Celebrating Pride, Passion, and Purpose

This month, we proudly celebrate a community united in love and horror — and the diversity that makes us morbidly beautiful.

It’s June. Not only does that mean Summer is here, but it also means it’s Pride Month. This is the month we celebrate love and diversity. We champion the courage to be proud of who you are, even if others make you feel different or strange. And we take a positive stance against discrimination and intolerance.

Here at Morbidly Beautiful, we take this opportunity to highlight diversity and inclusiveness in the genre throughout the month. Just as we do every year with Women in Horror Month, we focus more on content this month that spotlights the underrepresented voices in horror. We take extra care to celebrate LGBTQ+ filmmakers, films, story lines, and artists.

Diversity is incredibly important to us all year long — from the members of our writing team to the type of content we curate.

However, we kick things up a notch during June, and we’re so proud of everything we’ve got coming your way this month.

We are also honored to help sponsor a very important fundraising event in support of Pride Month, and in partnership with Drafthouse Phoenix and our very own Danni Winn. Click here to learn all about the event — a very special screening of High Tension with raffle prizes and beer specials — and find out how you can donate to a  really important and impactful nonprofit, Mulligan’s Manor.

Pride is about self-affirmation, dignity, and equality. But it’s also about unity. It’s about standing together as one, in spite of our differences, and refusing to let hate and ignorance divide us.

The Horror community is one of the most caring, supportive, and accepting groups I’ve ever had the pleasure to be a part of.

Maybe that’s because many of us have been made to feel like outcasts and outsiders at various times in our life due to our macabre tastes and love for things others don’t understand. We see beauty in the morbid (a fact that inspired the name of this site). And when others look away from the terrifying and the grotesque, we lean in closer. We are united by the pride we take in our genre — in our love for the monsters and monstrosities society casts aside.

We wear our weirdness like a badge of honor.

But the Horror community, sadly like all communities, is not without its toxic influences. There are people who will judge you for you are, what you like and dislike, what baggage you bring to the table, and your qualifications to be in the horror “cool” club”.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard someone accuse another of being a “fake” horror fan. What does that even mean?!

If you love Horror, any kind of Horror, you are one of us.

Maybe you’re an extreme horror gore hound. So am I. But that’s not for everyone, and that’s ok. Maybe you think John Carpenter is overrated or Argento is a hack. That makes me weep inside, but you’re no less of a horror fan than I am. Whether you love or hate jump scares, praise or protest remakes, live for slow burn horror or think it’s a total bore — every voice matters, and everyone deserves a place at the horror table.

We can debate our differences. We can disagree. Sometimes vehemently. But we all deserve respect. And we all deserve to be proud of who we are — to love who and what we love, free from hate and hostility.

Now, as a left-leaning, socially conscious lass, I’ve had my share of confrontations with those who delight in mocking the idea of empathy, inclusiveness, and tolerance. One of the most common arguments from those who love to instigate is something known as the tolerance paradox. Basically, it goes something like this:

“If you claim to be tolerant but stand up to hateful rhetoric, you’re a hypocrite. If you say you’re tolerant, you have to be tolerant of everyone and everything.”

While a lot of this extreme divisiveness feels very modern, fueled in many ways by social media and the 24/7 news cycle, the philosopher Karl Popper actually dealt with the intolerance paradox way back in 1945 in “The Open Societies and Its Enemies”.

In it, he prescribes a course of action to take in situations where people urge us to tolerate intolerance: DON’T.

“Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.”

In other words, if a demand for unlimited tolerance suggests that we need to tolerate the most awful ideas and acts that occur within society (specifically, those that oppress others), we’re providing a tacit endorsement of those policies.

We will never stand for intolerance. In fact, I’ve been accused of getting a bit too “cause-y” here on this site. Horror, it’s been argued, should not be about social issues or politics. I respectfully disagree. And, quite frankly, so do many of the most beloved horror auteurs of all time, who have brilliantly tackled important socio-political issues while making some of the greatest horror movies ever made.

Who cares about issues?

The masters like Carpenter, Cronenberg, Craven, Barker, Romero. It’s evident in true horror classics like Candyman, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, They Live, The People Under the Stairs, Rosemary’s Baby, Dawn of the Dead, Nightbreed, and Jaws. It can be found in the foundations of horror like Frankenstein, and in modern masterpieces like Get Out and The Witch. And let’s not forget one of the biggest (literally) horror icons of yesterday and today, Godzilla. A GREAT BIG political statement.

We care about things that matter on this site. We are genre junkies first and foremost, and our love and respect for horror never waivers.

We care about diversity of talent, as well as diversity of content. That’s why we cover everything from film to literature, music, art, comics, television, and anime. That’s why we highlight work ranging from extreme horror to arthouse to cult cinema, from obscure indie gems to mainstream favorites, from exploitation to high art.

But we also think it’s important for those of us with a voice in the community to champion those whose voices have been ignored or muted for far too long — to amplify the voices that deserve to be heard. We believe in equality, diversity, and inclusiveness. And it’s why we are, whole heartedly and unapologetically, about something more than horror.

Happy Pride!

#LoveForAll #HorrorForAll