Queers in American Popular Culture [3 volumes] (Praeger Perspectives) 031335457X, 9780313354571

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Queers in American Popular Culture

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Queers in American Popular Culture Volume 1 Film and Television

JIM ELLEDGE, EDITOR

Praeger Perspectives

Copyright 2010 by Jim Elledge All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Queers in American popular culture / Jim Elledge, editor. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–313–35457–1 (set. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978–0–313–35458–8 (set : ebook) 1. Gays in popular culture—United States. I. Elledge, Jim, 1950– HQ76.3.U5Q447 2010 2010023183 306.760 60973—dc22 ISBN: 978–0–313–35457–1 EISBN: 978–0–313–35458–8 14 13 12 11 10

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This book is also available on the World Wide Web as an eBook. Visit www.abc-clio.com for details. Praeger An Imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC ABC-CLIO, LLC 130 Cremona Drive, P.O. Box 1911 Santa Barbara, California 93116-1911 This book is printed on acid-free paper Manufactured in the United States of America

For David

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Contents

Set Introduction Jim Elledge Chapter 1: Politically Queer: Ellen and the Changing Face of American Television, 1997 to 2007 Rachel Loewen Walker

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Chapter 2: “There’s Nowt So Queer as Folk” (Nor the Spaces They Seek) Mark John Isola

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Chapter 3: After Noah’s Arc: Where Do We Go from Here? Michael Johnson Jr.

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Chapter 4: Anatomy of a Lesbian Relationship and Its Demise: The First Lesbian Relationship of the Medical Drama Grey’s Anatomy Niina Kuorikoski

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Chapter 5: From Stereotypes to Characters: The Development of Queer Motifs in American Cinema from Wings to The Children’s Hour Florian Mundhenke

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Chapter 6: Women Actors and Male Performativity in Early Hollywood Sarah Smorol

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Chapter 7: A Cinema of Contradictions: Gay and Lesbian Representation in 1970s Blaxploitation Films Novotny Lawrence

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Chapter 8: Tongues Untied: African-American Men Take the Spotlight Rodger Streitmatter

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Chapter 9: When Straight America Starts “Queering”: Brokeback Mountain and Its Parodies Jennifer Malkowski 139 Chapter 10: Queerness Taking Place?: Constructing the “Urban Redecoration Project” of Showtime’s The L Word Rosemary Deller

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Chapter 11: Nobody Wants to Watch a Beacon: Will & Grace and the Limits of Mainstream Network Television Kathleen Battles and Wendy Hilton-Morrow

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Chapter 12: “They Can’t Show a Whole Screen Full of Gay People”: Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Television Viewers Assess Portrayals of the Gay Community on Television Lyn J. Freymiller 209 Chapter 13: Camp Figures of American Television in the Sixties and Seventies: A Boyhood Memory Walter R. Holland 231 Chapter 14: “We’ll Have a Gay Old Time!”: Queer Representation in American Prime-Time Animation from the Cartoon Short to the Family Sitcom Jo Johnson 247 Chapter 15: Recuperating and Reviling South Park’s Queer Politics James Keller

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Index

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About the Editor and Contributors

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Set Introduction Jim Elledge

Queers in American Popular Culture attempts to cover, in a comprehensive way, the presence of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and the transgendered persons in popular culture venues of the United States. Although largely post-Stonewall in scope, this three-volume set also, at times, investigates queers and their representation in periods as early as the late 1880s. The topics covered may be new to a non-queer readership (and even to some queer readers), perhaps even strange to them, but they are always eye opening and thought provoking. While most readers will have seen episodes of Will & Grace or may even be diehard fans of the popular television sitcom, for example, only a handful will have heard of—much less seen—the post-op, female-to-male-with-a-vagina porn star, Buck Angel. Fewer yet will have been enthralled by his body, his rugged sexuality, and his sexual appetite(s). Transforming from man to woman to pop icon, RuPaul has “sashayed shante” very visibly across Billboard’s charts, becoming the best-known drag queen entertainer in the United States and across the globe since Boy George. Yet while RuPaul is taking her turn on the catwalk, “boi”—a personality as important to contemporary queer culture as the fairy was to our grandfathers and grandmothers a century ago—scoots along the streets, hangs out, and clubs hard virtually unknown and unnoticed by all but those in the know. Queers in American Popular Culture gives notice to, and provides a forum for discussion about, both “boi” and Buck Angel, along with the much more visible RuPaul and Will.

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Queers in American Popular Culture attempts to be comprehensive and strives diligently to obtain that goal. The number of possible topics to cover is so immense that it would be impossible to produce a work that truly covered, even only minimally, every queer topic and every queer personality in American popular culture. Queers have been associated with U.S. popular culture for so long now that many of those involved with it, their representations in it, and what they produced have simply faded away—“like sand through the hour glass”—from current, cultural awareness. Those of us of a certain age will remember when the country’s attention was focused on Glenn Burke and Colonel Martgarethe Cammermeyer or when Torch Song Trilogy and Go Fish caused a stir, although not one of them is mentioned in these pages. The truth is that what was once so important to gay men, for example, has now all but vanished from the scene. Beginning with the riots at the Stonewall Inn in New York’s Greenwich Village during the last weekend of July 1969 and for the next two or three decades thereafter, personalities like Paul Lynde, who was a regular “center square”—an oxymoronic handle if there ever was one—on the TV game show Hollywood Squares, was perhaps the most recognizable queer funny man to most Americans. During the approximate same period of time in which Lynde was delivering belly laughs, many of the diehard fans who watched the wigged-out, dark comedy Soap became fascinated by the quirky boy-next-door Jodie Dallas, played by Billy Crystal, a less bitchy and bitter, and a more bittersweet, character than Lynde’s persona. Jodie, who did not elicit the guffaws that Lynde did, tempered the image most Americans had when they thought of queer men. A third personality appeared during the same period, one that would further complicate the image. Hunky, handsome, blonde Steven Carrington of the nighttime soap opera Dynasty, a number-one hit within a few seasons, got no laughs, only ooohs and ahhhs. He quickly won the hearts of gay men and imaginative straight women alike. Played first by Al Corey, then by Jack Coleman, Steven seemed, at the time and to many gay men, to be the first “realistic” depiction of a gay character, one who struggled with his sexual identity and took missteps, but eventually “got it together.” He was vastly different from both Lynde and Jodie. As important as these three television personalities were in queer male popular culture in the 1970s and 1980s, few remember them now and, perhaps, even fewer care. There were many others, including lesbians and bisexuals, who like Paul Lynde, Jodie Dallas, and Steven Carrington would become

