Scream Queen

I am a self-confessed horror geek. I just LOVE horror movies. I love getting scared, which is not too often because i'm pretty much immune to most of the horror films by now. I also love pulling off scary pranks on people - - like hiding in the dark with my Scream Mask on, or hanging from a noose inside a closet waiting for people to open it. I was actually known for pulling pranks like that back in college. Fun times.

In fact, I am such a horror fan , my favorite time of the year is Halloween (nope, not Christmas and definitely not Valentine's Day) Nothing delights me more than sitting in a theatre or a living room watching a good horror movie with some friends and seeing their surprised reactions and hearing their shrieks of terror (yes, even from the boys). That's why i always organize horror movie marathons this time of the year.

Yesterday was an example of that, albeit impromptu. After running the Adidas KOTR 21K (wherein i underperformed and disappointed myslef, thanks to my partying the night before - -and this constitutes a totally different blog entry altogether)me and some friends had a horror movie marathon at home complete with some booze, pasta, and chips. While enjoying myself as i watched my friends jump out of their seats, and listened to their screams of terror i realized something - -there is a profound lack of gay characters in horror movies. And i just found that so ironic.

I mean, horror movies --if we were to follow the formula- -are supposed to have scream queens as leads. Take for example Janet Leigh in Psycho, her daughter Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween, Heather Langenkamp in A Nightmare on Elm Street, or Neve Campbell in the Scream Trilogy. So given that, wouldn't it be nice and i think even effective to actually have a scream "queen" in a horror movie?

Imagine a gay lead character in a slasher flick? And i mean an honest-to-goodness slasher, not the one like "Hellbent" which was supposed to be the first ever gay slasher. A real slasher with a whodunit plot, the gore, the hold-your-breath scenes, everything but with a gay guy as the lead. Would it be effective to have a final girl character being played by a gay man?

Strictly speaking, the final girl is a horror film (particularly slasher film) trope that specifically refers to the last woman or girl alive to confront the killer, ostensibly the one left to tell the story.

The final girl has been observed in dozens of films, including The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Alien, Halloween,Scream, Friday the 13th, and A Nightmare on Elm Street. The term was coined by Carol J. Clover in her book Men, Women and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film.Clover suggests that in these films, the viewer begins by sharing the perspective of the killer, but experiences a shift in identification to the final girl partway through the film.

According to Clover, the final girl is typically sexually unavailable or virginal, avoiding the vices of the victims (sex, narcotic usage, etc.). She sometimes has a unisex name (e.g. Teddy, Billie, Georgie, Sidney). Occasionally the Final Girl will have a shared history with the killer. The final girl is the "investigating consciousness" of the film, moving the narrative forward and as such, she exhibits intelligence, curiosity, and vigilance.

One of the basic premises of Clover’s theory is that audience identification is unstable and fluid across gender lines, particularly in the case of the slasher film. During the final girl’s confrontation with the killer, Clover argues, she becomes masculinized through "phallic appropriation" by taking up a weapon, such as a knife or chainsaw, against the killer. Conversely, Clover points out that the villain of slasher films is often a male whose masculinity, and sexuality more generally, are in crisis. Examples would include Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, or Billy and Stu from Wes Craven's satirical horror film Scream. Clover points to this gender fluidity as demonstrating the impact of feminism in popular culture.

The phenomenon of the male audience having to identify with a young female character in an ostensibly male-oriented genre, usually associated with sadistic voyeurism, raises interesting questions about the nature of slasher films and their relationship with feminism. Clover argues that for a film to be successful, although the Final Girl is masculinized, it is necessary for this surviving character to be female, because she must experience abject terror, and many viewers would reject a film that showed abject terror on the part of a male. The terror has a purpose, in that the female is 'purged' if she survives, of undesirable characteristics, such as relentless pursuit of pleasure in her own right. An interesting feature of the genre is the 'punishment' of beauty and sexual availability.

The film Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (2006) explains and talks extensively about this popular horror film trope (although in the film, it is referred to as "survivor girl"), even using it as a major plot device.

So given all these requirements would a gay guy final girl work? Imagine a sexually unavailable gay guy....oh wait. Hmmmm, i think we might need to re-think this one. Would a gay character actually survive a horror movie scenario?

Here's an article i found online at AfterElton, written by Brian Juergens and i think he explains it quite well.

