The monstrous and the queer have always gone hand in hand, particularly where pop culture is concerned. Uncertainty about the stability of identity and the mutability of a person’s physical shape has the potential to inspire fear. It is from these sites of uncertainty and the resulting terror that the figure of the shape-shifting monster arises in storytelling traditions. The popular monster movies of the 1940s and 50s presented the monster as a lurking threat that must be exterminated. These creatures looked human … but they weren’t. Or they were a combination of human and other, and even if they struggled with this duality, they had to be put down for the good of humanity. In Dracula and most of its stage and screen adaptations the Vampire King seeks to steal away virtuous women from their noble men while at the same time attempting to conquer a modern world to create more of his kind. And if that weren’t threatening enough, Dracula’s love is an infection that destroys traditional heterosexual unions: therefore, he must be destroyed. Likewise, even though Lon Chaney’s Wolf Man is primarily a sympathetic character, in his lupine form his only thought is to kill and to destroy the woman that he loves. He has to be put down. For his own good.
The vampire and the werewolf look just like you and me, but once their mask has been torn away and their true nature is revealed … then the fear, disgust, and horror begins to manifest.
Homophobia gives these archetypal figures an underlying significance. Monsters are the characters that bear the weight of audience fears. The heroes and heroines of these stories are inevitably betrayed when they discover the Mark of the Beast the monster bears. Subsequently the monster usually succumbs to the stake or silver bullets of the Van Helsing-type monster-hunting character so that the sanctity of the “normal” – read: heterosexual – lifestyle is preserved.
If we read these monsters coded as queer, as gay viewers have always had a tendency to do, we find that these specific viewers may identify with the monster/creature/mutant instead of the hero/heroine or the monster hunter, recognizing within the monster character their own status as Other. For the queer forced to live inside the closet, for reasons such as geographical location, religious beliefs, family practices, etc., the danger that the werewolf or vampire faces should their identity be revealed has a particular resonance.
Jacque Tourner’s The Cat People (1942) is highly regarded as one of the more complicated of the monster films that were so popular during World War II. It is rife with themes of sexual identity, gender hierarchy, and a coded form of internalized homophobia. The film tells the story of Irena Dubrovna, a young Serbian woman living in New York. Irena believes that she is descended from a race of witches who, when angered or aroused sexually, transform into murderous panthers. At the film’s outset Irena meets happy-go-lucky Oliver Reed, an average American guy who claims to have never been unhappy; their mutual attraction leads them to marry. Irena’s deep-seated pathological fear that consummating her marriage with Oliver will lead her to murder him understandably causes marital strife that Oliver attempts to resolve by sending Irena to a psychiatrist. When Oliver leaves Irena for Alice, a pretty co-worker, Irena’s jealousy brings about the transformation that leads eventually to her own death. Although the audience is never shown Irena changing into a panther, the activation of the malevolent side of her personality is enough to cause the destruction that threatens her life and the lives of the people she loves.
Irena exists under the curse that traditionally haunts the monster queer, particularly the queer Werewolf figure; likewise, many queer people, particularly during this time, felt that their sexual identity was a curse they wish they could escape. The Cat People can be read as a cautionary tale for queers. They are thus encouraged to embrace traditional gender roles and patterns, engage in heterosexual activity, and reject the dark, i.e. “queer,” part of their personalities. The alternative is a decidedly unhappy existence that will likely end in a violent death. This was the viewpoint articulated by the majority of horror movies in the 1930’s, 40’s, and 50’s as post-war America struggled to define and maintain a heterocentric national identity.
By the time Dark Shadows debuted, just past the mid-point of a decade that would prove to be highly transformational for the whole country, gays and lesbians were just starting to be visible to mainstream America. (Two of the series’ cast members, Keith Prentice and Don Briscoe, played in The Boys In the Band on Broadway, a groundbreaking play that showcased gay characters instead of relegating them to supporting status.) And once the series comfortably accepted its nature as a show that featured actual monsters instead of potential ghosts and shadowy figures that lurked so predominantly in the gothic literature that preceded it, Dark Shadows itself became decidedly more queer.
The monsters of Dark Shadows were the heroes. Queer viewers learned what most of the monster films seemed determined to gloss over: that acquiring the power of the vampire/beast granted them the strength to battle their own demons, literal as well as metaphorical. What an empowering notion! In film the monsters were usually dispatched; on Dark Shadows they fought the good fight.
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