The term “New Queer Cinema”, coined by academic B. Ruby Rich, references an era of cinema, most notable during the 80’s and 90’s, which saw a rise in queer themed films, those of which were most notably by queer filmmakers. Described by Rich herself as “irreverent, energetic, alternately minimalist and excessive [and] Above all, they’re full of pleasure” the films of the movement addressed the social issues, and injustices faced by the LGBT community. The films, while many had their similarities, all varied in aesthetic, style and genre, and instead saw their coherent links through their various corresponding tools and strategies that address their social struggles.
While, noted by Rich that queer films don’t “share a single aesthetic vocabulary or strategy or concern” they all tend to share an aggressive presence of queerness. These films in their entirety tend to address their queer values in their cores, rather than being treated as subcontexts, as they were in earlier 20th century queer films (Chin 2-3). One of the biggest markers of the New Queer Cinema movement is its use of appropriation and parody as an artform. Many of the quintessential films of the queer movement incorporate the imitation and pastiching of classic cinematic Hollywood structures, trends and aesthetics to highlighting the queer exclusion from the traditional Hollywood narrative. The traditional cinematic narrative structure is deeply criticised for its reinforce of ideological values, and the ways of which it attempts to conceal these operations. Through the use of “transparent style, "invisible" editing, and self-effacing mise-en-scene” classical hollywood films are able to reinforce hegemonic ideologies through a manufactured “realness” or “spontaneity.” Encoding both gender and sexuality in a male centered narrative, “the same narrative structure that identifies narrative space in gendered terms, that reinforces gender differences symbolically, also reinforces heterosexuality, for in defining the movement of male desire, the active space, into and through the passive space, morphologically female, we have a narrative reenactment of the heterosexual act” (94 Farwell).
The film ‘Poison’ directed by Todd Haynes is a project consisting of three short intercut stories: Hero, Horror, and Homo, each with core themes of sex, violence and outsiders. Hero, tells the story of boy who shoots his abusive father to death, and in a documentary structure, is constructed of a series of interviews and commentary on the incident. Horror, replicating a B-Grade 1950’s melodrama horror, follows scientist Dr McArthur, who accidentally drinks an elixir, and as a result becomes a contagious leper, taking the lives off those who comes in contact with. In the third story, Homo, a male prisoner develops romantic and sexual attractions towards another male inmate, of whom he knew years before in a juvenile institution. While, Posion, only explicitly asserts its queerness in one of its substories: Homo, its other two: Hero and Horror, seem to address the related stigmas and social issues of homosexuality in a more implicit manners. (Burdette). Hero, with its antagonistic portrayal of the “white suburban patriarchal nuclear family”, comments on the obscene standards that create the traditional family model. The demonisation of this model is made to draw comparisons to alternate family structures, such as queer families, of which are wrongly considered unnatural or shameful. Horror’s relevance to the queer community is its portrayal of a diseased man, of whom has been associated with a fear of “sexual otherness”. Being viewed as a metaphor for the social rejection of HIV positive individuals, Horror features undeniable references to the AIDS epidemic: “public hysteria, the sensationalism of the mass media, the victim's fear of ostracism.” Homo, however, is centered around the urges and emotions of a homosexual inmate, and contains graphic portrayals of homosexual relationships. The blatant queer presence in Homo, therefore suggests homosexual representation to have been a prominent motivation of Todd Hayne’s for this segment (Burdette). Aware of the traditional cinematic Hollywood trends, Todd Haynes adopts a various of different aesthetics in Poison, with guises varying among Hero and Horror, of which appropriate various popular film genres, and their trends and characteristics. (Ishii-Gonzales 34-36, Burdette). Hero, structured as a series of interviews following the chronicles of a suburban family, adopts the aesthetics of a crime documentary series: incorporating medium close ups, flat lighting, fictional reenactments, and “talking heads”, recreating the essence familiar to the imitated genre. Horror, on the other hand, incorporates a black and white filter, high contrast, an exaggerated acting style, and dated costumes to imitates the characteristics of a 50’s B grade horror flick. The segment, Homo, however, seems to be the only substory in the film which doesn’t parody a set of Hollywood guises, according to Burdette and James Morrison. Burdette and Morrison both view Poison as the intermingling of two straight traditionally structured narratives: Hero and Horror, to one of which has an overtly queer narrative: Homo. The films structure, with its intercut substories, asks audiences to reflect on its three stories holistically to transform the film into a coherent whole – “to weave for ourselves the philosophical net that unites all three stories” (Ishii-Gonzales 38). Following this perception, Homo being the most authentic and original piece among the three, it is the emotional core of the film, and merely uses Hero and Horror to compliment and accentuate the relevant queer themes.
Paris Is Burning, on the other hand, is a documentary film that chronicles the lives and cultures of the New York drag scenes of the 1980’s. The ethnographic film centers around lives and cultures of the gay and transgender African-American and Latino, with focus on their drag
mostly focuses around the New York balls, and documents the lives ofs its African-American.
Paris Is Burning possesses an “aggressive” queerness simply in its nature of being a queer documentary. The film, being an eye into the New York drag scene, gives audiences a view of a queer subculture. With its honest and raw content, Paris Is Burning directly explores the life of a queer community, places it on a screen, and asks for audiences to engage and empathise with real life characters and stories, as opposed to the fictional ones found in Poison, and many of its other contemporaries. Furthermore, the film shines light on categorical inequalities, exposing audiences to the oppressions and discriminations faced by this community, by presenting them as an accessible and congenial group of people, as they have never before been viewed (Schacht). Paris Is Burning is very much structured to highlight its subjects lives’ dichotomies: a stark contrast between their lives struggles to the luxurious lives they imitate in the New York drag balls; most notably the “spoiled, rich, white, girl[s],” as quoted from Paris Is Burning subject, Venus Xtravaganza (Hentzi). By doing so, Paris Is Burning creates has its protagonists and antagonists, demonising the patriarchal structures that oppress those of the drag scene, and, not only shows the queer communities attempts to survive in an oppressive society, but the ways of which they idolise those who contribute to their oppression. Therefore, Paris Is Burning concerns itself with educating and empathising with its audiences on queer realness, with an aggressive and authoritative declaration of queer lives and culture. Paris Is Burning, is less so a self aware criticism of the exclusive cinematic customs, and is more so an attempt to introduce a queer entity amongst these customs. While its ethnographic structure isn't parodic or ironic, it still uses its structural nature to criticise Hollywood standards simply with its presence on the silver screen. Simply in its nature as being a documentary film, Paris Is Burning follows a predetermined structure of which derived from a cinematic culture that ostracised its very subjects. Therefore, Paris rather ironically uses it a traditional structures and styles that used to exclude them, to, now, instead declare their existence, and to deconstruct the structures, narratives and images of traditional cinema that reinforce heteronormativity (Burdette).