Abstract
This chapter examines the whiteness and white trashness of the 1990s new queer cinema. Using My Own Private Idaho (Gus Van Sant, 1991), Postcards from America (Steve McLean, 1994), and Boys Don’t Cry (Kimberly Peirce, 1999) I discuss the cinematic confluence of queerness with white trash identity, detailing the frequent representation of white trash drifters and hustlers who use the road to move across and through the romanticized American landscape. That these films are road movies featuring white trash hustlers is certainly not accidental — the persistence of the road motif demonstrates how such new queer characters were restless identities that could not be anchored to any one place. New queer cinema recognized that queerness is characterized by a multiplicity of conflicting voices and visions, acknowledging how white trash identity can be a rather queer thing.
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© 2011 Thomas Peele
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Cunningham, D.M. (2011). New Queer White Trash Cinema. In: Peele, T. (eds) Queer Popular Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-29011-6_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-29011-6_12
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