Learning to look askance. Explaining Queer through film

Moderna Sprak

Volumn 97, Issue 2, 2003, Pages 147-163

  Gillett, Robert ^a  

^a QUEEN MARY UNIVERSITY OF LONDON   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 70749107091     PISSN: 00268577     EISSN: 20003560     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (37)

1. Anon: 'At last - Lesbian Romance fit for your Maiden Aunt', The Sun, 22.6.2002, p. 23
2. Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness, London: Virago 1981
3. For a discussion of this aspect of Hall's novel, see Jean Radford, 'An inverted romance: The Well of Loneliness and sexual ideology', in: J.R., ed., The Progress of Romance. The Politics of Popular Fiction, London, Routledge: 1986, pp. 97-111
4. See for example Nigel Andrews, 'Girls just want to have Sapphic fun', Financial Times 22.6.2002, p. 18
5. Jenny McCartney, 'The Sapphic Factor', Sunday Telegraph Review 23.6.2002, p. 6
6. Robin Rauzi, 'Sapphic Equaliser. Hollywood's latest girl-meets-girl romantic comedy manages to avoid all the clichés', Observer Review 5.5.2002, p. 9
7. Rauzi (see note 5)
8. Erin Gill, 'Kissing Jessica Stein', Sight and Sound, July 2002, 46-47, p. 47
9. McCartney (see note 5)
10. Barbara Ellen, 'Love be a lady tonight', The Times, 20.6.2002, Section 2, p. 10
11. Victoria Coren, 'Why every woman must see this film', Evening Standard 26.6.2002, p. 30
12. Sheila Jeffreys, 'Does it matter if they did it?' in: Lesbian History Group, eds., Not a Passing Phase: Reclaiming Lesbians in History 1840-1985, London: Women's Press 1986, pp. 19-28
13. Marcia Klotz, 'The Queer and Unqueer Spaces of Monika Treut's Films', in: Ingeborg Majer O'Sickey & Ingeborg von Zadow, eds, Triangulated Visions. Women in Recent German Cinema, Albany: State University of New York 1998, 65-77, p. 65
14. Cf. Jon Savage/Isaac Julien, 'Queering the Pitch. A Conversation', Critical Quarterly 36 (1994), 1-12, p. 2: 'That's where the word "queer" comes in: you widen your own experience of what it's like to be homosexual into discussions of gender, into discussions of class and race.'
15. Cf. Tamsin Spargo, Foucault and Queer Theory, Cambridge: Icon 1999, p. 17: 'Foucault, in contrast, insisted that the category of the homosexual grew out of a particular context in the 1870s and that, like sexuality generally, it must be viewed as a constructed category of knowledge rather than as a discovered identity.' (Emphasis: T.S.)
16. Cf. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf 1991) pp. 9-10: 'The analytic move it makes is to demonstrate that categories presented in a culture as symmetrical binary oppositions [...] actually subsist in a more unsettled and dynamic tacit relation....'
17. Cf Monique Wittig, 'One is not born a Woman', in M.W., The Straight Mind and Other Essays (Boston: Beacon Press 1992) pp. 9-20, here p. 11: 'A materialist feminist approach shows that what we take for the cause or origin of oppression is in fact only the mark imposed by the oppressor: the "myth of woman".'
18. Neil Jordan, The Crying Game (London: Vintage 1993), p. 44
19. Jordan (= note 22), p. 45
20. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble. Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (London: Routledge 1990) p. 137
21. Judith Butler, 'Imitation and Gender Insubordination', in: Diana Fuss, ed., Inside/Out. (London: Routledge 1991) 13-31, p. 24-25
22. Butler (= note 24), pp. 28-29
23. Cf. Kristin Handler, 'Sexing The Crying Game. Difference, Identity, Ethics', Film Quarterly 47 (1994) 31-42, p. 35: 'The Crying Game [...] fails to question the oppression of women by men, and is not at all interested in female subjectivity.'
24. See Jane Giles, The Crying Game. BFI Modern Classics (London: British Film Institute 1997), p. 40
25. Jordan (= note 21) viii
26. Cf. Harriet Malinowitz, 'Queer Theory: Whose Theory?', Frontiers 13 (1993) 168-184, p. 168: 'I found myself [...] defending [...] queer theory from charges of elitism, inaccessibility and general unintelligibility'
27. Donald Morton, 'The Politics of Queer Theory in the (Post)Modern Moment', Genders 17 (1993) 121-150, p. 130: 'Such observations confirm finally the deep complicity of Queer Theory [...] with the dominant regime of truth'
28. and Steven Seidman, 'Identity and Politics in a "Postmodern" Gay Culture: Some Historical and Conceptual Notes', in: Michael Warner, ed., Fear of a Queer Planet (London: University of Minnesota Press 1994) 105-142, p. 134: 'In other words, it fails to theoretically engage the practices of individuals organized around affirmative lesbian and gay identities.'
29. Handler (= note 26), p. 32
30. Handler (= note 26), pp. 31-32
31. Sedgwick (= note 14), p.11
32. Foucault (= note 18). The Nietzschean intertext, of course is 'Der Wille zur Macht'
33. Cf. Friedrich Nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Böse in: F.N., Werke III (Munich: Hanser 1976), p. 631 (= Aphorism 108): 'Es gibt gar keine moralischen Phänomene, sondern nur erne moralische Ausdeutung von Phänomenen...'
34. The reference, of course, is to L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz of 1900 (London: Pavilion 2002)
35. John Lennon, 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds'. Cf. e.g. 〈wysiwyg://13//http://www/geocities.com/Sun...ip/Lounge/7109/songs/ lucy_in_the sky.html〉, accessed 12.10.03
36. It is no accident, for instance, that one of Plato's dialogues about Love is staged as a symposium
37. Klotz (= note 11), p. 72