Unspeakable Horror!

Closet and the Werewolf:

A Queer Reading of Identity, Race, and Otherness in Michael Jackson’s Thriller

For me, any discussion of queer horror must begin with Michael Jackson’s Thriller, directed by John Landis, the site where queer anxiety first formed an association with the werewolves and zombies in my imagination. Whether classified as a music video or a short film, Thriller was the first horror movie that I watched, and the first horror movie I loved, introducing me to my two favorite sub-genres: the werewolf film and the zombie film. It slipped under parental supervision through the cable box, and I furtively consumed multiple viewings. As a rule, my father, a Christian Reformed minister, wouldn’t let me watch horror films; I remember begging my mother to let me rent Landis’ An American Werewolf in London at the video store, but to no avail. I was ten-years-old the year Thriller came out, at the onset of adolescent identity crisis and puberty. Already, the mystery of Michael Jackson’s sexuality caused a great deal of schoolyard anxiety (an ongoing mystery without an absence of recent public spectacle). I remember discussing the controversy with boyhood friends at recess, the same setting for frequent sessions of “Smear the Queer” with a Nerf football and a crowd of boys who dog-pile on the triumphant/unfortunate boy who manages to catch the ball. Michael Jackson’s high-pitched voice and effeminate style, his lovely eyes and sleek nose, his skinny nimble limbs, all seemed to signify volatile queer otherness. When Thriller first played on MTV, Michael Jackson rose in my imagination to a true hero/superstar status, and I rose to the role of the fan. The clear portrayal of a heterosexual love interest alleviated my anxiety about the mystery of Michael Jackson’s sexuality, which mirrored the anxiety over my own emerging sexuality; the werewolf transformation and zombie dance fascinated me; the werewolf, the zombie horde, and queer anxiety were wedded in my imagination.

In the body of folklore, literary fairy tales, and the genre of the horror film, wolfish bestiality signifies a profound anxiety concerning male sexuality. Traditional versions of Little Red Riding Hood portray a cross-dressing sexual carnivore. The Big Bad Wolf of folklore is an unredeemable wolfish other. [1] However, filmic incarnations like Lon Chaney’s iconic 1941 Wolf Man and director John Landis’ 1981 An American Werewolf in London present a werewolf protagonist torn between the human and the bestial, a sympathetic protagonist, despite the unforgiving conclusion when protagonist and wolf must be destroyed for the sake of ideological normality, a predictable pattern in the werewolf film. The anguish of the protagonist presents a dualistic model that mirrors the struggle of closeted sexual identity. As a queer viewer of horror films, I identified with these tortured protagonists and the “closet” of the werewolf.

The mutability of the werewolf, torn between ideological heterosexual normality, and bestial, sexualized otherness becomes a powerful metaphor for the conflict of the closet in an aggressively homophobic society. The violence and bestiality associated with the werewolf follows a larger pattern in Hollywood horror films of alienating otherness, including ethnic and political otherness. [2] Internalizing the metaphor of the werewolf as a signifier for closeted gay male sexuality exists in the context of a society that proliferates the horrors of homophobia and homosexual panic. [3] Michael Jackson’s 1983 “Thriller,” directed by John Landis, portrays a werewolf that attempts to “come out” to his girlfriend before transforming into a werewolf. Before concluding his confession about being different from other boys, he transforms into a horrific beast, leaving a gap of meaning that enables the queer viewer to attach meaning to the signifier of the werewolf.

There are multiple possibilities of what the signifier of the werewolf, and the conflict of the werewolf’s duality, might signify. Stephen King analyzes the archetype of the werewolf in Danse Macabre, arguing that the duality of the werewolf represents the split between lofty intellect and baser, bestial desires in humanity. In a recent film with explicit Little Red Riding Hood subtext entitled The Woodsman, named after the character that kills the wolf at the end of the fairytale, Kevin Bacon portrays a sex offender struggling with a “wolfish” desire to molest adolescent girls. Bellin portrays a wide range of examples that illustrate how monstrocity in film functions to alienate, and this certainly includes the ubiquitous symbol of the werewolf. The werewolf in Thriller might also represent anxiety over racial identity in a violently racist society. The werewolf, like Melville’s White Whale, is a multi-faceted symbol with many possibilities for interpretation, including the anxieties of puberty in teen werewolf movies such as I Was a Teenage Werewolf.

This “coming out” as a werewolf, helping to fuse the open signifier of the werewolf’s duality with the double-life of the closet, appears in numerous films featuring werewolves and other incarnations of bestial otherness, [4] including Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” The internalized association between the queer viewer and the werewolf, [5] followed by the inevitable destruction of the wolf is profoundly negative and reflective of an aggressively homophobic society. However, like the tradition of retelling fairy tales to respond to and overturn ideological messages, the metaphors of the horror film are also being retold to overturn negative messages about queer otherness.

