The Connection Between the Queer Community and the Horror Genre

Society, from the beginning of time, has been chilled to the bone by things outside the norm, things that are dangerous to their way of life. From uncanny dolls to the living dead, society realizes that not only do these things not belong, but they trigger the survival instinct in the common person. Throughout Hollywood eras, directors and screenwriters have created movies that reflect and take advantage of current societal fears. John Carpenter’s Halloween soared in popularity by taking advantage of new horrors entering suburbia. It’s not a coincidence that at the same time as the movie’s release, black people were beginning to move from the cities into the suburbs, entering a space where they were perceived as a threat. White people were horrified that black people were moving next door and when that passed, well, the attention was focused on another community. Humans will forever be afraid of things that are different, unique, and queer.

Queer horror has always been around in the media, although not as directly compared to the modern day. James Jenkins of Valancourt Books noted that “the traditional explanation for the gay/horror connection is that it was impossible for them to write openly about gay themes back then (or even perhaps express them, since words like ‘gay’ and ‘homosexual’ didn’t exist), so they sublimated them and expressed them in more acceptable forms, using the medium of a transgressive genre like horror fiction.” Gay authors, screenwriters, and directors, were hiding in the shadows and crafting their truths through the lens of fear. A lens that society could relate to because, at the end of the day, queer people were seen as out of place, a danger to human existence, a true horror.

Jennifer’s Body, released in 2009, cemented itself in the queer horror hall of fame due to its direct depiction of queer female relationships. Jennifer’s Body is a movie about dorky Needy and her preppy, gorgeous best friend turned succubus, Jennifer. Needy always ditches her side character boyfriend for Jennifer and always does what Jennifer asks of her. She even lovingly ogles Jennifer from the stands, as the object of her affections completes her cheer routine, all while Black Kids’s “I’m Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance With You” rings out during the scene. Queer women could see themselves in Needy and relate to the way she silently crushed on her seemingly straight best friend. This is a common occurrence among many queer people, in the closet or not. Needy was every young queer getting a little too

‘close’ with their straight best friend, spending too much time together, or staring for a second too long. Even with the movie’s iconic girl-on-girl makeout scene, it quickly pushes past it as if nothing happened. Just like how a lot of close female relationships can be passed off as ‘that’s just how girls are.’ Jennifer’s Body takes from Jenkins’s theory, as it shows you the queerness of the film underneath the surface of a man-eating succubus. Jennifer’s Body was a win for the gays while still catering to a heterosexual audience, making it widely praised. Unfortunately, this praise is not reflected in many queer movies.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show is a 1970s film based on a horror musical. Although criticized for its blatant themes of sexuality and gender exploration, it’s garnered a cult following for the exact same reasons. Rocky Horror Picture Show is about the chaos that ensues after a young normie couple stumbles upon Dr. Frank-N-Furter’s mansion. With scandalous corsets, fun dance numbers, and a whole lot of sexual references, it’s easy to see why this film gained its godfather-like status amongst the queer community. Rocky Horror was a safe space in every sense of the meaning. The normie couple, Janet and Brad, are completely out of place amongst the characters that reside in the mansion. Their pastel, conservative outfits and anxious behavior paint them as the outsiders in this new world of heavy eyeliner and bold actions. When they first meet Dr. Frank-N-Furter, Janet represents the primarily heterosexual audience looking on in horror. In this world though, the gaze from the outside is not as strong, as the queer community has found strength in numbers and a sweet transvestite mansion owner.

The queer community and horror go hand in hand. Horror movies offer a safe space to those who are ‘othered’, a place to see ‘monsters’ thrive with little homoerotic hints hidden in the shadows. Because, for people who are so different and outcasted, what is there to be afraid of?

Bioscientific

imageries in western culture conjure up indisputable definitions of life. Life that is carefully discovered and verified through scientific methods and processes by scientists, objective champions of technology and truth, within a sterile and self-contained laboratory. Their findings are hoisted as solutions, demanding applause for their socalled achievements. While bioscientific explanations are readily trusted and employed within society and culture, the scientists creating them are already embedded in these societies and cultures. Such a relationship generates a mutually inclusive whole, where one now does not exist without implicating the other. Great philosophical questions emerge from the crevices of unanswered, unexplained, and undone notions left in the wake of biological answers. Headlines present a reoccurring crisis: biotechnology is growing in capability faster than these ethical questions can be answered. Upending established conceptions through narratives of art, bioart takes these queries further.

Bioart is the use of biomaterials, such as living cells, tissues, and bacteria, and bioscientific techniques, processes, and tools, as an artistic medium. In the famous work, GFP Bunny (2000), Eduardo Kac commissioned a lab to create a rabbit born with a Green Fluorescent Protein gene from a jellyfish, rendering the rabbit, named Alba, an unnaturally bright green under a blue light. Conversations regarding the safety of genetic engineering ensued, conjured through an explicitly artistic endeavor. Anna Dimitriu’s Cholera Dress (2023) tells the story of epidemiology’s genesis, using an 1850s bodice and skirt, herbs thought to be remedies at the time, and extracted cholera DNA, all contained within the dress. Dimitriu pays homage to not only John Snow’s tracing of the cholera outbreak, but also to the female sex workers and nurses of the time, and even the bacteria itself. SymbioticA of the University of Western Australia is a research lab that facilitates both biological researchers and artists in wet biology practices, producing many experimental works of art. With the increasing availability of biotechnologies, more artists engage with the medium for a host of purposes. A generalized overview of the art invoked through living materials and processes is not a sufficient summary of the breadth of works it has inspired. However, bioart does decenter the use of biological science and technology as one of reserved usage and strict boundaries, allowing for indistinct exploration, released from the confines of research timelines and outcomes. Boundless play with life and life

by Omia Haroon

processes easily subverts western categorical imperative, not just in bioscience and technology, but also between disciplinary lines.

