Modelled upon American slasher film tropes, Omar Ali Khan’s Zibahkhana (2007) is more than a transnational remake. It is a vision of a queer revolution, and imagines queer futures brought about through rural anarchy and violent eroticism. This article reads the masked killer of Zibahkhana as a monstrous queer agency armed with a queer (zombie) militia prepared to consume and transform the heteronormative matrix. Offering an unprecedented and unapologetic representation of queer aggression onscreen, Khan’s indie slasher explores queer articulations of desire and anarchy in the figure of the killer, Baby, a queer woman and a murderous cannibal. With Baby, Zibahkhana offers a queer anti-hero, the first of its kind for Pakistani cinema, that challenges normative modes of being, belonging, and desiring. Thus Zibahkhana not only offers a welcome revision of Western slasher film tropes, it blazes a trail for transgressive and incendiary portrayals of queer embodiments and intimacies in Pakistani visual media.
AhmadA. N., & KhanA. (2010). From Zinda Laash to Zibahkhana: Violence and horror in Pakistani cinema. Third Text, 24(1), 149–161.
2.
ArshadM. (2017). Oasis of acceptance. The News on Sunday. Retrieved from http://tns.thenews.com.pk/oasis-acceptance/#.WkpW4d-WbIX
3.
AtluriT. (2012). The prerogative of the brave: Hijras and sexual citizenship after orientalism. Citizenship Studies, 16(5–6), 721–736.
4.
BenshoffH. M. (1997). Monsters in the closet: Homosexuality and the horror film. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
5.
CarpenterJ. (1978). Halloween [motion picture]. United States: English.
6.
CloverC. J. (1992). Men, women, and chainsaws: Gender in the modern horror film. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
7.
CreedB. (1993). The monstrous-feminine: Film, feminism, and psychoanalysis. London, UK and New York, NY: Routledge.
8.
CunninghamS. (1980). Friday the Thirteenth [motion picture]. United States: English.
9.
DemmeJ. (1991). The Silence of the Lambs [motion picture]. United States: English.
10.
GrizzellT. (2014). Re-animating the social order: Zombies and queer failure. In McGlottenS. & JonesS. (Eds.), Zombies and sexuality: Essays on desire and the living dead (pp. 123–139). Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company.
11.
HiltzikR. (1983). Sleepaway Camp [motion picture]. United States: English.
12.
HinchyJ. (2014). Obscenity, moral contagion and masculinity: Khwajasiras in public space in Colonial North India. Asian Studies Review, 38(2), 274–294.
13.
HitchcockA. (1960). Psycho [motion picture]. United States: English.
14.
HooperT. (1974). The Texas Chainsaw Massacre [motion picture]. United States: English.
15.
JafferA. (2017). Spiritualising marginality: Sufi concepts and the politics of identity in Pakistan. Society and Culture in South Asia, 3(2), 1–23.
16.
KazmiZ. (2016). Dandy Highwaymen. 3:AM Magazine. Retrieved from https://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/dandy-highwaymen/
17.
KhanO. A. (2007). Zibahkhana [motion picture]. Pakistan: Urdu.
18.
KhanF. (2014a). Khwaja Sira: Culture, identity, politics, and ‘transgender’ activism in Pakistan (PhD thesis, SURFACE dissertations-ALL), Syracuse University, Syracuse.
19.
KhanF. (2014b). Khwaja Sira: Transgender activism and transnationality in Pakistan. In WadleyS. A. (Ed.), South Asia in the World: An Introduction (pp. 170–184). New York, NY: M. E. Sharpe.
20.
KhanS. (2016). What is in a name? Khwaja Sara, Hijra and Eunuchs in Pakistan. Indian Journal of Gender Studies, 23(2), 218–242.
21.
KirkG. S. (2014). Working class zombies and men in burqas: Temporality, trauma, and the specter of nostalgia inZibahkhana. BioScope: South Asian Screen Studies, 5(2), 141–151.
22.
KugleS. A. (2007). Sufis and Saints’ Bodies’: Mysticism, Corporeality, and Sacred Power in Islam. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.
MansoorS. (2011). Bol [motion picture]. Pakistan: Urdu.
25.
MartinsD. K. (2016). From monsters to monsters: Perverted predators and diseased deviants—Queer representations in American slasher film of the 1980s (MA thesis), Repositório UL: Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa.
SedgwickE. K. (1990). The Epistemology of the Closet. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press.
36.
SmithI. R., & VerevisC. (2017). Introduction: Transnational film remakes. In SmithI. R. & VerevisC. (Eds.), Transnational Film Remakes (pp. 1–18). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
37.
WanJ. (2013). Insidious: Chapter 2 [motion picture]. United States: English.
38.
WarnerM. (1993). Fear of a Queer Planet: Queer Politics and Social Theory. Minneapolis, MN: The University of Minnesota Press.
39.
WoodR. (1979). Introduction. In WoodR. & LippeR. (Eds.), American Nightmare: Essays on the Horror Film (pp. 7–28). Toronto: Festival of Festivals.
40.
WoodR. (1986). Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan… and beyond. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
