Queer Theory Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Queer Theory - Essay Example Queer Theory presumes that sexual characteristics that are a function of representations. It assumes that representations pre-exist and define, as well as complicate and disrupt sexual identities. Queer theory results in an effort to speak from and to the differences and silences that have been suppressed by the homo-hetero binary, an effort to unpack the monolithic identities 'lesbian' and 'gay' including the intricate ways lesbian and gay sexualities are inflected by heterosexuality, race, gender and ethnicity.' Queer theory allows us to examine Western culture and problematize its approach to attributing everyone to not only certain behaviour's but identities and its tendency to label, box and categorise. Queer theory also seeks to not only break down gender roles, sexual order and dichotomies but break down the very thoughts around sexuality in regard to biology and reproduction. Much discussion in queer theory has been cantered on the issue of spectatorship. In her frequently quoted and highly influential essay 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,' Laura Mulvey (1975) described how dominant cinema codes have been constructed by a patriarchal system of looking and the desire to obtain and consume. The gaze championed by Mulvey (p.11) is assumed to be male, white and heterosexual, and therefore endowed with the power and privilege enjoyed by white and heterosexual men in a patriarchal society. In essence, she contends that in a classic narrative film, the subject of the narrative and the gaze, is male; woman functions as spectacle, the object of the gaze. In terms of spectatorship, the viewer is split between these two positions - the male subject and the female object of the gaze. Hence, being the spectator - identifying with the subject of the narrative and the gaze, presents a difficulty for female viewers (Mulvey, p.11). However, when Mulvey penned this article, she seemed to have neglected the presence of queer audience; her account of the sexual hierarchy of narrative cinema has been challenged by many critics who have insisted that identification can also occur across gender and sexual demarcations (Smyth, 1995, p.125) As Doty (p.151) argues, all texts are open to multiple interpretations; queer readings of texts are not alternative or sub-cultural readings, but readings to position side by side to normatively straight readings. "Boys Don't Cry" is arguable the earliest mainstream movie that is based on a real life story, to scrutinize the female to male transvestism. The 'gender as performance' notion is explicitly depicted in Boys Don't Cry; in the opening sequence, Brandon (Hilary Swank) is seen grooming and gearing up for her date. The idea of performance in this sequence seem to have a dual connotation, besides performance as in portraying a male role, I see performance here also as theatrical presentation where the socks for her crotch and the cowboy hat are seen as her props, and her cousin Lonny (Matt McGrath), and spectators of the film are the audience. Further into the film, when admiring Brandon's facial features, Lana (Chloe Sevigny)'s mum (Jeannetta Arnette) commented that Brandon looks like 'like a movie star', further emphasizing the performative nature of her gender to the