“Way Too Gay to be Ignored”: The Production and Reception of Queer Horror Cinema in the Twenty-First Century

Abstract

This chapter is an update to my book Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality and the Horror Film, which argued—drawing upon Robin Wood’s famous formulation of the movie monster as white patriarchal capitalism’s repressed Other—that monstrous figures in American cinema were and are informed by their given era’s social understanding of homosexuality, or more broadly queerness.1 As the twenty-first century begins, various aspects of contemporary and historical queer cultures continue to be brought into the mainstream, including those surrounding the figuration of the “monster queer.” The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)—a film that forthrightly exposes the queerness inherent in the horror genre—is an excellent barometer of such social changes. Produced by a major Hollywood studio (20th Century-Fox), it bombed upon its initial release. Then, finding a smaller, appreciative, and queer audience, it became the most celebrated cult film/midnight movie in history. Today, it is arguably more popular and well known than ever, repeatedly airing on basic cable and available via most DVD outlets. Most recently, it served as the basis for the FOX-TV hit Glee’s Halloween episode, albeit in truncated form. What was too queer then now seems almost quaint. This chapter examines how the monster queer continues to come out of the closet, and how recent horror films and fan bases have frequently been forced to acknowledge his or her presence. While queer audiences may variously celebrate or decry these developments, for straight fans of the genre, these more overtly queer horror films sometimes bring discomfiture, being in the words of one such fan, “way too gay to be ignored.”2KeywordsSerial KillerHorror FilmMale ProtagonistHorror MovieInternet Chat RoomThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.