Space, affect and contagious bodies

Representing HIV in 1990s Czech cinema

Bibliographic Data

ID2394195
AuthorsFanni Antalóczy (0000-0002-2195-3535, Eszterhazy Karoly Catholic University, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume29
Issue3
Pages332-345
Publication date2024-06-14
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSexualities (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1363-4607 • E-ISSN: 1461-7382
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/13634607241261829
OpenAlexW4399665274
LanguageEN
References cited17

Wiktor Grodecki's trilogy - Not Angels But Angels (1994), Body Without Soul (1996) and Mandragora (1996) - depict the Czech queer sex industry of the 1990s. This article examines the films' representational attitudes to queerness and contagion at the intersection of cultural geography, body studies and affect theory. The films equate queer with contagion. Queer practices question the definition of sexual orientations; spaces used for sex lose the dichotomy of public and private, and sexuality is reduced to bodily functions. Queer bodies are represented as endangered and dangerous at the same time: the virus they might be carrying and transmitting is present as a constant, invisible threat. The possible contagion of the bodies disrupts the borders of normativity and inscribes them with stigma, resulting in shame and fear as the dominant affects inscribed on spaces and experienced in/on bodies

Aesthetics · Affect (linguistics · Art · Czech · Epistemology · Human sexuality · Literature · Movie theater · Queer · Queer theory · Shame · Sociology · Soul · Trilogy · Visual arts · Communication · European history and politics · Gender Studies · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Philosophy · Psychology · Sexuality, Behavior, and Technology · Social Psychology

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