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Queer N
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Cinema
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A CritiCAl reAder
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Edited by Michele Aaron
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‘New Queer Cinema offers an exciting, complex and comprehensive e
appreciation of those in-your-face, politically incorrect indie and avant-garde
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films of the 1990s that feature killer queers, black snap queens, transsexual
Hispanic voguers, Shakespeare-spouting hustlers, lesbians who have sex with
men, and interracial gay and lesbian couples. Each of the superb chapters in C
this volume contributes a strikingly fresh perspective on the films, directors,
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themes and audiences of this watershed in contemporary film history.’
N
Alexander Doty, Professor, English Department, Lehigh University
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Coined in the early 1990s to describe a burgeoning film movement, ‘New
Queer Cinema’ has turned the attention of film theorists, students and m new
audiences to the proliferation of intelligent, stylish and daring work by
lesbian and gay filmmakers within independent cinema, and to the a
proliferation of ‘queer’ images and themes within the mainstream. But what
constituted New Queer Cinema then and now? And was it political gains,
cultural momentum or market forces that determined its evolution? A Queer
New Queer Cinema is divided into sections on the definition, the filmmakers, C
r
the geography, and the spectator of New Queer Cinema. Chapters address
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the pivotal directors (e.g. Todd Haynes and Gregg Araki) and the salient films t
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(e.g. Paris is Burning and Boys Don’t Cry) but also non-mainstream and non- C
Anglo-American work (e.g. experimental film and third cinema). With a A Cinema
critical eye to its uneasy relationship to the mainstream, the volume explores l
the aesthetic, socio-cultural, political and, necessarily, commercial investments r
of New Queer Cinema. This book, the first full-length study of the subject, e
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offers the definitive guide to New Queer Cinema combining indispensable
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discussions of its central issues with exciting new work by key writers.
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Features r
• Provides a definitive introduction to New Queer Cinema A C r i t i C A l r e A d e r
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• Clear structure with each section addressing a key topic in the study of d
New Queer Cinema it
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• Themes covered include genre, gender and race, politics, media, and the d
relationship between New Queer Cinema and the mainstream. b
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Michele Aaron is Lecturer in Film Studies at Brunel University, London. M
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le Edited by Michele Aaron
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ISBN 978-0-7486-1725-8
9 780748 617258
NEW QUEER CINEMA
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NEW QUEER CINEMA
A Critical Reader
Edited by
Michele Aaron
EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY PRESS
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© in this edition Edinburgh University Press, 2004
© in the individual contributions is retained by the authors
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
22 George Square, Edinburgh
Typeset in Sabon by
Hewer Text Ltd, Edinburgh, and
printed and bound in Great Britain by
MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 0 7486 1724 8 (hardback)
ISBN 0 7486 1725 6 (paperback)
The right of the contributors
to be identified as authors of this work
has been asserted in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgements vii
List of Illustrations ix
Notes on Contributors xi
PART I NEW QUEER CINEMA IN CONTEXT
1 New Queer Cinema: An Introduction 3
Michele Aaron
2 New Queer Cinema 15
B. Ruby Rich
3 AIDS and New Queer Cinema 23
Monica B. Pearl
PART II NEW QUEER FILMMAKING
Overview 39
4 The Characteristics of New Queer Filmmaking:
Case Study - Todd Haynes 41
Michael DeAngelis
5 Camp and Queer and the New Queer Director:
Case Study - Gregg Araki 53
Glyn Davis
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CONTENTS
6 Art Cinema and Murderous Lesbians 68
Anneke Smelik
7 New Queer Cinema and Experimental Video 80
Julianne Pidduck
PART III LOCATING NEW QUEER CINEMA
Overview 101
8 New Queer Cinema and Lesbian Films 103
Anat Pick
9 New Queer Cinema: Spectacle, Race, Utopia 119
Daniel T. Contreras
10 New Black Queer Cinema 128
Louise Wallenberg
11 Nationality and New Queer Cinema: Australian Film 144
Ros Jennings and Loykie Lomine
12 New Queer Cinema and Third Cinema 155
Helen Hok-Sze Leung
PART IV WATCHING NEW QUEER CINEMA
Overview 171
13 Reception of a Queer Mainstream Film 172
Harry M. Benshoff
14 The New Queer Spectator 187
Michele Aaron
Index 201
vi
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank the contributors for their patience and the pleasure of
working with them. I am grateful to Alexander Doty, Richard Dyer, Richard
Fung, Jackie Stacey and Julianne Pidduck for recommending potential con-
tributors, and to the latter, especially, for her general support and co-con-
spiracy. This one's for Vita Aaron Pearl, for delaying the project (and so much
else) so delightfully.
B. Ruby Rich's article, 'New Queer Cinema', Sight and Sound 2:5 (September
1992) reprinted with permission from Sight and Sound.
Anneke Smelik's chapter is a different version of 'Bodies That Kill. Art
Cinema And Its Murderous Girls In Love' in Textus. English Studies in Italy,
XIII, 2000, pp. 449-68.
Michele Aaron's discussion of Boys Don't Cry was first published as 'Pass/
Fail' in Screen 42.1 (Spring 2001): 92-6, reprinted with permission from
Oxford University Press.
vii
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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
7.1 Mike Holboom's Tom: homage to gay American Underground film-
maker Tom Chomont
7.2 Richard Fung's Sea in the Blood: swimmers and metaphorical fluids
7.3 Sadie Benning's It Wasn't Love: 'We're going to Hollywood'
7.4 Cathy Sisler's Aberrant Motion #4: a staggering ontology
12.1 Ke Kulana He Mahu: Remembering a Sense of Place 1
12.2 Ke Kulana He Mahu: Remembering a Sense of Place 2
ix
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