i'm hoping that some screen-L'ers might be able to
help me answer a [to me] tricky bibliographical question

i have a first year student in an intro to film class
who is just, slowly and painfully, coming to recognize
that the stable sexual and gender categories he's
always taken as axiomatic are much trickier than
he ever dreamt, both in films and in the world
that films [mis]-represent . . . so he's decided to
do a major resarch paper on homosexuality
in film, and has asked me for some clues about
useful sources . . .

while there's no shortage of material out there
most of it seems to me unsuitable for a combination
of two reasons:  1)  the premises about sexuality
that are invoked are typically taken as given --- ideas
that any enlightened person already has . . . most
often they are neither introduced and explained
nor defended . . . and i'd rather my student not
immediately get the sense that the discussion is
meant only for the initiated and the already
converted . . .  2) the level of discourse in virtually
everything on my shelves is well beyond anything
i might expect someone fresh out of a typical
american high school to be able to assimilate
 . . .  he has, for example, tried to make sense of
eve sedgwick, but with precious little success . . .
and i'm not about to invite him to look at one or
another lacanian influenced reading of the
sexualized body . . .

so, are there any books --or, even better, essays -- that
might be used to *begin* an exploration of homosexuality
on [and, by implication, off] the screen . . . all suggestions
will be very much appreciated

thanks

mike
     [with apologies for duplication]

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