Restrained Excess: Where Sophistication Meets the Grotesque

Sophistication and the grotesque may not at first sight seem to have much in common. Yet as the notions of camp, decadence, and extravagance suggest, there are instances in which the grotesque intersects with sophistication and vice versa. Investigating sophisticated/grotesque phenomena like the exquisiteness of culinary disgust and the attractive revulsion inspired by freakish bodies, I probe the outer limits of the restrained excess brought on by the paradox that is the sophisticated grotesque. In this, I ultimately question what the grotesquely sophisticated can tell us about the transgressions of norms at either end of the scale of the refined and the vulgar.