Queer Slashers

Book excerpt: From Norman Bates dressed as "Mother" in Psycho to the rouged cheeks of Leatherface in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, many slasher icons have borne traces of queer and gender nonconforming behavior since the subgenre's very beginning. Queer Slashers presents the first book-length study of how and why the slasher subgenre of horror films appeals to queer audiences. In it, Peter Marra constructs a reparative history of the slasher that affirms its queer lineage extending back as early as the 1920s. It also articulates the queer aspects of the slasher formula that forge an unlikely kinship between queer audiences and these retrograde depictions of queer killers. Marra establishes a queer history and function for the slasher, analyzing several key contemporary "queer slashers"–that is, slashers that are made by queer filmmakers–to better understand how queer artists take up the slasher iconography and put it toward modern queer aims. Featuring analysis of films such as John Waters's Serial Mom, Peaches Christ's All About Evil, and Alain Guiraudie's Stranger by the Lake, Queer Slashers illuminates the queer meanings of slashers, their foundations, and their future possibilities.