Defending Gay Twilight Fanfiction - An Introduction to Queer Horror Cinema
Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho got queer cinema terribly, terribly wrong.
Yes, Norman Bates oozes this unnerving charisma as one of the most recognisable movie villains of all time, with a mid-picture twist so devious that it turned watching movies on its head, but it came from a place of serious misunderstanding. A mistake so costly it weaponised queerness for decades after its release.
Based on Robert Bloch’s novel, and supposedly centered around the narrative of Ed Gein - a real killer who (supposedly - the extremities of this narrative are wildly contested, as Gein could not be found guilty by cause of insanity, as well as some seriously homophobic and transphobic accounts by authorities, which resulted in him spending the rest of his life in mental institutions) exhumed bodies from graveyards and mutilated women including his own mother to make a human ‘female skin suit’. His testimony was forged with the mutilated remains found in the basement of his family home and some truly shoddily written accounts of the entire ordeal. He was a truly complicated man and this made him truly entertaining to contemporary news.
With Psycho, Hitchcock took this further and turned transness into a novelty. A punchline with a purpose, rather than explore psychological queerness that is anything more than skin deep. It vilified an already oppressive agenda of an era that championed any diversity as ‘the other’, whilst also simultaneously setting a precedent of perverted - and at times cannibalistic - personas that signposted queer trauma away from queer communities. The Norman Bates’, the Leatherfaces and the Hannibal Lecters of this world, all with origins in the Gein story, were more intent on creating something for male-centric audiences with its own signature brand of sadistic corruption. Further filthy reworkings of this story - looking at you, Ryan Murphy - whilst seemingly watchable slop to the masses, allow queer critics to provide more insight into the truth of this alarming story.
So, how can filmmakers get queerness right?
To understand queer horror, film theory only tells half of the story. Carol Clover’s 1992 work Men, Women and Chainsaws, a revolutionary work hellbent on looking at horror cinema through gendered perspectives, is an insight into audience reception of the slasher genre. The first to recognise this infamous “final girl”, aligning audiences not with this male-centric killer, but rather with the feminine anti-hero that often threw around “boyish” tropes. In the same breath, Clover contests the symbolic power of phallic weapons, like knives and guns, as a framework where gender norms are continuously subverted in acts of violence, a “masculine penetration” as the killer rarely gets his way. In moments of panic and humiliation, male killers also go through emasculation, often experiencing continued pleasure and almost erotic moments of body horror as a reflection of their distorted intentions.
With this, a narrative of gender-fluidity and radically progressive inversion of gender roles has made it incredibly powerful for queer people to identify with these theories.
Let's break this down. For example, the uptight mysticism of vampires, instigated from the fear of venereal blood diseases, continued polyamory and out-of-era charm creates a dazzling framework for queerness. Away from Camilla, and Bram Stoker's supposed likeness of the imprisoned Oscar Wilde to Dracula, is this timeless story of characters that provide their own path away from a heteronormative society. In the case of Lestat and Louis in Interview With A Vampire, queer meaning is centered around two male characters who share an alarmingly challenging sanguine secret together - painfully addictive and wildly speculated sharing parenting duties of a child. Whilst author Anne Rice denied this homosexual reading for years, modern adaptations, including the 2022 series, can allow queer interpretations of the novel to be expressed in real time - where this LGBTQIA+ lens could be expressed with openness and confidence that wasn't able to be shown before to contemporary audiences.
Taking this further, shipping Twilight’s Edward and Jacob really does have fantastical implications of how a fandom identifies with queer theory. This is but just one example of how LGBTQIA+ audiences take ownership of horror cinema as a way to express implicit and sexualised desires. Interpreting their own meaning, even if Bella is left out of the picture.
And it can be seen elsewhere too. It's how Rocky Horror gained cult status, The Fly gained sensual and moral ambiguity, Suspiria’s enigmatic coven gained iconic precedence over the horror landscape and Eggers’ Lighthouse uses bestial imagery such as mermaids and tentacles to once again ship Robert Pattinson with an unbothered mortal enemy, Fortnight.
Because fans make or break popular culture, right? Audience reception is the ultimate gauge outside of queer creators to decide if something is overtly “gay” or not. Even if it's One Direction during that one performance of X-Factor where they’re singing Total Eclipse Of The Heart for Halloween week. AO3 was all over that.
Projecting self-identified meaning onto cinema, as a viewing lense to reveal more about the inner desires of an audience member, is why queer horror cinema is so insightful, complex and fascinating. This is why Jane Schoenbrunn’s Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is one of the most innovative films to come out of this year. Her misunderstood monster, Little Death, is a characterisation of the queer lens taking revenge on the traditional cinema foundations. Quite literally - their head is a box, a frame to understand the heteronormative world run by seemingly “straight-presenting” horror tropes. The summer camp. The urban myth. The misunderstood child. Using the well-established parameters of horror media, endless references to slasher movies until physical media becomes a focal part of the story, is an exciting way to explore the understanding and origins of desire and nostalgia in a really thorough introduction to ‘the queer archive’ where memories and media become integral to sexual identity and genre.
Her other work, I Saw The TV Glow, a refreshing insight into self-identification in queerness through discovering transness in media, is a landmark in queer cinema. It builds on the work of this new wave of authors, such as Maggie Nelson and Carmen Maria Machado, that challenge memory as a way of understanding trauma. Queerness becomes frightfully intimate to its creator.
In this, nothing compares to horror cinema forged by queer creators. Luca Guadagnino, immortalised by Call Me By Your Name, throws incredible tenderness into the 2015 remake of Suspiria, as well as the electric standalone Bones And All. Whilst not openly queer herself, Julia Ducournau’s lesbian-centric films add a new dimension to French cinema. Notably, 2019’s Raw empowers a lifelong vegetarian to become a cannibal with endless insight into female desire. The Watchowski sisters, coming out as transgender long after the release of the Matrix trilogy, have left an incomparable legacy on scifi cinema, and is worth a re-watch with an understanding of how queerness shaped the narrative with the understanding we have today.
No queer cinema analysis could be complete without the legacy of the Hellraiser series. Clive Barker, whose experiences as a gay man handcrafted this film's pained narrative as an extension of his own external suffering. Androgenous unidentifiable beings, BDSM clothing straight out of Bergheim culture and this continued need for physical and mental torture provide heavy foundations that created one of cinemas most recognisable characters.
Here, queerness is authenticity. Its freedom of expression, built on this innate desire to not fit conventional stereotypes, but to just exist, and live with confidence. Critic Jose Esteban Munoz describes this as an unobtainable utopia, where the closer to acceptance the LGBTQIA+ community gets, the more they demand of the world, because it is a reality they have not been able to have perspective on until now. This view is testament to how queerness is constantly evolving with worldwide acceptance, and modern pushback with anti-LGBTQIA+ rhetoric is an indicator of how far our community has come in the last century.
Horror, whilst unconventional, for some it bridges that gap of a utopia, at times flirting with the gothic and finding beauty in the shadows. Sometimes, creating the supernatural is a way to process trauma, find understanding in chaos or live out that fantasy that feels out of reach. In this world, it is the framework that makes sense of it all.
Horror was built for the queer community, and cinema is the lens that makes it incredibly identifiable, reliable and rewatchable. Endless sentimentality that words struggle to find the meanings of.
Even if sometimes it's just sexualizing mothman…
Words: Amber Brooks
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