SEXTANT: masculinities, sexualities & decolonialities

ABSTRACT

The following text is a transcribed scene from Léann Herlihy’s larger docu-film Beyond Survival (2022). 

Beyond Survival is an indigestible mash-up of mainstream survival television, fucking-frenzy naturist collectives and anti-sodomy laws legislated under the title ‘Crimes Against Nature’. Tempered by the exaggerated nature of survivalist figures and their excessive performances of non-essential survival, the protagonist of this docu-film transforms into numerous characters, ranging from a cameo as a cis-heterosexual survivalist to a stern warning from a queer environmental activist. Adopting the cinematic stylization of survival documentaries, Beyond Survival uses numerous cameras to emphasise feigned solitude and satirically leans into confessional soliloquies employed by handheld cameras. By situating itself in a natural landscape, Beyond Survival emphasises how an alternative vision of natural phenomena can de-centre the rigid social order and thus, provide us with new ways of living beyond immediate survival.

KEY WOrDS

queer ecologies; sexualities; primal masculinity; survivalism; reality TV; pedagogies

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