First, I should lay my cards on the table. I can’t lay claim to any of the letters of the LGBTQQIP2SAA… experience (hereinafter, in short, LGBT+), myself. However, I do find myself reading and listening to a lot that looks at horror from a queer perspective (e.g., the podcasts Horror Queers, The Gaylords of Darkness, and the sadly defunct Attack of the Queerwolf) and, as it is still Pride Month for a couple more days, I wanted to do something with the notion of “queer horror” and look at a couple examples that I enjoy. That said, I hope this is not received in any way as disrespectful. One might fairly ask why I, a straight-cis guy, should have something at all to say about queer-anything. All I can offer is that I write here about what I find interesting and I find this interesting and approach it with respect and appreciation. I hope that’s enough…
So to begin, I think there are a couple of reasons that I consume so much of this stuff. Firstly, the world of horror fandom can be a really varied place, featuring many thoughtful and insightful people, but also including some personalities that turn me off (e.g., the “horror-bro”), and explicitly queer and/or feminist content is simply a more pleasant listen; I feel I have more in common with an artist who would call themselves queer than an agro dude who would use that word to belittle someone or something. Secondly, I enjoy when discourse comes from a clear viewpoint. Having some inkling of the writer/speaker’s lived experience serves as a lens through which to view their opinion, making it all more personal, while also drawing attention to that lens itself. Now, to be fair, there are countless perspectives out there. One might look at horror from a Black perspective, or Jewish, or French, or Marxist, or Freudian, or as a person who does crossword puzzles, etc., but this is a very prominent one. You can find writing that looks at horror content from all of these other angles and more, but none of them have quite the profile in the world of horror criticism that queerness does.
Queer
And perhaps this is with good reason. ‘Queer’ is a once derogatory term, which has been reclaimed as a proud self-identifier of otherness (specifically in terms of sexual/gender identity). Horror is all to do with the ‘other,’ with what is outside the norm. What else is a monster? And while traditionally, the approach has been to posit that other as inhuman, abject, an object of fear, so much of the genre takes a position of at least sympathizing, if not outright identifying, with it. Who watches Frankenstein and roots against the creature (cue obligatory note that it and its first sequel, The Bride of Frankenstein, which is very, very camp, were directed by an out gay man)? And even when the sympathies of the audience are not intentionally aligned with the monster or the monstrous experience on display (for another classic example, take Nosferatu, directed by another out gay man), there is still an inherent fascination, an attraction (sometimes conflicted) towards that which social/ethical/religious norms instruct us to abjure.
Especially given how focused the genre can be on the body, on flesh and fluids, on explicit, titillating, sometimes “gratuitous” sex and nudity, it is easy to make the leap from the allure of one deviation from the norm to another. I’d not be the first to observe that horror as a whole is, thus, pretty ‘queer.’
Reading a Film
But sometimes more so than others and in ways far more varied than I would venture to survey in such a short essay. So, what kinds of ‘queer horror’ might we look at here? One major branch consists in queer readings of horror texts with no explicitly LGBT+ characters. This may be informed by knowing that the writer or director, or some key member(s) of the cast were not straight/cis, but also sometimes a text just lends itself well to the reading.
A great example here is Fright Night (1985). No characters are identified as ‘gay,’ but there is so much to read into it: Charlie ignoring his girlfriend, who is finally ready to sleep with him, because he’s so fascinated by the suave, magnetic man who just moved in next door (who is a vampire); Ed, a weird kid in a kind of showy way, ostracized even by his purported friends, who is seduced to vampirism with the line, “I know what it’s like being different. Only they won’t pick on you anymore… or beat you up. I’ll see to that”; the tragedy of Peter Vincent, a very queer coded (British accent, delicate physicality, lots of makeup), older character having to kill Ed (as a wolf) and watch him suffer and die – it feels like there is a connection there, like Ed would have been able to come to him for support and community, had things only been different; and of course, the fact that Jerry the vampire comes to town with his servant/roommate/live-in-carpenter, Billy (apparently they travel around flipping houses together and collecting antiques), and their relationship seems genuinely warm and tender (and Jerry seems truly crushed when Billy is killed).
