This week, I am introducing a new film style called "Queer Cinema".
Queer Cinema, a film style that consist of a concept that re-examined and reviewed the image of homosexuality. The film style can be said is identifiable with avant-garde cinema. It was introduced back at 1991 at Toronto Film Festival as a concept.
Since then, films have re-evaluated subjectivities, male gazes, and so on; by incorporating the question of pleasure on screen and the celebration of excess, resulting in a subversion of previously considered mainstream genres.
The evolution of Queer Cinema slowly showed progress during the 1990s with the global traumatizing effects of AIDS. From the name Queer Cinema, they have changed to New Queer Cinema as the films have become a marketable commodity and very much an identifiable movement.
"New Queer Cinema" is a term used to describe the renaissance of gay & lesbian film making by the Americans. Gus Van Sant is a leader for such cinema with the contributions My Own Private Idaho (1991) & Even Cowgirls Get The Blues (1993).
New Queer Cinema is not a single aesthetic but a collection, taking pride in difference. Regrettably, it is a male homosexual cinema that focuses on male desires. For Lesbianism, they remain quite invisible (like mainstream heterosexual films), resulting in an inequality of funding for lesbian film makers.
With Queer Cinema, it comes Queer Theory. The Queer Theory was born out of the growing trends in critical theory in the 1980s. The theory challenges and pushes further debates on gender and sexuality, formally proposed by Feminist Theory, and as a critical response to the numerous discourses surrounding AIDS & homosexuality.
There are basically four ways used to conduct queer reading of texts.
1) Audience Reception: Assessing popular cultural texts that overtly address non-straight audience, such as homosexual characters in a narrative film.
2) Texts that address straight audiences but have gotten appreciation from non-straight audiences .
3) 'To describe straight-identifying film and popular culture theorist, critics, or producers that is concerned with non-normative straightness' (Doty 1998, 150)
4)'Films and popular cultural texts, spectator positions, pleasures, and readings that articulate spaces outside gender binaries and sexuality categories, whether these are outside normative straight understanding of gender and sexuality or outside orthodox lesbian and gay understandings' (Ibid., 150)
Susan Hayward, an actress and a theorist herself says that Queer Theory is one of the first postmodern theories born in the age of postmodernism. It incorporates a broad range of study, embracing all "non-straight" approaches to living practice - including, within our context, film and popular culture.
She suggested that Queer Theory seeks to confuse gender and sexual identity, exposing and blurring their limitations. The Queer Theory examines queer work, makings & writings, done by all sexualities. It also opens up texts & urge us to read seemingly straight texts queerly. What seemed straight previously can now be viewed as queer, e.g., Joan Crawford as butch feminine gun-totter in Johnny Guitar (1954).
The Queer Theory is rather assertive about its politics, that there are more to one way of looking at things, thus, sexuality is looked into as multiplicity and not fixed. It ridicules consumer passivity through deliberate vulgarity, e.g., in-your-face visuals and context of homosexuality, possibly in excess.
In simple terms, Queer Cinema ascribes value to homosexuality and lesbianism, be it good or bad. New Queer Cinema revamps previously heterosexually-confined voices, sexualities & genres while engaging audiences to connect to the queer or queerly contexts, across racial, cultural and societal boundaries.
Our goal today is to look for the elements in the queer cinema film that may or may not capture 'MY' attention on. The film that we are going to research is Billy's Hollywood Screen Kiss (1998), directed by Tommy O'Haver.
Billy's Hollywood Screen Kiss, a queer film that starts out with a out-of-the-closet gay dude, Billy Collier, a photographer working on a series of pictures featuring recreations of movie kisses, with drag queens playing the female roles. For his male model, he hires Gabriel, a young hot and hunky waiter on whom he has developed a serious crush. While Billy is openly gay, Gabriel says that he is straight and even claims to have a girlfriend. However, as they spend more time together and grow closer, Billy becomes increasingly unsure that this is true.
