Queer Screen Cultures

In her 1984 essay ‘Thinking Sex,’ Gayle Rubin proposes a hierarchy of acceptable sexualities, in which she outlines a sliding scale between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ sexualities and their perception and acceptance by the general public. The ultimate pinnacle of ‘good’ sexuality is, of course, a married, heterosexual, procreative union; descending from there and becoming progressively more ‘bad’ are sexual practices including promiscuity, homosexuality, fetishism, intergenerational sex, any or all of the above, and so on.

Despite the progress that has been made in the inclusion of queerness and related sexualities on the mainstream media over the past two decades, Rubin's hierarchy remains an unfortunately applicable way of understanding media portrayals of sexualities outside the "married with 2.5 children" paradigm.

The hierarchy is particularly evident in the hit forensic drama CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (CBS, 2000-). Though the show is set in Las Vegas, a city that is widely regarded as a permissive space both morally and sexually, CSI uses the city as part of its condemnation of ‘bad’ sexualities and their practitioners. This paper will examine the sexualization of several deaths on CSI and their relation to the city-space of Vegas as well as their positioning in the show's mythos. All these deaths are tied to the practice of ‘bad’ sexualities, a move that simultaneously popularizes and criminalizes the acts and that will ultimately serve to align them almost perfectly with Rubin's twenty-year-old theory, raising the question of to what purpose queer sexuality is used in popular media.

Within a movement of new queer horror filmmakers from the early 2000’s – the emergence of a niche sub genre focuses upon the ‘celebration’, erotic display, torture and evisceration of the male body spectacular in horror cinema aimed at gay male audiences: Gaysploitation Horror.

This paper will consider the genre films of seminal gay horror auteur David DeCoteau (The Brotherhood series (2000-2005), Leeches! (2003), Voodoo Academy (2000)), to the supernaturally influenced cable TV serials from Here! TV (Dante’s Cove (2005-present), The Lair (2007)), the self touted rise of the “first gay slasher film” from the late Halloween producer Joe Wolf (Hellbent (Paul Etheridge-Outzs, US 2004)) with its camp homage to Tom of Finland stereotypes, to festival circuit successes like Sean Abley’s sci-fi horror Cronenberg-homage Socket (US, 2007), Gay Bed and Breakfast of Terror (Jaymes Thompson, US 2007) and Dead Boyz Don’t Scream (Mark Salterelli, US 2006).

Introducing the stereotyped recurring figures of the ‘Devil Daddy’ and of the ‘Final Boy’ both of whom mimic, eroticise and symbolically slaughter ‘straight-acting’ male hypermasculinity, the films and their character types reveal deep anxieties within gay male culture concerning the apparent acceptance and assimilation of homosexuality into the mainstream and of its heterosexist conflation of gay male subjectivity with femininity and effeminacy. The films discussed highlight the gay male spectators fascination with the horror genre and provide a snapshot of gay male subculture in crisis as the sub-genre continues to mutate.

Now sometimes, you’re halfway through a shag and you just get bored of him. So you wank him off in a doorway and move straight on; ‘cos you keep on looking, that’s why you keep going out, there’s always some new bloke, some better bloke just waiting around the corner. Vince in Queer as Folk (Davis 1999)

In the wake of Lee Edelman’s much cited work, No Future, the contemporary queer subject finds themselves theoretically detached and rejected from the myth of heterosexual reproductive futurism and, subsequently, the future itself. This paper will attempt to problematise such a critique by examining gay men’s investment in their own future mythologies; the figure of the perpetual future partner, as highlighted by Russell T. Davies, above.

Given that the gay male subject inhabits a state of digital immersion, this paper will examine a range of online ‘dating’ resources for gay men to detail not only the pivotal role new media plays in the British gay community, but how the success of this media both depends upon and replicates these gay myths of futurity.

In highlighting this convergence between gay male usage of new media and the replication of gay futurity myths, the ever-present tension between need and desire within gay male subculture once again takes centre stage. Cybercarnality offers a contemporary lens with which to revisit the oft-trodden complexities of gay male identity; to reconsider how our needs and desires are playing out in the online sphere and to contemplate what discursive shifts may be enabled or prevented by the proliferation of such technologies.

Deus e o diabo na terra do sol is a stark, surreal narrative with multiple possibility for interpretation. Situated within the movement of Cinema Novo, it is considered immensely important within brazilian film, and, moreover, its cinematic influences stretch as far as Martin Scorsese and Sergio Leone. Its protagonist is a hapless inhabitant of the desert badlands of the Northeast of Brazil – the Sertão. This paper will present a queer reading of the film, focusing on the explicit and implicit sexualities that can be drawn from Glauber Rocha’s work.

Initially, a queer reading of the film seems perhaps an unusual one, arguably as much as for the lack of any obviously ‘queer’ material as for its setting. However, neither superficial heterosexuality nor the barren landscape preclude such a reading. The main theoretical framework within which I will work is the concept of homosocial desire presented by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick: her work in Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (Columbia University Press: 1985) - the notions of “homosocial desire” and of a continuum between displays of overt homosocial and homosexual activity¹. Using the analytical tools that Kosofsky Sedgwick provides, I will analyse the relationships that the film develops and sustains between the protagonist, Manoel, and the various figures he encounters during his flight through the Sertão.