The portrayal of the werewolf in Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” and other works featuring pop-culture werewolves, present a dualistic conflict between bestial otherness and ideological normality, ranging from the horrific to the humorous, and reflecting the horror of both societal and internalized homophobia, as well as alienation of difference. However, films like “Thriller” overturn the negative messages of the horror genre through self-reflexivity, pastiche, and an alternate conclusion.

During the formation of identity and emerging queer awareness of adolescence, viewing from within the shadow-world of the closet involves an unspoken hunger for identification on the screen. The closet, like premature burial, requires a precarious and dangerous escape. As an adolescent in the aggressively homophobic 1980’s, coming out of the closet was fraught with panic, alienation, denial, and the pressures of societal conformity. Considering the role of the horror film, like the horror urban legend, [6] as an expression of societal and sexual anxieties, it is no wonder that I viewed my own struggles with the closet in the fantastic transformations, horrific possessions, and lustful perversions of the horror film genre.

Universal’s 1941 Wolf Man presents a model for the werewolf film, complete with Little Red Riding Hood allusions and subtext. Larry Talbot is the prodigal son, returning after many years in America to assume his patriarchal birthright and hereditary estate. The banality of Larry’s character is complicated by his aggressive sexuality, spying on a woman through a telescope, and convincing her to go out with him, despite the fact that she is engaged to another. In this sense, Larry is immediately linked with the wolf as a metaphor for sexual aggression and anxiety. The wolf is immediately present through the subtext of Little Red Riding Hood which is presented in the initial meeting with Larry and his love interest, but the actual curse of the werewolf is introduced into the community through the gypsy caravan, aligning the curse with ethnic otherness, personified by the iconic Bela Lugosi, whose Dracula defines monstrous otherness in the horror genre. When the gypsy portrayed by Lugosi transforms into the wolf, he attacks a young woman in the forest, and Larry intervenes to rescue her. The werewolf bites Larry and the curse is passed to him.

The werewolf folkore within the film emphasizes that the curse may be visited upon a normal male: “ Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night, may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright.” No matter how the viewer interprets the open signifier of the werewolf in this film, whether it represents the transgression of Larry’s aggressive pursuit of an engaged woman, the xenophobic paranoia associated with aligning the werewolf curse with the gypsies, lycanthropy as a symptom of mental illness as suggested by the doctor in the film, or the emergence of sexualities not defined by the narrow categories of ideological normality, the werewolf represents an otherness that must be destroyed. Larry’s various attempts to seek help from the authority figures in the film results only in patronizing consolation that questions Larry’s sanity and points toward a psychiatric solution to the problem. Benshoff notes that the pattern in horror films to turn toward the psychiatric institutions for the restoration of normality coincides with pathologizing of homosexuality at this point in history. Despite the doctor’s best attempts, Larry’s own father must kill the werewolf in order to restore order at the conclusion of the film.

“Thriller” overturns this pattern of the werewolf film exemplified by Wolf Man and followed by Landis’s full-length werewolf film, An American Werewolf in London. “Thriller” opens with Michael Jackson’s character and his nameless love interest, played by Ola Ray, traveling down a moonlit lane, evoking the milieu of urban legends like “The Hook” and “The Boyfriend’s Death.” [7] When they run out of gas, Michael’s nameless love interest asks, “Now what?” presuming that the empty tank is merely a ploy for “parking,” also subtly suggesting that the girl would participate willingly. However, when they cut to the couple walking down the lane, she apologizes for assuming Michael had prurient intent, but they did literally run out of gas. “Thriller,” a compact 13 minutes in length, omits the back-story that leads to the transformation into the werewolf, relying on the audience’s cultural awareness of the werewolf myth as defined by the tradition of Hollywood horror films. While defending a damsel in distress, Larry Talbot receives the bite from the werewolf; however, for Michael, there is no back-story to provide origin for the curse. Instead, his wolfishness springs forward at the appearance of the full moon, which coincides with his “coming out” as a werewolf. The following is a transcript from the film:

Michael: Can I ask you something?

Ola: What?

Michael: You know I like you, don't you?

Ola: Yes...

Michael: And I hope you like me the way I like you...

Ola: Yes...

Michael: So I was wondering if... you would be my girl...

Ola: Oh Michael!

Michael: There's something I've got to tell you.

Ola: Yes Michael?

Michael: I'm not like other guys.

Ola: Of course you're not. That's why I love you.

Michael: No I mean I'm different.

Ola: What are you talking about?