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well-known, even liked, admired, and emulated, gathering a large fan base and accruing large revenues—and a great deal of right-wing, fundamentalist hatred—but each has now been edged out by the new. Typically, what any book like Queers in American Popular Culture covers depends, to a large extent, on what is currently hot, what is currently the buzz, what is currently aflutter in our—queers’ and non-queers’—collective consciousnesses: gay marriage, Ennis and Jack (or is it Heath and Jake?), Ellen, and so on. In short, currency is all too often the capital for critical or scholarly interest in popular culture whether we want it to be or not. Nevertheless, Queers in American Popular Culture purposefully includes a number of chapters that cover topics that are not currently hot, not the buzz, nor even vaguely on our minds as we drive or walk or take the subway to and from work, but which have a timeless value. Certainly, we do not typically mull over the place of lesbian and gay pulp fiction in the larger, non-queer culture during coffee breaks, nor do most of us ponder lesbian cookbooks (of which there are a surprising number) while eating a Big Mac at lunch. Yet in these volumes, some little-thought-of subjects as well as some forgotten personalities point out the fact to us over and over again that popular culture, and the queer’s place in it, is remarkably vast and varied, flexible, and timeless. Even some topics covered in Queers in American Popular Culture that are current have had lives in previous eras. Some were extant and even recorded decades before the dawn of the twentieth century, helping in their own way to give birth to the Pansy Craze, approximately a decade and a half or so (from the 1920s through the mid-1930s) in which gay men were quite visible, particularly on stage and screen but also in restaurants, department stores, on the streets, and elsewhere. By 1935 or so, the pansy began to fade from popular culture. Through the 1940s and 1950s, and almost to the close of the 1960s—decades that are often dubbed the Lavender Scare—queers, so visible during the Pansy Craze, were forced into invisibility, finding refuge in the closet. Police raided their meeting places time after time and closed them. They were arrested, tried, jailed—then fired from their jobs, expelled from their families, and rejected by their friends. During the Lavender Scare, if popular culture represented queers at all, they were targets of ridicule, paranoia, even outright hatred. As one might expect, the majority of the chapters in a set of books like Queers in American Popular Culture will focus on television and film, not because those two media are more important in queer

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popular culture than others are, but because they are the most accessible of all popular culture venues and so are the most “popular” of all, what most people think of when they think about popular culture. Whether developed by heterosexuals or queers, the popular culture scene in which queers find their most immediate and overt representation these days is in TV Land. The vast majority of U.S. citizens have television sets, often very large ones and often more than one per household, and the producers of television programs have found that some series with substantial queer representation have been a lucrative business proposition. (Advertisers, too, have come to realize that such programs bring in the loot.) Queers in American Popular Culture does not ignore television and film. It acknowledges both, and it puts them on equal par with other popular culture venues. Said in a different way, “popular culture” is far larger than sitcoms on the boob tube or flicks on the silver screen. In fact, television and the cinema, as popular as each is in our culture, are only two facets of a multifaceted phenomenon that includes sports, fashion, literature, art, music, performances of various sorts, advertising (in popular magazines and even on television: between individual programs and within the programs themselves), and the Internet that, as many believe, is giving both television and the film industry a run for their money. The chapters in Queers in American Popular Culture are divided into large categories that highlight the range of popular culture venues. Volume 1 is devoted to television and film; Volume 2 contains chapters on many different topics, among them, popular art, the Internet, popular literature, performance, and youth-related subjects; and Volume 3 covers advertising, fashion, leisure, lifestyle, and sports. These categories are decidedly subjective, and a different editor might have arranged the volumes quite differently. All but four of the chapters have never appeared elsewhere in print before, giving this three-volume set a fresh approach that is rare in other popular culture anthologies. As readers of these pages will quickly discover, each of the authors is an acute observer of U.S. popular culture and the queer’s place in it. In fact, contributors to Queers in American Popular Culture include a number of scholars from countries other than the United States. Also unlike other anthologies on similar topics, “popular culture” is broadly defined by the authors whose chapters fill the three volumes’ pages to cover what many might not think of as “popular culture” in its narrowest definition. In short, while the expected is certainly represented in Queers in American Popular Culture, the unexpected has also

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found its way into the collections. Readers will expect chapters on Brokeback Mountain, The L Word, and Queer as Folk in Volume 1, for example, but they will also be delighted to discover chapters on Noah’s Arc, a series on Logo about a group of African-American gay men in Los Angeles, and on queers in 1970s blaxploitation films, and on gay themes/representations in animation. Students who open Volume 2 will probably anticipate finding a chapter on gay pulps and Dykes to Watch Out For, but they will be surprised by chapters on lesbianism in Latina popular literature, on queer vampires, on the blogs of transwomen, or on pornography. Also, readers of Volume 3 might be amazed to read that the concept of gay marriage has been discussed since the 1950s, that there are cookbooks aimed at lesbians, that the father of modern bodybuilding was queer, and that not all queers worship within any mainstream faith system. While the authors of the chapters in all three volumes are to be thanked for their devotion, intelligence, and savvy, Queers in American Popular Culture could not have been produced without the help and diligence of my graduate research assistant, Sara Meyer, or Lindsay Claire, my second set of eyes at Praeger. I owe both more gratitude for their help than I could ever express.

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Chapter 1

Politically Queer: Ellen and the Changing Face of American Television, 1997 to 2007 Rachel Loewen Walker

“Why don’t we just get her a puppy?” In the summer of 1996, just after the airing of the third season of ABC/ Disney’s Ellen, the show’s writers deliberated over how to resolve the series’ unfocused plot, thought to be the result of the lead character’s lack of onscreen love interest. The central character was the perpetually single, thirty-something, Ellen Morgan, played by the wellknown comedian Ellen DeGeneres, and although the series revolved around her well-received comedy, the producers felt the show—and subsequently DeGeneres’s character—needed a more fixed identity with which audiences could identify. The series had never fallen into the archetypal sitcom format where each episode documents the romantic adventures and mishaps of the lead character, and although Ellen Morgan had her share of romantic embarrassments, the writers stuck to episodes about the love lives of her friends and her own comedic adventures in the everyday. As can be expected, however, Ellen Morgan’s lack of a relationship left an unspoken silence on the show, and during discussions concerning how to tie up these loose ends one of the writers suggested that Ellen simply get a puppy in the fourth season. Thus was born “The Puppy Episode,” one of the most significant hours of television

