Intersecting Film, Music, and Queerness

Intersecting Film, Music, and Queerness uses musicology and queer theory to uncover meaning and message in canonical American cinema. This study considers how queer readings are reinforced or nuanced through analysis of musical score. Taking a broad approach to queerness that questions heteronormative and homonormative patriarchal structures, binary relationships, gender assumptions and anxieties, this book challenges existing interpretations of what is progressive and what is retrogressive in cinema.

Examined films include Bride of Frankenstein, Louisiana Story, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Blazing Saddles, Edward Scissorhands, Brokeback Mountain, Boys Don't Cry, Transamerica, Thelma & Louise, Go Fish, and The Living End, with special attention given to films that subvert or complicate genre.

Music is analyzed with concern for composition, intertextual references, absolute musical structures, song lyrics, recording, arrangement, and performance issues. This multidisciplinary work, featuring groundbreaking research, analysis, and theory, offers new close readings and a model for future scholarship.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction

PART I: Mad About The Boy: Male Homosexuality and Music in Film
1. Louisiana Story, Homoeroticism, and Americana
2. Musical Cachet in The Living End and the New Queer Cinema
3. Brokeback Mountain Music

PART II: Fighting the Patriarchy: Dykes, Misogyny, and Gender Fear
4. A Tale of Two Walters: Genre and Gender Outsiders
5. Mainstreaming and Rebelling

PART III: Queering of Genre
6. Queer Monster Good: Frankenstein and Edward Scissorhands
7. Blazing Saddles: Music and Meaning in 'The French Mistake'
8. Conclusion

Index

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