The Horror of Transformation: Remix

Quick side note: our group has been working under the assumption that there are people out there who don't like remix. I've yet to search for or find these people, but this post is working under that assumption.

Today in my 495 class we discussed The Island of Dr. Moreau. In the book, a man is shipwrecked and ends up on an island with strange, beast-like men. It turns out that Dr. Moreau, who owns and lives on the island, takes animals and operates on them in an attempt to make them human. Totally gross out worthy and horrific. I highly recommend the book.

At one point in the discussion, Professor Horrocks asked us what exactly was so horrifying for us about what Dr. Moreau was doing. Was it the ethics of the thing? The subsequent degeneration of the animals back into their animistic natures? The lack of anesthetic and the screams of the animals being vivisected?

For me it was the transformation of something from its natural state to something tortured and unnatural. I've always been squeamish about human transformation. The first time I saw the movie Willow, I had to leave the room when they all got turned into pigs. It was unnatural. They were in pain. It honestly made me sick to my stomach. During the werewolf transformation scenes in Van Helsing I still have to close my eyes and plug my ears. I can barely watch Bruce Banner's first transformation in the Avengers. What really bothers me about these transformations is how painful they seem. It just plain freaks me out.

I think the same sort of principal works for our horror at what is going on in stories like these:


The Wolfman/Werewolves
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Dracula
Frankenstein

i.e., something natural turning unwillingly and perhaps painfully into something unnatural.

Does this apply to remix? Might some people not like it because they see something they like and are comfortable with (read: natural) twisted into something new and uncomfortable (read: unnatural)? That the original way something is is its natural and correct state and that should not be tampered with?