Queer Media Images

Queer Media Images: LGBT Perspectives presents fifteen chapters that address how the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered communities are depicted in the media. This collection focuses on how the LGBT community has been silenced or given voice through the media. Through a study of queer media images, this book scrutinizes LGBT media representations and how these representations contribute to a dialogue about civil rights for this marginalized community. While the communication discipline has been open to the LGBT community, there has been an absence of published research and a marginalizing or tokenizing of the queer voice. Through a study of media representations, this unique collection provides a snapshot into the issues surrounding LGBT identity during a time when the Defense of Marriage Act is called into question and explores what it means to study images through a queer lens.

In many arenas the debate is raging over the nature of sexual orientation. Queer Words, Queer Images addresses this debate, but with a difference, arguing that homosexuality has become an issue precisely because of the way in which we discuss, debate, and communicate about the concept and experience of homosexuality. The debate over homosexuality is fundamentally an issue of communication—as we can see by the recent controversy over gays in the military. This controversy, termed by one gay man as the annoying habit of heterosexual men to overestimate their own attractiveness, has been debated in communication-sensitive terms, such as morale and discipline. The twenty chapters address such subjects as gay political language, homosexuality and AIDS on prime-time television, the politics of male homosexuality in young adult fiction, the identification of female athleticism with lesbianism, the politics of identity in the works of Edmund White, and coming out strategies. This is must reading for students of communication practices and theory, and for everyone interested in human sexuality. Contributing to the book are: James Chesebro (Indiana State), James Darsey (Ohio State), Joseph A. Devito (Hunter College, CUNY), Timothy Edgar (Purdue), Mary Anne Fitzpatrick (Wisconsin, Madison), Karen A. Foss (Humboldt State), Kirk Fuoss (St. Lawrence), Larry Gross (Pennsylvania), Darlene Hantzis (Indiana State), Fred E. Jandt (California State, San Bernardino), Mercilee Jenkins (San Francisco State), Valerie Lehr (St. Lawrence), Lynn C. Miller (Texas, Austin), Marguerite Moritz (Colorado, Boulder), Fred L. Myrick (Spring Hill), Emile Netzhammer (Buffalo State), Elenie Opffer, Dorothy S. Painter (Ohio State), Karen Peper (Michigan), Nicholas F. Radel (Furman), R. Jeffrey Ringer (St. Cloud State), Scott Shamp (Georgia), Paul Siegel (Gallaudet), Jacqueline Taylor (Depaul), Julia T. Wood (North Carolina, Chapel Hill).

Queer Images chronicles representations of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer sexualities over one hundred years of American film. The most up-to-date and comprehensive book of its kind, it explores the ever-changing images of queer characters onscreen as well as the work of queer filmmakers and the cultural histories of queer audiences--from the works of discreetly homosexual filmmakers during Hollywood''s Golden Age and classical Hollywood''s attempt to purge sex perversion from films, to queer exploitation and physique films, cinematic responses to AIDS, and how contemporary Hollywood deals with queer issues. An essential volume for film buffs and anyone interested in sexuality and culture. Visit our website for sample chapter!

2020 ALA Alex Award Winner 2020 Stonewall — Israel Fishman Non-fiction Award Honor Book In 2014, Maia Kobabe, who uses e/em/eir pronouns, thought that a comic of reading statistics would be the last autobiographical comic e would ever write. At the time, it was the only thing e felt comfortable with strangers knowing about em. Now, Gender Queer is here. Maia’s intensely cathartic autobiography charts eir journey of self-identity, which includes the mortification and confusion of adolescent crushes, grappling with how to come out to family and society, bonding with friends over erotic gay fanfiction, and facing the trauma and fundamental violation of pap smears. Started as a way to explain to eir family what it means to be nonbinary and asexual, Gender Queer is more than a personal story: it is a useful and touching guide on gender identity—what it means and how to think about it—for advocates, friends, and humans everywhere. This special deluxe hardcover edition of Gender Queer features a brand-new cover, exclusive art and sketches, and a TK from creator Maia Kobabe.

Locating Queerness in the Media: A New Look delves deep into an understanding of queer sensibility. This collection examines how media images of the LGBTQ community create a universal consciousness about the media existence of queer people, ranging from tragic to villainous./span

This book examines different forms and practices of queer media, that is, the films, websites, zines, and film festivals produced by, for, and about lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people in China in the first two decades of the twenty-first century. It traces how queer communities have emerged in urban China and identifies the pivotal role that community media have played in the process. It also explores how these media shape community cultures and perform the role of social and cultural activism in a country where queer identities have only recently emerged and explicit forms of social activism are under serious political constraints. Importantly, because queer media is ‘niche’ and ‘narrowcasting’ rather than ‘broadcasting’ and ‘mass communication,’ the subject compels a rethinking of some often-taken-for-granted assumptions about how media relates to the state, the market, and individuals. Overall, the book reveals a great deal about queer communities and identities, queer activism, and about media and social and political attitudes in China.

Media Queered is a groundbreaking assessment of minorities and the media. Authorities including Larry Gross, Edward Alwood, Lisa Henderson, and Marguerite Moritz join several new scholars to examine four aspects of visibility: history, expertise, popularity, and technology. To supplement this research, media practitioners including journalists working in the gay and mainstream press contribute a unique series of interludes. The first is by Studs Terkel, who interviewed founders of the U.S. homophile movement. Written for scholars, students, and instructors of media and gender studies, Media Queered is also accessible for general readers intrigued by the recent flowering of queer characters, themes, and images in popular culture.

In Reframing Bodies, Roger Hallas illuminates the capacities of film and video to bear witness to the cultural, political, and psychological imperatives of the AIDS crisis. He explains how queer films and videos made in response to the AIDS epidemics in North America, Europe, Australia, and South Africa challenge longstanding assumptions about both historical trauma and the politics of gay visibility. Drawing on a wide range of works, including activist tapes, found footage films, autobiographical videos, documentary portraits, museum installations, and even film musicals, Hallas reveals how such “queer AIDS media” simultaneously express both immediacy and historical consciousness. Queer AIDS media are neither mere ideological critiques of the dominant media representation of homosexuality and AIDS nor corrective attempts to produce “positive images” of people living with HIV/AIDS. Rather, they perform complex, mediated acts of bearing witness to the individual and collective trauma of AIDS. Challenging the entrenched media politics of who gets to speak, how, and to whom, Hallas offers a bold reconsideration of the intersubjective relations that connect filmmakers, subjects, and viewers. He explains how queer testimony reframes AIDS witnesses and their speech through its striking combination of direct address and aesthetic experimentation. In addition, Hallas engages recent historical changes and media transformations that have not only displaced queer AIDS media from activism to the archive, but also created new witnessing dynamics through the logics of the database and the remix. Reframing Bodies provides new insight into the work of Gregg Bordowitz, John Greyson, Derek Jarman, Matthias Müller, and Marlon Riggs, and offers critical consideration of important but often overlooked filmmakers, including Jim Hubbard, Jack Lewis, and Stuart Marshall.