Guides: Queer Horror @ Pitt: How-to: Queer Reading Modes

How to "Read" Queer Cinema

Many of the films in this guide don't outwardly appear to be queer. To the casual heterosexual viewer, many of these films may not seem to contain any queer subtext. Allow me to explain.

When you view a film under a queer "reading mode," you'll find subtext that may have been missed during a first watch. Due to production codes and social stigma, many horror filmmakers have had to discuss queer topics and identity under the guise of other metaphors and symbols. This means that your run-of-the-mill vampire movie, for example, likely contains queer subtext, as vampires and monsters of all kinds are common metaphors for queer "otherness" and the isolation that comes with it.

The films on this list include films read through a queer lens given the role of directors, screenwriters, and stars, as well as films that are more explicitly queer. This guide is by no means an exhaustive list of all queer horror films and horror films with queer subtext- rather, it's a curated collection of queered horror.

By "queered" horror, I mean both explicitly queer texts and texts that contain queered elements. "Queer" being a verb here. Many monsters and myths queer the monster themself. Or, rather- the act of being queer can be portrayed as being monstrous, in the same way that being "monstrous" or "physically deformed" makes you an "other," an outsider. "Dangerous," posing a threat to the status quo.

In this way, a movie can also be "queered" by simply other-ing a character for being monstrous or mutating/changing heterosexual relationships and the idea of the nuclear family unit (Carrie, The Last House on The Left, The Bad Seed). Any rejection of the status quo or religion, or attacks on family and society, "queer" horror spaces.

As genres and genre studies expand, more and more films can be added to this list. Many films on here also occupy a multi-genre space, which is quite common within horror subgenres and queer horror especially, as aspects of camp tend to exist in tandem inside the main horror storyline. For example, a slasher film can delve into supernatural elements (Nightmare on Elm Street 3) or a horror-comedy can contain a slasher-esque storyline that itself feels a bit campy (Jennifer's Body).

I've learned that it's difficult to identify and label films as queer, in the same way that I sometimes struggle with labeling films as feminist. (The Neon Demon claims to be both queer and feminist, but all I remember is two hours of women hurting each other and men hurting women, which doesn't feel too "feminist" for me.) Because horror film and film in general has been historically dominated by men in all aspects- production, direction, marketers, reviewers- identifying queer horror becomes a matter of whatever your individual reading strategy is.

Having a gay or queer character does not a queer film make. The criteria here involves some camp and intertextual relay- for example, the casting of a known queer actor, or a film's association with a queer director or producer (Ryan Murphy, etc.)

Reading modes change over time. For many years, gay and/or trans characters have been treated as monsters that threaten mainstream societal values and morals. I have not included many films like this, for I believe we're coming a bit further along in America. I don't enjoy watching queer people be harmed.

For more on queer reading modes in the horror genre, look to the general critical texts below.

