Presentation by Liz Deegan

Disgust as an aesthetic/affective category is utilized frequently in many of the queer underground works that I have seen, but it has yet to be deeply investigated or defined. At times it may be written off as a trash aesthetic, or as coming out of a grungy, punk scene, but disgust has not been addressed as a facet of the queer underground, nor given space to lay out the nuanced representations available. While other forms of cinematic disgust have gotten close to some of the nuances of disgust that I am interested in, they tend to focus more on the shock aspect of disgust. I absolutely find that to be an integral part of disgust, but what happens when we are no longer shocked? How does disgust function to instead make us laugh, or make us question? 

This essay has two main objectives; to map a nuanced account of the queer underground in America that focuses on the creation of communities as opposed to the individualism that the underground usually highlights, and to analyze the use of disgust in the underground as a kind of communal resistance or tool, and/or as a queered aesthetic that disrupts the normative rejection response, and instead draws viewers closer.

Registration required in advance for the workshop:

https://msu.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJElcOmqrz4sHtTp5lZKQ3HDS1rcWAKd0GoC

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