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‘American Horror Story’: A Very Gay Showcase

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American Horror Story has been a reliable source of outrageous horror for over a decade. Creator Ryan Murphy struck gold in 2011 with season 1, retroactively titled Murder House, and blew the lid off anthology TV with its entirely different follow-up season, Asylum. This put the FX network on the map during a golden age of television that occurred at a time before the influx of eight thousand streaming apps oversaturated our screens and bank accounts. And while Murphy has had a slate of projects that were either overtly queer (Glee) or queer-coded (Popular, Nip/Tuck), AHS isn’t technically a “gay” series. Despite this, Murphy and his team have utilized the show’s platform to give the community a voice, whether by hiring out gay actors as significant players or by including queer characters and storylines on a show that isn’t necessarily about such. For something that was a big part of the cultural zeitgeist during its earlier years, it was pretty noteworthy to showcase members of the LGBTQ+ community and tell their stories in such a bold way. With June being Pride Month, we at Horror Press thought it a suitable time to pay tribute to what a very gay showcase American Horror Story has been all these years, so let’s go ahead and take a peek behind the rainbow curtain.

From its inception, AHS made strides in the industry by featuring multiple out actors like Sarah Paulson, Zachary Quinto, and Dennis O’Hare in prominent roles. We’re all aware of how fearful Hollywood is of out and proud actors because, after all, how could a gay person possibly play straight, or why would straight viewers care to watch people they have no chance at bedding? Murphy’s casting gave the one-finger salute to this ignorant train of thought. Over time, the show’s flamboyance and queer actor count progressed, incorporating the likes of Billy Porter, Matt Bomer, BD Wong, and Cody Fern into the fold. Of course, most of these actors had careers in their own right before the show, but including so many of them in a single series – and often playing queer characters – was simply unheard of. It should be acknowledged that there was an admittedly slow start regarding the casting of POC actors, with the introduction of Angela Bassett and Gabourey Sidibe to the series in season 3 being the only major POC actors until season 6. Still, I suppose we can never quite have it all…

Yet while the show’s cast was revelatory for the time, its fictional queerness had more humble beginnings. Later seasons could sometimes be so in your face with their excess and eleganza you’d think you were at a Pride parade, but the OG, Murder House, was much more subtle. Jessica Lange’s tour-de-force performance as insidiously nosy neighbor Constance Langdon fed the gays who worship at the altar of powerful women acting their asses off. While not explicitly gay, a presence like Lange’s, along with Connie Britton’s gorgeous mane and the framing of Dylan McDermott as an object of sexual desire (daddy, indeed), certainly supported the gay agenda.

This first season also includes a ghostly gay couple at the genesis of Rubber Man, a BDSM fetish suit that immediately became one of the series’ most iconic and recognizable frights. Depicting a realistically rocky relationship that met a violent and tragic end – as most things on AHS do – Chad and Patrick’s struggles were no different from those of the Harmon family at the center of the season’s drama. Rather than focusing on their relationship as “the other” to be juxtaposed with the show’s straight counterparts, Murphy and his writers integrated this gay couple seamlessly into the action, and sometimes that’s just as welcome as highlighting the differences in queer stories.

Asylum veered in the other direction by using the discovery of protagonist Lana Winters’ lesbian relationship as a MacGuffin to set her journey and the plot itself into motion. Set in the good ol’ days of 1964, Lana is forcefully admitted to the asylum under the guise of curing her “mental illness” of homosexuality. Unfortunately, horrific things like this did and still do occur in our world, and such a strong and fully realized queer character as Lana must be celebrated. Paulson’s performance sees her going head-to-head with the legendary Sister Jude. Their rivalry is one for the books, providing a feminine psychological intensity not seen since Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? The series’ darkest season even imitates some of Baby Jane’s campiness, giving us a brief reprieve via the frantic and silly Name Game sequence.

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It’s not all dark and full of terrors on AHS, though, and seasons Coven, Hotel, and Apocalypse bring a delightfully mean-spirited sense of frivolity to the series. As previously mentioned, the gays love a feminal force of nature, and Coven provides us with an entire class of them. A gay fantasy of the highest praise, season 3 finds us at Miss Robichaux’s Academy for Exceptional Young Ladies or Hogwarts for bad bitches and the queers who love them. A Real Housewives of Salem-style battle for the literal supremacy ensues, and to borrow a meme-worthy phrase from scandalous Housewife Erika Jayne; it’s going to give the gays everything they want. The library is open, and these women aren’t holding back.

