By Julian Vega
Queer genre theory explores how LGBTQ+ identities, desires, and perspectives intersect with established genre conventions—and how they reshape or resist them. From early camp aesthetics to contemporary queer horror and New Queer Cinema, LGBTQ+ voices have long engaged with genre both creatively and critically.
One of the foundational concepts in queer genre theory is camp—a sensibility that exaggerates style, artifice, and irony. Scholars like Susan Sontag and critics within queer communities have linked camp to melodrama, musicals, and even science fiction. Camp transforms genre by highlighting its codes and excesses, turning “bad taste” into a form of resistance and pleasure.
New Queer Cinema of the 1990s challenged genre boundaries altogether. Filmmakers like Todd Haynes, Cheryl Dunye, and Gregg Araki experimented with narrative form, ambiguity, and affect, refusing neat resolution or traditional hero arcs. These films often appropriated and queered genre forms such as noir, horror, or teen drama to express queer subjectivity and non-normative desire.
In more recent years, queer horror has emerged as a critical and creative space, reimagining monstrosity, fear, and the body. Scholars like Harry Benshoff argue that horror, long filled with coded queer figures (e.g., vampires, shape-shifters), becomes fertile ground for exploring identity and repression. Similarly, LGBTQ+ representation in genres like fantasy and superhero films has pushed mainstream cinema toward more inclusive storytelling, though often with tension between visibility and tokenism.
Queer genre theory doesn’t just ask “Are there LGBTQ+ characters?” but rather: How does the genre itself function queerness? How do formal structures like time, space, narrative closure, and character arc reflect or resist heteronormative expectations?
Ultimately, queer genre theory opens up new ways of reading and making media—where genres are not rigid containers but dynamic frameworks that can include ambiguity, fluidity, and resistance at their core.
Sources: Susan Sontag, Harry Benshoff, Alexander Doty, Jack Halberstam; writings on camp, queer horror, and LGBTQ+ cinema.