Our Story - Be Gay, Do Crime #5: Eat the Rich

RENDEZ-VOUS

Be Gay, Do Crime_5
Eat the Rich - Our Story

Through its Be Gay, Do Crime program, Our Story examines the figures of the "bad queer" and the "queer villain." From the stereotyped Hollywood representations inherited from the Hays Code to the anti-assimilationist stances of New Queer Cinema, this series of screenings brings queerness into dialogue with notions of impropriety and criminality.

In March, the queer villains presented by Our Story take aim at the aristocracy and financial capitalism. Set against the backdrop of the erosion of British social classes in the early 1960s, the protagonist of The Servant utilizes every possible means to pervert the power dynamic binding him to his wealthy, indolent employer. A decade later in West Germany, the heroine of Das zweite Erwachen der Christa Klages attempts to save her daycare center by robbing a bank. While the queer dimensions of these two compelling works remain implicit, they nonetheless accentuate the protagonists' deviant positions in the face of violent socioeconomic systems. Here, the queer reveals itself as both a force of solidarity and a force of destruction.