After a quick Google search, I was astounded as to how many blogs denounce Sleepaway Camp (1983) as transphobic. I’ve always been conscious of the film’s inherent homophobia – two children touch each other after seeing their father and his partner in bed, suggesting homosexuality as a taught paedophilic behaviour – but I’m less certain of the film’s inherent transphobia. As a cisgender gay man, it’s questionable whether I can rightfully claim what is and isn’t transphobic, but watching Sleepaway Camp, something less regressive resonates within me.
Angela’s father embraces his partner (top) for Angela and her brother to mimic their behaviour (bottom)
I first recall watching Sleepaway Camp at 15 years old. Besides the ending, I hated it. The only thing that carried me through was Angela (Felissa Rose) who I felt desperately empathetic towards. A quiet, tortured soul, I wanted to like her. I certainly felt a proud grimace of hope whenever she opened her mouth to speak. Little did I know, I was Angela; she’s the bullied caricature of every queer kid.
Given, Robert Hiltzik’s screenplay for Sleepaway Camp is cheap and problematic. Any reference to queer identity he openly refers to as “foreshadowing.” But what about those, like me, who see more than foreshadowing? What about those who see their lives projected before them? Upon recent analysis, I noticed a scene which had previously passed me by. Angela is victimised by camp counsellor Judy (Karen Fields), humiliated in front of her peers, saying:
“How come you never take showers when the rest of us do, huh? You queer or somethin’?”
Angela’s look of discomfort and shame is one that I’ve certainly shared, reminding me of my experiences as a 15 year old, when the scene went beyond me. In silence she’s given depth, normalising a queer identification by eliciting empathy.
Judy humiliates Angela (top) for queer audiences to resonate with Angela’s look of discomfort and shame (bottom)
Cut forward to Sleepaway Camp’s concluding gimmick. Moments before, Mel (Mike Kellin), the owner of Camp Arawak, is murdered, having attempted to bring justice to the bullies who have been slain. He is heteropatriarchal authority personified, but as is typical in contemporary horror, authorities are entirely ineffectual. Mel fails to put an end to Angela’s queer reign of terror, with heteropatriarchal order overthrown as Angela shoots an arrow through its neck.
Heteropatriarchal authority is shot dead with an arrow
Following Mel’s death, Angela is not only revealed as Camp Arawak’s self-avenging killer, but transgender. Admittedly, the reveal is an exploitative money shot – Angela stands naked, in which her penis functions as nothing other than spectacle – but, despite accusations, Sleepaway Camp‘s big reveal simultaneously offers more than a shock to the heteronormative senses. Certainly, with heteropatriarchy overthrown, all is not abysmal as it seems.
The Naked Truth: Angela as Queer Monster
“God, she’s a boy,” exclaims an onlooker. The gendered pronouns are confused, and physically mapped onto Angela’s female identity is a penis. Her body becomes a canvas of ambiguity. No matter how queer audiences self-identify, the inability to gender Angela allows them to project their own identities onto her. She can be shaped to their own subjective needs, encoding all variations of gender and sexuality. If before, queer audiences only empathised with Angela, it’s here that she physically becomes them.
Check out the trailer for Sleepaway Camp:
Audiences are left gazing upon Angela’s look. Her look of psychosis, accompanied by orchestral noise, certainly leaves a lasting impression. But what does it mean, exactly, to be creeped out by this? The scene is discomforting, yes – the status quo is never reformed – but does the atmosphere solely trade in the transphobic underpinning of this discomfort?
Angela’s gesture turns monochromatic as the credits start rolling over it, a disruption to hegemony still taking place. Queer audiences are left with an image of antagonism, pain, psychosis. They are left with the impression that everything isn’t okay. With a nihilistic feeling that continues once the credits have rolled, queer audiences are left with an image that confirms their anxieties, identifying with the gesture of a character whose plight is not over.
Angela’s queer reign of terror doesn’t end with the credits, confirming the anxieties of audiences
A decade after 9/11, Sam J. Miller claimed that there are no more queer monsters. In his words:
“. . . the death of the queer monster provides an analogy for the normalisation of queer identity, at the same time as queer activism and queer culture evolved from militant movements against fundamentalism and ignorance into assimilation-minded and professionalised forums for gaining access to two of patriarchy’s most cherished institutions: marriage and the military.” [1]
I’m not meaning to suggest that these representations aren’t problematic. What I am suggesting is that with such problematic representation eradicated, there’s the implication that the demands of queer politics have been met, ‘liberating’ queer individuals and eliminating the need for activism. Meanwhile, we live in a society where queer people are still brutalised, scared for their safety as countries radically revoke LGBTQ+ rights, whether explicitly or implicitly. Whether or not the queer monster is present, queer audiences are hurt. Surely, if queer audiences are attacked without so much as visibility, it’s better to be attacked with a mediated image of queerness. It is our responsibility, in turn, to disarm this image as a representational weapon; to read against the grain and negotiate new meaning.
As Miller asserts, again: “If the queer monster returns . . ., it will come from all the pissed-off, eloquent, subversive faggots lurking in the shadows, the ones that mainstream society really should be afraid of.” [2] However, as Sleepaway Camp‘s Angela puts the ‘trans’ into ‘transgressive,’ it is perhaps more useful for us pissed-off, eloquent, subversive queers to wait no longer, reappropriating a source text that is readily available to us.
Sleepaway Camp is on Blu-ray and streaming on Amazon:
Notes
[1] Sam J. Miller, “Assimilation and the Queer Monster” in Horror after 9/11: World of Fear, Cinema of Terror, eds. Aviva Briefel and Sam J. Miller (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2011), 222.
[2] Ibid., 232.
Daniel Sheppard is an MA Film Studies student at the University of East Anglia, UK. He graduated from the University of Lincoln in September 2017, awarded first-class honours in BA (Hons) Film and Television. His undergraduate dissertation – AIDS and Other Killers: Queer Villainy in 1980s Slasher Cinema – was conferred two graduate awards, and he has since presented work on queer identity and horror cinema at various conferences. Follow him on Twitter @DanielJSheppard.
This take is cold and bland. You recognize you’re not a trans woman, yet somehow take it upon yourself to speak to a demonizing portrait of transgender women.
You hide behind using “queer” as unifying terminology to avoid the cold fact that this isn’t your topic to say anything on. The trope of “girl was really a guy” used for shocks is always transmisogynistic. Trans women being made out as murderers is always transmisogynistic. This film is an example of heavy homophobia and transmisogyny put in place as a horror topic.
This article is foolish, ignorant, and lacks any kind of experience necessary to speak on these kinds of issues with any hope of clarity or truth.
Shame on you for speaking over trans women, and shame on you for allowing trans women in the community to be treated as horror tropes.
I’m with Naomi, I ain’t with this. I kept expecting some more nuance, more substance to this piece, and I never got it. You never even delve into the problematic nature of Aunt Martha’s forced gendering of Peter, which is something that is still very relevant today as a narrative transphobes love to push and wring their hands over. Queer experiences are not all the same, and trans issues are a subset of them that you don’t seem to be well versed in. Next time, kindly leave this to someone who knows what they’re talking about, ie, actual trans folks.