cover image Making Things Perfectly Queer: Interpreting Mass Culture

Making Things Perfectly Queer: Interpreting Mass Culture

Alexander Doty. University of Minnesota Press, $39.95 (146pp) ISBN 978-0-8166-2244-3

Doty, who teaches film and gay and lesbian studies at Lehigh University, is concerned in this volume with uncovering gay/lesbian/bisexual elements in unexpected places in popular culture. He wishes ``to challenge the politics of denotation and connotation'' in traditional ``heterocentric'' critical practice. Otherwise ``heterocentric texts can contain queer elements, and basically heterosexual, straight-identifying people can experience queer moments,'' he writes, especially if one understands ``queer'' as encompassing more than just sexual behavior, but, rather, a range of cultural phenomena as well. Doty offers cogent analyses of the interaction between queerness and auteurist film theory, particularly as applied to a gay director like George Cukor or a lesbian filmmaker like Dorothy Arzner; of the lesbian inflections of female-bonding sitcoms like Laverne and Shirley ; and of Pee-wee Herman and gay male misogyny. Doty is an incisive writer, well versed in both pop and academic literature. His work is less jargon-ridden than is usual in critical theory books, and his choices of subject matter should help broaden the audience for this provocative book. (May)