The evolving representations of queer people in moving images have taken the form of a homecoming, especially in light of recent law changes that pertain to same-sex marriage in the United States, and the media’s concurrent readiness to recast sexual minorities in the roles of husbands, wives, fathers, mothers and children. The queers’ cinematic and televisual journey from periphery to center has effectively become a journey back to the privileges and comforts of familial life, and a domesticity that remains at the core of American culture.
In light of this transition, this thesis seeks to explore the presence of kinship in queer urban communities in the period from the 1970s to the 1990s. While the queer cultural output of this period seeks to establish the queer identity independent of, or in opposition to, heteronormativity, the idea of family is absorbed and transformed as part of a larger community-building process. In the queer milieu, family is appropriated, emulated and enacted as much as it is escaped, negotiated and subverted. In order to demonstrate the diversity of the queer “family,” this study engages with three major filmic case studies –The Boys in the Band (dir. William Friedkin, 1970), Parting Glances (dir. Bill Sherwood, 1986) and Paris Is Burning (dir. Jennie Livingston, 1990). These films are analyzed for their capacity to give shape to queer kinship as conceptualized in queer theory, film theory, queer history and criticism, psychoanalysis, and dramatic theories. Through these filmic case studies, the queer “family” is located and investigated in three distinct contexts – that of American family drama, the AIDS epidemic and performance documentary.