is just natural, but when a whole media seems fixated on the most banal of gossip about these ‘icons,’ you know something must be wrong.
Q: And your problem with plastic surgery?
A: It’s more a problem with vanity in general. Though I like to imagine what a caveman would think if he was transported to our time and saw some of the plastic-faced monstrosities we hold up as cultural icons. He’d probably assume they were demons of some kind, and I think I’d struggle to correct him.
Q: Do you think people would take Dr Banks up on his radical new procedure?
A: Well, the story’s satirical, so it’s obviously meant to be a slight exaggeration of the truth to prove a point. But if it would get them their fifteen minutes of fame, I suspect more than a few women would. And in the interests of not being s*xist, I bet a few fame-obsessed guys would get a similar thing done for that very same reason if they could.
Well, with thoughts and feelings like that, once I had my title in mind I suppose there was only one route the story could have taken. But I didn’t know that when I sat down to write. So now the final question remains, did I have fun finding out where the words “Designer Dentata” would take me? You bet I did. I hope you all have just as much fun reading it.