Queering the South on Screen

Tison Pugh

ISBN 10: 0820356727 / ISBN 13: 9780820356723

Published by University of Georgia Press, US, 2020

About this Item

Within the realm of American culture and its construction of its citizenry, geography, and ideology, who are southerners and who are queers, and what is the South and what is queerness? Queering the South on Screen addresses these questions by examining the intersections of queerness, regionalism, and identity depicted in film, television, and other visual media about the South during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.Southern queers on screen often reflect the fantasy of cultural stereotypes. Editor Tison Pugh contends that when southern queers appear in films and on television, and when southern queers watch these portrayals, the inherent contradictions of these cultural depictions reveal the fault lines of gender, geography, and desire. These underlying schisms point to the infinite, if infrequently portrayed, possibilities of actual queer southern life.Examining a range of materials, including gothic horror films and drag queens on public-access television, the contributors show that queer southerners have always expressed desires for distinctiveness in the making and consumption of visual media. Read together, the introduction and twelve chapters deconstruct premeditated labels of identity such as queer and southern. In doing so, they expose the reflexive nature of these labels to construct ideological fantasies of southerners regardless of the complexity of their lives.

Seller Inventory # LU-9780820356723

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Queering the South on Screen
• Publisher: University of Georgia Press, US
• Publication Date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0820356727
• ISBN 13: 9780820356723
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

Within the realm of American culture and its construction of its citizenry, geography, and ideology, who are southerners and who are queers, and what is the South and what is queerness? Queering the South on Screen addresses these questions by examining the intersections of queerness, regionalism, and identity depicted in film, television, and other visual media about the South during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Southern queers on screen often reflect the fantasy of cultural stereotypes. Editor Tison Pugh contends that when southern queers appear in films and on television, and when southern queers watch these portrayals, the inherent contradictions of these cultural depictions reveal the fault lines of gender, geography, and desire. These underlying schisms point to the infinite, if infrequently portrayed, possibilities of actual queer southern life. Examining a range of materials, including gothic horror films and drag queens on public-access television, the contributors show that queer southerners have always expressed desires for distinctiveness in the making and consumption of visual media. Read together, the introduction and twelve chapters deconstruct premeditated labels of identity such as queer and southern. In doing so, they expose the reflexive nature of these labels to construct ideological fantasies of southerners regardless of the complexity of their lives.

About the Authors

TISON PUGH is Pegasus Professor of English at the University of Central Florida. He is the author of Queer Chivalry: Medievalism and the Myth of White Masculinity in Southern Literature; Precious Perversions: Humor, Homosexuality, and the Southern Literary Canon; and Truman Capote: A Literary Life at the Movies (Georgia).

TED ATKINSON is an associate professor of English at Mississippi State University and editor of Mississippi Quarterly.