#harry m. benshoff

[albertserra]

Me and who

[onebluebookworm]

30 Days of Literary Pride 2023 - June 6

Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality and the Horror Film - Harry M. Benshoff

[thatwritererinoriordan]

@onebluebookworm you were right, this was very much worth a read.

[salvadorbonaparte]

Broaden Your Horizons 2024

A Non-Fiction Rec List by Salvadorbonaparte

Books

Adventures in Yiddishland: Postvernacular Language and Culture - Jeffrey Shandler

A Good Man in Evil Times: The Heroic Story of Aristides de Sousa Mendes -- The Man Who Saved the Lives of Countless Refugess in World War II - Jose-Alain Fralon, Peter Graham (trans.)

Brief Answers to the Big Questions - Stephen Hawking

Erebus: The Story of a Ship - Michael Palin

Every Word Is A Bird We Teach To Sing: Encounters with the Mysteries and Meanings of Language - Daniel Tammet

Federico Garcia Lorca: A Life - Ian Gibson

Getting to Yes: Negotiating an agreement without giving in - Roger Fisher, William Ury

I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban - Malala Yousafzai

Ice Ghosts: The Epic Hunt for the Lost Franklin Expedition - Paul Watson

Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny - Amartya Sen

If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face?: My Adventures in the Art and Science of Relating and Communicating - Alan Alda

Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism

Iwígara: American Indian Ethnobotanical Traditions and Science

Lingo: A Language Spotter's Guide to Europe - Gaston Dorren, Alison Edwards (trans.)

Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality and the Horror Film - Harry M. Benshoff

One River: Explorations and Discoveries in the Amazon Rainforest - Wade Davis

Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour - Kate Fox

What's Your Pronoun? Beyond He and She - Dennis Baron

Documentaries

Bowling for Columbine

Break It All: The History of Rock in Latin America

ReMastered: Tricky Dick and the Man in Black

She's Beautiful When She's Angry

Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street

Podcasts

Clear+Vivid with Alan Alda

Freaks and Psychos: The Disability in Horror Podcast

Lingthusiasm

Ologies with Alie Ward

Root of Evil: The True Story of the Hodel Family and the Black Dahlia

The Sewers of Paris

[dabistits]

My Hero Academia ch. 392 | Stone Butch Blues, Leslie Feinberg | On Being a "Lesbian", Kakefuda Hiroko trans. Indiana Scarlet Brown | Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality and the Horror Film, Harry M. Benshoff | Why be Happy When You Could be Normal?, Jeanette Winterson | Disobedience, Naomi Alderman | The Well of Loneliness, Radclyffe Hall | "A Working Definition of the Monstrous," Ryan Dzelzkalns in It Came from the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror | Notes of a Crocodile, Qiu Miaojin | "For Friendship, Perhaps," Revolutionary Girl Utena

[counttwinkula]

hi i have been obsessed with your “the monster’s body is a cultural body etc” post since i saw it like a month ago. do you have any book recs where i can read more about this, like, forever. (I’m aware of your podcast I’m checking it out too) <3

i'm glad you liked it, it's an honor to introduce the people of tumblr to cohen's seven theses

first and foremost i would recommend The Monster Theory Reader, ed. Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, which includes several seminal essays including:

"The Uncanny" by Sigmund Freud

"The Uncanny Valley" by Masahiro Mori

"Approaching Abjection" by Julia Kristeva

"Horror and the Monstrous-Feminine: An Imaginary Abjection" by Barbara Creed

"The Monster and the Homosexual" by Harry M. Benshoff

i would also recommend the book in which Cohen first published his seven theses, Monster Theory: Reading Culture, ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen

(i must admit that i haven't gotten around to reading either of these books in full yet)

aside from the essays mentioned above, here are some foundational texts for monster theory but not specifically about monster theory:

The Uses of Enchantment by Bruno Bettelheim

Mythography: The Study of Myths and Rituals by William Doty

Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety by Marjorie Garber

monster theory/horror criticism texts i've read:

Monsters in the Closet by Harry M. Benshoff

Skin Shows by Jack Halberstam

Murder Most Queer by Jordan Schildcrout

It Came from the Closet, ed. Joe Vallese

Horror by Brigid Cherry

Men, Women, and Chain Saws by Carol Clover

Dark Places by Barry Curtis

The Dread of Difference, ed. Barry Keith Grant

The Monster Show by David J. Skal (SEE NOTE BELOW)

