Alyssa Piraino
FAIR 336B: Horror Films
December 1st, 2010
“My God, She’s A Boy!”
Cross Dressing in Slasher Films
Introduction: Images of Cross Dressing in United States Cinema
While transgender women and cross dressing are common traits of killers in
popular films such as Psycho (1960), Dressed To Kill (1980) and Silence of the Lambs
(1991), no film quite brings this to surface like Sleepaway Camp (1983). It’s already
clear that slasher films are completely tied up in gender and sex. The following table
from Gender and Survival vs. Death in Slasher Films: A Content Analysis by Gloria
Cowan and Margaret O’Brien at California State University represents this idea in
numbers.
This table makes clear that sexual language, nudity and sex are important factors,
primarily in female’s deaths (Cowan 5). Cross-dressing blurs these lines and scares
audiences precisely because it doesn’t fit into these two categories of male and
female so important and prominent in slasher films. “The world of horror is in any
case one that knows very well that men and women are profoundly different (and
that the former are vastly superior to the latter)” explains Carol J. Clover, author of
Men, Women and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film “But one that at the
same time repeatedly contemplates mutilations and slidings whereby women begin
to look a lot like men (slasher films), men are pressured to become like women
(possession films) and some people are impossible to tell apart (…the pubescent girl
in Sleepaway Camp who turns out to be a boy),” (Clover 15). Even in the Scream
series (1996) the costume worn by the killer is essentially a dress, and Dracula’s
(1931) dark lipstick draws us in. Images of cross-dressing are in every era of
American horror filmmaking because it’s something that American’s still haven’t
directly confronted and are still scared of. For some reason, women dressed up as
men aren’t quite so scary to us as men dressed up as women-why is that? Isn’t
United States culture patriarchal and wary of women reaching men’s status? “It
appears to have less threatening connotations,” says Stephen Whittle, author of Do
Transsexuals Eat Women? at Manchester Metropolitan University, “Perhaps due to
the long and well documented history of women who cross dressed in order to go to
war, or to sea. Many such stories relate the woman's cross dressing as a disguise in
order to search for a husband or lover, so they do not threaten the social norms,”
(Whittle 3). Whittle goes on to explain that especially in the slasher genre, cross
dressing is used as a portrayal of the Freudian Oedipal complex. Usually the Oedipal
complex refers to the cross dressing killer, relating their (usually serial) killing,
cross dressing and sexual relationship with their mother as one interrelated issue.
Perhaps most damaging, explains K.E. Sullivan, author of Ed Gein and The
Transgender Serial Killer “This narrative structure serves to reinforce the
association between murderer/ psychopath and transvestite: [insert
psychosexually confused serial killer here] is not a transvestite who happens to be
a killer- he is a transvestite killer who kills precisely because he is a gender- and
sexual-deviant,” (Sullivan 3).
Film Discussion: Sleepaway Camp
The 1983 film Sleepaway Camp, directed by Robert Hilzik, revolves around sex,
sexuality and gender. When 5-year-old Angela Baker’s twin brother and gay father
are killed in a boating accident, she is sent to live with her apparently transgender,
or at least very masculine, aunt. Eight years later she is sent to summer camp, where
people start dying at the hands of an unknown killer. At the end of the film Angela is
revealed to be her twin brother, Peter. Peter/Angela was forced by his aunt to dress
like a girl causing a killing spree at gendered summer camp. This shocking scene
involves Angela/Peter holding the severed head of a boy, naked with a male body
and prominent phallus. Critics and viewers were unimpressed initially (most gave
the film between two and three stars), but the film has become surprisingly popular
because as one critic suggested, the children who watched the film when it came out
and had nightmares for years are now adults who want to share it with friends and
family. Don’t worry- two sequels follow (IMDB 1).
One of the first scenes at the summer camp involves the camp cook
attempting to molest Angela. Later, one of the victims is raped with a hot curling
iron before being killed. There is no scene involving anything even closely
resembling enjoyable sex. At the same time, every single character seems endlessly
concupiscent, from small boys making rude gestures to the camp counselors who all
seem to be sleeping with one another. The film has many classic slasher film
elements- a shower stabbing scene, a virginal final girl and victims usually killed
directly after or before sexual encounters. But what does it mean that the “final girl”
is not only the killer, she turns out be male-bodied? This bizarre twist leaves
audiences shaken precisely because they have come to expect the classic final girl
that has nothing to hide.
The film revolves around sexuality, especially because of the numerous queer
characters in the film. Foreshadowing events to come, Peter and his twin sister, who
we assume to be Angela, are shown sitting in bed and as the camera revolves around
them, they seem to switch places. The black background and creepy music really
make this scene (Fig 1). Even when it is not explicitly obvious, such as the gay
fathers being shown in bed together, stroking each other’s hair, it is suggested, such
as an older camper, Judy, and a counselor, Meg, that plays a boyfriend figure. (Fig 2)
Fig 1
Fig 2
There are several things that I find very interesting about this film. First, no critic,
scholar or blogger that I have found seems to have commented on it’s obvious issues
intertwined in transgender rights, which is part of the reason I decided to write
about it. Second, the reason why Peter/Angela becomes a killer in the first place is
because he is forced to present himself in a way that he doesn’t identify withobviously he is not actually transgender, or else this film would be a whole lot
happier. However, this subtext of someone being forced to dress as something they
don’t identify with is a transgender rights text if I’ve ever heard one. Thus the film
turns into a bizarre combination of being completely insulting to transgender
people and promoting their rights at the same time.
Cultural Context: Masculinity, Sexual Deviance, the Queer Rights Movement,
and the Myth of Ed Gein
Cultural context for this film can begin with what the film was supposedly about.
