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Queer characters have been historically underrepresented in horror movies, and when they did show up, they were often regarded as disposable, depraved, or deadly. Yet, filmmaking tropes have evolved from the queer-coded villains of classic Hollywood, to more thoughtful portrayals of the LGBTQIA experience. So how did we get here? And why are these important stories only being told now?
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00:01Watch Leviticus exclusively in theaters June 19th.
00:04Queer characters have been historically underrepresented in horror movies,
00:08and when they did show up, they were often regarded as disposable, depraved, or deadly.
00:16Yet filmmaking tropes have evolved from the queer-coded villains of classic Hollywood
00:20to more thoughtful portrayals of the LGBTQIA plus experience.
00:25In 1940's Rope, Hitchcock shocked audiences with the murderous union that occurs when two gay lovers come together.
00:33Jump ahead to 2026's Leviticus, and it's no longer the queer couple we're meant to be appalled by.
00:38Instead, the monster is a supernatural entity that aims to sever their romance and keep them apart.
00:47Rather than being killed off in the first act of a horror movie,
00:50queer characters now have their perspectives centered.
00:53So, how did we get here? And why are these important stories only being told now?
00:59Welcome to Ms. Mojo, and here's everything you need to know about the evolution of LGBTQIA plus representation
01:06throughout horror movie history.
01:09He's still following us!
01:10Guys! You're black! I'm gay! We are so dead!
01:15Chapter 1. Queer coding.
01:17Once upon a time, filmmakers were actually prohibited from depicting same-sex attraction,
01:22or even making characters explicitly gay.
01:25That's because of the Hays Code, which was adopted in the 30s as a radical censorship guideline.
01:31It forced directors to hide homosexuality behind queer coding,
01:34a subtext where characters were written to have stereotypically queer traits.
01:38And in horror movies, queer coded characters were typically villainous.
01:43The power to kill can be just as satisfying as the power to create.
01:48Take the Countess in 1936's Dracula's Daughter, or Irina in 1942's Cat People.
01:54Both are sapphic tales of women so afflicted by their unnatural desires that it turns them into monsters.
02:00Something that reaches out from beyond the grave and fills me with horrible impulses.
02:07Because homosexuality was condemned at the time,
02:09the queer coded villain reaffirmed that embracing this lifestyle was sinful.
02:14Nearly all of Hitchcock's wrongdoers are played with effeminate mannerisms,
02:18designed to add to their creepiness.
02:21Toodaloo.
02:22Most notably, Norman Bates in 1960's Psycho parades as his mother to commit a string of murders,
02:28which leads us to Chapter 2, Cross-Dressing Killers.
02:32The Hays Code was formally retired in the late 60's,
02:35and while society grew more lax about queer representation on screen,
02:39it doesn't mean they became more tolerant.
02:42Norman proved to be a profoundly influential villain,
02:45spawning a new kind of psychopath who more openly participates in sexually deviant activities.
02:51Buffalo Bill in 1991's The Silence of the Lambs is another serial killer
02:55who plays in women's clothing to signal to viewers that experimenting with gender identity means you must be some kind
03:01of lunatic.
03:02Billy hates his own identity, you see, and he thinks that makes him a transsexual.
03:08But his pathology is a thousand times more savage.
03:12Throughout the 80's and 90's, horror villains began to cross-dress more and more
03:16in order to deepen the subliminal link between queerness and craziness.
03:21The unsettling twist at the end of 1983's Sleepaway Camp is that our slasher is not actually a girl.
03:28God, she's a boy!
03:31And 1980's Dressed to Kill offers a deplorable takeaway,
03:35misrepresenting trans identity as multiple personality disorder.
03:38What's wrong with that guy anyway?
03:41He was a transsexual.
03:43About to make the final step, but his male side couldn't let him do it.
03:46As much as Bobby tried to get it, Elliot blocked it.
03:51Ultimately, this trope left audiences with no choice but to root for the death of an evil homosexual.
03:57The type of person they may have already been morally opposed to, wicked or not.
04:01At the same time, we saw the rise of...
04:04Chapter 3, Bury Your Gaze.
04:06You can't! You can't! There's rules!
04:09I'm gay! I'm gay!
04:12Queer characters who were not the villain instead became the victim.
04:16Never the hero, never the final girl, just a token body to add to the kill count.
04:21They often served as comic relief, cracking jokes before getting their neck cracked.
04:26You know, I hear cell phones give you brain cancer.
04:28That's an urban legend.
04:29Too bad.
04:31So while it was nice to finally have likable queer characters in horror movies,
04:34their stories weren't really being told.
04:37Plus, their repetitive demise effectively taught us that queerness should be punished.
04:42Sometimes, this death sentence was incredibly swift, like in 2005's Land of the Dead.
04:492004's Hellbent actually opens with the murder of two gay men within the first three minutes.
04:58Now, this movie was considered revolutionary for having so many gay characters,
05:03but it still felt hollow because it fell into stereotypical slasher trappings.
05:07Hey!
05:09I like your costume.
05:11You work out, right? I can tell.
05:14Turns out my girly costume here isn't turning very many heads.
05:19Clearly, nothing was learned from 1980's Cruising, a similar Al Pacino-led flick that hit theaters decades earlier and was
05:25equally controversial.
05:27Here, a serial killer stalks New York, picking off sex-crazed gay men one at a time.
05:32Was it daring? Sure, but it also reinforced stigmas and gay myths,
05:37even implying that the lead investigator's deep entanglement with the subculture turns him gay.
05:43I need to talk to you, but I want to tell you everything. Okay? Let me just get this off.
05:48Okay.
05:49This trope, which persisted well into the 2000's, proves that not all representation is good representation.
05:56In fact, it can be exploitative.
