Unscripting the Present : The Security Panic of Queer Youth Sexuality

Timothy Gitzen

ISBN 13: 9798855801644

Published by SUNY Press, 2025

About this Item

nach der Bestellung gedruckt Neuware - Printed after ordering - 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.

Seller Inventory # 9798855801644

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Unscripting the Present : The Security Panic of Queer Youth Sexuality
• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Publication Date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 13: 9798855801644
• Binding: Buch
• Condition: Neu
• Dimensions: 235W x 157H x 18D millimeters 235 millimeters width by 157 millimeters height by 18 millimeters depth
• Weight: 521 grams

About this title

Synopsis

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.

About the Author

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.