The history of queer cinema all too often presents their queer characters as either perfectly good people fitting into heteronormative traditional standards, or as dark, evil monsters that need to die for the audience to feel secure. It treats queerness as this “other” experience that does not fit quite right into society’s rules. Similarly, gothic literature treats their monsters in very similar ways, creating unease in its readers about these distant creatures. In Jack Halberstam’s Skin Shows, he discusses how the gothic monster is a figure on the outskirts of society. It cannot fit in with what society deems appropriate, yet it yearns to be included. I apply queer theory and the idea of the gothic monster to the TV series Hannibal (2013) to explore how the show flips the script on how cinema represents queerness through the relationship between the two main characters, Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham, who embody queer, gothic monsters refusing to be cast aside and instead carve their own space in the world.
