Queer Theory and Brokeback Mountain: (Film Theory in Practice)

Queer Theory and Brokeback Mountain examines queer theory as it has emerged in the past three decades and discusses how Brokeback Mountain can be understood through the terms of this field of scholarship and activism. Organized into two parts, in the first half the author discusses key canonical texts within queer theory, including the work of writers as Judith Butler, Michel Foucault, and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. He provides an historical account of the questions these scholars have posed to our understanding of sexualities—both normative and non-normative—in the historical past and in contemporary life, as well as a discussion of the theories of sexuality and gender offered by these scholars as these phenomena shape the experiences of men and women in the genital, bodily, erotic, discursive, and cultural dimensions. The second part examines Ang Lee’s 2005 feature film, Brokeback Mountain, in order to understand the claims and insights of queer theory. Tracing the film’s adaptation by screenwriter Larry McMurtry of Annie Proulx’s 1997 short story of the same title, this portion of the book examines the film’s narrative about two working-class men in the rural mid-20th-century U.S. and the meanings of the sexual and emotional bond between the pair that develops over the course of two decades.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements Preface Introduction Chapter One: Queer Theory Chapter Two: Queer Theory and Brokeback Mountain Conclusion List of Further Reading

About the Author :
Matthew Tinkcom is Associate Professor of Communication, Culture and Technology and Affiliate Faculty of English at Georgetown University, USA. He is the author of Working Like a Homosexual: Camp: Capital, Cinema and Grey Gardens, co-editor of Key Frames: Popular Cinema and Cultural Studies as well as articles that have appeared in Cinema Journal, South Atlantic Quarterly and collections from Duke University Press and the British Film Institute. He has served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar and Director of the Program in American Studies.

Review :
Strongly recommended both for students coming to queer scholarship for the first time, and to those in Media Studies, Film Studies and Cultural Studies interested in how contemporary thinking around sexuality and gender might be explored in a piece of relatively mainstream cinema. I can think of no other queer-film scholar to write this book. In Queer Theory and Brokeback Mountain, Matthew Tinkcom elegantly, clearly, and adroitly traces signature trajectories of queer theory, then stitches these concepts into traditions of film theory and close analysis. Merging Freud, Foucault, and Sedgwick with Bazin, Buscombe, and Mulvey, Tinkcom demonstrates a generous capacity to speak at once to well-heeled scholars, eager undergraduates, and cinephiles. A true page turner, Queer Theory and Brokeback Mountain delights in the complexly queer pleasures that the cinema offers. Queer Theory and Brokeback Mountain deftly accomplishes a formidable, vital achievement: unpacking the often opaque tenets of queer theory in the service of illuminating the dynamic and contradictory cultural dialogue sparked by this landmark film. This eloquent, rigorous, and approachable volume places the film within the larger discourses of genre and reception studies while anticipating future priorities for queer media and scholarship. In this compact volume, Matthew Tinkcom makes the key concepts of queer theory accessible to a new generation. Through its sustained, provocative engagement with Ang Lee’s well-known film, this book not only introduces readers to current thought about non-normative gender and sexuality, but also demonstrates on every page how queer theory can enable fresh academic inquiry, both within and beyond film studies.