“Older-wiser-lesbians” and “baby-dykes”: mediating age and generation in New Queer Cinema

Krainitzki, Eva L ORCID: 0000-0003-1178-718X (2016) “Older-wiser-lesbians” and “baby-dykes”: mediating age and generation in New Queer Cinema. Feminist Media Studies, 16 (4). pp. 631-647. doi:10.1080/14680777.2016.1193294

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Abstract

Representations of intersections of gender, age, and sexuality can reveal deep-rooted cultural anxieties about older women and sexuality. Images of lesbian ageing are of particular interest in terms of alterity, as the old/er queer woman can combine layers of otherness—not only is she the cultural “other” within heteronormativity, but she can also appear as the opposite of popular culture’s lesbian chic. In this article, a cultural analysis of a range of films—If These Walls Could Talk 2 (dir. Anderson, Coolidge, and Heche 2000), Itty Bitty Titty Committee (dir. Babbit 2007), The Owls (dir. Dunye 2010), Hannah Free (dir. Carlton 2009), and Cloudburst (dir. Fitzgerald 2011)—considers diverse dramatisations of lesbian generations. This article interrogates to what extent alternative cinemas deconstruct normative conceptualisations of ageing. Drawing on recent critiques of post-feminist culture, and a range of feminist and age/ing studies scholarship, it suggests that a linear understanding of ageing and the generational underlies dominant depictions of oppositional binaries of young versus old, of generational segregation or rivalry, and the othering of age. It concludes that non-linear understandings of temporality and ageing contain the potential for New Queer Cinema to counteract such idealisations of youthfulness, which, it argues, is one of the most deep-rooted manifestations of (hetero)normativity.

Item Type:	Article
Article Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Age; Queer Cinema; REF2021
Related records:	"Older-wiser-lesbians" and "baby-dykes":...
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HT Communities. Classes. Races P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN1992-1992.92 Television Broadcasts P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN1993 Motion Pictures
Divisions:	Schools and Research Institutes > School of Creative Arts
Research Priority Areas:	Creative Practice and Theory Culture, Continuity, and Transformation
Depositing User:	Eva Krainitzki
Date Deposited:	22 Jun 2016 14:47
Last Modified:	08 Aug 2023 20:10
URI:	https://eprints.glos.ac.uk/id/eprint/3376

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