We all know the formula: A group of horny teens (or 20-somethings pretending to be teens) hole up in an isolated location to party, and a nutter with something pointy arrives to dispatch them in increasingly inventive ways. For many people it's a Halloween tradition; for others, it's a year-round obsession. It's the American slasher movie.

With roots in the increasingly violent thrillers of the early '70s, the slasher film became a mainstay of the American cinema between 1979's breakout indie hit Halloween and the mid-'80s, when it was pretty much phased out in favor of other subgenres. It seemed like every week boasted a new set of bowling-pin teens just begging to be skewered by Jason Voorhees, Madman Marz, Michael Myers or any one of their many imitators. America's kids were suddenly caught in a highly visible life-and-death situation; issues like acne, grades and who to ask to the prom were Mickey Mouse stuff compared to the bloody morality plays that were splashed across our screens for $4 a ticket.

Considering the amount of nudity, violence, and all-around sleaziness that slasher pics boast, it's no surprise that the genre has been the subject of a lot of scrutiny by critics, academics and conservative media watchdogs. The overriding criticism of the genre is that it is demeaning to women and encourages sexual violence in young men.

But other readings of the genre argue that the mucky morality of the teen horror film is actually far more complex. The genre actively promotes gender cross-identification (the hero is almost exclusively a young girl) and places enormous weight on the ideals of purity, hope, responsibility, accountability and good overcoming evil. And you just thought it was about hacking up drunken sluts.

So what about the queers? Seeing as how we're constantly encouraged to believe that Hollywood is the Gayest Place on Earth and that leftist, Commie, tree-hugging, gay-seeming subtext is being crammed into everything from Harry Potter to shampoo commercials, what does the horror genre hold for the homos?

It's actually not what one might think. Considering that the common perception of horror movies is that they're about as sensitive as a dead co-ed when it comes to gender politics, and that anything not immediately understood by hygiene-challenged men who live in their parents' basements is verboten, the facts about gay representation in horror are surprising. In order to gain a better understanding of how gay characters are treated by the horror genre, I've created the Gay Characters' Guide to Surviving a Straight Horror Film.

Now, I am focusing on only straight horror films because the past few years have seen the rise of actual all-gay horror movies, the most well-known being Paul Etheredge-Ouzts' West Hollywood slasher Hellbent. Since all the fellas in that one are gay, it doesn't really fit into the discussion at hand. The happy, humpy himbos of Hellbent essentially take on the roles traditionally played by straight boys and girls in standard horror. Our concern here is the odd man (or woman) out — the lone sissy or dyke, trapped with a group of gropey straight kids and forced to suffer through an otherwise straight morality play. And so here it is …

The Gay Characters' Guide to Surviving a Straight Horror Film

1. You don't.
History unfortunately shows that the gays don't fare too well in the horror genre. But then again, neither do most people — after all, you're slapping down your cash to see some blood and maybe jump out of your seat once or twice, and you can't make an omelet without breaking a few teens. In the dozen or so films I will be discussing here, only one of them shows a gay character living through the final reel.

But horror isn't a black-or-white genre. Sure, the whole “you live or you don't” thing is pretty rigid, but there are plenty of shades of grey. Some characters die nobly, while some have deaths that are treated as jokes (the meanest kind, really). Some characters contribute to the defeat of the killer, while some actually aid in the massacre. And perhaps most importantly, some characters earn our love and support, while others become folks we actually want to see die.

In this regard, gay characters have actually made quite a bit of progress over the years. Gay characters have evolved from being mere tools to aid in the survival of the film's heroes to being their own complete characters, and their deaths have been treated with increasing sensitivity. Gay characters have also become younger and more at ease with their sexuality in recent years, which is a huge shift, particularly in a genre commonly regarded as straight male masturbatory material.

Let's start with what is perhaps the gayest slasher movie of all time, Eyes of Laura Mars (1978). Sure, it predates the teen horror boom by a few years and really fits more into the glorious Batshit Matrons in Peril subgenre, but it's basically a midlife crisis version of a slasher movie.

Faye Dunaway (Mommy!) plays Laura, a cutting-edge fashion photographer (gay …) who poses her models in scenes of bloody carnage (fabulous and gay). Problem is, someone's been offing her acquaintances in scenes that mimic her photos, and what's more, she can see through the eyes of the killer as the murders take place. Laura's whisper-thin, noodle-wristed pillar of strength is the fabulously flaming Donald (Rene Auberjonois), who hosts piano parties in his apartment and brays like a gay donkey at just about everything, good or bad. At one point, Donald even dresses up as Laura as a decoy to distract police, and sadly meets his end — still dressed in Dunaway drag — in his building's elevator.