Coven is stacked, blessing us with a pantheon of devilish witches to root for. We have Misty Day (Lily Rabe), the lovably naive white witch with a penchant for Stevie Nicks; an extended cameo and performances (yes, plural) by superstar Stevie herself; venomous celebrity Madison Montgomery, embodied frightfully well by Emma Roberts in a way she emulates twice more in Scream Queens and Scream 4; Frances Conroy as every gay’s favorite quirky aunt, Myrtle Snow; and Kathy-friggen-Bates as a resurrected slave owner hilariously tormented for her sins by Gabourey Sidibe’s Queenie. Coven’s true indulgence, however, is Angela Bassett as the queen mother of voodoo Marie Laveau and her centuries-long feud with the witches. This finds her at odds with reigning Supreme, Fiona Goode (once again, Miss Jessica Lange). Eventually, the adversaries form a truce to team up and dismantle the witch-hunting patriarchy. Add to all of this a witch whose power is death upon any man she sleeps with, and it’s no wonder the season’s first episode is titled “Bitchcraft”.

Coven is later succeeded by season 8’s Apocalypse, an Avengers: Endgame level crossover event that finds the witches of Miss Robichaux’s fighting the supernaturally aged antichrist Michael Langdon, who was birthed during the climax of Murder House. Newcomer Cody Fern brings big pansexual energy to the role, and while much of the season is fan service, Murphy – once again – gives the gays everything they want.

These witches paved the way for what would become the series’ signature sense of wicked fun, but it’s season 5’s Hotel that brought the stuff of gay legend to our screens in the form of LADY GAGA as The Countess. Like most gays, I’ll never forget where I was when I learned she would be starring in the season, and while there was some apprehension concerning her acting chops (this was before her Oscar nomination), I think I can speak for the community when I say we were gagged. Thus, Lady Gaga ushered in what I consider to be the queerest season of television that isn’t inherently about gay culture. With high fashion and old school elegance, gore galore, a frequently nude Matt Bomer and Lady Gaga, exquisite cinematography, and a plot not unlike a soap opera set in Hell, Hotel plays out like a nightmare version of a star-studded perfume ad. It doesn’t all make sense, but really, who cares?

Jessica Lange’s spirit is also not forgotten, and as it’s the first season without her on the cast, Gaga & Co. do their damnedest to bring the drama in her honor. With one icon gone, two must become one, and The Countess is joined by former flame Ramona Royale – hello again, Angela! Their romance is beautifully presented as an elevator tableau, tracking its ups and downs through the decades as they come and go from the hotel’s lift. It’s a bittersweet sequence that portrays the demise of a couple with nuance and serves us haute couture to boot.

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The character of Liz Taylor, played by Dennis O’Hare, is also one to look out for when it comes to nuance. As the aging transgender bartender of the Hotel Cortez, Liz takes in others’ pain while silently suffering in the shadows. O’Hare brings tragedy and levity to the screen in equal measure, and Murphy has yet to surpass Liz Taylor’s depth when it comes to writing queer characters for AHS. One scene, in particular, finds Liz coming face to face with her adult son from a life she has long since left behind. Something of a precursor to what Murphy would eventually do with Pose, the heartbreaking truth behind stories like this is essential queer storytelling.

Much more can be said about the very gay showcase that is American Horror Story. There is the homoerotic slasher throwback season 1984 that also debuts Angelica Ross as the series’ first black trans actor, Double Feature going full inclusivity with the bizarre pregnancies of gay males via alien experimentation, and underpinnings of gay panic seen through characters like the extremely possessed and sexually charged Sister Mary Eunice in Asylum and scantily clad serial killer Dandy Mott in Freakshow. And I haven’t even mentioned Jessica Lange performing David Bowie and Lana Del Rey or the queer warlocks of Apocalypse! Wow, this show is really gay, huh? In all seriousness, AHS has had its highs and lows of quality and critical acclaim, but its unapologetic and unabashed queerness deserves to be commended. On behalf of myself, Horror Press, and the month of June, we thank you American Horror Story for bringing queerness, warts and all, to the main stage. BALENCIAGA!!!

Alex Warrick is a film lover and gaymer living the Los Angeles fantasy by way of an East Coast attitude. Interested in all things curious and silly, he was fearless until a fateful viewing of Poltergeist at a young age changed everything. That encounter nurtured a morbid fascination with all things horror that continues today. When not engrossed in a movie, show or game he can usually be found on a rollercoaster, at a drag show, or texting his friends about smurfs.

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Editorials

What’s in a Look? The Jason Voorhees Redesign Controversy

The Jason Voorhees redesign sparked heated debate, but is the backlash overblown? Dive into Friday the 13th’s formula and fan expectations.

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If you’re a longtime reader of Horror Press, you may have noticed that I really really like the Friday the 13th franchise. Can’t get enough. And yet, I simply couldn’t muster a shred of enthusiasm for piling hate on the new Jason Voorhees redesign that Horror, Inc. recently shared with an unwitting public.

