Week 13: "New Queer Cinema"

Question 1

What was “New Queer Cinema,” according to B. Ruby Rich? What were some of the foundational films? Who were some of the notable filmmakers?

Answer 1

Queer-themed independent films that gained critical acclaim on the North American festival circuit in the early 1990s.

Gus Van Sant- My Own Private Idaho

Question 2

What are the five ways that “New Queer Cinema” was defined by defiance? How did defiance mark this movement as “queer”?

Answer 2

Defiance- Films defied a homophobic society by giving voice to marginalized social groups, not just lesbians and gays, but also subgroups within them.

Films defied “positive” “tasteful” “tolerated” representations

Films defied official/ received understandings of the past.

Films defied conventions of form, content, and genre.

Films defied silence/ complacency and acceptance of death (AIDS era)

Question 3

What does Douglas Crimp mean when he says that cinema depends on “identification across identities,” and what does this mean for “New Queer Cinema”?

Answer 3

Cinema always already depends on establishing empathy, alliances, and desire along lines not restricted to normative patterns of attraction.

Rather than disavowing the queer implications of identifying with a “character- who-is-not-you,” queer cinema openly affirms it (often in sexually explicit ways).

Question 4

What happened to “New Queer Cinema”?

Answer 4

Despite the increase in the production of (and audience for) queer films in the 1990s, NQC constituted a relatively small number of films

A new and enduring sector of popular radical work failed to materialize from this initial groundswell of queer filmmaking activity.

Question 5

What are two examples of the legacy of “New Queer Cinema,” and what are the implications for studying film history?

Answer 5

Hollywood found ways to profit from this new audience for queer films (including queer audiences and portions of the mainstream public):

It helped launch the careers of queer directors

It became more comfortable with queer characters and themes

Queer Film Studies flourished as an academic subfield, giving film scholars a paradigm for three projects:

Critically exploring queer directors and queer imagery in films

Discussing queer spectatorship (what do queer texts reveal about the spectators’ experience of cinema?)

Retrospectively queering film history by rereading and reclaiming classic texts as queer.