by Melisa Ferati
The LGBTQ+ community has had quite the long-term relationship with the villains of the horror genre. From the homoerotic sexuality of vampires to the sympathetic creation of Dr. Frankenstein, the antagonists of horror primarily served as a reflection of heteronormative society’s perception of those who fell outside of its boundaries for a long time. With the genre serving as a platform to explore society’s fears, author Harry Benshoff explores the major three factors defining the fear of queerness in his book Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality and the Horror Film – being perceived as “a threat to the individual”, “a threat to others”, and “a threat to the community [and its] culture”; their existence alone taken as “[an attack] on traditional gender roles and… ‘family values’” (1). The “monster is to ‘normality’ what homosexuality is to heterosexuality” (1). Queer coding has been present in horror-based media for hundreds of years, and despite it generally being rooted in negative associations between queer people and these monsters; many in the community have come to embrace and even self-identify with the outcasted beings.
Those who fall outside of the societal idea of “normal”, “like vampires, have rarely cast a reflection in the social looking-glass of popular culture. When they are seen, they are often filtered through the iconography of horror” (1).Media serves as means to reflect on oneself, and when the primary representation queer people have had is that of monsters and villains, an intriguing bond arose. Rather than rejecting these images altogether, many LGBT people came to find the beings to be kindred spirits; taking the purposeful demonization of the characters as the projected lens of heteronormative society’s perception of the community and finding solidarity with all that goes bump in the night.
Even in media where coding is not as obvious/intentional, LGBT people have adopted varying works into queer culture, two great examples of this phenomenon being The Craft and The Covenant. Both films follow young covens, one female and the other male, as they navigate high school life and their powers (sexuality). Both groups of witches either ostracized or fetishized by those around them, they struggle with their relationship to magic and its role in their day-to-day lives. The four girls at the center of The Craft present in various ways: one bold in both her appearance and persona, one who hides herself away, one who actively has to deal with bigots, and one who has not yet understood her nature. Othered by those around them and always a topic of interest amongst the student body, viewers see the girls shunned, sexualized, and forced into these roles as the “bitches of Eastwick” high. The boys of The Covenant all hide their nature for fear of what others may do if they know, the antagonist being both visible and unapologetic in public use of his powers (not fearing repercussions that may arise if he’s spotted). It is interesting to note that the one character who is unafraid of the magic within him is the main villain. The boys are not sexualized by/through the other characters but rather inherently sexualized for the audience – which garnered a fan base of both straight women and gay men alike despite being a box office bomb. Despite statements of there being no intentional queer coding (the only explicitly queer connection being The Craft’s openly gay director, Andrew Fleming), both films are claimed and beloved by those in the community. Seeing how varied films claimed as queer coded are – some purposefully so, some created by LGBTQ+ filmmakers, and others simply appealing to those within the community – the question of the inconsistent basis for defining a movie as coded arises.
Just what is it that deems media queer? Well, at least when it comes to horror, it is “because of [the obviously] metaphorical… forms and narrative[s within] which disrupt the heterosexual status quo” (1). In the essay An Introduction to the American Horror Film, Robin Wood notes the presence of two forms of repression within the genre: basic and surplus – the former being “universal, necessary, and inescapable”, the latter varying based on the culture it came from and “conditioned from earliest infancy to take on predetermined roles” (2). Understanding the role of heteronormativity in western culture, it only makes sense that queer coding in horror explores this constantly present notion of repression. The repression of queer people in society has forever been predominant whether it was through active (and often volatile) regulation or simply the push for them to remain quiet, private and unseen (think “don’t ask, don’t tell”). In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the doctor is constantly battling himself in regard to his choice in bringing life to the undead. His inner monologue mirrors the rhetoric of internalized homophobia and the battle of self-acceptance, thinking about everything from what his father and loved ones back home would think of his actions to the dread he feels seeing his desires manifested. His monster serves as a reflection of his view of his sexuality; monstrous and unsightly. Despite the shock and disgust he experiences upon seeing him, the subtext of the language he uses in describing him is homoerotic. He notes how “…his limbs were in proportion” and he “had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! Great God” (5). Immediately after he details disgusting features contrasting them (reflecting his inability to accept himself), but the fact that his first thought was of the monster’s beauty speaks volumes to the dynamics of his latent homosexuality. Contrasting this with the attitude of the vampy Countess Marya in the film Dracula’s Daughter, who first seeks a cure but soon after decides to instead embrace her nature, the role of repression manifests in many ways but is ever present. Repression is inherent to the queer experience whether internal or external, and horror’s ways of exploring both seem to form a natural tie between the genre’s commentary on it and the LGBT+ community. Looking at Dracula’s Daughter with the time of its origin in mind (1936), the way in which a queer-coded character was able to be featured so predominantly at all with the Hays code being in effect is surprising. With the code used to regulate any evidence of “sexual deviancy”, which under their definition inherently included queerness, the film had to enact multiple edits on both the film itself and the material promoting it. Despite said edits, the film’s queer coding still proved to be quite predominant – still spoken about today when queer film theorists and historians discuss queer coding in (horror) media.
