Flaming Classics: Queering the Film Canon

Flaming Classics turns the heat up on the movies we love best. In his wicked readings of film favourites, Alexander Doty takes us to the queer side of criticism, offering fresh and controversial views of the stars, the plots, and the directors of our best loved and most iconic films. Arguing against the assumption that only explicitly gay films are subject to gay readings, he looks at six classics and reads them for their queer potential. With both affection and scholarly rigor, he teases out the lesbian fantasy inherent in The Wizard of Oz , the gay nightmare narrative of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari , the bisexual erotics of Gentleman Prefer Blondes , the queerness of Norman Bates, and even makes a compelling argument about Citizen Kane’s dying word, ‘Rosebud’.