Instead of receiving a specific response to this question, the “difference” Michael refers to manifests itself in the horrific transformation into the werewolf.

The transformation and subsequent chase through the forest are classic horror movie fare. The werewolf, although sympathetic as the sweet-voiced Michael earlier in the scene, is the evil monster of the classic horror tradition. However, as the werewolf catches up with its prey and approaches with claws raised, something very peculiar happens, the scene cuts to a frame narrative. Suddenly, we see Michael and Ola sitting and watching a film in a movie theater. It is the same Michael and Ola from the previous scene, but they are now dressed in contemporary fashion for the eighties, as opposed to the fifties outfits from the previous film. This signifies several things in the self-reflexive play of the short film. The previous werewolf scene, complete with the confession of “difference,” took place within the mis-en-scene of the fifties horror films, the previous generation with its traditions of alienating otherness.

The first thing we see in this frame narrative is the grin on Michael’s face as he obnoxiously chomps on his popcorn. The rest of the moviegoers flinch and cover their eyes at what the watch on the screen, but what the audience of the video can’t see: the werewolf killing and eating Ola, which Michael mirrors in the gleeful chomping of his popcorn. The perverseness of smiling and chomping the popcorn characterizes this new character portrayed by Michael, different than the earnest confessor of difference in the werewolf film-within-a-film. This new Michael character offers a playfulness that overturns the ideological seriousness of the classic horror films. Similarly, audiences can also overturn the seriousness of ideological horror films through the recognition of “camp,” which, at least in part, playfully deconstructs and laughs at what is intended to be serious or scary in the original context. Camp is essentially an act of the viewer: re-contextualizing a serious horror film in the context of the absurd, diffusing any offensive or damaging negative messages about difference, fueled by overdramatic acting and out-of-date special effects and sensibilities. The frame jump in Thriller performs a similar action on the horror genre. What makes the jump to a new frame narrative especially innovative is the use of the same actors. The Michael and Ola in the 50’s werewolf movie are indistinguishable from the Michael and Ola watching the film in the theater, with the exceptions of a wardrobe shift and the trickster-like playfulness of the 80’s Michael character.

Ola, too frightened by viewing her own slaughter in the film-within-a-film, walks out of the theater. Michael follows, smiling and teasing, chastising her with the statement, “It’s only a movie,” a statement that parallels the self-reflexivity of the frame narrative. Ola replies, “It’s not funny.” As Ola walks away from the movie theater and proceeds down a desolate and creepy urban street, a stark contrast to the forest setting within the frame of the werewolf movie, Michael attempts to make up with her by offering a playful and self-referential homage to the pleasure of viewing horror film.

As Ola walks down the street, Michael dances around her. At first, his song, like the previous frame, seems to take place within a horror film as he sings, “It’s close to midnight and something evil’s lurking in the dark.” In the second verse of the song, he says, “You hear the door slam and realize there’s nowhere left to run,” which foretells the conclusion, which occurs in the abandoned house. In the third stanza, there is a jump similar to the jump from the 50’s werewolf film to the 80’s movie theater. At the beginning of the verse, he sings, “They’re out to get you, there’s demons closing in on every side/ The will possess you unless you change the number on your dial / Now is the time for you and I to cuddle close together/ All thru the night I’ll save you from the terror on the screen.” This verse shows that the horrific events are taking place on a television screen, and the monster on the screen can be evaded by turning the dial. The playful uncertainty whether or not the characters are in a horror movie or merely watching a horror movie is paralleled by the lyrics in the song.

However, the frame narrative is also revealed to be a horror film when a macabre voiceover “rap” from Vincent Price accompanies the images of multiple zombies rising from their graves.

The horror of the zombie represents a different societal anxiety than the bestial duality of the werewolf. Unlike the werewolf’s wild abandon to gratify bestial desires, the zombie represents the complete loss of identity and individuality in a mindless mob. While the werewolf film finds its roots in the 1941 Wolf Man, the zombie film progenitor is George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, a film that offers an ensemble cast, but the last remaining survivor is the character of Ben played by African American actor Duane Jones. The zombie horde in this film, on one level, represents a mass of overwhelming whiteness. In subsequent zombie films, the satire underlying the zombie horde takes different forms: in Dawn of the Dead, the mindless consumerism of shopping malls, but the original 1968 film speaks to the anxiety of unrest. Despite the variations of the satire, the zombie horde represents mindless conformity. Unlike the Cold War dread of film like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which focuses on xenophobic paranoia of threats from the outside, this zombie film specifically represents the threat of assimilation from within American culture. For the queer viewer, the terror of the zombie horde is not to be hunted down by the pack of villagers with torches, but to be assimilated into mainstream society.

