This video essay attempts to reveal the problematic thin line that Queer Horror films often tread when deploying metaphor and allegory to represent LGBTQ+ anxieties/fears and trading in sometimes harmful and/or stale tropes that offer confused conclusions to their narratives. Utilising a recurring visual motif of shattering, more specifically imagery and sounds of fragile glass panes breaking or fragmenting, I draw attention to the hackneyed pattern of splitting when representing binarized gender and sexuality. To work the concept further, the video essay offers a multiplicity of possibilities that shatter the gender binary and break out-of-date metaphors.

An excerpt from the Video Essay given as a KEynote on QueerWolves, entitled 'Queerwolves and Wolf-girlz and Were-Bears, Oh My!' a consideration of the liminal and queer representation of werewolves in Film/TV and pop-cultural history. Academic purposes only.

Educational video essay on the state of queer culture in 21stC

I do not own the rights to any of the images and sounds in this video essay and is used for Educational Purposes only according to Fair Usage Rights.

an excerpt from my keynote/video essay on how Queer Horror narratives deal with mental anguish and mental health.

An excerpt from my keynote video essay on Queer Horror Film and TV and the concept of Hauntology.

An introduction to the film Fright Night for the BFI's season of film screenings - In Dreams are Monsters - was shown October 2022 at the BFI Southbank.

A Video Essay considering the facial portraiture of Joey Stefano films and concepts of active/passive sexual binaries. Darren Elliott-Smith ‘Flow/Job: A Video Essay on the Pornographic Facial Portraiture of Joey Stefano’ by Elliott-Smith, D. Dec 2017 inTransition: Journal of Videographic Film & Moving Image Studies. Issue 4.4. http://mediacommons.org/intransition/2018/01/10/flowjob

A close textual and cultural analysis of Sirk's Imitation of Life. This Video Essay considers Sirk's auteurist style, looking at iconography, thematic structures, representations of femininity and race. It also considers queer appropriation and appreciation of the film's excessive and performative style.