[Editor’s Note: This is Part 1 in a four-part series on disability and horror.]
“Watching horror films is a disabling experience,” Angela M. Smith, Associate Professor of English and Gender Studies for the University of Utah and author of the book “Hideous Progeny: Disability, Eugenics, and Classic Horror Cinema,” said. “It’s a controlled encounter with discomfort, with the vulnerability of our minds and bodies to images and suggestions that opens us to unwilled transformations.”
The horror film revels in the world of deformity and grotesqueness and, to a disabled viewer, that can be confusing in how relatable it is. For many, to be disabled is also to look different, so how does a person with a disability approach the horror genre when the presented thing to fear is themselves?
Smith said people weren’t ready for “Freaks” in the 1930s, and she’s absolutely correct. “Freaks,” for better and worse, remains one of the only U.S. features to have a predominately disabled...
“Watching horror films is a disabling experience,” Angela M. Smith, Associate Professor of English and Gender Studies for the University of Utah and author of the book “Hideous Progeny: Disability, Eugenics, and Classic Horror Cinema,” said. “It’s a controlled encounter with discomfort, with the vulnerability of our minds and bodies to images and suggestions that opens us to unwilled transformations.”
The horror film revels in the world of deformity and grotesqueness and, to a disabled viewer, that can be confusing in how relatable it is. For many, to be disabled is also to look different, so how does a person with a disability approach the horror genre when the presented thing to fear is themselves?
Smith said people weren’t ready for “Freaks” in the 1930s, and she’s absolutely correct. “Freaks,” for better and worse, remains one of the only U.S. features to have a predominately disabled...
- 10/6/2020
- by Kristen Lopez
- Indiewire
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