When Michael and Ola encounter the zombie horde, Michael is drawn in and immediately becomes a member of the living dead, complete with tattered clothing and the initial stages of decomposition. Michael leads the undead in a zombie dance while using the choppy motions of the undead. When it’s time for the chorus, all signs of the undead vanish, and Michael becomes the beautiful young man from the previous scene, spinning around and singing. Instead of being assimilated, he leads them in a new round of choreography and singing, demonstrating that Michael’s character is in control of the forces of anxiety that fuel the horror film.

Unlike the predominant whiteness of the zombie horde in Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, the race of the zombies in Thriller are indistinguishable through the makeup. Like the werewolf, the zombie horde also acts as an open signifier for a wide range of societal and political anxieties. Generally speaking, I believe the zombie horde represents the erasure of unique difference in the assimilation of mainstream society. In any event, Thriller overturns the hopelessness and despair of Night of the Living Dead; the character of Ben is mistaken for a zombie at the end and burned along with the rest of the zombies. In this short film, Michael is clearly in control of the zombie horde, shifting back and forth, and leading their choreography. However, Ola does not seem to realize this. Similarly, she does not see the humor in the horror film that Michael finds enjoyment in.

Once the chorus of the song concludes, the joke on Ola continues as Michael now leads the zombie horde as they menace and pursue Ola who runs into an abandoned house for shelter, similar to the opening of Night of the Living Dead when Barbara seeks shelter in the farm house. Inside the house, Ola is trapped. Quickly, the zombie horde breaks into the house through the boarded windows and up through the floor. The leader of the horde, an undead Michael, smashes through the door with superhuman strength. The group of zombies close in, and there is another leap to a different reality. Like the jump from the werewolf scene to the movie theatre, suddenly the room is transformed from an abandoned house with sheets across the furniture to a cozy living room. The zombie horde vanishes, with the exception of Michael, but he is transformed back into his pre-zombie self with all the tatters on his red leather jacket magically mended. The switch from the zombie film reality to this new safe reality leaves Ola in a state of disorientation for only a moment. Michael asks, “What’s the problem.” Stunned, Ola says nothing, and then Michael says he will take her home. The denouement of the short film occurs when Michael turns to the camera. He reveals to the audience the same cat-like eyes from the werewolf scene; simultaneously, the audience hears wicked laughter while Michel shows a smile of perverse glee.

The “difference” that Michael speaks about in the first scene of the film surfaces again here at the conclusion, indicating that he still harbors this secret difference and the shame shown by the character in the first scene is replaced by a perverse smile and wild laughter. The destruction of the werewolf in the traditional narrative pattern is transformed into an inside joke between the audience and Michael.

Ultimately, the character of Michael is in control throughout the entire film. He confesses he is different with a look of shame, and appears to be unable to control his transformation into the ravenous wolf creature, but at the moment of ultimate terror for Ola the scene jumps to the frame narrative, and Michael is gleefully chomping on the popcorn. The themes of loss of self-control and identity in the traditional narratives of the zombie film and werewolf film are overturned here. Michael possesses a difference that enables him to shift back and forth between these various states of monstrosity as if they were only masks, all for the sake of needlessly scaring the girl and sharing an inside joke with the audience.

Notes

[1] Catherine Orenstein, in her book Little Red Riding Hood Uncloaked, presents an extensive argument connecting the wolf in the fairytale to the folklore of the werewolf.

[2] For book-length analysis on this subject, see Joshua David Bellin’s Framing Monsters: Fantasy Film and Social Alienation and Harry M. Benshoff’s Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality and the Horror Film.

[3] Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s Epistemology of the Closet provides a theoretical foundation and forumulation of the pervasive concept of “The Closet” that I am using in this writing.

[4] Instances of werewolves “coming out of the closet” as werewolves includes Michael J. Fox’s Teen Wolf.

[5] Queer reading of popular culture raises the conflict between reader response, authorial intent, the auteur theory of film criticism, and the true meaning of a text. My analysis of the horror genre relies on the foundation of the “I” and relative subjective truth of reader response. In this essay I will explore how I found identification and self-knowledge in the symbolism and mythology of the iconic and ubiquitous werewolf. Assumptions about the inner life of a general “queer viewer” are frequently based on myself, and I’m not intending to portray any sort of universal queer experience.

[6] See Jan Harold Brunvand’s introduction to the study of urban legends in The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends & Their Meanings. His analysis concerning the relationship between horror urban legends, which provide the prototypes for all of the slasher movies, and societal anxieties is foundational for my approach to horror movie analysis. Also, Carol Clover provides an interesting analysis of plot structure in slasher films, linking them to the structural patterns found in folklore.

[7] See Brunvand’s The Vanishing Hitchhiker.