Queer Cinema Revisited for Transmedia Narrative: the Visual Album Montero by Lil Nas X

Abstract

Queer cinema and black queer cinema have left their influence on figures, motifs, themes and modes of narration, reappropriated by certain contemporary visual texts, coming from media industry companies, such as music videos. Transmediality is a promotional tool for popular music artists with commercial objectives and the generation of a universe, a message of vindication and social change with all their work. This work aims an approach to queer cinema, in its black queer cinema aspect, reflecting on its legacy in a transmedia project, the Lil Nas X´s visual album, Montero, with fifteen music videos. The proposal approaches the album as a storytelling creation project, which builds a personal narrative around a series of themes, figures and visual motifs that in recurrence draw a general message, founding an artistic personality. The methodology includes textual and descriptive analysis of a qualitative nature, of lyrics and moving image, iconographic analysis, searching for elements of continuity and intertextual quotations. The findings reaffirm the transmediality and intertextuality of the album, analyze the visual leitmotifs, objects, types of figuration and symbolism that allow us to speak of a visual narrative continuity and a discourse of empowerment and individual catharsis.