What is Cinema? Critical Approaches Queer Theory

Lecture structure 1. Queer Film, Theory and Activism 2. Gender as Performance 3. New Queer Cinema and Queer Film Theory

1. Queer Film, Theory and Activism Heteronorm: privileging heterosexuality as the normal or preferred orientation Sex: biological differences determined by medicine Gender: how manifestations of sex are organised in society; to do with culture, rather than biology

Queer film theory provides tools for identifying and criticising mainstream cinema’s heteronormativity highlighting the queer resonances of stories and performances in classical films

Queer theory also helps us analyse films about LGBTQA experiences.

1969 – Stonewall Rebellion – Gay Liberation Front

1987 – ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power)

1990 – Queer Nation – Gender Trouble (Judith Butler) – Paris is Burning

finally destroy us (Tom Kalin, 1991, video) Swoon (Tom Kalin, 1992, film)

2. Gender as Performance Butler, Gender Trouble (1990): argues that identity categories such as ‘woman’ reinforce gender hierarchy and ‘compulsory heterosexuality’.

Butler: gender is a social construction or performance, rather than expressing an essence.

Compare with Mulvey (1981) on the female viewer’s oscillating masculine and feminine identifications.

‘Drag enacts the very structure of impersonation by why any gender is assumed. […] Drag constitutes the mundane way in which genders are appropriated, theatricalised, worn, and done; it implies that all gendering is a kind of impersonation and approximation’ (Butler, ‘Imitation and Gender Insubordination’, pp. 312–13) So, drag can be subversive, challenging structures of domination.

3. New Queer Cinema and Queer Film Theory

positive imagery rejected; political incorrectness appropriation and pastiche Michele Aaron: stance of ‘defiance’ diversity and fluidity of sexual identities

In miming gender norms or ideals, to what extent do the ball competitors critically rework them?

hooks: postcolonial / intersectional critique of queer theory drag and misogyny ‘In many ways the film was a graphic documentary of the way in which colonized black people (in this case black gay brothers, some of whom were drag queens) worship at the throne of whiteness’ (hooks, ‘Is Paris Burning?’, p. 149)

hooks argues that Livingston adopts an invisible ‘imperial overseeing position’

‘Paris is Burning documents neither an efficacious insurrection nor a painful resubordination, but an unstable coexistence of both’ (Butler, ‘Gender is Burning’, p. 95)