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Çakirlar, C 
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1171-8635 and Needham, G,
2020.
The monogamous/promiscuous optics in contemporary gay film: registering the amorous couple in Weekend (2011) and Paris 05:59: Theo & Hugo (2016).
New Review of Film and Television Studies, 18 (4), pp. 402-430.
ISSN 1740-0309
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Abstract
This article explores representations of same-sex intimacy in contemporary gay cinema by focusing on two films, namely Weekend (2011), and Theo & Hugo (2016). Both films spatialize intimacy, which is reflected in a formal appeal to monogamous and promiscuous optics. What interests us here is how the relational politics of monogamy/promiscuity can be considered as stylistic and ideological registers in gay filmmaking. Informed by Bersani's work, we investigate how gay cinema tests the social viability/intelligibility of same-sex intimacy against a centring of the self. Furthermore, we explore how gay films use form and style to situate both their politics and their spectators through spectacles of erotic relationality. Following Bersani, the article proposes a theory of a cinematic optics that privilege the impersonal over the personal, and the ontological over the psychological. The film Weekend ‘ovalises’ intimacy and locates the couple formally and ideologically. The couple in Weekend’s space of sociality operates within a monogamous optic that presents intimacy through stabilising identities and psychologising subject positions. Theo and Hugo, however, reorients spectatorship as impersonal and promiscuous in finding a way to express the experience of cruising and sociability in ways that are dispersed and extensible.
| Item Type: | Journal article |
|---|---|
| Publication Title: | New Review of Film and Television Studies |
| Creators: | Çakirlar, C. and Needham, G. |
| Publisher: | Taylor & Francis |
| Date: | 2020 |
| Volume: | 18 |
| Number: | 4 |
| ISSN: | 1740-0309 |
| Identifiers: | Number Type 10.1080/17400309.2020.1800329 DOI 1119061 Other |
| Divisions: | Schools > School of Arts and Humanities |
| Record created by: | Linda Sullivan |
| Date Added: | 20 Sep 2019 13:42 |
| Last Modified: | 28 Jun 2021 03:00 |
| URI: | https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/37730 |
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