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you are homeless and you have this idea that you want to make a film about your life or about anything. These things can be accessible to us if we just put it in our minds that it is possible to do it. It is the most empow- ering thing we can actually do.
Mariam: Audre’s Revenge Films is horror based and even within the art and film community horror isn’t a genre that a lot of people take seriously. Do you think that since horror and sci-fi genres are already labeled as outsider that you have more freedom to express yourself and use this knowledge you are bringing?
Monika: Oh Yeah! Definitely! I think the reason hor-
ror is not taken seriously is because it is based on the irrational fears of the white psyche and that in itself being used as a tactic to laugh it off, yet it’s relatable
to the majority of the audience they want to reach. It has become kind of kitschy in a way. Since our collec- tive is made of QTIPOC, our lives are sometimes in a constant state of horror just based on our interactions with the “real” world. Having to always fear things like being profiled by the cops or being a sex worker wor- rying if your john is going to kill you because in a lot of horror movies the sex worker has always been silent or has always been a victim. It is typically because
of the white dude sexism that exists that sex work-
ers have always been two-dimensional characters. Also the queer coding that happens in horror movies where a transperson is always seen the villain be- cause they fuck with gender binary. Horror is actually a playground where we can flip the script to let people know that there is another spectrum of horror. We can show what it actually means to be this person living in society, having these constant fears that can also be very real in our everyday lives, and present that to folks in order to show that sometimes we laugh in order to keep from crying. Sometimes we have to express in a very exaggerated ways in order to bring awareness to folks. Horror has always been an outsider genre where anything goes as far as content, but it can also be very harmful. I think about The Witch...that movie was great in a lot of ways, mostly because the horrifying
presence was patriarchy. That definitely is a real
life fear for white women, that’s what this movie focused on, because it’s the oppression they faced and still face everyday. In the approach depicting real life fear, we have two things going on; we have white women depicting those types of fears, but also this is kind of revolutionary in how horror has been created because it always prays on the ir- rational fears of white dudes mostly. That is totally doable within our own universe in portraying these same types of fears, being able to eloquently ex- plain how we live our lives and how this is actually damaging to us. I think about that movie In My Skin, it’s a fetish movie but Marina De Van. This is also another white woman narrative, but it’s about this woman who becomes obsessed with cutting off her skinned. We see these everyday situations where she is dating this person who she doesn’t really want to date but seems so perfect for her life, she
is in this job that seems so perfect but she doesn’t want to do it, so to cope she starts peeling off her skin in order to actually start feeling something. Those are the only types of links that are relative to white supremacy, which are also the only accept- able narratives that have been funded by compa- nies. Now is our time to actually show what it is to live our lives and some of the fears we have to face everyday in order to survive.
Mariam: So because you are expected to experi- ence a heightened level of discomfort in horror, people are more apt to sit through something even if they don’t understand the narrative? Like someone can reject watching a Black Panther documentary because they think it’s too explicit, but they will sit through a horror movie depicting a similar themes.
Monika: Yes. Horror is always in this realm of fantasy and since it is exaggerated a lot of people are more willing to sit through it because it is not your lived perspective. You don’t actually have to worry about Mike Myers coming to your house and cutting
you with a machete, (laughing) but the underlying discomfort is do you really want to leave your door open at night? It’s not necessarily the monster but the fear of home invasion and quite possibly being murdered violently, so it’s based on the exaggera- tion of ones irrational fears. Like you said, sitting through a Black Panther documentary probably hits closer to home, the idea of black people owning guns and wanting to destroy the establishment,