How Queen's I Want to Break Free Video Explores Queerness in Relation to Queer Theory

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Recommended: Similarities of gender identity and sexual orientation

Intro: Like various art forms such as film, television, and literature allows artists to express their own sense of identity, that being nationality, race, class, ethnicity, gender or sexuality. In this case, Queen uses music to illustrate the themes of gender and sexuality through their music video I Want to Break Free (1983). This essay will attempt to discuss how Queen’s music video, I Want to Break Free, explores queerness in relation to queer theory. Firstly, I will introduce the ideas and arguments of queer theory through Gilbert Herdt article Same Sex Different Cultures (1997). I will then discuss Queen’s portrayal of drag within the music video and how it can be seen as queer rather than heterosexual. Lastly, I will argue that Mercury’s depiction of heterosexuality within the music video could also be seen as queer in oppose to heterosexual through his performance of hyper-masculinity.
Queer: Generally speaking, queer theory concerns itself with issues dealing with gender identity and sexual orientation (Herdt, 1997, p. 8). This theory accepts academic sources which raise issues of literature, philosophy, sociology and other scholarly discourses (Herdt, 1997, p. 8). However, queer theorists use these texts and reinterpret them to “seek a new culture and history sought to uncover a period of past social life” (Herdt, 1997, p. 9). Herdt notes that queer theory attempts to expose and subvert the social hierarchies of “power that define normality” (1997, 9). However, in order to do this Herdt notes that within queer theory attempts to deconstruct sexual identity and refuse “all classification and all notions of normality” (Herdt, 1997, p. 9). In saying this, queer theorist believe that one’s sexual identity is based on soci...

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...essentialism". The Journal of Philosophy 65. 1968. (20): 615–626
Peraino, J. 2003. Listening to the Sirens: Music as Queer Ethical Practice. In A. GLQ 9:4; 433–470
Butler, Judith. 1999. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (Subversive bodily acts, IV Bodily Inscriptions, Performative Subversions). New York: Routledge
Herdt, G. H. (1997). Same sex, different cultures exploring gay and lesbian lives. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press.
AfterElton.com. (2008) “The Fifty Greatest Gay Movies!”. Retrieved from 16 May 2014.
Frith, Simon & Angelina McRobbie (1978) “Rock and Sexuality”. On Record: Rock, Pop, and the Written Word. Ney York: Pantheon Books

Ray, Amy & Emily Saliers. (1995). Power of Two [Recorded by Indigo Girls]. Swamp Ophelia [CD]. Nashville, TN: Epic.
Deacon, John. (1983). I Want to Break Free [Recorded by Queen].The Works [CD]. UK: EMI.

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