Episode 004: Disability in Slashers

AnDread is joined by his friends and fellow horror hounds Joshua Anderson and Matthew Connolly to discuss the prominence of disability in slasher films in classics such as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Halloween, and Friday the 13^th. Plus AnDread recites his poem “Unmasked” and reviews of the Land of the Creeps podcast and the poetry collection I Am Not Your Final Girl by Claire C. Holland.

1. Intro
2. Slashers Overview  11:00
   • Definition: a killer picking off unsuspecting victims one by one, usually young, attractive teens or twenty-somethings, indulging in sex and drugs
   • Conventions:
     • Trauma motivates the killer, creating an implicit mental illness aspect (influence of Freudian psychology and psychoanalysis)
     • Killer often has some deformity as well
     • Killer wears a mask to hide deformity and/or identity
     • Ritualistic aspect: connected to a particular place, holidays or anniversaries
     • Final Girl, often virginal and nondisabled female protagonist who survives and defeats the killer, at least until the sequel – coined by Carol J. Clover in Men, Women, and Chainsaws
     • Stylistic devices: point-of-view shots of what the killer sees, creative staging of death scenes and gore effects
     • Misogyny in slashers
     • Formulaic nature of slashers – the “light” quality as the “junk food” of horror films?
     • Mythic aspect – taps into traditions, desires for sex and fears of death, forces everyone to confront mortality
3. Disability in Slashers Discussion  40:30
   • The “demonic cripple” trope: disability is linked with violence and evil; originally coined by Leonard Kriegel to describe Shakespeare’s Richard III
   • Why is disability so prominent in slashers?
     • Equation of physical/mental traits with moral failings
     • Frankenstein’s monster as precursor to disabled slasher villain
     • Disability as a way to make a human killer monstrous
   • Interesting examples/twists on disability in slashers
     • Tucker and Dale vs. Evil – interpretation itself becomes the “monster”
     • Dr. Loomis in Halloween – similar to Ahab, example of a “demonic cripple” who is not the villain?
     • Psycho and distorted perception of Norma Bates through Norman’s perspective
     • Candyman – disability forced upon the villain by others – disablement creates trauma
     • My Bloody Valentine
     • Franklin in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre as a “good” representation of disability in horror (see Katelyn Nelson’s “5 Great Representations of the Disabled in Horror Films”) and the lack of imagining disability in rural environments
   • AnDread’s reading of his poem “Unmasked”
   • Masks, masculinity, and disability in slashers
4. Psycho Sounds  2:00:15
   • Land of the Creeps
   • Facebook: LOTC Facebook Group
   • Twitter: @LandoftheCreeps
   • Instagram: landofthecreeps
   • Voicemail: 1-804-569-5682
5. Freaky Fic  2:04:20
   • Claire C. Holland, I Am Not Your Final Girl. GlassPoet Press, 2018.
6. Plugs and Wrap-Up  2:16:44
   • freaksandpsychospodcast.com
   • freaksandpsychospodcast@gmail.com
   • voicemail: 614-721-1011
   • Twitter: @FreaksPsychos and @AnDreadtheBlind
   • Facebook: facebook.com/groups/freaksandpsychos/
   • Letterboxd: Andread and Disability in Horror
   • Dark Mark, creator of the show’s intro and outro music
     • Twitter: @mark_longfield
     • Letterboxd: Darkmark

Check out the work of Stephen Graham Jones, a horror writer who has covered slashers, werewolves, and much more in his fiction. Josh is a big fan of his stuff and is the secretary of the Stephen Graham Jones Society.

Here are Josh’s recent publications:

Anderson, Joshua T. “Playing Dead.” Bourbon Penn, no. 14, Sep. 2017.

—. “Hard Water.” North American Review, vol. 305, no. 2-3, summer/fall 2020.

—. “Mongrel Transmotion: The Werewolf and the Were/Wear/Where-West in Stephen Graham Jones’s Mongrels.” Weird Westerns: Race, Gender, Genre, edited by Kerry Fine, et al., University of Nebraska Press, 2020.

Here are the two lists about great and poor representations of disability in horror referenced in the episode:

Nelson, Katelyn. “5 Great Representations of the Disabled in Horror Films.” Killer Horror Critic, 20 Jul. 2020.

—. 5 Poor Representations of the Disabled in Horror Films. Killer Horror Critic, 22 Jul. 2020.