Slasher films, and cross dressing in slasher films, can be seen as beginning with
Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960). This film, along with Silence of the Lambs (1991)
and Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) were supposedly based on the real murders
committed by Ed Gein. Much misinformation and false rumors circle the internet
about Gein, but he appears to not have really been a serial killer at all, probably only
deliberately killing one woman, Mary Hogan, in 1954. He was found innocent in
court for one other death that appeared to be an accident. What scares people about
Gein was his grave robberies, and his experimentations with women’s bodies.
Particularly fascinating to filmmakers, apparently, was the fact that he made a suit
for himself out of women’s bodies. However, it’s even unsure as to weather this is a
fact at all- no scholarly sources confirm this (Quinn 1-3). So if events of a “true
story” of a cross dressing serial killer turn out to be twisted or even blatantly
untrue, the cultural context must have come from somewhere else. “Even now it is
difficult to sift fact from fiction,” says K.E. Sullivan, “What seems very clear, however,
is that Gein and the initial fictionalization of his case in the figure of Norman Bates in
Psycho function as larger cultural symbols which reflect contemporary concerns
about masculinity, motherhood and sexual deviance,” (Sullivan 3).
Some critics have suggested that these killers are in fact representing cisgender
women, not the trans community at all. “Thus the cross dressed slasher was
created,” says Whittle, “But as the sub text of both Psycho and The Silence of the
Lambs point out, it is not a true character at all…. It is unfortunate that they are used
as scapegoats, to allow for the female violator…The three films purport to be about
serial killers who are cross dressers - but when viewed at depth, they are about
women. Women are operators at all levels of the text. The cross dresser is merely a
blind to the story,” (Whittle 14). Audiences can’t bear to see women as killers, and
thus using cross-dressing and transgender female characters serves as an antidote
to this problem. One of the most important subtexts of the slasher film is the use of
phallic objects such as knives instead of guns or bombs as killing weapons, meaning
that any time a woman is in the role of a slasher, she essentially has a penis. This is
represented with roles of “women with penises” or cross-dressing or transgender
women.
Transgender rights in the early eighties (and still today) are often tied up with
lesbian, gay and bisexual rights, even though gender and sexuality are two separate
issues. In any case, the late seventies and early eighties saw many gay icons in
American culture, such as a gay regular character in the sitcom Soap (1977-1981)
and Three’s Company (1977-1984), another television show about men who
pretended to be gay to live with female roommates (Phillips 129). In 1979, the
program A Change of Sex aired on the BBC which followed Julia Grant, a pre-op
transgender woman through her transition. It even highlighted the arrogance of
doctors and psychiatrists at the time (Zone 11). “The late 1970s were radically
transforming the traditional notions of not only family and sex but also gender and
sexuality,” says Kendall Phillips, author of Projected Fears (Phillips 130). Sexuality
was also an issue at the forefront of politics at the time. Lesbian and gay activists
represented 77 delegates at the 1980 Democratic National Convention, where
Virginia Apuzzo co-authored the “first gay civil rights party platform plank for a
major political party in the United States,” (lgbtq 1).
At the same time, the late 1970s saw a push from the religious right, and nostalgia
for the conservative, masculine-centered and gendered 1950s permeated many
films and television shows such as American Graffiti (1973). The threat of the
decline of masculinity since the 1950s, and the rise of queer culture, was certainly a
fear of the era of Sleepaway Camp (1983), perhaps explaining the fear of men
dressed like women (Kendall 132).
Conclusion: Horror Films as an Anti-Queer Movement
Unfortunately, many Americans don’t have transgender or cross dressing friends
and family, and get their information about them from television and film. While
these images are improving through television such as RuPaul’s Drag Race, many
characters are still portrayed as overly sexual and/or violent. While projecting fears
of Americans at the time, images of cross dressing and transgender serial killers in
horror and slasher films seriously degrade queer culture by making transgender
identity out to be not only an illness akin to necrophilia, but also a monstrous
disorder causing terrible damage to the person and everyone around them. In
actuality, transgender people experience discrimination, harassment and violence
every day because of these inaccuracies in popular culture.
Works Cited
Amazon. "External Reviews for Sleepaway Camp." Internet Movie Database. Web. 29
Nov. 2010. <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086320/externalreviews>.
Clover, Carol J. Men, Women and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993. Print.
Cowan, Gloria, and Margaret O'Brien. "Gender and survival vs. death in slasher films:
A Content Analysis." Sex Roles 23.3 (1990): n. pag. Google Scholar. Web. 28
Nov.2010.<http://www.springerlink.com/content/k7754366j346887t/expo
rt-citation/
Lgbtq. "Democratic Party (United States)." glbtq: an encyclopedia of gay,
lesbian, bisexual, transgender & queer culture. lgbtq, Inc., 2006. Web. 29
Nov. 2010. <http://www.glbtq.com/social-sciences/
democratic_party.html>.
Phillips, Kendall. Projected Fears: Horror Films and American Culture. Westport:
Praeger Publishers, 2005. Print.
Quinn, Lacie, et al. "Biography of Ed Gein." Louisiana State University. N.p.,n.d. Web.
29 Nov. 2010. <http://www.lsu.edu/faculty/jpullia/
gein.htm>.
"Transgender People and Mental Health." TransgenderZone. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Nov.
2010. <http://www.transgenderzone.com/features/timeline.htm>.
Whittle, Stephen. "Do Transsexuals Eat Women?????" Gendys. Gender.org, 1994.
Web. 28 Nov. 2010. <http://www.gender.org.uk/conf/1994/women.htm>.