I do not really like the film as there are certain parts of the story could be clarified a little more. For example, when Billy asked if Gabriel was gay, Gabriel denied and say that he was straight and claim to have a girlfriend back in San Francisco. Few times where both of them already developed a friend relationship and hang out together, he refuses to talk about his relationship or even mentioning about his girlfriend. This part left me ponder about Gabriel might be lying about he has a girlfriend or he was being in an unhappy relationship with his girlfriend which clearly need some clarification from the story itself.
The ending for me was not a nice closure too. After getting over the drama of Billy and Gabriel's case, Billy focused on his film and started his film's series exhibition in Los Angeles, which includes photos of Gabriel. Billy's friend, Perry shows him a magazine with an underwear ad featuring Gabriel, suggesting Billy should give him a call. Billy demurs, saying he needs some time away. Toward the end of the night, after his friends have all gone home, Billy meets a handsome young chap named Joshua who enthusiastically admires Billy's photographic work. It is suggested by many people who watched this film said that Billy with his newfound artistic success, he also at last find romantic fulfillment. From this last scene may seem like Billy has finally settled with a new guy with a new success, but it leaves many possible endings to the story such as "the same history can be repeated again but with a different guy" or he just end up single without having any luck with guys to have romance with. Unlike typical romance film, this one kinda gave me a "meh" kind of feeling towards it which shows that the film lack of completeness in certain parts of the story.
All in all, this romance comedy queer film is funny in the terms of its references to many gay people's culture or used word such as "blue balls" or "gay-dar" (which refers to a radar that a gay person has, to detect others' sexuality). This film does successfully pulled off a queer film by using the first approach - Audience Reception where you can find few scenes that Billy being called out easily recognized as a gay person for some people even though he did not act obviously that he is gay or feminine. In my opinion, this film gave a look of what it's like to live as a gay person from young to adult during that time of era where you would find that they are mostly not much of any different than any other straight people. They eat, sleep, love, talk and do any activity just like ordinary people except their love interest is towards their own gender.
Reference Links:
1) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0137386/
I do not really like the film as there are certain parts of the story could be clarified a little more. For example, when Billy asked if Gabriel was gay, Gabriel denied and say that he was straight and claim to have a girlfriend back in San Francisco. Few times where both of them already developed a friend relationship and hang out together, he refuses to talk about his relationship or even mentioning about his girlfriend. This part left me ponder about Gabriel might be lying about he has a girlfriend or he was being in an unhappy relationship with his girlfriend which clearly need some clarification from the story itself.
The ending for me was not a nice closure too. After getting over the drama of Billy and Gabriel's case, Billy focused on his film and started his film's series exhibition in Los Angeles, which includes photos of Gabriel. Billy's friend, Perry shows him a magazine with an underwear ad featuring Gabriel, suggesting Billy should give him a call. Billy demurs, saying he needs some time away. Toward the end of the night, after his friends have all gone home, Billy meets a handsome young chap named Joshua who enthusiastically admires Billy's photographic work. It is suggested by many people who watched this film said that Billy with his newfound artistic success, he also at last find romantic fulfillment. From this last scene may seem like Billy has finally settled with a new guy with a new success, but it leaves many possible endings to the story such as "the same history can be repeated again but with a different guy" or he just end up single without having any luck with guys to have romance with. Unlike typical romance film, this one kinda gave me a "meh" kind of feeling towards it which shows that the film lack of completeness in certain parts of the story.
All in all, this romance comedy queer film is funny in the terms of its references to many gay people's culture or used word such as "blue balls" or "gay-dar" (which refers to a radar that a gay person has, to detect others' sexuality). This film does successfully pulled off a queer film by using the first approach - Audience Reception where you can find few scenes that Billy being called out easily recognized as a gay person for some people even though he did not act obviously that he is gay or feminine. In my opinion, this film gave a look of what it's like to live as a gay person from young to adult during that time of era where you would find that they are mostly not much of any different than any other straight people. They eat, sleep, love, talk and do any activity just like ordinary people except their love interest is towards their own gender.
Reference Links:
1) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0137386/
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