Abstract
This paper theorises the emergence of the AIDS monster as a critical category that is constructed in relation to the discriminatory metaphoric language of the AIDS crisis. This language reflects into societal reality, signified by the abjection of so-called ‘at-risk’ groups. The liberatory potential of the AIDS monster will be traced by reading the films Hellraiser (1987) and Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988) through the lens of the Posthuman Gothic (Bolton 2014). It will be argued that instead of representing a cautionary tale about the dangers of sanctioned desires, the films function as tales of queer survival told in the negative aesthetic conventions of the genre. Not only does this reading open up possibilities for queer self-determination in the wake of crises and oppression, but also makes it possible to trace the influence of queer artists in art history, where they are time and again overlooked as such.
Keywords: Hellraiser, Posthuman Gothic, HIV/AIDS, monster, sadomasochism, transformation, body fortress, metaphoric language, infection paranoia, queer monstrosity
Introduction
In her influential essay collection Illness and its Metaphors and AIDS and its Metaphors (1988), Susan Sontag describes how AIDS transcends its biological boundaries as an actor within society. According to her, it inscribes itself into processes of sense-making, becoming charged with significance through metaphorical attributions when interacting with other agents (Sontag 1988: 93). This means that its influence on society (society here denoting a machine for the purpose of producing identity) is determined not only through epidemiological and etiological qualities but also by the metaphors through which it is conceptualised. As language can thus be understood as that which begets identity, the metaphors used in context of the AIDS crisis aim to promote a distinction between those who supposedly have no relation to the virus at all and those identities intrinsically tied to it. These metaphorical attributions then ultimately dictate the steps a general, or generalised, society is willing to take in order to protect itself from being infiltrated by those who become identified as so-called ‘at-risk’ groups.
The confrontation of general society with AIDS can best be understood by focusing on the specific metaphor of the body – that of the individual as well as the body politic which, during the AIDS crisis, are linked together through a common goal, that is, keeping viral agents from crossing a pre-defined border. In relation to the individual body, viral agents here denote infected blood products that transgress the border of the skin. On the level of the body politic, the term relates to individuals associated with the virus, the aforementioned ‘at-risk’ groups, that are imagined to cross into said generalised society. Both conceptions of the body thus become fortified – a body fortress (Sontag 1988: 96-97). For the individual, the imagination of skin-as-border leads to the performance of rituals signifying cleanliness, as seen with officers wearing gauze masks when entering the house of a person infected (Sontag 1988: 162) or the avoidance of public washrooms out of fear of contracting HIV. In the context of the body politic, understanding the border in relation to identity categories allows the identification of an in-group and leads to the exclusion of people that are imagined as linked to characteristics supposedly endorsing viral transmission. Gay and bisexual men, as well as people of colour, poor people, migrants, and users of intravenous drugs, are conceptualised as dangerous, as they supposedly are at a higher risk of infection and, thus, viral transmission. In order to protect society then, these already marginalised communities become further ostracised. This dehumanisation is necessary for general society, I argue, for legitimising drastic and discriminating acts of biopower – the expansion of power into what Foucault calls ‘anatomo-politics of the human body’, regulating a population’s corporeal possibilities (Cisney & Morar 2015: 4). In this way, a system is upheld that supposedly provides safety against infection and, furthermore, identification with the ostracised. What follows are rigorous border controls, the ban on gay bathing houses in San Francisco and New York (Trout 2021), and the call for ‘concentrating’ infected individuals in Germany (Entartung ausdünnen 1987), as well as Clause 28 under the Thatcher Government in the UK (Whittaker 2022: 72).
Identities imagined as the other to the hegemonic conception of an in-group are treated as antagonistic to general society or, in the words of Sontag, as ‘an infectious agent that comes from the outside. [...] This is the language of political paranoia, with its characteristic distrust of a pluralistic world’ (Sontag 1988: 105-106). In this sense, ‘at-risk’ groups can also be conceptualised as ‘red agents’ in relation to the red scare of the Cold War. They are envisioned to penetrate the outer layer of the body politic, comparable to communist ideologues infiltrating parliaments and universities at the same time as mirroring polluted blood products transgressing the individual body.
Alien Sex Fiends
In a state of constant infection paranoia, queer desires become unthinkable due to their association not only with individual death but also their potential for the disintegration of this described hegemonic identity, defining itself in relation to its others. To be accepted by general society means following its rules or being perceived as hellbent on its destruction. Thinking this relation through Foucault, queer sexuality can be understood in terms of an ‘ars sexualis’ – an undirected lust principle based on the sexual revolution past the 1960s (Whittaker 2022: 74), that becomes dominated by biopolitical mechanisms of control acted out through the medical institutions of general society; the ‘scientia sexualis’ (Foucault 1987: 69).
The drastic distinction between general society and those identified as ‘at-risk’ groups is reflected in and acted out in a multitude of cultural products. The structure of the horror genre, for instance, sees a nonhuman monster that is summoned through an oversight in the humanistic moral framework, threatening an otherwise unobtrusive society, and how it is violently driven out to reinstate order (Carroll 1990: 16-17). For the philosopher of horror Noëll Carroll, monstrosity signifies a category crisis that produces aversion and disgust in humans, as it cannot fully be determined to belong to any one category of a given ontological distinction. The monster, in this way, has the ability to disrupt symbolic structures of sense-making that rely on division between an in- and an out-side to hegemonic order. The monster of the horror film and ‘the other’ to general society overlap here, as both can be conceptualised in relation to Julia Kristeva’s theory of the abject. According to her, the abject marks the breakdown of the structures of sense-making by loss of distinction, such as the border between subject/object or self/other. It pulls the individual towards the archaic, that is, the pre-symbolic, which exists outside of the sphere of culture. In this way, the abject produces negative somatic reactions such as trembling out of fear and feeling sick, while highlighting the fragility of a given symbolic order. To protect this order, in relation to which general society constructs a normative identity, the abject is cast out through rituals reinstating and securing its hegemony, thus upholding its function (Kristeva 1982 S. 1-4).
