Hetero: Queering Representations of StraightnessSean Griffin Just as feminist scholars have turned to considerations of masculinity and scholars of race have begun to consider whiteness as a category, this collection brings the insights of queer theory to bear on cinematic representations of straightness. Spanning decades and cultures, from silent Hollywood films to modern Mumbai cinema, the essays in Hetero uncover multiple forms of heterosexual desire and demonstrate that heterosexuality is in fact a heavily contested terrain. Movies often become a place where one specific "heteronormative" ideal is upheld as proper, while other types of heterosexuality are denied or pathologized. By investigating how heterosexuality functions as a social construct, these essays deconstruct normative heterosexuality's simultaneous omnipresence and invisibility, effectively breaking down the barriers of sexual identity. Hetero offers a collective call to expand the ways in which queer theory is applied and put into practical use, and exposes the queer nature of the love that does dare speak its name. |
Contents
1 | |
1 Stop the Wedding William Haines and the Comedy of the Closet | 19 |
Film Promotion of A Free Soul | 37 |
The Performance of Jewish MaleHeterosexuality in Yiddish American Cinema of the Great Depression | 53 |
Male Film Stars in the Swedish 1930s | 71 |
Eleanor Powell and the Spectacle of Competence | 89 |
Violent Inversions of Heterosexuality in Vincente Minnellis Home from the Hill | 111 |
The Fate of Marriage in Hollywoods Sexual Revolution | 129 |
9 Time Crisis and the New Postfeminist Heterosexual Economy | 173 |
10 Are You Saying My SonIs a Bitch Boy? The Perilously Achieved Hegemonic Masculinity of Ben Stiller | 191 |
Heterosexual Aspirations and Masculine Interests in the World of Quentin Tarantino | 209 |
Heterosexuality According to Brokeback Mountain | 227 |
Works Cited | 243 |
Contributors | 257 |
261 | |
Toward a New and ImprovedGlobal Public Image | 153 |
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