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WHAT IS QUEER THEORY

Michel Foucault’s work is monumental in Queer Theory because several of the theorists studied in this course constantly refer back to Foucault. In The History of Sexuality, Foucault coins the Repressive Hypothesis. This is the term for the widespread ideology that contemporary society constantly struggles with the 19thcentury’s legacy of sexual repression. This innate struggle constantly prevents society from liberating ourselves from the burden of the Victorian era’s burden of silence and strict sexual morals. Foucault argues against the repressive hypothesis as he dictates that modernity has developed an explosion of new ideologies and discussions towards sex, and these ideologies are tied to history’s dynamic power relations from capitalistic societies. Our society has become obsessed discovering the truth about sex, but also a society that claims sex to be the ULTIMATE truth to be discovered. Sexuality is indeed a social construct from the knowledge producing institutions. Homosexuality was not defined until the 1870’s and before that these certain sexual preferences were not defined as homosexual and heterosexuality was still not coined either. In the film Different from Others, two male musicians fall in love as they develop a student-teacher relationship. Being from 1919, this is one of the first queer films available. The title itself gives into Foucault’s repressive hypothesis. The fact that they are homosexual makes them “different” from everyone in society because sexuality is known as the ultimate secret. Once their secret is revealed, they struggle to liberate themselves from society because it is against the law to participate in homosexual acts in this period of Germany. The fact that this particular society and its strict sexual morals treated sexuality as the ultimate secret, it unintentionally directed the motives and the source of the character’s mental status. Once the musician is sent to court with the extortionist, his big secret/ultimate truth is revealed, and it drives him mentally unstable as he loses everything. He lost his love, his life, and ultimately his life.

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GENDER/SEX/QUEER

Annamarie Jagose expands on the queer theory and what “queer” actually means in her paper Queer Theory: An Introduction. As Jagose explains, “queer” is an umbrella term for one’s sexuality and that it is the name given the developing theories derived from lesbian/gay studies. Since this term is non-normative and unstable, it is an elastic term. To try to define queer theory is an attempt to fix an idea that deliberately rejects fixing. She explains that the distinction between homosexual behavior which is a universal and homosexual identity which is culturally mediated. Judith Butler takes a deeper look into gender binaries and identities in Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Butler aims at attempting to deconstruct the gender binaries (ex: boys are blue, girls are pink). Gender is a “social fiction” and a performative and speech act (gender is a doing not a being). Gender identity does not manifest from biological characteristic’s or reproductive organs, but rather from socio-cultural construction which individuals go through in order to universalize their individual experience. Individuals have the free will to mold their own gendered identity according to their personal taste, fashion sense, and sexual orientation. In the film Orlando,we are given a story in which Orlando, a young English aristocratic man from the 16thcentury lives on through centuries, but through his journey transforms into a woman and lives on as a woman until contemporary times. Though the question of how Orlando woke up a woman or how Orlando is able to live forever is never quite answered. However, this story gives us an insightful study on Queer theory as well as gender binaries. Orlando begins as an androgynous man who wears the attire of a man and even falls in love with woman. This plays into Jagose’s comment on gender being performative. However, most of the film falls into the normative gender identity understandings that Jagose confronts. For example, when she wakes up a woman, she realizes this because she looks in the mirror and sees her breasts. She no longer seems interested into woman but now falls in love with a man. So not only does Orlando’s biological characteristics dictate her gender, but Orlando falls under compulsory heterosexuality.

