Introduction: Gender, Sexuality, and the Soundtrack

Abstract

Editorial introduction to the 'Music, Sound and the Moving Image' special issue on Gender and Sexuality. 'Gender, sexuality and the soundtrack' comprises original research, a critical review of literature in the field, and an overview of other articles included in the special issue. Extended analyses of sequences from 'A Woman's Secret' (d. Ray; c. Hollaender, 1949), 'Diamonds Are Forever' (d. Hamilton; c. Barry, 1971), and 'Muriel's Wedding' (d. Hogan; c. Best, 1994) are used to demonstrate the role of music and sound in constructing normative and queer gendered and sexual identities in dominant cinema traditions, demonstrating the sonic articulation of identity in ways that are reductively stereotypical but also have latent potential to be reclaimed for transformation and resistance by characters or the audience. This frames a broader critical literature review of current scholarship from literary, cultural, media, and music studies that contributes to debates around gender and sexuality across a range of audiovisual media, with further examples drawn from film, television, videogames, and music video. Key themes that run throughout the article include the centrality of character and audience subjectivities to nuanced understandings of identities and representations, the interconnected and reductive nature of categories of difference and their sonic representation, and the necessity of interdisciplinary methodologies to textually responsive analyses of audiovisual media.

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