Issue Details: First known date: 2022... 2022 Queering the Happily Ever After : Paradoxes of the Cinematic Trope in Christos Tsiolkas’s Loaded
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'The 2017 marriage equality referendum was conservative in reach—refuting the entrenched marginalisation of queer existence, a challenge to conflations of happiness (in fact, the ultimate “happily ever after”—marriage) and heteronormativity. The marriage equality debate was an ugly realisation of those discourses of exclusion and prejudice implicated in many Western values, and in Australian national identity broadly. In thinking through these issues, I return to Christos Tsiolkas’s novel Loaded (1995) for its queering of “happily ever after” myths via film referents. Ari’s paradoxical relationship to romantic tenderness is evident in his frequent first-person allusions to various films. A close reading of Loaded and the film’s allusions expose both the operation of exclusion and an individual’s response to that exclusion prior to marriage equality. Loaded invites reflection on these complexities in a call for the universal right to romantic happiness through its deployment of filmic tropes.' (Publication abstract)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Journal of Australian Studies Christos Tsiolkas and Contemporary Australia—The Outsider Artist vol. 46 no. 1 2022 24308385 2022 periodical issue

    'Christos Tsiolkas is regularly acknowledged as one of the most important writers working in Australia—indeed, the world—today. However, his proclivity for the public essay (in venues such as The Monthly), as well as his willingness to speak out on important social and political issues (such as refugees and marriage equality), casts him not only as an important writer, but also as a critical public figure in contemporary Australia. This collection of articles takes the range of Tsiolkas’s works (both fiction and non-fiction, as well as their television and cinematic adaptations) as their impetus, using these as a model to explore the significance of Tsiolkas’s intellectual contribution to Australian public life. As such, these articles work across genre, across theories, across national and international borders, and across disciplines in order to make clear Tsiolkas’s contemporary significance. Building on recent book-length studies on the author, including Andrew McCann’s Christos Tsiolkas and the Fiction of Critique: Politics, Obscenity, Celebrity (2015) and my own Christos Tsiolkas: The Utopian Vision (2017), what these articles hold in common is an assertion that Tsiolkas’s fiction and non-fiction always and everywhere serve a political and social purpose. As I have argued elsewhere, Tsiolkas’s writing ultimately suggests the ways in which we can shape a better future for Australia.' (Jessica Gildersleeve : Introduction: Christos Tsiolkas and Contemporary Australia—The Outsider Artist)

    2022
    pg. 85-97
Last amended 6 Apr 2022 09:17:39
85-97 Queering the Happily Ever After : Paradoxes of the Cinematic Trope in Christos Tsiolkas’s Loadedsmall AustLit logo Journal of Australian Studies
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