Review of Jeffrey P. Dennis, Queering teen culture: All American boys and same-sex desire in film and television

Clarke, Victoria

Abstract

In Queering Teen Culture, Jeffery Dennis displays an encyclopaedic knowledge of US television shows and films that foreground teenage characters. Focusing on representations of teenage boys, Dennis aims to ‘queer’ US teen culture. Citing Foucault and Derrida, among others,
Dennis defines queering as finding ‘evidence for same-sex desire, romantic interactions or identities…where, according to the dominant ideology, they do not and cannot exist’ (p. vii). His intention is to look beyond the surface representation of heteronormative desire in teen-oriented soap operas, sitcoms and films, to understand how ‘same-sex desire will not be silenced, how it informs the plot lines of the most doggedly boy-meets-girl teen-idol ballad and waits quietly in the background of the most tenaciously girl- and boy-crazy sitcom characters’ (p. vii).

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2008
• Journal: Culture, Health & Sexuality
• Print ISSN: 1369-1058
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis (Routledge)
• Peer Reviewed: Not Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 10
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 427-429
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/13691050701654941
• Keywords: Jeffrey P.Dennis, teen culture, same-sex desire, film, television
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/1017653
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13691050701654941