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DRAG AND TRANS IDENTITY

Paris is Burning is a documentary which followed several “legends” and rising “legends” from the drag scene in Harlem from the 80’s and 90’s. following the lives of these drag stars, we are witness to the dangers and adversity they are faced with. Most of these drags dreamed of being able to get the sex change surgery, but they were often financially barred from doing so. Joanne Meyerowitz wrote on the earlier sex change procedures and the way the pressed covered the during the mid 20thcentury. In Sex Change and the Popular Press, she explains that most people early on who wished to get the surgery were also barred financially as they were in Paris is Burning (coming from lower classes in Harlem). In the times of Christine Jorgensen not many doctors allowed this surgery, but they also were technologically prepared for these procedures. Jorgensen was able to find the resources available for the surgery through the press and had to travel all the way to Europe. This was decades before Paris is Burningand something about racial intersectionality can be said here. Though Jorgensen was white, most drags who dreamed of this surgery came from racial neighborhoods and belonged to Latino and Black communities. Being able to acquire the surgery decades before, there is obviously some type privilege that white transsexuals carried, especially in the mid 20thcentury. The Harlem Balls and the drag houses in Paris is Burning became a subcultural network for these drag legends and often became their homes. This same subculture network arose in Meyerowitz’s paper and through these networks were several individuals able to find the resources available to get the surgery done decades before.

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THE CLOSET

Epistemology of the Closet by Eve K. Sedgwick takes a look at the knowledge gathered of what society has claimed to be the “closet”. Eve theorizes that the closet is not a physical space and is often a safe yet hidden space. In This space or state, the true identity of an individual is concealed. The identity which she hints at was construted by the coming of terms homosexual and heterosexual. Homosexuality is enforced by heterosexuality and heterosexuality is always subsumed by homosexuality. These identifications came to be from an identification of the sex of the subject and the sex of the object of desire. This garnished socially construed ideas of sexual and gender binaries. In the 1900s, sexual orientation was linked to genital contact (simply put, where you put your genitals). Sedgwick emphasizes that “coming out” of the closet is a sequential performative and discursive act that queer individuals must constantly keep performing. Meanwhile, “closetedness” or staying in the closet is in itself a performative act initiated by silence. Through the film noir film of 7thVictim we are given a queer coded text in which Jacqueline must constantly perform her closetedness. Jacqueline’s character is portrayed in silence and absence as if she is mostly unseen and unspoken throughout the film. This can be read as her performative act of silence as she remains in the closet. When Ward explains, “There’s something about your sister a man can never get a hold of”, we are given hints towards the queering of Jacqueline’s character. Visually, in the scenes in which she does appear she must hide in the dark shadows of the film noir film. This pushes the theme of closetedness and that some things just never come to light.

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THE TROUBLES OF FEMALE INTIMACY

In this week’s discussion we analyzed the wrings of Carroll Smith-Rosenburg and Lisa Duggan. Smith-Rosenburg studied the intimate social relationships garnished between women in family, friend, and boarding school settings in the 19thcentury. Mothers of families established a form of womanhood for their daughters to follow in and it often excluded men. They often wrote to each other from great distance and discussed very intimate and social topics amongst between themselves. Through these letters historians have been able to study this sector of American womanhood and Female relations. Lisa Duggan wrote on the stories of Freda Ward’s murder and the lynchings of which Ida Wells publicized about in the South in the late 19thcentury. The murder of Freda Ward garnished an incredible amount of media coverage for it was her lover Alice Mitchell who killed her. This story of “sexual inverts” swayed white America to view the dangers of the “mannish lesbian” for she can become violent and even kill. The lynchings of the apparent African American “rapists” and white “mannish lesbians” filled the press and warned white America of their “dangers” to white domesticity. Heavenly Creatures takes notes from both of the readings. For one, the two young adolescent girls established a close intimate relationship between one another and formed a social relationship similar to those depicted in Carrol Smith Rosenburg’s The Female World of Love and Ritual. Though this movie took place decades later in New Zealand, once their parents caught on to their intimacy, they were allowed to continue their relationships through writing love letter amongst each other. However, this film ends tragically and embodies an ill depiction of female queerness similar to that of Duggans’s Sapphic Slashers. In efforts to stay together forever, the two young girls devise a plan to kill Pauline’s mother and eventually go through with it. This paints a negative representation on lesbianism in the same way that the “mannish lesbian” murderer was used to damaging representation of queerness.