Here, the gay character is about two eyelashes away from a gay Stepin Fetchit, the cackling, zippy queen who seems to have no other concern than catering to the whims of the straight, rich and fabulous. I guess these days he'd be a celebrity stylist or one of the Fab Five. But remember, this was 1978 — for a gay character to be present at all in a mainstream genre picture was something notable in and of itself, and I wouldn't exactly expect the character to be particularly well-rounded.

But while Donald's affectations might be a bit over-the-top and cliché, the fact of the matter is, he's really the only selfless character the movie has. He's there for Laura through thick and thin — he even dies for her, albeit not intentionally. So I guess if you're a gay character and want to survive a horror film:

2. You can't rely on your good intentions. Or your fashion sense.
Let's look at another Batshit Matron in Peril movie, 1981's ridiculous The Fan. In it Lauren Bacall plays film and Broadway legend Sally Ross, who is attempting to mount both her first musical production and James Garner. Sally has been receiving increasingly creepy notes from a deranged fan named Douglas (a young Michael Biehn), who soon begins offing Sally's friends with a straight-edged razor.

As if the Marvin Hamlisch-scored musical, countless dance routines and campy performance of Bacall weren't enough, we soon get a legit gay subplot. In order to throw cops off his trail, Douglas goes to a gay bar, picks up a kid roughly his size, and has a quick tryst with him on a roof before slitting his throat and setting him on fire beside a fake suicide note. Charming, right? And who in God's name would put a straight-edged razor that close to his junk?

Here we have a rather less favorable image of a gay man in a horror film. He exists solely to facilitate the actions of the villain (he's of no help to Sally, who's off belching out show tunes between clouds of cigarette smoke) and is identified only by his “destructive sexuality,” which gets him killed before he utters a single line. It's really pretty despicable, but then again, the whole movie's a gloriously tasteless piece of trash, so it's not out of place. So the message here would be:

3. Don't seduce Michael Biehn on a rooftop.
Oh, come on — have you seen The Terminator? Rawr …

Once the craze kicked in, horror films started skewing much younger, and plot and character withered, making room for more gore and allowing for faster shoots and cheaper budgets. It seemed that the Friday the 13th (1980) and Halloween (1978) clones existed in an entirely straight universe — there's not a gay character to be had among them (although plenty of gay and closeted actors, of course).

I like to think that gay kids had better things to do than work as summer camp counselors and hang out with Jamie Lee Curtis, like maybe strut around the mall or audition for Puttin' on the Hits. There are a few teen slashers that feature gender-bending killers — most notably Terror Train (1980) and the wonderfully screwed-up Sleepaway Camp (1983) — but they are more plot devices aimed at tricking audiences and concealing the identity of the killer than attempts to bring a gay character to the screen, for slaughter or otherwise. (I also have my own theories about Jason himself being a bit light in his water-logged loafers, but that's another discussion entirely.) The message here would seem to be:

4. Being the murderer will keep you alive a little longer, but ultimately you'll still die, be driven insane or bring the wrath of GLAAD down on your head (not sure which is worse).
Along with gender-bending killers, the horror genre also features a few notable “confused teens” whose seeming sexual ambivalence and possible possession by demons lead to mass carnage. Take Fear No Evil (1981) and A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge (1985). Both boast somewhat feminine male leads at odds with their more aggressive high school peers, who have complicated relationships with girls and suffer horrible humiliations in the locker room (I affectionately call this subgenre Jockstrap Horror).

In both cases, these young men are possessed with an evil power that seems to arise in highly sexualized situations. For example, Andrew from Fear No Evil is kissed in the shower by a bully looking to humiliate him (makes no sense!), and counters by nearly sucking his soul out of his head. (He later gets revenge on the bully by giving him breasts, at which point the kid kills himself — better dead than feminized, right, kids?)

