“I would like, if I may, to take you on a strange journey.”
That’s how the narrator kicks off The Rocky Horror Picture Show, one of the most famous cult classic, audience participating, midnight screening movies in history. It’s also how I’d like to kick off my Pride Month post to talk about a topic that is getting a lot more attention over the last few years and something I find endlessly interesting: the intersectionality between the 2SLGBTQIA+ experience and horror media.
You may be surprised to learn that there is a long, colourful history of 2SLGBTQIA+ artists and creators popping up in and around some of our biggest horror classics. Mary Shelly, who wrote the original Frankenstein, is believed to have been bisexual. Bram Stoker, the author of Dracula, is also suspected to have some queer-leaning tendencies (he wrote letters to Walt Whitman basically saying as much), and many speculate that watching what happened to friend and fellow writer Oscar Wilde kept Stoker from exploring any further (Wilde’s in the horror club too, he wrote The Picture of Dorian Gray). James Whale, who had a male life partner, directed some of the most classic of Universal monster movies like Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein and The Invisible Man. Anthony Perkins, the star of Psycho, spent pretty much all of his life closeted due to fears of being blacklisted from acting. These are just some examples, there are many more, from very early cinema pioneer F. W. Murnau to writer Clive Barker to Cassandra Peterson (AKA Mistress of Darkness Elvira) to showrunner Bryan Fuller, etc. etc.
But a lot of classic horror films and books have been looked over again with a queer lens in our modern times. Classics like Cat People, The Lost Boys (which just released a musical adaptation on Broadway), A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge, Rebecca, Nightbreed, Interview with the Vampire (the movie hinted at it, but the TV series made it very clear), Jennifer’s Body, The Uninvited, Carmilla and many more either come right out and say gay or it can definitely be read into what ended up on the screen or the page. And many films, books and TV shows, especially recently, just make the context text. You can look to modern writers like Chuck Tingle and Gretchen Felker-Martin for some examples.
A lot of horror monsters have queer undertones as well. Vampires represent all kinds of things about sexuality. Werewolves are often a metaphor for puberty and for humanity having two sides to themselves. Witches who live on the edge of town and don’t play by society’s rules are often embraced by LGBTQIA+ people. All of these creatures can represent belonging and found family and other big parts of the human experience.
So why is horror popular with this demographic? Well, many have argued that horror has always been queer. Being a member of the rainbow brigade has historically meant being othered, being outside of good society, being thought of as wrong, sinful, scheming… even monstrous. And horror is also outside of society. It dabbles in the monstrous, the sinful, the scheming, in order to tell stories to horrify or say something difficult to say in polite society or just to shake people out of the normal and into the extraordinary, even if it’s scary.
The shorter answer is that queer people see ourselves in these stories, and we don’t always connect with the victims or the heroes. Sometimes we see ourselves in the antagonists. And that’s because for the longest time, and unfortunately still in many places, being queer automatically means you’re perceived as bad. The coded villains. The folk devils. The monsters who lead good, pure people away from the righteous path. This has often been the dominant narrative, as it has been for other groups of people as well.
In horror movies and stories we reclaim the monsters. We speak to what we once couldn’t speak to. And in more modern stories queer people become the heroes instead of the villains, sometimes dealing with real life horrors of being LGBT+.
As much as I’d love to go deeper into this, we’ll be here all night if I do, and I don’t want to keep anyone from any Pride Month plans. Luckily for you there’s Queer for Fear: The History of Queer Horror, which is an excellent documentary series covering this very topic, and we have it available on Hoopla. And if you’re looking for recommendations check out the list below. We have several books, movies and shows that combine horror with the queer experience, from coded characters to sympathetic monsters to out and proud characters just trying to survive. Also, if you like teen fiction or have teens in your life I have a list for them too on the same subject. Let’s throw in vampires and werewolves for that age group as well, for good measure.
Happy Pride Month everyone! However you celebrate I hope it’s frighteningly fantastic!