{"product_id":"9780822384007","title":"The Wedding Complex: Forms of Belonging in Modern American Culture","description":"In \u003ci\u003eThe Wedding Complex\u003c\/i\u003e Elizabeth Freeman explores the significance of the wedding ceremony by asking what the wedding becomes when you separate it from the idea of marriage. Freeman finds that weddings—as performances, fantasies, and rituals of transformation—are sites for imagining and enacting forms of social intimacy other than monogamous heterosexuality. Looking at the history of Anglo-American weddings and their depictions in American literature and popular culture from the antebellum era to the present, she reveals the cluster of queer desires at the heart of the \"wedding complex\"—longings not for marriage necessarily but for public forms of attachment, ceremony, pageantry, and celebration.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFreeman draws on queer theory and social history to focus on a range of texts where weddings do not necessarily lead to legal marriage but instead reflect yearnings for intimate arrangements other than long-term, state-sanctioned, domestic couplehood. Beginning with a look at the debates over gay marriage, she proceeds to consider literary works by Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Faulkner, Carson McCullers, Vladimir Nabokov, and Edgar Allan Poe, along with such Hollywood films as \u003ci\u003eFather of the Bride\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Graduate\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eThe Godfather\u003c\/i\u003e. She also discusses less well-known texts such as Su Friedrich’s experimental film \u003ci\u003eFirst Comes Love\u003c\/i\u003e and the off-Broadway, interactive dinner play \u003ci\u003eTony ‘n’ Tina’s Wedding\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cp\u003eOffering bold new ways to imagine attachment and belonging, and the public performance and recognition of social intimacy, \u003ci\u003eThe Wedding Complex\u003c\/i\u003e is a major contribution to American studies, queer theory, and cultural studies.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Duke University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47124318028016,"sku":"9780822384007","price":28.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780822384007_p0.jpg?v=1763752723","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780822384007","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}