Date of Award
2021
Document Type
M.A. Essay
First Advisor
Annabelle Cone
Second Advisor
Paul Young
Abstract
In this essay, I interrogate visual representations of a lesbian love story in Jul’ Maroh’s graphic novel Le bleu est une couleur chaude and its film adaptation by director Abdellatif Kechiche, La vie d’Adèle : Chapitres 1 et 2. By studying the diegesis of each work’s opening scene, I reveal that the graphic novel embodies Barthes’s concept of a writerly text, or one that requires its reader to produce its meaning, while the film, as a readerly work, constructs a passive viewing experience for its audience. I argue that each author’s narratological approach exemplifies the particular manner in which they portray queerness throughout these stories: the reader of the graphic novel is urged to interpret the lesbian plot point as banal, while the film steers its audience towards viewing the love story as a spectacle.
Recommended Citation
Frank, Sophie, "banal/QUEER/spectacular: Reframing Blue is the Warmest Color" (2021). Comparative Literature M.A. Essays. 5.
https://digitalcommons.dartmouth.edu/complit_essays/5
Included in
Comparative Literature Commons, French and Francophone Literature Commons, Other Film and Media Studies Commons