Screening Queer Memory: LGBTQ Pasts in Contemporary Film and Television

Description

In Screening Queer Memory, Anamarija Horvat examines how LGBTQ history has been represented on-screen, and interrogates the specificity of queer memory. She poses several questions: How are the pasts of LGBTQ people and communities visualised and commemorated on screen? How do these representations comment on the influence of film and television on the construction of queer memory? How do they present the passage of memory from one generation of LGBTQ people to another? Finally, which narratives of the queer past, particularly of the activist past, are being commemorated, and which obscured? Horvat exemplifies how contemporary British and American cinema and television have commented on the specificity of queer memory - how they have reflected aspects of its construction, as well as participated in its creation. In doing so, she adds to an under-examined area of queer film and television research which has privileged concepts of nostalgia, history, temporality and the archive over memory. Films and television shows explored include Cheryl Dunye’s The Watermelon Woman (1996), Todd Haynes’ Velvet Goldmine (1998), Jill Soloway’s Transparent (2014-2019), Matthew Warchus’ Pride (2014) and Tom Rob Smith’s London Spy (2015). Cover Contents List of figures Series editor’s foreword Acknowledgements Introduction: Locating queer memory Part One Queer memories of the screen 1 The picture of Arthur Stuart: Todd Haynes’s Velvet Goldmine and queer fan memory 2 Going on Faith: Cheryl Dunye’s The Watermelon Woman and the invention of Black lesbian memory Part Two Queer memory, intergenerationality and television 3 Haunting and queer histories: Representing postmemory in Joey Soloway’s Transparent 4 New spies, old tricks: Intergenerational narratives and memories of the AIDS crisis in London Spy Part Three Remembering queer activism 5 Reimagining LGSM: Gendered activism and neoliberalism in Matthew Warchus’s Pride Conclusion: The borders of memory: Transnational trends in LGBTQ representation Notes Bibliography Film and television references Index