Darkly: Black History and America's Gothic Soul by Leila Taylor

The Ghost: A Cultural History by Susan Owens

and some others i own but haven't read yet:

Dark Carnivals by W. Scott Poole

Phantom Past, Indigenous Presence: Native Ghosts in North American Culture and History by Colleen E. Boyd and Coll Thrush

Queer for Fear: Horror Film and the Queer Spectator by Heather O. Petrocelli

Pretend We're Dead: Capitalist Monsters in American Pop Culture by Annalee Newitz (just started this, already love it)

Theatre and the Macabre, ed. Meredith Conti and Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr.

and i can't neglect to mention The Monster in Theatre History: This Thing of Darkness by Michael Chemers

before i say anything further i want to give one warning. my particular interest is on monstrosity and queerness (probably evident based on some of my recommendations). monster theory and horror criticism have generally been rooted in psychoanalytic theory, particularly as it has been interpreted through a feminist lens. unfortunately, this leads to a lot of arguments and interpretations that are sex essentialist and fail to address gender with the necessary nuance. this is particularly true in Men, Women, and Chain Saws and The Dread of Difference.

(Vested Interests is… complicated. it's not monster theory exactly but cohen cites it. garber is generally better than the others mentioned here in her consideration of trans people but her work can still be uncomfortable.)

i have a lot of reservations about recommending The Monster Show. i loved reading it and i think skal has great analysis. somehow, however, in the middle of his discussion of how marginalized people have been historically monsterized in american culture, he has the audacity to cite The Transsexual Empire by Janice Raymond, the ur-text of TERF ideology, and skal uses this text to monsterize trans women. it's disgusting and reprehensible, and if the rest of the book wasn't so strong i wouldn't recommend it

the best medicine i have are texts by trans people. It Came from the Closet is an anthology with several essays by trans people, i adore it. i am forever obsessed with Gender Outlaw by Kate Bornstein, which isn't exactly monster theory, but i would say it's monster theory adjacent and i wish everyone would read it

and if you haven't, you must read "My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage" by Susan Stryker. (see i even put a link to that one. drop everything and read it now)

alright if you're still with me i have a couple other things to put out there:

the docuseries Queer for Fear, available on Shudder, is incredible and i'm obsessed with it

she seems to be inactive these days but @draculasdaughter has a lot of posts quoting texts and articles on monster theory/horror criticism that i highly recommend

i've only seen the jacob geller videos on this list but i mean to watch this youtube playlist of video essays about horror, fear, and dread

and i also keep a #monster theory tag on my blog that has various posts on the subject, some funny and some earnest

[calamitys-child]

Wait, I saw ur bookshelf read flags tags can u recommend some books on horror and gender? I'd love to read more about horror but I don't know where to start

ABSOLUTELY I CAN!

Men, Women, and Chainsaws by Carol J. Clover - I just finished rereading this one and it's so good man, it's the foundation of ideas of the Final Girl in slasher films and talks a lot about identification with characters blurring gender lines especially in horror. Some of the concepts and language used are kinda dated, it was first published in 1982 as an article (Her Body, Himself) then expanded into a book, but it broadly really holds up and its a super strong foundational gender horror text

Gender, Genre, and Excess by Laura Mulvey - this one's a short read and it's fantastic in the way it categorises films as 'body genres'; the idea of specific film genres, including horror, being specifically constructed to evoke a bodily response, and the way these genres thus act as foils to each other

When The Final Girl Is Not A Girl by Jeremy Maron - builds on Clover's work and takes the "girl" component out, focusing on female killers and male survivors in slashers

Is The Rectum A Grave? by Leo Bersani - less focused on film texts and kind of a hard read but it makes some really good points about the potential for queer people to take the horror that cishet people have of us and use that as empowerment, the idea of reframing "penetrated/penetrating" as "swallowing/swallowed"

Queer Theory's Evil Twin by Susan Stryker - on that note, Stryker is a fantastic writer who does this piece on how monsters in horror films are potentially wish fulfillment for trans people and how queer studies generally seems afraid of trans studies specifically