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QUEER LATINX

Feeling Down, Feeling Brown is the title of Jose Esteban Munozarticle in which he describes the performative and depressive position of Latinos and other minorities. Munoz begins by declaring that depression is actually gendered and also needs to amended for it actually assumes a default white subject. In this sense he brings in his argument, Feeling Down Feeling Brown, meaning that through a depressive state there is a feeling of brownness that results from belonging in alterity, in other words, queerness. This is an ethical position in the social for minority subjects and recognizes the racial performance coded by “Latina”. This performance is deployed by minorities who do not feel they belong within the normative protocols of society, assuming heteronormative society. The film for this week was Mosquita y Mari which is the story of two young adolescent Latina girls gradually beginning a relationship in the middle of their often hectic life (especially in the case of Mari). This plot resonates with Feeling Down, Feeling Brown because we take a step away from white male subjects as we follow the tale of two young girls in a Latino community. Mari is new to the school so we witness her performative of feeling down/brown as she seems to be the oddball and has to not only adapt to a new environment but secretly adapt with her queerness. Her depressiveness and performance is far more obvious than Mari for she is carrying a lot of weight as a young girl helping her family get by in this lower class area of Los Angeles. In this sense we analyze queerness through a series a different intersectionalities. Already mentioned were the class and race intersections, but also age and religion. Mosquita and Mari are some of the youngest characters we have examined in our required films and are barley in their last years of high school. Belonging to a heavily populated Latino community, they are also within strict Catholic environments in which they must hide this relationship from their religious parents.

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LESBIANISM & BLACKNESS

In Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence Adrienne Rich attacks the institution of compulsory heterosexuality to enhance the lesbian experience. This compulsory heterosexuality makes the assumption that women are “innately sexually orientated” towards men and that the lesbian experience is simply reaction of resentment towards men. She also critiques the feminist theory of not only avoiding a voice for the lesbian experience but for avoiding a critique of compulsory heterosexuality. It is this compulsory heterosexuality that is created by men, and fortified by men and patriarchal institutions as a means to reflect male needs, fantasies and interest in controlling women (especially in the mean of sexuality and reproduction). Through the lesbian experience and same-sex desire between women, the institution of compulsory heterosexuality can be countered by empowering women and creating a conscious women identification. Though this paper was written nearly 40 years ago and I feel the lesbian and the queer experience has come a long way, the film Pariah can draw several correspondences to the theories of Adrienne Rich. Alike in the movie lives in a highly patriarchal and compulsive heterosexual environment. I am not claiming that New York embodies this environment, but rather Alike’s direct family and societal environment does. Alike’s lesbian experience lives in the shadow of this compulsive heterosexuality that dominates. She dresses the way she wants under her own experience when she is free however, in the eyes of her family, school peers, and the church she must basically costume herself into the ways the compulsive heterosexuality has dictated her to. The clerk at the gas station in the film insults Alike towards her father because she isn’t conforming to this heterosexuality. As Rich explains that the lesbian experience and conscious woman identity can empower women, it is important to notice that in the film the most empowered characters to me were Laura and Bina, two characters who were the most open and conscious about their lesbian identity. Alike’s mother can be seen as a symbol of compulsory heterosexuality for she never succumbs to accepting her daughter’s true identity and tries her hardest to conform her.