Somehow, even the totally hetero-seduction of Amy on the dance floor (under very “bisexual-lighting,” long before that was a thing) carries a soupçon of queerness in her awakening to her own sexuality, identity, and the extent to which she is done with this immature boy – when she bares her neck to be bitten, she chooses otherness for herself (ending up somewhat shark mouthed for a time). Of course, by the end, the seductive/disruptive vampire has been vanquished, Charlie and Amy are back together, and everything’s very straight, but that does not erase all that came before.
I think the case of finding queerness in Fright Night represents the lion’s share of queer horror. A queer reading here comes easily, but any text can be “queered” or read in this way, and I enjoy hearing about/reading how individuals have found their own stories and experiences reflected in work that may have honestly never considered them. Sometimes it’s a stretch, but even then, there is the pleasure of a totally personal engagement with a work, which is far more fulfilling than a claim at objectively judging a work’s artistic/literary merits, or lack thereof.
A Question of Representation
Sometimes, interpretation isn’t necessary to find a character who is explicitly LGBT+; it’s all on the surface. This representation might be positive, as in the case of the basketball coach in Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker, who is only ever shown to be a caring educator, seeking to help the traumatized young person in his care (who may also be gay – a plot point that is never firmly settled) navigate a world of murderous aunts and viciously homophobic police (though the real reason the film is so embraced is probably Susan Tyrell’s gloriously over-the-top performance, treasured by aficionados of high camp).
Sometimes, a case can be made for reading a film to be, even unintentionally, supportive of the LGBT+ community (I would argue this for Sleepaway Camp, but I don’t want to open that can of worms without a huge spoiler warning from the get go). Sometimes, a work may explicitly feature LGBT+ characters (such as an early 70s Lesbian Vampire film) but have obviously been made with a typical straight-male gaze in mind (though even in those cases, it can be compellingly liberating to watch a woman discovering what an improvement this alluring female vampire lover is over her brutish, abusive, and/or possibly deeply closeted and self-hating husband – e.g., Daughters of Darkness).
Very often, though, the representation can be toxic. This seems especially true with trans (or if not exactly ‘trans,’ then at least notably gender-nonconforming) characters, such as Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs.
What fascinates me here is taking in how others navigate their own complex relationships with problematic texts. One may find certain elements noxious, or even harmful, and still treasure a given film. Hearing a trans person detail their complicated appreciation for Dressed to Kill, Psycho, or Terror Train, while reckoning with, challenging, and criticizing, or even decrying the perpetuation of the dangerous ‘killer-trans’ trope can be illuminating (outside of the purview of this essay, the same can be said, for example, of women, particularly survivors of sexual violence, who find comfort in exploitative rape-revenge films, such as I Spit on Your Grave).
This is an experience that I do not have personally, but I can find things uncomfortable; there can be that sense of ‘is this alright?’ ‘is it still ok to enjoy this?’ and sometimes I need to reckon with a film I love saying or doing something that I find ugly. Seeing how others thread this needle of engagement with work can be instructive. You can love something, and you can criticize it; you can find value and harm in the same place, and it is valuable to interrogate that juxtaposition. Life is complicated. (And of course, mileage may vary – a regressive, harmful message can simply ruin a film for a person as well.)
Queer as a Verb
The last strain of queer horror I’d like to look at is, I think, rarer, but might also be what interests me most, and it brings us first to a fairly academic discussion. In her book, Gender Trouble, Judith Butler framed gender as something not natural but rather, constantly performed, continually being performatively played into being; furthermore claiming that certain performances of gender, such as drag, can serve as a kind of strategy of resistance; a heteronormative text/image/concept (one which not only presents, but reifies a gender binary/heterosexual norm) can be twisted, played with, mocked and thus undercut – in other words, it can be “queered.” I am no expert in queer theory (but I did read a bit of Butler, Sedwick, Newton, and Sontag in grad school 20-something years ago, studying performativity), so I can’t say if Butler exactly coined the use of ‘queer’ as a verb, as something one does, but I associate her with it. Ok, so let’s bring this back to horror and how it can be ‘queered.’
