Citation

Scahill A. J. Lesbian Stud. 2012; 16(3): 365-375.

Affiliation

a English Department, George Mason University , Fairfax , Virginia , USA.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2012, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/10894160.2012.673936

PMID

22702384

Abstract

Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures (1994) is the story of two girls in New Zealand who form an intense erotic friendship based on a fantasy world they create, and how their forced separation leads them to commit matricide. Beneath the sensational surface, though, is another story: this is a film about cinema, about desire, and how queer spectators create new and unexpected meanings. This article argues that Heavenly Creatures is a queer love letter to the power of cinema, revealing how queer consciousness may indeed be constituted from foreclosed possibility by the medium-providing a landscape, a stage, and a mise-en-scène of desire.

Language: en