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Horror, Men, Queer Love, and Cars: The Hitcher & Christine

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When thinking about the historical and traditional symbols of heteronormative male culture, two main things come to mind; women and cars. Cars are such an essential part of this identity that an entire franchise is dedicated to the power of cars. So utilizing cars, and the culture around them, to tell stories about queer identity and sexuality is fruitful territory. Christine (1983) and The Hitcher (1986) take on these ideas but utilize them differently. Christine is a movie about a killer car that entices a nerdy boy desperate to be a man, while The Hitcher is about a man who accidentally picks up a killer that he becomes inexplicably attached to. Ultimately the two movies give our main characters two options; repress their identity or accept their transformation. In one tale, we see how this struggle drives two best friends apart, and the other brings two strangers together. Yet both highlight how our focus on traditional societal values and binary identity can cause immense harm, destruction, and death. 

While car culture is traditionally seen as a part of heterosexual male culture, these two movies have many queer moments specifically in and around the car. Both movies start with sexually charged scenes between the characters as they enter the car. In Christine, Dennis picks Arnie up to go to school. Immediately the conversation turns sexual as they talk about blowjobs which prompts Dennis to talk about how they need to “get Arnie laid”. Eventually, Dennis comments that Arnie “can count your life savings between your legs”. Insinuating that Dennis knows that Arnie has a big dick. In The Hitcher, Jim picks up John, making the excuse that he needs someone to keep him awake during his long drive. The first thing he says to John is, “My mother told me never to do this”. The time spent on the ride is filled with awkward first glances and touching. Eventually, someone stops them on the road, gets the vibe that they are a couple, and says, “Get going sweethearts”. These two first encounters show us how a car is a place where these men can be alone with each other. And the atmosphere often feels like an awkward first sexual encounter or a nervous first date. They offer a secluded location where the outside world does not influence these characters. 

Cars are used in other ways as well. By all accounts, Christine is meant to be looked at like a woman. The car is frequently sexualized by the camera. When she’s destroyed by Arnie’s bullies, it’s filmed like a rape scene. And there is the iconic “show me” scene in which she repairs herself in front of Arnie. It’s shot like a seduction scene. In The Hitcher, cars are not given a personality, but they are a tool. John rear-ends Jim, which has clear sexual allusions. They’re used as weapons and home to deviant behavior like the multiple murders that John commits. It is the mode in which the two can stalk one another. John uses cars as a weapon to destroy the heteronormative world, killing families, cops, and young girls. And it feels like a big coincidence that both movies have a scene with a flaming car, which in and of itself is clearly a queer implication. 

When Jim and John are not in cars, they are frequently framed coming in and out of doorways, gates, and car doors. Jim is also frequently in gas stations, diners, and bathrooms. Several times we see Jim sexualized in the bathroom spaces. We see him constantly changing into “clean” clothes, and even showering. He tries to be clean, but John continuously brings him back into the dirt, filth, and everything deviant. Jim even dreams about John, his conscious and subconscious, wholly focused on this one man. As the movie goes on, they begin framing Jim the same way they frame John, a subtle nod to the transformation he is going through. By the end of the movie, when he is given the opportunity to move on and leave behind the events he has faced, he actively chooses to turn around to find John and become the deviant killer John wanted him to be. They constantly compare their actions up until the end, when they are truly aligned. Where Arnie has an unspoken supernatural connection with Christine, Jim has a similar connection with John. These forces can sense each other. 

 

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In Christine, Arnie and Dennis are always positioned with something or someone in between them; girls, parents, tables, and even a case of beer. It alludes to how the two are constantly separated by status, societal pressure, and Christine. Arnie’s transformation aligns with a girl in a teenage comedy where the nerd takes off her glasses and becomes hot. There are also moments in The Hitcher when John and Jim are separated in a similar way, but as they consistently show us, all you have to do is reach across the table or divide to get to each other. This is evident especially in the scene at the diner when Jim pulls a gun at John, and John moves his finger closer and closer to the barrel. In The Hitcher, they constantly find ways to touch and be physical with each other. Whether by fondling each other with weapons, or John holding Jim’s face tenderly. They even swap saliva, licking or spitting on each other at different times. These strangers have an immediate physical connection, one that Arnie and Dennis would probably envy. Yet they cannot find it in themselves to act on or entertain these ideas. Ultimately Arnie and Dennis are doomed because they cannot take that next step, they don’t try to reach for each other. 

