Do you love unreliable narrators and ghosts and wish that more psychological dramas laid off the gore? Gather round the fire, readers, it’s time for the original THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE.
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Feminist Halloween 2017: Day 9: The Haunting of Hill House (novel)
Posted in Uncategorized on 2017/10/09| 2 Comments »
Feminist Halloween 2016, Day 27: Halloween (1978)
Posted in Feminist Halloween, Uncategorized, tagged Halloween, Halloween movie, horror films on 2016/10/27| Leave a Comment »
Image: poster for John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978). A hand holds a knife with the same curve as the sections of the pumpkin on a jack-o-lantern. Text: “The night HE came home!”
Or, a Halloween veteran (me) watches Halloween again with someone who has never seen Halloween (my partner).
Feminist Halloween 2016, Day 23: Movies That Missed the Mark: The House on Sorority Row
Posted in Feminist Halloween, Uncategorized, tagged disability, horror films, The House on Sorority Row on 2016/10/23| 1 Comment »
I decided to watch The House on Sorority Row (1983) because I confused it with some other better-reviewed slasher movie of the era with a forgettable name (Black Christmas, 1974) that also took place in a sorority house. Welp. Like The Moth Diaries, it alternated between brilliant, dull, and problematic.
Image of The House on Sorority Row: the sorority sisters, who are in their nightgowns/slips/pajamas, toast with mugs to graduating]
Spoilers ahead.
Feminist Halloween 2016, Day 21: “Do We Need to Time Warp Again?”
Posted in bisexual, Feminist Halloween, Geek Culture, Media, queer, Uncategorized, tagged biphobia, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, transphobia on 2016/10/21| 1 Comment »
The remake of The Rocky Horror Picture Show aired yesterday on Fox, and though I haven’t seen it yet, I wanted to share this piece from Bitch Media about the complicated relationship between the queer community–particularly bi+ and trans folks–with this film.
Laverne Cox as Dr. Frank-n-Furter, who has just left a rainbow lipstick mark on the “screen” of the image.
Feminist Halloween 2016, Day 20: Films That Missed the Mark: The Moth Diaries
Posted in Feminist Halloween, Gender, Uncategorized, tagged horror films, The Moth Diaries on 2016/10/20| 2 Comments »
Image: the poster for The Moth Diaries, showing Ernessa touching Rebecca’s face
I was promised atmospheric queer vampire romance directed by a woman. The first half of the film delivers, but the second half just doesn’t hit the mark.
Rebecca is a student at an all-girls boarding school (surprise). She totally wants to be gal pals with her bestie Lucy, but Lucy is too enraptured with Ernessa, the new student who totally isn’t a vampire, to notice. (more…)
Feminist Halloween 2016, Day 16: The Witch
Posted in Feminist Halloween, Gender, Media, Uncategorized, tagged history, horror films, puritans, Robert Eggers, The Witch on 2016/10/16| 1 Comment »
Image from The Witch website: a dark image with a goat; text is overlaid on the image: “GOAT: The He-Goat’s two horn’d crown doth reign / Through blackest Nature, His domain.”
The genre of horror doesn’t exist in a vacuum: what is scary isn’t the same throughout time or space. For example, my idea of a great scary story*:
On a hot and sunny day, your intrepid blogger was blindfolded and forced to attend a gender-reveal party for a baby.** Watch as they encounter…
Misgendering! [cut to “Well, hello, there, miss!”]
Cissplaining! [cut to “They/them aren’t real pronouns!”]
The very concept of binary genders assigned based on in-utero pics of baby’s genitals! [cut to BLOGGER, confused: “hamburger?! turtle?! are we speaking English rn does the ultrasound now tell you folks’ pronouns now?”]
Ruining cake with the arbitrary and artificial gender binary! [cut to CAKE oozing pink or blue]
Regrettably, being marginalized usually means folks are afraid of people like me: queer and genderqueer/gender non-conforming (though the brunt of that falls on trans women). Cultural fears, particularly about the marginalized gaining power and influence (or, self determination even), drive horror films. The vampire as a queer woman or a (somehow also queer) Eastern European; the serial killer as bisexual or trans; zombies as a metaphor for racial Others; and, among many others, witches. Witches are conflated with everything from the fear of ethnic Others (Roma, Creole, Latinx, African) to the generalized fear of women, including but not limited to women having rights to their own bodies, property, money, sexuality, and self determination.
Which brings me to The Witch, a horror film for Puritans by Puritans. (more…)
Feminist Halloween 2016, Day 11: The Gilda Stories
Posted in Feminist Halloween, queer, Uncategorized, tagged Jewell Gomez, The Gilda Stories on 2016/10/11| 2 Comments »
The cover of the 25th anniversary edition of The Gilda Stories by Jewelle Gomez: a sepia tone image of a black woman with blood splatter on the cover]
I will attempt to write this in a manner that doesn’t seem like I’m screaming and failing and fan-nerding out, but my desire to ALL CAPS is SO STRONG.
The Gilda Stories is, as described by its author Jewelle Gomez, a “black lesbian vampire novel.” That’s apt, but it doesn’t even scratch the surface of how amazing and perfect The Gilda Stories is.
Feminist Halloween 2016, Day 9: “My Auntie Buffalo Bill” by Jos Truit
Posted in Feminist Halloween, Gender, Media, Uncategorized, tagged Jos Truit, Silence of the Lambs, transgender, transphobia on 2016/10/09| 3 Comments »
As much as I wanted Season 4 of NBC Hannibal, I was terrified about how the character of “Buffalo Bill” would be treated–I can’t conceive of a way to use that character without transphobia. Best case scenario, the showrunners could have just removed the whole “woman suit” aspect and made it a people suit, gender removed from the equation. (Or, just vacation in Rio with Will and Hannibal. Forever.) (more…)
Feminist Halloween 2016, Day 3: The Other Side: Queer Paranormal Romance Anthology
Posted in Feminist Halloween, Gender, Media, queer, Uncategorized, tagged comics, Kori Michele Handwerker, Melanie Gillman, queer romance, The Other Side: Queer Paranormal Romance Anthology, YA fiction on 2016/10/03| Leave a Comment »
Look, I’m just saying that Edward and Jacob would have been the more compelling star-crossed lovers: vampires and werewolves hate each other; plus coming out as a queer interracial couple to your oddly conservative supernatural communities is going to be rough, especially in a small town–
(loud coughing) I mean, welcome, friends, to day 3 of Feminist Halloween, where we continue this queer horror theme we’ve got going with The Other Side: Queer Paranormal Romance Anthology, edited by Kori Michele Handwerker and Melanie Gillman!
The Beyond Binaries Book Club’s Feb/March ’16 Book: The Left Hand of Darkness
Posted in Beyond Binaries Book Club, Gender, Uncategorized, tagged ambigender, scifi, the left hand of darkness, ursula k le guin on 2016/02/24| Leave a Comment »
Ann Leckie herself recommended it to me. In person. 
We wrapped up Imperial Radch, and now we’re time-traveling back to 1969, the year Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness was published. This work fits our theme by featuring an entire planet of “ambisexual” (bigender and bisexual) humans, who are androgynous for most of the month except when in “kemmer,” during which time they essentially develop genitalia and hook up with each other.
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