In grad school, I took a Writing Horror, Fantasy, and Supernatural course where my professor stated there was a difference between a horror film and a ghost story. Both contain scares and incite dread, but the former ends without relief, plunging you back into terror in the very final frames of the film, a la Naomi Watts realizing Samara will never stop killing via videotape in The Ring, while the latter provides the resolution we crave. Think Bruce Willis realizing he’s dead and accepting he has to move on in The Sixth Sense.
That distinction sticks in my brain because it makes sense, and I want things to make sense, especially in stories because that desire underscores why we tell stories in the first place; to put a container around events to make them seem related and greater than each moment separated from the rest. Paradoxically, this explanation that delights my brain by making sense also undercuts my theory of storytelling. If the horror genre freeze frames on the TV static of death, doesn’t that create a container that tells us life has no meaning beyond pain and suffering?
Thankfully, I am a person who experienced loss when they had to move away from their childhood friend and movie-making collaborator only to watch them become friend and podcast collaborator all over again when we both moved to LA, needed a roommate, and wanted to start Queer Cinema Catchup.That story, our story, when contained by the framework of our shared queer-identites and desire to make content, lets me see other, more hopeful meanings in my own life. Meanings about finding one’s self, one’s people, surprises that shift and change you for the better. This meaningful podcast experience, however, is why I’m thinking about ghost stories in the first place.
The second episode of QCC (A Bottle of Mescal) centers around a movie with a very Shyamalan twist. All of Us Strangers starring Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal eventually arrives at catharsis and meaning but it makes you feel quite awful before providing that relief by playing with expectation. Pretty quickly in the film Andrew Scott’s character Adam begins conversing with the ghosts of his parents who died when he was a pre-teen. Such an early reveal primes the audience to look for ghosts, wondering if Adam or Paul’s character Harry might be of the spirit world as well.
Though you anticipate some kind of ghostly twist, the script still manages to gut you by having Adam experience a resolution followed very quickly by intolerable pain once more. First, there’s relief: Adam accepts he must shepherd his parents to the afterlife and make peace with the fact that death robbed his family of a real and not imagined or supernatural chance to move through the shock of having a son come out as gay in the 1980s and arrive back at love. Then, there’s horror: Adam returns home ready to choose his troubled but sweet neighbor and partner Harry fully. In walking through Harry’s door, however, Adam and the audience know all has gone wrong - the apartment is in shambles, there is an awful smell, Adam recoils when he looks in the bedroom. We know he’s seen death once again, so soon after learning the power of love. The cycle of grief never ends. The movie forces you back into the bad feelings.
As an FYI, that’s not what catharsis is supposed to do! It’s a term you may have learned in high school English, as I did by reading Aristotle’s Poetics. When my teacher explained catharsis as the purging of negative emotions, however, I didn’t really understand. Perhaps because I was a teen and liked the angst. Developmentally normal, of course, but also indicative of a belief I held back then that explained why I listened to Johnny Cash’s Hurt on repeat or felt glad when my favorite character Cristina Yang was left at the altar. I felt that dark, painful feelings held more truth than joy.
I’ve now lived enough life to see that it’s all, to steal another of Aristotle's ideas, about balance. Or maybe about cycles, which brings me back to All of Us Strangers. All the pain and anger I felt when Adam found Harry’s body dissipated the moment Adam steps out of the bedroom and sees Harry once again. A ghost, as perhaps he’s always been, but this time Adam and Harry both know it and Adam understands he needs to help this boy accept his death and all the negative emotions it has conjured via an embrace as the Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s song The Power of Love plays. So, the power of love reigns again. Except that’s not really true. Stories may end but life continues and grief returns. A cycle we’ll all experience again and again, whether we're contending with actual death or other hardship.
In a way, the movie brilliantly explores the cyclical on a societal level as well by having Adam belong to one generation and Harry to another, younger generation. Since Adam’s parents died when he was a teen before he came out, we get a very stark idea of what it was like to grow up queer as a British Gen X-er. When Adam comes out to her ghost, Adam’s mom brings up fears about AIDS, rejection and humiliation, and lonely lives, which rankles Adam who’s become an adult in a more accepting time. Even so, we have Harry, someone who’s likely of Generation Z, describing feeling like an outsider in his own family in a separate scene. Yes, Harry was perhaps accepted by his family, but he’s different and apart from the norm that’s embraced and followed by the rest of his people, making me think of a Taylor Swift quote, “I know my love should be celebrated but you tolerate it.”
Being queer in Western society has in many ways changed for the better, yet more visibility and acceptance doesn’t negate persistent inequality and other minority stressors that can make one feel like they’re on the outside looking in at everyone else living the “right” kind of life. The pain’s always there, and the cycle threatens to start all over again with anti-LGBTQ+ legislation on the rise.
Another of my professors, this time from undergrad, had a thought that helps me find sense in the cycle. A thought that aligns in my mind with the meaning of All of Us Strangers. In our very first class, my Shakespeare professor shared that he and his wife had a disagreement over whether tragedy (in Shakespeare, death) or comedy (in Shakespeare, weddings) held more truth. All throughout the semester, my professor proposed this choice to us, even questioning if certain scenes were as straightforwardly tragic as they appeared (i.e., Could King Lear’s “look there, look there” as he looks at his dead daughter Cordelia suggest he sees proof of life…a supernatural passing on…something hopeful…or is it just the horror of death alone?).
At the time, this question felt especially existential to me, for I was in my final semester of college. An end was upon me, and I needed to know what to make of it, especially since I didn’t feel as if I knew who I was or where I was going after what was supposed to be the most fun and formative time of my life. While I can’t remember exactly how he phrased it, my professor led us to an answer on the final day of class that satisfied me in that it was a call to action. He told us it was our choice. Where we saw truth. Pain or laughter. Death or life. Loneliness or love.
I won’t choose for you, or come down too definitively on one side or the other. I will reiterate I like stories that make sense. Hear Joe and I discuss All of Us Strangers in more detail on the second episode of Queer Cinema Catch Up, and send us reactions, thoughts, and questions to queercinemacatchup@gmail.com
