By Ashley R. Lierman
Happy Halloween! In honor of the upcoming holiday, I’d like to tell you one thing that’s really crummy about being me: I love horror movies very much, but horror movies can be really gross about some things. And not in the fun way.
A lot of horror, especially of the more “slasher” than “supernatural” varieties, tends toward gory, over-the-top, and frequently sexual violence toward women. Some theorists – probably most famously Carol J. Clover, in Men, Women, and Chain Saws – have made convincing arguments that horror’s relationship with female bodies is more complicated than it seems, and that the genre isn’t nearly as inherently misogynistic as popular media have made it out to be. For many people, though, and especially those who have suffered violent experiences in their own lives, that’s kind of a moot point, as it’s still not something they can safely and comfortably watch. There are issues of race too, of course: people make that joke about how the Black guy always dies first for a reason, and many films cheerfully cast the cultures and faiths of people of color into the role of a sinister Other without the slightest apparent concern.* And of course, the genre’s dealings with queer issues are in much the same vein, so to speak.
Modern horror can trace its lineage back to Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho in a number of ways, and one of them is the recurring figure of the “gender-ambiguous” serial killer. Let me pause to clarify that term even as I apologize for any offense it may cause: what I’m trying to suggest is that when a character fits into this category, almost invariably they are not actually trans-identified in the narrative of the film, but rather a villain who is given trans markers as part of their character, in order to exploit audiences’ transphobia to make the character frightening. Norman Bates dressed up as his mother isn’t supposed to be understood as a trans character, whether Hitchcock would’ve been prepared to have that conversation or not; but his choice of stabbing costume is clearly meant to lend enticing topnotes of perversion and fetishism to his depiction.** And, as it happens, Bates is the father (or mother) of a long line of similar killers in horror fiction and film. Even without going outside the mainstream, Silence of the Lambs‘s Buffalo Bill functions in a similar way, with his suit made of women’s skin, and just last year Insidious: Chapter 2 made the disappointing decision to take its ghostly crone in the same direction, providing her the backstory of a boy forced to live as a girl who grew up to be a serial murderer. In both of these cases, debatably to their credit, pains are taken within the film itself to distance the monstrous villain from actual trans people, but ultimately that doesn’t help much. Variance from binary gender norms is still being used as shorthand for grotesquerie and deviance, and harmful attitudes are still being reinforced.
Another reason it doesn’t help that these aren’t “real” trans villains is because, well, even serial killer representation would be some kind of representation, right? Probably not the kind most trans folks would hope for, and probably kind of counterproductive at the end of the day, but given the nigh-total invisibility of trans people (except as the occasional joke) in genre film otherwise, maybe it’d be worth something, at least. Who knows – with everything trans people have to deal with and go through from people on a daily basis, identifying with a serial killer might be a nice stress-relieving fantasy. (Just kidding. Mostly. Seriously, though, I wouldn’t blame you a bit.)
But this issue goes hand-in-hand with a larger one in horror films: namely, that it’s just generally a very straight, cis genre, in terms of the people it represents. I don’t have evidence, but anecdotally, I’d say that horror as a subset of film runs even less queer than the overall average. I’ve watched almost 300 horror movies in my time,*** and of those I can think of maybe three or four that even include queer characters that aren’t those “gender-ambiguous” serial killer stereotypes, let alone feature them in any kind of prominent role. More often they’re used as a backdrop meant to repulse, or at best one might be a protagonist’s sidekick. I’m not saying that the average of wide-release film is much better than that, of course, but for all it’s been out of the grindhouse and into the cineplex since the 90s, horror still stands a little to the side of the mainstream. It could, plausibly, get away with pushing the envelope in other areas besides just violence, and it chooses not to. Even Clive Barker’s work, coming from a high-profile gay figure in Hollywood, is itself about as straight as the rest.
I’ve thought a lot about why this might be true of horror movies, and I don’t have a definitive answer. In part, I suspect much of it is that (to my frequent discomfort) horror can be a relatively conservative genre of film, in terms of the stories it tells. I think all the claims that horror is always about punishing teenagers who have sex or do drugs are much too simplistic, but it’s true that at times horror film can be moralistic and repressive, especially about young people and sexuality. It’s something of a copycat genre, too: horror in general tends to reuse tropes, themes, and images that have been successful in the past, as a head-start toward evoking the same emotional reactions. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, actually, and a lot can be (and has been) said academically about the relationship between horror and folklore or even ritual.**** But it also means that, once that “safe zone” of content has been defined, future films are a lot less likely to stray outside it.
And with all of that said, one more question remains: where would we ideally want to see more queer representation in horror movies, anyway? Casting queer characters as either villains or (potential or actual) victims of violence isn’t exactly an appealing prospect either, for a number of reasons. One might be kind enough to think this might be another reason horror filmmakers avoid queer characters, although the amount of violence specifically against women in horror movies doesn’t make that a very convincing argument. But on the other hand, not all horror film is about violence as a core concept, especially not on the more “supernatural” than “slasher” end – which actually tends to be far more to my taste than the whole serial killer angle anyway. Ghost stories, monster movies, and other kinds of supernatural horror seem generally more likely to play with allegory and higher-concept stories than gory slasher flicks are, and that’s a place where queer representation might be able to be handled more delicately. As some more progressive films have featured monsters aligned with racism and misogyny, couldn’t a movie’s horror come from transphobia or homophobia? What about stories of queer characters beset by – and triumphing over – supernatural metaphors for the kinds of hardships queer people already face? And that’s not even to mention the zombie movie possibilities. Just try to picture a zombie Jerry Falwell!
…Whoa, no, sorry, that got way too scary even for me. You go ahead and keep thinking of ideas, but I’ve gotta go turn on some lights.
* It’s worth noting that this also has its counterexamples, though: Night of the Living Dead, the 1968 classic of the zombie horror subgenre, has a Black main character who survives beyond all other protagonists to the final scene, and horror elements of some films like Candyman, The People Under the Stairs, and the more tongue-in-cheek Tales from the Hood are drawn pointedly from white racism, rather than from xenophobic depictions of non-white cultural components. Still, overall, not a great track record.
** Sorry if you are from Mars and I just spoiled Psycho for you, by the way.
*** 279, actually, unless something’s been overlooked. I keep a spreadsheet. Look, I’m a geek, I get intense about stuff.
**** Is it time to admit I have a Ph.D in religious studies at this point?