Skin Shows by J. Halberstam (they publish under 2 different names but it's always a J initial) - SO GOOD. SO good. I got a copy for my birthday bc I miss my uni access to it so much. Loads of in depth discussion about trans visuals and constructed bodies in horror media

Monsters in the Closet by Harry M. Benshoff - I feel like the title is enough of a pitch for this one tbh. Focuses mainly on cis non-heterosexual depiction in horror

Like and Lycanthropy by Tim Stafford - if an academic article could be my best friend its this one. THE transgender werewolf text of all time, discourse on empowerment/disempowerment vs assimilation/non- or anti-assimilation. I kiss it on the papery lips every day

This is all just off the top of my head, and just academic/nonfiction; if you want fiction I can recommend a few of those, and if you want more stuff I have an essay I wrote linked in my pinned which has a way more comprehensive resource list at the bottom :D I love love love queer horror I am always delighted to talk about it

[ghnosis]

"Queer even challenges 'the Platonic parameters of Being - the borders of life and death.' Queer suggests death over life by focusing on non-procreative sexual behaviors, making it especially suited to a genre that takes sex and death as central thematic concerns."

from "The Monster and the Homosexual," by Harry M. Benshoff in The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film ed. Barry Keith Grant 2015

[queerslovehorror]

In a 1984 study of anti-homosexual attitudes, the investigators broke heterosexuals' fears of gay and lesbian sexuality into three topic areas: (1) Homosexuality as a threat to the individual - that someone you know (or you yourself) might be homosexual. (2) Homosexuality as a threat to others - homosexuals have been frequently linked in the media to child molestation, rape, and violence. (3) Homosexuality as a threat to the community and other components of culture - homosexuals supposedly represent the destruction of the procreative nuclear family, traditional gender roles, and (to use a buzz phrase) "family values." In short, for many people in our shared English-language culture, homosexuality is a monstrous condition.

Monsters In The Closet (Harry M Benshoff, 1997)

[fleshadept]

“But it is also precisely this type of connotation (conscious or otherwise) which allows and fosters the multiplicity of various readings and reading positions, including what has been called active queer (or gay, or lesbian) reading practices. If we adopt Roland Barthes’s model of signification wherein the denotative meaning of any signifier is simply the first of many possible meanings along a connotative chain, then we can readily acknowledge that a multitude of spectators, some queer, some not, will each understand the ‘denotative’ events of a visual narrative in different ways. For Doty, then, there is the (fourth) sense that any film viewed by a gay or lesbian spectator might be considered queer. The queer spectator’s ‘gay-dar,’ already attuned to the possible discovery of homosexuality within culture-at-large, here functions in relation to specific cultural artifacts. As such, ‘Queer readings aren’t “alternative” readings, wishful or willful misreadings, or “reading too much into things” readings. They result from the recognition and articulation of the complex range of queerness that has been in popular culture texts and their audiences all along.’ In the case of horror films and monster movies, this ‘complex range of queerness’ circulates through and around the figure of the monster, and in his/her relation to normality.”

Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality and the Horror Film, Harry M. Benshoff, 1997.

[marley-manson]

Hey Marley, it'd be cool if you would drop a list of the masculinity in film books you're reading. No pressure tho!

Oh yeah for sure, lol sorry I have a tendency to default to vagueness when I'm talking about anything outside of fandom.

There's a lot, I went on a spree for a few weeks lol, so this is under a cut

Only one I've read cover to cover so far is Armed Forces: Masculinity and Sexuality in the American War Film - Robert Eberwein which was both interesting and frustrating in that a lot of it was (mildly defensively lol, as a response to a lot of queer film theory) explaining how a lot of homoerotic shit isn't intended to be interpreted as actually gay, but I'm glad I read it because I was specifically trying to understand how contemporary audiences viewed homoerotic shit.

