Sunday Culture Corner
BY Claire Potter ON December 7, 2014
Peter Pan — Queer Icon? Shannon Keating at The Atlantic (December 4 2014) argues that the tradition of Peter being played by a woman is one of the earliest examples of female masculinity. “For many queer women and gender non-conforming people sprawled in front of their TV sets when they were still children, watching women like Mary Martin play Peter Pan provided visual affirmation that a genderbent lifestyle was within their realm of possibility,” Keating writes. As a historian I would like to see a little more evidence for this claim, but agree that Peter Pan is a very queer text indeed. Oddly, Keating’s close reading of the play seems to miss Barrie’s gesture to a certain kind of maternalist feminism, and his loving relationships with the boys of the Llewelyn Davies family, the first audience for the Peter Pan stories.- Film makers’ renewed interest in the queer past? So speculates Ben Walters in The Guardian (December 4 2014.) Walters speculates that “gay art and activism have often focused on crisis management and the pursuit of legal equality. Those battles aren’t over, but significant progress has been made, and now there also seems to be room to take a breath and look back.” Here’s an idea — now that we’re on a roll, how about some queer films that are not about white guys? Suggesting biopics of Radclyffe Hall (starring Gwendoline Christie, who plays Brienne of Tarth in Game of Thrones); Audre Lorde (Lupita N’yongo), Les Feinberg (Hilary Swank, of course!) and Dr. Mom Chung (Sandra Oh.) We could do this thing!
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