Lisa Henderson
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814790571
- eISBN:
- 9780814790595
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814790571.003.0002
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
This chapter examines the film, Boys Don't Cry (1999), as the opening gambit for queer class critique of the text. The film is recognized as a narrative of transgender trauma and transphobic murder, ...
More
This chapter examines the film, Boys Don't Cry (1999), as the opening gambit for queer class critique of the text. The film is recognized as a narrative of transgender trauma and transphobic murder, one based on the true story of Brandon Teena, a transgender teenager killed alongside his friends Lisa Lambert and Phillip DeVine by John Lotter and Tom Nissen in Humboldt, Nebraska, in 1993. The chapter draws from the accounts of Judith Halberstam regarding the murders. The film marks gender trauma, and gender variance is both the hope and denial of class transcendence. Such dramatic images of class failure are cautionary, not just an expression but an enactment of bourgeois white supremacy. The film illustrates that trauma and shame are a queer class affair, and the category of class itself is queered, its historical certainties shaken down and reconstructed through new modes of longing and expression.Less
This chapter examines the film, Boys Don't Cry (1999), as the opening gambit for queer class critique of the text. The film is recognized as a narrative of transgender trauma and transphobic murder, one based on the true story of Brandon Teena, a transgender teenager killed alongside his friends Lisa Lambert and Phillip DeVine by John Lotter and Tom Nissen in Humboldt, Nebraska, in 1993. The chapter draws from the accounts of Judith Halberstam regarding the murders. The film marks gender trauma, and gender variance is both the hope and denial of class transcendence. Such dramatic images of class failure are cautionary, not just an expression but an enactment of bourgeois white supremacy. The film illustrates that trauma and shame are a queer class affair, and the category of class itself is queered, its historical certainties shaken down and reconstructed through new modes of longing and expression.
Brian Dolinar
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617032691
- eISBN:
- 9781617032707
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617032691.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, African-American Literature
This book concludes by placing the works of Langston Hughes, Ollie Harrington, and Chester Himes against the background of the left-wing political movement that nurtured several black writers and ...
More
This book concludes by placing the works of Langston Hughes, Ollie Harrington, and Chester Himes against the background of the left-wing political movement that nurtured several black writers and artists. In their works, they advanced an unrelenting race and class critique. By revisiting their creations, one can see evidence of an enduring radicalism that extended beyond the dates of the Depression. Today’s African American artists have looked back to this generation for examples of how to produce work that can have an impact. In recent years, a cottage industry of African American popular literature has emerged. The bestselling success of Terry McMillan’s books—Waiting to Exhale and How Stella Got her Groove Back—awakened the white publishing industry to an untapped market.Less
This book concludes by placing the works of Langston Hughes, Ollie Harrington, and Chester Himes against the background of the left-wing political movement that nurtured several black writers and artists. In their works, they advanced an unrelenting race and class critique. By revisiting their creations, one can see evidence of an enduring radicalism that extended beyond the dates of the Depression. Today’s African American artists have looked back to this generation for examples of how to produce work that can have an impact. In recent years, a cottage industry of African American popular literature has emerged. The bestselling success of Terry McMillan’s books—Waiting to Exhale and How Stella Got her Groove Back—awakened the white publishing industry to an untapped market.
