An Introduction To Queer Cinema and Beyond

Finding yourself on screen and in life can feel like a big task. Good thing I'm here to help you out with that because clearly, I have it all figured out!

You Gotta Get The Hell Outta Dodge

“Maybe I wanted to rebel against my WASPy small-town midwestern upbringing and take a class with the word “queer” in it since I had finally escaped to a Big 10 college campus.”

In my first year of undergrad, I took a class called “Queer Cinema and Beyond.” I had just turned 19 when the class started. I was barely even out to myself. I had tried to come out as bi to my family over winter break, in the weeks leading up to the beginning of that spring semester class, only to get shoved roughly back into the closet.

One could argue that I signed up for this class for a few reasons. The most practical reason is that I needed a “critiquing media” credit for my journalism degree, although other classes that were actually required for my degree would have probably fulfilled the requirement. Maybe I wanted to rebel against my WASPy small-town midwestern upbringing and take a class with the word “queer” in it since I had finally escaped to a Big 10 college campus. These were both things I told myself and others at the time. In reality, I was just a baby gay, looking desperately to see myself in the things I loved, and to know that the things I loved saw me too.

First Thing's First: Watch Some Lesbians

To be honest with you, we watched at least as many completely forgettable pieces as we did memorable ones. We covered everything from pre-code queer films to cinematically-experimental gay porn from the 50s and 60s when queer filmmakers couldn’t get funding to make anything else to AIDS documentaries from the 80s to modern classics like Carol (2015) all the way to my professor’s friend’s absurdist short films, all on a big screen in Franklin Hall on IU Bloomington’s campus.

The very first movie we watched, and in my opinion one of the more memorable ones, was Bound (1996), the Wachowskis’ writing and directing debut. The sister duo would go on to become the sci-fi superstars of the decade a few years later with their hit film The Matrix (1999) and the subsequent sequels, the most recent of which just came out at the end of 2021. They would go on to produce a number of different genre films, typically with sci-fi elements, but Bound is a slightly more noir-style gangster film that ends with a couple of Sapphics (we can argue later about whether they’re lesbians or omnisexual Sapphics, but for now I’m using an umbrella term) driving their pickup truck off into the night.

We, of course, discussed the fact that both directors, had come out as trans women in the 20-plus years between the movie’s release and our viewing. Honestly, I don’t think they were really doing a very good job of hiding anything. The very first scene of their very first film was literally just two queer women tied up in a closet. So really, they were letting us know from the get-go.

Who Knew Cinema Could BE So Queer

“Having a queer author can make a text queer, having queer content can make a piece queer, queer actors can queer their performance of a text that is not otherwise explicitly queer, queer viewers can queer a text simply by consuming it, and so on.”

Before our first viewing, we had been talking about the ways that content can be both explicitly and implicitly queered based on the perspective that creatives and viewers bring to films. Having a queer author can make a text queer, having queer content can make a piece queer, queer actors can queer their performance of a text that is not otherwise explicitly queer, queer viewers can queer a text simply by consuming it, and so on. For me, this was a revolutionary concept. Who knew cinema was so queer?

Watching Bound in January of 2018 didn’t change the writers’ queer perspectives, but it did, arguably, change the viewer’s understanding of those perspectives. It’s quite possible that the artists' understanding of their own perspectives changed over the course of those two decades as well. Regardless, I had already been heavily exposed to the Wachowskis’ later work, which had definitely already informed my perspective as a queer consumer of media and had certainly inspired me to take the class, to begin with.

A Cult Classic Anyone?

In high school, while still pretty heavily closeted even to myself, I became a super-fan of the Wachowskis’ cut-short, two-seasons-and-a-movie-genre-bending-queer-sci-fi-action-telenovela-Bollywood-kungfu-cult-classic Sense8 (2015-2018). It certainly helped me find myself on the screen, and outed me to myself, at least retrospectively. What I don’t understand is how it didn’t out me to my parents. I was very openly and obviously obsessed with a very queer show made by very queer people.

And Sense8 was definitely responsible for some of my higher expectations for queer media. For one thing, we get genderqueer characters, both monosexual and omnisexual characters, as well as a couple of (relatively) healthy polyamorous or otherwise queered family structures.

As with much of the queer genre, this show focuses a lot of themes around the acceptance of found family and the universality of the human experience, despite the divisions of factors like geographic location, sexuality, race, gender, and socio-economic class.

Of course, the show has its shortcomings– and a recent re-watch has made them all the more glaring to me. In truth, the Wachowskis overwrite for my taste, using expositional, unnatural dialogue to set scenes rather than trusting the actors to perform their characters well or trusting their viewers to pay attention to the subtlety of that performance. This overwriting led to drawn-out episodes that take a long time to build plots. When the show got canceled, the Wachowskis attempted to cram about 30 hours of TV into a two-and-a-half-hour movie. With writers that already struggle to move things along, the show ended up with a lot of unearned character development, half-finished plot lines, and inelegant character relationships.

