Horror works often create correlations between disabilities and the presence of evil by framing disabled characters as villains or perpetrators. Examples include both older works such as Bram Stoker's Dracula and more recent items such as Stephen King's Misery.

Claremont Graduate University

Disability is often employed in horror pieces as something to be feared and the monster, murderer, or other type of antagonist in a horror piece is often disabled. Cheyne identifies five dominate sensations one might expect to be conjured about in a horror piece: uneasiness, vulnerability, anxiety, repulsion, and revulsion. These are all elements synonymous with the word "horror" itself which encapsulates the presumed affect of work within the genre.

Disability and Horror

Cheyne, R. (2019). Disability, Literature, Genre: Representation and Affect in Contemporary Fiction. Liverpool University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvsn3pp7

Disability, Literature, Genre: Representation and Affect in Contemporary Fiction

The Horror Genre does not merely attempt to produce a purely cerebral sort of disgust in readers/ viewers. Rather, it hopes to produce a physical response or bodily symptoms of these feelings as scholars Linda Williams and Carol Clover note that the feeling of horror is a so-called "body genre" that illicits bodily responses (sweating, shaking, etc.). Much of these physical symptoms are also associated with revulsion or fear and when disability is employed in horror it therefore connects the presence of these symptoms to a reaction to the presence of the disability itself.

Horror and Bodily Affect and Implications of Ableism

There is a general lack of attention to disability among scholars who focus on the horror genre. This may quite likely be due to what Bolt refers to as "critical avoidance" or the regularity with which humanities scholars avoid discussing disability in their analysis. Additionally, disability studies scholars seem to avoid analyzing horror work, likely as it is often seen as purely escapist, non-critical, and not of quality. This produces a near dearth of scholarly work on horror and disability.

The Lack of Disability Studies in Horror and Vice Versa

Disability and Evil in Horror

When disabled characters are the victim or protagonist in horror works, it often reinforces other negative stereotypes about disabled individuals. Typically disability is seen as causing people to become vulnerable or weak and portrayals found in horror media often cement these ideas as said victims typically die earlier on in horror media or else are tortured and ultimately must be rescued by another. 

Disability and Vunerability in Horror

Recent humanities work employing theories from disability studies or the field of disability studies itself has made attempts to use more nuanced analyses in recent years, generally avoiding analyzing disabled characters as mere stereotypes or reinforcers of ableist stereotypes. However, this has largely not been possible with horror as most of its works seem to do little more than play on stereotypes, effectively stunting the growth of writing on horror/disability.

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