Books I've read at least a chapter of:

Men, Masculinity, and the Media - Steve Craig

Running Scared: Masculinity and the Representation of the Male Body - Peter Lehman

Masculinity: Bodies, Movies, Culture - Peter Lehman

Masculinity and Popular Television - Rebecca Feasey

Buffoon Men: Classic Hollywood Comedians and Queered Masculinity - Scott Balcerzak

Shadows of Doubt: Negotiations of Masculinity in American Genre Films - Barry Keith Grant

Screening the Male: Exploring Masculinities in Hollywood Cinema - Steven Cohan

Laughing Matters: Understanding Film, Television, and Radio Comedy - John Mundy, Glyn White

Laughing Hysterically: American Screen Comedy of the 1950s - Ed Sikov (highly recommend just for the essay on Some Like It Hot)

What Made Pistachio Nuts?: Early Sound Comedy and the Vaudeville Aesthetic - Henry Jenkins

also shoutout to this article

Books I've obtained but haven't looked through yet:

American Cinema of the 1970s: Themes and Variations - Lester D. Friedman

Hollywood Androgyny - Rebecca Bell-Metereau

The New Hollywood: What the Movies Did With the New Freedom of the Seventies - James Bernardoni

Manhood in Hollywood: From Bush to Bush - David Greven

Girls Will Be Boys: Crossdressed Women, Lesbians, and American Cinema - Laura Horak

Hard Bodies: Hollywood Masculinity in the Regan Era - Susan Jeffords

The Remasculinization of America: Gender and the Vietnam War - Susan Jeffords (I've actually read the first Jeffords in uni and parts of the second but they're pretty psychoanalytical so ymmv)

Deviant Eyes, Deviant Bodies: Sexual Re-orientations in Film and Video - Chris Straayer

Masculinity in Fiction and Film: Representing Men in Popular Cultures 1945-2000 - Brian Baker

Masculinity in the Contemporary Romantic Comedy - John Alberti

Out in Culture: Gay, Lesbian and Queer Essays on Popular Culture - Corey K. Creekmur, Alexander Doty

Flaming Classics: Queering the Film Canon - Alexander Doty

Making Things Perfectly Queer: Interpreting Mass Culture - Alexander Doty

Vested Interests: Crossdressing and Cultual Anxiety - Marjorie Garber

Queer Images: A History of Gay and Lesbian Film in America - Harry M. Benshoff

Ghost Faces: Hollywood and Post-Millennial Masculinity - David Greven

Ethereal Queer: Television, Historicity, Desire - Amy Villarejo

Gender Terrains in African Cinema - Dominica Dipio

Masculinity and Monstrosity in Contemporary Hollywood Films - Kirk Combe and Brenda Boyle

Open Secret: Gay Hollywood 1928-1998 - David Ehrenstein

Screened Out: Playing Gay in Hollywood From Edison to Stonewall - Richard Barrios

Hollywood from Vietnam to Regan - Robin Wood

In a Lonely Street: Film Noir, Genre, Masculinity - Frank Krutnik

Unamerican Hollywood: Politics and Film in the Blacklist Era - Frank Krutnik and others

[albertserra]

Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality and the horror film by Harry M. Benshoff

[onebluebookworm]

Ranking Books I Read in 2022 - 35-31

35. Another Day In the Death of America: A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives - Gary Younge

What I Liked: Utterly painful and haunting. Very novel concept - taking a random day and chronicling all the gun deaths of young people in chronological order, some receiving a lot of attention, some barely receiving a mention in the local paper. Offered some fire quotes about American gun culture. What I Didn’t Like: Some parts could get a little dry and uninteresting. Final thoughts: Not for the faint of heart, but definitely something a lot more people should read to understand how much we give up in order to avoid passing any kind of effective gun control. TW gun violence and discussions of racism.

34. Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture - Roxane Gay

What I Liked: A wide range of essayists offered new perspectives on this very sensitive subject. Another book full of absolutely fire quotes. What I Didn’t Like: Ally Sheedy’s essay was pretty fucking tone deaf. The essay regarding migrants who’d experienced sexual violence was dry as all hell and mostly just quotes statistics, and that’s not something you really should do when you’re trying to draw attention to a problem like this. Final thoughts: Hard to get through, but ultimately a great resource mostly full of thought-provoking, heartfelt works. TW for sexual violence of all kinds.

33. Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality and the Horror Film - Harry M. Benshoff

What I Liked: An amazing resource full of very interesting history and analysis. Bulked up my to-watch list. The section on Vincent Price made my entire life because he’s my hero. What I Didn’t Like: Some of the language got a little too academic and would lose me, but that honestly wasn’t very often. Final thoughts: A must-read for queer horror film lovers, that truly codifies why the genre resonates with us so much. TW discussions of homophobia.