For Kristeva, the quintessential encounter with the abject can be found in the human corpse. It is not symbolic, like, for instance, the cross, which is loaded with cultural significance, but immanent by conflating life/death, subject/object, rational/natural in itself. Monstrosity, then, can be understood as combining distinction in itself and thus problematizing the structures that uphold society. The presence of the human monstrous, which at first exists unnoticed in society, then problematizes the distinction between the non:human. In relation to this, members of an ‘at-risk’ group, by virtue of being infected with an invisible alien force, have forfeited their acceptance in general society, that is, the human(e). Through markers that code them as the other – queer, migratory, poor, or promiscuous – they become seen as the living:dead.
In regard to this, Ellis Hanson writes:
This paper theorises the emergence of the AIDS monster as a critical category that is constructed in relation to the discriminatory metaphoric language of the AIDS crisis. This language reflects into societal reality, signified by the abjection of so-called ‘at-risk’ groups. The liberatory potential of the AIDS monster will be traced by reading the films Hellraiser (1987) and Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988) through the lens of the Posthuman Gothic (Bolton 2014). It will be argued that instead of representing a cautionary tale about the dangers of sanctioned desires, the films function as tales of queer survival told in the negative aesthetic conventions of the genre. Not only does this reading open up possibilities for queer self-determination in the wake of crises and oppression, but also makes it possible to trace the influence of queer artists in art history, where they are time and again overlooked as such.
Keywords: Hellraiser, Posthuman Gothic, HIV/AIDS, monster, sadomasochism, transformation, body fortress, metaphoric language, infection paranoia, queer monstrosity
Introduction
In her influential essay collection Illness and its Metaphors and AIDS and its Metaphors (1988), Susan Sontag describes how AIDS transcends its biological boundaries as an actor within society. According to her, it inscribes itself into processes of sense-making, becoming charged with significance through metaphorical attributions when interacting with other agents (Sontag 1988: 93). This means that its influence on society (society here denoting a machine for the purpose of producing identity) is determined not only through epidemiological and etiological qualities but also by the metaphors through which it is conceptualised. As language can thus be understood as that which begets identity, the metaphors used in context of the AIDS crisis aim to promote a distinction between those who supposedly have no relation to the virus at all and those identities intrinsically tied to it. These metaphorical attributions then ultimately dictate the steps a general, or generalised, society is willing to take in order to protect itself from being infiltrated by those who become identified as so-called ‘at-risk’ groups.
The confrontation of general society with AIDS can best be understood by focusing on the specific metaphor of the body – that of the individual as well as the body politic which, during the AIDS crisis, are linked together through a common goal, that is, keeping viral agents from crossing a pre-defined border. In relation to the individual body, viral agents here denote infected blood products that transgress the border of the skin. On the level of the body politic, the term relates to individuals associated with the virus, the aforementioned ‘at-risk’ groups, that are imagined to cross into said generalised society. Both conceptions of the body thus become fortified – a body fortress (Sontag 1988: 96-97). For the individual, the imagination of skin-as-border leads to the performance of rituals signifying cleanliness, as seen with officers wearing gauze masks when entering the house of a person infected (Sontag 1988: 162) or the avoidance of public washrooms out of fear of contracting HIV. In the context of the body politic, understanding the border in relation to identity categories allows the identification of an in-group and leads to the exclusion of people that are imagined as linked to characteristics supposedly endorsing viral transmission. Gay and bisexual men, as well as people of colour, poor people, migrants, and users of intravenous drugs, are conceptualised as dangerous, as they supposedly are at a higher risk of infection and, thus, viral transmission. In order to protect society then, these already marginalised communities become further ostracised. This dehumanisation is necessary for general society, I argue, for legitimising drastic and discriminating acts of biopower – the expansion of power into what Foucault calls ‘anatomo-politics of the human body’, regulating a population’s corporeal possibilities (Cisney & Morar 2015: 4). In this way, a system is upheld that supposedly provides safety against infection and, furthermore, identification with the ostracised. What follows are rigorous border controls, the ban on gay bathing houses in San Francisco and New York (Trout 2021), and the call for ‘concentrating’ infected individuals in Germany (Entartung ausdünnen 1987), as well as Clause 28 under the Thatcher Government in the UK (Whittaker 2022: 72).
Identities imagined as the other to the hegemonic conception of an in-group are treated as antagonistic to general society or, in the words of Sontag, as ‘an infectious agent that comes from the outside. [...] This is the language of political paranoia, with its characteristic distrust of a pluralistic world’ (Sontag 1988: 105-106). In this sense, ‘at-risk’ groups can also be conceptualised as ‘red agents’ in relation to the red scare of the Cold War. They are envisioned to penetrate the outer layer of the body politic, comparable to communist ideologues infiltrating parliaments and universities at the same time as mirroring polluted blood products transgressing the individual body.
Alien Sex Fiends
In a state of constant infection paranoia, queer desires become unthinkable due to their association not only with individual death but also their potential for the disintegration of this described hegemonic identity, defining itself in relation to its others. To be accepted by general society means following its rules or being perceived as hellbent on its destruction. Thinking this relation through Foucault, queer sexuality can be understood in terms of an ‘ars sexualis’ – an undirected lust principle based on the sexual revolution past the 1960s (Whittaker 2022: 74), that becomes dominated by biopolitical mechanisms of control acted out through the medical institutions of general society; the ‘scientia sexualis’ (Foucault 1987: 69).
The drastic distinction between general society and those identified as ‘at-risk’ groups is reflected in and acted out in a multitude of cultural products. The structure of the horror genre, for instance, sees a nonhuman monster that is summoned through an oversight in the humanistic moral framework, threatening an otherwise unobtrusive society, and how it is violently driven out to reinstate order (Carroll 1990: 16-17). For the philosopher of horror Noëll Carroll, monstrosity signifies a category crisis that produces aversion and disgust in humans, as it cannot fully be determined to belong to any one category of a given ontological distinction. The monster, in this way, has the ability to disrupt symbolic structures of sense-making that rely on division between an in- and an out-side to hegemonic order. The monster of the horror film and ‘the other’ to general society overlap here, as both can be conceptualised in relation to Julia Kristeva’s theory of the abject. According to her, the abject marks the breakdown of the structures of sense-making by loss of distinction, such as the border between subject/object or self/other. It pulls the individual towards the archaic, that is, the pre-symbolic, which exists outside of the sphere of culture. In this way, the abject produces negative somatic reactions such as trembling out of fear and feeling sick, while highlighting the fragility of a given symbolic order. To protect this order, in relation to which general society constructs a normative identity, the abject is cast out through rituals reinstating and securing its hegemony, thus upholding its function (Kristeva 1982 S. 1-4).
