Tales from the cripped: representations of disability in North American horror cinema

Prentice, Katherine Lucia (2026) Tales from the cripped: representations of disability in North American horror cinema. MRes thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

Disability has an uncomfortable ubiquity in the horror genre, with villains and victims making up the majority of these representations. While much scholarship continues to focus on gender and the final girl, and more recently has engaged with sexuality and race in horror, this thesis interrogates how ableist stereotypes have become ingrained in modern horror cinema with a particular focus on familial structures. Analysing the child/Adult Child, Mad Mother, then the wider, “deviant” family as a microcosm of perceptions of social “ills”, this thesis highlights the intersections of race, class, sexuality, and gender within these ableist trends in the genre through textual analysis. This research is intended to pick up where previous studies of disability in horror, such as Angela M. Smith’s 2012 monograph, have left off. As such, the films analysed here begin in the 1960s, but particular attention is paid to the most influential films in the genre, particularly those with extensive franchises and recent reboots. These are then compared throughout the thesis to recent horror from the 2020s to illustrate the continued prevalence of the disabled villain, and how it manifests differently across North American horror cinema. Centuries of fiction utilising disability as metaphor for social issues (Mitchel and Snyder, 2004: Susan Sontag, 1978) perpetuate false ideas about disability, particularly as it intersects with class, race, and gender, prevalent in eugenicist discourse, which continues in the genre and is internalised by disabled and non-disabled people alike, which this thesis aims to contest and unpack.

• Item Type: Thesis (MRes)
• Qualification Level: Masters
• Subjects: N Fine Arts > N Visual arts (General) For photography, see TR
• Colleges/Schools: College of Arts & Humanities > School of Culture and Creative Arts > Theatre Film and TV Studies
• Supervisor's Name: Khosroshahi, Dr. Zahra and Jenkins, Dr. Abigail
• Date of Award: 2026
• Depositing User: Theses Team
• Unique ID: glathesis:2026-86154
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 28 Jul 2026 12:03
• Last Modified: 28 Jul 2026 12:23
• Thesis DOI: 10.5525/gla.thesis.86154
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/86154