In discussing the way that religious, reactionary types may decry the corruptive influence of horror, Stephen King noted that, ironically, “horror fiction is as conservative as a banker in a three-piece-suit”; you have “normal society” – it is disrupted by an (often external) othered threat; eventually that threat is conquered, and everything returns to normal, or the threat destroys all and it is a terrible tragedy. With respect to King though, I think that only describes one (perhaps dominant) kind of horror.
Another kind of horror is, for me, represented by the work of Clive Barker, who I intend to discuss in far greater depth when I finally finish re-reading his 6 volumes of the Books of Blood, comprising the vast majority of his short stories. (Look for that at some point.) One of the things that makes him so interesting to me is how much he doesn’t do what King described above. Sure, he brings in threats aplenty, and they can be violent, gory, weird, and very often obsessed with sex/the body/flesh, but so often his work culminates in a point where that threat, that horror becomes revelatory.
Whilst their experiences are still horrific, characters so often undergo a transformation that approaches the divine. What originally seemed terrible – scary – disgusting, twists into something of beauty. By the end of the night, Kaufman in The Midnight Meat Train has witnessed untold brutality. It has been a nightmare: one that he wakes from mutilated and traumatized, but also with a sense of newfound purpose, of service, of glory. He falls to his knees and kisses the filthy streets of the city which had so disappointed him and to which now he pledges eternal loyalty. And I don’t think we, the readers, are supposed to be horrified by this. Elements of his journey were meant to be (and were) horrific, but having ridden this train with him, we attend his beatification in the spirit that he does, and the cognitive dissonance of the dread and the awe are delicious.
I’ve long felt that this is a kind of ‘queering’ of horror. It may have nothing to do with sexual or gender identity (though Barker, himself, is gay and does often include gay characters), but is it any less subversive to render that once deemed utterly contemptible, transcendent?
A Recent Favorite – Suspiria (2018)
In planning to write this text, I’ve revisited a number of films and watched some for the first time, and while I’ve enjoyed most, I took the greatest pleasure in re-watching one of my favorites of recent years (which I’ve briefly touched on before) through this particular lens: Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria (2018), which can be viewed as a work of queer horror in multiple ways. It never explicitly states that any of the characters are LGBT+, but it is so easy to see romantic/sexual tension in their relationships – both between Susie and Sara and between Susie and Madame Blanc (not to mention among the feminist dance collective/witch coven in general). Furthermore, once those relationships are taken as a given, the story really comes to life so much more fully and is that much more emotionally resonant (I’ve heard that in the first draft they were explicitly presented, and so, in the final cut, they are still there even if the film never directly speaks of them). Also, Tilda Swinton plays a man, so that’s something. Guadagnino, himself, is out and the fact that the last film he’d made before this was the gay coming-of-age story, Call Me By Your Name, perhaps further frames the conversation. But for me, this also serves as an example of “queered” horror, ala Barker.
Even before I picked up on the chemistry between the characters, I loved the tactile physicality and sensuality of the film. It is a film about dancers and I believe in the dance of it. There is a relationship to gravity, to the body in space, to breath that all feels so totally of dance. And I love how the witchcraft is woven so fully through the work of that dance. The academy is not just a location where a secret cabal of witches hides behind the front of teaching dance (as it is in the 1977 original). The dance is the witchcraft. And it really is gorgeous, and dark, and the grounding of the dance makes the magic feel all the more solid and corporeal.
Into this space, so focused on the physical relationship between bodies, enters Susie Bannon, still a quiet newcomer to the academy, but no longer the delicate waif of the original (Jessica Harper was great, but it was a very different role). This Susie may giggle shyly, but she also stares back with a disarming directness, and she notably does so with two women there: her fellow dancer, Sara (who, like Susie, is also being groomed as a possible vessel for Helena Markos, the mostly unseen founder of the academy, lurking beneath the floorboards, dominating the coven and feeding on youth) and the other matriarch of the dance company (and its dominant creative presence), Madame Blanc.
