sovay: (Jeff Hartnett)
sovay ([personal profile] sovay) wrote2023-05-03 05:15 am

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

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.
radiantfracture: Beadwork bunny head (Default)

[personal profile] radiantfracture 2023-05-04 03:05 am (UTC)(link)

Hurrah!

…I hope it’s not in German