Table Of ContentQUEER GIRLS,
TEMPORALITY &
SCREEN MEDIA
NOT ‘JUST A PHASE’
Whitney Monaghan
Queer Girls, Temporality and Screen Media
Whitney M onaghan
Queer Girls,
Temporality and
Screen Media
Not ‘Just a Phase’
Whitney Monaghan
Monash University
Clayton, Victoria, Australia
ISBN 978-1-137-55597-7 ISBN 978-1-137-55598-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-55598-4
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016936394
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A
CKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Throughout the writing process, I have been lucky to have the support
and encouragement of a range of people. Of course, thanks must fi rst go
to Chris Penfold, Harry Fanshawe, Lina Aboujieb and the anonymous
reviewer at Palgrave for seeing the potential in this project, and for their
professional advice and assistance in its development. Thanks must also
go to Rebecca Beirne, who gave me the opportunity to publish my early
thoughts on S ugar Rush in her collection Televising Queer Women, and
Fran Martin and Patricia White, who both read this book in an earlier
form and provided very valuable feedback in its development.
The staff in Film & Screen Studies at Monash University have been
an invaluable support. They have all offered me advice and feedback at
seminars and conferences over the past few years. Words cannot express
how grateful I am to my “dream team”: Therese Davis, Claire Perkins
and Olivia Khoo. These amazing women have provided me with endless
encouragement and assistance throughout my PhD and life beyond. In
many ways, they have been my inspiration as I navigate my own queer girl-
hood. I am also particularly grateful to Janice Loreck and Kirsten Stevens
for their continued friendship as we all fi nd ourselves negotiating the
messy beginnings of our futures in academia. Finally, I must also express
my undying thanks and love to my family (both biological and chosen)
but especially my mum, Sally. She supports all areas of my life and provides
me with great stories to tell. My last thank you is saved for my favourite
queer girl, Hayley Summers, who I will never be able to thank enough.
v
C
ONTENTS
1 Just a Phase 1
Terminology 6
Visibility 8
Across Cultures 10
Queer Temporalities 13
Queer Girls, Temporality and Screen Media 2 3
2 “Are Queer Girls, Girls?” 2 7
Girls 28
Queer/Girl Theory 3 3
Queering Girls’ Studies, “Girling” Queer Studies: The Critical
Potential of In-Between 3 6
3 Serialising the Queer Girl in Sugar Rush and Skins 43
Teen TV’s Transitory Queer Girls 44
Serialising the Desire of the Queer Girl Protagonist: Sugar Rush 5 6
Serialising a Relationship Between Queer Girls: Skins 64
On Queerness, Queer Girls and Television 74
vii
viii CONTENTS
4 R etrospective Narratives, Nostalgia and the Queer Girl:
For 80 Days and Butterfl y 77
Narratives of Going in Rather Than Coming Out:
The “Memorial Mode of Representation” 8 0
Thinking Nostalgically, Feeling the Past: Unpacking
Nostalgia 8 4
“Looking Forward” and “Feeling Backward” in Butterfl y 91
5 On Boredom, Love and the Queer Girl: My Summer of
Love, Show Me Love 1 01
The Bored Queer Girl: The O.C., My Summer of Love 1 02
Critical Boredom 111
Aesthetically Embracing Boredom: Show Me Love 1 17
On Boredom, Love and Queer Happiness 124
6 Time Imagined Queerly in Mashup Videos: “Madchen
in Uniform—What I Go to School For” and “Lea and
Dianna: The First Mile” 127
Mashup 128
From Media Criticism to Film Theory: The Re-edited Video 1 30
Mashup as Minor Video 1 36
Minor Queer Girl Video: “Madchen in Uniform—What
I Go to School For” and “Lea and Dianna: The First Mile” 1 42
What If? Imagining Time Queerly Within Mashup Videos 148
7 Beyond Girlhood 1 51
Appendix: 15 Years of Queer Girls, 1998–2013 163
Select Filmography 169
Works Cited 1 75
Index 189
L F
IST OF IGURES
Fig. 2.1 As in Mean Girls (Mark Waters, 2004), popular and
academic discourse constructs girlhood through a narrow frame
of reference. In this shot, the teenage girls are individually
revealed by the camera and positioned as celebrities 31
Fig. 2.2 In Cruel Intentions (Roger Kumble, 1999) queer desire is
represented as acceptable practice for heterosexual desire 41
Fig. 3.1 Neighbours (Reg Watson, 1985–present) brief coming out
storyline began when Lana kissed her friend Sky at a sleepover 51
Fig. 3.2 Sugar Rush (Katie Baxendale, 2005–2006) emphasises
Kim’s desire from the outset. In this shot from the fi rst
minutes of the fi rst episode, an image of the two girls
kissing dissolves into a closer shot 57
Fig. 3.3 Skins (Jamie Brittain and Brian Elsley, 2007–2013) emphasises
visual metaphors in scenes such as this: Emily and Naomi
hold hands through the cat door 69
Fig. 3.4 The camera closes in on Emily and Naomi as they kiss,
giving the scene a feel of privacy 73
Fig. 3.5 However, the camera pulls away to reveal another character
watching the scene, enacting the spectatorship of the viewer 73
Fig. 4.1 The nostalgic scenes in For 80 Days (Jon Garaño and Jose Mari
Goenaga, 2010) are stylised to replicate nostalgic memory 81
Fig. 4.2 Mid-way through Butterfl y (Yan Yan Mak, 2004), Flavia watches
the footage of her youth and braces herself against the trauma
of her past 99
Fig. 4.3 At the end of Butterfl y (Yan Yan Mak, 2004), Flavia watches the
footage a second time and it feels as if the memories are being
projected into her future 100
ix