General Critical Texts

Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality and the Horror Film by Harry Benshoff
"Arguing from a postmodern perspective, Benshoff examines how Hollywood has historically "monsterized" homosexuality even as gay and lesbian viewers were learning to read queer elements into classic horror films. The author traces the concept of monster queer as it evolved from one era to the next. An interesting theoretical companion to earlier monographs that touch on gays and horror films, including Vito Russo's seminal Celluloid Closet (1987. rev. ed.), Andrea Weiss's Vampires and Violets (Penguin, 1993), and Rhona Berenstein's Attack of the Leading Ladies (Columbia Univ., 1996); recommended for both queer and film studies collections." - Anthony J. Adam, Prairie View A&M Univ. Lib., Houston.
Dread of Difference by Barry Grant
"An undying procession of sons of Dracula and daughters of darkness has animated the horror film genre from the beginning. Indeed, in this pioneering exploration of the cinema of fear, Barry Keith Grant and twenty other film critics posit that horror is always rooted in gender, particularly in anxieties about sexual difference and gender politics."
Planks of Reason: Essays on the Horror Film
"This revised edition retains the spirit of the original, but also offers new takes on rediscovered classics and recent developments in the genre. In addition to reprinting seventeen essays, including Robin Wood's "An Introduction to the American Horror Film," this revised edition features a new chapter on yuppie horror films by Barry Grant, as well as an updated analysis of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre by Christopher Sharrett."
Queer Horror Film and Television: Sexuality and Masculinity at the Margins
"In recent years, the representation of alternative sexuality in the horror film and television has "outed" itself from the shadows from which it once lurked, via the embrace of an outrageously queer horror aesthetic where homosexuality is often unequivocally referenced. In this book, Darren Elliott-Smith departs from the analysis of the monster as a symbol of heterosexual anxiety and fear, and moves to focus instead on queer fears and anxieties within gay male subcultures. Furthermore, he examines the works of significant queer horror film, television producers, and directors to reveal gay men's anxieties about: acceptance and assimilation into Western culture, the perpetuation of self-loathing and gay shame, and further anxieties associations shameful femininity. This book focuses mainly on representations of masculinity, and gay male spectatorship in queer horror films and television post-2000. In titling this sub-genre "queer horror," Elliott-Smith designates horror that is crafted by male directors/producers who self-identify as gay, bi, queer, or transgendered and whose work features homoerotic, or explicitly homosexual, narratives with "out" gay characters. In terms of case studies, this book considers a variety of genres and forms from: video art horror; independently distributed exploitation films (A Far Cry from Home, Rowe Kelly, 2012); queer Gothic soap operas (Dante's Cove, 2005-7); satirical horror comedies (such as The Gay Bed and Breakfast of Terror (Thompson, 2008); low-budget slashers (Hellbent, Etheredge-Outzs, 2007); and contemporary representations of gay zombies in film and television from the pornographic LA Zombie (Bruce LaBruce, 2010)) to the melodramatic In the Flesh (BBC Three 2013-15). Moving from the margins to the mainstream, via the application of psychoanalytic theory, critical and cultural interpretation, interviews with key directors and close readings of classic, cult and modern horror, this book will be invaluable to students and researchers of gender and sexuality in horror film and television."
Off-cuts: Gay Masculinities in Queer Horror Film and Television Since 2000
"This thesis highlights the limits of a metaphorical understanding of homosexuality in the horror film in an age where its presence has become explicit. Extending on Harry M. Benshoff's work on homosexual representation in Monsters in the Closet (1997) this thesis argues that, post 2000, the horror genre has developed to include representations of gay masculinity that point to a queer horror aesthetic where homosexuality is often unequivocally referenced. My hypothesis is that queer horror and its representations of gay masculinity reveals more about gay male anxieties in the early twenty-first century than heterosexual ones."
Some-Ness in No-When: Queer Temporalities in the Horror Genre
"In my research, I question why heteronormative society is afraid of the elements of horror films that are inherently queer. My focus is on temporal understandings of horror through the concepts of queer time, as theorized by Jack Halberstam and the theory of the abject, as presented by Julia Kristeva. I examine the relationship between queer time and heteronormative time. The abject serves as the return of time without identity or defined by binaries. Queer time is the time that will destroy heteronormative time's conception of itself. This then relates to the horror that is created by the queering of time through the breaking down the binaries that hold together normative society as the time in which queer subjects exist is also in a time in which heteronormativity exists. I will apply the theory of queer time to the vampire films Bram Stokers Dracula (1992), The Hunger (1983), and Let the Right One In (2008); the ghost films The Conjuring (2013), The Others (2001), and Insidious (2010); and lastly, I will look at the slasher films A Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), Psycho (1960), and A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)."
