Queering Family: Gender And Sexuality In Three Turn-of-millennium American Films

As more and more LGBT families become undeniable reality in the modernsocieties, the negotiation is also brought into attention between two supposedlyopposite discourses, namely queerness and family. Queer kinship as an alternativeconceptualization and phenomenon has since the1990s received booming attentionfrom both the academic world and the media. While the postmodern feminists areattempting to make two distinctive discourses talk to each other meaningfully, in themedia especially the cinema the representation of queer families is also growing.Though both the concept and the phenomenon of queer kinship might not be newto the media and the academics, to study queer family representations from a renewedpostmodern kinship theorization remain a scarcely explored field. Therefore thisproject has undertaken to investigate the queer family representation in three turn-of-the-millennium American films with the help of contemporary kinship theories, queertheories and most importantly queer kinship theorizations.This attempt is not just about the communicative dialogue between two differingtheories. It is also in essence an intercultural communication between supposedlyopposing subcultures originating from varying discourses: hetero-normativity vs.queerness, nationalism vs. universalism, identity vs. fluidity. This project, therefore,wishes to explore more meaningful ways for those different subcultures tocommunicate with each other more productively instead of othering each other intomuteness, through studying the subversive agency regained in the power negotiationswithin a queer family.