ABSTRACT
This chapter’s title invokes the playful and liberating aspects associated with the city in contemporary gay and lesbian culture. In 1969 the Stonewall riots marked the earlier historical turning point from homosexuality as a secret, underground activity to “out” lesbian and gay identities. “Stonewall” refers to the urban rebellion of drag queens on the piers of New York City against the police that enabled gay
and lesbian life to be “out,” the public display of gay and lesbian identities, affections, and lifestyles. In 1981, the AIDS crisis gave rise to radical queer activism, which enabled the queer culture of the 1980s and 1990s, including an explosion of queer cinema. AIDS was also the context for films that presented a dystopian view of a dark underworld defined by sexual perversion, alienation, violence, discrimination, and deviance, mobilizing homophobic fantasies of an urban gay and lesbian underworld that can kill on contact or turn innocent characters into killers, for example in Brian De Palma’s Dressed to Kill (1980) and William Friedkin’s Cruising (1980). Gay and lesbian directors have since developed a diverse cinema that circulates transnationally and ranges from lowbudget, avant-garde, political films, to mainstream genre films. This chapter discusses representative examples of films that mark these shifts regarding the ways in which sexual desire and non-normative sexual practices are cinematically mapped onto the city.
