Queer Fear: Gay horror fiction

Queer Fear: Gay Horror Fiction
by Michael Rowe, Editor
Arsenal Pulp Press
ISBN: 1-55152-084-2

When I received Queer Fear, the first question that came to mind was, how is queer fear any different from hetero fear?

Michael Rowe writes a fascinating introduction to this anthology in which he takes on the subject of cinematic horror and then generalizes to textual horror, and his introduction, combined with my own studies about sexuality, sex, and gender, led me to slowly acknowledge that there may, at some level, be a difference.

Cinematic horror is almost always about the body – what it is, how we define it, what can be done to it, what it is capable of. Usually this is encoded in heterosexualized terms, with a male attacker stalking a female victim; and the female victim is usually accompanied and assisted (if not actually rescued) by a male protagonist. Cinema theory argues that we enjoy cinema because we enjoy the "being-there" experience, the dreamlike participation in the film that we get, especially in dark theaters with back projection. We identify with some of the characters; we enjoy a voyeuristic frisson at watching others.

Given this, one can see why gay viewers, especially, perhaps, gay male viewers, have had to struggle to recognize themselves in horror film. Similarly, feminist women like myself have struggled to see themselves in horror. The underlying theme of mainstream horror is usually patriarchal and heterosexual.

Recent horror cinema has acknowledged and sometimes challenged many of horror's sexist cliches, but heterosexuality is still its predominant code. This can be generalized, with somewhat less reliability, to textual horror works, as well. Most horror novels and stories set up heterosexual situations, either between attacker-victim or victim-rescuer or victim-victim. Although gay literature is enjoying a small boom, few homosexually encoded texts reach the mainstream, and even fewer homosexually encoded films.

Once I acknowledged the heterosexuality of horror film and books, I could begin to imagine a homosexually encoded film or book – to agree that, perhaps, there can be a "queer fear" different from "hetero fear."

Armed with this insight, I moved on to tackle the actual stories. (Don't worry, not every reader needs to work out the nature of sexuality in society before enjoying this anthology; it's only an issue for us academic-nerd-reviewer-types).

Queer Fear contains 18 short stories that run the gamut from near-pornographic (e.g., "The Nightguard") to mythic-intellectual (e.g., "Bear Shirt"); from psychological surrealism (e.g., "Tabula Rasa") to a haunting suggestiveness (e.g., "Spindleshanks [New Orleans, 1956]"). In every story the protagonist is gay or lesbian, although there are significantly more stories about gay men than about lesbian women in the collection.

One of the fears that comes through in many of these stories (though certainly not all) is simply the fear of being gay in a heterosexist world. A fear of being found out, a fear of acting on "forbidden" desires, a fear of being harmed by those who don't understand or accept. Over that fear is, then, laid the horror, the supernatural.

On the base level, on the level of fear-of-not-being-heterosexual, these are queer stories. On the median level, on the level of protagonists' sexuality, these are queer stories. But on the superstructural level, on the level of supernatural/fear, there's little to differentiate most of these stories from any other kind of horror. Murder, incarceration, temptation, ghosts, monsters, magic ... these themes transcend sexuality. So to that extent, these aren't queer stories; they're simply stories, horror fiction, accessible to everybody regardless of sexual persuasion. Perhaps, in the end, horror just treats flesh as flesh.

The quality of the stories in this anthology is a bit uneven. I found stories like "The Nightguard" and "You Can't Always Get What You Want" surprisingly weak. "The Nightguard" starts as a gritty, explicit story of prison rape but ends in an overused cliche in the horror genre; not the best choice, I thought, for the lead story in the anthology. I'd have liked to see the author rework the story to avoid its "metastory." "You Can't Always Get What You Want" plays on a vampire cliche that I've seen dozens of times already, although, to be sure, always before with a heterosexual couple.

On the other hand, there are some jewels here. The quiet, sad lyricism of "Goodbye" by Michael Thomas Ford will linger with the reader. In contrast, the ridiculous slapstick of "Nestle's Revenge" by Ron Oliver is sure to raise a grin. "Bear Shirt" by Gemma Files deftly weaves together themes of white supremacism, Nordic mythology, and domination; "Little Holocausts"by Brian Hodge is a skillful retelling of the old "sell your soul to the devil" concept, reworked for grey modernity.

Overall, Queer Fear is a entertaining read, with more hits than strikes, and I'd recommend it to readers. I don't, ultimately, think that the sexuality of the characters is important here. I have no doubt that it's refreshing for gay and lesbian readers to be able to see themselves in a horror story (of course, with horror, that sort of identification is always a bit masochistic). I feel the same way about horror that features competent female protagonists. But just as gay and lesbian readers have been able to enjoy heterosexually encoded horror for years; as feminist readers have been able to enjoy patriarchally encoded horror for years; so heterosexual readers should be able to enjoy homosexually encoded horror in the same way.

Queer Fear is for everyone.

The Harrow's Copyright Information and Disclaimer.