There are also women in the movies that stand between the men. Both women are androgynous or masculine in style and appearance. Even their names are masculine (Leigh and Nash). Leigh has strong, traditionally handsome features like her dramatic jawline. She usually wears pants and tops with little to no hint of cleavage. This is a stark difference from Roseanne, who has a crush on Dennis but cannot get his attention. She is nerdy and has a similar stoic presence as Dennis. In the final scene, she is styled like Arnie and has a similar stoic personality to Dennis. She is a combination of the two, which makes her a perfect cipher for them. If they cannot be with each other, they can be with a woman that reminds them of each other. She is also part of the status symbol Arnie needs to be seen as a “man”. He has the car, the makeover, and the hot new girl, so he does not feel emasculated for the first time in his life. In the movie’s final scenes, Leigh and Dennis are immediately very physical, in a way he never could be with Arnie. So when Arnie is gone, she can fill the void. 

Nash has a short bob haircut, is very casual, and dresses in jeans and t-shirts (also styled similarly to the men). In The Hitcher, John sees Nash as a potential lifeline for Jim. She is the only person that believes he is not a killer. She represents a return to a heteronormative life for Jim. In John’s eyes, she needs to be destroyed. John acts like a jealous lover when confronting Jim about her. Nash never gets the opportunity to understand what is going on. She asks Jim, “Why didn’t he kill us?” and “Why did you pick him up?”. But Jim is never able to answer. He wants to believe that he is another victim or that he picked John up out of kindness, but the truth is perhaps more complicated. They have an unexplainable connection to the outside. 

It is fair to question if John is a real live person or a representation of the “deviant queer” lifestyle that Jim is seduced by. John has no record, and the police cannot find any information on him. Jim is framed for John’s crimes because he is always at the same place the crimes happen. He even has evidence on him. So it all begs the question, are these just two strangers who are inexplicably drawn to each other, or does the idea of deviance entice Jim, and John is simply a part of him that he cannot suppress? It’s all centered in a desolate area tied to hitching and truck stops, and queer culture is essential to these ideas. Even the name John brings to mind the idea of “a John” like a client of a sex worker. It’s steeped in ideas in and around historically “deviant” sexual culture. Christine and John are strong forces influencing others, one towards repression and one towards acceptance. 

Christine is centered around repression and masculinity. Arnie is emasculated because he is a nerdy gawky kid. He is the target of bullies. Even Dennis unintentionally emasculates him by being at Arnie’s side, constantly fighting his battles. If Arnie has romantic feelings for Dennis, it is covered by his resentment of Dennis. On the other hand, Dennis does this out of love. He wants the two to be close and gets visibly emotional as Arnie drifts further away from him. He is even jealous of Christine as soon as Arnie sees her. Dennis can be vulnerable and emotional with Arnie, but as Arnie transforms into more of a heteronormative man, he pushes their emotional connection aside. Much of it is distilled in the last conversation the two have when Arnie brings up the idea of love:

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Let me tell you a little something about love, Dennis. It has a voracious appetite. It eats everything. Friendship. Family. It kills me how much it eats. But I’ll tell you something else. You feed it right, and it can be beautiful, and that’s what we have. You know, when someone believes in you, man, you can do anything, any fucking thing in the entire universe. And when you believe right back in that someone, watch out world, because nobody can stop you then, nobody! Ever!

Dennis wants this monologue to be about him, fears it is about Leigh, and finds out it is actually about Christine. Arnie always thought Dennis stuck around out of pity because of his internalized self-hatred. Yet these complex emotions are too much for these high school boys to unpack. So Arnie gets consumed by repressive gender norms and traditional values. 

