Queer Studies in Media & Popular Culture - Current Issue
Volume 9, Issue 3, 2024
- Articles
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‘I have loved being with you, Yaz’: Doctor Who, Thasmin and brilliant lesbian futures
By Liz MillwardThe Dead Lesbian Syndrome, part of the Bury Your Gays trope, is characterized by the death of lesbian and bisexual women characters, and it undermines a sense of lesbian futures. This article argues that although the relationship between the Thirteenth Doctor and Yasmin Khan (or ‘Thasmin’) in Doctor Who (2005–present) does end in the Doctor’s regeneration, it is not an example of the Dead Lesbian Syndrome. Drawing on the work of the Black studies scholar Katherine McKittrick, this article claims that the deliberately inclusive version of the show created around the Thirteenth Doctor depicts lesbian futurity through a combination of non-linear time and the erotic relationality of what Marilyn Farwell terms ‘lesbian narrative space’. It suggests that through this focus on relationality and multiple irreducible forms of temporality Thasmin becomes a different kind of story about women being together.
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Surveillance, performance and versions of the real in On the Road and RuPaul’s Drag Race
More LessThis article conducts a comparative analysis of On the Road (1957) and RuPaul’s Drag Race (2009–present). It is argues that both texts seek to represent a real that is transgressive and empowering. But in order to achieve this representation within a format that will be acceptable to the imagined audience, these texts must perform a problematic process of recording and constructing content. Furthermore, this palatable version of the real excludes aspects of gender and sexuality that are seen to transgress the existing social matrix of acceptable behaviours and identities. This comparative study suggests how recording and presenting the real continues to be problematic, even across time periods and media modes. It also indicates how supposedly transgressive texts may ultimately prioritize marketability over a reality that is truly paradigm-shifting and inclusive.
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Cinematic queering of the Russian heartlands: Three case studies from the 2010s
More LessSince the so-called ‘gay propaganda’ law was enacted in the Russian Federation in 2013, overt cinematic representations of LGBTQ+ lives and stories have become very rare. This article examines three rare examples of films with explicitly queer narratives: Sibir’ i on (Siberia and Him), Autlo (Outlaw) and (M)uchenik (The Student). Taking a textual analysis approach, this article illuminates the intertwined provincial and queer discourses in these three films. It argues that by drawing on the ambivalent cultural mythology of the provinces, these three films to varying degrees defy the top-down, centre-driven homophobic official discourse of Russianness. The article therefore makes an important contribution to the burgeoning scholarship on Russophone queer cinema and global queer cinema more broadly.
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Fight and kiss boys: Effeminacy and the fault lines of homophobia in 1980s comedies
By Scott MaliaDrawing on apposite film, queer and gender theory, this article focuses on a progression of femme representations of queer men in three comedies of the 1980s – Airplane! (Abrahams et al. 1980), Revenge of the Nerds (Kanew 1984) and Mannequin (Gottlieb 1987) – in which gay or gay-coded characters are marked as effeminate or femme. In order to make them the butt of a joke, queer male characters had to be rendered more fully visible and recognizable to the audience, but in doing so, the films created a kind of Streisand effect, whereby the opposite of what was intended occurred. This new visibility revealed fault lines in gender expression that pushed at the limits of homophobic constructs: rather than containing queer characters in homophobic confines, these films opened up potential unforeseen possibilities. Revisiting older films such as these not only reclaims some representations for queer audiences and critics but also destabilizes notions of ‘femme’ and ‘stereotype’, particularly criticism of stereotypes that falls into the very queerphobia and effeminophobia it attempts to decry.
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- Album Review
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The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology, Taylor Swift (2024), Digital Album, USA: Republic
More LessReview of: The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology, Taylor Swift (2024), Digital Album, USA: Republic
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- Book Review
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Queer Precarities in and out of Higher Education: Challenging Institutional Structures, Yvette Taylor, Matt Brim and Churnjeet Mahn (eds) (2023)
More LessReview of: Queer Precarities in and out of Higher Education: Challenging Institutional Structures, Yvette Taylor, Matt Brim and Churnjeet Mahn (eds) (2023)
New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 216 pp.,
ISBN 978-1-35027-365-8, h/bk, $90.00
ISBN 978-1-35027-364-1, p/bk, $29.95
ISBN 978-1-35027-367-2, e-book, $26.96
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- Film Review
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Monkey Man, Dev Patel (dir.) (2024), USA: BRON Studios and Monkeypaw Productions
More LessReview of: Monkey Man, Dev Patel (dir.) (2024), USA: BRON Studios and Monkeypaw Productions
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- Classic Media Review
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Saving Face, Alice Wu (dir.) (2004), USA: Destination Films.
More LessReview of: Saving Face, Alice Wu (dir.) (2004), USA: Destination Films.
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