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history, where Ellen Morgan got her “puppy” and announced she was gay to 40 million viewers across North America. Not only did the twopart “Puppy Episode” document the coming out of the first lesbian lead character on a television sitcom, but that lead character was played by a real-life lesbian, as Ellen Morgan’s coming out coincided with Ellen DeGeneres’s own public coming out to an international audience. The parallel events of DeGeneres’s and Morgan’s coming out have been documented, on the one hand, as radically significant in making homosexuality visible on North American television, while on the other hand media and sexuality scholars have argued that the events reinforced traditional conceptions of sexuality and were not radical enough.1 I propose a third reading, whereupon careful examination of the series makes it apparent that Ellen functions as a strategic political subtext such that the producers, and DeGeneres herself, used the medium of comedy and television to speak past the script to not only the topic of homosexuality, but to issues of sexism, censorship, and artistic freedom. Consequently, the series represents one of the most daring political moves of an actor or actress, whereupon DeGeneres’s decision to align her public and private identity permits a queer “crossing” or destabilizing of the boundary between the performative and the real. Indeed, this “crossing” occurs not only in the coming-out episode, but throughout the entire fourth and fifth seasons, demonstrating a conscious move on the part of DeGeneres and the show’s writers to push this boundary beyond its limits. Close readings (and watchings) of Ellen reveal a carefully crafted buildup to “The Puppy Episode” where decidedly queer references and jokes surface at least once in each week’s script. This subtext provides a rich plot line for a seemingly transparent sitcom that contrasts with Ellen Morgan’s naivete´ at the ways of gay once she comes out as a lesbian. Following her coming out, the fifth season makes Ellen’s sexuality and her new (and somewhat successful) love interest the central plotline. Although the show tackles a breadth of queer issues, of interest here is the subtextual reaction to ABC’s growing discomfort with the series and the strict guidelines that were routinely imposed on the writers and the queer storyline. The series was slapped with parental guidance advisories whenever an episode featured an onscreen kiss between Ellen and her girlfriend Laurie, and ABC stopped promoting the show and fought with the show’s writers to remove scenes they deemed “too gay.”2 In effect, the politics of queer representation that

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surrounded both the fourth and fifth season of Ellen are reflected to audiences through the show itself. Partnered with the media and scholarship documenting the series, we begin to see a powerfully political agenda at work that has had a lasting and revolutionary effect on North American public television. WHAT’S THE BUZZ? A SURVEY OF MEDIA AND SCHOLARSHIP Ellen began as These Friends of Mine in March 1994 and documented the life of Ellen Morgan, a manager of a trendy bookstore and coffeehouse called Buy the Book, who routinely sat around chatting with her close group of friends. Pegged as the female-led version of Seinfeld,3 the show’s episodes were about nothing, instead foregrounding the endearing and quirky comedy of DeGeneres as her character botched her way through wedding toasts, dates, friendships, and personnel management. When the show was revamped for its first full season in the fall of 1994, Ellen’s friends were replaced and the series was renamed Ellen to promote it as a character comedy, hinging on DeGeneres’s growing acclaim as America’s foremost “funny girl.” Early on in the series it was evident that Ellen Morgan did not have much luck with romance, and the romantic involvements on the show often came off as awkward and ill-conceived. As a result, Ellen Morgan was written as increasingly asexual and her lack of ability to “pull off” a heterosexual relationship became a recurring comedic theme throughout the second and third seasons. As Ellen’s fourth season began in September 1996, news leaked out that Ellen Morgan would come out as a lesbian later that year. The rumor was met with controversy as the religious right criticized ABC and Disney of threatening American family values. It was not until March 1997 that the rumors were confirmed and “The Puppy Episode” went to production while DeGeneres began a two-month media campaign seemingly “shopping” the idea around to newspapers, talk shows, and magazines. Always tempered with a great degree of parody, DeGeneres’s trek through the talk show circuit included quips such as “the character does find out—and this is where the confusion comes in—that she is Lebanese” and “everything got totally blown out of proportion. . . . We’re adding another character— a guy—and his name is Les Bian.”4 Although nosy media speculations about DeGeneres’s own sexuality had long punctuated Hollywood reports, Ellen Morgan’s coming out took a significant turn when on April 14, 1997, DeGeneres appeared on the cover of Time magazine

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with the headline “Yep, I’m gay,” just two weeks before the airing of “The Puppy Episode.” Consequently, the Time headline ushered in a more significant plot twist than many have acknowledged5 such that it represented both a collapsing of the boundary between so-called real-life and onscreen performance, and it spotlighted Ellen the series as a form of political commentary that spoke past the text to public perceptions on issues of sexuality and representation. Needless to say, right-wing organizers reacted as strongly to Ellen DeGeneres’s coming out as they did to Ellen Morgan’s coming out. On April 17, following the Time magazine announcement, such organizers took out a full-page ad in Variety that queried: Could it be Disney and ABC just don’t care what American families think? Could it be ABC didn’t mean it when it told many of our nation’s leaders it would air more family-friendly programming? What else could account for this insult, this slap in the face to America’s families?6 As the reaction preceded the official coming out of the fictional Ellen Morgan, it was apparent that DeGeneres’s confirmation of her own homosexuality was just as problematic, as it blurred the lines between what could have otherwise been considered purely performative and what was now made real through the adorable, girl-next-door appeal of “America’s funny girl.” The show had never enjoyed a particularly large audience, but it had a loyal following. Leading up to “The Puppy Episode” Ellen’s viewership increased significantly, culminating in the record-breaking 40 million viewers for the big night. Although the audience dropped off after the pivotal episode, some viewers remained devoted, specifically the queer community. A great deal of the program’s reception was due to the status of DeGeneres as one of America’s foremost comedians, a characterization that survived the cancellation of Ellen and merciless media scrutiny of her love life over the years following the series. In fact, DeGeneres paved new ground right from the beginning of her career when she was asked to sit next to Johnny Carson after doing stand-up on The Tonight Show. It was the first time Carson had called a woman over after her first appearance on the show. At the time “The Puppy Episode” aired, DeGeneres was already a well-respected comedian and actress throughout Hollywood— demonstrated by the endless list of supportive guest stars7 featured

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on the episode. As will be discussed later, she did not receive the same support from this community in the years following Ellen, indicating the far reach of many layers of homophobia and fear around public representations of sexuality that continue to dominate public ideology. However, DeGeneres’s story does not end on a sad note, as she has returned to center stage with her fabulously witty, playful, and successful Emmy-winning talk show The Ellen DeGeneres Show. Not surprisingly, Ellen had a vast impact on audiences, media outlets, and academic scholarship on television and film. “The Puppy Episode” inspired coming out parties across North America, some sponsored by the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLADD) and Absolut Vodka. Supportive sponsors, including Volkswagen and Absolut, vied for advertisement spots, while others— J. C. Penny and Chrysler—pulled their ads from the episode. Kickstarted by the media frenzy that preceded the episode, both Ellen Morgan and Ellen DeGeneres experienced a great deal of publicity, and although some were critical of the so-termed “song and dance routine”8 that DeGeneres enacted on earlier talk shows, nothing so ground-breakingly queer had ever been done on mainstream television. The majority of newspaper and magazine coverage was supportive, citing the decision to out a lead character as “a landmark decision in the world of television.”9 Stories took on themes of political activism and human rights issues, and detailed the personal impact that the dual coming out had on thousands of gay and lesbian viewers who were grateful for the new role model’s courage.10 Contrary to the positive response of popular media and audiences, academic scholarship surrounding the show took (and continues to take) a much more critical stance. In fact, there appears to be a large disjuncture between the academic response and popular public response, where scholars claim that DeGeneres acted cowardly. Yescavage and Alexander state that: In many ways, the Ellens’ coming out reinforces some very traditional understandings of sexual orientation (it is innate and private, for instance), while avoiding more complicated and provocative questions about the role of sexual behavior in human relationships and identity.11 The same article later asks, “How does one represent lesbianism without depicting sexual activity?”12 It argued that “The Puppy Episode” circumvents any discussion of lesbian desire through overt reference