Why the Jason Voorhees Redesign Controversy Feels Overblown

Hockey mask? Check. Machete? Check. Clothing? Yeah, he’s wearing it. I really didn’t see the problem, but very many people online pointed out all the places where I should. The intensity and specificity of the critiques shot me right back to 2008, reminding me distinctly of watching Project Runway with my friend’s mom while I waited for him to get home from baseball practice. What, just me?

But the horror community’s sudden transformation into fashion mavens got me thinking about other things, too: the character of the franchise as a whole, how Jason Voorhees fits into it, and why I feel like this reaction has been blown out of proportion. (A disproportionate reaction to a pop culture thing? On my Internet? Well I never.)

Baghead Jason

What Does A Jason Look Like, Anyway?

What confused me the most about this reaction was something I couldn’t quite get a bead on. What does Jason Voorhees look like? His look, both masked and unmasked (especially unmasked), changes wildly from film to film, even when he’s played by the same person (in three consecutive movies, Kane Hodder played a hulking zombie Jason, a shiny slime monster Jason, and a Jason who was mainly seen in mirrors and looked like his face was stung by a thousand bees). And then there’s the matter of him being both a zombie child and a bagheaded killer before receiving his iconic hockey mask.

However, if you synthesize the various forms of the character into the archetypical Jason Voorhees, the one that most people might visualize in their head when told to imagine him, the result doesn’t not look like this new redesign. Frankly, I even think “redesign” is too strong a word for what this is. This image shows a dude in outdoorsy clothes wearing a hockey mask. It looks enough like “Jason Voorhees” to me that my eyes just slide right off of it.

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What Do We Expect From Friday the 13th, And What Do We Need?

Ultimately, many people clearly disagree with my assessment of this redesign, which led me to ponder the franchise as a whole. If there’s something to complain about with this new look, that implies that there is a “right” way and a “wrong” way to be a Friday the 13th movie.

This I can agree with. While the franchise is wide-ranging and expansive to the point that it has included Jason going to space, fighting a dream demon, and taking a cruise ship from a New Jersey lake to the New York harbor, the movies do still follow a reasonably consistent formula.

Step 1: Generate a group of people in a place either on the shores of Crystal Lake or in Crystal Lake township (they can travel elsewhere, but this is where they must start).
Step 2: Plunk Jason down near them, give him a variety of edged weapons, and watch what happens. One girl survives the onslaught, and sometimes she brings along a friend or two as adjunct survivors. Bada bing, bada boom, you have yourself a Friday the 13th movie.

If you fuck with that formula, you’ve got a problem. But beyond that, there’s really not a hell of a lot that the movies have in common. Sometimes you have a telekinetic final girl, other times you have a child psychologist. Sometimes the dead meat characters are camp counselors, but other times they’re partiers or townies or students attending space college.

Hell, even the people killing them aren’t always the same. Look at Pamela Voorhees in the original movie or Roy in A New Beginning.

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So why this protectiveness around the minutiae of Jason’s look?

It’s Us, Hi, We’re The Problem, It’s Us

I don’t mean to discount everyone’s negative opinions about this Jason redesign. There are a multitude of aesthetic and personal reasons to dislike what’s going on here, and you don’t have to turn that yuck into a yum just because I said so. But I think we’ve had online fandoms around long enough to see how poisonous they can be to the creative process.

For instance, was The Rise of Skywalker a better movie because it went down the laundry list of fan complaints about The Last Jedi and basically had characters stare into the camera and announce the ways they were being fixed?

Look, I’m not immune to having preconceived disdain for certain projects. If I’m waiting for a new installment in a franchise and all that I’m hearing coming out of producers’ mouths is “prequel” and “television show,” those are fighting words.

However, the constant online pushback to projects that are in early development might be one reason it has taken us so long to actually get more Friday the 13th (I’m talking in addition to the long delays amid the lawsuit, of course). It’s been more than a decade and a half without a new Jason vehicle, and that time keeps on stretching longer and longer.

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Poll taken from Horror Press Instagram account

What Fans Really Want From a New Jason Voorhees Movie

Instead of just letting the creative tap flow and having a filmmaker put out the thing they want to make, then having somebody else take the wheel and do that same thing for the next installment, it seems like producers are terrified of making the wrong move and angering the fans, which has prevented them from actually pulling the trigger on much of anything.

Look, we survived A New Beginning. And Jason Takes Manhattan. Even Jason Goes to Hell. A controversial misstep can’t kill the immortal beast that is Friday the 13th. I say let’s just let them make one. Having something tangible to complain about is better than having nothing at all.