In the Readings of Homosexuality in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Four Film Adaptations, Michael Eberle-Sinatra touches on the interpretation of homosexuality in the novel serving to challenge heterosexual “’masculinity’s claim to authenticity, to naturalness, to coherence – [in other words,] to dominance’” (3). The establishment of heteronormativity only came around in the last few hundred years (4). It exists as a relatively new invention and despite that freshly enforced nature is consistently used to control, demonize, and repress those falling outside its tightly defined bounds. It can be argued that the villains in horror, although damaging in their negative queer coding, serve to comment much more on the distorted perception of heterosexual society than queer society itself – reminiscent of the saying “what Sally says about Suzy says more about Sally than it does Suzy.” Clive Barker concurs. In his film Hellraiser, his “reactionary” horror serves to comment on this perception through his Cenobites, the demons at the center of the story who actually don’t fall under the definition of villain; but rather anti-hero. Promising ultimate pleasure through brutal pain to extreme hedonists resolved to solving their puzzle (thus summoning them), the seemingly genderfluid beings do not search for victims, but wait for those who seek them. “Demons to some, angels to others”, the Cenobites have a tangible sense of morality that is present at multiple points in the film. Dressed in garb based off of hardcore S&M club fashion with various extreme body modifications adorning their bodies, they are scary in appearance, yes, but at multiple points show the audience that they can be reasoned with. Frank, uncle of the protagonist Kirsty (and the true monster of the story), is the reason that the Cenobites come into their lives. He is the only person with whom they are truly concerned – as he escaped their dimension after seeking them out. His character’s sexuality is not explicitly defined one way or another; his concern is not with who or what he is pleasured by, but rather that the pleasure is all-consuming. When he comes back from the Cenobites’ dimension, he manifests as a fleshy corpse, skinless even after he obtains enough blood to reconstitute all his muscle and bones. Along with his lover Julia, who is his brother Frank’s wife, he kills his brother and takes his skin for his own, an interesting image that has been interpreted as a symbolic echo of feelings related to gender dysphoria, discomfort in one’s skin. He belongs to their world now and even in trying to appear otherwise he cannot fit back into the world he once came from. Like coming out of the closet to everyone you know, he can truly never “take it back.” Despite all of the queer subtext, the cult classic is often disregarded when critics speak about queer-coded movies, its nuances dismissed. Barker’s commentary is interpreted as a demonized reflection of Barker’s own relationship with his sexuality (being a gay man himself) rather than its intended commentary on the heteronormative perception of the culture.
Although the “guidelines” for defining media as queer-coded are still ill-defined, what is clear is that the role the coding established in horror plays in the portrayal of LGBTQ+ characters in media still exists today. The inherent ties between queer coding and horror’s influence on it cannot be ignored when speaking on it considering the development of queer coding at large – its predominant influence stemming from the horror genre setting precedent that is still recognizable in LGBTQ+ representation in pop culture today. From creatures that are simply hated for being as they are, misunderstood and sympathetic, to those of an evil nature, their morality compromised – both extremes come together to round out a societal context, from the misguided and ill-informed fears of heteronormative society to the fears of the queer community and their internal and external struggles. The evolution of queer coding in horror provides insight into just how the genre came to be a staple in LGBTQ+ culture and show how much more growth society desperately needs regarding their representation of the queer community in media today.
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