In this course, students will be introduced to Queer Cinema in a wide range of historical and cultural contexts, with the aim of investigating relationships between queer representation across different genres, and at different political moments in history. We will examine documentary, Hollywood films of the 20th and 21st century, New Queer Cinema, and other visual texts, “reading” these works as cultural texts that shed light on the ongoing historical struggles over gender identity and appropriate sexual behaviours. The course traces the history of LGBTQ / queer identity as expressed through film from the 20th century to the present, examining the effect of the Hollywood Production Code and censorship of sexual themes and content in Hollywood film, and the ensuing subversion of queer cultural production in embedded codes and metaphors. We will ask how literature and popular film participated in the construction and reflection of stereotypes, tropes, and cultural perception of non-normative sexual and gender identities. The evolution of queer literature and cinema from early negative representations of sexual and gender deviance as monstrosity to the emergence of camp and New Queer Cinema raises provocative questions about the politics of representation and the power of queer art forms as a tool of liberation and social justice. We will look at documentaries such as ‘The Celluloid Closet’ and ‘Screaming Queens’, films such as ‘Rope’, ‘Carol’, ‘Philadelphia’ and ‘Moonlight.’
Objectives
By the end of the course, students will be able to:
- Debate the history of Queer cinema and be proficient in the examination of individual texts to historical accounts of cinema as a cross-cultural and political theatre of desire
- Have refined their technique of text / film / image analysis
- Be able to reflect on the interaction between representation, fiction and story-telling
- Produce a structured critical discourse (written and oral) about a piece of queer cinema
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