Cookie Consent by FreePrivacyPolicy.com
Skip to main navigation menu Skip to main content Skip to site footer

Special Issue Articles

Vol. 5 No. 2 (2024): Narrative, Environment, Social Justice

In Search for Alternatives: Queer Theorizing, Affect, and the Horror Film

Submitted
March 20, 2024
Published
2024-06-18

Abstract

This article argues that queer theories of affect not only offer an alternative approach to analyzing the horror film in the twenty-first century, but also that a new wave of horror media negotiates its social criticism in newly queer ways. Analyzing Ari Aster's 2018 film Hereditary, it becomes clear that its horrifying effect stems from queer affects within its narrative that both its character and audience share. In this, Hereditary goes beyond traditional forms of criticism regarding its deconstruction of normative family structures, present in horror films as early as 1974's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, as it not only points to potential horrors within the traditional family but instead lays open the inherent, inescapable affective horrors of these normative structures and narratives of belonging, necessitating the need for alternative forms of self-determination and community. Doing so, the film utilizes the established forms of the genre but plays both within and outside of its conventions, affecting its audience beyond mere shock. In applying queer theories of affect and negativity to the film, this article demonstrates a critique of the horrors of real-life institutions and systems that plague (queer) existence in our neoliberal society: normative family structures, sexual and romantic normativities, and complex feelings of (not) belonging. In this reading, Hereditary serves as a powerful counternarrative to the cruelly optimistic narratives of everyday life.