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COMING OF AGE / COMING OUT

Whitney Monaghan asks and investigates the question of “Are Queer Girls, Girls?” in her book Queer Girls, Temporality and Social Media. In doing so she is able to interrupt cultural understandings of what it means to be a girl and what it means to be queer. After feminist studies began in the 70’s, the study of girlhood began to develop, and Monaghan briefly touches on the “mean girl” and Clover’s “final girl”. She notes that through films, girlhood began to represent an attractive heterosexual belonging to the white middle class and hence the image of girlhood was oversimplified. Sexuality was often excluded in studies of intersectionality as heteronormativity reigned. Though queer studies reject normativity and gender binaries of sexuality, it often lacked information on what it means to be a queer girl. Monaghan critiques queer theory in this sense for it erases difference by constructing a universal subject. In The Miseducation of Cameron Post, the gay camp can also be criticized for this critique for they tended to lump all the adolescents there into one generalized group, as simply gay. However, through the iceberg assignments it became evident that everyone there was actually different and universalizing the identity of queerness can actually become quite problematic. Through a coming-of-age narrative in films and tv, an adolescent protagonist underwent a transition period that they became “ambiguous” and in which they mature through individual trials in life. In this midpoint between heterosexuality and non-heterosexuality, contemporary films and tv series often portrayed queerness as an interruption in heterosexual maturity and more often restored normality and compulsory heterosexuality on the screen. God’s Promise, the conversion therapy camp, followed this same ideology that Monaghan wrote on. In the film, the Doctor and the reverend tried to “fix” the adolescents and pull them out of this “in-between” and back to their pure side, the side of compulsory heterosexuality. However, through the ending the film succeeds in the sense that the three adolescents strongly identify as queer regardless of “God’s Promise” and are able to run away from the camp to trump over normality and compulsory heterosexuality. It is important to note that out of these three, Cameron is the only teen coming from a white middle-class background, and the film diversifies the representation of queerness with the other two.  

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QUEER ANTI-FUTURISM

Lee Edelman’s The Future Is Kid Stuff begins by detailing western civilization’s obsession with reproductive futurism. This concept is a way to limit political ideology by protecting the “absolute privilege of heteronormativity” and avoiding any queer resistance. This is upheld securely by western politics’ obsession of the symbolic order of the Child as the future and pinning queerness as outsiders and even dangerous to this order. Queerness therefore is not directed by reproductive futurism for it lacks the absolute value of the symbolic Child and rather embraces social and political “otherness” of the death drive. Religion also reinforces this symbolic order of the Child for the bible dictates to “be fruitful and multiply” and therefore pushes the agenda that history repeats itself. Edelman concludes that for this reason queerness is against the order of the Child and insists the future stop here. Interview with the Vampire aligns itself with the ideology of the death drive and “no future” by creating several parallels and contrasts with the monstrous vampire. For one, the vampires in this film have historically hunted down victims throughout their reigning centuries and can be seen as a parallel to an attack on Western civilization’s future with the aristocratic mannerisms of the vampires (Louis even abandons his plantation, a capitalistic icon of the 1800’s, once his alternate lifestyle ensues). The heavily queer coded tale between the two male vampires portrays a lifestyle far more immortal and privileged than that of those in the heteronormative societies of their prey. One can argue for the reading of this film’s queer text that once Louis’ daughter passed and he lived as a vampire, he was no longer dictated by reproductive futurism. However, when Lestat turns Claudia into vampire, they created a queer family for this can be seen as a-sexual reproduction and carries notions of futurity. This coincides with Sue-Ellen Case’s Tracking a Vampire and her ideology of the vampire and queerness. Since same sex desire is portrayed as “monstrous” for its inability to give birth or reproduce, the vampire love story of Lestat and Louis is symbolic of queerness. After all, it was Lestat who turned Louis into a “monster”, and as Case argues, queer desire has a strong affinity with the vampire.

