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

[aurumcalendula]

I would like someone to write or edit a nice, serious volume on queerness in film noir [...] 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.

Seconding this!

[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.)

[gwynnega]

Someone really should do this.

[thisbluespirit]

♥

And the eternal cry of "Must I do the damned thing myself?!" *hugs* Maybe? But how annoying, if so. It does feel like something that certainly should exist by now!

[radiantfracture]

Jake Hinkson's The Blind Alley (2015)

So I have found a cheap copy of this and it would give me great joy to send it to you and the only thing stopping me is I can't find your address anymore which means I have to ask you for it again which means you may refuse on principle and I encourage you not to do that (refuse) but rather to send it to me so that this book can be in the hands it wants to be in and not in (checks) some bookstore in Germany where it is doing the world no good

[asakiyume]

I would love to read *your* book on this, but I understand very well the feeling of not wanting to be the person to write a thing, so...