Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman
In the past, when same-sex
love dared not name its name, filmmakers whose movies, horror or
otherwise, featured gays or gay themes had to rely on coded messages
to convey their messages. While such a tactic is not necessary now
that mainstream society has embraced, or is beginning to embrace,
lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgender men and women, the
approach can be adapted to other uses, offering a subtler, more
indirect way of communicating that could help make horror films more
nuanced in their presentation of themes in general.
The group of editors who co-wrote an Advocate article, “17 Horror Films Only LGBT People Understand,” identify several of the ways by which gay filmmakers “coded” their homosexual content.
The group of editors who co-wrote an Advocate article, “17 Horror Films Only LGBT People Understand,” identify several of the ways by which gay filmmakers “coded” their homosexual content.
In The Black Cat (1934), Christopher Harrity observes, Hjalmar Poelzig (Boris Karloff) “keeps dead women in glass cases.” Extreme misogyny, he notes, was a shorthand way, back in the day, to suggest a character's homosexuality.
Beyond the calculable lesbian energy set off when Melanie and Annie interact, and Melanie’s fabulous wardrobe, there’s an argument to be made for those lovebirds (they’re called lovebirds, after all) as an allegory for forbidden love shaking things up. Bodega Bay was perfectly fine and set in its ways before Melanie, with her progressive ideas and those winged outsiders, turned up and created a feathered maelstrom.
For Gilchrist, it's warrant Officer Ripley's personal characteristics (“laconic sensibility, competence, strength,” not to mention her “cheekbones”) that establishes the Alien (1973) character as a butch lesbian. A lesbian context for the female Marine (who's a middle-management fighting woman, halfway between the ranks of commissioned officer and that of enlisted personnel) is created by the presence of the alien eggs and by the “feminist iconography of tunnels and dark spaces evoking vaginas, ovaries, and wombs, and . . . recurring primal scenes of birth and rebirth.”
According
to writer David Chaskin, Nightmare
on Elm Street 2
(1985) contains a gay subtext because he promoted the movie's “gay
themes.” These elements—“leather bars, male shower scenes, and
a 'final boy' who is more interested in hanging out with his cute guy
friend than making out with the beautiful gal pal”—were directed,
Chaskin admitted (after initially denying the “gay themes” were
present in the movie at all), at “teenage boys' rampant AIDS-era
homophobia.”
“Subverting
gender roles” can also mark a movie as bearing a gay theme, as The
Descent
(2005) does, claims Neal Broverman, in the film's depiction of women
without men as “strong women,” rather than “helpless girls”
who must face monsters on their own in the remote cave they're
exploring.
In
Teeth
(2007), the
protagonist, Dawn O'Keefe (Jess Weixler) fights “male aggressors”
with a weapon unique to her sex—her vagina, which, unlike those of
ordinary women, is armed; she possesses an actual vagina dentata. The
movie “is a tale about empowering women,” Daniel Reynolds
contends.
Writers can learn from
moviemakers who wanted to imply certain themes before it was socially
acceptable even to mention such topics in a public forum. Their
solution was to use subtext to suggest, rather than to communicate
about forbidden lifestyles directly. As a result, they used indirect
communication to get their points across to an audience who was in
the know or who could relate well enough to the implications of the
subtext to figure out its overt significance. This approach doesn't
have to be limited to the expression of same-sex themes. The use of
subtext can enrich any movie by suggesting, rather than stating
openly, by intimating rather than declaring, by connoting rather than
denoting.
By exemplifying the
behaviors characteristic (or believed to be characteristic) of a
group of people—in other words, stereotyping—writers can imply
that an individual character is a member of the group whose
characteristics he or she expresses. Sometimes, to drive home the
point, writers may exaggerate such characteristics or behaviors.
A person who masquerades
as a member of a race, nationality, or ethnicity other than his or
her own could be shown as speaking and acting as members of the group
he or she is imitating generally speak or behave. In short, such a
character could impersonate a member of the group. A particular
manner of dress, which is associated with a specific group, can help
to create the illusion that the character belongs to the race,
nationality, or ethnicity he or she is impersonating. Of course, it
is likely that an actual member of the group could recognize the
character as fraudulent, possibly with violent or even deadly
consequences—we're talking horror here, after all.
Just as a character's sex
and gender can be disguised by a sexually ambiguous or androgynous
nickname, a nickname can suggest that a character belongs to a group
of criminals, especially if “Guido,” “Scarface, or “Cool
Daddy” uses criminal cant, or “gangster talk”; “The Colonel,”
“Jarhead,” or “Sarge” uses military jargon (complete with
plenty of acronyms); or “Doc,” “Sage,” or “The Professor”
employs the argot of a particular profession, such as medicine,
philosophy, or higher education.
Symbolism can create the
impression that something stands for something else. Symbolism often
works on the basis of metaphor, the comparison of two unlike
objects—and, in fiction, the second object is apt to be the story's
setting. In a sense, a metaphor is an equation of sorts, suggesting
that one thing (A) = something else (B). If
Alien
used a “feminist iconography of tunnels and dark spaces evoking
vaginas, ovaries, and wombs, and . . . recurring primal scenes of
birth and rebirth” to create a lesbian subtext, another subtext can
be created by using an “iconography” (visual images and symbols)
appropriate to it. To develop such an iconography, use a metaphor.
Alien's
iconography might have been based on the metaphor Spaceship's
Interior (A) = Woman's Body (B). What if a writer wanted to suggest
that a Lake (A) is a Mouth (B).
What
iconography—which images and symbols—could be used to accomplish
this end? Perhaps a wave (tongue) caused by an underwater disturbance
rumbling (like a stomach) near a cave (open jaws) could curl over a
boat, lifting it upward and backward, into an eddy down which the
occupants (food) would swirl (as if being swallowed). Then, a big
bubble might form on the surface of the lake, get bigger and bigger,
and then pop (as though the lake had belched). A line of cone-shaped
buoys could represent teeth. Before and after, people on the shore
could be seen eating picnics and people aboard boats on the lake
could be seen drinking—one or two might even pour a beverage into
the lake, and the water could carry it toward the cave-jaws. When
victims die violent deaths on the lake, as surely they would in a
horror story, their blood could follow the same pathway as the
poured-out beverages.)
Deception can also suggest
that things are other than they appear. Members of organized crime
are famous for using legitimate businesses, such as restaurants or
warehouses, as “fronts” for their criminal activities. Mafia
members have held meetings in restaurants, where, in a basement room,
they've committed murders, even cutting up the body so its parts
could be parceled out and dumped throughout the city. A mortuary did
double duty, conducting legitimate burials during which a
double-decker coffin allowed the disposal of both the dearly departed
in the upper berth, so to speak, and a murder victim in the lower
berth. The restaurant employed a chef, servers, and assistants, and
it served meals to the public, just as the mortuary provided actual
services to the community. Were a novel written or a film produced
with such a plot, saving the truth about what is really happening
until the end of the story would make the horror all the more
shocking when it is finally revealed.
Sex-role and gender
reversals can occur in horror fiction whether there is an LGBT
dimension to the story or not.
Since horror is a
type of fantasy fiction, anything can happen. A woman's vagina can
grow teeth. Alternatively, inanimate objects may come to life or,
through personification, nature can be embodied by a giantess with
the power to create an earthquake simply by shaking her body, grow
plants and trees out of her torso, and become solid rock, loose sand,
or running water.
By using the same
techniques that filmmakers employed in less tolerant times to convey
LGBT themes in mainstream movies, today's writers can imply meanings
that transcend the literal text, enriching their stories while making
them more sophisticated than they'd be without such an approach.