For Kristeva, the quintessential encounter with the abject can be found in the human corpse. It is not symbolic, like, for instance, the cross, which is loaded with cultural significance, but immanent by conflating life/death, subject/object, rational/natural in itself. Monstrosity, then, can be understood as combining distinction in itself and thus problematizing the structures that uphold society. The presence of the human monstrous, which at first exists unnoticed in society, then problematizes the distinction between the non:human. In relation to this, members of an ‘at-risk’ group, by virtue of being infected with an invisible alien force, have forfeited their acceptance in general society, that is, the human(e). Through markers that code them as the other – queer, migratory, poor, or promiscuous – they become seen as the living:dead.
In regard to this, Ellis Hanson writes:
Typically, in media representations of AIDS, I find neither people who are living with AIDS nor people who have died with AIDS. What I find, rather, are spectacular images of the abject, the dead who speak and sin and walk abroad, the undead with AIDS. (Hanson 1991: 324)
While infection paranoia inscribes itself into horror films and is reflected by it due to how the genre stages the process of societal abjection, the language surrounding the AIDS crisis already incorporates metaphors from the realm of Gothic fiction, which the horror film builds upon. The virus, described as an alien force, takes control of otherwise independent human bodies (Sontag 1988: 97); newspaper headlines such as ‘The monster who gave us AIDS’ (Brook 2019) to refer to homosexual men who, supposedly fully aware of their infection status, infect others; then there is the urban myth of AIDS Mary that made its rounds on US campuses in the late 1980s and early ’90s, a time in which acts of gendered violence, such as date rape, started to be discussed more openly in society (Fine 1987: 192-197). AIDS Mary, who seduces men and leaves them with the message ‘Welcome to the world of AIDS'' smeared on a bathroom mirror in red lipstick, summons images of vengeful ghosts.
Queer Echoes in the Gothic Genre
Making the implicit queerness of the Gothic an explicit part of this essay is crucial to critically re-evaluate the discriminatory language of the AIDS crisis in horror films. Darren Elliot-Smith and John Edgar Browning write in the introduction to their book New Queer Horror (2020) that, since Robin Wood's Introduction to the American Horror Film (1979), scholars have reproduced a binary model of identification that ascribes viewers to identify solely with normative, i.e. heterosexual protagonists or the non-normative, i.e. queer monster. Queer-coded elements of non-monstrous figures would experience little critical reflection due to this construction, perpetuating a model in which positive or self-confident transitions between the human and monstrous spheres could not take place (Elliot-Smith & Browning 2020: 2). The Gothic as a narrative form is constructed around moments in which protagonists are seduced into entering a relationship with that which lies beyond the symbolic sphere of identification they inhabit, enabling connections with that which is oppositional (Hughes & Smith 2011: 1). As protagonists of classic Gothic tales could not be openly queer due to a conservative social consensus in the nineteenth century, the reinstitution of a heteronormative normal state marked a positive end to their stories (Haefele-Thomas 2012: 2). Nevertheless, it becomes clear in moments in which characters expose themselves to abject elements that these are staged in a manner evoking non-normative longing. ‘To be queer in Gothic terms is, in a sense, to know both, seemingly to adhere to one and yet to desire (even in the form of vicarious enjoyment) the other’ (Hughes & Smith 2011: 1) The Gothic genre narrates characters crossing borders, thus exploring the limit of representability. Thus, it functions as an indicator of how the conflict between general society and that which it suppresses is constructed due to the powerful staging of the social abject.
An Aesthetic of Distinction – The Aids Monster in Film
Following the work of authors such as Ed Guerrero (1990), David J. Skal (1993), and Jeffrey Weinstock (1997), who themselves relate their work on infection paranoia in horror films during the crisis back to Sontag, Harry M. Benshoff (1997) and his fundamental work through which he creates a queer lens to view horror films, through to the aforementioned Elliot-Smith and Browning, an analytical category emerges: the AIDS monster.
The AIDS monster is reflective of general society's paranoia during the years of the crisis. Moments that in other circumstances could lead to the realisation of a queer longing between characters instead become replaced by violence, appropriating the object of desire not through sexual fulfilment but via its destruction. Spouts of blood replace the orgasm. The victim in these instances is often coded as male due to the associative relationship between AIDS and gay men. The perpetrator, however, is not coded only through its gendered relation to the victim but by displaying what is considered a dangerous sexuality in context of the AIDS crisis. Monstrous figures are used to signify individuals who are perceived as effeminate or homosexual (A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge [1985], The Carrier [1988], Nightbreed [1990], Frisk [1995]), as well as women of colour (Vamp [1986], Vampire’s Kiss [1988], Def by Temptation [1990]) and those understood as outsiders due to displaying non-native accents (The Hunger [1983], Bram Stoker’s Dracula [1992], The Addiction [1995]).
While infection paranoia inscribes itself into horror films and is reflected by it due to how the genre stages the process of societal abjection, the language surrounding the AIDS crisis already incorporates metaphors from the realm of Gothic fiction, which the horror film builds upon. The virus, described as an alien force, takes control of otherwise independent human bodies (Sontag 1988: 97); newspaper headlines such as ‘The monster who gave us AIDS’ (Brook 2019) to refer to homosexual men who, supposedly fully aware of their infection status, infect others; then there is the urban myth of AIDS Mary that made its rounds on US campuses in the late 1980s and early ’90s, a time in which acts of gendered violence, such as date rape, started to be discussed more openly in society (Fine 1987: 192-197). AIDS Mary, who seduces men and leaves them with the message ‘Welcome to the world of AIDS'' smeared on a bathroom mirror in red lipstick, summons images of vengeful ghosts.
