Bryan Fuller on New Docuseries Queer for Fear and How Hannibal Is “Explicitly Queer”
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The post Bryan Fuller on New Docuseries Queer for Fear and How Hannibal Is “Explicitly Queer” appeared first on Consequence.
In working on the new AMC documentary series Queer for Fear: The History of Queer Horror, director/executive producer Bryan Fuller (Hannibal) was excited to dig into all the facets of storytelling around this genre — including the way in which queer themes have been hidden within mainstream works for centuries.
“As somebody who grew up used to the codes, and faced obstacles in my own career as a storyteller with queer representation, and having that eradicated or suppressed by studios or other creatives who just felt that the world wasn’t ready for queerness in that regard… I have a great affection for the codes of queerness, because there’s so much about being queer that is already coded,” he tells Consequence over Zoom.
In fact, he says, that affection for codes ended up having a big influence on Hannibal, his 2013-2015 NBC series riff on Hannibal Lecter. “Because I’ve been around for a second and have gone through different phases of social acceptance of queerness, it feels easy. And I kind of like the idea of building to it,” he says. “Even over the course of something like Hannibal, that started out as sort of this bromance and then became something much more explicitly queer — that, I guess, was part of my process of coming to terms with what the audience is capable of processing and/or rejecting, and ultimately landing on a very queer space for those characters and those dynamics.”
As he says, the show didn’t start off that way, and “I would imagine part of the resistance to the explicit representation was perhaps my comfort in codes for the queer audience. Because I know that for me as an audience member, it’s incredibly satisfying when you see through the code and see how The Matrix is working on the spectrum.”
Queer for Fear may surprise viewers who think they understand how LGBTQ+ issues and themes have been a part of horror storytelling over the centuries. Beginning with early literary works by Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker, and Mary Shelley, the series provides an in-depth insight into the earliest days of the genre from a wide range of icons, stars, culture critics, and storytellers from within the queer horror community, including Kimberly Peirce, Renée “Nay” Bever, Mark Gatiss, Lea DeLaria, Jennifer Tilly, Karyn Kusama, Leslye Headland, and Oz Perkins.
You know it’ll be a fun interview when you start off talking about fart jokes, and Fuller didn’t disappoint. Below, transcribed and edited for clarity, he gets into how the production found their sources for the show’s extensive talking-head interviews, the claiming of Alfred Hitchcock as a creator of queer horror, and more about why he’s been so fascinated with queer-coded storytelling — even when the subtext has become much more textual these days.
So I want to start off by asking — with documentaries like this, a big factor is who you get as your talking heads. What was that process like?
You know the process was fascinating because with a lot of these documentaries, people don’t get paid for their time to come in and talk to you for, you know, one-to-four hours depending on the interview. So a lot of people said no. We cast a very wide net and we had a lot of folks pass on it or want to get paid for it. And we’re a small operation, so there were certain people that we just couldn’t accommodate in terms of their schedule. Everybody that you see showing up should be applauded for caring enough about the subject matter to show up and have the conversation. That was wonderful.
Also, there was just the community aspect of talking to one person who says who you should really talk to is this person. The reason Jasmin Savoy Brown is a producer on the show is that we had a conversation with her and she said, “You know, who you need to talk to is this list of 10 people. They’re all amazing women that are queer and are really insightful. And you may not be aware of all of them, but you should be.”
Folks who didn’t necessarily find themselves in a community can now claim the horror community as their own. We had a lot of those experiences, where one person would lead to five more people, or six more people because they just cared and wanted to make sure that there were a lot of voices in the conversation. Because people like Jasmin Savoy Brown cared so much about the subject matter and how it’s starting a conversation and perhaps creating a community.
That’s kind of how we structured the feel of the series, as opposed to kind of a checklist or a Pop-Up Video of facts of queer horror. We really wanted to be a salon-style conversation where you’re at the Algonquin with Dorothy Parker and Kevin Williamson and Don Mancini and Carmen Maria Machado and Jasmin Savoy Brown and, you know, Tawny Cypress and Liv Hewson and Kimberly Pierce and all these fantastic cool queer people — and some who are not queer, like Karyn Kusama, who represent queerness in all of their works, but still wanted to participate in the conversation with us.
It spoke to the strengths of what horror provides medicinally, therapeutically, or what have you, for the people who kind of relate to the survival narratives of what horror brings for the audience. Queer people often relate to horror and go to horror because there is an opportunity to live out the possibility of someone’s survival story. And if Ginny Field can survive Jason Voorhees in Friday the 13th Part 2, then perhaps they can survive their circumstances, however traumatic they may be. I think that’s one of the beautiful medicinal qualities of queer horror or seeing queerness in horror.
What were the conversations like, about the definition of horror as it applies to this project? Because I feel like we all have a definition of horror in our minds, but there are things that perhaps fall outside it by other people’s definitions.
