ABSTRACT
The history of modern queer representation thus begins with this oppositional model: heterosexuality as the norm and queer sexualities as physical and psychological aberrations. In biomedicine and sexology, queer sexualities were a central obsession, although they had other names, such as 'perversion', 'degeneration', 'hysteria', 'fetishism', 'masochism' and 'sadism'. Much like the idea that sexuality was repressed during Victorian times, the conventional wisdom is that queers were absent from or invisible in Classical Hollywood. Throughout the twentieth century, Hollywood emerged as the most significant cultural institution for representing queer sexualities. The pansy reinforced the alleged femininity of male homosexuality, strengthening the gender-inversion model of representing queer sexualities. Moreover, with increased visibility comes the potential for enhanced surveillance, and trends in contemporary representation tend to favour what have been called 'homonormative' visions of queer sexualities and lives, perhaps at the expense of other, potentially queerer, possibilities.
