Queer bare lives: Melodramatic form and biopolitics in Michael Mayer’s Out in the Dark

Abstract

This paper considers how the melodramatic form of Out in the Dark is employed to subvert the biopolitical discourses concerning queer migration across the Israel-Palestine border. In the diegesis, the queer Palestinian refugee is gradually stripped of his human rights, security, and legitimacy during border crossing, gradually being reduced into a state of ‘bare life’. I contend that the film Out in the Dark represents queer bare lives to subvert the homonationalist discourses employed by Israeli state power. The melodramatic form of Out in the Dark alters the recognition of the victim/hero/villain and cultivates novel spectatorial sensibilities via aesthetics. Ultimately, I show how the film associates queerness with the confluence of nationalism, militarism, and heteropatriarchy on both sides of the Israel-Palestine border, which offers a critique of biopolitical governance over the lives of queer migrants.