Queer Studies in Media & Popular Culture - Volume 5, Issue 1, 2020

The Harry Potter novels present their readers with traditional views of masculinity, male dominance and, by extension, female subjugation. Although the books may appear to portray female characters as strong and independent, the text focuses on outmoded ideas of male heroism. While many critics have discussed related topics like female power and sexuality in Rowling’s novels, this article focuses on the power structure at play and on the underlying homoerotic subtexts in the source text by making use of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s concept of homosociality. In addition, the article relies on fanfiction stories to shed light on the hidden homoerotic subtexts in the novels and examines the ways in which fanfiction allows and promotes a fluidity between homosocial and homosexual bonds between men. This article attempts to find answers to how fanfiction enables the readers to imagine male intimacy and what premises these stories consider. The article claims that fanfiction stories broaden Sedgwick’s term by combining male homosocial relationships with intimacy and non-homophobia and exposing the homosexual continuum in already written texts. The article further suggests that fanfiction can be considered a utopian place/space where male intimacy can be imagined.

This article analyses The Birds in order to distinguish a form of heteropatriarchy characterized by the development of surveillance practices. In the earlier films Vertigo and Rear Window, female characters were represented as intensely desirable, yet also disturbingly unattainable. This article is dissatisfied with the explanation that Hitchcock’s unattainable woman is an example of the 1960s developing lesbian subjectivity. Instead, I use The Birds to prove that Hitchcock’s representation of women has in mind the projects of arranging women for interrogation, eavesdropping on their conversations and intruding upon their intimate moments. Hitchcock’s voyeurism, construable as ambivalent in earlier films, manifests in The Birds as a surveillance practice that assumes access over the private lives of women: a heteropatriarchal strategy that keeps women’s bodies, if not accessible for men, punishable by them. By keeping tabs on the ways that women grow intimate with one another instead of with men, Hitchcock’s cinema moves from narrative to surveillance, blurring the distinction between cinematography and security footage.

This article explores the 2015 film Carol, reading the two protagonists’ mutual coming-into-focus as emblematic of the film’s calling-into-focus cinematic representations of love, motherhood and artistry in relation to the intersections of queer and gendered challenges. In observing these challenges, the cinematic camera adopts the disposition of Therese, a ‘strange girl’, as Carol calls her, who develops a loving inquisitiveness that drives her towards romantic and artistic discovery. The film depicts and itself utilizes what I call a ‘strange girl gaze’, which, marked by a gentle curiosity and a willingness to listen to alternate perspectives, counters the domineering gaze of heteropatriarchal surveillance. Using a queer understanding of hope, my article considers the cinematic potential of this new way of looking, which attends to socially peripheral individuals, including their painful pasts, with innocence, open-mindedness and compassion.

An investigation into the parallelism between media portrayals of gay individuals and the findings produced by the science community can offer possibilities to comprehend the intersection of science and popular culture on the topic of homosexuality. Recognizing this relationship renders it possible to address the historical evolution of media representations of homosexuality alongside the development of scientific knowledge on the same issue. That is, mainstream media can be perceived as a space in which perceptions of what gayness is and means has been negotiated. In this article, I set out to trace how media representations of gay sexuality have shifted from survival to legitimate presence by looking at the adoption of the Born This Way narrative as a new approach to understand homosexuality. To this end, the Born This Way narrative allows for thoughtful and productive representations of gay characters on mainstream television programmes, which the anti-discrimination narrative lacks.

Review of: Positive Images: Gay Men and HIV/AIDS in the Culture of ‘Post Crisis’, Dion Kagan (2018)

London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 295 pp.,

ISBN 978-1-78453-419-6, h/bk, $85.01

Review of: Bad Environmentalism: Irony and Irreverence in the Ecological Age, Nicole Seymour (2018)

Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 320 pp.,

ISBN 978-1-51790-389-3, p/bk, $26.95

ISBN 978-1-51790-388-6, h/bk, $108.00

Review of: Heroes, Heroines and Everything in between: Challenging Gender and Sexuality Stereotypes in Children’s Entertainment Media, C. D. Reinhard and C. J. Olson (eds) (2017)

Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 270 pp.,

ISBN 978-1-49853-957-9, h/bk, $105.00

ISBN 978-1-49853-957-9, eBook, $99.00