32. Just Like Home - Sarah Gailey

What I Liked: Phenomenal language. Intensely creepy atmosphere. Daphne is an amazing villain. What I Didn’t Like: Vera is kind of bland, and we don’t really learn much about her as an adult. James became kind of a mustache twirling baddie and it wasn’t incredibly believable in a book that had such complex characters up to this point. Final thoughts: A little rough around the edges, but still a refreshing take on the haunted house story.

31. Exit, Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles - Mark Russell

What I Liked: A surprisingly realistic look into life around this time period, you can tell Russell did a lot of research. As crazy as the concept is, these characters actually do make for compelling reading. What I Didn’t Like: The subplot with the chairwoman of the committee kinda fizzled out and died. Final thoughts: As absolutely ridiculous as it sounds to take classic Hanna-Barbara characters and put them in a gritty historical drama about McCarthy America, it’s just sincere enough to work. TW for homophobia and suicide.

[smallestchurch]

do you have a reading list from the syllabus you can share 😳?

Robin Wood - American Nightmare

Paul Oflinn - Production and Reproduction: The Case of Frankenstein

Harry M Benshoff - The Monster and the Homosexual

Linda Williams - Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess

Linda Williams - When the Woman Looks

Carol J Clover - Her Body, Himself

Barbara Creed - Horror and the Monstrous Feminine

Eric King Watts - Postracial Fantasies, Blackness, and Zombies

[ellalily]

So, do you want to hear about queer horror? :D. I did a big research project on it for English class and I interviewed the guy who wrote the book I sourced.

So, queer horror *lemme dig out my big fat essay

Harry M Benshoff wrote a book called "monsters in the closet: homosexuality and the horror film". You can probably guess what's it's about from the title >this book is super interesting and I do recommend it

He said there are 3 main ways to identity a film as queer

1. It has queer characters

2, if it was written/produced by q queer person

3, through subtexts

Why is horror queercodded?

So, there js a study mentioned in the book about (1984) anti homosexuality attitudes and they broke the fears down into 3 categories

1, threat to individual

2, threat to others

3, threat to community

Horror exploited these fears (not modern films but the older ones). There were trans psycho killers [sleep away camp (1983) and silence if the lambs (1991)] and several other things but this ask is already super long

And then there was they hays code which didn't allow openly queer characters onscreen so subtext was there instaid.

Also since homosexuality was feared/not understood at the time, queer people were demonized and often took the roll of the monsters. Othet thjngs that people feared. Like communism, and durring ww2 nazis and the aids crisis (which has a ton more too it)

One notable film director is James whale, a gay man who directed many films, like Frankenstein (1931), the old dark house (1932) etc... from a different source I had came the quote "these films set the template for many horror films to come" [subisatti from #189 queer fear special issue. Rue morgue magazine. July/August 2019]

And now as queerness is more accepted there isn't a need for that subtext and the villains arnt demonized queer people ect. Lindenburg [how to make a monster: homosexual experience jn horror and thriller cinema, [fisher digital publications at St. John fisher college ___I think it was some sort of end of year college essay, I can't remember though.] He said "horror cinema will always have jts origin in gay experience"(pg 11)

Though this representation was bad, in an interview I did with benshoff, he said something along the lines of

I would rather have had that bad representation then none at all

(Paraphrasing, can't remember exact wordjng)

Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this long brain vomit of a topic I loved learning about. If you want I could send you my essay and my sources.

Hope your day gets better

Persob this is the most fascinating thing I've read all day

Thank you so much for sharing!! Your long brain vomit was amazing. (And I would love to see your essay and sources if you dont mind👀)

[wildzero1999]

image id// a photo of a quote by sue ellen case from her work 'tracking the vampires' included in harry m benshoff's essay 'the monster and the homosexual.' the text reads:

the queer, unlike the rather polite categories of gay and lesbian, revels in the discourse of the loathsome, the outcast, the idiomatically proscribed position of same-sex desire. unlike petitions for civil rights, queer revels constitute a kind of activism that attacks the dominant notion of the natural. the queer is the taboo-breaker, the monstrous, the uncanny. like the phantom of the opera, the queer dwells underground, below the operatic overtones of the dominant; frightening to look at, desiring, as it plays its own organ, producing its own music.

end id //