Gender in horror films

Transgender roles in horror films

Transgender representation comes from characters can either self identify as transgender or be coded as transgender through cross dressing and other gender non-conforming actions. The use of trans bodies and coding is to incite fear from the audience as transgender people are seen as abject.

Trans-feminine

Some of the most notable trans-feminine representation in horror films are Norman bates in Psycho (1960), Jame Gumb/Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Angela in Sleepaway Camp (1983) with subsequent series, and Dr. Elliott/Bobbi in Dressed to Kill (1980). Carol J. Clover details in Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film that the prevalence of gender play in the horror genre with the "killer as feminine male and the main character as masculine female", commonly found in the Final Girl trope. Julie Tharp explains in The Transvestite as Monstergender Horror in The Silence of the Lambs and Psycho that Norman Bates in Psycho stokes fear of an emasculated man suffering with an Oedipal Complex and Jame Gumb/Buffalo Bill exploits cis-normative societies fear of gender outside the binary.

Sleepaway Camp (1983) creates fear through revenge. Angela, a teenage girl who is bullied and harassed murders those who have harassed her. It is revealed at the end that she is a transgender woman at which point her transgender identity become equally is horrific as her brutal killing spree. Angela's trans identity being a secret to the audience until the end of the movie plays on the idea that transgender people are trying to deceive those around them. Sleepaway Camp's revenge plot also stokes the fear of the cisgender audiences by making them feel that they could be next as the bullying and harassment Angela experienced is similar to the shared experience of transgender people in a cisnormative world.

Trans-masculine

There are few depictions of trans-masculine characters in horror films. More notable examples are Warren in Homicidal (1961), George Atwood in Private Parts (1972), and Barney in Girls’ Nite Out (1982). Trans-masculine characters are typically depicted as either being cis-women who are victims forced to transition either through abuse or to gain power in patriarchal society or as people struggling with mental illness and their trans-masculine expression is then pathologized. As Edwin Harris explains in his article Transmasculinity in Horror, trans-masculine characters are both “victims of internalized misogyny and threatening vectors of gender ideology, trans men in horror are commonly depicted as simultaneously pitiable and frightening”.

In Homicidal (1961), Warren is a victim of abuse from his parents. His mother, trying to secure Warren's inheritance from his sexist father and afraid for his life, raised Warren as a boy even though he was assigned female at birth. The pressure of this secret and Warren not having a choice in the gender he was raised as led to him developing an alter-ego as Emily so that he could live as a woman in secret. Warren/Emily do whatever they can, including murder, to protect the secret around their gender identity. Similar to Warren in Homicidal, George Atwood in Private Parts and Barney in Girls’ Nite Out were both raised as boys and forced to suppress their feminine identity.

References

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