Deviant Eyes, Deviant Bodies: Sexual Re-Orientation in Film and Video by Chris Straayer

Film and Culture Series: John Belton, Editor

Between Men-Between Women Series: Lillian Faderman and Larry Gross, Editors

June 1996 / 360 pages / 112 film stills / ISBN 0-231-07978-8 / $49.50s, cloth ISBN 0-231-07979-6 / $17.50g, paper

This pioneering work, including an in-depth exploration of lesbian and gay film and video, is a bold, provocative look at deliberately deviant spectators deliberating social "deviants." In Deviant Eyes, Deviant Bodies, Chris Straayer looks at commercial film and video from a new angle, and compels readers to consider the wealth of films made by and for nontraditional viewers.

Including more than one hundred photographs, Deviant Eyes, Deviant Bodies moves beyond the traditional focus on the male "gaze" as the dominant form of spectatorship, arguing that women and other "others" engage with films in ways that go beyond this mode of patriarchal desire.

With extraordinary clarity, Straayer surveys Hollywood productions ranging from the 1935 Stella Dallas to 1994's Mrs. Doubtfire. Deviant Eyes, Deviant Bodies investigates instances where traditional gender boundaries are transgressed, exploring films including Some Like It Hot, Tootsie, and The Year of Living Dangerously, and such music video icons as David Bowie, Dead or Alive, and Divine.

Straayer's work is also unique in its inclusion of a generous sampling of experimental productions. Deviant Eyes, Deviant Bodies encompasses lesbian and gay films from the classic Maedchen in Uniform and A Florida Enchantment to the contemporary Patience and Go Fish, as well as the performance art of Karen Finley and Annie Sprinkle, expertly interweaving these diverse works with popular productions.

Engaging feminist and queer theory ranging from Nancy Chodorow to Judith Butler to Valerie Solanis's The SCUM Manifesto, from psychoanalysis to Foucault's theories of sexuality, Straayer looks at the deconstruction of sex and gender on film and at the realities of lesbian and gay spectatorship.

For those interested in alternative film productions, Deviant Eyes, Deviant Bodies provides invaluable analysis. For any reader engaged in the discourses of critical, feminist, or queer theory, Straayer's groundbreaking work opens up radical new avenues for rethinking questions of sexuality and gender.

Chris Straayer is Associate Professor of Cinema Studies at New York University. She has taught in the University of Arizona's Department of Media Arts and has been a Visiting Artist in the Filmmaking and Art History departments at the Art Institute of Chicago. Her articles have appeared in journals that include Film Quarterly, Jump Cut, and Camera Obscura.