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Editorials

Monstrous Mothers: Unveiling the Horror in ‘Mommie Dearest’ and ‘Umma’

The horror umbrella is massive and encompasses many subgenres including thrillers, sci-fi, and even true crime. I like to quip that movies like Mommie Dearest and Priscilla belong to the latter category. I even point out they have final girls surviving their monsters, but like most jokes, there is a lot of hard truth behind that. To be clear, Mommie Dearest is highly contested even by Christina Crawford, who wrote the book about the abuse suffered at the hands of her alcoholic guardian. However, the fact remains that there is an abusive mother terrorizing children at the heart of the horror. This is a tale as old as time in the genre, and we see these themes of motherhood, mental illness, and generational trauma often. So, why do we typically forget this movie when discussing titles like Psycho (1960), Run, Hereditary, etc.?

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I challenged myself to fill a gap in my cinema history this month and watched Mommie Dearest. I was very familiar with the movie due to how many drag queens reference it and because of Joan Crawford’s villainous reputation. However, I had never seen it in its entirety before, which is weird because I write about my own maternal baggage often. Without ever seeing the film, I knew this movie, categorized as a drama, belonged under my favorite genre label. Some sources even try to meet in the middle and classify it as a psychological drama, which is a phrase that does a lot of heavy lifting to remove itself from what it actually is. After all, what else should we call a film about being abused by the person who should love us most other than horror?

Does Mommie Dearest Belong in the Horror Genre?

The horror umbrella is massive and encompasses many subgenres including thrillers, sci-fi, and even true crime. I like to quip that movies like Mommie Dearest and Priscilla belong to the latter category. I even point out they have final girls surviving their monsters, but like most jokes, there is a lot of hard truth behind that. To be clear, Mommie Dearest is highly contested even by Christina Crawford, who wrote the book about the abuse suffered at the hands of her alcoholic guardian. However, the fact remains that there is an abusive mother terrorizing children at the heart of the horror. This is a tale as old as time in the genre, and we see these themes of motherhood, mental illness, and generational trauma often. So, why do we typically forget this movie when discussing titles like Psycho (1960), Run, Hereditary, etc.?

Mommie Dearest recounts a version of Christina Crawford’s upbringing by Hollywood royalty Joan Crawford. It depicts her as an unstable, jealous, manipulative woman who only holds space for her beliefs. As with most abusive parents, she takes out her frustrations and feelings of inadequacy on those around her. Specifically, those who cannot fight back due to the power dynamics at play. This version of Joan is a vicious bully, which feels familiar for many people who grew up with an abusive parent. How many of us never knew what would set our parental monster off, so just learned to walk on eggshells? How many of us grew up believing we were the problem for way longer than we should have? How many of us normalized the abuse for so long that it carried over into adulthood, letting us believe being mistreated is just part of living?

Watch the trailer for Mommie Dearest

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The Lasting Impact of Abusive Parents in Horror Movies

While my mother wasn’t the active bully in our home, part of my struggle with her is her complicitness in the hell she helped create for all of us. Which is why, while I don’t think Mommie Dearest is a great film, I believe it’s a decent horror flick. It made me want to revisit a better movie, Umma, that also dealt with motherhood, mental illness, and trauma. Iris K. Shim’s 2022 PG-13 horror sees Sandra Oh playing a single mother who has not healed. After growing up with her own mother, who was especially cruel to her, she has built her world around that trauma and forced her daughter to live within its walls with her. As someone who was severely homeschooled by a woman who still really needs to find a therapist, Umma hits me in my feelings every time. 

Watch the trailer for Umma below

Maternal Monsters: A Common Thread in Psycho, Hereditary, and More

Before the film starts, Oh’s character, Amanda, has turned her back on her family and cultural heritage. She has built a life that she’s not really living as she hides in her home, afraid of electricity due to the abuse she suffered at the hands of her mom. So, when her uncle shows up with her mother’s ashes, she is triggered and haunted. All of the issues she hasn’t dealt with rush to the surface, manifesting in ways that begin turning her into her deceased mom. Amanda does eventually force herself to confront her past to avoid becoming her mother and hurting her daughter. So, while Umma is different from Mommie Dearest, it’s not hard to see they share some of the same DNA. Scary moms make the genre go round which is why movies like M.O.M. Mothers of Monsters, Serial Mom, Mother, May I?, and so many others will always pull an audience by naming the monster in the title.

I doubt I am the first person on Norma Bates’ internet to clock that some of horror’s most notorious villains are parents, specifically moms. I’m also sure I cannot be the first person to argue Mommie Dearest is a horror movie on many levels. After all, a large part of the rabid fanbase seems to be comprised of genre kids who grew up wondering why the film felt familiar. However, I hope I am the first to encourage you to watch these two movies if your momma trauma will allow you to hold space for a couple more monstrous mothers this month. Both have much to say about how we cope with the fallout of being harmed by the people who should keep us safe.

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