Intersecting Film, Music, and Queerness

"A pleasure to read throughout! Dubowsky's scholarship is meticulous, his critical sense alert and intelligent, and his range of knowledge is marvelous. Plus, he writes with a clear mind and a clean prose. This book will count for scholars of music, LGBTQ studies, American history, and film." (Mitchell Morris, Professor of Musicology, UCLA, USA) "Jack Curtis Dubowsky's Intersecting Film Music and Queerness provides a fresh and exciting analysis of cinema and sound, offering fascinating insight into the relationship between soundtracks and the sexuality and gender of the musicians who made them. The book weaves film studies, musicology, and queer theory into a compelling interpretive mesh for academic audiences, while serving up enough biographical tidbits and interesting anecdotes to please even the most hardcore fans and enthusiasts." (Susan Stryker, Director, Institute for LGBT Studies, University of Arizona, USA)

Intersecting Film, Music, and Queerness uses musicology and queer theory to uncover meaning and message in canonical American cinema.

Intersecting Film, Music, and Queerness uses musicology and queer theory to uncover meaning and message in canonical American cinema. This study considers how queer readings are reinforced or nuanced through analysis of musical score. Taking a broad approach to queerness that questions heteronormative and homonormative patriarchal structures, binary relationships, gender assumptions and anxieties, this book challenges existing interpretations of what is progressive and what is retrogressive in cinema. Examined films include Bride of Frankenstein, Louisiana Story, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Blazing Saddles, Edward Scissorhands, Brokeback Mountain, Boys Don't Cry, Transamerica, Thelma & Louise, Go Fish and The Living End, with special attention given to films that subvert or complicate genre. Music is analyzed with concern for composition, intertextual references, absolute musical structures, song lyrics, recording, arrangement, and performance issues. This multidisciplinary work, featuring groundbreaking research, analysis, and theory, offers new close readings and a model for future scholarship.