Month: May 2016
Barely Here and Queer: Authenticity, Identity, and Queerness in Lena Dunham’s “Girls”
(Author’s Note: This was originally written for my favorite class lass semester, “HBO’s Girls and the Millennial Generation.”)
Queerness is rarely the focus of Girls, and when it does appear, it does so as well-worn character trope (Elijah as gay best friend) or form of tragedy (Laura in the rehab center).] Yet, while the show focuses its efforts on examining the “authenticity” of characters, it rarely considers queerness as an element of authentic identity in a serious or earnest manner. This is troubling, given that questions of authenticity are something that dogs all of its characters. The show relegates queerness and queer identity as punch line and not as element of authentic identity as equally as gender, experience, or class. By depicting queerness as an object with which ostensibly straight characters can utilize at their will, often to ignore reflections of themselves and their own privilege, Girls reveals that its concepts of authenticity and queerness is limited to a straight, white gaze. Read the rest of this entry »
Wish I Were Special: Gay Panic, Masculinity, and the Queer Other in “Creep” and “The Gift”
(Author’s Note: Hey, look, it’s the paper I presented at the Visions Film Festival and Conference in April!)
This evening, I’m here to talk about masculinity, and clearly, as you can see that I’m the bastion of heteromasculinity, I am the right person to do such a thing. I would like to talk about two films: Creep, the found footage horror film, and The Gift, the suspense drama, and how one operates to stigmatize the queer other and how one comments on the very framework of toxic masculinity that engenders that discourse of stigma. I’ll be exploring concepts of masculinity, gay panic, and queerness and the ways in which they are utilized as generic tropes within these films, framing the entire works as either satire and critique or perpetuation of oppression. Read the rest of this entry »
I Like Things That Look Like Mistakes 