From Nosferatu to A Nightmare on Elm Street, LGBTQ+ viewers have long tected a queer unrtone many horror films. Now the genre is brgg s gay subtext to the surface
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THE HISTORY OF HORROR IS GAY
Big budget releas are slowly dolg out token gay superhero and chaste embrac between galaxy-savg the horror genre, queer reprentatn has taken a different — and arguably more plited — trajectory. Those addns are not necsarily a bad thg, but whout genue thematic pth to back them up, they n ultimately feel may expla why Don Manci, creator of Chucky and one of the genre’s most proment out gay filmmakers, has had so much succs wh creatg, wrg, and directg the Chucky seri for Syfy and USA: He has long shown dienc that queerns n’t be shoehorned to horror bee is already embedd cric Sam Bodrojan put a touchg reflectn on the msage of acceptance offered by Seed of Chucky, the Chucky films are “borne as a reclamatn of the ia that queer people are signated to the role of the sners. ”Seed of Chucky, which was origally rejected by Universal for beg “too gay, ” troduced Glen, the genr non-nformg child of Chucky and Tiffany, all the way back 2004, before the word “nonbary” had even entered the mastream lexin.
Jake, the show’s ma character, is a 14-year-old stgglg to fd himself while alg wh a vilently homophobic fay at home and bullyg at the film Heredary reveals about society’s moral panic surroundg transmascule the first eratn of the Child’s Play anchise 1988, young Andy was a kid om a workg-class fay whose sgle mother uldn’t afford much, drawn by the shy mercial lure of an expensive new toy — somethg of a twisted metaphor for the horrors of a palist system which the thgs we are told we most want are often the thgs that kill, Chucky’s promise to be “your iend to the end” tak on an even more sister dimensn, when nsired the ntext of queer opprsn. The horror is not an outsi, vadg force, but somethg emergg om their own bodi, sentially puberty, a chaotic force that the girls are learng and stgglg to ntrol, and which mak them dangero to the straight, cis yet as meangful as the stg of a trans actrs might be, The Craft: Legacy squanred an opportuny to say somethg more evotive and plited about the tersectn of genr and adolcence — anythg has to say about nascent outsir inty is ultimately jt wdow drsg for a fairly generic teen be fair, reprentatn horror is trickier than other genr: when you’re wrg characters who will evably experience torture and pa, sometim you don’t want “good” reprentatn, bee margalized people already experience so much real-world openg of It: Chapter Two, for example, adapted a btal scene of gay-bashg om Stephen Kg’s origal novel, which self was based on a real-life murr that occurred Kg’s hometown the 1980s.
Although that premise holds the potential for sightful social mentary, recent adaptatns have stead felt like they are cheaply explog trma for shock Chapter Two me unr signifint cricism for that upsettg openg scene, which sets the stage for the movie but hardly factors to the plot any real way, as well as an awkward subplot which ’s implied that Bill Har’s character is gay.