Queer Representation Of The Film ' Bugs Bunny ' And ' The Celluloid Closet '

As the years have gone by, you can see the change of how gays and lesbians are widely seen in mostly every tv show or movie in today’s society. This is something most of our own parents didn’t even grow up seeing gays throughout the media. Living in today’s time period, you’re able to see how the influence has changed the way people see gays and lesbians. The nation has become more accepting of the gay and lesbian culture verses back in the days of when our parents and even grandparents were our age. Not only was is rare to see homosexuals on television, it was portrayed negatively, and now you can see it portrayed positively.

By doing this, he is succesful in showing that gay men are the same as anyone else. The only difference is who they choose to share a sexual life with. Once again modeling reality, several characters are confident in their sexuality but are hesitant to admit to it.

George Chauncey’s Gay New York Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World 1890-1940, goes where no other historian had gone before, and that is into the world of homosexuality before World War II. Chauncey’s 1994 critically acclaimed book was a gender history breakthrough that gave light to a homosexual subculture in New York City. The author argues against the idea that homosexual men lived hidden away from the world. Chauncey’s book exposes an abundant culture throughout the United States, especially in New York. In this book Chauncey not only shows how the gay population existed, but “uncovers three widespread myths about the history of gay life before the rise of the gay movement which was isolation, invisibility, and internalization.” Chauncey argues against these theories that in the years 1890-1940, America had in fact a large gay culture. Chauncey book is impactful in the uncovering of a lost culture, but also works as an urban pre-World War II history giving an inside view of life in the city through sexuality and class.

Despite the dearth of available literature due to censorship and the passage of time, this period was characterized by flourishing deviant—and provisionally—queer sexuality. The unstable times, cultural changes, and political turmoil all lent themselves to a shift in discussions and understandings of sexuality. The Civil War remains a period of incredible upheaval that profoundly shaped culture and society. This period saw the reshaping of gender and sexuality norms while also instigating the codifying of existing gender-based oppression and violences (Bronsky, 81). While the lexicon of sexuality has changed in the intervening years, the Civil War (and the circumstances it produced) remains a condition of emergence of queer pre-history, as well as a crucial site for interpreting and reclaiming historical

But then of course the film references to history and has cultural and symbolic references, like Valerie, who is played by Natasha Wightman, was sent to a detention center foe being a lesbian and was then tortured and had medical experiments performed on her. This is similar to when Nazi Germany was in power and there treatment upon the gays during the Holocaust, where homosexual men were sent to concentration

LGBT history has changed the way society works in the United States and has had an impact around the world. The homosexual community came as an impact to the world during the early 1900’s. They were considered different; odd, ill, and weak, but little did we know the effects it would have in today’s society and politics. The war, queer, and AIDs movements seem to relatively impact members of the gay and lesbian community the most. In an series of interviews in “Word is Out” conducted by Nancy Adair and Casey Adair, the reader is introduced into the lives of Pam, Rusty, and Pat; lesbian women living within their true identity during the mid-1900’s. Their stories consist of broken family relationships, marriage failure, and gender roles. To help one understand the dynamics of their relationships and lives, John D’Emilo talks about the effects of war and how it structures and damages the gay community and their opportunity for equality. Elizabeth Davis speaks about the Lesbian experience in public spaces that exposes many to find their character by associating with those that fit best to their community in “Lesbian Bar Culture in the 1930’s and 1940’s”. The LGBT community for centuries has won the spotlight in the news and many articles published in well know newspapers, but what many never get to hear or see are the struggle that many homosexuals face. Both gays and lesbians in the United States have received backlash because of their race, gender, and social class. The

Faderman takes a decidedly social-constructionist analysis as she examines lesbian life in Twentieth Century America, arguing from the start that its definition has less to do with innate same-sex attraction than with external sociopolitical influences. It is apparent that in the debate between the “essentialist lesbians” and “existentially lesbians” she offers no apologies (and plenty of reasons) in siding with the latter. Not only does she explore how the sub-culture continually responds to external pressures such as conservative politics and institutional biases but deeply analyzes how then the community expands and contracts to its marginalization and oppression. For instance, she describes numerous times (such as the butch/femme role enactment and the demand for a regulated sexual intercourse between women in the 1970’s) when the lesbian community – and corresponding social movement – enacts various border patrolling and internal policing to maintain its strict identity as women to keep the pressure and agents of the patriarchy outside.

