Making Things Perfectly Queer: Interpreting Mass Culture

by Alexander Doty

Genres: Queer, Nonfiction, Theory, Gender and Sexuality, Film, Cultural Studies, LGBT

168 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Doty's scholarship centered around gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and feminist film theory. He wrote seminal books on queer film theory and gay culture.

Reviews

[Salome Wilde · Rating 5 out of 5]

An early, vital work in the pleasures of queer studies. The introductory chapter is inspiring, and the study of directors Cukor and Arzner with attention to questions of auteurism and queer reading is compelling. It is tragic Doty died recently, and we are lucky his books remain.

[Malcolm · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alexander Doty is one of the names in sharp, queer analyses of popular culture, and this is a great introduction to that field - even if the case studies 'Laverne & Shirley', Pee-Wee Herman and the like have dated. Queer theory was all the rage in the mid to late 1990s, it prioritises sexuality as a means of analysis and disrupts so much of the normalising discourse of social theory and political struggles. It places great emphasis on pleasure and desire, and reminds us that we are allowed to really enjoy the stuff we study. For me, the stand out chapter is the one exploring 'Laverne and Shirly' and 'I Love Lucy' as forms of lesbian narratives: it is a fine piece that unravels irony.

[Naomi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing book on media and queer theory. His writing style is so easy.

[Esmé J · Rating 4 out of 5]

Doty provides wonderful scaffolding to help other queer academics and media consumers to enact queer readings of assumed "straight" pop culture. I especially loved the chapter on I Love Lucy! My only complaint is that most of the examples were "before my time." However, even though I had never seen many of the shows and films discussed, I could still follow Doty's readings of them fairly well. I used Doty's framework to produce a queer reading of "10 Things I Hate About You" for one of my classes that I think Doty would be proud of.

[Ketab Dozd · Rating 3 out of 5]

احتمالا اگه فیلما و برنامه‌هایی که راجع بهشون صحبت شده بود رو دیده بودم خیلی برام جالبتر میبود ولی بازم خوب بود واسه یه بار خوندن و حداقل بهم یه سری سریال و اینا که میشه خوانش کوییر ازشون داشت رو معرفی کرد.

[Cloud · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's good but it's very specific. Personally I only quoted some parts of the introduction, but I'm sure film studies majors consider this a goldmine.

[Bookshire Cat · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting as a glimse of 1990s queer theory and its application to those particular shows, otherwise dated.