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to heterosexual sex and instead offers lesbianism as an identity based on the absence of sexual desire for men.13 Although accurate in pointing to the absence of visible lesbian “sex” in “The Puppy Episode,” Yescavage and Alexander problematically equate identity with physical sexual activity, seemingly refusing queer access to those who have not consummated their same-sex desire. Even more problematic is their misinformed and all-too-literal reading of the sex scene that Ellen and her old friend Richard (Steven Eckholdt) share (or rather, do not share). Arguably the campy and over-the-top scene more accurately reveals the laughable conventions of heterosexual sex rather than reinforces their legitimacy; that is, it points to their performative rather than normative quality. The exaggeration is given even more meaning when contrasted with the touchingly earnest scenes that Ellen shares with Susan (Laura Dern), the woman who ultimately propels Ellen to admit her desire for women. Susan Hubert voices similar sentiments regarding the episode’s lack of a political agenda, arguing that “Ellen’s supposedly controversial attempt to push the limits of acceptability actually reinscribes conventional sexual politics.”14 She believes that this reinscription occurs because Ellen Morgan’s sexuality is divorced from a public political sphere and also because Ellen and Susan’s friendship does not become a sexual relationship as a result of Susan’s commitment to her longterm partner. In what feels like a shot in the dark, Hubert claims that this plot line problematically advocates monogamy and reservedly “heterosexual” values such as fidelity, commitment, and responsibility. Representing a controversial and underdeveloped claim at best, Hubert’s discussion of the show belies a trend within academic discussions of Ellen to focus only on the coming out event rather than on the show as a whole. This examination of “The Puppy Episode” as an isolated event negates both the breadth of media attention surrounding the event and the ingeniously queer writing that had characterized the fourth season. From a careful viewing of the series, it was more than obvious that Ellen Morgan had been toying with issues of queer desire in direct relationship to her public identity throughout the entire fourth season. The lack of sexual engagement between Ellen and Susan was, in effect, far from a reinscription of heternormative desire but rather gave audiences a warm and realistic “aha” moment. Ellen Morgan’s own anxiety and discomfort around “fitting in” and “performing” a heterosexual self was finally given space to voice what had been a deafening silence for years.

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Perhaps the most provocative discussion of Ellen takes place in a recent article by Didi Herman where she focuses primarily on the act of “coming out” and its role within queer and greater-than-queer communities, arguing that Ellen portrays coming out as a “dead end” due to its focus on identity in opposition to desire. In accord with criticisms from Yescavage and Alexander, Herman argues that Ellen’s sexuality rests on a “comical, inauthentic past”15 and furthermore that Ellen’s unsuccessful heterosexuality then becomes the closet out of which she must emerge in order to live an authentic life.16 Once again, I would argue that Herman’s distinction between identity and desire problematically polarizes the two as exclusive, and even separable. I am not implying that one’s desire must always and automatically be met with an iteration of identity, but rather I want to draw attention to the fluidity of the terms such that one’s identity is always being reconstituted, and not only by desire but by relationships, locations, and circumstances. Ellen’s proclamation of “gay” identity was not the mere recognition of her absence of desire for men, but rather her realization of her desire for women; her ability to finally fill a “lack” with a possibility that was not previously present due to a deeply ingrained heteronormativity that regulates both identity and desire. In a claim that reinforces the aforementioned tendency of scholars to watch “The Puppy Episode” in isolation from the rest of the series, Herman writes, “The Ellen producers, for various reasons, decided to feature a single coming out episode, not preceded by any form of personal journey usually associated with coming out narratives.”17 Understandably, the episode on its own portrays a rather quick, disjointed, and unexplained narrative of self, but this method of viewing also discredits the carefully crafted and coded references to Ellen’s inability to “fit in” and her search for both the words and the support necessary to identify beyond heterosexuality, especially on prime time television. Although a great deal of academic scholarship surrounding the series, and more specifically the “coming out” episode was negative, a return to the series itself reveals a much more complex and subversive subtext at play. In 1995, long before Ellen’s “puppy” was even a possibility, Joyce Millman of the San Francisco Examiner called Ellen “the Sitcom that Dares Not Speak Its Name.” She wrote that previous heroines of single-woman sitcoms did not “throw off the, um, gender neutral vibe that Ellen Morgan does. . . . Ellen doesn’t make any sense at all, until you view it through the looking glass where the unspoken subtext becomes the main point. Then Ellen is transformed into one of TV’s savviest, funniest, sliest shows.18 In order to sort through the

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events that truly make Ellen a groundbreaking queer text, I now turn to the show itself, first to season four in order to highlight the witty and savvy writing that made the show unapologetically queer, and then to season five, where America’s first lesbian television star refused to be re-closeted and instead broke through the mainstream door of representation and sexuality in the media in ways that 10 years later still qualify Ellen as the most political, radical “gaycom”19 yet to be viewed on public television. THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS: SEASON FOUR, 1996/1997 Although literature surrounding Ellen’s fourth season argued that there was neither a build-up to the critical “Puppy Episode” nor considerable thematic development of the season, season four demonstrated some of the most blatant queer comedy ever aired on prime-time television. In fact, the very first scene of the season opened with Ellen walking into the bathroom in the morning, looking completely disheveled and unkempt. As she looks up into the mirror she sings, “I feel pretty, oh so pretty. I feel pretty, and witty and . . . hey!” the impending “gay” is circumvented as Ellen yells out, realizing that the water to the bathroom tap has been shut off. Later in the same episode Ellen’s new realtor puts on a slide presentation of potential homes where she personifies a little “Ellen” puppet. She holds the puppet and says “this could be you, walking up to your new home, and [Velcro-ing a male puppet to the screen] here’s your husband coming home from work.” Ellen immediately deadpans, “Oh I think that puppet’s in the wrong show.” Whether or not the producers had elected at this point to have Ellen Morgan come out as a lesbian, the writers clearly had decided to go ahead with an overtly queer subtext, thus realizing Millman’s prediction that Ellen was one of TV’s sliest sitcoms. Early on in the season Ellen’s parents tell her that they are splitting up and that they plan to get a divorce, an event that propels Ellen into a season-long subplot of therapy sessions. As Ellen meets with various counselors her sessions serve as a central tool in developing her unease around her own sexuality and also allow for degrees of introspection that would have otherwise been out of place. Most notably, one episode opens with Ellen sitting on the dark leather couch of a therapist’s office while she trails on: Well, um, the first time, I was with a man, and, um, then I was with a woman for a little while, and then I was with a man again and

