ABSTRACT
This chapter makes use of a cultural politics approach to consider the significance of popular culture in relation to power relations and in particular with regard to the ongoing legacy of heteronormativity in the constitution of intimate relationships. Importantly, this approach highlights how power relations in general, and associated legacies of injustice, articulated within popular culture cannot be contained within linear, progressively teleological or passive naturalised understandings of time. Rather, popular culture offers mechanisms which enable ongoing legacies of social inequality to be rendered invisible and thus continued as normalised and indeed axiomatic. This cultural politics approach to power and time provides a means to examine the practices of legitimation and hegemony by noting the effect of reiterated themes in popular culture and specifically in Hollywood film—a cultural format seen by mass audiences across the globe. Hollywood movies are by no means just simple escapist entertainment but offer repeated political narratives which have substantiated effects. For this reason, the chapter asks whether, and by what means, Hollywood romance films reiterate, enforce or challenge social injustice in the form of heteronormativity. In considering this question, a new ‘test’, the Beasley-Brook test, is outlined, which—drawing upon the useful possibilities of the Bechdel (or Bechdel-Wallace) test—may be employed in assessing the heteronormative character of films. The aim is to outline possibilities for innovation and social change for the future.
