Defining The Significance Of Queer People In Horror Decade

Defining the Significance of Queer People in Horror Decade by Decade The “Monster Queer” is a term that Harry Benshoff used to define how cinema, and particularly the horror genre, attributes otherness to being queer by representing queer people as the monsters and villains of the story. Homosexuality is a threat to the heteronormative status quo that dominates Western society. Many directors and writers are affected by this supposed threat and use the medium of cinema as a means of representing queerness as morally reprehensible. This portrayal in popular media has enabled and justified the mistreatment and systemic oppression of queer people throughout society, leading to queer people’s lack of rights continuing till the present

However, there was a significant change in that queer people in films were starting to be characterized as villains and criminals. This reinforced the idea that queer people were sexual deviants and further associated them with moral impurity. The link that filmmakers drew between queer people and crime led to an increase in their marginalization and persecution. World War II set the stage for Nazism playing a huge role as one of the main connections filmmakers made to queer people. Movies such as The Mad Doctor, The Mummy’s Curse, and The Spider all contain queer people being associated with or participating in Nazism. During this time homosexuality was perceived as a medical issue and opened the door to eugenics-esque forms of hormone treatments, shock treatment, lobotomies, etc. These sorts of treatments had also found their way into cinema with movies like Lady in the Dark. In the film, a psychiatrist tells the main character that she would be happier if she had a man at home to dominate her instead of a woman. With the changes in how queer people were represented, heterosexual characters were also changed. Casablanca saw the creation of the hypermasculine male hero and changed how, specifically white, men have been portrayed in films

Queerness was shown with more nuance to the culture and sympathy instead of the aversion and disdain of the previous half-century of film media. These changes that showed a more accurate depiction and the reduction of censorship laws allowed for more positive representations of queer culture in the film industry. These small victories came with their fair share of negativity as well. As the movies portraying queerness became more positive and representative of real life they still relied on many stereotypes and made being queer out to be a tragic and dangerous lifestyle. Nevertheless, the 1960s shifted queer representation to allow more fulfilling and positive associations to be made in the future of