QUEERNESS AS MONSTROSITY, HOMOPHOBIA AS A HAUNTING: Contagion, Self-Destruction, and the Horror of Knowledge in Jennifer's Body and Marble Hornets

A thesis paper by E. Greenleaf written in late 2021. Posted to tumblr by user @blackberry-jam, the original link to the paper can be found Here. A link directly to the paper itself can be found here - LINK. This page is a ground for me to store some of my favorite lines and notes from the paper, originally taken down in a notebook.

Marble Hornets at first presents itself as an archival project - a former film student trying to unravel what happened to his friend through a collection of clips, a shuffled sequence of hints of something, out there, watching and waiting and stalking, and as the scraps begin to coalesce into a larger whole, the true narrative becomes clear - the struggle between the protagonist, his formerly-missing friend, and the two masked figures from their past.
Marble Hornets is a story about isolation, about being haunted, about secrets, and it utilizes all of the supposed 'weaknesses' of its format in order to better communicate these themes.
The horror is found primarily in the fear that the Operator is "persistently and disturbingly persent in [something]", in this case the lives of the main characters.
This simplicity unravels, and things which seemed clear and unambiguous at the beginning shift over the course of the story. The Operator, however, remains almost static throughout, unchanging and undaunted.
The Operator never speaks, and never expresses any desire, leaving its intentions and wishes up to interpretation by the characters and further unnerving them... It is not the specter of being hurt or harmed or torn open that follows him, but the terror of the unexplained, the silence of something which feels no need to communicate its unfathomable wishes to you.
Though Jay is a naturally secretive person, he does his best to be honest when it counts... Alex, on the other hand, cuts off communication with Jay... His austerity and secretiveness rapidly realign into a facade in hindsight - he is a person trying desperately to regain control over himself.
[Tim] takes an approach somewhat between Jay and Alex, being honest where he can and explaining what is necessary, but holding back more private information than Jay.
[Hoody] is one of [the mystery]'s architects, offering them pathways and opening doors to even more dangerous ideas.
The persistent fear of being seen, of being caught... there is a small and constant undercurrent of tension in every entry which Jay goes into a populated area or speaks to other people, to the point where at times it seems safer for him to be in the woods at night or breaking into abandoned buildings. The near-complete alienation from the majority of poeple is a facet of Marble Hornets that often goes unremarked.
Imposing Jay's paranoia upon the viewers, allowing them a window into his viewpoint through how fundamentally it shapes his series. The paranoia may seem off-putting, as it extends to situations most people would find unremarkable or easy.
Places the viewer into Jay's shoes - constantly at odds with the world, navigating it fearfully, and wondering when the tension will finally snap
In contrast, Marble Hornets ends with the idea not that the audience is disallowed from seeing, but that there is nothing more to see.
There is no epilogue beyond this, no answer to the questions left open-ended, nothing owed to the audience beyond a closing of the loop.
[Alex]'s agitation and paranoia are evident from the first few entries, and though they only escalate as the series continues, they are constantly pushed behind a facade of normality and stability, even after he's revealed to have become a murderer.
Even at his most irritable, Alex maintains a level of affection for Brian that isn't reserved for anyone else.
It is the tape of himself killing Brian that Alex keeps with him, even three years after giving the rest to Jay and moving away.
Alex's attachment to Brian is continuously emphasized throughout the series, from keeping the footage of his death as a memnto to his repeated sparing of the hooded man, even after telling him outright "I'll kill you".
Even in the earliest entries, Alex's behavior is that of a man constantly conscious of his being watched, tense and haunted by his stalker and their presence in all areas of his life.
Alex remains affectionate and respectful of Brian, up until the moment he kills him.
Alex is implied to have killed [Amy], as he killed Brian, and he similarly holds onto a photograph of Amy alongside the tape of Brian's death.
It is Amy and Brian whose memories Alex clings to most, out of his many victims.
Alex recognizes that both he and Tim are tainted by the Operator's contagin, and rather than reach out for help as Tim does, he intends to end the sickness by destroying them both.
the primary characters are so deeply alienated from the society they live in that they have nobody but each other.
Marble Hornets is a portrayal of a world of horror, paranoia, and ceaseless pain, wherein the most heroic thing to do is not to erase yourself from the world, but to continue to live in it.
MH uses the perspective of queerness to confront ideas of how violence is imposed upon queer and mentally ill people in ways that drive them to self-destruction.