Spaces Unknown: Articulations of Suburban Normativity and Alterity in James Wan's Insidious (2010)

Abstract

This article explores the representation of the suburban house and the concept of suburbia as a space of social normativity in the American and Canadian context following World War II. I pursue this line of investigation by analyzing a work of horror film that questions and disrupts this distinct space – James Wan’s Insidious (2010). The following reveals the unique means through which this work exposes a decades-long disdain held toward postwar suburban development and its deep ties to normativity by closely examining how Wan represents the space of the home and its subsequent undoing. I thread works of queer theory within my analysis to act as a guiding framework through which the productivity of the film’s represented ulterior space may be read and understood. 

Drawing from spatial and temporal theory primarily, I articulate how normativity is formed in the space of the suburbs through structured rhythms, movements, and gestures that become attributed to the heterosexual, white, middle- to upper-class family. This investigation is followed by a methodology that adopts from queer theory a process of estrangement, a deviation from the normative space of the suburbs that seeks to disrupt and challenge existing scripts within dominant social frameworks unique to horror film. As such, this article provides a new method through contemporary horror film may be analyzed, away from canonical or genre prescriptions, and toward the productive potential of spaces considered to be ulterior.