"The Killer Cross-Dresser": Gender Non-Conformity in Horror Films

An essay discussing the depiction of queer, gender non-conforming identity in horror, with a focus on the films Psycho and Silence of the Lambs

The Killer Cross-Dresser

Famed horror film director Alfred Hitchcock once said, “A glimpse into the world proves that horror is nothing other than reality”. A society which, historically and presently, fears and subjugates all things deemed too queer- that which “opposes the binary definitions and prescriptions of patriarchal heterosexism” (Benshoff)- is bound to let these hegemonic ideas seep into all aspects of culture. The horror genre, more so than other aspects of western culture, allows these ideas of the Other to be easily and openly projected onto very literal villainous allegories. Following this logic, it makes sense that a prolific tropes within the western horror film industry is that of the killer cross-dresser.

As argued in the essay The Monster and the Homosexual, the horror archetype of the mad scientist, who plots to challenge and destroy the natural order of society, runs parallel to narratives of queer activists who seek to- from a heteronormative perspective - dismantle “traditional values” (Benshoff, 2015, pg. 119). In this way, horror has long been used as a vehicle for personifying fears surrounding queer identity. Where this idea can be seen most prominently is through the aforementioned trope of the killer cross-dresser, seen in various forms throughout the history of the genre but most often discussed through the examples of Psycho’s Norman Bates and Silence of the Lambs' Jame “Buffalo Bill” Gumb.

The original Psycho was released in 1960 and is often credited as the catalyst for the slasher film genre. At the time of its release, transgender identity was not a topic of open discussion in popular western culture, and those- outside of the queer community- who had any concept of the identity’s existence knew of it in vague, often incorrect and, more often, negative terms. Despite cross-dressing and transgender identity being two separate topics that are not interchangeable, many at this time (and still today) viewed them as such- both with each other and most queer identities. Upon the release of Psycho, the concept of cross-dressing started to become inextricably tied to ideas of mental illness and violence. During the film’s final scenes, killer Norman Bates is explained to have been driven to kill due to his overbearing late-mother. Bates was said to have been overtaken by his mother's jealous personality after experiencing any sexual desire towards women, dressing up as her to kill these objects of his desire in a envious rage.

Norman Bates is not a transgender woman. Bates' act of dressing as a woman reflected the ways in which his mothers abuse “took over” his actions and forced him to kill. However, Norman Bates’s challenging of traditional gender roles at a time in society which held little knowledge of queer identities led the film’s twist ending to be often reduced to and remembered as the tale of a killer cross-dresser, still present in the horror genre today. Whether the character of Norman Bates contributed to negative views of queer identity is a source of much debate, often boiling down to a case of the chicken or the egg- do the prejudices of society inform popular media, or does popular media inform the prejudices of society?

It is the argument of this essay that the representation of queer identity in the horror genre, and specifically that of cross-dressers, is the former. Meaning, a society which truly understands the complexities of queer identity and gender expression would not read Psycho as a cautionary tale, warning of the dangers of the inherently violent gender non-conforming man. An educated and unprejudiced audience would see Bates for what he is: a mentally unstable individual who, after years of abuse at the hands of his mother, projects his trauma onto women through his mothers image. Bates does not dress as a woman because he is a woman trapped within a male body, as a transgender woman would. Moreover, Bates does not dress as a woman as a means of expressing his gender identity or purposely challenging societal norms, as a drag queen might do.

As argued in the journal Seeing the Female Body Differently, society “assumes that there is something ‘normal’ about being male, and profoundly wrong with being female. Whereas women who dress as men desire access to the ‘privileged’ state of maleness, men who dress as women are seen to be voluntarily disenfranchising themselves of their ‘right’ to the supposedly higher status of masculinity” (Dubois). This hegemonic concept is what allows many viewers to read Bates' unstable and violent behavior as being because of his choice to dress as a woman, mentally intertwining cross-dressing with delinquency. Moreover, the creation and gradual simplification of this trope in film simply utilizes this societal belief- that only an insane man would choose to degrade himself by dressing as a woman- to rely on the prejudiced fears of a normative audience to create effective and memorable scares.

Much like Psycho’s Norman Bates, Silence of the Lambs’ murderous Buffalo Bill is a queer character whos effect on pop culture and society is also hotly debated. In the article Unmasking Buffalo Bill, author Kendall Phillips writes “For many gay male critics the film’s antagonist, Buffalo Bill, was another in a long line of homophobic representations while, for some feminist critics, the film’s protagonist, Clarice Starling, represented a strong female character overcoming the barriers of patriarchy” (1998, pg. 33). In his article, Phillips catalogues and analyzes the various discourse surrounding the then newly-released film from both the queer community and women, noting a majorly negative reaction from the former and majorly positive from the latter. As Phillips discusses, many women responded positively to the intelligent and independent FBI agent Clarice Starling, depicted as finding career success within her male-dominated profession. Conversely, many gay male viewers felt that the murderous, outwardly queer Buffalo Bill, who sought to make a woman-suit out of real skin, was a step backwards for representation.

