Member-only story
I Don’t Think Straight Men Ever Had a Lock on “Hellraiser”
The 2022 reboot turns the franchise’s queer subtext into text, and shows the power of claiming your monster.
Every day, traditional masculinity becomes more endangered. This week, we lost one of its last great icons: Pinhead from Hellraiser.
Pinhead is a Cenobite, which is to say, a sex demon. He lives in a parallel dimension that can be accessed through a magic puzzle box. If you solve his magic puzzle box, he pops out and tortures you sexually. The torture is sexual for him, by the way, not you: You’re mostly getting mutilated and having your limbs pulled off. Most of the people to whom this happens seem pretty unhappy about it. As a dom, Pinhead’s ability to establish consent and respect his partners’ boundaries needs work, but you cannot deny that he’s super into mutilation, sexually. All Cenobites are.
Yes, it was important for red-blooded American boys to have Pinhead as a role model. In him, all the manly virtues (torture; mutilation; sexual gratification…
