Queer cuttings on YouTube: re-editing soap operas as a form of fan-produced queer resistance

Despite the increasing efforts of representing gay main characters, popular soap operas still hinge on the discourse of heteronormativity. Queer theorists have uttered the necessity for exposing the oppressiveness of heteronormative practices and offering viable alternatives to the heteronormative way of living. This article argues that fan-produced re-edited videos of soap operas may embed the potential to expose and challenge the way that heteronormativity functions. By a textual analysis of Christian & Oliver, a fan-produced YouTube series based on the German soap Verbotene Liebe (Forbidden Love), the article enquires how subversive practices of rearticulating narrative conventions of soap operas may function as strategies of resistance. Since texts only become resistant through reading practices, this article discusses the fragility of resistance by elaborating on the negotiated position of resistance within popular culture, discussing the role of fans as producers of new texts and differentiating the role of audiences as readers of resistance.Despite the increasing efforts of representing gay main characters, popular soap operas still hinge on the discourse of heteronormativity. Queer theorists have uttered the necessity for exposing the oppressiveness of heteronormative practices and offering viable alternatives to the heteronormative way of living. This article argues that fan-produced re-edited videos of soap operas may embed the potential to expose and challenge the way that heteronormativity functions. By a textual analysis of Christian & Oliver, a fan-produced YouTube series based on the German soap Verbotene Liebe (Forbidden Love), the article enquires how subversive practices of rearticulating narrative conventions of soap operas may function as strategies of resistance. Since texts only become resistant through reading practices, this article discusses the fragility of resistance by elaborating on the negotiated position of resistance within popular culture, discussing the role of fans as producers of new texts and differentiating the role of audiences as readers of resistance.A