New Queer Horror Film and Television

The historical depiction of queer characters has comprised mere suggestions or hints at the possibility of queer relationships. These moments of “mass culture queerness” have lived in the “shadowy realm of connotation,” becoming a metaphorical closet that, “allows straight culture to use queerness for pleasure and profit in mass culture without admitting to it.”1 However, in the collection New Queer Horror Film and Television, editors Elliott-Smith and John Edgar Browning determine that over the past two decades, horror films and television shows have found success through the implicit or explicit depictions of queerness. As we enter an enlightened age of queer acceptance, the representations of queer characters have moved from implicit or symbolic to explicit and clear, shifting the arguments revolving around queer representations. The inclusion of the queer community is traced through the global history of horror in film and television. New Queer Horror Film and Television offers a way to examine the contemporary anxieties and fears from within the queer community onto the big and small screens.“New Queer Horror,” Elliot-Smith and Browning explain, “designates horror that is crafted by directors/producers who identify as lesbian, gay, bi, queer, transgender, non-binary, asexual, intersex; or work that features homoerotic, or explicitly gay, narratives with ‘out’ LGBTQ+ characters” (Kindle ed., ch. 1). New Queer Horror examines the anxieties and struggles felt within LGBTQ+ subcultures, as these feelings are manifested within the characters and narratives on contemporary shows. The symbolic role of the queer monster is expanded and subverted as the representations become more explicit and nuanced. New Queer Horror pushes the queer metaphors out of the closet, aiming to lure in LGBTQ+ audiences because their inclusion is lucrative. Building on the earlier work of Harry Benshoff and Elliot-Smith himself, this collection highlights the experiences of counterhegemonic communities and subcultures, providing innovative ways to understand the elusive and shifting genre. Textual analysis is the main method of interrogation, but some chapters analyze the production and the aesthetics of the genre, connecting on- and off-screen queer identities.New Queer Horror is divided into three thematic sections and totals twelve chapters (four chapters in each section), incorporating scholarly voices from around the globe. Part I, “Transforming, Re-Reading and Re-Making Queer Horror,” focuses on the queer representations featured in the reinterpretations and adaptations of horror films and television. The films and shows that are analyzed include a queer rereading of Jeepers Creepers (2001), Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), and the television remake Rocky Horror Picture Show: Let's Do the Time Warp Again (2016), Let the Right One In (2008), and the American remake, Let Me In (2010), and Hannibal (NBC, 2013–15) the television adaptation. Each story reexamines these problematic texts by extending or subverting the queer metaphor from the Other to something politically and sexually liberating from a contemporary perspective. In chapter 1, media theorist Browning contends that the monster in Jeepers Creepers is both terrifying and sexually liberating. The film, once thought to villainize the queer monster, can be reread as an emancipatory display of queerness through the way the monster's unconventional needs expose the homophobia in societal views of masculinity. Upon this rereading, the monster's success is liberating, despite the fact evil prevails.Part II, “Queer Playgrounds and Adolescent Horrors,” has four chapters focusing on representations of the queer child in horror. Featured case studies include Black Swan (2010), Jack and Diane (2012), Adventure Time (Cartoon Network, 2010–18), The Nature of Nicholas (2002), and Final Destination (2000). In these texts, many common queer tropes, such as the abject body, are featured as nonheteronormative qualities that society rejects. Instead of reverting to heteronormative frameworks, the shows unashamedly confront sexual differences as the internalized monster expressed through self-hatred, guilt, and difference. For example, the fluid gender and sexuality featured in the children television show Adventure Time inscribes narratives of embracing queerness. Simon Bacon analyzes the queer relationship of Princess Bubblegum and Marceline the Vampire Queen and their open expression of a lesbian relationship through a shared on-screen kiss. Marceline follows the lesbian vampire cannon, using vampirism to move beyond normativity to express her transgressive sexuality.Finally, Part III focuses on the celebration of queer monsters, in particular, “Badass Witches and Queer Wolves.” Television shows and films that exemplify a celebratory tone of queerness include American Horror Story (FX, 2011–present), Teen Wolf (2011–17), Twilight films (2008–12), Being Human (BBC, 2008–13), and The Lords of Salem (2012). Horror's transformative storytelling is exhibited through physical mutations, coming out as a werewolf, and feminist witches. Examples of this include, interpreting the werewolf transformation as a coming out narrative, where the trauma of the transformation ultimately queers and enhances their abilities. The werewolf's monstrous transformation is viewed as celebratory rather than feared. Likewise, queer feminism is featured in American Horror Story: Coven through the switching of character portrayals, setting, and story each season, queering dominant hegemonic ideas of witches, sisterhood, and expectations of serialization. The witch becomes a queer figure through the disruption of normativity and the use of camp.New Queer Horror offers an updated critique of queer representations that contribute to the omnipresence of horror. Unfortunately, most of this collection analyzes depictions of gay masculinity, lacking representations of other LGBTQ identities, such as gay femininity and transgender narratives. Moreover, the book gives the impression that “gay” and “queer” are synonymous at times. The way the term “queer” is deployed in this book suggests that identity politics is an actively favored element in their endeavors. However, the purpose of queer theory and queerness might also be reasonably thought of as a project wherein one does not outline, schematize and categorize identities, but rather deconstruct them, and blur the boundaries between and across them. In this way, queerness is not identity politics because identity politics reinforces the categorizations within heteronormativity (and indeed, strict, often hierarchical, categorizations in total). The editors highlight these limitations stating, “this study . . . remains somewhat limited to a notably narrow and identarian consideration of queer and gay masculinity” (Kindle ed., ch. 1). Despite these critiques, the New Queer Horror fulfills a gap in scholarship about the contemporary representations of the queer community and how they are shifting throughout the expansive genre. Indeed, the collection touches on how queer theory and queerness can be deployed in studying the horror genre. Overall, professors, graduate students, and fans of the horror genre will find this book useful when analyzing the waxing and waning landscape of contemporary queer horror and queer worldmaking. This project reimagines queer worlds, subverting heteronormativity in ways that affirm queer life.