Overcoming the Stigma: The Queer Denial of Indiewood

Elio and Oliver's romantic (Grand) Tour: Gender, genre, and media‐induced tourism in Call Me By Your Name

“…As argued by Richards (2016) and Rigoletto (2020), the impossibility of the queer relationship is a recurring theme in many gay romances and movies, which, in order to become mainstream, also need to tone down the sexual content. As queer cinema scholar Stuart Richards points out, censored male gay sex is one of the conditions for the mainstream circulation and commercial success of a movie and “sex sells, except when it comes to [Hollywood] films with lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) content” (Richards 2016, 19). In the case of CMBYN , the decisions to de‐queer the narrative and to conform the characters and story to the conventions of the romance genre are influenced by the market logics of profit and by the need to make the film appealing to a broader audience.…”

Pride and Pudency: Paratextual Domestication and the US DVD Release of Pride

“…Films depicting LGBTQ content are likely targets of paratextual domestication because their sexual and gender politics may be seen to threaten the status quo (Brookey and Gray, 2017;San Filippo, 2013;Cooper and Pease 2008). Such domestication can influence, or limit, the ways that LGBTQ media is read or interpreted (Brookey and Westerfelhaus 2002;Cooper and Pease, 2008;Richards, 2016;Benson, 2017;Wuest, 2018). This is particularly true of films that depict LGBTQ content in an ambiguous or subtextual way.…”

“…This attribution illustrates the role that critical discussion plays in classifying films, as well as informing the meaning of said classifications themselves. Secondly, as this first point foreshadows, the distinctions between LGBT, queer and mainstream cinema are worth noting because they further indicate the influence of paratexts on how we engage with and understand films (Sisco-King, 2010; Richards, 2016Wuest, 2018. The distinctions between these classifications may be informed by textual characteristics, but they are largely driven by 'the industrial work of packaging, promoting, framing, and naming a text' (Wuest, 2018: 40).…”