They both have a similar “kill your queers” ending. Unsurprising, although still too present in mainstream media. But the stories have subtle differences in portraying the last men standing. In Christine, Arnie is killed, and Dennis is welcomed back into the heteronormative fold. While in The Hitcher, Jim is no longer the sweet innocent boy he was at the beginning. He becomes the violent hard man John wanted. Dennis becomes normal, and Jim is a deviant, now living in the queer-coded world. Whether looked at as cautionary tales or happy endings, it is clear that ideas around identity and sexuality permeate these movies. Making them interesting thought pieces on socialization and how heteronormative and toxic masculinity culture have made “being yourself” difficult and often painful. Whether choosing to repress or accept, you might end up taking a ride in a flaming car. 

Tori Potenza (she/they) is a queer film critic and historian based in Philadelphia. They are a staff writer with MovieJawn and have published work for Nottingham Horror Collective, Slay Away With Us, and Certified Forgotten. She is a lecturer who has spoken at film festivals and schools. Her work often focuses on sex and gender themes in film along with body horror and posthumanism. Currently they are working as a shorts screener for Brooklyn Horror Fest.

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Finding Gender Freedom in ‘The Curse of the Cat People’ (1944)

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“I’m going to make a deer hunter out of you,” my father told me right after I was born. This was by way of my mother, of course. I had just popped into the world, and already, I was slapped with gender stereotypes of what it means to be a “man.” My father would become woefully disappointed when he later learned I hate hunting. Instead, I played with Barbie dolls, choreographed dances to Britney Spears, and generally did everything a boy or man wasn’t supposed to do. Although I don’t mind fishing and love camping/hiking, the point still stands: I didn’t turn out the way my father (or society) wanted me to. That’s perhaps why I gravitate so much to 1942’s Cat People and its genre-swerving sequel, The Curse of the Cat People (1944).

Exploring Gender Roles in The Curse of the Cat People

Far more drama than horror, The Curse of the Cat People picks up a few short years after its predecessor. Where Cat People explored queerness, the follow-up dove deeper into gender roles and how one little girl learned to embrace herself despite her father’s demands that she be more like the other kids. Irena’s (Simone Simon) tragic death behind them, Oliver (Kent Smith) and Alice (Jane Randolph) move into a posh suburb of Tarrytown, New York, with their adoring daughter Amy (Ann Carter).

Amy is an outsider, ostracized by the other girls, and turns to animals and insects for companionship. Her peculiar behavior not only draws attention from the teacher but her father, who, as we’ve learned already, adheres to strict societal expectations. A young girl should be happy, skipping down the street–gleeful and popular–not detached and “strange.”

One afternoon, Amy wanders down the street and stumbles upon a looming three-story house. Inside are aging socialite Julia Farren (Julia Dean), whom the local kids claim is a witch, and her daughter Barbara (Elizabeth Russell). Julia is just so different, much like Amy. That’s why Amy accepts Julia’s gift of a handkerchief and a wishing ring, on which Amy wishes simply for a friend. Her wish comes true through the manifestation of Irena as a cloaked woman who appears in Amy’s backyard garden. No one else can see her, and Amy finally has the human connection she’s so desperately needed. Through their relationship, Amy comes to understand that self-acceptance is her gateway to personal freedom. She breaks those shackles that have long tied her to Oliver and society’s archaic gender roles.

Growing Up Different: My Own Gender Identity Journey

It took time for me to come to such a realization. I grew up in your typical country town where machismo and camo were rewarded, while femininity was frowned upon. My friends were predominantly girls, and our play-pretend frequently saw me taking on roles of female characters, including Kelly from Saved by the Bell and T-Boz from TLC. I no longer have shame in that. But I also played with trucks, cars, and Power Rangers. There’s a duality that’s always been integral to who I’ve been. Much like Amy, I didn’t fit what society expected of me. My father never had a sit-down with me about how I was acting–except one summer, he forced me to play baseball, where I was bullied by a kid named Chance. The godawful experience taught me who I wasn’t and that there were shades to my identity.

