Queer Images
A History of Gay and Lesbian Film in America
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- USD 54.99
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- USD 54.99
Descripción editorial
From Thomas Edison's first cinematic experiments to contemporary Hollywood blockbusters, Queer Images chronicles the representation of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer sexualities over one hundred years of American film. The most up-to-date and comprehensive book of its kind, it explores not only the ever-changing images of queer characters onscreen, but also the work of queer filmmakers and the cultural histories of queer audiences. Queer Images surveys a wide variety of films, individuals, and subcultures, including the work of discreetly homosexual filmmakers during Hollywood's Golden Age; classical Hollywood's (failed) attempt to purge "sex perversion" from films; the development of gay male camp in Hollywood cinema; queer exploitation films and gay physique films; the queerness of 1960s Underground Film practice; independent lesbian documentaries and experimental films; cinematic responses to the AIDS crisis; the rise and impact of New Queer Cinema; the growth of LGBT film festivals; and how contemporary Hollywood deals with queer issues. This entertaining and insightful book reveals how the meaning of sexual identity—as reflected on the silver screen—has changed a great deal over the decades, and it celebrates both the pioneers and contemporary practitioners of queer film in America. Queer Images is an essential volume for film buffs and anyone interested in sexuality and culture.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In their excellent general history of queer sexualities in American film over the past 100 years, co-authors Benshoff and Griffin gracefully realize their goal of creating "a volume that would update and theoretically complicate Vito Russo's The Celluloid Closet." In their up-to-date consideration, they contextualize films in relation to cultural, political and social issues surrounding homosexuality and its perception. From the subtle suggestions in silent movies through classic Hollywood pre- and post-Hays Code, experimental and underground film and the New Queer Cinema of the late 1980s to the present, the college professor authors maintain an accessible style and vocabulary even while tackling prickly points and turns of queer theory. Beyond queer films or characters in films, the study also puts forth a lineage of queer filmmakers from Dorothy Arzner and George Cukor to Todd Haynes and Gregg Araki, and explores how queer movie audiences read, learn from and deconstruct the images presented both of them and by them. While hardcore gay pornographic film is under-considered, early physique films, gay documentaries and AIDS films are well covered, though some mainstream films are conspicuous in their absence (Dog Day Afternoon, for instance). Like Russo's groundbreaking study, this new contribution to the field is essential.