 And that is why he is my hero. He didn’t just open a door for queer creators in the horror field; he blew the door right off the fucking hinges! Clive Barker is my hero. To fully understand this statement, I should preface this article by saying I was a child in the 1980s, a teenager in the 1990s. Not that long ago, but in some ways it feels like forever ago. Before Ellen and Will and Grace changed the television landscape, when queer people couldn’t openly serve in the military, before marriage equality was considered even a remotely realistic possibility. And definitely before queer representation in the horror genre. In fact, during my formative years you were hard pressed to find queer representation in most any genre, but it was particularly sparse in the horror field. You had the tragic gay couple at the beginning of Stephen King’s It, or you could dip way back to the lonely lesbian character in The Haunting of Hill House. The most positive representation we had were the gender-fluid vampires in the work of Anne Rice. But if you were a queer horror fan during that time, as I was, you weren’t going to be able to find many books where you found yourself represented. And I looked, believe me I looked. Not just in the pages, but behind the pages. Back then you would also be hard pressed to find openly queer creators writing horror books. As an aspiring writer with an interest in horror myself, it left me with the impression that there was no place for me in the genre. My earliest writings contained no queer characters because judging by what I saw being published, I thought such a thing simply wasn’t allowed in horror. Then Clive Barker changed everything for me. I’ve heard people since say that even before he publicly came out, everyone in the industry knew he was gay. Well, I wasn’t in the industry. I was a teenager living in a tiny southern town, lonely and feeling like my favorite genre had no room for people like me. Until the February 25, 1995 issue of The Advocate magazine. At that point in my life, I was taking my first tentative steps out of the closet. In life, if not my fiction. I routinely bought the latest issues of The Advocate (subtitled at the time “The National Gay and Lesbian Newsmagazine”), and in this particular issue I was surprised and delighted to find an article on Clive Barker. As a horror fan, I was of course familiar with Barker, both the films (Hellraiser and Candyman were particular favorites of mine) and the books (at this point I had read The Books of Blood, The Thief of Always, and The Damnation Game). I appreciated the breadth and boldness of his imagination, the sheer originality of his fiction, and I got a kick out of the fact that he utilized a gay couple as the leads in his short story “In the Hills, the Cities.” Yet I had no idea the man himself was gay. Not until I read that article in The Advocate. Charles Isherwood had gone to Barker’s Los Angeles home and interviewed the storyteller for the piece, and in it Barker talked openly about being a gay man and how he thought his homosexuality was an asset to his creative endeavors. I have to admit, I was shocked. Here was a well-known author who made movies and published with a major publisher (HarperCollins), an icon in the horror genre who had been praised by the likes of Stephen King himself, unashamedly talking about his homosexuality. In the article, he also talked a lot about the imagination, his writing process, the importance of stories, but he did not shy away from talking about his sexuality in very overt terms. He was frank and fearless, and I was left feeling stunned and elated. In this day and age, I’m not sure if I could explain that feeling to someone who didn’t grow up queer in that time period. This was truly unprecedented, and the fact that he talked so candidly and casually about his sexuality made it even more groundbreaking. There are those that say a person’s sexuality doesn’t matter, but usually the ones who say that are people who have never been ostracized or discriminated against because of their sexuality. It does matter, and it particularly mattered in the mid-90s, so coming out in such a public way was an act of courage from Barker. Something that entailed actual risk to his career, but he did it anyway. And that is why he is my hero. He didn’t just open a door for queer creators in the horror field; he blew the door right off the fucking hinges! Coming out in The Advocate didn’t end Barker’s career or even slow him down. In fact, the very next year he released the book Sacrament which featured an openly gay man as the protagonist and used the AIDS epidemic still ravaging the gay community as a metaphor for endangered species. Or he used endangered species as a metaphor for the gay community. However you look at it, the book put gay themes front and center. In a mainstream horror/fantasy novel published by HarperCollins. His official bio started referencing his “husband.” In 1998, he produced the queer-centric film Gods and Monsters – a fictional account of the final days of real-life openly gay Frankenstein director James Whale, based on the book by openly gay author Christopher Bram, directed by openly gay filmmaker Bill Condon, starring openly gay actor Ian McKellen. Barker’s career continued to flourish, and he remained a respected member of the horror community. That makes him more than an icon but an actual fucking legend in both the horror community and the queer community. After reading that article, I began to rethink my assumption that I would find no place at the horror table with overtly queer work. It caused a shift in me as a person and as a storyteller, and I realized I was erasing myself from the narrative. I had craved representation in the horror genre, and Barker helped me see that I could contribute to that representation. I may never be as successful as him, but I could be as fearless and frank. After that, I started putting queer characters in my work. Front and center. I started exploring queer themes, and my work became more honest, more personal, and I think much richer and deeper. Barker gave me that courage. I also took strength from his example when later on I encountered publishers who were very upfront with their misgivings about queer elements in horror. These publishers weren’t necessarily malicious, but they all had an attitude of what I would call casual, even unconscious homophobia. I was told being so openly gay would kill any chance at a career in horror, that using queer characters would “alienate the heterosexual male fan base” of the genre. I was told I may need to find a publisher that specialized in marketing to a gay audience, intimating that a straight audience would never accept my work. I even had small word choices questioned because, I was told, one man calling another man “beautiful” would be too jarring for straight male readers. But I persevered, in part because I had seen Clive Barker do it. He had blazed that trail and all I had to do was follow. Today I see the horror genre (particularly in the small press, big New York publishing still has a ways to do) flourishing with such a diverse array of openly queer creators, and I feel it can be traced in part back to Barker, to that article in The Advocate. He gave us the signal that it was okay outside the closet. He was and is a pioneer, and that should never be forgotten. Clive Barker is my hero. Mark Allan Gunnells Mark Allan Gunnells loves to tell stories. He has since he was a kid, penning one-page tales that were Twilight Zone knockoffs. He likes to think he has gotten a little better since then. He loves reader feedback, and above all he loves telling stories. He lives in Greer, SC, with his husband Craig A. Metcalf. Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Mark-Allan-Gunnells/e/B005C18L7Q/ Blog: https://markgunnells.livejournal.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/MarkAGunnells The Heart and Soul of Horror Promotion websitesComments are closed.
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