Well, I half expect to be required to come up with a new topic for my essay, but in the meantime I guess all I can do is pretend that I'm actually writing the essay I proposed. So here's my essay that I proposed:A QUEER THEORY ANALYSIS OF THE WARRIORS
Alright, now for those of you who have seen The Warriors you might be shocked by this decision because you think The Warriors is a manly film about tough guys who kick ass for a living. Well, the notion of masculinity of the film is a large part of my proposed essay. But how do I go beyond that? Am I just saying that the film has strong gay undertones because the main characters wear vests with no shirt underneath? No, not at all. I really see a lot of metaphors for homosexuality and a variety of instances in the film that can be interpreted as literal homosexuality. And again, all of this is emphasized (and in a way, questioned) by the "masculine" themes in the film of fighting, killing and otherwise being a rough and tough dude.
So why did I choose to do this? Do I just see everything as gay? Am I gay? Well no, but my best friend is gay and he told me I'm allowed to do this essay so it's all good.
The origin of this proposed essay began when I watched The Warriors with my gay friend. Before we watched it he mentioned that the film is featured in a documentary called The Celluloid Closet, which is about the history of homosexuality in cinema. So from the start I had my eyes and ears open for anything homosexual, which I otherwise would not be on the lookout for. In doing this, I ended up finding many connections to homosexuality. One of many examples I can give is that in the realm of all the gangs The Warriors start off as just another group of guys, but when Luthor "outs" them as Cyrus's killer, they are suddenly outsiders who are instantly persecuted. He doesn't even give any proof. Then later one member of The Warriors says they should stop showing off their colors so people won't know they're Warriors and another member scolds him and tells him he should be proud of what he is and not try to hide it. Starting to sound kinda like something else now, huh? See, I told you this wasn't all about the vest with no shirt thing.
Oddly enough, my friend and I rented The Celluloid Closet and the only reference to The Warriors was when they showed a clip of one of the characters saying "faggot". That's all. We felt ripped off because after we watched The Warriors together we had an entire conversation about the many references to homosexuality. And an entire documentary about gay cinema only used the movie in a montage of people saying homophobic slurs. In fact, in my search for sources I didn't find any scholarly sources that used any form of queer theory to analyze The Warriors. So either I'm treading new ground (which would be great) or I just don't know what I'm talking about (which is pretty likely). I guess time will tell.
1 comments:
I actually think that this is a rather intruging idea for an essay. Think about using the idea of the male gaze in reference to homosexuality. Are their male characters that are porterayed as feminine? Could you apply any feminist theory to all of this? I am very interested to see how this folds out.
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