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then another man, and um let’s see a woman, woman, man, woman, and then another man, and you know lately I’m beginning to think it doesn’t really matter if it’s a man or a woman you know, it’s the person that counts. But, the one thing I know for sure, I can’t keep going from therapist to therapist like this! In a scene that notably “crosses” the boundary between the real and representational while demonstrating the reflexivity between Ellen Morgan and Ellen DeGeneres, Ellen and her friends are sitting around opening Christmas gifts while the credits roll on the December episode, months before the official announcement of the plans for “The Puppy Episode.” Ellen and her friends all give each other “Taste This,” Ellen DeGeneres’s new comedy CD and Ellen Morgan looks up and says “Boy, Ellen DeGeneres, I love her show . . . do you think the rumors are true?” Although the entire season is punctuated by queer references, it is specifically that which is not said that signifies the subtext at play in the series as the queer references haunt the dialogue of the show.20 As a comedic tool, the unsaid, invoked by absence or lack, points to an exciting space of possibility, where the future is undetermined and, in the case of Ellen, the audience is allowed a semblance of agency in creating meaning around the show. As the dominant means of social production in North America, television—and the meanings produced through our “watchings”—constitutes a significant component of our cultural and everyday behaviors. These playful hauntings signify queer cultures and knowledge, and in so doing make them a reality. Clearly the most direct foreshadowing of Ellen’s coming out occurs two episodes before “The Puppy Episode,” where Ellen and her friend Peter (Patrick Bristow), who is out as gay in the show,21 attend a spiritual retreat for self-renewal. In a scene where all attendees of the retreat are sitting around in a circle taking turns speaking to themselves in a mirror, Ellen takes the mirror and makes some glib comments about herself and then passes the mirror off to Peter. Peter looks into the mirror and begins to speak to himself about his painful adolescence when Ellen interrupts, claiming that he has reminded her of something that she forgot to say. She takes the mirror and says, “Ellen, sometimes you didn’t fit in when you were a teenager and sometimes you still feel the same way.” She then passes the mirror back to Peter, who begins to talk about how he is more comfortable giving love than receiving love, and once again Ellen interrupts

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because he has reminded her of something similar. Peter’s growing irritation is evident as he snaps the mirror back to Ellen. Oblivious to his frustration Ellen looks into the mirror and says, “Ellen, sometimes you care too much, but all in all you’re very happy and it’s great that you’re happy!” With an exaggerated air of self-satisfaction she passes the mirror back to Peter, who sneers at Ellen and angrily takes the mirror for the last time to say, “and finally Peter, you’re gay. ELLEN?” The use of the mirror begs for a Lacanian reading, whereby Ellen’s refusal to truly “look” indicates her denial of a queer identity; the lesbian desire that constitutes her subjectivity. The coming out episode aired on April 30, 1997, and high expectations were rewarded with a well-written, hilarious, and thoughtful episode. The opening sequence continued the tongue-and-cheek humor that had characterized the rest of the season as Ellen is getting ready for a date with an old college boyfriend in the back office at the bookstore. Her friends yell to her from the couch because she’s taking too long getting ready: Paige: Joe:

Ellen, are you coming out or not?! Yeah, Ellen! Quite jerkin’ us around and come out already!!

A smirking Ellen pokes her head out from behind the door and responds, “What is the big deal? I’ve got a whole hour!” Although her date with Richard goes well, it is his producer Susan, who happens upon them at the hotel restaurant, who really catches Ellen’s eye. Ellen and Susan immediately connect over shared interests and a synchronous sense of humor. When Ellen refuses Richard’s advances back in his hotel room after dinner, she bumps into Susan in the hall and casually invites herself in for a drink. Ellen and Susan continue to discover shared interests, although the obvious mutual attraction is cut short when Susan assumes their shared interests extend to both of their being gay. Ellen immediately jumps off of the couch the two have snuggled into and adopts an exaggeratedly butch posture, denying the assumption and stammering that “it’s not enough for you to be gay, you’ve got to recruit others.” Poking at worries of the religious right, Susan quips, “I’ll have to call national headquarters and tell them I lost you. Damn, just one more and I would have gotten that toaster oven.” Ellen’s retort—“What is that, gay humor? Because I don’t get it!”—is deeply satisfying given that the audience has been privy to deftly gay humor all season.

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Ellen clumsily exits Susan’s hotel room and bursts back in on Richard in an attempt to affirm her heterosexuality. It is this experience that provides the context for Ellen’s aforementioned relay of the story to her friends the next morning, where she describes an overthe-top sex scene complete with phrases such as “I guess I’m just a sucker for man-woman sex,” “show me the money,” and even an after-sex cigarette (though neither Ellen nor Richard smoke). Later in her therapy session, Ellen tells her therapist (Oprah Winfrey) the real story, which includes an entirely awkward and unsuccessful sex scene that leaves Ellen feeling confused and frustrated. For the first time all season, seriousness takes hold when Ellen tries to explain to her therapist why she did not want to be with Richard: Ellen:

Therapist: Ellen: Therapist: Ellen:

It’s not like I haven’t had boyfriends, just ‘cause I don’t happen to have a boyfriend right now. It’s just that— I’m—I’m choosy. What’s wrong with being choosy? . . . It’s not like I’m looking for perfection, I just want somebody special, somebody—you know—that I “click” with. Has there ever been anyone you felt you clicked with? nods. And what was his name? Susan.

Later in the episode, Ellen anxiously rushes to the airport to confess her feelings to Susan. Tongue-tied and nervous, all she is able to blurt out is “ . . . I did get the joke about the toaster oven,” and in the heartwarming monologue that keeps the audience intimately involved with her emotional roller-coaster, Ellen stutters: This is so hard. I—I think I’ve realized that I am—I am—I can’t even say the word. Why can’t I say the word? I mean what is wrong? Why do I have to be so ashamed? I mean, why can’t I just say the truth, be who I am? I’m thirty-five years old. I’m so afraid to tell people. I just . . . Susan . . . [at this point Ellen leans on the intercom system so that her words reverberate through the entire airport] . . . I’m GAY! The panicked look of joy on Ellen Morgan/Ellen DeGeneres’s face is so heartfelt that we know, as audiences, colleagues, co-stars, and friends that the tears are real and that we have witnessed a change in

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history. For comic relief, the epilogue reveals Melissa Etheridge and Ellen sitting at a table in the bookstore. Ellen is required to sign a number of official-looking documents, confirming her lesbian-ness. Following the signing Etheridge turns to Susan, congratulates her, and hands her a brand-new toaster oven. In the two episodes following “The Puppy Episode,” Ellen comes out to her parents, moves into a new home, and quits her job as manager of the bookstore because her homophobic boss ceased allowing her to babysit his two young daughters. The removal of Ellen’s workplace meant that the recurring storylines that involved Ellen’s friends/staff chatting about their lives at Buy the Book would inevitably be replaced by a more focused storyline revolving around Ellen Morgan’s “new” life as a lesbian. When viewed in concert with the media surrounding the series, the 1996/1997 season of Ellen forces a reading “between-the-lines,” whereupon queer references subversively participate in a conversation with audiences, critics, and the show itself. After an entire season of writing “undercover” queer-savvy audiences were more than curious as to how an openly gay Ellen would negotiate her newfound sexuality. Looking at the developments that take place in season five, it will become apparent that although Ellen the lesbian became an overt text, the politics of having a lesbian on television brought with it a new set of challenges, most notably trying to negotiate a climate that was able to applaud Ellen’s declaration of lesbian identity but unable to accept her material instantiation of that identity. BREAKING THE MIRROR: SEASON FIVE, 1997/1998 Returning with an entirely transformed set, new subject matter, and a much clearer focus, the fifth and final season of Ellen was unapologetically queer. Ellen had quit her job, moved into a new home, and had amazingly lost her insecure and incoherent stuttering(!) Without the typical locale of Buy the Book, the bulk of the scenes take place at Ellen’s new home and Joe’s new coffee shop, called A Cuppa Joe. The supporting cast also experiences a shift, as storylines that spotlighted their lives and loves were all but absent, and instead the show focused almost exclusively on Ellen’s new journey into the world of “gay.” This shift has been both praised and criticized as documented media claims argue that Ellen veered away from its focus as a comedy22 or even that it became “too gay.”23 However, it is impossible