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QUEER UTOPIAS 

In Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity, José Esteban Munoz theorizes on a duality of the concepts of queerness and utopias. His goal in this introduction and the overall document is to give readers a challenge: to reapproach the queer critique from different temporalities and spaces (from queer futurity focused on the past to critique the present by cruising through ideas of hope and utopia). Most of his framework derived from the works of several theorists such as Kant, Hegel and most notably, Bloch. Interestingly enough, as he challenges readers to view queerness from a different space, he refrains from using knowledgeable and overused queer works such as those from Foucault and instead draws from theorists farther away from the realm of queer theory. In all honesty, like several documents from this semester, I often got lost wandering through the heavy theory of this paper as I tried to find my way and understand Munoz’s philosophical perspectives. However, the very first page gave me powerful insight and a useful direction to guide me through the paper. On this first page I also found the most abundance of parallels to this week’s screening, “Black Mirror” San Junipero.“Queerness is a structuring and educated mode of desiring that allows us to see and feel beyond the quagmire of the present. The here and now is a prison house. Some will say that all we have are the pleasures of this moment… we must dream and enact new and better pleasures, other ways of being in the world, and ultimately new worlds.” San Junipero and the tale of Yorkie and Kelly was exactly this, a dreamy new world where queerness can find pleasure: a utopia. Though in her reality, Yorkie was metaphorically stuck in a “prison house” in the sense that she was in a comatose state and never been able to freely escape the shackles of the closet, in San Junipero she was able to surpass the “quagmire” of her now and express her queerness freely (ironically, she once found herself looking for her new love in the craziness of the Quagmire). Despite Munoz warning us of the possible disappointments of hope in utopias and the possible negative criticism of queerness only being allowed in the alternative space of San Junipero’s virtual reality, this episode belongs and ends in a positive futurity. This futurity negates the negativity of queer stories being plagued with fatal endings as one would actually expect from any other tragic Black Mirror ending. Though Yorkie must die to live her truth, they continue to live on and love through the futurity and utopia of San Junipero and as Munoz wrote, “The future is queerness’s domain”.

*last photo has a caption

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Sources

https://www.amc.com/talk/2010/07/vampires-movies

https://www.denofgeek.com/us/movies/the-mummy/239725/13-essential-mummy-movies

https://www.cinelinx.com/movie-stuff/item/13047-classic-horror-origins-the-mummy.html

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/10/31/13440402/zombie-political-history

https://bloody-disgusting.com/editorials/3491208/beware-full-moon-history-werewolves-film/

https://bloody-disgusting.com/editorials/3370217/something-wicked-way-came-charting-history-witches-horror-films/

https://www.cinelinx.com/movie-stuff/item/8646-looking-back-on-the-long-film-history-of-frankenstein.html

https://www.thoughtco.com/slasher-movies-1873211

http://wickedhorror.com/features/horror-histories-cannibalism-cinema/

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Cannibals

Unlike vampires and zombies, cannibals are monsters that consume human flesh but are nothing more than living humans. The first representation of the cannibal was seen in The Enchanted Kiss(1917) in a film no longer available, a man finds the flesh of young women to be the answer to aging. The early adaptions of Tod Slaughter were seen in Sweeney Todd (1926) and The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1936)told the story of an infamous demonic barber who killed customers for their possessions and made pies out of their remains. That was a similar storyline behind Bloodthirsty Butchers (1970) except it was a duo, one man was the barber, the other the baker. Doctor X (1932) had a cannibal as the antagonist of the film was known as the moon killer and ate his victims, and Circus Queen Murder (1933) depicted a traveling circus that showcased several atrocities including 13 living cannibals. The adaptations of the carnivorous cannibal were put to a halt when the Production Code restricted Hollywood and would have to wait until the 60’s for the return of the cannibal. Blood Feastwas released in 1963 with a killer killing several women just to eat them and resurrect an Egyptian goddess and the sequel Blood Feast 2: All U Can Eatwas produced in 2002. Psychopathic families who sold humans at restaurants and ate humans for dinner were seen in The Undertaker and his Pals (1966) and Spider Baby (1967). The 70’s came with an explosion of cannibal films including The Mad Butcher(1971), Deep River(1972),Soylent Green(1973), and Cannibal Girls(1973). Flesh-consuming films filled the 70’s with a vast number of cannibalistic scenes in which killers ate humans out of pleasure or were forced to consume virgin meat to please deity or perform pagan rituals. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and all of its sequels witnessed the debut of human eating Sawyer family in the 70’s. Foreign films of the “Cannibal Boom” reached American cinemas and exceeded in the grindhouse sector. In 1980 several films revolving cannibalism retuned to cinema after a brief break in 1979 including Cannibal Holocaust, Eaten Alive, Zombie Holocaust, We’re Going to Eat You, Sex and Black Magic, andDevil Hunter. The first adaptation of Hannibal Lecter was seen in 1986 in with Manhunter,but his story would not take off until Anthony Hopkin’s role in Silence of the Lambs(1991), Hannibal(2001), and Red Dragon(2002). With several of these movies depicting the preferred or acceptable meal for the cannibal as young and often virgin women, there’s a lot Laura Mulvey would respond to. For one, women are not only objectified to the most extreme; they are more than just eye-candy, but they are juicy meat for men to eat.