The two decades that followed proved to be tricky. In 2006, when I first came out as a gay man, we didn’t have terms like non-binary. I accepted what society told me about identity; I’ve always landed somewhere in between male and female. I’ve felt a strong sense that my slider scale, so to speak, pushed tightly on the side of womanhood. It wasn’t until 2015 that I began questioning my transness, after seeing the controversial film, The Danish Girl, starring Eddie Redmayne. The way he caressed fabric, an electricity rocketed through my body. “That’s me!” I said to myself. It wasn’t exactly accurate, but I felt a certain type of way.

I was living in New York City at the time, and I can recall every single detail about that night – the way the street smelled on the walk home, the crispness in the winter hair, and the suffocating inner tension that nearly snapped in half. My body, once broken, felt renewal wash over my bones and flesh. The blurriness of my self-portrait became crisper, more detailed, and less fuzzy. 

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Finding My Truth: The Power of Queer Representation

But my journey was far from over. In 2017, I was doomscrolling on Twitter when I stumbled upon a piece actor/producer Natalie Morales had written for Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls, in which Morales came out as queer. “I don’t like labeling myself, or anyone else, but if it’s easier for you to understand me, what I’m saying is that I’m queer,” she wrote. “What queer means to me is just simply that I’m not straight. That’s all. It’s not scary, even though that word used to be really, really scary to me.”

Queerness comes in fractured neons. Each ray scatters a million particles, and all you can do is collect up the pieces that fit and move on. Much like Morales, “I thought I was sick. I know I thought something was really wrong with me,” she continued. “I was ashamed, and I thought I was dirty. I knew that the church said it was wrong and that God said it was wrong (even though I couldn’t exactly figure out why, if it wasn’t hurting anyone).”

I was practically in tears after reading such brutal, self-exposing honesty. It shattered me. Society’s skin-cutting chains rusted through and fell to the ground in that moment. Morales’ queer confession then sent me down a long, winding rabbit hole until I came across the term, genderqueer, or non-binary as it’s also called. There it is, I thought. That’s what I am. I’m both genders at once, existing in a once-non-existent space between the two that has now opened up like a gushing waterfall. All of it, my entire life, came crashing down upon my head, and everything I had ever felt made sense.

Lessons from Amy: Self-Love and Breaking Gender Norms

I suppose that’s the journey Amy took, too. In defying her father, who described her as having “too many fancies and too few friends” and how that wasn’t “normal,” worried that she’d turn out just like Irena, Amy forged a new path forward. With ghost Irena’s help, she learned that not only was she normal, but it was the new frontier. Self-love and acceptance are beautiful things. I’d like to think Amy lived the life Irena wasn’t able to, one step closer to completely decimating society’s backward belief system that’s killed more people than not.

Every time I watch The Curse of the Cat People, I’m always reminded that my identity journey is never really over. I’m just happier now than I was yesterday. Baby steps. Like Amy, I’ve stepped into the sunlight for the first time. My face grows warm by the soft, golden radiance, and I can finally discard everything society has ever had to say about gender. I no longer need those misguided, harmful words filling up my heart and mind. In their place, I’ve fit new puzzle pieces together – gratitude, hope, compassion, love, and freedom – and each day offers exciting possibilities. Dear Amy, I hope you’ve lived a life you had only dreamed of, and that you’re happy. We all deserve to be.

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The Evolution of Female Cannibals in Horror Films and TV

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[This article contains spoilers]

Prior to the disestablishment of the Hays’ Code, filmmakers had to make depictions of cannibalism more palatable, diluting the depravity of the act with humor by concealing body parts in pies. Cannibal horror didn’t truly emerge as a subgenre until 1972’s Man From The Deep River drew controversy and intrigue alike. This film jumpstarted the trend of cannibal films centering on your so-called “civilized man” venturing into desolate, often foreign landscapes, only to be cannibalized by the natives. Modern cannibal media has pushed beyond this cliché narrative, depicting sophisticated cannibals that cook their food like fine dining or turn the horror of the act into something frighteningly sexy. But the kinds of cannibalism we see in film differs significantly depending on the cannibal’s sex.

