This thing of darkness: Reclaiming the queer killer in contemporary drama.
Item
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Title
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This thing of darkness: Reclaiming the queer killer in contemporary drama.
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Identifier
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AAI3169979
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identifier
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3169979
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Creator
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Schildcrout, Jordan.
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Contributor
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Adviser: David Savran
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Date
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2005
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Theater
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Abstract
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This dissertation analyzes dramatic narratives that feature a frequently recurring character type: the queer killer. Although gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people are often the victims of violence in our society, a remarkable number of plays present queer characters who commit murder. This study examines the homophobic paradigm that imagines sexual nonconformity as criminal, destructive, and evil. Yet dramatic narratives with queer killers are not necessarily "negative representations" that reiterate homophobic constructions. The queer killer represents extremes---of intense emotion, of violent action, and of a position far outside "normal" society---and therefore is uniquely capable of illuminating certain emotional, social, and political realities of queer people. This dissertation aims to deepen and enrich our understanding of these plays by interpreting them as complex works of imagination that trade on metaphor and fantasy to entertain, provoke emotion and thought, and illuminate queer experience. Instead of rejecting these characters as hindrances to the political project of normalizing queer subjects, this dissertation reclaims them into the community of theatrical representations, analyzing the meanings in their acts of murder, confronting the real fears and desires condensed in those dramatic acts, and recognizing the potential value and even pleasure of violence in the theatre.;Individual chapters analyze (1) Mae West's scandalous melodrama The Drag and the medical and legal discourse that frame the sexual deviant as murderous; (2) "operatic" motifs in plays by Terrence McNally, Chay Yew, and Christopher Durang, in which murder enacts both the legitimization of gay love and the fear of the impossibility of gay love; (3) dramatic narratives based on real life queer killers, from Leopold and Loeb to Aileen Wuornos, that allow the audience to "retry" infamous cases, imagining different versions of justice; (4) thrillers such as the Broadway hit Deathtrap that use the closet to construct duplicitous and dangerous queers, while the Queer Theatre movement creates "excessive" theatrical performances that explode the closet and give full voice to queer rage and desire; and (5) works by gay playwrights such as Craig Lucas, Nicky Silver, and George Wolfe that envision metaphysical nightmares and wrestle with the concept of evil.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