The Revolting Child in Horror Cinema: Youth Rebellion and Queer Spectatorship
"The monstrous child is the allegorical queer child in various formations of horror cinema: the child with a secret, the child 'possessed' by Otherness, the changeling child, the terrible gang. This book explores the possibilities of 'not growing up' as a model for a queer praxis that confronts the notion of heternormative maturity."
Logging into Horror’s Closet: Gay Fans, the Horror Film and Online Culture
Dissertation. "Harry Benshoff has boldly proclaimed that ‘horror stories and monster movies, perhaps more than any other genre, actively invoke queer readings’ (1997, p. 6). For Benshoff, gay audiences have forged cultural identifications with the counter-hegemonic figure of the ‘monster queer’ who disrupts the heterosexual status quo. However, beyond identification with the monstrous outsider, there is at present little understanding of the interpretations that gay fans mobilise around different forms and features of horror and the cultural connections they establish with other horror fans online. In addressing this gap, this thesis employs a multi-sited netnographic method to study gay horror fandom. This holistic approach seeks to investigate spaces created by and for gay horror fans, in addition to their presence on a mainstream horror site and a gay online forum. In doing so, this study argues that gay fans forge deep emotional connections with horror that links particular textual features to the construction and articulation of their sexual and fannish identities."
'Just Keep Looking Forward or We'll Be Stuck Here Forever': The Final Girls, Spectatorial Address and Transformations of the Slasher Form
"This chapter offers a reflection on the horror film’s spectatorial address through an analysis of Todd Strauss-Schulson’s The Final Girls (2015). In particular, it shows how the film’s self-referentiality and metagenericity help destabilize horror’s assumed gendered address, bridging ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ cinematic codes, as they have traditionally been perceived by film criticism. By establishing intertextual dialogue with Wes Craven’s Scream franchise, the chapter focuses on two particular aspects: the place of motherhood in the horror film and a reconsideration of the Final Girl trope through the affective politics set up by the hybridized conventions of the slasher form and maternal melodrama. Paszkiewicz concludes that what might be considered new in the film—female friendship, a collaborative front against the patriarchy, self-referentiality interwoven with the emotional intensity and affect—is already present in the horror genre."
Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me: The Ambivalent Queer of Post-Network Television
"This essay reassesses the deregulation of the American television industry and the rise of identitarian premium cable channels in the context of a new screen presence that has, since the early-2000s, advanced more provocative representations of sexual non-normativity than those found on network programming. This figure, the ambivalent queer of post-network TV, is a libidinous and morally suspect individual often found on premium GLBTQ cable outlets like Here! and on its series such as Dante’s Cove (2005–2007). Such channels target niche audiences interested in ‘quality’ programming and, as a result, are able to offer showrunners and writers a comparatively broad range of creative control, leading to series that break social, cultural, and televisual taboos. And nowhere has this boundary-breaking potential of the ambivalent cable queer been more industrially conspicuous than in television horror."
"You Had me at ‘I’m Dead'”: Porn, Horror, and the Fragmented Body
This chapter in Transnational Horror Across Visual Media discusses the films of Bruce LaBruce.
Desire After Dark: The Queer Culture of Contemporary Supernatural Media
Dissertation. "This dissertation constructs a cultural and industrial history of supernatural film and television from the sexual revolutions of the 1960s to the present, investigating those queer genders, sexualities, and sexual practices that have been integral to the maturation of the genre and its persistent popularity as both a subcultural and mainstream media form. While most academic studies focusing on the significance of gender and sexuality to horror have concentrated primarily on subgenres such as the Classical Hollywood “creature feature,” the 1970s and 1980s slasher film, and the more recent cycle of apocalyptic zombification, this project takes occult phenomena such as vampirism and witchcraft as its central objects of attention. Examining how the queerness of the occult has been found at the heart of our continuing fascination with screening the supernatural, I employ industrial and cultural historiography, textual analysis, and popular press/trade discourse. “Desire After Dark” thus produces a history of the paranormal present, one maintaining that supernatural media has risen to prominence at particular moments during the past fifty years as one way of exposing and working through cultural crises surrounding gender and sexuality, evidenced in such eras as the global sexual revolutions of the 1960s, the fascination with “Euro-sleaze” cinema and theatrical hardcore pornography at the beginning of the 1970s, the crisis of HIV/AIDS during the 1980s, and the increasingly explicit sexualization of American cable television in the new millennium."

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Queer Horror @ Pitt

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How to "Read" Queer Cinema

General Critical Texts