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10th Anniversary Special Issue: ‘Queer Style and Porn Chic’
  • ISSN: 2050-0726
  • E-ISSN: 2050-0734

Abstract

This article is a companion piece to the stop-motion animated film short that I made and which is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70jfc7osN80. Here I describe my creative process, methods and motivations in making the film as someone who is both an artist and scholar concerned with dress as an embodied practice. I characterize – animated through the juxtaposition and photography of different images – as a camp parody of white-supremacist hypermasculinity. While the carnivalesque film aims to subvert hegemonic normativities, I concede that such transgressive reinscriptions are necessarily controversial, ambiguous and meant to evoke ambivalent laughter. I posit that as a camp expression, potentially highlights the constructedness of what gets naturalized visually – which includes naturalized beauty, desirability and sexuality – and what philosopher Heather Widdows characterizes as a hegemonic aesthetic ethos rooted in western beauty ideals.

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2023-02-27
2025-06-17
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References

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  • Article Type: Article
Keyword(s): camp; dress; film; hypermasculine aesthetics; parody; stop-motion animation
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