The Rocky display features a bruised Stallone with Westmore’s prosthetics pasted onto his swollen eye and broken nose (Fig. 3) and would be moved to the lower right hand corner of the exhibit. This rugged and overt machismo offered by Stallone starkly contrasts the sensuous display of Hepburn in the other corner, denoting the spatial configuration of femininity and masculinity. Notably, Tyburczy expounds on Judith Butler’s theory of performativity and spatial configuration by stating that it is the “process of socialization whereby gender and sexual identities are produced through regulating and citational practices” (Tyburczy 12). The regulations that Westmore and the curators maintain are that “monolithic” structures of gender are essential to Hollywood media, placing binaries of both masculinity and femininity. To avoid siphoning off past histories and straying from the rigid boundaries of masculinity, placing video footage of actual representations of marginalized communities would disrupt the power struggle between queer communities and dominant communities. Specifically, footage of the Stonewall Riots in the 1960’s would introduce discomfort politics and therefore would unleash a new conversation about rigid masculinity in mainstream media. Moreover,

Queer Excursions: Retheorizing Binaries in Language, Gender, and Sexuality. Eds. Lal Zimman, Jenny Davis, and Joshua Raclaw. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.

The collision of one’s cultural imperatives with his/her psychological reality establishes a psychic dissonance between norm and self. How might an individual with tendencies divergent from the institutionalized societal norm find a sense of place? This question establishes a need for reconciliation between the values of a culture and the developing beliefs specific to said individual. This dissonance, in terms of queer sexuality, constitutes an internal conflict between heteronormative-imposed shame and one’s natural sexual desire. John Rechy’s City of Night, sheds light on this often-hidden conflict by detailing an unnamed, homosexual Mexican-American narrator’s chosen psychological justification for his sexual excursions.

The argument about Queer Representation

The documentary The Celluloid Closet discusses the evolution of gay and lesbian films. “From the very beginning movies could rely on homosexuality as a surefire source of humor”. Being gay was used as a source of comedy to the film industry. They mocked gay people with using gay/lesbian cameos in popular films as a form of entertainment. Which brings about the Sissy, Hollywood's first run-of-the-mill gay character.

The Lesbian experience in the early and mid-twentieth century seemed to be more obscured than the queer male subcultures. For many lesbians of the early and mid-twentieth century, to live as a queer woman and to still maintain social respectability meant that lesbians often had to live in the closet. I believe that that lesbian subculture was unknown and ignored because it was impossible for women to claim their identity as a lesbian; they were frequently viewed from the outside as sick, confused, or sinful and no one would want to be considered one. Being a lesbian woman in the streets was unsafe for them, as they were vulnerable to be followed and harassed by men. Finally, in this era working-class women were working more and had to keep silent about their sexual identity because it could cost losing their jobs.

In his novel The Hours, Michael Cunningham creates a dazzling fabric of queer references managing to intertwine the lives of three different women into one smooth narrative. In this essay, I will discuss what makes The Hours queer literature, how the novel has contributed to the queer genre, the cultural significance of the novel, and I will discuss several points made in Jeanette McVicker’s critical article “Gaps and Absences in The Hours.” My aim, however, is not to say that Michael Cunningham’s The Hours is strictly a queer novel, but to highlight what makes the novel queer and to discuss Cunningham’s idea of sexual orientation as a fluid entity.

In Foucault and Queer Theory Spargo defines queer theory as a nebulous group of cultural criticism and analysis of social power structures relating to sexuality . It is these power structures and aspects of culture that are responsible for the discourse that creates and informs ones understanding of gender, race, and sexuality. However these aspects of identity do not exist separately from one another, but are constructed in tandem throughout history. These layers of identity inform each other in a way that is difficult if not impossible to separate. They do not act independently with an additive effect but intersect constructing their own unique set of experiences and perspectives. In this paper I will be exploring queer theory