An end to monstrosity

There has been a significant shift in the way LGBTQ characters are represented in the horror genre on film and TV since at least 2015, an interval that roughly corresponds with the end of the Obama presidency and the beginning of the Trump era. In this chapter, I am extending and expanding upon the work of Darren Elliott-Smith in Queer Horror Film and Television: Masculinity and Sexuality at the Margins (2016), which is essentially the jumpingoff point for this research, and Harry M. Benshoff in Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality and the Horror Film (1997) (Elliott-Smith’s book picks up more or less where Benshoff ’s leaves off. Moreover, in the seminal The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies (1987), Vito Russo devotes a chapter to the subject of queer horror, and many of his observations are as relevant today as they were when he made them three decades ago. Herein, I will focus primarily on The Walking Dead , Fear the Walking Dead , American Horror Story , the television remake of The Exorcist , and several of their most relevant predecessors to argue that the connection previously made between queer sexuality and monstrous Otherness is finally being severed.