- Title
- I want him to hold me, but I’m afraid to ask: the objective correlative and the souvenir as representational narrative devices of queer male intimacy
- Creator
- Ferreira, Evaan Jason
- ThesisAdvisor
- Western, Rat
- Subject
- Sexual minorities in art
- Subject
- Sexual minority culture
- Subject
- Intimacy (Psychology)
- Subject
- Sexual minorities in motion pictures
- Subject
- Intimacy (Psychology) in motion pictures
- Subject
- Homosexuality and motion pictures
- Subject
- Motion pictures Study and teaching
- Subject
- New media art
- Subject
- Nostalgia
- Subject
- Souvenirs (Keepsakes)
- Subject
- Gay men
- Subject
- Queer male intimacy
- Subject
- Objective correlative
- Date
- 2022-04
- Type
- Master's thesis
- Type
- text
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10962/232556
- Identifier
- vital:50002
- Description
- This thesis centres itself around an investigation into the representations of the relationship between intimacies and ideas of romance, love, desire, and vulnerability in male relationships. The premise for this body of work was sparked by my own observations on the conflation of sex and intimacy in representations of queer male love—particularly (but not exclusively) in mainstream film and media. Whilst intimacy and sex are not unrelated, the over-emphasis on the physical when trying to represent the connection between two men led me to consider other ways in which a relationship or special connection could be gestured towards — through other kinds of signifiers that last longer than physical contact and point to the importance of a particular connection. In the introduction, I consider my own experiences as a closeted queer teen when contemplating representations of queer relationships in mainstream media. I explore several studies by gender and film theorists who consider reasons and modes in which the representations of queer intimacies on-screen are distorted to favour a presumed heterosexual audience. In the first chapter, I discuss two potential means by which to relay a more complex emotional state via the use of narrative signifiers. I examine T.S. Eliot's (1919) theory on the objective correlative in narratives as a means to explore the emotional state of a character through metaphors which open up the reading rather than illustrating it through dialogue or direct speech. I then explore Susan Stewart's (1992) ideas on souvenirs of personal experience. In Chapter Two, I conduct a close reading of three mainstream films, which employ such signifiers in the attempt to share more complex representations of queer male intimacies through well-developed storylines and characters. The films Brokeback Mountain (2006), Moonlight (2016), and Call Me by Your Name (2017) have been selected based on their use of the objective correlative and souvenirs as plot devices (rather than exclusively physical intimacy) to demonstrate the emotional resonance between characters. The third and final chapter explores my own use of objective correlatives and souvenirs as symbolic, narrative devices in my practical body of work: an online garden of remembrance. My practical work focuses largely on the process of creation of these intimacy objects (the objective correlative or the souvenir) through an investigation into my own poetry, which details my experiences of intimacies with other men, specifically where vulnerability and secrecy played a large role.
- Description
- Thesis (MFA) -- Faculty of Humanities, Fine Arts, 2022
- Format
- computer, online resource, application/pdf, 1 online resource (95 pages), pdf
- Publisher
- Rhodes University, Faculty of Humanities, Fine Art
- Language
- English
- Rights
- Ferreira, Evaan Jason
- Rights
- Use of this resource is governed by the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons "Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike" License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/)
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View Details Download | SOURCE1 | FERREIRA-MFA-TR22-12.pdf | 3 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |