Queer temporalities in gay male representation : tragedy, normativity, and futurity

Through the analysis of over seventy films and thirty television series, ranging from Shortbus, Sweet Home Alabama, and Poseidon to Noah's Arc, Brothers & Sisters, and Dawson's Creek, Goltz examines reoccurring narrative structures in popular media that perpetuate the extreme value placed upon "e;young"e; gay male bodies, while devaluing health, aging, and longevity. Alienated from the future -- outside of limited and exclusionary systems of marriage and procreation -- the gay male is narrated within a circular tragedy that draws upon cultural mythologies of "e;older"e; gay male predation, the absence of gay intergenerational mentorship, and the gay male as sacrificial victim. Using a Burkean framework, Goltz makes a theoretical, rhetorical, and cultural investigation of how the increased visibility of "e;positive"e; gay representation in dominant media shapes contemporary meanings of gay aging, heteronormative future, homonormative future, and queer potential.