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Frankenstein

A product of Mary Shelley’s novel “Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus”, ingenious scientist and his manmade creation of a monster has created an abundance of adaptations into the horror genre. In 1931, Universal Studio released Frankenstein which starred Boris Karloff as the silent monster as well as in the sequels , The Bride of Frankenstein(1935) in which Frankenstein created a wife and The Son of Frankenstein (1939) where the son of the doctor Frankenstein being manipulated by a malicious hunchback, resurrects the monster and begins killing for the hunchback. The 3rdsequel titles Ghost of Frankenstein (1942) where the hunchback’s brain was supplanted into the monster and gets killed ended in very diminished popularity. As America lost interest in horror after WW2, Universal began making mash up movies with the monsters crossing over as seen in Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman(1943), The House of Frankenstein(1945), and The House of Dracula(1945). As Noell Carrol explained, horror is arranged in historical cycles; the progression of Frankenstein throughout its representations in the films showed how audiences reacted to horror at specific times, especially during this era of crossovers and humorous adaptations. When Hammer Studios began their interpretation with The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), they efficiently portrayed the monster a more sinful Doctor  and revolved more around the doctor and his new creations, which each were placed in the squeals: The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958), The Evil of Frankenstein (1964),  Frankenstein Created Woman (1966),  Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969), and The Horror of Frankenstein(1970). In 1986, The Bride (1986) revolved around the evils of the doctor as he created a companion for his initial creation but kept her for his possession instead. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994) produced a closer rendition to the novel with an aesthetically pleasant attempt. As the creations of Frankenstein and the movies about him never seem to die, you can draw a parallel that society’s creations and offsprings live on and may come back to haunt us.

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Witches

First signs of witches came in Haxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages (1922),a banned silent film from Europe on the causes of witch-hunts. The next series of witch films came in the 1960’s and revolved around witch hunting and torturing such as Black Sunday(1960) and Witchfinder General (1968). Rosemary’s Baby(1968) played with the notion of witchcraft with the spawn of Satan’s child. Up to this point, witch horror movies parallel the story of the crucible which represented society’s malpractice of persecuting “others” while not yet showing the witch as a monster. The 70’s brought Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971) and The Devils (1971) in which both revolved around narrow minded Christian communities battled against demonic possessions and claims of witchcraft. In 1977, Dario Argento directed Suspiria which finally brought the evils of witches into light as a cult of witches ran a ballet school and caused the elongated deaths of a few female dancers. Argento played off of Edgar Allen Poe’s quote, “The death of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetic topic in the world” as he used colorful hues to paint beautiful pictures of horrific deaths in Susparia.The witches in the movie perfectly represented what Barbara Creed spoke on femininity naturally abjected as the phallic mother. The 80’s and 90’s brought along humorous and numb portrayals the witches such The Witches of Eastwick and The Witches which just played off the stereotypes of witches. In Pumpkinhead (1988), a witch summoned a demonic giant headed pumpkin-head. The end of the 90’s brought witches back into realm of a horror’s deepest fears with The Blair Witch Project (1999).The film shows footage of three students wandering into the forest in search of clues regarding the death of the Blair witch. The Woods (2006),similar to the plot of Susparia a young student realizes she is attending a school ran by evil witches and eventually kills them all with the help of a boy.

