Virtual Queer Halloweenposting Part 1: Queer Themes in the Scream Franchise

 It's September 1st, friends!!!! The day where I personally think I am allowed to start publicly celebrating Halloween without judgment. In honor of this most auspicious day, we are posting our first of many articles discussing queer themes in Horror. In this post, C is tackling one of her favorite horror series, "Scream".

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What’s your favorite scary movie?
    Well, Creepy Caller in a Universally Known White Mask, that list is so long, you will get bored and find another target fairly quickly. But since you asked… my favorite scary movies are the ones that can laugh at themselves, that are so meta, they quickly became a satire of themselves. Forget the fourth wall, the fifth and sixth walls are coming down, too. Ones that don’t use gore just for the sake of gore (unless you’re anything in the Evil Dead series, but that’s another blog post for another time). And ones that encompass such a beloved cast of characters (killers and final folx alike), that you tend to smile no matter who’s on screen. And I also like scary movies that make me think, that work as a character study that I can somehow relate to my own everyday life.
*Click*
That was the sound of Ghost Face hanging up on me.
In a word, my favorite scary movie is Scream. Scream III, if we’re being overly specific, but for the purpose of this post, I am in love with the entire franchise.
In December of 1996, someone, somewhere thought “hey, let’s release a Halloween-esque horror movie days before Christmas, but we’ll make it funny,” and horror movie nerds everywhere were like, “do it! Do it! Nothing says Christmas like horror. Haven’t you ever seen Black Christmas?!”
And so the cult following was forged.
In 1996, queerness was the punchline to almost every joke on Friends. It would still be a year before Ellen Degeneres would  publicly come out on Ellen. Jack McPhee hadn’t even thought about moving to Capeside yet, let alone began to realize he’d be one half of the first kiss between two men on network TV (#Dawson’sCreekForever).
In 1996, in mainstream media, queer characters were background characters, the joke, teh stereotype. And the few times that they weren’t, it was almost guaranteed that viewers shouldn’t get too attached because they would die bloody and senselessly in a trend now referred to as “Burying your gays” (RIP Tara).
In 1996, queer kids lived on the fringes. I didn’t even know that there was a word for people who didn’t want to kiss boys or girls, but just wanted to read adventure books and watch trashy movies (asexual. The word was asexual, and it would be another twenty years before I realized that that was what I was). In 1996, queer kids were looking for a scene where they fit, where they belonged without question or judgment or backhanded comments disguised with a laugh track.
Enter Kevin Williamson (who would later have a hand in Jack McPhee’s coming out and my own battle cry of #Dawson’sCreekForever) with a white mask and the character of Billy Loomis.
Billy Loomis.
Originally set as the heartthrob, the bad boy, Sydney’s love interest who was maybe from the wrong side of the tracks but couldn’t possibly be the killer, because he was going to swoop in and save the day. Until Williamson took what we all thought we knew about horror movies and turned it on its head.
Not only was Billy Loomis the big bad (if this is a spoiler to you, where have you been and why are you reading this post??), but the love between him and Sydeny was an act (truly the scariest concept of this whole franchise).
Breaking this down into the most basic of character studies, Billy Loomis was a kid whose family was ripped to shreds by the actions of his father and Sydney’s mom, and it broke him, left him a shell of who he could have been.
With only an example of what I can only assume was the worst kind of toxic masculinity known to mankind (please look at the vicious way Billy throws around the word slut), is it any wonder that Billy Loomis uses the promise, or the threat, of love as a weapon?
So it’s safe to assume Billy only held a certain kind of rage for Sydney, no love at all for his friends who he’s killed without much thought. Except… there’s an exception to that rule and his name is Stu Maucher. Stu is so many things.
Hilarious.
Crass.
Over the top.
Feeling a little woozy.
And Billy’s best friend.
Boundaries between these two don’t exist. We’ve all seen the memes, usually made up of that now iconic scene of Stu leaning almost somewhere sensually over Billy’s shoulder, the two covered in blood. 
Stu looks ecstatic, the eyes of a boy about to have a raunchy kiss goodnight after a spectacular first date, and Billy… Billy looks calm. Content. Not the look you would expect someone to have when a man with a knife is so close, even if he is wielding his own.
