Unscripting the Present - The Security Panic of Queer Youth Sexuality

Interrogates contemporary sex panics in the United States, looking especially at popular culture texts to conceptualize queer youth survival strategies.
Sex panics saturate contemporary discourse and politics in the United States. While such panics have a long history, they are now infused with rhetoric, logics, and methods of security that turn queer sexuality into an existential crisis. Queer youth bear the brunt of this crisis, with their presumed innocence always in danger of being lost. Unscripting the Present interweaves analysis of laws and lawsuits, news media, sociological studies, and popular culture both to understand contemporary sex panics and to highlight how queer youth find ways to survive in the here and now. Developing a novel technique of "unscripting," Timothy Gitzen focuses our attention on those impromptu moments when things go awry in representations of queer youth-moments that disrupt securitization's social "scripts." Foregoing well-worn promises of things getting better, texts such as Netflix's Sex Education, the film Love, Simon, and the multimodal show Skam upend the anxious hyperfocus on what's to come in favor of a hopeful present.

Info autore

Timothy Gitzen is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Wake Forest University. He is the author of Banal Security: Queer Korea in the Time of Viruses.

Dettagli sul prodotto

• Autori: Timothy Gitzen
• Editore: State University of New York Press
• Lingue: Inglese
• Formato: Tascabile
• Pubblicazione: 02.10.2025
• EAN: 9798855801651
• ISBN: 9798855801651
• Pagine: 222
• Serie: SUNY series in Queer Politics and Cultures
• Categorie: Scienze sociali, diritto, economia > Media, comunicazione > Tematiche generali, enciclopedie; Scienze umane, arte, musica > Arte > Teatro, balletto; USA, Media Studies, Television, PERFORMING ARTS / Television / General, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Media Studies, Of specific Gay & Lesbian interest, United States of America, USA, PERFORMING ARTS / Film / History & Criticism, Gay & Lesbian studies, SOCIAL SCIENCE / LGBTQ+ Studies / General, Film Theory & Criticism, Film history, theory or criticism, Relating to LGBTQIA+ people, LGBTQIA+ Studies / topics