ABSTRACT
Many of the most notable and celebrated works of the contemporary queer American cinema share a concern with recalling and representing a repressive historical past. Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain (2005) recreates a rural American West of the late 1950s that has yet to find a place for two cowboys in love, while Gus Van Sant’s Milk (2008) focuses upon a 1970s San Francisco where the increasing visibility of gay culture prompts both subtle and overt demonstrations of homophobia. The films of Todd Haynes reach back from the glam rock period of the 1970s (Velvet Goldmine, 1998) to a much more remote 1950s (Far From Heaven, 2002) where gay male sexuality is confined to dark theaters and concealed bars with unmarked entrances. The period specificity of these films is emphasized by the fact that all of them reference antecedents, varying widely from the historical (the extensively documented life of Harvey Milk), to the literary (Annie Proulx’s source novel Brokeback Mountain), to the cinematic (Citizen Kane for Velvet Goldmine, All That Heaven Allows for Far From Heaven).
