Straight Girls and Queer Guys

The Hetero Media Gaze in Film and Television

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by Christopher Pullen

Type: Studies
Subject: Sociology
Keywords: sexuality, homosexuality
Publishing date: 2016
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Language: English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Hardcover • 200 pages
6 x 9 ¼ inches (15.5 x 23.5 cm)

ISBN

978-0-7486-9484-6

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Book Presentation:
Examines the emergence of gay male and female heterosexual alliances within contemporary media

Exploring the archetypal representation of the straight girl with the queer guy in film and television culture from 1948 to the present day, Straight Girls and Queer Guys considers the process of the ‘hetero media gaze’ and the way it contextualizes sexual diversity and gender identity. Offering both an historical foundation and a rigorous conceptual framework, Christopher Pullen draws on a range of case studies, including the films of Doris Day and Rock Hudson, the performances of Kenneth Williams, televisions shows such as Glee, Sex and the City and Will and Grace, the work of Derek Jarman, and the role of the gay best friend in Hollywood film. Critiquing the representation of the straight girl and the queer guy for its relation to both power and otherness, this is a provocative study that frames a theoretical model which can be applied across diverse media forms.

Key features
• Reveals the impact of neoliberalism within minority representations in contemporary media
• Offers an inter-cultural and interdisciplinary approach, in revealing new linkages between social agency and media consumption
• Defines new historical approaches in exploring the history of queer representation within the media

About the Author:
Christopher Pullen is Senior Lecturer in Media Theory at Bournemouth University, UK. His research interests relate to the representation of minority identity in the media, with a particular focus on sexual diversity, AIDS, youth and school education. His recent books include: Gay Identity, New Storytelling and the Media (2012), Queer Youth and Media Cultures (2014), and Queer Love in Television and Film (2013) (co-edited with Pamela Demory).

Press Reviews:
Friendships between straight girls and queer guys have a rich, complex place in popular culture that is rarely given sustained scholarly attention. In this sharp, original, and wide-ranging book, Christopher Pullen shows us how representations of this 'unlikely couplin'" work - and how they matter.– Professor Joshua Gamson, University of San Francisco

Pullen’s book is an important intervention into queer screen culture. In presenting the heteromedia gaze, Pullen offers a reading of how the coupling of straight girls and queer men resist the dominant desiring gaze with a sense of transgression and rebellion, thus offering not only new ways of seeing and reading these texts but also revealing the incomplete continuum of such reading.'– Rohit K. Dasgupta, Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities

Christopher Pullen’s monograph Straight Girls and Queer Guys approaches the titular relationship from a welcome variety of angles. He demonstrates how, as a storytelling trope, the bonds between queer-coded men and explicitly or presumptively heterosexual women have a diverse history across cinema and television.'– Nick Davis, Northwestern University, Evanston, Women's Studies

See the publisher website: Edinburgh University Press

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