In his conclusion, Phillips notes of these reviews, “few of these writers utilized significant evidence from the film itself and none sought to base an interpretation exclusively on the text of the film” (Phillips). If one were to do so, it would be evident that while Buffalo Bill is without a doubt queer by this essay’s definition, he is not transgender or definitively gay. In a conversation between protagonist Clarice and incarcerated cannibal Hannibal Lecter, the two work to create a psychological profile of the killer dubbed “Buffalo Bill”, whose identity is unknown at that point. When Lecter puts forth the idea that the killer may be looking to transform into a woman, Clarice points out that, “there's no correlation in the literature between transsexualism and violence. Transsexuals are very passive". Lecter eventually lets on to his real point: “Billy's not a real transsexual, but he thinks he is. He tries to be. He's tried to be a lot of things, I expect… Billy hates his own identity, he always has - and he thinks that makes him a transsexual. But his pathology is a thousand times more savage”.

Later in the film, the perspective switches to that of the killer’s (Jame Gumb), following him through his claustrophobic basement lair. During this environmental scan, viewers can observe not only various feminine costumes, but miscellaneous white supremist memorabilia, including a quilt covered in swastikas. This environmental storytelling serves to illustrate Gumb’s dalliances with various identities in an attempt to escape his own. Where a transwoman is born as a woman trapped within a male body, Gumb simply decided that becoming a woman is the best way for him to distance himself from his born identity, which he detested. While Gumb is- based on close reading- not a trans woman, he is indeed a cross dresser. This aspect of his identity serves as the crux of the film's horror, with Gumb’s desire to embody womanhood leading him to murderous ends, again seemingly linking gender non-conformity and violence for viewers.

Ultimately, there is strong evidence to both sides of the argument concerning whether Jame Gumb is a nuanced, queer killer whose identity is independent of his evil acts or a homophobic villainization of queer identity. Where a close reading of the film’s text would point more so to the former, it is safe to say that the average viewer will not engage in a close reading and will make general judgements based on the film's most gripping aspects. For Silence of the Lambs, this most gripping aspect would likely be the infamous scene featuring Gumb dancing mostly nude before a camcorder, genitals tucked between his legs and donning bright lipstick. While Gumb asks the camera “would you f*ck me?”, viewers are meant to feel uncomfortable and scared at the brazen display of gender-nonconformity and overt sexuality.

Much like Psycho, a viewing of this film, and this scene in particular, would illicit two very different responses from a properly educated and uneducated audience. Wherein an educated audience would likely remember, like Clarice mentioned, that almost all transgender women are passive, nonviolent and overall normal people and Gumb’s exploration of the identity is a likely misguided one, an uneducated audience may recoil in horror at the “reality” of the transgender identity.

At the core of both of these subjective and complex representations, and what they mean to the identities they may or may not represent, is the topic of representation in media as a whole. In the documentary The Problem with Apu, which discusses infamous The Simpsons character Apu and his role as a negative stereotype of Indian immigrants, Indian actor Utkarsh Ambudkar states “We just were underrepresented. We didn’t have any other representation in this country. That creates a problem when the most popular show on television is showing mainstream America what an Indian is”. While this quote discusses the issue of racial representation, the same concept can be applied to the topic of queer representation.

The issue with both Norman Bates and Jame Gumb is not their portrayal of gender non-conformity and cross-dressing. The issue with these characters is their prominence in a very small pool of queer characters in media. Meaning, when a group is grossly underrepresented in media, negative portrayals stick out and stick with uneducated audiences. In a world where media overflowed with positive, negative, complex and varied portrayals of queer, gender non-conforming characters, Bates and Gumb would be no different than Psycho’s detective Milton Arbogast and Silence’s Hannibal Lector- who no more represents all white cisgender men than Bates and Gumb represent all queer individuals. Overall, these examples serve to amplify the importance of diverse representations in all media, even in pieces as low-brow as slasher films.

References

Benshoff, H (2015). The Monster and the Homosexual in Grant, B. K. (Ed.) Dread of difference

ProQuest Ebook Central https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.proxy.libraries.rutgers.edu

Dubois, D. (2001). 'Seeing the female body Differently': Gender issues in the silence of the Lambs

Journal of Gender Studies, 10(3), 297-310. doi:10.1080/09589230120086502

Melamedoff, M. (Director). (2017). The Problem with Apu [Video file]. Retrieved 2021, from

https://play.hbomax.com/feature/urn:hbo:feature:GXfu_jAb4bZWdkQEAAAgU

camp=googleHBOMAX&action=play

Phillips, K. (1998). Unmasking Buffalo Bill: Interpretive Controversy and "The Silence of the Lambs".

Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 28(3), 33-47. Retrieved April 16, 2021, from

http://www.jstor.org/stable/3886379