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not to recognize the landmark role of Ellen as the first sitcom on public television to revolve around an out lesbian star. Episode after episode, viewers were exposed to the realistic, everyday experiences of an irresistible queer woman. A number of outside factors greatly influenced the fifth season, most problematically the fact that ABC/Disney slapped a TV-14 rating on the show in October. Any episode that portrayed lesbian sexual content—such as kissing, sex, hand-holding—included an additional parental guidance advisory. In a break from the subtle, comic reactions she carried on in promoting “The Puppy Episode” the year before, DeGeneres began speaking out publicly against the show’s executive team and even threatened to quit the show if the warnings were not lifted.24 One article in particular 25 captured the political bent of the fifth season, specifically the way in which it actively questioned queer representation and durationality on television. McCarthy writes that “the sitcom’s temporal and historical form—its modes of development, disclosure, pedagogy, and institutional referentiality—emerged as the richest, most elastic mode of discourse for this process of negotiation in Ellen’s final season.”26 In accord with this recognition of the intertextuality of Ellen’s fifth season, I briefly explore both the radical content of the series and the show’s “talking back” to the public, network anxieties, and queer criticisms that overrode the show during the 1997/1998 season. With a clear focus and bold writing, the fifth season of Ellen truly became a “Gaycom.”27 In the very first episode, Ellen’s athletic and scantily clad cycling instructor shows obvious interest in her, and she and Spence deliberate over how she should ask her out on a date. (Needless to say, Ellen is unsuccessful and winds up hanging from a cliff by a rope.) Subsequent episodes revolved around the series of “firsts” that Ellen had to overcome: her first date with a woman, her first kiss with a woman, and her having sex with a woman for the first time. It also focused on a series of queer issues, including the never-ending “coming out parade,” whereupon a person who comes out as lesbian or gay must not only proclaim this once to the world, but must come out again and again to new friends, extended family members, co-workers, and colleagues. One episode took a brave look at gay marriage (including criticisms of gay marriage), while others looked at co-parenting, queer subcultures, the politics of queer identity in Hollywood, and workplace homophobia. Arguably, the season endorsed not only a

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queer agenda, but also a decidedly feminist agenda as it also tackled issues of workplace harassment, discrimination against women in the military, and diversity on television. In the episode that deals with Ellen’s insecurities around having sex with a woman for the first time, she has an open and honest conversation with her friends, discussing differences between having sex with women and men, and the levels of experience (and inexperience) that have left Ellen terrified to have sex with Laurie. Although the episode, aptly titled “Like a Virgin,” shows neither the two women in bed together, nor a passionate build-up to sex (the creators would not want it banned from the airwaves), it ends with an uncharacteristically seductive Ellen leading Laurie into the bedroom with a trail of flower petals. Indicative of the competing interests being served, Ellen’s fifth season is punctuated by random episodes that have absolutely nothing to do with Ellen’s sexuality. In a notable “filler” episode, titled “All Ellen, All the Time,” Ellen is hired as the producer of a radio station and ends up securing her own talk radio show by rudely telling people off on-air for an entire morning. Ironically, these “fringe” episodes, which many reviewers and critics have criticized heavily as far too contrived, take on other politically charged and decidedly feminist topics such that in “G.I. Ellen,” Ellen fights to be able to participate as a soldier in the yearly war reenactment even though no women have ever been able to take part. In “All Ellen, All the Time,” the sportscaster at the station constantly harasses Ellen, trying to get her to go out with him. In addition to addressing workplace harassment, the episode gives voice to the phenomenon of the never-ending coming out process. After Ellen tells Joe about Chuck’s harassment, he quips “Why don’t you just tell him you’re gay? I mean—I must hear that twenty to thirty times a week,” to which Ellen responds “I’m tired of having to out myself everywhere I go. I’d like at least one place that I could just be Ellen, instead of the lesbian formerly known as Ellen.” The controversy between Ellen’s writers and the network wear on the show as the season progresses, and although it maintains a great deal of humor, it is not surprising to discover that Ellen’s weekly content is the subject of a full-scale battle, whereupon the network executives and media critics have condemned the show as “too gay” and demanded more plotlines that have nothing to do with Ellen’s sexuality. On the other hand, DeGeneres and the show’s writers struggled to maintain their distinct focus on portraying the everyday experience of a lesbian woman (which they did very well, when able). Further proof of this battle surfaces in growing textual references to the pervasively

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normative standards of television and the tendency of television executives to comply with public expectations and shy away from portraying diverse subjects. Similarly to the queer subtext of season four that kept queer-savvy audiences in the “know,” these references speak to real-life battles staged over the show and the homophobia that expected Ellen to re-closet herself. As Tropiano writes in response to this debate: The concept of something being “too gay” is a troubling one, implying that a show about a gay character can focus too much on same-sex relationships. It is especially troubling when one considers that no show has ever been accused of being ‘too straight’ for obsessing on opposite-sex relationships (which describes 99% of everything on television). How could Ellen have been ‘less gay?’ Be gay every other week? Every fourth episode? The very aspect of the character that was celebrated . . . had suddenly become a liability. It’s almost as if ABC was hoping that after reaping the ratings boost of the coming out episode, both Ellens could simply slip back into the closet.28 As the debates over content and parental advisories became more heated, the dialogue in particular episodes became more and more pointed. Shortly after ABC placed the TV-14 guidelines on the show, an episode aired where Ellen, Laurie, and Laurie’s daughter Holly are sitting on the couch watching television. After Laurie warns Holly about flipping randomly through the channels because she may come across a show that’s not appropriate, Ellen quickly chimes in “oh come on, if there’s something objectionable on, I’m sure there’ll be a warning.” In an episode more overtly targeted at ABC, Ellen helps Paige out for a day by participating in a television focus group. Ellen’s job is to persuade the rest of the participants to approve of Paige’s pitch for a show with a “short cop” lead character. In dialogue that seemingly replaces “gay” with “short,” Ellen and other participants debate about the character: Participant 1 (Emily):

I just prefer characters who are normal. You know what I’m saying?

