'Unspeakable Acts': Coming Out as Werewolf
- Submitting institution
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Birmingham City University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 32Z_OP_C2098
- Type
- C - Chapter in book
- DOI
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- Book title
- New Queer Horror: Film and Television
- Publisher
- University of Wales Press
- ISBN
- 9781786836267
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of publication
- -
- Year of publication
- 2020
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Late twentieth-century academic writing on the relationship between queerness and horror in literature, film and television focuses on the often-covert coding of non-normative sexualities as monstrous. In contrast, this enquiry focuses on gothic tropes of ‘unspeakability’ in relation to more ‘out’ werewolf representations. It reviews portrayals of werewolves in contemporary horror media, reading them through the context of queer identities, and historical discourses on homosexual ‘unspeakability’ and the closet.
The researcher examines a specific scene from BBC3 TV’s ‘Being Human’ in which a character named George tries, and fails, to ‘come out’ as a werewolf to his family. Exploring this moment, the researcher draws parallels with the difficulties of ever fully ‘coming out’ as queer—rather than as lesbian or gay—because of its challenges to ‘cultural intelligibility’ (J. Butler, 1990). At the moment of werewolf transformation, when the human vocal cords tear and twist, no speech is possible. Through the work, the researcher proposes and investigates the potentiality of radical unspeakability as a tool for queer identities to exceed and resist normative sexual categorisation.
The researcher argues that the queer potential of the werewolf lies in unspeakability: not the unspeakability of something so hideous or shameful that it cannot be named, nor the secrecy and silence of the homosexual closet, but rather in the implicit excess of the subject at moments when spoken language fails to express or capture transformation and alterity.
This research has been disseminated through public and academic talks: ‘The Horror of Queer’ (2015) as part of ‘SHOUT: Queer Arts Festival’ in the West Midlands; and ‘Coming Out as Werewolf’ (2015) at ‘The Company of Wolves’ international conference at the University of Hertfordshire (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-34144752). Most recently this research is published as a book chapter in <New Queer Horror: Film and Television>, University of Wales Press (2020).
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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