Artists and scientists are imagined to operate in separate realms with entirely different goals, methods, and laws. An artist is an expressive creator, who uses their creativity, imagination, or ideologies to make and project meaning in their work. Painting, clothing, pottery, writing, photography, sculpture, dance, animating, film, and acting are mediums readily considered art. It is a field of feeling and discussion, often incorporating experiences, agendas, and rhetoric in order to capture what the artist desires. But it occupies a domain without consequence, coupled with airs of luxury and frivolity. It can be visited, observed, enjoyed, left behind, and subsequently fastened into history. In alleged contrast, scientists are in pursuit of objective truth, human advancement, and the future. With no room for frivolity, they wield technology, time, and training in a standardized environment. Personhood and experiences are negligible, even discouraged, as scientists are striving for the same understandings and abilities. Such dichotomous views of the temporality and meaning of art and science are confronted by bio-artists.

Bio-artists using bioscientific techniques and technologies for art can orient their works into the future, the unknown, and the unfamiliar, as scientists do. For example, human cells can be combined with animal cells with no ends in mind, no transhumanist goal, but instead to open-endedly question preconceived notions in their artistic work. Art’s goal of portrayal, whether it be a feeling, moment, or idea, is fully realized in bioart. The uncertainty that is bound to bioscience and technology intensifies when an artist is employing the unquestioned vaulting of bioscience and technology into legitimacy, not in the pursuit of the betterment of biological knowledge. Coupled with experiences, agendas, and rhetoric, questions of consequence seep out of laboratories and reach far beyond their isolated discoveries and subsequent usage and commercialization in supposedly human interests. Bioart asks the questions that are deferred or neglected in the frenzied prioritization of discovery and development: do humans have the right to manipulate pieces of beings, to extract and discipline human and non-human life, and what, or who, even makes that distinction?

MODELS: Dominique Bell & Immanuel Jackson

PHOTOGRAPHY: Rachel Laminack

STYLING: Amaya Al-Mussawir & Henry Tran

MAKEUP: Amaya Al-Mussawir

SET: Emma Sullivan, Erin Secosky, Sophie Dickerson, & Janey Harlow

MODELS: Kelly Hernandez & Stella Park

PHOTOGRAPHY: Rachel Laminack, Tae Park, & Rory Sullivan

STYLING: Meg Fickling & Anika Seward

MAKEUP: Isabella Broccolo & Sarah Quinn

HAIR: Sarah Quinn & Delaney Caulder

MODELS: Nina Burman, Talia Kintzele, Fidelise Paku, & Abby Schwebke

PHOTOGRAPHY: Viosa Koliqi, Tae Park, & Rory Sullivan

STYLING: Owen James, Ruby Jones, Kendall Wisniewski & Braxton Hare

MAKEUP: Amaya Al-Mussawir, Isabella Broccolo, Samantha Roncevich, & Keymoni Sakil-Slack

HAIR: Delaney Caulder, Samantha Roncevich, Sarah Quinn, & Kendall Wisniewski

WhenI was younger, I always envied Hannah Montana; not just because she was a world-renowned pop star that lived on the beach in southern California, but mostly because she could wear blue jeans and sequined tank tops to school. It was such a minuscule thing, but every day I still fantasize about waking up to a matching outfit laying on the foot of my bed. Instead, I was stuck wearing a stuffy, ill-fitting uniform that cost more than my parents’ grocery bills.

The common excuse for uniforms is that they have the ability to keep kids looking clean-cut and sophisticated at all times. But honestly, the monotony felt more like a cage than a lesson in maturity. And it wasn’t just a burden for the kids who wanted pink hair and nose piercings – all around me I saw girls constantly readjusting the way their skirts sat on their hips and boys pushing their hair back with headbands so they wouldn’t get dress-coded.

It really sucks feeling like you had so much to offer but nowhere to show it. And since being a kid meant minimal autonomy and maximum teenage angst, every part of that you were expected to push down always ended up coming back up, one way or another. Because when everybody looks the same, you have to do things that make you stand out; you have to talk louder and stand taller, and if you can’t do that then you have to study harder or score the most points in the championship game.

This, in combination with the normal, life-ruining complexities of individuality and identity, made me feel like I was constantly fighting an uphill battle of trying to find myself in a way that would make sure I wouldn’t get sent home with a detention slip. Back then, I knew who I thought I wanted to be, but I also knew I couldn’t actually be that. So I was left with two options – (1) convince myself that the school administration was right and the nose ring that I really want is unbecoming of a young academic like me, or (2) do it anyway, because who actually cares about that sort of thing?

I decided to get a nose ring. Then, I got a week’s worth of lunch detentions and a one-on-one meeting with the principal who told me that even though I was 6th in my class, I wouldn’t be able to join the National Honors Society. I tried not to be offended by it, because my mom was already offended enough, but it definitely stung to know that everything I worked for was immediately disregarded the second I decided to make a decision for myself.

That’s really where the issues I have with uniforms lie. Aside from being extraordinarily classist, it’s a message that tells you success and respect are given, not earned. It doesn’t matter what kind of person you are as long as you look like the kind of person that would’ve had it anyways. It devoids academics and professionalism of any sort of expression and passion, and instead, fills them with the shallow idea of conformity that sounds like it came straight out of a George Orwell novel.

I’m lucky that I’m now able to go to class feeling like I belong in my own clothes. It seems like a fruitless hill to die on when you’re on the outside looking in I’m sure, but I know now that expression is a luxury. Let’s be honest, it really is the little things in life that you have to look forward to, and having fun and being whatever the hell you want to be is the best cure for a dull life.

by Lexi Amedio