Evolution of Cannibalism in Horror Media

From Grotesque to Sophisticated Cannibals

Cannibalism media used to be a genre divided into extremes. Your cannibal either had a grotesque, animalistic habit like Leatherface or a deviously delicious and sophisticated palate like Hannibal Lecter; however, as we’ve entered the 21st century, this binary has become more of a spectrum. Audiences don’t want to watch the same reveals of flesh furniture or dinner parties that serve human flesh to unknowing guests. They want cannibalism as metaphors, cannibalism as erotic fixation, and even cannibalism as a connection to the supernatural.

Male Cannibals: Power and Brutality

Be it Hannibal Lecter, Alfred Packer, or a member of the Sawyer family, the first cannibal you think of is likely a man. While most cannibal media has departed from stereotypical portrayals of cannibalism as indicative of some non-Christian barbarity, sterilized, almost surgical cannibalism has become more common but not the norm. Wes Cravens The Hills Have Eyes (1977) present cannibals as inbred savages, trapping and tearing apart whoever comes across their path, yet films like Antonia Bird’s Ravenous (1999) and Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs (1991) portray cannibals as calculated, intelligent, and capable of seizing power despite their brutal actions. The sheer number of cannibal films centering male cannibals has allowed more opportunity to test the boundaries of the genre, but that doesn’t mean we should discount the more recent wave of female-centered cannibal movies.

Rise of Female Cannibals in Modern Media

Female Cannibals in Yellowjackets

Female cannibalism is just now hitting the mainstream as Yellowjackets (2021-present) captivates its audience as it tells the story of what happened to a girls’ soccer team lost in the wilderness. However, while Yellowjackets lets its female protagonists be ravenous and brutal, female cannibals in film are often portrayed as sympathetic and less monstrous than their male counterparts.

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Sympathetic Portrayals in The Hills Have Eyes

In Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes (1977), a family of desert-dwelling cannibals feed off stranded tourists with the male family members brutally attacking, assaulting, and defiling the bodies of their victims; however, Ruby (Janus Blythe), the young daughter of the clan, is characterized as kind and having an aversion to her family’s violent ways, even going as far as opposing her family’s attack and sacrificing herself to protect the tourists’ baby.  Female cannibals like Ruby are often portrayed as self-loathing and disgusted by their actions, unlike their unsympathetic male peers.

Cannibalism as Metaphor in 21st-Century Film

Raw: Cannibalism and Sexual Awakening

As we enter the 21st century, cannibalism in literature and film has evolved, often being a stand-in for sex as a character consumes the flesh of another to satisfy a deep, carnal appetite. Julia Ducournau’s Raw (2016) tells the story of a first-year veterinary student and long-time vegetarian Justine (Garance Marillier), who finds herself with an insatiable hunger for meat after a hazing incident gone wrong.

As she navigates the sexual and ritualistic traditions of the program, Justine often finds her new cravings for flesh, coinciding with sexual pleasure as she attempts to consume her sexual partners. The version of cannibalism created by Raw is sympathetic, humanizing Justine by creating parallels between an obscene act and one that is normalized and commonplace in our society.

Jennifer’s Body: Cannibalism as Revenge

Karyn Kusama’s Jennifer’s Body (2009) takes a supernatural approach, recounting the tragic story of Jennifer (Megan Fox), a teen girl who is sacrificed to a demonic entity only to be resurrected as a man-hungry succubus. When Jennifer rises from the dead, her acts of cannibalism invert the power dynamic imposed on her human body earlier in the film when a band drugs and sacrifices her body to gain a deal with a demonic entity.

Jennifer then seeks revenge on the male sex, consuming them in ways that are just as destructive as the way they imposed themselves upon her. Her cannibalism is an inversion of the violence she suffered as the band overpowered, bound, and sacrificed her to reach musical fame.