Meanwhile, Jesse of Freddy's Revenge is a classic closeted teen. He's obviously in love with his best friend, recoils at the touch of an aggressive girlfriend, and dreams about running into his gym coach at a leather bar and being forced to shower alone in front of him. No, I'm not making this up. I guess the lesson here would be:

5. Try to become possessed, so you can lay the blame on someone else for your own sexual frustration. And stage a dance routine to a Cathy Dennis song — that'll throw them off the scent.
Recently, though, the climate for gays in horror has become much less about self-loathing and destructive sexuality, and more about just hanging with friends. Maybe this is because the slasher renaissance was in part facilitated by gay writer and producer Kevin Williamson, whose Scream, The Faculty and I Know What You Did Last Summer infused a dead genre with some much-needed queer sensibility. The teen slashers of recent years, while regrettable at times because of their dependence on WB actors and wink-wink humor, have been surprisingly charitable to the gays.

The first “Well whaddayaknow, he's gay!” character I remember seeing in a horror movie is Dave (Gordon Michael Woolvett) in Bride of Chucky (1998). Openly gay Dave is a well-adjusted, friendly guy who helps his friends elope, while unbeknownst to them Chucky and his new bride Tiffany plot their own cross-country carnage. Dave's character is interesting in that while he does die, he isn't actually killed by Chucky — he gets hit by a truck.

Openly gay scripter Don Mancini (who created the series, wrote every installment, and directed the most recent, Seed of Chucky) once told me that it was important for Dave to die because “he's the one likeable victim,” and that it was important for the audience to feel the “sting of death,” the sense of loss. So here we have the gay character not being used as a way to horrify the audience or make them uncomfortable (as gay characters have been used for decades), but to pull them emotionally into the story. He's sort of a more mainstreamed, teen-friendly version of Donald from Laura Mars. Pretty progressive, for what most people would dismiss as a “dumb horror movie.”

Or what about the surprisingly good (and incredibly gay-friendly) Jeepers Creepers 2 (2003)? Aside from boasting a bounty of young male skin and an appearance by Diane Delano (Miss Glass from Popular), Creepers 2 also features a gay teen character, Izzy, who butts heads with an alpha jock on a school basketball trip. The character is smart, attractive and an ambitious writer for the school paper; he's also much more level-headed than the punchy jocks. Sadly, this doesn't save him from being killed by the Creeper, but it does raise the topic of high school homophobia and how it creates a culture of fear for gay teens.

The abysmal teen voodoo slasher flick Venom (2005) also features a gay central character, and for once, he is about as generic as the rest of the kids. (His gayness made him a bit closer to the lead girls than maybe he would have been were he straight, but that's about it.)

Genre legend Tobe Hooper's Mortuary (2005) features a gay teen character as well, and like Venom, the film presents the guy's sexuality as a nonevent, just a character trait like hair color or height. It's also interesting to note that in both movies, the gay characters are absolutely adorable (Pawel Szajda in Venom, Rocky Marquette in Mortuary). We may be subordinated, but we're cute!

Wes Craven's colossally misguided Cursed probably went further than any other recent horror movie to address teen homophobia and present a complex gay character (too bad it was otherwise essentially unwatchable). Bo (Milo Ventimiglia) is a jock who picks on the lead character, Jimmy (Jesse Eisenberg) — that is, until Jimmy is bitten by a werewolf and suddenly becomes the “dominant male” in his school, kicking butt at wrestling and getting the hot girl.

Curiously, Bo does an about-face at this show of pumping hormones, and clumsily comes on to Jimmy, inadvertently outing himself. By the end of the film, Bo is much more comfortable with his sexuality (and no longer a self-loathing bully as a result), and he and Jimmy are friends. And you know what? They even let him live.

So I guess the real key is:

6. Disguise yourself as a hot, homophobic high school wrestler who later opens up and becomes the hero's happy, gay sidekick.
Which brings us back to square one — well, except for the fact that we're at least allowed to live this time. The bottom line is, genre movies paint with some of the broadest strokes in the business, and as a result, just about any group (gays, blacks, women, the elderly) is likely to find some kind of beef with their methods. But time has shown that gay character presence in horror has become both more frequent and more positive. Now if we could just find a way of bagging the jock, helping the Final Girl to find a more flattering wardrobe, and dispatching the killer, we'd be on to something.

I guess we'll just have to settle on being queens rather than scream queens. Let's leave that to the girls. Just as long as we get a chance at the cute Final Guy, i'm cool. But i still can't help but wonder about the possibility of a gay lead in a horror movie. Maybe one day i'll write a screenplay for one. Ang title - -"Tsugi". LOL. Happy Halloween!