But it’s 1996 and they’re the Big Men on Campus. These strong serial killers who want to be known for their brutality. They can’t be gay.
So they’re not.
Billy dates Sydney. Stu dates Tatum (and doesn’t seem totally broken up when she dies in a scene that has traumatized anyone who has an automatic garage door for forever). And that makes them angry, because even Sydney’s mom got to sleep with who she wanted. But Billy… it’s different for Billy.
Neve Campbell, the actress who has graced our screens as Sydney Prescott for 27 years, picked up on it, too, once stating, “Maybe some of their anger comes from not being allowed to be who they want to be, if you want to go there.” (Pride Source).
And they are angry. That much is clear from the very first moments when Drew Barrymore answers the phone.
Their method of killing can even be brought to attention here: the knives, a very phallic symbol, stabbing, in a very intimate way.
As someone who listens to a lot of true crime, I can tell you that stabbings, especially to this degree, repetitive in its nature, erratic in its movements, it’s usually sexual in nature (Psycho: The Knife). .
And, yes, at the end of the day, this is a fictional horror movie that makes fun of itself in every conceivable way, and all of these theories are just a bunch of film buffs contemplating the opinions and personal lives that happened off screen and in between script pages.
Except… even Kevin Williamson (all hail the king, a genius if ever one has truly existed), has famously said before the release of Scream 6 that Stu and Billy are based on Leopold and Loeb, a very real romantic couple of killers from the early 1900s who stabbed a little boy just to see what killing felt like (Screen Rant).
Billy and Stu, yes, had a vendetta against Sydney and her mom, but what about the rest of the cast? Those killings all seemed pretty meaningless to me. A kill just to feel the thrill of a kill, and to share that excitement together. It’s pretty in line with Leopold and Loeb, except… neither Leopold nor Loeb ever stabbed the other like Billy stabbed Stu.
Call it panic, call it evil, call it a final way to deny his own feelings, but whatever you call it, it can’t change the fact that Billy turns around and stabs Stu deeper than necessary. And then he literally twists the knife.
I could write a blog post all its own on the look on Stu’s face when Billy stabs him. The betrayal, the fear, the object devastation that settles there as he realizes that they were never going to get their happily ever after. And maybe Billy feels it, too, the way his eyes move, careful not to give too much of himself away. There’s no good, analytical reason for Billy to kill Stu. He wasn’t going to tell on him, they were about to get away with it (except Sydney is badass and that would never happen). There is no need for more bloodshed, especially not within their little meeting of the Killer Club, but Billy can’t seem to stop himself. It’s not an accident; that much is clear. He is very deliberate in where he sticks the knife, how he sticks the knife, and how he avoids Stu’s gaze as he falls, proclaiming in a broken cry that he’s feeling a little woozy. He’s scared, and Billy pretends to just not care, locking that part of himself away again. It’s almost always been my speculation that Billy kills Stu out of desperation, out of denial. Sydney’s going to be dead, Tatum already is, there is nothing else standing in their way. Except the fact that Billy can’t be gay, not in 1996. So he stabs the object of his affections and watches him rather stoically as he dies on the kitchen floor.
Of course, as the series continued to Scream II and Scream III, then Scream 4, then the exceptional Scream 5, and now 6, along with some talks of 7 already in the works, speculation of Stu and Billy’s situationship has also evolved, and so have the other characters.
It’s not 1996 any longer and the queer characters don’t have to hide under a cheap robe from a costume store. Most notably, in the 2 newest installments, we met Mindy, the twin of the golden boy and objectively more interesting. Mindy is an explicitly out queer character who has an on screen girlfriend (who, spoiler, RIP, does not make it), and spends all of Scream 6 in a Lavender Menace shirt.
All in all, the queer themes throughout the Scream franchise are higher than the body count and I could go on and on and on about Billy and Stu for quite a while, but for now, my dear readers, I leave you with the speculation of what a possible Scream 7 might include.
Happy stabbing.
Metaphorically, of course - VQ Library does not condone violence of any kind in the real world. 

-C