Hipsters End: Queer Time, and Imitation versus Authenticity, in Matthew Lopez’s the Inheritance

Abstract

This article examines Matthew Lopez's The Inheritance, a rewriting of E. M. Forster's Howards End. It analyses Lopez's dealings with property, a concern that still chimes with the millennials of Lopez's play, in the play's invocation of property and the creation of community. It suggests that the play's most affecting moment involves the queering of time, while arguing the play enshrines normatively masculine bodies, instead of memorializing those bodies affected by AIDS. It is suggested the play also avoids depicting gay sex realistically, perpetuating the repression undertaken in the wake of AIDS. The article's main argument involves hipsterism in the play, specifically the tension between imitation and authenticity, which fails to offer a culturally distinctive depiction of the mourned "queer community." It also interrogates Lopez's positionality, proposing that his fascination with Forster's novel emulates that of Forster's working-class character Leonard Bast with the bourgeois Schlegels, while fetishizing the revered cultural object of the past, and thus failing to represent queer intersectionality.