Months before beginning this piece, I found a photograph of my father doing an impersonation (he is a few generations too old for “cosplay”) of Walter Pidgeon's iconic Dr. Morbius from the classic sci-fi film Forbidden Planet (dir. Fred M. Wilcox, 1956) (fig. 1). I framed the photograph and placed it on a pile of books, and as I drew closer to putting words to this essay, I moved the photograph to my desk. At this moment, the framed photo is angled toward me, and it evokes a multitude of feelings. For one thing, I was rather unceremoniously forced into participating in my father's eccentric iteration of “home movies.” These projects were in fact parodies in homage to his favorite things, B films and pulps of the 1950s and 1960s, that featured bumpy, string-maneuvered miniature flying saucers or clumsy, handmade, full-body Robby the Robot suits (figs. 2...
You Can't Go Home Again: Remakes as Trans Method Available to Purchase
Joshua Bastian Cole-Kurz (he, him) works at the intersections of trans studies, disability studies, performance, and screen media. His multidisciplinary research has been published in Somatechnics, Jump Cut, and New Review of Film and Television Studies. Cole-Kurz has taught in media, communications, and feminist, gender, sexuality, and queer studies departments at the City University of New York, the State University of New York at Plattsburgh, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, and Cornell University. He is a visiting lecturer in the Department of Performing and Media Arts at Cornell University and serves as a committee member for the Queer and Trans Caucus of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies.
Joshua Bastian Cole-Kurz; You Can't Go Home Again: Remakes as Trans Method. TSQ 1 February 2024; 11 (1): 149–163. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/23289252-11131767
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