blog entry #3 - lgbtq+ rep in horror

11/28/22 - Monday 7:30 pm

as we all know, queer rep wasn't really that strong when horror started out. sure, we had glen and glenda from the seed of chucky being confirmed canonically genderfluid, and angela from sleepaway camp being canon transfem. the angela thing is questionable to say the least if you've seen the ending to sleepaway camp and the intro of sleepaway camp 2, but since i am not transfem i won't say if it's good representation or not. but generally, the lgbtq+ community didn't have a lot of representation back in horror media. we did have frank n furter though! he's still a murderer but like girlboss y'know. also the entirety of hellbent?? that movie had a lot of gay characters (the main character himself was openly gay) but they all pretty much die so not girlboss :( if you want a good talk on trans rep in horror, i'd recommend the dead meat podcast episode they did on it.

anyways, one specific example i want to talk about because it is a monday evening and i have nothing better to do except this, is the relationship between billy and stu from the og scream. if you've watched that movie, you know those mfs were anything but straight. did you see the way stu looks at billy during billy's monologue to sydney??? boy was not thinking straight thoughts in that instance. it's been confirmed by the show's screenwriter that stu definitely liked billy even if billy didn't like him back nearly as much but still knew. he also said that a lot of their anger and frustrations might have come from not being able to be themselves. kevin williamson (the screenwriter) even said that sydney was basically a fictional version of his struggles with being gay. he even admits he might have braver to present their relationship less subtly had it not been a time where queer rep wasn't exactly the most accepted thing in media, even less than it is now.

also oddly enough nightmare on elm street: freddy's revenge involved a gay protagonist?? i guess they never directly say that he's gay but one of the leadups to a death in the movie is the main character going to a gay bar so...i mean, yeah, it's heavily implied. mark patton, who played the main character, jesse, even said in an interview that instead of freddy running his blade around jesse's mouth, it had almost been going in and out of his mouth, but because of patton's discomfort and encouragement from his makeup artist to turn it down that changed it to what we have currently. obviously, i can understand that. but patton at the time received major harassment for "ruining" freddy's revenge because he wasn't the stereotypical jock trope that a lot of people wanted him to be. it's disappointing, really. especially since mark spent years being hurt by how people viewed him only for it to become sort of a cult classic. it's great that the movie's been viewed more favorably recently, it just would have been nice had it been viewed that way when it came out.

there's also the ambiguous nature of leatherface's gender in the texas chainsaw franchise. he's been confirmed to most likely not be genderfluid, however, gunnar hansen, leatherface's og actor, said himself he doesn't think leatherface really knows what gender identity is, he just does what makes him comfortable. this relates to the pretty lady and grandma masks/outfits he wears. me personally, i think he could be genderfluid, but i don't think it's necessary to his character, just an interesting addition, y'know?

so finally, ig we'll talk about the lighthouse and re-animator, with the lighthouse being the most recent so we'll talk about it first. the lighthouse follows two men, thomas wake, played by willem dafoe, and ephraim winslow/thomas howard (we'll call him ephraim for the sake of my sanity) keeping watch over a lighthouse when a storm hits and they're stuck there longer than intended. there's a specific scene with the two where they get in each other's faces while drunk and almost kiss, but ending up beating each other's asses instead, and there's the scene where they dance together in a pretty romantic way. then there's the literal lighthouse itself being symbolism for a wang so its not extremely subtle if you know to look. hell ephraim even has a wank session in a CLOSET. you cant look at me and tell me he wasnt like. a little fruity. anyways on to reanimator. herbert himself was confirmed to be asexual by the very person who acted him, jeffrey combs. now is it a little stereotypical to make the hardened smart scientist guy asexual? i guess, but even then, jeffrey explains it in the sense that herbert's more confused by intimacy than anything, and is interested in reanimation because it allows him to almost live through his reanimations and "be normal" in his words. i personally also think that dan cain could be bisexual, but of course herb and dan could have just been a "they were roommates" story, i suppose, but like. still. they seem fruity. my fruit radar goes off when i watch the first two movies

anyways there's definitely more examples but all of these were personal favorites or just interesting to look into :>

signing off, atlas ♥