You know, we have a very broad definition of horror. Some people wouldn’t categorize Hitchcock films as horror, more like thrillers, but for our purposes, we’re claiming them as horror. And there’s something about any tale that causes your blood to rush or elicit some sort of physical response… that’s horror.
And there’s something exciting about that, that we can be broader in our definition. As we go into the series and hopefully more seasons of the series, there are interesting conversations about [topics like] “are women in prison movies considered horror?” They’re certainly filled with horrific elements and the tales are centered on women’s experiences that include explicit representations of queer women. So does that count as queer horror? We would argue that yes, it does. I think those parts of the horror continuum that may be on the fringes are still valid, and we’re still considering them horror.
Going back to Hitchcock a little bit, are you expecting any pushback on the idea of claiming him as a creator of queer horror?
Absolutely, and let’s have the conversation because I think there’s undeniable proof that there are queer thematics throughout his work. And he has even said that if he hadn’t met his wife at the right time, that he may have been queer. Also his affinity for these stories and the fact that he hung out in the pansy clubs in the ’20s in London and had dinner parties with all sorts of queers, and it was part of his community — like he hired his friends in these films and old stories about protagonists that had associations with them. I don’t think that’s an accident.
I think there’s something about either his openness or his lack thereof and his very complex relationship with women and his own sexuality that paint a picture of a certain level of queerness that I think is defensible. And we’re all pretty savvy on, on our Hitchcock. So I would enjoy a debate on that subject
For sure. I mean, the idea that one does not necessarily need to be an out creator in order to create queer work is itself a fascinating idea.
Yeah. And I think you see that. For instance, I’ll bring up Karyn Kusama again. Whether it’s Jennifer’s Body and its explicit queerness or her other films that include queer characters, she always represents queerness in some variety in all of her films, and may not identify sexually [that way], but is certainly ideologically. And I think that’s also comforting for the community to know, that we do have those allies that are thinking about us and also see themselves in our stories in a way that is reaffirming.
You just touched on this a little bit, but I really want to talk about the 1920s and ’30s “pansy craze,” just because this is a part of queer history I personally had not been familiar with before now.
Well, I think a lot of people don’t understand the full and evolving dynamics of queer history and the variables of social acceptance of queerness versus rejections of them, and what’s considered polite in society and what’s not. What’s fascinating about the pansy clubs is that there’s gender fuckery in the performances that are confronting our expectations and understandings of gender, and tearing them down in a way that are useful to look at — how we see ourselves through our gender identities, or not.
I think that the pansy craze of the twenties and thirties, a lot of the popularity of those clubs, was because of Prohibition. And it was the only place that a lot of people could get drinks because of these underground clubs. And if they were miserable, unpleasant places, you would have to be a pretty desperate alcoholic to go there, if that’s how you felt about the queer community.
But mostly people went and had a good time and had a drink because they were entertaining. That was something that was happening in major metropolitan cities from London to New York to Los Angeles. And the history of the pansy clubs in Los Angeles being so close to Universal Studios, right outside the gates — it’s hard to dismiss the influence of the popularity of those places, when you look at something like Dwight Frye’s performance in Tod Browning’s Dracula. It’s very, very queer and he is so thirsty for Dracula when he meets him. I don’t know how you can’t see that as a queer narrative.
To wrap things up — after making this show, looking at the past and then thinking about the modern state of horror, and how we’re able to represent these narratives much more explicitly on screen, what do you feel has been your biggest takeaway about analyzing this genre on this level? What do you feel like Queer For Fear taught you?
As somebody who grew up used to the codes, and faced obstacles in my own career as a storyteller with queer representation, and having that eradicated or suppressed by studios or other creatives who just felt that the world wasn’t ready for queerness in that regard… I have a great affection for the codes of queerness, because there’s so much about being queer that is already coded.
If you’re attracted to somebody, you can’t necessarily express it explicitly if you’re in an environment where you don’t know if that person is queer themselves. So it may not be safe to express that attraction and also, within the community, there’s a lot of demographics that aren’t necessarily welcoming or inclusive of other demographics, depending on your skin color, your body type, or your gender expression. There are still queers who put in their profiles, no fats, no fems, no blacks, no Asians. And it’s kind of horrific that we still have that level of bigotry within a marginalized community.
It just kind of goes to the point of people who were abused either break the cycle of abuse or continue the cycle of abuse, and queers are no less guilty of that than any other member of society. So I missed the days of coded expression because I found it more clever and it was an interesting puzzle, for queer audiences who could see it. And if you didn’t see it, you know, fine.
Now that we’re more explicit, it’s great for people who find themselves alone in their worlds and need to see themselves on screen. But I miss the codes because I think there’s a poetry in the code that I find creatively very interesting, and the explicitness of queerness can sometimes feel a little common. Which is great for everybody who needs to see themselves — but for me, I like to interpret the poetry.
Queer for Fear premieres Friday, September 30th on Shudder.
Bryan Fuller on New Docuseries Queer for Fear and How Hannibal Is “Explicitly Queer”
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