| Danger, Sex, and Identification in Contemporary American Independent Film In this dissertation, I extend the notion of the queer as a means of bringing film studies into conversation with contemporary trends in queer theory. For all its openness, queer theory's engagement with film theory has tended to focus primarily on GLBT identity. One of the things I'm committed to doing in this project is pushing queer theory to its logical conclusions; that is, engaging with non-normative sexualities. My project takes up the charge of queer theory by arguing that the queer extends to a plurality of sexualities, including but not limited to homosexuality and heterosexuality. At the same time, studies of Queer Cinema have tended to focus only on "queer" content. I argue that films that explore the fluidities between sex, gender, and desire (particularly through the use of cinematic and stylistic play with multiple identification and fluid identities) may also be understood as queer. Thus, I look at cinematic representations that risk addressing erotic variety, through both their dramatic content as well as their use of cinematic style. Plotting out the relationships between independent cinema and reimaginings of non-normative sexualities, I argue that films such as sex, lies, and videotape, thirteen, Eve's Bayou and Happiness can be classified as queer because of the ways in which they encourage a fluidity and multiplicity of queer readings and identification strategies in viewers. |