Queer Echoes in the Gothic Genre
Making the implicit queerness of the Gothic an explicit part of this essay is crucial to critically re-evaluate the discriminatory language of the AIDS crisis in horror films. Darren Elliot-Smith and John Edgar Browning write in the introduction to their book New Queer Horror (2020) that, since Robin Wood's Introduction to the American Horror Film (1979), scholars have reproduced a binary model of identification that ascribes viewers to identify solely with normative, i.e. heterosexual protagonists or the non-normative, i.e. queer monster. Queer-coded elements of non-monstrous figures would experience little critical reflection due to this construction, perpetuating a model in which positive or self-confident transitions between the human and monstrous spheres could not take place (Elliot-Smith & Browning 2020: 2). The Gothic as a narrative form is constructed around moments in which protagonists are seduced into entering a relationship with that which lies beyond the symbolic sphere of identification they inhabit, enabling connections with that which is oppositional (Hughes & Smith 2011: 1). As protagonists of classic Gothic tales could not be openly queer due to a conservative social consensus in the nineteenth century, the reinstitution of a heteronormative normal state marked a positive end to their stories (Haefele-Thomas 2012: 2). Nevertheless, it becomes clear in moments in which characters expose themselves to abject elements that these are staged in a manner evoking non-normative longing. ‘To be queer in Gothic terms is, in a sense, to know both, seemingly to adhere to one and yet to desire (even in the form of vicarious enjoyment) the other’ (Hughes & Smith 2011: 1) The Gothic genre narrates characters crossing borders, thus exploring the limit of representability. Thus, it functions as an indicator of how the conflict between general society and that which it suppresses is constructed due to the powerful staging of the social abject.
An Aesthetic of Distinction – The Aids Monster in Film
Following the work of authors such as Ed Guerrero (1990), David J. Skal (1993), and Jeffrey Weinstock (1997), who themselves relate their work on infection paranoia in horror films during the crisis back to Sontag, Harry M. Benshoff (1997) and his fundamental work through which he creates a queer lens to view horror films, through to the aforementioned Elliot-Smith and Browning, an analytical category emerges: the AIDS monster.
The AIDS monster is reflective of general society's paranoia during the years of the crisis. Moments that in other circumstances could lead to the realisation of a queer longing between characters instead become replaced by violence, appropriating the object of desire not through sexual fulfilment but via its destruction. Spouts of blood replace the orgasm. The victim in these instances is often coded as male due to the associative relationship between AIDS and gay men. The perpetrator, however, is not coded only through its gendered relation to the victim but by displaying what is considered a dangerous sexuality in context of the AIDS crisis. Monstrous figures are used to signify individuals who are perceived as effeminate or homosexual (A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge [1985], The Carrier [1988], Nightbreed [1990], Frisk [1995]), as well as women of colour (Vamp [1986], Vampire’s Kiss [1988], Def by Temptation [1990]) and those understood as outsiders due to displaying non-native accents (The Hunger [1983], Bram Stoker’s Dracula [1992], The Addiction [1995]).
Despite the violence inflicted upon the victim's body, it is often not destroyed, the focus instead being how it transforms painfully after encountering the AIDS monster. These changes to the body are displayed through special effects makeup made to seem as realistic as possible and evoking the rational, scientific perspective through which the virus, its transmission, and the infected are analysed by intradiegetic representations of society’s bio-power. The monstrous origin, however, is coded as mystical by portraying the monsters as demons or other unholy nonhuman forces, thus alluding to the idea that the virus is divine punishment. The interaction of these two opposing dimensions changes the symbolic value of the vampiric bite. Not only does the vampire drink the victim's blood, but also infects them, passing along their unholy affliction – polluted blood products – which become represented through cinematic hemograms, that is, images that use the aesthetic of scientism and essentialize the body in regard to the purity of its blood. Examples of cinematic hemograms can be seen in The Hunger (01:01:32–01:03:34), when a sex scene between vampire Miriam (Catherine Deneuve) and Sarah (Susan Sarandon) is intercut with electronic images of red blood cells; in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (01:03:50–01:05:50), when the bubbles in an absinth glass are overlaid with images of red blood cells in anticipation of a vampiric attack; and in The Addiction (00:19:59–00:21:12) where the recently turned Kathleen (Lili Taylor) uses a syringe to take a man’s blood.
In light of the described elements, the Hellraiser films have to be understood as representing the AIDS monster. Hellraiser (Barker, 1987) portrays the invasion of the societal body of the family and individual bodies by abject monstrous forces. The film can be read as evoking the paranoid fears of members of this base unit, who potentially endanger it by taking part in unthinkable acts coded as sanctioned sexual practices; queer sadomasochism.
According to the author, director and producer Clive Barker:
Hellraiser asked whether SM could be pleasure and pain, long before today's mainstream obsession with tattoos and piercing which were then taboo. Sexuality is like religion – it's there in all my work. (Teeman 1999)
It is no surprise, then, that the films’ Cenobites originate visually in the queer S&M subculture of the times and are understood as representative of it (Adams 2017: 134), while protagonists Frank and Julia are solely provided with victims of the same gender for their vampiric consumption of human blood.
With Frank, the relation to homosexual or bisexual men as ‘at-risk’ groups becomes even more evident by the way he drains his victims, taking them from behind and sliding his hand into the back of their necks. However, before doing so, he orders Julia to leave and not to look at him (Hellraiser 1987: 00:35:46–00:38:39). His consumption, voyeuristically framed through the attic door, becomes readable as ‘in the closet’.
In the second installation of the franchise, Hellbound: Hellraiser II (Randel, 1988), it is further revealed that these monstrous forces stem from a specific mystical origin: ‘the God of flesh, hunger, and desire, Leviathan, Lord of the Labyrinth’ (Hellbound: Hellraiser II 1988: 01:03:24–01:03:45), a dark entity from a parallel dimension that reaches out into the human realm. It leads individuals towards transgressing predefined borders, one of which is the border between the worlds that opens only by obsessively engaging the puzzle box; the other being the skin, which is transgressed by being ripped open and merging it with signifiers of Leviathan's hellish domain or removing it altogether. Characters then become unbounded in terms of a fortified ideal of the body.
