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10: Screening LGBTQ+

  • Page ID
    240439
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    Learning Objectives

    Upon completion of this chapter, students will be able to do the following:

    • Summarize the cinematic history of nonnormative genders and sexualities, including homosexuality, bisexuality, and transgender identity.
    • Summarize the history of film censorship as it relates to nonnormative genders and sexualities, including homosexuality, bisexuality, and transgender identity.
    • Identify key approaches to critiquing explicit and coded LGBTQ+ identities and themes in film.
      • Discuss at least one approach in detail and apply it to an original interpretation of queer film.

    • 10.1: Screening LGBTQ+ - Overview
      This section explores debates over what defines LGBTQ+ film and media, questioning whether queerness stems from plot, characters, directors, or audience interpretation. Scholars highlight how queerness can be constructed through reception as much as representation. It examines form versus content, common tropes like “Bury Your Gays,” and sociohistorical contexts shaping queer visibility, emphasizing critique as essential to understanding representation.
    • 10.2: Movements, Aesthetics, and Sensibilities
      This section traces LGBTQ+ representation in film and television from camp aesthetics to New Queer Cinema and mainstream successes. It highlights John Waters’s subversive camp, 1990s independent films addressing AIDS and identity, and Cheryl Dunye’s The Watermelon Woman. Later, mainstream hits like Brokeback Mountain and Moonlight, plus TV milestones from Ellen to Queer as Folk and The L Word, expanded visibility, diversity, and cultural impact.
    • 10.3: Other Web Content
      This section explores LGBTQ+ media in the digital era, highlighting YouTube creators like Hannah Hart and Jazz Jennings who bypass traditional gatekeepers. It examines critical debates—coming out tropes, homonormativity, bisexual erasure, and ciswashing—while spotlighting the Wachowskis’ groundbreaking trans representation in Sense8. Finally, it critiques campaigns like It Gets Better, stressing privilege, activism, and the complexities of queer visibility.
    • 10.4: Profiles - Tongues Untied and One Day at a Time
      Written by Marquis Bey, this profile highlights Marlon Riggs’s Tongues Untied (1989), a groundbreaking film centering Black gay identity, culture, and resilience amid racism, homophobia, and the HIV/AIDS crisis. Riggs’s work blends documentary, poetry, and performance to break imposed silence, reclaim voice, and celebrate practices like voguing and snapping. It critiques violence and stereotypes while affirming Black gay men’s complexity, creativity, and liberation.
    • 10.5: Research Resources
    • 10.6: Glossary
    • 10.7: Footnotes
    • 10.8: Deep Dive - Books and Film

    Thumbnail image attribution: David Vignoni, Ch1902, LGPL <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl.html>, via Wikimedia Commons


    This page titled 10: Screening LGBTQ+ is shared under a CC BY 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Lynne Stahl.