ABSTRACT

Through the analysis of over seventy films and thirty television series, ranging from Shortbus, Sweet Home Alabama, and Poseidon to Noah’s Arc, Brothers & Sisters, and Dawson’s Creek, Goltz examines reoccurring narrative structures in popular media that perpetuate the extreme value placed upon "young" gay male bodies, while devaluing health, aging, and longevity. Alienated from the future -- outside of limited and exclusionary systems of marriage and procreation -- the gay male is narrated within a circular tragedy that draws upon cultural mythologies of "older" gay male predation, the absence of gay intergenerational mentorship, and the gay male as sacrificial victim. Using a Burkean framework, Goltz makes a theoretical, rhetorical, and cultural investigation of how the increased visibility of "positive" gay representation in dominant media shapes contemporary meanings of gay aging, heteronormative future, homonormative future, and queer potential.

chapter |18 pages

Introduction

“Deleted Scenes” and “Innocent Questions”

chapter |28 pages

The Heteronormative Tragedy

Kenneth Burke and Queer Media Criticism

chapter |34 pages

Victims in/of Time

Gay Aging as Ritualized Horror

chapter |34 pages

Future Identification

Symbolic Mergers with Heteronormativity

chapter |41 pages

The Dinner Party

Queer Gesturing to Time and Future