Ain't we all confused? It's just the facts of life

[sovay]

I would like someone to write or edit a nice, serious volume on queerness in film noir and I don't want it to be me. I can find no shortage of internet takes on the subject; in print I run across individual articles like Richard Dyer's "Postscript: Queers and Women in Film Noir" in E. Ann Kaplan's Women in Film Noir (1978/1998) or Gaylyn Studlar's "A Gunsel Is Being Beaten: Gangster Masculinity and the Homoerotics of the Crime Film, 1941–1942" in Lee Grieveson, Esther Sonnet, and Peter Stanfield's Mob Culture: Hidden Histories of the American Gangster Film (2005) and I just got a tantalizing line on lesbianism in film noir in Jake Hinkson's The Blind Alley (2015) if I can just manage to get hold of the book. But there seems to be no such thing as a reference work or even just a preliminary survey and there is enough material and obvious interest that I really feel there should be, especially since we are now past the point in noir criticism where it is sufficient to explore the phenomenon purely in terms of sensation and crime. I have famously lousy gaydar and I keep tripping across these vibes all the time, as often as not where I didn't expect them. I want one or more persons with better gaydar and actual grounding in queer theory to take on the question and then I want to argue with them. I feel this is not an unreasonable demand.

Comments

[selkie]

and I don't want it to be me

Reasonable, and yet, I fear you may be the one meant to do the thing? I mean I fear it may be one of the couple of things you were Brought Here to Do. No one sees through-lines like you do. If you need someone else's gaydar, you have my axe. (You have your own bow and I can't be of use with it. An axe, I can git 'er done.)

[sovay]

I mean I fear it may be one of the couple of things you were Brought Here to Do. No one sees through-lines like you do.

Thank you. I placed the rest of my reaction in a jam-jar with some tiny back issues of Boyd McDonald's Straight to Hell.

(You have your own bow and I can't be of use with it. An axe, I can git 'er done.)

*hugs*

I actually think my slash goggles may be more relevant to this project I don't want to take on, because it really is not my first instinct to read a relationship in romantic or sexual terms unless so indicated by the narrative, which means that if, to take a recent example that partly fueled this complaint, Dave's feelings for Frankie in I Walk Alone (1947) look visible from space to me, then I can feel reasonably confident that the narrative must be doing something to frame them so, and in fact I can identify several of the choices, even if I have no idea what prompted them, which may in any case be less relevant than the fact that they were made at the time.

[selkie]

it really is not my first instinct to read a relationship in romantic or sexual terms unless so indicated by the narrative

HOW'M I DOING WITH THOSE PEOPLE IN THE BOOK
/teeth, teeth, not at you teeth

in a jam-jar with some tiny back issues of Boyd McDonald's Straight to Hell.

Awww! Enrichment for hims' enclosure! The dandelion was too artlessly cheery on its own.

[sovay]

HOW'M I DOING WITH THOSE PEOPLE IN THE BOOK

STRONGLY INDICATED

THE BANGING HELPS

*hugs*