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Volume 9, Issue 3
  • ISSN: 2055-5695
  • E-ISSN: 2055-5709

Abstract

Drawing on apposite film, queer and gender theory, this article focuses on a progression of femme representations of queer men in three comedies of the 1980s – (Abrahams et al. 1980), (Kanew 1984) and (Gottlieb 1987) – in which gay or gay-coded characters are marked as effeminate or femme. In order to make them the butt of a joke, queer male characters had to be rendered more fully visible and recognizable to the audience, but in doing so, the films created a kind of Streisand effect, whereby the opposite of what was intended occurred. This new visibility revealed fault lines in gender expression that pushed at the limits of homophobic constructs: rather than containing queer characters in homophobic confines, these films opened up potential unforeseen possibilities. Revisiting older films such as these not only reclaims some representations for queer audiences and critics but also destabilizes notions of ‘femme’ and ‘stereotype’, particularly criticism of stereotypes that falls into the very queerphobia and effeminophobia it attempts to decry.

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2024-11-26
2024-12-14
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/content/journals/10.1386/qsmpc_00135_1
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  • Article Type: Article
Keyword(s): effeminophobia; film; gender expression; masculinity; reclamation; representation; stereotype

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