The connection between Susie and Sara could easily be read as simply friendship, but there are moments that feel like more. When Susie has been having nightmares (a common occurrence in the school) and Sara runs to her and pushes her way into her bed, there is a sweet intimacy, a frankness that approaches sexuality. At a later moment, Sara returns to Susie’s room and is crestfallen to find it empty (Susie’s with Blanc at the time). Finally, in the film’s climax, after Sara has met a sad and bloody fate (having discovered something of the coven/academy’s intentions), Susie releases her from her torment with a sigh of “sweet girl” and cradles her as she goes. All of this still plays well if there is no hint of romance between them, but with it, the moment is all the more bittersweet.
On the other pairing, every scene between Susie and Madame Blanc feels like lovemaking – it’s just that no one actually has sex. But in the transmission of choreography in the dance studio, or asking and avoiding personal questions while eating a chicken wing, or staring at each other across a crowded table as all the others laugh and sing, or in the rare touch they may share, their desire and connection are palpable. At first, it seems that there is a power imbalance at work (which feels both potentially improper and as if that is part of the allure) – after all, Susie is the young, inexperienced dancer and Madame Blanc has run the company for years, but by the end, it is revealed just how much the truth is quite the opposite and how much Susie has been in control all along, tenderly leading and indulging her lover (of sorts). Again, the story tracks if there is no attraction, but I feel it’s strengthened – made more meaningful – by its presence.
But I think the piece is queerer than that, and it is here that I return to that Butler/Barker notion of ‘queered horror.’ While it takes its time, and is absolutely dense with its themes of power, abuse, responsibility, memory, guilt, and so much more, by the end, Suspiria is an absolute abattoir. Bodies have been broken (one in a bravura scene of dance, magic, and power). Viscera dangle from abdomens. Heads explode. Arterial sprays paint the walls. You might say it’s intense. But it isn’t scary. For me, I remember being in the cinema, just glowing with something like joy and melancholy. It is really a moment of beauty – sad and violent beauty, but beauty nonetheless. I danced all the way home.
And I feel that in this, Guadagnino has taken Argento’s dark fairy tale of scary witches preying on young dancers (which I love in its own right) and he has absolutely ‘queered’ it. Partly through the addition of the magnetic exchanges between these central characters, he has twisted the threat of the original film into a revelation of sensual power, and dominance, and gentleness. There is a kind of vengeance here, but also mercy.
From the very beginning, the witches are pretty much ‘out’. Susie doesn’t need to discover that the school is being run by an evil coven (she watches some instructors cackling and toying with a couple of pantsless, ensorcelled police inspectors and rather than being shocked, she titters to herself and the whole event passes without comment) – she has to instead discover who she is, and has always been, however repressed she was at home (her religious mother referring to her as “my sin. She’s what I smeared on the world”), and accept this in both its strength and its sorrow. This is the rare remake that doesn’t just go a different direction with the source material, but rather subverts it, turning it inside out to enact a totally different project of queer, female power.
The only way that it is truly similar to its precursor is in how much they are both works of excess: Argento’s being an excess of style, of sensory data, of color and sound, and glorious violence, and Guadagnino’s being an excess of ideas). They are otherwise opposite films.
So Much More
And so, this is all just to scratch the surface of the world of queer horror. There’s so much more to explore: from the haunting, tender self-discovery of Thelma to the John Waters-esque grotesque camp of All about Evil or Seed of Chucky, from the ambivalence of Nightmare on Elm Street II: Freddy’s Revenge (presenting a very coded young gay man as the lead – a rarity, especially at the time – but centering him in a story that presents his burgeoning sexual identity as a deadly monstrosity, his only hope of salvation being the love of a good woman) to the explicit, gay-porn themed modern giallo, Knife + Heart, from the Carmilla based, French, poetic Blood and Roses to the Carmilla based, lurid Hammer Horror, The Vampire Lovers (really, Carmilla is all over the lesbian vampires, unsurprisingly). There is a deep well. And though I still can’t claim any particular letters, I’m sure I will continue to take pleasure in these bloody parables of self-revelation, as well as others’ interpretations of the countless texts onto which queerness might be ascribed.