Queer Cinema Part 1

I accidentally ended up watching Brokeback Mountain (2005) and Beautiful Thing (1996) in the same day leading to obvious comparisons. The two films are of course about homosexual characters, but is this the only similarity and what is the significance of these films in terms of Queer Cinema? Does it even matter that these films are dealing with gay characters? Well it certainly seems so as Brokeback Mountain became the ‘gay cowboy film’ even though the main characters, one could argue, are bisexual rather than gay. In this day and age does Queer Cinema still exist, surely Brokeback Mountain is just another romantic drama rather than a queer film and why should there be specific theories surrounding such films? I decided to investigate further.

Queer theory came about in the 1990s in response to films verging on the arthouse/avant-garde which were perhaps a response to the AIDS epidemic of the 80s. B Ruby Rich coined the term ‘New Queer Cinema’ in 1992 due to the number of Queer films being made and shown that year. Reappropriation meant that the term ‘queer’ became positive and liberating. American and British filmmakers such as Gus Van Sant, Todd Haynes, Isaac Julien and Derek Jarman were trying to establish new ways of representing homosexuality and also making films for a gay audience. Queer cinema was and perhaps still is subversive and contains key themes of identity, gender, class, family and society, aiming to challenge and subvert these themes. These films were attempting to de-essentialise the homosexual portrayal by trying to create more complex and diverse characters but this has the danger of actually essentialising the portrayal. This single identity, is argued by some, to be the product of society and here we can bring in the theories of Louis Althusser. According to Annamarie Jagose in her ‘Queer Theory An Introduction’ “Louis Althusser has argued that we do not pre-exist as free subjects: on the contrary, we are constituted as such by ideology. His central thesis is that individuals are “interpellated” or “called forth” as subjects by ideology, and that interpellation is achieved through a compelling mixture of recognition and identification. This notion is important for any thorough examination of identity politics, because it demonstrates how ideology not only positions individuals in society but also confers on them their sense of identity. In other words, it shows how one’s identity is already constituted by ideology itself rather than simply by resistance to it”. This notion of identity and ideology are key to Queer Cinema both in terms of the film’s subject matter and in analysing the film.

Not only does queer theory examine films with homosexual protagonists but also there are queer readings of film, appropriating a queer view to a heterosexual film, however, this is a discussion for another day. There are many strains to queer theory and many questions can be raised when trying to investigate this genre; what constitutes a gay/lesbian film? Does the director have to be gay in order for the film to be constituted as gay? There are no definitive answers to these questions and as with all film theory and criticism a lot is personal opinion. For the benefit of my investigation I am going to focus on the themes of family, gender, identity, class and society in order to deconstruct representation within the films and examine ideology and stereotypes within Beautiful Thing and Brokeback Mountain.