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Queer Cinema, The Film Reader

Edited by Harry Benshoff, Sean Griffin

Published June 17th 2004 by Routledge – 256 pages

Series: In Focus: Routledge Film Readers

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Description

Queer Cinema, The Film Reader examines the relationship between cinematic representations of sexuality and their social, historical, and industrial contexts.

Clearly divided into an introductory overview and four topic areas, the Reader explores how recent critical thinking has approached queer sexualities in relation to the cinema. The four sections discuss:

  • Authorship - examining the role of sexuality in the work of queer filmmakers such as George Cukor, Dorothy Arzner, Barbara Hammer, and the directors of New Queer Cinema
  • Forms - exploring how genres such as the horror film, the musical, film noir, and the animated film construct queer cinematic spaces
  • Camp - looking at how this reception strategy and mode of textual production, initially practised by pre-Stonewall queers, retains its critical charge even in contemporary mainstream popular culture
  • Reception - considering three specific historical case-studies of how queer fans have interacted with media texts from Judy Garland to Star Trek.

The Reader concludes with an essay that queerly rethinks classical gaze theory and allows students and scholars of the subject to draw their own conclusions in their studies.

Reviews

'Four Stars … there is much to appreciate here' - Film Review

Contents

Part One: Auters 1. Whose Text is it Anyway? Queer Cultures, Queer Auters, and Queer Authorship 2. Physique Cinema, 1945-1969: Hard to Imagine 3. Transgressive Cinema: Lesbian Independent Film 4. The New Queer Cinema, Part Two: Forms 5. The Monster and the Homosexual 6. Queer Negotiations of the Hollywood Musical 7. Queer Noir, Part Three: Camp 8. Camp and the Gay Sensibility 9. Reclaiming the Discourse of Camp, Part Four: Reception 10. Judy Garland and Gay Men 11. Finding Community in the Early 1960s: Underground Cinema and Sexual Politics 12. 'Out of the Closet and into the Universe': Queers and Star Trek 13. Reviewing Queer Viewing

Author Bio

Harry M. Benshoff is an Assistant Professor in Radio, Television and Film at the University of North Texas. He is the author of Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality and the Horror Film (Manchester University Press, 1997) and co-author (with Sean Griffin) of America on Film: Representing Race, Class, Gender and Sexuality at the Movies (Blackwell Publishers, forthcoming, 2004)

Dr. Sean Griffin is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Cinema-Television at Southern Methodist University. He is the author of Tinker Belles and Evil Queens: The Walt Disney Company from the Inside Out (NYU Press, 2000), and co-author (with Harry M. Benshoff) of America on Film: Representing Race, Class, Gender and Sexuality at the Movies (Blackwell Publishers, forthcoming, 2004).

Name: Queer Cinema, The Film Reader (Paperback) – Routledge 
Description: Edited by Harry Benshoff, Sean Griffin. Queer Cinema, The Film Reader examines the relationship between cinematic representations of sexuality and their social, historical, and industrial contexts. Clearly divided into an introductory overview and four topic areas, the Reader explores how...
Categories: Cinema Studies & Popular Cinema