Queeritage: LGBTQ Family Legacy in American Dramatic Narratives 1979 - 2021

Abstract

This thesis examines the long-ignored theme of intergenerational queer family legacy in American dramatic narratives. It analyzes the ramifications of a queer character's interacting with, discovering, or excavating the history of another queer character in their own biological or adoptive family in plays, films, and television series of the past forty plus years. This analysis calls for the creation of a new term to differentiate this type of relationship from other, more often explored, forms of queer intergenerationality. This is particularly necessary as terms such as "family" and "kinship" have, over the years, assumed different meanings in a queer context thereby complicating scholarly research. To this end, the use of the word "queeritage," an amalgam of the words "queer" and "heritage," is proposed. This thesis examines the ways in which queeritage has functioned in twelve dramatic narratives from its first iteration, in Martin Sherman's 1979 play Bent, through its most recent, in Jane Campion's 2021 film The Power of the Dog. The opening sections of this thesis explicate why queer people came to be thought of as existing exclusively outside of a traditional family structure. It then examines dramatic narratives which invoke queeritage within such a structure, organized and discussed in the context of four historical periods in which they were created. Queeritage first appears in the post-Stonewall era of sexual liberation, followed by iterations during the HIV/AIDS crisis, then again in another period of sexual liberation, and subsequently after the legalization of same sex marriage, an event which spurred a proliferation of queeritage narratives. The role of autobiography, in the creation of several of these narratives, as well as in the creation of this thesis, is described. An argument is made for the importance of queeritage as a critical lens for exploring both dramatic narratives as well as personal lives in view of the profound effects that it might have in combatting suicide and poor mental health outcomes in queer youth. This is especially true of those who are rejected by their families of origin, and more broadly in serving to dispel the myth believed by many queer people and their straight relatives alike, that 'nobody in this family was ever like that.' This myth—further perpetuated by scholarship's oversight of queeritage—leads to an othering of queer people that makes repressive policies by governments, which claim that queer people are alien to their culture, possible.