Queer fears

You know when you call something a mind fuck and really you mean, “That’s kind of fucked up. Let’s put it out my mind.”? Will if you, like me, are being forced against your will to watch this season of “American Horror Story” then you are among the few who can legitimately use the term “mind fuck” and mean it in almost the literal sense. Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk are having nonconsensual sex with my brain and I don’t like it one bit. As I have already mentioned, I am a huge wuss when it comes to scary things. I only watched the first few episodes of the first season of “American Horror Story,” but knew it was not for me with its ghouls and ghosts.

But this season, this season is less about the things that go bump in the dark and more about the things that go bump in your brain. The creators have gone for the non-too-subtle metaphor of making this season about psychological scares and setting it in, duh, a mental asylum. And, boy, have they done a terrifying job of bringing every gay person’s worst nightmares to life this season. Having your lover blackmailed into committing you to the institution just because you are both lesbians. Getting locked up against your will in the nut house just for being a lesbian. Being subjected to electroshock treatment just for being a lesbian. Enduring sexual behavior modification therapy just because you are a lesbian. And now (SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS) finding out your girlfriend has been brutally murdered by the one seemingly rational man in the entire place and kept on ice (minus her teeth – shudder) for you to continue your sick ex-gay therapy on just because you are a lesbian? Welcome to your mind fuck, there is no lube.

I can’t say I enjoy this season of “American Horror Story,” because I don’t. I had to close my eyes during the whole (SPOILERS AGAIN) possibly Anne Frank lobotomy scene. And don’t get me started about what the hell they’ve done to poor Chloe Sevigny. But I will say that Ryan and Brad are doing an admirable job of making my every worst nightmare spring to life on screen to terrify and disgust me in equal measure. And while it is not, in any way shape or form, easy to watch, it is interesting. And it is interesting not just for the sheer WTFness of it, but because it does something few horror genre offerings do. It makes us sympathize with the lesbian character above pretty much all others. Sarah Paulson’s Lana is the proxy for the audience, and her anguish is the audience’s anguish. Granted, I’m never happy when a LGBT character has to endure terrible, horrible, very bad, no good things. But I do commend them for making Lana’s horrifying journey our journey. More so than the young man accused of killing his wife. More so than the French girl accused of killing her family. More so than the promiscuous young woman who gets her legs cut off. More than anyone, we’re stuck in this god-awful place with Lana. And we’re rooting for her, above all others, to make it out.

Now will she? Fuck if I know. Also, what the fuck is up with the aliens?