ABSTRACT

The combination of sex and horror may be disquieting to many, but the two are natural bedfellows. In fact, sex and horror coincide with such regularity in contemporary horror fiction that the two concepts appear to be at least partially intertwined. Sex and horror are balanced in a manner that thoroughly blurs the distinction between porn and horror. Complaints about moral and social deterioration are abstract in nature: it is not clear how representations of sex-horror have a corrosive impact on society or morality per se. Those who seek to suppress sex-horror imagery typically garner support for their position by negating these complexities. The ostensible sex-horror paradox stems from the unnecessarily limited vision of sexuality. The moralistic quest to censure representations of sex-horror entails denying these complexities in favour of over-simplified models such as the media-effects paradigm. Indeed, calls to censure sex-horror are typically marked by both conceptual confusion and a lack of detailed engagement with the films under scrutiny.