25 🇧🇷🇺🇸

I make stuff (like art and games) sometimes and I have thoughts (about media and junk) that I do writing about, but for real i just be posting tbh



JuniperTheory
@JuniperTheory
Ghostwatch Review

This review is about a transphobic movie and discusses transphobia in england.

every year, me and a group of friends watch every a horror film every single day in october, and then finish it off by watching ghostwatch on the 31st

ghostwatch is the blair witch project before the blair witch project. it premiered on BBC pretending to be a real talk show where people could call in and share their paranormal experiences, and anyone missing the beginning cue card that said it was a movie would have simply been greeted with an extremely good horror movie that was trying to trick them into thinking it was happening live, at that moment

i could talk about the genius framing of it all, how the film was so scary it got banned from ever being shown again on the bbc, or the legacy of it later influencing other found footage style horror, but instead I want to talk about what fascinates me most about it:

forget sleepaway camp, THIS is my favorite transphobic horror film.

the ghost in this, called "pipes", is talked about as being possibly a man or a woman at times; by the end of the film they're constantly referring to him as male while also constantly mentioning how he wears a dress. the film never really makes it clear what he is; maybe a number of ghosts all brought together, maybe a single evil man or transgender person, but it doesn't want to. what could be scarier then a bald man in a dress, especially one who is probably a child predator? on a surface level, the film just draws these lines together to make a spooky ghost, lines that are genuinely disgusting

but the lines aren't being drawn in a vaccum. Ghostwatch isn't a normal horror film, the entire thing is taking place live on British television. our ghost is haunting a family in a british suburb, and we see this by having cameras and microphones constantly being shoved in their faces. more then just an attempt to capture the supernatural it feels exploitative. watching the family try desperately to convince people that this thing haunting them is real while not looking *too* weird so they aren't dismissed as "insane" feels cruel, even more so by how it's being turned into the hottest new live television as we watch. having people call in and give their thoughts makes it worse.

there's two main "perspectives" we're offered on what could be going on. First is a few quick interviews with a rationalist; a scientist saying that all of this is fake, nothing we see is real. Trust your eyes, ignore what people feel, we are a modern rational nation! The second is a true believer in the supernatural, and one of our main characters in the film and hosts of the show. She sits in the studio reassuring people that the supernatural is real... but it's understandable. it's safe, it's something we can tame. sure, in the past we might have been scared of ghosts, but in our more civilized age we can understand them and be at peace with them. for most of the film, she gladly eggs on the camera crew and everyone involved; capturing this footage is valuable proof that can help us understand these things, and through understanding, we can all find peace.

but there is no peace to be found with the horror lurking beneath the british empire.

the ghosts in this film aren't vague monsters and demons. they're queer people, they're poor people, they're the things the empire covers up and hides in it's corners. Hell, they're the ghosts of the empire itself; early in the film, one of our characters talks about how she's personally had a supernatural experience. when she describes it, she talks about her vision of "an indian woman doing a dance" and then later talks about a learning about "concubines" that lived there in a way that feels like the sort of moderately racist fantasy a white british woman would have. these are the sorts of places our ghosts come from in ghostwatch.

england thinks, perhaps, they can control their past. while some take the perspective that "we've done nothing wrong, there is Nothing to See Here, it's a modern rational age and our colonial crimes have no bearing on us", most liberals take a different approach. sure, we may have committed crimes beyond measure to the world at large, but in our modern era we can understand these things and have peace with them. they do not want us dead! they simply want to be understood, and we can understand them in turn.

they cannot. the crimes they have committed call out for justice, and when it will not be found, there is a deep, deep fear that it will find a way to claim that justice anyways. Pipes is coded as a trans woman because fear of transgender people is deep, deep in the british psyche, and it should be. terf island should be scared of us. they should be scared of the years of teaching their children that men wearing dresses are child predators. they should be scared of the crimes they've committed against the world, as should every fucking empire.

i love ghostwatch. i wish it would actually happen to england. in the meantime, we will simply have to make them pay ourselves when the revolution finally comes. death to america, a country of evil beyond measure, and death to england, who taught us everything we know.


You must log in to comment.

in reply to @JuniperTheory's post:

Ghostwatch is such a great example of a "period film by accident." The BBC was such an unassailable cultural edifice in 90s Britain that the film's commitment to precisely capturing its style and sensibilities now deepens and broadens its unnerving effects. Long stretches of the film feel frivolous and banal in exactly the way you would expect from BBC stuffed shirts slumming it as ghost hunting reality TV. It doesn't just feel voyeuristic and exploitative, it feels like business as usual for all the media figures involved. Ghostwatch never feels like it's winking at the camera; indeed, it feels incapable of self-reflection of any kind. So those very same media figures who are ostensible "reporting the story" are sitting ducks and the last to realize how fucked things have become by the end.

Exactly. The fact that it's transphobic doesn't feel like they're playing up transphobia to scare you, it feels transphobic because bbc is transphobic. Every part of the film feels like it's "like that" because england itself is like that, and that fascinates me.

"Not be having to learn Chinese right now" you just had to be racist in your defense of America, huh. typical patriot shit, i'm not surprised

so much about your comment is nonsense. you need to crack open a few books, get the propaganda out of your head. the idea that the US is some bastion of human rights is completely laughable if you know anything about actual history

Ah well nuts! Ghostwatch is one of my favorite found footage movies, but because I'm cis, the transphobia went right over my head. I never even considered it might be read that way. I just the thought the ghost was like the stone tapes, where each new victim became a new layer to the supernatural entity. Got to have a think about this now.

It is! But also, there's a layer of transphobia TO the horror; why is a bald man in a dress a scary image?

I guess my point is that i'm not saying ghostwatch is transphobic, i'm saying that ghostwatch is first and foremost extremely british, and ENGLAND is transphobic. England is many things. It's a fascinating complex film, and I absolutely adore it.