GUTTER STUDIES

Starting some time in the last decade or so, we’ve all run into the dreaded phrase “elevated horror.” Sometimes it meant A24. Sometimes it meant horror movies too-obvious in their treatment of grief, trauma, race, motherhood, or family dysfunction. Sometimes it just meant horror movies that critics decided to gush about after looking down on horror for … This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gutterstudies.substack.com/subscribe

For fifty years, The Rocky Horror Picture Show has endured as a midnight ritual. The first thing any fan or critic wants to talk about is the cult following and audience participation elements: the costumes, callbacks, inside jokes, the flying props. And that’s all good fun. But the carnivalesque cult following around the film often impedes the more interesting critical questions we can ask. After all, what is the text of Rocky Horror actually about? And how does that relate to its cult elements or the cultural situation we live in today?My new video essay argues that underneath the fishnets and the floor show, Rocky Horror is a timeless story about sexual politics; specifically, about the cycle of radicalism and reaction that drives so much cultural history.Rocky Horror is about liberation. But it’s also about the price of that “absolute pleasure: the backlash, the violence, the collapse. It’s like a microcosm of the sociopolitical pattern we keep living through, even as we navigate the present transition from the high woke era to the so-called vibe shift. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gutterstudies.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to Sweet Sweet Suffering: A Three-Part Video Essay on Hellraiser! In part one, I argue Hellraiser is not about demons. It's about desire, and best understood as mapping to a specific theory of desire from Jacques Lacan, one of the twentieth century’s most provocative and influential thinkers.Over three video essays, I'll go deep into the Hellraiser franchise — not just as horror films, but as a surprisingly coherent philosophical argument about what it means to be a human being.Each part focuses on a different entry (parts 1, 2, and 4). (I skip Hell on Earth because I don’t have anything interesting to say about that one.) In my reading, Hellraiser, Hellbound, and Bloodline each elaborates its own Lacanian concept.Hellraiser is about desire.Hellbound is about the Real.Bloodline is about the role of fantasy.The first talks about desire as a certain paradox: what happens when you actually get what you want? The second descends into the psychological system that produces desire. The third reveals the fragile illusion that allows us to live with desire at all. The framework is Lacanian psychoanalysis — one of the twentieth century's most challenging and rewarding bodies of thought. But no prior knowledge required. If you love Hellraiser and want to go deeper, this is for you. And if you've always been curious about Lacan but didn't know where to start, it turns out Hellraiser is a fantastic entry point. 🧠Takes this as an opportunity to revisit one of the most interesting horror films of all time. Part two, covering Hellbound, drops in two weeks. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gutterstudies.substack.com/subscribe

This is one of the last videos I’ve had in the vault from my Youtube days. It started as a silly idea for a kind of audacious clickbait project. I didn’t realize how wildly time-consuming it’d end up being. And it was kind of a maddening project too. Many times along the way, I felt uncomfortably deranged for even attempting such an obscene exercise. But it ended up being good practice for me as a video editor, since it involved wrangling and sequencing a huge number of clips in specific order. I can’t say I’m necessarily proud of making this. But I did make it, so here it is for your sick enjoyment. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gutterstudies.substack.com/subscribe

In this audio-only episode, I’m joined again by Cynthia to count down the best horror movies of 2025. The conversation is 100% spoiler free—and I think also free of pretentious jargon! WDYT - was 2024 or 2025 a better year for horror? Many are asking. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gutterstudies.substack.com/subscribe