These flaws, mixed with the way that transphobia and homophobia both play a major part in some characters’ plotlines, as well as some off-color voyeurism, puts this show perhaps a little lower in my ranking of things that are “pure queer joy” than a show like this otherwise would be. Even so, Sense8 holds a very specific and joyful place in my little queer storytelling heart.

I'm Not Just A Me, I'm Also A We

In the early summer of 2018, a week or two after I had submitted my final paper for Queer Cinema and Beyond, an analysis of the queering of the road genre in The Living End (1992), I attended a screening of Amor Vincit Omnia (2018) in the Wachowskis’ home town of Chicago. Amor Vincit Omnia was the very quickly written, shot, and produced two-and-a-half-hour-long Sense8 finale. It was a ticketed event with Lana Wachowski and a few cast and crew members, including Max Riemelt, who gave me a hug that permanently solidified two facts for me: 1) I am for sure attracted to men as well as women 2) he smells really good.

I couldn’t drive at the time (further proof that I’m gay) and was living for the summer at my parent’s house in rural Northeast Indiana, about three hours and a time zone away from the city. So, I managed to convince my twin brother and his girlfriend to come with me. I don’t think either of them was actually up to date on the show at that point, but we took their car to a train station in South Bend, Indiana, and rode a train the rest of the way into Chicago.

At that point in time, I had only ever been to one smaller pride event as part of a group. I had never been to any kind of TV or movie or YouTube convention. I had never really been in a large space filled with “my people” where I felt I could be myself. The closest thing I can even think of is the Chicago Lit Festival, which I had been attending– with my dad and his writing buddies who had all done their MFAs in the city– since I was in middle school. In fact, I would return to the city in just a couple of weeks to attend that event (I got to jabber at Joyce Carol Oates about my creative writing minor while she signed my battered copy of High Lonesome: New and Selected Stories 1966-2006 (2007) that I had stolen from my dad. It was awesome.).

But the viewing of Amor Vincit Omnia was different. This wasn’t just the kids from my dorm floor checking out the local pride event, or fellow story lovers wandering around downtown Chicago. These were fellow gay story lovers. These were my people and we all were there, together, doing something that we had only previously done alone. We were packed into a tiny, historic, theater without air conditioning, laying to rest our abruptly ended found family. We laughed and we cheered and we cried. It was one of the first times I felt that I’m not just a me, I am also a we. For that reason, no matter its shortcomings, Sense8 will always be special to me.

Being Queer Is Enough

“This collection does not rely simply on texts to discuss queer media; instead, it relies largely on my understanding of (and theories about) them. This doesn’t make my interpretations of any one text “correct,” but it does make them mine. I won’t remove myself from my experience when writing about media, especially when writing about queer cinema and beyond.”

When it comes to discussing and analyzing media, I am a firm believer that there are many ways to analyze, and very few of them rely solely on the text. After all, having queer creators is enough to queer a text. Simply being a queer viewer is also enough to queer a text. The acts of creating and consuming media are two halves of an ongoing conversation between artists and viewers; a conversation that often transcends and shifts through constraints like time, culture, and class. And, like all conversations, every participant brings their own perspective based on their own experiences.

I cannot analyze media without including the ways that creating and experiencing media are both deeply personal experiences. This collection does not rely simply on texts to discuss queer media; instead, it relies largely on my understanding of (and theories about) them. This doesn’t make my interpretations of any one text “correct,” but it does make them mine. I won’t remove myself from my experience when writing about media, especially when writing about queer cinema and beyond.

Join Me (Or Don't)

My love for queer media may have started with that show, that class, and those directors, but that love has grown so far into Beyond to include so many incredible artists and pieces of art from TV and movies and books and music and podcasts. It’s a love I want to share. So, join me (or don’t) as I write about Queer Cinema and Beyond.

Be sure to Subscribe and check back on Monday for next week's installment of Queer Cinema and Beyond, "Mama Mia! Here We Go Again With The Mommy Issues and The Daddy Issues and The Queering of Found Family Structures."

Did you find a spelling error? Is there something you think I should cover? Interested in writing a guest blog? Wanna talk about Queer Cinema and Beyond? Follow me on Twitter and Instagram at @abiraccoon or email me at abiraccoon@gmail.com.

Thanks to my friend Zoey Fields for featuring my piece The Night Before The End of The World part one and part two this week on her blog The Learning Curve. Be sure to subscribe to her site to read the second half later this month.