Representation is a Minefield — The Queer Safety Aesthetic

Fictional Violence, Aesthetic Genre, and the Illusion of Safety

Being queer is scary, and 2020 is a particularly scary time to be queer. When I was still deeply in the closet in 2005, a friend and I went to see “the new Wachowski film,” by which we meant the Lilly and Lana Wachowski-produced, James McTeague directed Alan Moore adaptation V for Vendetta, and the film crystallized many of the fears I had around queerness from the hostility of my rural Wisconsin high school teachers, the…