Straight

Girls and
Queer Guys
The Hetero Media Gaze in Film and Television

Christopher Pullen
Straight Girls and Queer Guys
In memory of Dora Carrington (1893–1932)
Straight Girls and Queer Guys
The Hetero Media Gaze in Film and Television

Christopher Pullen
© Christopher Pullen, 2016

Edinburgh University Press Ltd

The Tun – Holyrood Road
12(2f) Jackson’s Entry
Edinburgh EH8 8PJ
www.euppublishing.com

Typeset in Garamond MT Pro by

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and printed and bound in Great Britain by
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A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 0 7486 9484 6 (hardback)

ISBN 978 0 7486 9485 3 (webready PDF)
ISBN 978 1 4744 1102 8 (epub)

The right of Christopher Pullen to be identified as author of this

work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988, and the Copyright and Related Rights
Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498).
Contents

List of Figures vii

Preface viii
Acknowledgements x

Introduction 1
Unlikely Coupling and the Fag Hag 2
Politics, The Heidi Chronicles and Neoliberalism 5
Time Frames, Contexts and Case Studies 10
Conclusion 13

Chapter 1: The Hetero Media Gaze 15

The Gaze 16
The Panopticon and the Political Economy of the Sign 22
Doris Day and Rock Hudson Trilogy 25
A Taste of Honey, Darling and Zee and Co. 32
Conclusion 39

Chapter 2: Queer Gazes and Identifications 41

Queer Narcissism and the Gaze 42
Rope and Suddenly Last Summer 44
Swoon 52
Derek Jarman and Gregg Araki 56
Conclusion 63

Chapter 3: Film and Commodity 65

Queer Spectatorship, Femininity and Camp 66
Kenneth Williams and the Carry On Films 69
Sunday Bloody Sunday and Cabaret 75
The Gay Best Friend in Contemporary Film 81
Conclusion 87
vi Straight Girls and Queer Guys

Chapter 4: Television and Domesticity 89

Domesticity and the Intimate Glance 90
Love Sidney 92
Tales of the City, Will and Grace and Gimme Gimme Gimme 95
Sex and the City, Girls, Queer as Folk and Looking 102
Bob and Rose and Torchwood 110
Conclusion 117

Chapter 5: Documentary and Performance 120

Documentary, the Body and Liminal Performance 121
Carrington 125
Platonic Devotion and Marriage in Documentary 129
Would Like to Meet 136
Queer Eye for the Straight Guy 138
Boy Meets Boy 141
Conclusion 144

Chapter 6: Youth, Realism and Form 147

Social Realism, Queer Identity and Youth in 1960s film 148
Beautiful Thing and The Way He Looks 151
Glee 155
Gayby and G.B.F. 160
Conclusion 166

Conclusion 169

Select Filmography 172

References 176
Index 184
Figures

I.1 The Way He Looks 1

I.2 Tom Hulce and Jamie Lee Curtis in The Heidi Chronicles 6
I.3 Anne Baxter and Farley Granger in The North Star 9
1.1 Doris Day and Rock Hudson in Pillow Talk 29
1.2 Rita Tushingham and Murray Melvin in A Taste of Honey 33
2.1 Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor in Suddenly Last Summer 51
2.2 Brady Corbet and Mary Lynn Rajskub in Mysterious Skin 63
3.1 Kenneth Williams and Hattie Jacques in Carry On Doctor 73
3.2 Glenda Jackson and Murray Head in Sunday Bloody Sunday 77
3.3 Jennifer Aniston and Paul Rudd in The Object of My Affection 84
4.1 Sean Hayes and Megan Mullally in Will and Grace 100
4.2 Andrew Rannells and Lena Dunham in Girls 106
5.1 Emma Thompson and Jonathan Pryce in Carrington 125
5.2 James Getzlaff and Andra Stasko in Boy Meets Boy 142
6.1 Fabio Audi, Tess Amorim and Ghilherme Lobo in The Way He
Looks 152
6.2 G.B.F. 162
Preface

This book explores the representation of the heterosexual female with the
homosexual, bisexual or queer male, within contemporary film and television
forms, using the term straight girls and queer guys. While this coupling is
often employed to characterise the female as a ‘Fag Hag’, framing a reductive
terminology that clearly debases the straight girl and the queer guy, and there
is a sense of mutual use, evident in the relationship appearing as a kind of
masquerade or disguise for a ‘regular’ heterosexual coupling, I argue that the
straight girl and queer guy archetype is an advancing and prolific form.
Through examining this archetype within films and television programmes
mostly produced in the United Kingdom and North America, or at least
addressing Anglocentric audiences evident in my case study on the Brazilian
film The Way He Looks, this book foregrounds the notion of the hetero media
gaze. Critiquing the foundational work of Laura Mulvey (1975) with regards
to the cinematic gaze, and extending the work of later writers such as Jackie
Stacey (1987) with regard to the homosocial female gaze, and Richard Dyer
([1989] 2000) in relation to the commodification of the queer male body, this
book develops a conceptual framework that contextualises film theory with
television studies and performance studies. Key aspects include: questioning
the fixity of the dominant gaze as gendered, or socially exclusive; examining
the significance of the queer gaze in relation to consumption; considering the
importance of spectatorship, and the relationship to celebrity; exploring the
significance of the televisual glance in relation to domesticity; considering
documentary and issues of performativity; and examining the significance of
youth and the context of social realism. These are explored by considering
key case studies, which, while they are not examined in terms of chronologi-
cal progression, offer a discussion, generally within the time frame of between
1948 and 2015, in terms of media production.
This includes examining prototypical representations of the queer gaze
within the films Rope and Suddenly Last Summer, and the queering of male and
female coupling in the performance of Kenneth Williams in the Carry On
films. Also it includes the subliminal emergence of the hetero media gaze upon
the straight girl and the queer guy within Hollywood films starring Doris Day
 Preface ix

and Rock Hudson, its more vivid representation within John Schlesinger’s
Darling and Sunday Bloody Sunday, and the impact of Christopher Isherwood’s
novel Goodbye to Berlin on the film Cabaret, as establishing an archetypal form.
Furthermore, aspects of social realism are foregrounded in films representing
youth, particularly evident in A Taste of Honey, Beautiful Thing and The Way He
Looks. Also the explicit commodity of the gay best friend is vivified in My
Best Friend’s Wedding, The Object of My Affection and G.B.F. At the same time
television form is examined, considering the enduring impact of the straight
girl and the queer guy in popular situation comedies, such as Will and Grace
and Gimme Gimme Gimme, and documentary and reality television representa-
tions focusing on aspects of devotion, and sometimes marriage, evident in
Boy Meets Boy, My Husband Is Not Gay and the biographical drama Carrington.
However, a central premise of this book is that both the queer guy and the
straight girl are abject others, as respectively female and queer, which while
it implies a shared political vision, and the connectivity between feminism
and queer identity politics, in fact offers an unstable and contentious cultural
form. As part of this, the book considers the neoliberal, and post-­feminist,
context of the straight girl and queer guy union, which reveals the reliance
on dominant identity forms, foregrounding a sense of absence as much as
presence.