That we have no one to blame but ourselves. Instead, the film portrays four out of the six villains as queer, thus reinforcing several homophobic views: that closeted gay people are dangerous and will sexualize and prey upon your children, and perhaps most heartbreaking, that the violence being committed against us is perpetuated by our very own. A film like They/Them could have been an opportunity to not only represent them in a mainstream film, but offer the validation of having their very real fears acknowledged with a sympathetic view and empowering allegory. Healthcare is being stripped away, and the constant pressure of being degraded and vilified is adding to an already well established red alert of queer youth suicide rates. It should not be news to anyone that there is a mutual panic and despair amongst the queer community. This has created a violent and destructive witch hunt that is crippling our educational institutions, ripping families apart, and subjecting children to increasing harassment and abuse. With more than 300 proposed legislative bills targeting and tormenting queer youth this year alone, the conservative right has misappropriated the sexually predatory term of “grooming” to apply to all queer people and even those who accept and support them. Did John Logan watch Sleepaway Camp? Has he even seen a horror movie? Witnessing this honeypot trope being deployed in a film like They/Them, it genuinely shocked me to think that in the year 2022 a filmmaker would double down on this dangerous and toxic insult. Yet in They/Them, the gender ambiguous character of Gabriel (hardy har, get it?), seduces fellow bunkmate Stu while luring him into a torture session at the command of evil chaperones. This belief literally gets people killed – all the time. The horror and humor relies on a transphobic view that trans people are lurking in society just waiting for the opportunity to entrap and molest a poor, unsuspecting potential sex partner. The notion of a character’s gender revealed to be a malicious and deceitful betrayal is an extremely common and harmful trope throughout cinema depicted in films such as Dressed To Kill and Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. For some, this allows for Angela’s violent murderous backlash to provide a rallying cry of catharsis. While an ideal, healthy upbringing for a trans child would be allowing them to explore and self identify their gender with their caretaker’s love and support, the emotionally dystopian trauma of being forced to live in opposition to your true self is sadly indicative of far too many people’s actual experience.
Martha Thomas forced her nephew to assume the identity of her now deceased niece. But is Angela really trans? After a freak boating accident, Dr. On its surface, one could interpret the film as mocking the trans experience. The most contentious issue in Sleepaway Camp frames a presumably trans body as a monstrous one. Which is good for him, I guess, but the only thing worse than making a “wrong” choice is making an apathetic one. He just wanted to make a silly, messed up little horror film. Everyone knows the ‘shocking’ end “WTF she has a PENIS?!?! I could forgive all the twisted and perverted murders but this is just one step too far!” Sleepaway Camp was written and directed by cis heterosexual man who has denied any intent on trying to make any kind of social statement. Since its release, the film has been vehemently derided, discussed, and even reclaimed by some within queer horror circles. But there are several baffling choices that make me question how Logan approached this film.įirst and foremost, if you’re setting out to make a queer-positive slasher film at a summer camp, the most obvious thing one could do is learn from the lessons of the notoriously problematic 1983 film, Sleepaway Camp.
I’m genuinely happy that some can see things differently. I am not going to pretend that my interpretation of this film is a definitive one. While the film has a 1.7 score on Letterboxd, 3.3 on IMDB, and 29% on Rotten Tomatoes, the biggest sting has got to be knowing how his film has been almost universally rejected by the queer community. I am giving director John Logan the benefit of the doubt that this is not how he wanted his directorial debut to be received. How did a horror film about the queer experience written and directed by a gay man go so wrong on almost every level to the point that They/Them completely fails as a narrative and insults its audience by totally misreading the moment, dismissing very real and ongoing threats while reinforcing both homophobic and transphobic tropes and beliefs? Clever title, great concept, brilliant casting. “I was rooting for you!” as Tyra Banks would say.
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