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Nature/Animals

Though usually exaggerated, the animals and creatures in natural horror are monsters of the animal and plant kingdom within our very world. Attacking and fighting back against humanity, nature is represented as a monster in horror with these natural killers picking humans apart. One of the first films to be recognized as a natural horror was King Kong(1933) and The Giant Claw (1957)in which a giant killer bird is mistaken for a UFO. Another initial horror film to release the animals into the horror realm was Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds(1963) in which an onslaught of birds begins attacking and killing people. The most iconic of all was Steven Spielberg’s Jaws(1975) in which a giant shark attacks residents of beach town. Barbara Creed sees the giant mouth and teeth of the shark as a negative force in horror movies represented by the archaic mother as the toothed womb of the shark, or the vagina dentata. Natural horror movies portrayed several other killer natural monsters such as vicious dogs (Cujo (1983), Dogs (1976), The Pack (1977)), killer Insects (Empire of Ants (1977), The Deadly Bees(1966), Kingdom of Spiders (1977)), human-eating plants (The Day of the Triffids(1962), The Ruins (2008)), and very grizzly bears (Grizzly(1976), Grizzly Rage (2007), (Into the Grizzly Maze (2014)). With the reoccurring conflict of man vs nature, one thing is certain and that is that mother nature is fed up and will fight back against humanity for their treatment of mother earth and her children.

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The Werewolf

The half-man, half-beast myth of the werewolf has since the beginning of cinema a popular trope in horror films. As vampires were seen as fusion of a monster (dead and alive) the werewolf was a fission of a monster. The initial appearance of the werewolf was produced in a short silent film The Werewolfin 1913 but was forever lost in a fire. It wasn’t until 1935 when Universal Studios released Werewolf of London as an addition to their classical monsters in which Larry is bitten by werewolf and becomes cursed and eventually goes on a rampage only to be killed by his own father. After WW2 and during the redscare, as most horror movies shifted towards a sci-fi based plot, the werewolf followed. Both, The Werewolf(1956) a movie about a man injected with a wolfman drug and I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957) wherea mad scientist turns his patient into a wolf man, embody this sci-fi shift following the war. In 1961 Hammer Studios releasedCurse of the Werewolf, their only werewolf film which told the tale of a man who could not overcome his lycan curse and is overwhelmed by his vicious impulses. Curse of the Werewolf and The Boy Who Cried Werewolf (1973) both symbolized “male toxicity” with their representation of the wolfman. The 80’s brought a series of popular werewolf films with the coming of advanced special effects. 1981 saw the release of An American Werewolf in London, The Howling,and Wolfen in which werewolves traumatized audiences and saw a climatic perfection in the transformation scene of the wolfman.

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The Slasher

The first of the Slasher films is often to be argued as Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) with Norman Bates as the knife slashing murderer. This film sparked a series of slasher films which were released in what is known as the golden age of slashers. Though movies such as Psychoand Peeping Tom (1960) as well as Violent Midnight (1963) were slashers, the first true slasher came with the iconic boogeyman Michael Myers in Halloween (1978) as he murdered countless victims including his sister with his knife. Eyes of Laura Mars and The Toolbox Murderers also featured serial killers hacking away at their victims in the late 70s. Leather Face appeared in the early 70’s in The Texas Chainsaw Massacreas he hid behind the masks of several human faces and killed using the unforgiving chainsaw. In 1980, Jason made an appearance as a new addition to the psycho killers hiding behind a hockey mask and killing with a knife. In 1984, A Nightmare on Elm Street brought Freddy Krueger into the realm of killers as he attacked victims in their dreams with his iconic metal claw. Carol Clover summarized the slasher films as killers who are distinctively male with superhuman powers and kill with a phallic weapon with a sexual aggression. The survivor and the one who defeats the killer is known as the final girl for she is ambiguous, and her androgynous femininity aligns the male audience with her. The anxiety of these films can be seen as the sexual activity of the youth, for it is the young, beautiful sexually active who often are victimized.