american horror story

[pocochina]

I started watching American Horror Story?! It wasn't really on my radar last year, but I've seen a few good reviews of Asylum and the first season went up on Netflix last week, so I'm giving it a try.

• I had assumed in part because I've heard second-hand about a lot of the problems with Glee, and because I'm aware of issues within the horror genre, that it would be difficult to watch on top of the gore and the killing and all. So I was pleasantly surprised at the resulting product, which was a thoughtful, respectful examination of the complicated politics of the personal. Murphy shows his work, going so far as to give a Women & Madness 101 meta-lecture which includes a succinct analysis of The Yellow Wallpaper. It is chock full of taboos like unhappy marriages, Bad Mommies, and children who are implied not to deserve a chance. For all the blood and the death and the miserable relationships, this strikes me as incredibly progressive television.
• It does something very interesting in making the home the locus of terror. "Home," in all of the comparisons I'm thinking to draw, is rarely this. Sometimes home is neutral and even somewhat depersonalized, like the Hyperion. Sometimes one or other domestic relationship is shown as terrifying. Often the concept of home is one of a sanctuary from the horrors of the world, either one comforting in its mundane difficulties (a la Buffy), or an idealized concept rather than a place (as in Supernatural). Either way, the adventure is shown as the public sphere - in the Murder House, more than one character works at home, showing the distinction as crumbling if not entirely arbitrary. But this is something very different, with close domestic interactions of all stripes shown as so dangerous as to sink into the home itself.
• Chad and Patrick feels...important, somehow. Twenty, or even ten, years ago, they would have had to be blissfully, insultingly happy to escape being Tragic Queers, and even then their presence on the screen would still have been jarring and subversive. And here they're no less flawed and miserable than the house's other victims, but no more so, either.
• Ben creeps me out as much as most of the ghosts. Vivien doesn't accuse him of gaslighting (though I loved her for KNOWING that's what was happening to her) for a while, but he's doing it the whole time through. He's very good at "hearing" her concerns, and sounding very calm and reasonable as he pathologizes them, quietly and clinically telling her she's crazy, and then decides "we" are going to do exactly what he wants them to do.
• I admit I rolled my eyes a bit when the murder house tour guide started doing the whole personhood spiel about the"little ones" haunting the house since abortions were performed there. And then that clever little knot in the traditional narrative comes through when the first tragedy of that home is the kidnapping of Nora's son, by a male partner of a patient explicitly said to be motivated by fury at everyone who allowed his wife to access abortion care. The initial violation is of someone else forcing his own domestic drama into theirs.
• Moira is so wonderful, too, because she's a character that doesn't usually get a voice. The exploration of women as sex objects/care takers is pretty heavy-handed and could have fallen flat. But Moira is shown to be flawed, reserved and sensitive but not lacking in perspective. Her murder at the hands of Constance is a brutal look at power struggles between women for what little the patriarchy gives them.
• And Constance, OMG. SO FABULOUSLY EVIL. I was shocked at how explicitly homophobic she was - I know people still are that way, but I'm always still a little shocked, because such overt homophobia is (rightfully, of course) usually at least eschewed as being *distasteful* even among people who harbor heteronormative attitudes. But it feels deliberate, to show the hypocrisy of the brutal policing done by this last member of the old guard - she's willing to leave the Murder House for her won survival, and to humor Chad and Patrick as long as they might get her a grandbaby, but it's only tolerance as far as it comes with usefulness to her own domestic dream.
• I just am such a sucker for social history, and analysis of gendered tropes, and humor as black as the night. I really like it.

So what do we think? Anyone else watching? I'm totally hooked and hoping to catch up on Asylum this weekend. This entry was originally posted at http://pocochina.dreamwidth.org/278276.html. Leave a comment here, or there using OpenID.