Lebanon as a Setting of Negotiations: Male Same-Sex Representations and Queer Subjectivities in Post-War Cinema

Abstract

This article examines how male same-sex desire is represented and self-represented in Lebanese cinema, situating these representations within a broader media landscape marked by stereotyping, censorship, and NGO visibility discourses. While Lebanon is often framed in Western narratives as a liberal exception in the Arab world, such portrayals obscure the structural inequalities and fractured discourses that shape non-normative visibility. Drawing on queer theory, media studies, and feminist critique, the article examines the evolution of male same-sex representation from early televisual figures, such as Coucou in the 1970s, to more recent cinematic productions. It focuses on how media outlets circulate coded and stereotypical depictions of non-normativity, while independent films offer counter-discourses grounded in refusal, fragmentation, and affective opacity. NGO involvement in shaping LGBT discourse is examined critically, particularly through Massad's critique of Westernized identity models and Moussawi's notion of fractal orientalism. These layered readings demonstrate that Lebanese queer cinema resists coherent identity politics narratives, instead offering a set of negotiations between local and global queer frameworks. The analysis focuses on four films, Libertad Beirut (Raad, 2018), Mondial 2010 (Dib, 2014), Eccomi Eccoti (Rafei, 2017), and Chronic (Sabbah, 2017), which illustrate these negotiations of desire, visibility, and resistance. By treating cinema as a site of political struggle, the article traces how non-normative desire is constructed, limited, and reimagined. It calls for an intersectional and postcolonial approach to media analysis, attentive to representation and its discontents.