New Queer Horror Film and Television

Editor(s) Darren Elliott-Smith,John Edgar Browning

Language: English

Genre(s): Media, Film and Theatre

Series: Horror Studies

  • October 2020 · 256 pages ·216x138mm

  • · Paperback - 9781786836267
  • · eBook - pdf - 9781786836274
  • · eBook - epub - 9781786836281

About The Book

This anthology comprises essays that study the form, aesthetics and representations of LGBTQ+ identities in an emerging sub-genre of film and television termed ‘New Queer Horror’. This sub-genre designates horror crafted by directors/producers who identify as gay, bi, queer or transgendered, or works like Jeepers Creepers (2001), Let the Right One In (2008), Hannibal (2013–15), or American Horror Story: Coven (2013–14), which feature homoerotic or explicitly homosexual narratives with ‘out’ LGBTQ+ characters. Unlike other studies, this anthology argues that New Queer Horror projects contemporary anxieties within LGBTQ+ subcultures onto its characters and into its narratives, building upon the previously figurative role of Queer monstrosity in the moving image. New Queer Horror thus highlights the limits of a metaphorical understanding of queerness in the horror film, in an age where its presence has become unambiguous. Ultimately, this anthology aims to show that in recent years New Queer Horror has turned the focus of fear on itself, on its own communities and subcultures.

Endorsements

‘This new collection of essays contributes to the ever-expanding field of queer horror scholarship. Vampires, witches, werewolves, serial killers and more are examined within this relatively “out” era of LGBTQ+ representation, once again demonstrating how this protean genre continues to speak in fascinating ways to issues of gender and sexuality.’
-Professor Harry M. Benshoff, University of North Texas

‘As everyday life begins to resemble a horror movie for more and more people, so horror genres have had to shift and change to keep pace with the grotesqueries of the quotidian. In this exciting new volume edited and curated in imaginative ways, queer horror takes centre stage. While LGBTQ+ people have long played the monster in the horror genre, we can now look at horror from the perspective of those relegated to the monstrous margins. Ranging between new queer readings of old texts and analyses of aesthetic ruptures, this anthology can claim to offer a definitive look at a genre that has neatly taken aim at normal life.’
-Professor Jack Halberstam, Columbia University

‘The horror that dare not speak its name is now out and (sometimes) proud – sometimes tragic, sometimes transgressive and sometimes still problematic. New Queer Horror Film and Television is a diverse and timely collection that deftly examines the contemporary landscape of queer monstrosity in the horror genre.’
- Dr Andrew Scahill, University of Colorado Denver

'With 12 chapters so different in content and depth, it is impossible for me to talk about all of them in detail, but I can tell you that each one makes the reader see the movies and series involved in a different way. The first four chapters of New Queer Horror Film and Television were a delight, hands down my favorites. Editors Darren Elliott-Smith and John Edgar Browning, along with John Lynskey and Ben Tyrer, got this book off to a very solid start that grabs you from the get-go and with a riveting style, writing about Jeepers Creepers, Rocky Horror Picture Show, Let The Right One In, and Hannibal.'
- Review by Alan D.D. Read the full review here https://bit.ly/3sduuQY

Contents

List of Illustrations
Author Biographies
Introduction
Part 1: TRANSFORMING, RE-READING AND RE-MAKING QUEER HORROR
1: ‘My Brother’s Creeper’: Towards a Queer (Re-)Reading of Victor Salva’s Jeepers Creepers (2001) – John Edgar Browning
2: Queer Cult Performance: Recreating Rocky Horror in the Twenty-First Century – John Lynskey
3: Castrating the Queer Vampire in Let the Right One In (2009) and Let Me In (2010) – Darren Elliott-Smith
4: ‘Becoming Hannibal’: Identification and Transformation in Queer Horror Television – Ben Tyrer
Part 2: QUEER PLAYGROUNDS AND ADOLESCENT HORRORS
5: ‘What happened to my sweet girl?’: Paranoid and Reparative readings of Queer Subjectivity in Black Swan (2010) and Jack and Diane (2012) – Robyn Ollett
6: ‘A Dream Within a Dream’: Children’s ‘Horror’ Television and Lesbianism in the World of Marceline the Vampire Queen – Simon Bacon
7: Abjection, Queer Bodies and Grotesque Doppelgängers in Jack and Diane and The Nature of Nicholas – Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns and Mariana Zárate
8: At the Edges of (queer) Time and Space: Atemporality, Adolescence, and Abjection in Final Destination – Christopher Clark
Part 3: BADASS WITCHES AND QUEER WOLVES
9: ‘If you look in the face of evil, evil’s gonna look right back at you’: Anthologising Supernatural Sexualities on American Horror Story: Coven – Andrew J. Owens.
10: Like and Lycanthropy: The New Pack Werewolf According to Tyler, Tyler and Taylor – Tim Stafford
11: ‘Unspeakable Acts’: Coming Out as Werewolf – Lisa Metherell.
12: ‘Sisters United’: Feminist Nostalgia, Queer Spectatorship, and the Radical Witch Politics of Rob Zombie’s The Lords of Salem – Ben Raphael Sher
Selected Bibliography

About the Editor(s)

Author(s): Darren Elliott-Smith

Darren Elliott-Smith is Senior Lecturer in Film and Gender at the University of Stirling, Scotland, and is known online as www.queerhorrordoctor.com.

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Author(s): John Edgar Browning

John Edgar Browning is Professor of Liberal Arts at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), Georgia USA.

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