Ellen:

Emily, what is normal? I mean come on, if we put different characters on TV right now, then twenty years from now our kids won’t think it’s so weird to be different. . . .

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Emily:

You know this show could make being short more acceptable.

Participant 2:

Yeah, and short people on other shows could finally stop hiding and come out of the closet.

Ellen:

. . . or the cupboard!

Later, when Paige’s boss trashes the idea, she dejectedly tells Ellen that she has to comply with his wishes, but Ellen parallels her (Ellen DeGeneres’s) real-life struggle when she passionately coaxes Paige to fight for diversity on television. In one of the most entertaining episodes of the season, Ellen winds up as the personal assistant to Emma Thompson (played by Emma Thompson). After Ellen spies Emma in a passionate kiss with another woman at a party, she tells Emma that she is gay in hopes of prying the truth out of her. Emma replies, “Oh what a coincidence, I have another friend Ellen who’s gay, perhaps you know her?” both alluding to the real-life Ellen DeGeneres and covering her discomfort with Ellen’s sudden proclamation. After admitting that she is, in fact, a lesbian, Ellen persuades Emma to come out at an upcoming awards gala that is honoring her with a lifetime achievement award. Emma reflexively stutters “on, on national TV?” With absolute irony, Ellen replies, “It’s not going to hurt your career, I mean you’re an actress, that’s not even a real job.” Emma experiences a moment of bravado, and declares that she will come out at the gala, and on the night in question she shoots back a few stiff drinks and says, “Let’s go out and terrify some Baptists!” Here she was speaking directly to Southern Baptists who were putting pressure on ABC/Disney to cancel the show at the time.29 Ellen DeGeneres’s own transformation from the self-professed “girl next door” who was “just the same Ellen”30 to someone who publicly called ABC on its homophobia when the show was finally cancelled was well-documented in aforementioned episodes, as scenes spoke directly to the growing anxieties and the reaction to the show’s commitment to gay comedy. In an interview with Diane Sawyer after the series was cancelled, Ellen responded to this change, saying “I grew up. [In earlier interviews] I didn’t even realize the internal homophobia and the shame that I was still dealing with.”31 This reflexive use of the Ellen script to chastise the heteronormativity of public television again collapses the identities of Ellen Morgan and Ellen DeGeneres and crosses the boundary between the fictive and the real, effectively

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displaying that the media does much more than merely entertain, but rather constructs, directs, and provokes the real-life scripts we imagine are somehow “authentic.” Definitive reasons for the cancellation of the series were never officially determined, although low ratings played a significant role. Of note is that these low ratings were not independent of the battle over parental advisories and the network’s underpromotion of the show throughout the season.32 Despite these factors, the network’s statement on the cancellation of Ellen was that “as the show became more politicized and issue-oriented, it became less funny and audiences noticed.”33 In a reading between the lines, Tropiano replies that this means that “because the material was more politicized (translation: gay) and issue-oriented (translation: gay), it became less funny (translation: too gay).”34 Clearly, public television was not ready for the type of transformative television that DeGeneres and her writers were more than capable of delivering.

CONCLUSIONS: TEN YEARS LATER AND HAVE WE REASON TO CELEBRATE? Ellen as gay was not solely seen and understood through the eyes of heterosexuals eager to counter their own fears. The series implicated Ellen in a larger world of gay people, with other gay characters, lovers, gay spaces, and even gay in-jokes. In other words, the series decentered heterosexuality and centered homosexuality, now no longer satisfied with being the object of heterosexual curiosity.35 So where does this leave us? More than a decade after the airing of “The Puppy Episode,” gay and lesbian characters on public television are much more plentiful, especially on networks that target niche audiences such as HBO, Showcase, and Showtime. Two full-scale queer dramas—Queer as Folk and The L Word, both on Showtime/Showcase— have predominantly gay and lesbian characters and draw in huge audiences, gay and straight. The home improvement/decorating empire has both capitalized on and created the imaginary Queer Eye,36 which situates gay men at the center of fashion and style, but still refuses them the right to hang a marriage certificate on their stylish walls. Ellen is accurately credited with paving the way for these programs, especially for the long-running gaycom Will & Grace, and

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yet deeper inspection reveals that public television has not come as far as one might expect. Queer characters still predominantly occupy supporting and underdeveloped or inconsequential roles, and their relationships are either read through a heteronormative lens or are entirely absent. In the case of Kerry Weaver (Laura Innes), who came out as a lesbian on ER in 2001, “the matrix of narrative support for her is so exiguous that the lesbian plot can be dropped for a season at a time without disturbing the show’s illusion of continuity.” 37 Even the widely acclaimed Will & Grace, which has two out gay male characters, is subject to critical scholarship that documents the underlying heteronormativity that relies on the heterosexual coupling of the gay man/ straight woman dyad: Will Truman (Eric McCormack) and Grace Adler (Debra Messing). As Karin Quimby writes: The possibility of Will and Grace’s eventual coupling is precisely what makes the contradictions and complexities of their queer relationship coherent to a traditional straight-identified audience, and the gay content of the show permissible on prime-time American television.38 To its credit, Will & Grace brought gay male sexuality and the gay references present in earlier seasons of Ellen into the public consciousness, such that audiences everywhere “got” and thoroughly enjoyed the campy, performative, and playful nature of the series. More than any other show, however, the long-standing success of Will & Grace pointed to the failure of Ellen as well as to the character that was lost with its cancellation: the onscreen lesbian. Public television has yet to portray another lesbian lead character whose identity was an important component to the series. The only exception was The Ellen Show, which ran from 2000 to 2001, in which Ellen DeGeneres played Ellen Richmond, an openly lesbian computer executive who returns to live in her hometown. Though the show was well-received by critics, it never gained a large following. Also, although Ellen was out, her sex-life was incidental and the asexual Ellen Morgan of early Ellen seasons returned to crack jokes and chat with her zany friends. While gay male supporting cast members were showing up in multitudes,39 lesbians experienced a significant drop, and what is worse, no one seemed to notice their absence. In fact, from a wealth of very recent surveys of the history of queer television in North America,40