Exploring Cannibalism in Yellowjackets

Season 1: Power Dynamics and Survival

As Yellowjackets has completed its third season, the show has attempted to explore cannibalism in relation to queerness, psychology, and pack dynamics. In the show’s first season, we see the formation and shifting of power dynamics within the social structure of the girls’ soccer team, as captain Jackie (Ella Purnell) finds herself ousted from the group’s cabin by Shauna (Sophie Nélisse), resulting in her death. As the Yellowjackets begin to starve, cannibalism is thrust upon them as Jackie’s corpse becomes engulfed in flames, breaking the animal part of the teams’ brains and causing them to feast on their teammates’ flesh. After this shocking finale, the group finds themselves at a crossroads, having to choose their humanity or their survival, with most choosing the latter.

However, Assistant Coach Ben (Steven Krueger) refuses the ritual consumption of Jackie’s flesh, putting him at odds against Shauna and the other Yellowjackets. In this case, cannibalism becomes a rite of passage, drawing a line between those who are willing to survive by any means necessary and those who would rather die than commit such an act.

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Seasons 2 and 3: Guilt and Pack Dynamics

Yellowjackets’ second and third seasons lean further into the sort of Lord of the Flies-esque nature of the show’s premise, exploring the relationship each of the adult characters and their teen equivalents have to the cannibalistic events of the first season. Shauna internalizes and hardens around the guilt surrounding Jackie’s death, displaying a clear crack in her composure as she finds herself tormented by illusions of Jackie.

In some ways, the consumption of Jackie serves as a means of keeping her at the forefront of Shauna’s attention, her guilt corrupting and turning her into a more cruel, violent version of herself to align with how she is portrayed in the show’s adult timeline. In some ways, this psychological effect of cannibalism mirrors that seen by more sophisticated cannibals such as Hannibal Lecter in the TV series Hannibal.

While Shauna isolates, the group finds themselves battling with the nature of their survival, with the other girls conspiring to create a method for fairly determining who they’ll have to cannibalize next. The group settles on a game of cards, where one unlikely drawer will be hunted for sport by the group, either ending up the groups’ next meal or successfully escaping into the freezing wilderness.

This kind of organized game displays a unique example in the context of female cannibalism, marrying the more cerebral decision-making seen in other female cannibals with the pack dynamics seen in movies like Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

Queerness and Cannibalism in Season 3

The show’s third season dives deeper into the inherent queerness of cannibalism in the Yellowjackets universe, as Taissa (Tawny Cypress), an ousted politician who struggles to hold her family together as the events of the wilderness impact her behavior, re-explores her relationship with fellow lover and Yellowjacket Van (Lauren Ambrose).

As Van struggles with a cancer battle, Taissa finds her mind drawn back to the wilderness, wondering if a sacrifice of blood is what is needed to prevent the nebulous entity known as the Wilderness from claiming Van’s life; however, while this theory proves at least somewhat correct, Van dies by another Yellowjackets’ hand, but the grief-stricken Taissa performs one last sickening act, consuming one of Van’s raw organs in almost a means to remain ever close with her now lost love. 

Redefining Female Cannibals in Horror

Justified Violence and Human Complexity

Female cannibals in film are often justified in their violence, slicked in gore, but excused of the filth of the act. They don’t often get to keep heads on plates in their freezers or wear a necklace of their victims’ ears. The brutality of their acts can’t be reduced to shock value, because these films acknowledge that there is a human component to their violence. They aren’t animals reduced to eating human flesh for the sake of it. They make the decision to do so.

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While there aren’t many female cannibals that lean into the filth of the act, maybe it is better that way. This archetype of a disgusting, subhuman cannibal who savors the act and displays heads on sticks is one based in historical assumptions of what it meant to be a cannibal. There is a racial component to attributing cannibalism to a foreign savagery, contradictory to the fact that many classic cannibal movies like The Hills Have Eyes are based on American or European accounts of cannibalism. Reducing cannibals to caricatures turns them trope-y and repetitive.

Modern cannibal stories, especially those centering on female characters, push the boundaries of the genre. Cannibalism can also be a trauma response, a devastating outcome to an unfortunate circumstance, or something that empowers and flips power structures. While the cannibal subgenre may be looked down upon due to its history, modern filmmakers continue proving that cannibalism isn’t as simple as eating human flesh. 

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