“That Magic Box Lies”: Queer Theory, Seriality, and American Horror Story

The unusual temporality of the FX series American Horror Story (2011–) prompts the authors to ask, what would a queer theory of television look like if it took as its starting point not the identity of the queer, but rather queerness itself as temporality? The series’ radical antisocial queerness is anchored as much in its form—its structural belatedness and disruptive imagery—as in its queer iconography and characters. Rejecting historical verisimilitude, each season examines the historicity of its diegetic present by enchaining it within the historical past, creating “temporal drag.” If politics is propped on the fantasy of the (reproductive) future, then AHS’s freaks, witches, and ghosts refuse that future at every turn through spectacles of sex, death, and stomach-churning violence. The third season, “Coven,” exemplifies the queerness of temporal drag as a formal structure, communicating the pain of history through its nauseating effects that interrupt the flow of narrative momentum.