Queer Cinema

In Amy Borden’s chapter, “QUEER OR LGBTQ+ On the question of inclusivity in queer cinema studies,” she discusses the multifaceted representation of queer people, that is those who fall along the spectrum between the hetero homo binary (or outside of it completely). She initiates her conversation with a depiction of the manner in which LGBTQ cinema has approached representation of queer peoples by discussing Swoon’s reenactment of Rear Window’s introduction of Grace Kelly’s Lisa. She later elaborates on the difference between queer and LGBTQ+ representations in cinema, “Queerness recognized in the counter cinema practices of art and avant-garde cinema helps differentiate between queer cinema and an LGBTQ+ cinema that mainstreams LGBTQ+ identities. LGBTQ+ cinema draws from classical Hollywood style-narrative closure, spatial and temporal coherence, and a cause and effect plot-to build mainstream and community-oriented films that work to normalize LGBTQ+ characters.” (102) She is saying that the technique of reenactment and genre identification with thriving areas of mainstream cinema in a given culture is a strictly LGBTQ+ technique to normalize the community into the currently established system. This is the second cinema that Getino O. and F. Solanas discussed in their piece Toward a Third Cinema, in that it does not call for a change in the system or revolutionary acts but it does call for more toleration and understanding (an idea not far from, “TheLiberal Western,” chapter of Edward Buscome’s, ‘Injuns!’: Native Americans in the Movies.) The queer approach towards cinematography is much closer to the 'third cinema’ in Gettino, O and F. Solanas’s discussion in it’s breaking from the classical narrative structure. Towards the end she posits, “The destabilization of the individual to question the singularity of identity is the primary motivation behind queer cinema studies’ resurgent valuing of practice over representation.” (105) synthesizes the idea that queer cinema is the revolutionary of the two approaches in it’s dismantling of the current system of representation.

I wonder if films like, Hedwig and the Angry Inch would be an accurate representation of queer styles of representation or if not what would? I also wonder if, Paris is Burning and Mosquita y Mari are similar to this discussion of LGBTQ+ representation, or if not which are? I also wonder if any of this is truly revolutionary enough to count as third cinema, or if there is any crossover between thrid cinema and queer of LGBTQ+ representations of non-heteronormative ways of life.