1. COM 327 January 22 2013 Quiz Housekeeping Group Presentation:
- “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”
Short lecture: Doty & Queer theory
Queer readings of pop culture

2. Quiz!

3. Question 1
Mulvey describes her analysis as a “political use of” which intellectual tradition?
a) Marxism
b) Psychoanalysis
c) Anger
d) Cinema

4. Question 2 Mulvey looks at the following gender formulation in cinema:
a) women as passive / men as active
b) women as human / men as cyborgs
c) women as crazy / men as rational
d) women as men / me as women

5. Question 3
What movie does Doty use as an example of how we’ve been culturally trained to assume that all non-stereotypically queer characters are straight?
a) The Princess Bride
b) Psycho
c) American Beauty
d) The Blair Witch Project

6. Question 4
What is the term Doty uses to describe academics who combine rigorous critical work with autobiographical, celebratory enthusiasm for the subject?
a) Scholar-fans
b) Academic wannabes
c) Invested critics
d) Subjectivists

7. Housekeeping Group presentations January 29 volunteers?
2. Emily and/or I for any questions about course material & assignments, including assignment feedback & grading
- Emily is also available for 45 minutes after each class!

8. Doty & queer theory What is queer theory?
Implications of Doty’s approach
Queer readings & “encoding / decoding”

9. Queer theory Roots in gender & feminist theory
‘Male’ & ‘female’ (sex) is not the same as ‘masculine’ & ‘feminine’ (gender)
Maleness and femaleness are oppositional concepts
Maleness and femaleness are constructed (for us) & performed (by us)

10. Hegemony & PATRIARCHY
The configuration of politics, law, economics, technology and culture around the belief that men and women are fundamentally different…
This configuration generally favors (straight, white) men.

11. “Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is”
“In the role playing game known as The Real World, “Straight White Male” is the lowest difficulty setting there is.”
“You automatically gain entry to some parts of the map that others have to work for. The game is easier to play, automatically, and when you need help, by default it’s easier to get.”

12. Hegemony & HETERONORMATIVITY
The configuration of politics, law, economics, medicine, technology and culture around the belief that heterosexuality is normal & natural...
...and that everything else is deviant / immoral / unnatural

13. “Homosexual” and “queer” are not the same thing
Just like “female” and “feminine”, or “male” and “masculine” are not the same thing!

14. Doty: Queerness is “any nonnormative expression of gender, including those connected with straightness” (p. 18)
Queerness is a performance that disrupts conventional ideas of “normative” identity

15. Doty & “encoding/decoding”:
there can be multiple readings of a ‘text’ (tv show, movie, video game, etc) – texts are “polysemic”
even the most heteronormative texts can be analyzed from a queer perspective
because texts are polysemic, my reading does not spoil the pleasure you get from the text
e.g.

16. Implications of Doty’s analysis:
Queer characters do not always mean queer positive
Queer readings are possible even when (especially when?) no characters are explicitly queer
e.g.

17. Vocabulary for “queer” readings
Homoeroticism
- Men take sensual pleasure from watching / being with other men… but how to make this OK for straight guys?
Camp
- over-the-top portrayal of sexual identity (often to the point of irony)
Essentialism
- Characterizing a group of people using limited stereotypes
Heterocentrism
e.g.

18. Homoeroticism
e.g.

19. What makes homoeroticism “safe?” A gay(er) villain

20. “What makes you think this is my first time?”
Skyfall
Who’s seen it?
– interesting because screenwriter is gay.

21. What makes homoeroticism “safe?” Victimization of women
the conquest of a female – often forcefully – reaffirms the straight masculinity of both the character and the viewers

22. What makes homoeroticism “safe?” Violence
violence affirms their straight masculinity – it gives a reason for their oiled musculature and loinclothes. In the movie, the rationale is that they kill better when they wear loinclothes. For the viewer – the STRAIGHT male gaze – the use of these bodies for violent purposes – for the ultimate expression of straight masculinity – sanctions the homoeroticism

23. Queer readings are possible with almost any text, whether or not they have explicit queer characters/themes
A queer reading does not necessarily reflect on your own identity
(e.g. just like Marxist analyses don’t make you a socialist)
Reading a text as queer simply means not assuming that every non-stereotypically gay person is straight.
In other words, it means asking “what if” instead of “obviously they’re not”.

24. Form into groups of 5
Choose from one of the following:
Hunger Games
Harry Potter
Twilight
Anything you want!
Do a queer reading.