Not only does this paper demonstrate the application of Kosofsky Sedgwick’s theory to contemporary visual culture in general, but also shows both that the sacralisation of Deus e o diabo na terra do sol as a central element of a Brazilian ‘canon’ does not preclude it from the interrogation of queer readings, and that in such an interrogation the relevance of the film is ‘updated’ for a contemporary queer audience – becoming itself a queer artefact. Finally and more broadly speaking this paper hopes to encourage discussion of contemporary visual culture in relation to queer theoretical interrogation.

This paper considers the uncertain dynamics between contemporary masculinity and the aesthetics of queer in cinematic representation. Using an analysis of the 1999 sci-fi/horror film The Astronaut’s Wife (Ravich) we argue that the figure of the astronaut is infused with a range of queer tropes that initially constructs a progressive, benign ideal of masculinity. This is disrupted when the central character, Commander Spencer Armacost (Johnny Depp) and his colleague experience an unexplained ‘incident’ in space. Our analysis suggests that this narrative device constitutes a ‘queer moment’ which unearths a range of anxieties concerning homosexuality, male rape and a subsequent loss of masculine power. After returning from the mission, Armacost appears normal but his behaviour begins to change towards his wife Jillian (Charlize Theron). Beneath this idealised exterior lies a latent malevolence which, as the film progresses, surfaces in moments of violent uxorial domination. The control of sex, reproduction and abortion are all ways by which a reassertion of violent hypermasculine heterosexually takes place. Linking this change to the ‘incident’ in space we explore how the aesthetics and thematics of queer simultaneously underpin the construction of an idealised masculinity yet also appear to be the symbolic cause of this potent affirmation of male power. Our reading therefore assesses the impact of the aesthetics of queer on representations of identity while also developing queer as an analytical tool.

The paper is entitled ‘Queermania: Little Britain’s Horrific Production’ and will illustrate how male-to-female drag performance uses comedy to entertain audiences (both queer and straight) in order to educate them. It will demonstrate how drag entertainment can constitute political activism by challenging notions of stable identities and, therefore, the concept of ‘otherness’ itself. Utilising film theory, it will establish how Little Britain encourages the viewer to critique the social reality of the images presented. In doing so, as will be argued with reference to Judith Halberstam’s theories (as demonstrated in Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters 2000), it also prompts the viewer to consider characters, such as Vicky Pollard, as representatives of an evolving society where success may depend on the appropriation of the traits of ‘othered’ social groups. Moreover, the piece will contend that the programme challenges the viewers – or residents - of (Little) Britain to experiment with their own identities, and suggests whether they will become or remain ‘othered’ if they do not. It will conclude by positing that the series aims to persuade its viewers to utilise multiculturalism to become proud of modern conceptions of British eccentricity - of which they are all an intrinsic part.

And most importantly, they showed us that no matter whom we choose to love, be they heterosexual, homosexual, asexual, bisexual, trisexual, quadrisexual, pansexual, transexual, omnisexual or that thing where the chick ties the belt around your neck and tinkles on a balloon, it has absolutely nothing to do with who we are as people. I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry

The comedies I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry (Dugan, USA, 2007), and Death at a Funeral (Oz, USA/UK/Germany/Netherlands, 2007), though not exclusively preoccupied with gender issues, visualize gender as seemingly fluid. Although with different engagement and difficulty, Chuck and Larry enact their hetero- and homosexuality whenever these are needed, while the diseased father of two sons and a beloved husband is revealed to had been a practicing gay while married.

This paper investigates in how far these comedies contribute to the mainstreaming of the queer culture: do they present gender/corporeal identities as fluid in the Butlerian sense (i.e. performative but embedded in a particular socio-cultural reality); do they re-visit and re-vision or rather only re-produce pervasive stereotypes of queerness? Does this cultural mainstreaming of (aversion of) queerness add to the understanding of queer identities?

Katy Perry’s music video, I Kissed a Girl, is a straightforward example of what Meyer has termed “trace camp”, “an appropriation of queer praxis” aimed at rendering ‘safe’ the critique of hegemonic culture enacted by the queer. The video normalises its queer performance by siting the titular kiss within concentric layers of heteronormative armour: calling it experimentation; foregrounding Perry’s heterosexual self-identification; and finally revealing it to have been ‘all just a dream’.

In this paper I intend to explore the commodification and normalisation of queer sexuality in Perry’s music video. However, this is only the beginning. Following from Driver, who warns against the temptation “to denounce commodification as the antithesis of queer girl empowerment”, I intend to explore the complex public response to Perry’s video. I Kissed a Girl has provoked condemnations from social liberals and social conservatives. While the first group sees it as a typical example of the marketing of lesbian sexuality for hetero-sexual titillation, the second sees it as a dangerous and transgressive text.

Although I am mindful of avoiding simple visibility politics and their “binary logic of positive and negative”, against which Villarejo has warned, I argue that such a text is important not only for the ways in which it might be used or resisted by consumers who are queer, but also by those who are socially conservative and hetero-normative.