It Came from the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror

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Because these aren’t really about the movies themselves you can still appreciate the essay without having watched it. Manages to strike the balance between in-depth, heartfelt discussions of queer identity and the coming-of-age stories of people across the spectrum with a sense of humour and lightness of touch. There’s a moment in this book that’ll resonate with every single reader: undead, queer, or otherwise. Joe Vallese is editor of It Came From The Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror and co-editor of the anthology What’s Your Exit?

But I would say that if you are planning on watching any of the movies that it’s a good idea to do it beforehand since they discuss a lot of spoilers. It Came from the Closet collects twenty-five takes on twenty-five horror films that make us cringe, crack up, turn away and turn back again—each piece lavishly queer in its intelligence, vulnerability, and wit. Whip-smart, honest, and hilarious… gore aficionados and reads-the-Wiki-plot-summary scaredy-cats alike will find something haunting to love within its pages. The movie inclusion was more like a gimmick so this wouldn't be 'just another nonfiction queer memoir essay collection' rather than an an actual component when it came to writing the essays, at least the ones I read. It Came From the Closet is at times beautiful, at times funny, at times gorgeously weird and baroque, and always as off-kilter brilliant as the genre, and queerness, itself.

Other standouts included: Carmen Maria Machado’s convincing reclamation of Jennifer’s Body for queer audiences; an essay on The Blob that morphed into a striking meditation on gendered bodies; an exploration of the remake of Candyman that probed connections between being gay, Blackness and San Francisco’s racist housing policies; a look at the unexpectedly queer erotics underpinning Spielberg’s Jaws; a lovingly nostalgic examination of the lesbian subtext of Hitchcock’s The Birds; slasher movies, the Aids crisis and the demonization of gay men; and an unusual take on Eyes without a Face and being trans. All in all — nie odradzam; wręcz przeciwnie, jeśli ktoś, tak jak ja, kocha horrory, to na pewno znajdzie tu sporo dla siebie. His writing has also been listed as notable in The Best American Essays , and he is an active member of the National Book Critics Circle. She is the author of Blood Box , winner of the Black River Editor's Choice Award, and the microchap Wolf Inventory . An impressively diverse array of queer voices contributes their opinions on how and why particular horror movies made a personal and indelible impression on them.

Jones also praised the essays for not being overly analytical, saying "[t]hese are personal essays, not queer theory papers. Still, viewers often remain tasked with reading themselves into beloved films, seeking out characters and set pieces that speak to, mirror, and parallel the unique ways queerness encounters the world.That being said, there's one essay in particular I was more than just a little uncomfortable with and its presence in the collection makes it hard for me to recommend it. Bardzo byłam podekscytowana czytaniem jak zaczynałam, a ostatecznie mnie strasznie momentami męczyła. HOWEVER, I was completely enthralled by the personal details of his writing, his marriage to a woman while struggling with his attraction to men, but even more, his blossoming secret interest in gaining weight and other men gaining weight. She has received support from Sundress Academy for the Arts, McGill University, the New York Live Ideas Fest, the Blue Mountain Center for the Arts, and the 2019 CUNY Graduate Center Adjunct Incubator Grant. I just made it a point to watch ALL of the films shared in this collection BEFORE reading the essays based on them.

But, when I finally did get into horror in high school, I never realized I was so attracted to it because horror itself explores Otherness. Though there is not a unique definition universally agreed upon, because what might be horrific to some people, might not be to others, it seems that the themes explored in this genre are widely appealing to the queer community. Some essays tend more towards personal reflection and memoir, others more towards analysis of various films through a queer lens; some move into lyrical "creative nonfiction" territory and others take their tone from the humanities graduate student essay or the chatty, freewheeling blog post.Others discuss how horror allowed them to escape from the real horrors of life, something I can definitely relate to.

Both Ways (Jennifer's Body)" by Carmen Maria Machado, "My Hand on the Glass (Hereditary)" by Bruce Owens Grimm, "The Wolf Man's Daughter (The Wolf Man)" by Tosha R. His creative and critical work has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books , Chicago Review of Books , Harvard Review , Colorado Review , Electric Literature , and elsewhere. A really terrific collection of essays by a great selection and variety of different authors—both fiction authors, poets, and essayists—about the intersection between queer studies and queer identity and horror movies.if you’re looking for a diverse theorization about queer appreciation for the horror (film) genre, look no further! He is currently clinical associate professor in the Expository Writing Program at New York University, and previously served as site director and faculty for the Bard Prison Initiative. His creative and pop culture writing appears in Bomb , VICE, Backstage, PopMatters, Southeast Review , North American Review , Narrative Northeast , VIA: Voices in Italian-Americana , among others.