Queer Slashers
About This Book
Queer Slashers is the first book-length study of why slasher films appeal to queer audiences. Peter Marra starts from the observation that many slasher icons have carried traces of queer or gender nonconforming behavior since the genre began, from Norman Bates dressed as "Mother" in Psycho to the rouged cheeks of Leatherface in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Marra builds a reparative history of the slasher that traces its queer lineage back as far as the 1920s. He also identifies the queer elements of the slasher formula, which help explain the unlikely kinship between queer viewers and a genre that so often depicts queer killers in retrograde ways. Alongside this history, he analyzes a number of contemporary "queer slashers," meaning slashers made by queer filmmakers, to show how queer artists use the genre's iconography for modern queer purposes. The films discussed include John Waters's Serial Mom, Peaches Christ's All About Evil, and Stranger by the Lake. Together, the chapters set out the queer meanings of slashers, their foundations, and where they might go next.
ISBN: 9780253071965
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