Screening (Non-)Solidarity, Now and Before: Polish Immigrants in Late Cold War Film (1980–1989)

2019 ◽  
pp. 117-158
Author(s):  
Kris Van Heuckelom
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
War Film

The Grid, the Spectacle and the Labyrinth in The Big Clocks Skyscraper: Queered Space and Cold War Discourse

Film Studies ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-48
Author(s):  
Merrill Schleier
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Style ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
War Discourse ◽  
War Film

The Big Clocks skyscraper is a mechanical, entrapping grid controlled by a huge timepiece. It is presided over by the homosexual Janoth who tries to frame Stroud for a murder that he committed. This article traces Stroud‘s journey within the International Style skyscrapers temporarily ‘queered spaces.’ The Cold War film seeks the removal of undesirable ‘aliens’ to liberate capitalist space and reassert hegemonic heterosexuality. The married Stroud outsmarts his adversaries, leading to Janoth‘s death by his own building. After Janoth is symbolically ‘outed,’ he kills his partner before plummeting down a hellish elevator shaft, punishment for his ‘perverse’ deeds.

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