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

Queer Theory - Essay ExampleQueer Theory presumes that sexual characteristics that atomic number 18 a employment of representations. It assumes that representations pre-exist and define, as well as complicate and disrupt sexual identities. Queer theory results in an struggle to speak from and to the differences and silences that live 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 horse opera culture and problematize its approach to attributing everyone to not only certain behaviours but identities and its tendency to label, box and categorise. Queer theory also seeks to not only break ware 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 authority and privilege enjoyed by white and heterosexual men in a patriarchal society. In essence, she contends that in a classic biography 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, be 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 power structure 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 Dont Cry is debatable 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 Dont 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, withal 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 pr ops, and her cousin Lonny (Matt McGrath), and spectators of the film are the audience. Further into the film, when admiring Brandons facial features, Lana (Chloe Sevigny)s mum (Jeannetta Arnette) commented that Brandon looks like like a movie star, further accent the performative nature of her gender to the