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- Volume 7, Issue 3, 2022
Queer Studies in Media & Popular Culture - Volume 7, Issue 3, 2022
Volume 7, Issue 3, 2022
- Editorial
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Reflections on a year of kink
More LessUntil relatively recently, the topic of kink has not typically been encountered in either polite company or mainstream popular culture. In response to this reality, this editorial highlights ways by which one scholar/photographer intentionally endeavoured to highlight, demystify and destigmatize kinky activities, relationships and representations over the course of a twelve-month period.
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- Articles
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Representing, repressing and pushing back: Queer and trans (in)visibilities in media, law and culture
Authors: Melanie Kreitler and Laura BorchertThe increasing focus on non-normative gender identities and sexual orientations in cultural discourses creates a paradox for LGBTQIAP* communities. On the one hand, increased visibility paves the way for greater tolerance in the general public; on the other hand, it may also suggest the logical fallacy that on-screen representations mirror off-screen realities. This article argues that the hyper-visibility of queerness in media maintains and legitimizes existing, cis-heteronormative sociocultural orders that are reflected in legal developments. Further, the (popular) cultural discourse about queerness adds to its continuing normativization. The ‘mainstreamification’ of queerness risks cementing legal inequalities for LGBTQIAP* persons, leaving queers vulnerable to discrimination while popular discourse is able to imagine an emancipated queer subject on-screen.
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Taking the past out of the pastoral: TikTok’s queer ‘cottagecore’ culture and performative placemaking
Authors: Kathryn (Rin) Ryan and Antoaneta TilevaTikTok’s ‘cottagecore’ subculture has been fertile ground for the growth of a new queer rural imaginary. Through performative elements such as food, dress, imagery and Sapphic sentiments, queer women on TikTok curate an idyllic and idealized vision of rural queer life and lay claim to it. Cottagecore as a performative practice allows queer people to revel in a fictional frontier lifestyle for their own enjoyment, without concern for its actualization. This article outlines the way in which queer TikTokers play/pretend the pioneering landscape, which previously has been dominated by hetero voices. By populating these virtual spaces and queer-coding forms of dress and performance, they claim their right to belong in frontier and pioneering narratives and figuratively, if not literally, stake claim to the rural terrain.
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God vs. gay: Queer counter-storytelling and Christianity in films about conversion therapy
More LessThis article compares dramatizations of ex-gay conversion therapy in the films But I’m a Cheerleader (1999), Save Me (2007), The Miseducation of Cameron Post (2018) and Boy Erased (2018) to demonstrate how the films refute the harmful myths circulated by ex-gay ministries and thereby combat the anti-gay agendas that such ministries support. The films all emphasize the liberation of their queer protagonists, but they differ in their treatment of Christian antagonists, with depictions ranging from mocking to hostile to sympathetic. I argue that while all four films offer empowering representations of lesbians and gay men surviving conversion therapy, only Save Me employs a rhetorical strategy that seeks to reconcile the perceived conflict between queerness and Christianity.
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Diasporic returns and queer kinship networks in contemporary French and Maghrebi francophone cinema
More LessRecent portrayals of trans-Mediterranean mobility within French and Maghrebi francophone queer cinema have showcased the return of immigrant and second-generation queer men of Maghrebi origin to their diasporic homeland in North Africa. Focusing on two films from this corpus – Rémi Lange’s 2001 Tarik El Hob (The Road to Love) and Mehdi Ben Attia’s 2009 Le fil (The String) — this article traces the ways in which ethnic queer subjects have fostered alternative genealogies of kinship and intimacy in relation to the French nation state and the Maghrebi heteronormative family. It demonstrates how such a reconceptualization of kinship ties involves the renegotiation of domesticity for queer Maghrebi immigrant and diasporic subjects against the backdrop of institutional kinship structures such as civil unions and same-sex marriage in contemporary France.
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- Book Review
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The History of Trans Representation in American Television and Film Genres, Traci B. Abbott (2022)
More LessReview of: The History of Trans Representation in American Television and Film Genres, Traci B. Abbott (2022)
Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 293 pp.,
ISBN 978-3-03097-792-4, h/bk, $119.99
ISBN 978-3-03097-793-1, e-book, $89.00
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- TV Review
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- Classic Media Reviews
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