By realising that Leviathan is the source of what is abject in the logic of the films, a desire to be monstrous, to be transformed, read in terms of the AIDS monster, represents an infection chain. The Cenobites are humans turned Leviathans monstrous agents. They infect the bored dandy Frank Cotton (Sean Chapman/Oliver Smith) by ‘[...] tearing [his] soul apart’ (Hellraiser 1987: 01:08:35–01:08:42) literally ripping him from the realm of general society to the realm of its abject. Frank, then, who seduces Julia (Claire Higgins), as seen in a flashback, infects her with the desire to also engage Leviathan. However, her realising her own monstrosity, which is following a desire that leads her away from general society’s moral framework, doesn’t happen until later in the film. This evokes the long asymptomatic phase ascribed to HIV. In Hellbound: Hellraiser II, she reappears fully monstrous and continues the infection chain through Dr. Channard (Kenneth Cranham) who in turn lets the transgressive power of Leviathan run wild in his hospital. This again evokes a specific fear attached to AIDS. The virus spreads within a compound representative of general society’s bio-power, breaking down the border between supposedly innocent members of general society and those at fault for their own infection.
The Posthuman Gothic – A Transformative Lens
The Hellraiser films can be seen as evocative of infection paranoia by staging the AIDS monster. Reading the films through the lens of the Posthuman Gothic, however, makes it possible to understand them as a tale of queer survival told in the negative aesthetic conventions of the genre, which, as previously stated, are intrinsically loaded with queer potentiality.
According to theorist of the Posthuman Gothic Greg Marks, the posthuman subject and Gothic fiction share a narrative core: an unstable inner world confronted by a menacing external world (Cultural Enquiry Research Group 2019: 00:00:00–00:02:51). The Posthuman Gothic was first theorised by Michael Sean Bolton, who defines it as an exploration of the genre’s critical potential, reflecting on the uncertain construction of subjectivity in a world perpetually plagued by complex scenarios of extinction. The focus of the Posthuman Gothic, however, is not the fear of human extinction. Rather, it focuses on the terrible realisation that only by merging with abject forces can human protagonists survive, however, changed beyond recognition (Bolton 2014: 4).
In this way, the Posthuman Gothic makes it possible to look at the Hellraiser films beyond the human/monster dichotomy that posits a regular humanist framework in contrast to its others. There arises a spectrum rather on which the films’ characters can be located. More interestingly, the film's characters can be described as changing position on the spectrum over the course of the films as well. Understanding identity construction as not fixed in this way, opens the strict dichotomy between general, supposedly unaffected society and ‘at-risk’ groups further.
Beyond Limits – Posthuman Entanglements in Hellraiser
Monstrosity in terms of the Hellraiser films means becoming-with the abject force of Leviathan. Leviathan, though, denotes not only a dark God in a parallel labyrinthian universe but also a base desire at the core of every character's identity. This is evidenced by a quote from occult neuroscientist Dr. Channard:
The mind is a labyrinth, ladies and gentlemen, a puzzle. And while the paths of the brain are plainly visible, its ways deceptively apparent, its destinations are unknown. [...] It is the lure of the labyrinth that draws us to our chosen field to unlock those secrets. [...] we, as explorers of the mind, must devote our lives and energies to going further to tread the unknown corridors in order to find ultimately, the final solution. We have to see, we have to know… (Hellbound: Hellraiser II 1988: 00:09:42–00:10:42)
The mind, the labyrinth, the hellish domain of the dark God here connect. ‘The lure of the labyrinth’, its unbound potentials and unknown destinations, become apparent as what makes characters engage their desires in an undirected manner.
In this entanglement, Clive Barker stages what Greg Marks describes as the Posthuman Sublime, the realisation of the agency of the looming abject. Marks identifies the Posthuman Sublime in the realisation of an undefinable active agency that is present in moments when there shouldn’t be one, as well as the absence of one when it should be present (Marks 2019). The Posthuman Sublime constantly withdraws from human cognition and can only be experienced through its effects, which, in context of the Hellraiser films, reflect the ‘ars sexualis’ through sadomasochism. What denotes ‘sadism’ here, however, needs to be specified, as it is too often equated with torture. According to John McIntyre, the torturer only wants to destroy the world of their victim. The sadist, on the other hand, opens up the masochist’s perception towards unknown horizons of experience through a complex interplay between the aversion and reward system (McIntyre 2016: 383). In the sublime experience of sadomasochism, the subject realises what is inconceivable, i.e. a dark desire that lies beyond identity construction. This leads to the disintegration of structures of metaphorical sense-making, determining their reality. The linguistically based symbolic relationship between subject and outer world is severed, the individual removed from the rational, left to their sensual experiences.
Trapped in the (Body) Fortress
As the relationship between subject and outer world is determined by the discriminatory language of the AIDS crisis, the crisis that confronting Leviathan means can be thought of as liberatory for characters whose desires are not thinkable in terms of the structures laid out by the ‘scientia sexualis’. This is exemplified through the character arc of Julia. Her initial appearance is intertwined with the realisation that she is stuck in an unhappy marriage. She is presented as ‘a very complicated character: lost, lonely, pissed-off with her husband’ (Stokes & Stokes 2015: 62). She struggles with her role as supportive wife and stepmother. Only in again encountering Frank is her true desire realised and a transformative process sets in, gradually moving her away from the human(e) on an ethical and ontological level. Unlike Frank, who tries fleeing Leviathan's influence, she is presented as able to accept the connection between the beautiful and the terrible – desire and destruction – that marks queer longing during the AIDS crisis (Wade 2021). Furthermore, her desiring Frank is in itself queer, as she longs to be seduced by him not in order to possess or be possessed, but rather to have her world(view) be shattered (MacCormack 2009: 115) and thus be changed. Julia functions so well as the focus of this analysis due to this inherent queerness – her desire to leave behind general society and act upon the transgressive connection to Leviathan that she’s been infected with.
At first Julia struggles to accept the change that engaging Frank signifies and thus hesitates to sacrifice men for him. Her resolve, however, is strengthened after the first man she picks up at a bar with promises of anonymous sex tries overpowering her, as she has second thoughts about actually taking him into her home. Sexualized violence, reducing Julia to nothing more than an object of desire, is also what legitimises for her the murder of her husband Larry (Andrew Robinson) at the hands of Frank, his brother. Thus, supposedly legitimate sexual desire – that is, in terms of the AIDS crisis, heterosexual – is here portrayed negatively to show that the safety it promises is false.