References

  1. Ahmed, Sara. "Happy Objects." The Affect Theory Reader, edited by Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth, Duke UP, 2010, pp. 29–51.
  2. Ahmed, Sara. Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others. Duke UP, 2006.
  3. Aldana Reyes, Xavier. "Beyond Psychoanalysis: Post-Millennial Horror Film and Affect Theory." Horror Studies, vol. 3, no. 2, 2012, pp. 243–61, https://doi.org/10.1386/host.3.2.243_1.
  4. Aldana Reyes, Xavier. Horror Film and Affect: Towards a Corporeal Model of Viewership. Routledge, 2016.
  5. Aldana Reyes, Xavier. "Mobilising Affect: Somatic Empathy and the Cinematic Body in Distress." Corporeality and Culture: Bodies in Movement, edited by Karin Sellberg et al., Ashgate, 2015, pp. 35–46.
  6. Benshoff, Harry M. Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality and the Horror Film. Manchester UP, 1997.
  7. Benshoff, Harry M. "Preface." A Companion to the Horror Film, edited by Harry M. Benshoff, Wiley Blackwell, 2017, pp. xiii-xix.
  8. Berlant, Lauren. Cruel Optimism. Duke UP, 2011.
  9. Berlant, Lauren. "On Citizenship and Optimism: Lauren Berlant, interviewed by David Seitz." Society and Space, 23 Mar. 2013, https://www.societyandspace.org/articles/on-citizenship-and-optimism.
  10. Braun, Adam F. "'Everyone Deserves a Family': The Triple Bind of Family in Ari Aster's Horror." Family and Community, vol. 1, no. 1, 2020, pp. 41–66, https://doi.org/10.17613/cq3d-z656.
  11. Chare, Nicholas, et al., editors. Re-Reading the Monstrous-Feminine: Art, Film, Feminism and Psychoanalysis. Routledge, 2020.
  12. Church, David. Post-Horror: Art, Genre, and Cultural Elevation. Edinburgh UP, 2021.
  13. Clover, Carol J. "Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film." Misogyny, Misandry, and Misanthropy, special issue of Representations, edited by Bloch R. Howard, vol. 20, 1987, pp. 187–228, https://doi.org/10.2307/2928507.
  14. Creed, Barbara. The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis, 2nd ed., Routledge, 2007.
  15. Crittenden, Jasmine. "Inner Dread: Psychology and Fate in Hereditary." Screen Education, vol. 94, 2019, pp. 22–27, https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ufh&AN=137066281.
  16. Dyer, Richard. "It's in his kiss: Vampirism as Homosexuality, Homosexuality as Vampirism." 1988. The Culture of Queers. Routledge, 2002, pp. 70-89.
  17. Elliott-Smith, Darren. Queer Horror Film and Television: Sexuality and Masculinity at the Margins. I.B. Tauris, 2016.
  18. Elliott-Smith, Darren, and John Edgar Browning. "Introduction." New Queer Horror Film and Television, edited by Darren Elliott-Smith and John Edgar Browning, U of Wales P, 2020, pp. 1–10.
  19. Freeman, Elizabeth. Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer Histories. Duke UP, 2010.
  20. Freud, Sigmund. "The Uncanny." The Monster Theory Reader, edited by Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, U of Minnesota P, 2020, pp. 59–88, https://doi.org/10.5749/j.ctvtv937f.
  21. Halberstam, Jack. "The Anti-Social Turn in Queer Studies." Graduate Journal of Social Science, vol. 5, no. 2, 2008, pp. 140–56, https://gjss.org/issues/05/02.
  22. Halberstam, Jack. In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives. New York UP, 2005.
  23. Hanson, Ellis. "Introduction: Out Takes." Out Takes: Essays on Queer Theory and Film, edited by Ellis Hanson, Duke UP, 1999, pp. 1–19.
  24. Hanson, Ellis. "Undead." Inside/Out: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories, edited by Diana Fuss, Routledge, 1991, pp. 324–40.
  25. Hereditary. Directed by Ari Aster, performances by Toni Collette et al., A24, 2018.
  26. Koresky, Michael. "Family Reunion." Film Comment, vol. 54, no. 3, 2018, pp. 40–44, https://www.jstor.org/stable/44991275.
  27. Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Translated by Leon S. Roudiez, Columbia UP, 1982.
  28. McCann, Hannah, and Whitney Monaghan. Queer Theory Now: From Foundations to Futures. Red Globe Press, 2020.
  29. Posada, Tim. "#MeToo's First Horror Film: Male Hysteria and the New Final Girl in 2018's Revenge." Performing Hysteria: Images and Imaginations of Hysteria, edited by Johanna Braun, Leuven UP, 2020, pp. 189–203, https://doi.org/10.11116/9789461663139.
  30. Turnock, Bryan. Studying Horror Cinema. Auteur Publishing, 2019.
  31. Twitchell, James B. Dreadful Pleasures: An Anatomy of Modern Horror. Oxford UP, 1985.
  32. Wallace, Diana. "'A Woman's Place.'" Women and the Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion, edited by Avril Horner and Sue Zlosnik, Edinburgh UP, 2016, pp. 74–88.
  33. Westengard, Laura. Gothic Queer Culture: Marginalized Communities and the Ghosts of Insidious Trauma. Nebraska UP, 2019.
  34. Williams, Linda. "Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess." Film Quarterly, vol. 44, no. 4, 1991, pp. 2–13, https://doi.org/10.2307/1212758.
  35. Wood, Robin. "The American Family Comedy: From Meet Me in St. Louis to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre." Robin Wood on the Horror Film: Collected Essays and Reviews, edited by Barry Keith Grant, Wayne State UP, 2018, pp. 171–80.
  36. Wood, Robin. "An Introduction to the American Horror Film." The Monster Theory Reader, edited by Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, U of Minnesota P, pp. 108–35, https://doi.org/10.5749/j.ctvtv937f.9.
  37. Wood, Robin. "What Lies Beneath?" Robin Wood on the Horror Film: Collected Essays and Reviews, edited by Barry Keith Grant, Wayne State UP, 2018, pp. 399–406.
  38. Woods, Gregory. A History of Gay Literature: The Male Tradition. Yale UP, 1998.

Similar Articles

1-10 of 94

You may also start an advanced similarity search for this article.