Research in progress, March 7, 2022
Back in 1986, Scribe Hanif Kureishi (My Beautiful Laundrette) observed: “Gay men and black men have been excluded from history. They’re trying to understand themselves. Like women, black people and gay people have been marginalized in society, lacking in power, and often ridiculed.”
Gay Directors. By Emanuel Levy (Columbia University Press).
Alan Sinfield, p. 2:
We need more complex and systematic account, which will discover in Foucauldian maneuver a production of certain kind of sexual dissidence.
Sinfield, p. 3
We live in a politically vibrant period when social activists depict, probe, contest and challenge cinema as a major site upon which to constitute and challenge gay, lesbian and trans identities.
“The point is not to decide who is a gay filmmaker, but to focus on representation, the production and circulation of concepts and images.”
Richard Dyer: Representation
“How an idea, person, or object is represented is the means by which we think and feel about that them, the modes by which we apprehend them.
There is no direct correlation between the sexuality of the writer/director/performer and the way they represent homosexuality.
Two Axes
In/visibility
un/friendliness
There’s representation that’s scoring high on visibility and low on friendliness.
Until 1960s, there is correlation: the more hostile a representation, the easier for it to claim visibility.
D. J. West (1995):
“Theater has been a particular site for the formation of viewing habits and the formation of dissident sexual identities.”