05:58With audiences begging filmmakers to do better, something finally gave way, birthing chapter 4, the social thriller.
06:07By the 2010s, shifting mores and landmark progress for human rights made queerness far less taboo.
06:13Thus, a new subgenre of horror emerged, dubbed the social thriller.
06:17By spotlighting marginalized people as protagonists, viewers are offered a glimpse into the harsh realities they navigate, which can often
06:25feel horrific.
06:26Add in a ghostly antagonist and religious trauma, and you have a solid horror flick.
06:31A must-see horror movie that does this so well is 2026's Leviticus, where an unrelenting spectre haunts our gay
06:38protagonists, Name and Ryan.
06:41It operates like a lethally effective form of conversion therapy, taking the shape of the one you crave most and
06:47attacking when you give in to your repressed romantic desires.
06:51If you see anything that looks like me, I'll go near it.
06:56What makes Leviticus such a welcome form of representation is the way it forces viewers to walk in the shoes
07:02of its ill-fated couple, or rather, run for their lives.
07:05We're gonna kill him!
07:07It carefully examines how parents, therapists, police, religious scholars, and other systems designed to protect actually fail our star-crossed
07:15boys.
07:16He has to go in the home.
07:19Look at the light.
07:20In a world where simply being gay proves a constant threat to Name and Ryan's well-being, we're reminded that,
07:26for many queer people, fear is survival.
07:29The fear of rejection.
07:30The fear of being outed.
07:32The fear of disappointing your family.
07:34The fear of suffering a homophobic attack.
07:37Leviticus candidly analyzes how scary life can still be for the LGBTQIA plus community, regardless of how much progress we've
07:45made,
07:45and clarifies why many deem it safer to stifle their true selves.
07:49Indecency.
07:50Lust.
07:52It's a contemporary take on horror that's both an exhilarating ride and a much-needed depiction of the far deeper
07:59terrors that relentlessly claw at queer people.
08:02Cleverly named after the book of the Bible that teaches followers how to atone for sin, Leviticus delivers on dread
08:08while weaving in an indelible coming-of-age story that's equal parts brutal and honest.
08:13This is what they wanted.
08:16They wanted us to be scared.
08:19Today's best horror films offer pointed critiques of the existential problems facing younger generations, because that's what they genuinely find
08:27terrifying.
08:28In my grandfather's day, you'd be on the lobotomy table.
08:32That's how we used to treat people with your condition.
08:34I don't have a condition, I'm just f***ing gay.
08:37Well, we'll soon see about that.
08:38Another film that perfectly amends the canon is 2021's Titan, which drew praise for foregrounding a sexually fluid antihero who
08:46reflects the realities of body dysmorphia.
08:48I don't know who you are. You're my son.
08:532017's Stelma subverts the ground rules established in classic Hollywood.
08:57Our lesbian lead discovers that she can actually control her supernatural ability, which grows when she's attracted to another woman.
09:04Sound familiar?
09:05Instead of allowing it to make her a freak, she realizes it's a gift that can restore the beautiful things
09:11her life was missing.
09:12Representation in horror has evolved to let us actually feel for queer characters, and root for them to overcome the
09:18hideous barriers that keep them trapped.
09:20I'm at the edge of something that I can't turn back from, and it's safer for you if you stay
09:27away.
09:29Spotlight, foundational queer horror.
09:31No conversation would be complete without acknowledging some of the franchises that consistently prioritized queer perspectives.
09:38While they may have once featured queer-coded characters, like with Theo in 1963's The Haunting,
09:44their modern adaptations and sequels fully embrace the progressive messaging they always sought to imbue.
09:49The creators of both Child's Play and Hellraiser are openly gay men, so they did their due diligence to both
09:55represent and respect the community throughout their films.
09:58In the first Chucky movie, released in 1988, Andy is being raised by two maternal figures.
10:04By 2004, Seed of Chucky introduced us to Glenn slash Glenda, inhabited by both male and female energy.
10:10Sometimes I feel like a boy, sometimes I feel like a girl, can't I be both?
10:18For the 2021 TV series, the character was updated to be a canonically non-binary pair of twins, played by
10:24the same non-binary actor.
10:25Sometimes I feel like that too.
10:29Like something's missing... inside.
10:34The hero of the TV series is Jake, a gay teenager navigating romance and living with a killer doll.
10:431987's Hellraiser, on the other hand, served as a metaphor for the AIDS epidemic, as giving in to carnal pleasure
10:49sends characters to a hellish space where bodily dissolution, anguish, and death are a guarantee.
10:55Explorers in the further regions of experience, demons to some, angels to others.
11:02The Cenobites themselves are androgynous, and by the time the 2022 Reimagining released, Pinhead was played by trans actor Jamie
11:09Clayton.
11:10The new film also features explicitly queer characters, reinforcing the franchise's exploration of anti-normative sexualities that can be complex
11:18to maneuver.
11:19You've never sought sensation. Your whole life. Every conquest. All your pleasures lie in power.
11:34It took nearly a century for queer representation in horror to move from a place where even being gay on
11:40screen was disallowed, to a cinematic world where queer characters can be the heroes.
11:45More than just battling demons, today's final girls and memorable couples grapple with their own personhood in a nuanced, relatable
11:53way.
11:53We're also seeing more queer filmmakers step up to reclaim the genre.
11:57The film was inspired by my own experiences growing up gay in Australia and also being a big fan of
12:03the horror genre.
12:04I knew I wanted to do something that, like all horror movies, explored a type of fear.
12:10And in this case, we dug into the idea of homophobia and what that means internally and externally.
12:15From impactful symbolism to literal queer storylines, LGBTQIA plus characters are taking horror by storm.
12:23And that's the kind of representation we've been dying for.
12:27Watch Leviticus exclusively in theaters June 19th.
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