Killing men who embody the structures of her oppression signifies her stepping away from the human realm into the queer posthuman dimension of Leviathan. Becoming monstrous could thus be read as proof of Julia‘s individual will to live not as an object of desire, but as a desiring subject intermingled with others who are able to realise the potential of an undirected, queer ‘ars sexualis’ – ‘pain and pleasure, indivisible’ (Hellraiser 1987: 00:46:37 –00:48:06).
Julia’s changing does not only manifest itself in the character's psychology, but also in her appearance. While Julia starts dressing more androgynously, exchanging white silk blouses for a black blazer with shoulder pads and sharp makeup, she becomes a confident murderer. She furthermore realises the androgynous by turning around the gendered relations of sexualized violence readily inflicted upon her. Interestingly, for this, Julia is later narratively rewarded after Frank regains his power and is allowed to kill his brother in order to wear his skin. Hellraiser leaves the murder of Larry at the hands of Frank to the audience's imagination, instead showing Julia and Frank having rough sex (Hellraiser 1987: 01:09:10–01:10:39). Engaging the abject sphere of Leviathan has brought Julia into contact with what she had considered to be her innermost desire up until this point.
Trapped in the (Body) Fortress
As the relationship between subject and outer world is determined by the discriminatory language of the AIDS crisis, the crisis that confronting Leviathan means can be thought of as liberatory for characters whose desires are not thinkable in terms of the structures laid out by the ‘scientia sexualis’. This is exemplified through the character arc of Julia. Her initial appearance is intertwined with the realisation that she is stuck in an unhappy marriage. She is presented as ‘a very complicated character: lost, lonely, pissed-off with her husband’ (Stokes & Stokes 2015: 62). She struggles with her role as supportive wife and stepmother. Only in again encountering Frank is her true desire realised and a transformative process sets in, gradually moving her away from the human(e) on an ethical and ontological level. Unlike Frank, who tries fleeing Leviathan's influence, she is presented as able to accept the connection between the beautiful and the terrible – desire and destruction – that marks queer longing during the AIDS crisis (Wade 2021). Furthermore, her desiring Frank is in itself queer, as she longs to be seduced by him not in order to possess or be possessed, but rather to have her world(view) be shattered (MacCormack 2009: 115) and thus be changed. Julia functions so well as the focus of this analysis due to this inherent queerness – her desire to leave behind general society and act upon the transgressive connection to Leviathan that she’s been infected with.
At first Julia struggles to accept the change that engaging Frank signifies and thus hesitates to sacrifice men for him. Her resolve, however, is strengthened after the first man she picks up at a bar with promises of anonymous sex tries overpowering her, as she has second thoughts about actually taking him into her home. Sexualized violence, reducing Julia to nothing more than an object of desire, is also what legitimises for her the murder of her husband Larry (Andrew Robinson) at the hands of Frank, his brother. Thus, supposedly legitimate sexual desire – that is, in terms of the AIDS crisis, heterosexual – is here portrayed negatively to show that the safety it promises is false.
Killing men who embody the structures of her oppression signifies her stepping away from the human realm into the queer posthuman dimension of Leviathan. Becoming monstrous could thus be read as proof of Julia‘s individual will to live not as an object of desire, but as a desiring subject intermingled with others who are able to realise the potential of an undirected, queer ‘ars sexualis’ – ‘pain and pleasure, indivisible’ (Hellraiser 1987: 00:46:37 –00:48:06).
Julia’s changing does not only manifest itself in the character's psychology, but also in her appearance. While Julia starts dressing more androgynously, exchanging white silk blouses for a black blazer with shoulder pads and sharp makeup, she becomes a confident murderer. She furthermore realises the androgynous by turning around the gendered relations of sexualized violence readily inflicted upon her. Interestingly, for this, Julia is later narratively rewarded after Frank regains his power and is allowed to kill his brother in order to wear his skin. Hellraiser leaves the murder of Larry at the hands of Frank to the audience's imagination, instead showing Julia and Frank having rough sex (Hellraiser 1987: 01:09:10–01:10:39). Engaging the abject sphere of Leviathan has brought Julia into contact with what she had considered to be her innermost desire up until this point.
After being betrayed by Frank at the end of Hellraiser, Julia returns in Hellbound: Hellraiser II as a fully realised posthuman monster, at first without skin, following boundless sadomasochistic experiences at the hands of the Cenobites, which Frank had already alluded to in Hellraiser. Mark Adams writes that Frank, and now Julia, appearing without skin is not only proof of a mutilation, transforming them into monsters, but that ‘[their] skin concealed [their] already existing “Otherness”’ (Adams 2017: 133). Julia then ‘[...] no longer just is the wicked stepmother. Now [she’s] the evil queen’ (Hellbound: Hellraiser II 1988: 00:47:26–00:48:26), as her skin, the last tie to a human(e) framework and identity – that is, her love for Frank – is stripped away.
Virtuous Corpses
While Julia's character arc is a linear development from one side of the human/monster dichotomy to the other, the Cenobites can at first be understood as entities in which the symbiosis with Leviathan is so advanced that they become a fully independent ontological category aside from the human. Following, the Cenobites will be explored regarding their position on the human/monster spectrum in order to call into question the construction of any such category.
The imprisonment in the body fortress not only leads to a rebellion against the normative structures that inform the political body, as illustrated through Julia, but also to a transformation of the individual. To subordinate the self to the sadistic power of Leviathan is to escape the control of the organising principles of the ‘scientia sexualis’ during the AIDS crisis. It means confronting that which has been abjected to create an exclusive understanding of general society through normative identification. Following the realisation of the abject’s presence, a category crisis ensues that ‘reduces language to a scream’ (McIntyre 2016: 383) and severs the connection between the individual and the outer world, defined only through metaphorical attributions. The only point of reference becomes the somatic quality of the body. The Cenobites are metaphysically tied to Leviathan and staged to be ontologically different from human characters, who first must be ‘torn apart’ to realise their true desires. Looking at the Cenobites as posthuman in relation to their connection to Leviathan reveals a different understanding of what a body can denote. Instead of the concept of the ‘body fortress’, they represent a ‘body without organs’ as theorised by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. According to them, a body can be everything, as they define it as an instance made from flows and contractions of forces that are arranged in a specific functional manner, for instance, societal ideals or moral identity markers. A body without organs then opens up an established corporeal ideal to the influence of forces outside of it. A body with a specific intentionality becomes an experimental side of construction, disorganised and receptive to the unbounded potential of affective experiences (Deleuze & Guattari 1997: S.13-14).
