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Posted on July 25, 2019

Visible Disability: Talking Freaks (1932)

On today’s episode, we’re heading back to 1932 with Tod Browning’s controversial film, Freaks. The behind the scenes story of a sideshow carnival, Browning cast real-life carnival performers with visible disabilities to mixed reaction. Both celebrated as an example of pre-Code horror and reviled as exploitation, this is, to put it mildly, a divisive film. But why?

We’re exploring depictions of disability in horror in this episode and asking what it is about Freaks, specifically, that audiences find so triggering so stay tuned.

Posted on August 29, 2018

The Gifts of Deafness in Horror

Guest Post

There remains debate as to whether deafness and hearing-impairments should be classified as disabilities. Many, including those within the deaf community and their allies, affirm that deafness is a culture rather than a disability. Still, others affirm that having a hearing impairment imposes disadvantages on an individual. We can think of many ways that being deaf brings challenges in common daily life activities- the ringing of a doorbell, the answering the telephone, the knock of a door. In horror media, deafness may mean missing the screams of loved ones, or not perceiving an audible threat, until the threat is close enough to sense by other means.

Horror characters rely on specific strengths to get through the terror they are experiencing and/ or to survive. In some examples of television and film, deaf characters utilize their hearing impairments as a gift to fend off the horrors while the hearing characters around them remain vulnerable. In these instances, we see a paradigm shift from one in which deaf persons suffer incapacities to one in which their deafness relates to a tenacity in the face of terror, even as they maintain their human vulnerability.

Posted on April 13, 2018

Disability in A Quiet Place: Hearing Not Required

Guest Post

Horror films include a diverse range of communication methods: anything from writing in blood, ghostly TV static, speaking in tongues, intense stares into the soul, opening puzzle boxes, reading from cursed books, dreaming, saying a name five times in a mirror, channeling spirits from beyond, passing around video tapes. The list could go on. There are also more typical methods, of course: screaming, crying, cackling. Among this list of strange and unusual ways to communicate, however, is a noticeable absence. A Quiet Place, directed by John Krasinski, may be the only horror film I’ve seen that so prominently features American Sign Language.

To encourage you to go see this movie, I’ve tried to avoid spoilers, though I do make vague mention of the end. The film starts mid-action, in the near future, the world already unrecognizable. Any remaining humans in this world cower in fear of violent and indestructible (gorgeously-designed) creatures, who appear to have already killed much of the population. The creatures are attracted to sound, which appears to cause them pain. In fact, their heads are comprised of teeth and an oversized, armor-encased ear. Whatever makes a sound is instantly destroyed. The tagline for the film is “silence is survival.”