The Cenobites start out in the first film as the quintessential monsters of the franchise – inhumane, with no relation to humanist ideals. For them, there is no distinction between pain and pleasure. Only intensity remains, which they inflict on those who call out for an ‘[...] experience beyond limits. Pain and pleasure, indivisible’ (Hellraiser 1987:00:46:37–00:48:06). They do so mercilessly, without showing any kind of emotional reaction. It surprises then when Hellbound: Hellraiser II starts out with Doug Bradley, who plays the infamous lead Cenobite, more commonly known as ‘Pinhead’, without monstrous makeup, but wearing a First World War uniform, solving the puzzle box. When it opens and hooks pierce his skin, just as with Frank in the previous film, he is transported into Leviathan's domain. Intense experiences inscribe themselves into his body, and his flesh merges with the signifiers of this other world. This is the origin of a Cenobite. Instead of being an independent monstrous category, they are thus revealed to be posthuman. In Bolton's words, the film here thinks ‘past the dissolution of the human subject and confront[s] the unknowable that lies beyond’ (Bolton 2014: 3). It does not reflect a fear of the extinction of the human subject at the hands of the abject, but of how humanity is called into question through the need to adapt to inhumane circumstances. Hellbound: Hellraiser II here subverts audience expectations. By recontextualizing the Cenobites as coming from the same origin – human – as other characters, that is, general society, the film opens up the possibility that every one of them can potentially become a Cenobite as well.
Following their becoming-with the domain of Leviathan, merging with the dark God, the Cenobites follow a specific guideline that determines their actions. By merging with the locus of the abject of the films, they embody the posthuman sublime that Marks theorises, as their agency is called into question. There is something present that shouldn’t be, that is Leviathan's influence, while there is something absent that should be there, that is the human(e) emotions needed to relate to the individuals they inflict intense experiences upon. In this way, they appear different from monstrous figures in other franchises, who are most often agents of chaos, set on destroying society. Barker, however, states that his monsters ‘[...] come from the outside and [...] call out to somebody to join them in the[ir] sanctum’ (Benshoff 1996: 242).
Their connection to Leviathan marks the Cenobites as posthuman on an ontological level. This can best be understood through Kirsty’s handling of the puzzle box, that, as a key to unlocking the gateway between the mundane and the world of unbound desire, is part of Leviathan. In the finale of Hellraiser, Leviathan's dark influence has invaded the Cotton family’s house in 55 Ludovico Street, and everyone except for Kirsty has been subsumed into sadomasochistic tableaus. As the Cenobites betray the contract that Kirsty thought she had with them, she rips the puzzle box from Julia’s body that is laid out on a bed, hooks pulling her skin, revealing the flesh underneath. By grabbing it, Kirsty startles the Cenobites, as she realises that it cannot only open but close the rift between their worlds as well. When pointing the box at the Cenobites, they are reduced to shots of energy and banished from the human realm. This motif repeats itself in Hellbound: Hellraiser II, when Tiffany targets Leviathan's central body, which floats over the labyrinth, to defeat the Cenobite Dr. Channard, who is being controlled by a tentacle that reaches from somewhere within this dark domain. By closing the box once more, energy bolts come shooting back through the gateways between the worlds and enter Leviathan's central body, marking the influence of the dark God, like the puzzle boxes the patients of the hospital were holding, as well as the Cenobites, returning from the human realm.
The close ties between the Cenobites and Leviathan are further evidenced by their recurring interaction with the film's reluctant-to-be-transformed final girl, Kirsty, who cannot understand why they seem to target her especially, even though she never intended to open the box in the first place. In Hellbound: Hellraiser II they state, however, that ‘it's not hands that summon us, but desire!’ (Hellbound: Hellraiser II 1988: 00:48:26–00:53:41). Kirsty’s desire, as evidenced by her relationship to her father and her recurring dreams about losing him, as well as her mother, who has already passed, can best be understood as the desire for an intact family structure. This kind of relationship is painted, however, as impossible in the Hellraiser films. The normative relationships between family members ultimately become defined through possession, not queer affection.
The Cenobites, on the other hand, are not individuals but a unity, as evidenced through the costume design and how it ties back symbolically to their own experiences of being consumed and changed by desire. They are a depersonalised order, a sadomasochistic chosen family, and they cannot stop but haunt Kirsty until they have brought her into their midst.
In this strict yet unknowable ruleset that the Cenobites follow lies also the reasoning for their calm demeanour that effectively contrasts their gory deeds. The supposed ordeal they promise to the yet-to-be-transformed characters of the films is uncanny precisely because the Cenobites follow this law, which forcibly eludes the still-human characters. In the Cenobites, who, as discussed, are a symbiotic existence between human and abject, the absence that characterises the posthuman sublime is particularly present in the question of their active agency. While something seems present that should not be – a foreign influence (the abject power of Leviathan) – something that should be present in them – human feelings that invite empathic relationship-making – is absent. Through them, Leviathan works and reaches out to seekers who crave to realise their innermost desire, which is Leviathan. It is the will of Leviathan to reconstitute a connection between its labyrinthine plane, immoral intensity – hunger and desire – and the human realm through the transformative potential of this very process.
And while the Cenobites have moved so far away from normative individual identity, that they cannot remember their human past, it still haunts them. This is evidenced in the final confrontation they have with Kirsty in Hellbound: Hellraiser II. Here, she presents the Cenobites with a photograph of the lead Cenobite before being torn from the human realm, to remind her assailants of this past. However, they discard the photo as a trick. It is, rather, what she says afterwards that makes them stop and consider her argument, as in her despair Kirsty screams: ‘Remember all your confusion. Think!’ (Hellbound: Hellraiser II 1988: 01:18:41–01:23:37). Here she reveals the human condition, that she is the film’s main representative of, as being defined by insecurity. The memory of this feeling of insecurity, defining what it means to be human, triggers the transformation of the Cenobites back into their human exteriors, evidencing that the concept of a fortified subject construction doesn’t mirror the human experience.
Conclusion
The realisation of embodying the abject to general society makes it possible to recognise that strict and fortified structures of identity construction have always been but ruins. In their debris, however, lies not only an understanding of one's undirected potential for becoming with others, but the situatedness in a historical context manifests itself too. The ruin of the fortified body is haunted by the spectral presences of members of self-chosen families, lovers and friends that have fallen victim to systemic discrimination and society's failure to provide them assistance when they needed it.
The Hellraiser films trace a melancholic process of becoming-with others. A sadness for humanity lost, as well as alternative ways to self-empowerment. As the characters always return to fractions of their human past, so do ‘at-risk’ groups faced with legislative and metaphoric effects of the crisis. It becomes clear that realising sanctioned desires is not possible without realising this entanglement of desire and grief.
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Barker, Clive (dir.) (1987) Hellraiser (US): New World PicturesBenshoff, Harry M. (1997) Monsters in the Closet. Los Angeles: Faculty of theGraduate School of Southern California.
Bierman, Robert (dir.) (1988) Vampire’s Kiss (US): Hemdale & Magelan Pictures.Bolton, Michael Sean (2014) ‘Monstrous Machinery: Defining the Posthuman Gothic’,in Aeternum: The Journal of Contemporary Gothic Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1.
Bond, James III (dir.) (1991) Def by Temptation (US): Bonded Filmworks & Orpheus Pictures
Brook, Benedict (2019): ‘Gaëtan Dugas, the man accused of being a “monster” all because of a typo’ [online] https://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/gaetan-dugas-the-man-accused -of-being-a- monster-all-because-of-a-typo/2GBS5HLK6QBJZP5YJZK4QI53QY/ (Accessed 28 February 2024).
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Cisney, Vernon W. & Morar, Nicolae (2015) Biopower: Foucault and Beyond. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press.
Coppola, Francis Ford (dir.) (1992) Bram Stoker’s Dracula (US): American Zoetrope & Columbia Pictures.
Cultural Enquiry Research Group (2019) CERG 2019 Seminar 07 | Greg Marks:
The Aesthetics of the Posthuman Gothic [Online-Video] https://youtu.be/WTEsvHy53u
A?si=RM1F6Ja0IYA3TodN (Accessed 3 March 2023).
Deleuze, Gilles & Guattari Félix (1997) Tausend Plateaus. Berlin: Merve.
Elliot-Smith, Darren & Browning, John Edgar (2020) New Queer Horror - Film and
Television. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.
Entartung ausdünnen (1987), Der Spiegel [online] https://www.spiegel.de/politik /entartung-ausduennen-a-bd30126d-0002-0001-0000-000013522444?context=issue (Accessed 17 May 2024).
Ferrara, Abel (dir.) (1995) The Addiction (US): Fast Films.
Fine, Gary Alan (1987) ‘Welcome to the World of AIDS: Fantasies of Female Revenge’, in Western Folklore, vol. 46, no. 3, 1987, pp. 192–97 (Accessed 3 March 2024).
Foucault, Michel (1987) Sexualität und Wahrheit I: Der Wille zum Wissen. Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag.
Haefele-Thomas, Ardel (2012) Queer Others in Victorian Gothic – Transgressing Monstrosity. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.
Hanson, Ellis (1991) ‘Undead’, in Fuss, Diana (ed.) Inside/Out: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories. London: Routledge, 324–40.
Hughes, William & Smith, Andrew (2011) Queering the Gothic. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Kristeva, Julia (1982) Powers of Horror - An Essay on Abjection. New York: Columbia University Press.
MacCormack, Patricia (2009) ‘Queer Posthumanism: Cyborgs, Animals, Monsters,
Perverts’, in Giffney, Noreen & O'Rourke, Michael The Ashgate Research Companion to Queer Theory. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Limited.
Marks, Greg (2019) ‘Into a Silent Universe: The Sublime and the Eerie in Byron and Ballard’, The Wasted World [online] https://thewastedworld.com/2019/09/08/sublimeand-eerie/ (Accessed 3 March 2024).
McIntyre, John (2016) ‘Rethinking the Body in Pain’, in Subjectivity Nr.9, S. 381–398.
Randel, Tony (dir.) (1988) Hellbound: Hellraiser II (US): Film Futures & Cinemarque
Entertainment.
Sholder, Jack (dir.) (1985) Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge (US): New Line Cinema & Heron Communications.
Skal, David J. (1993) The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror. London: Faber & Faber. Sontag, Susan (1988) Illness and its Metaphors and AIDS and its Metaphors. Ankerbooks.
Stokes, Phil & Stokes, Sarah (dirs.) (2015) Damnation Games - Hellraiser, Hellbound and Hell on Earth. Shenley (UK): Arrow Films.
Teeman, Tim (1999) ‘Clive Barker’, in Attitude, No. 66, October.
Trout, Hank (2021) ‘The bathhouse battle of 1984’, San Francisco AIDS Foundation [online] https://www.sfaf.org/collections/beta/the-bathhouse-battle-of-1984/ (Accessed 28 February 2024).
Verow, Todd (dir.) (1995) Frisk (US): Bangor Films.
Wade, Riley (2021) ‘Hellbound Hearts: What Makes Hellraiser Queer’, Horrorobsessive
[online] https://horrorobsessive.com/2021/11/29/hellbound-hearts-what-makeshellraiser-
queer/ (Accessed 30 May 2024).
Weinstock, Jeffrey (1997) ‘Virus Culture’, in Studies in Popular Culture, Vol. 20, No. 1,
S. 83-97.
Welsh, Kate (2018) ‘“What a woman will do for a good f*ck” – Julia Cotton’s sexual agency in Hellraiser’, Little White Lies [online] https://lwlies.com/articles/hellraiser-julia -cotton-sexual-agency/ (Accessed 17 September 2023).
Wenk, Richard (dir.) (1986) Vamp (US): New World Pictures & Balcor Film Investors.
Whittaker, Jason (2022) ‘All Too Human: Industrial Bodies and Anti-bodies in the Time
of AIDS’, in Whittaker, Jason & Potter, Elizabeth (eds) Bodies, Noise and Power in
Industrial Music. London: Palgrave Macmillan.