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not one text thought it was problematic that lesbians were significantly lacking from public television. This lack aligns with cultural criticisms of both queer theory and the gay rights movement as being dominated by gay men and signals the ongoing need to critique this absence and push for more representation of women. This also adds reason to why reactions to Ellen were so divided such that although audiences were in need of, and seemingly ready for, queer representation on television, they were still more accommodating of the laughable identities of the flamboyant Jack (Sean Hayes) and the asexually straight Will on Will & Grace than the “authenticity” of Ellen Morgan’s everyday life as a lesbian. In a throwback to sexist norms of much earlier television programming, the producers of Showtime’s The L Word—the only post-Ellen lesbian-driven drama—admit to consciously cultivating crossover appeal by buying into male-driven fantasies of lesbian sex in order to boost ratings. 41 Aligning with Walters’s comment about Ellen’s “decentering of heterosexuality, and centering of homosexuality,”42 the producers of The L Word allowed the lesbian identities and desire to remain the “object of heterosexual curiosity.” In contrast, the five-year-long Showtime series, Queer as Folk, portrayed the lives—although mainly the sex lives—of a community of gay men, and was unapologetically targeted at a gay male audience. With a political agenda that included an HIV-positive character, a trip to Canada for a marriage ceremony, and a dreadful adoption scandal between the two lesbian characters on the show and their sperm donor, Queer as Folk spoke directly to queer audiences and refused to make the show palatable for straight consumption. Given these dynamics surrounding lesbians and gay men on television, it is clear that queer women are still problematic for mainstream audiences in ways that queer men, surprisingly, are not.43 On a more positive note, however, Ellen DeGeneres has recently reclaimed her position as “America’s favorite comedian” through her multi-Emmy winning daytime talk show, The Ellen DeGeneres Show. What is more, at the time I was researching this article, DeGeneres took the stage as the only out queer person (and only the second woman ever) to host the Academy Awards, just two months before the tenth anniversary of “The Puppy Episode.” As The Advocate’s interview with DeGeneres about the event prefaces, “Think of it: On February 25, on televisions around the globe, a handsome, out American lesbian sporting a tuxedo will be the face of the Oscars, the mother of all awards shows, the biggest night in the entertainment universe.

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And Ellen will be making history—again.”44 The interview further explores the significance of the event, and once again the boundary between DeGeneres and all of her television personalities becomes one and the same as Sid Ganis, president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, states that “Ellen has gotten to a place now where audiences know her, not a character she’s playing. Audiences adore her . . . it gets down to ‘This is who I am,’ and . . . she portrays who she is to the audience.”45 Although lesbians have not “made it big” on the small screen, Ellen DeGeneres has, in fact, managed to press through the event that almost ruined her career. Upon reflection the repetitive and incestuous program titles—Ellen, The Ellen Show, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, and the title of Ellen’s mock-documentary styled season finale: Ellen: A Hollywood Tribute46—have hinted all along that the “Ellen” at the center was much more than a performance, much more than merely a script. The character had crossed public and private, fiction and reality all along, forcing audiences to grapple with sexuality in ways that had not previously been attempted and have yet to be repeated. The intertextual dialogue between the show and the public, brazenly situated Ellen DeGeneres among the most innovative and significant media icons of this era, and one only hopes that “The Puppy Episode’s twentieth anniversary will herald a diversity of queer representation on television: Who’s got a lesbian style? Who’s got a lesbian smile? Who’s happy and healthy and gay, gay, gay? It’s Ellen!47 NOTES 1. Karen Yescavage and Jonathon Alexander, “What Do You Call a Lesbian Who’s Only Slept with Men? Answer: Ellen Morgan. Deconstructing the Lesbian Identities of Ellen Morgan and Ellen DeGeneres,” in Lesbian Sex Scandals: Sexual Practices, Identities, and Politics, ed. Dawn Atkins, 21–32 (New York: Harrington Park Press, 1999). 2. Steven Capsuto, Alternate Channels: The Uncensored Story of Gay and Lesbian Images on Radio and Television (New York: Ballantine Books, 2000). 3. Jefferson Graham, “Ellen Happy with Women at Helm,” USA Weekend, December 19, 1995. 4. As quoted in Suzanna Walters, All the Rage: The Story of Gay Visibility in America (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2001), xv.

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5. See Didi Herman, “ ‘I’m Gay’: Declarations and Desire on Prime-Time TV,” Sexualities 8 (2005): 7–29; and Susan Hubert, “What’s Wrong with This Picture? The Politics of Ellen’s Coming Out Party,” Journal of Popular Culture, 33, no. 2 (1999): 31–36. 6. From “America’s Families Deserve Better!” (Advertisement), Variety, April 17, 1997, 322. 7. The guest cast included Melissa Etheridge, Billy Bob Thornton, k. d. lang, Gina Gershon, Demi Moore, Oprah Winfrey, Dwight Yoakam, and Laura Dern: a wide collection of queer and queer-friendly Hollywood names. 8. Camille Paglia, as quoted in Ginia Bellafante, “Looking for an Out,” Time, October 7, 1996, 91. 9. “Problems & Questions Loom Large if DeGeneres’ ‘Ellen’ Comes Out,” Daily News, September 16, 1996, n.p. 10. One such letter was read aloud by Kathy Najimi at Ellen DeGeneres’s acceptance speech for the Creative Integrity Award from the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center, March 10, 1998. The ceremony was broadcast by ABC-TV as Primetime Live, May 6, 1998, as “Ellen: Uncensored.” 11. Yescavage & Alexander, 23. 12. Ibid., 24. 13. Ibid., 25. 14. Hubert, 31. 15. Herman, 13. 16. Ibid., 15. 17. Ibid., 14. 18. Joyce Millman, as quoted in Steven Capsuto, Alternate Channels: The Uncensored Story of Gay and Lesbian Images on Radio and Television (New York: Ballantine Books, 2000), 381. 19. Stephen Tropiano defines “gaycom” as: (1) a situation comedy featuring one or more gay or lesbian characters involved in humorous and embarrassing situations; (2) a situation comedy that doesn’t reduce gays and lesbians to second-class citizens. See Stephen Tropiano, The Prime Time Closet: A History of Gays and Lesbians on TV (New York: Applause Theatre & Cinema Books, 2002), 245. 20. For example, most sessions with her therapists involve their asking questions about the role that men, or relationships, play in her life. These queries are usually met with rambling, stuttering, or all-out screaming as Ellen balks from the questions. In one scene where Ellen actually begins to answer with “the truth is, I’m not in a relationship, I’m not, and it’s not really that I’m not interested, it’s just that lately I’ve begun to question” at which point her therapist falls asleep, thus halting any further disclosure. 21. Peter and his partner Barrett were introduced in the third season and experienced a noticeable increase in airtime in the fourth season. Throughout the season, Peter’s increasing presence serves as a signifier of Ellen’s undefined sexuality as well as a gauge of audience reactions to homosexual content.

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22. See Capsuto, 2000; Suzanna Walters, All the Rage: The Story of Gay Visibility in America (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2001); and Ron Becker, Gay TV and Straight America (London: Rutgers University Press, 2006). 23. As cited in Tropiano, 2002, 248–249. 24. See Becker, 2006. 25. Anna McCarthy, “Ellen: Making Queer Television History,” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 7, no. 4 (2001): 593–620. 26. Ibid., 602. 27. See endnote 20. 28. Tropiano, 249. 29. See Becker, 2006. 30. Variations of this line were used a number of times in Ellen, as well as cited in newspapers and magazines, and Ellen’s seemingly apolitical stance at the time has received significant criticism from scholars: Herman, 2005; Yescavage & Alexander, 1999; Hubert, 1999; and Walters, 2001. 31. As quoted in Walters, 93. 32. Tropiano (2002). 33. Bloomberg, as cited in Tropiano, 248. 34. Tropiano, 249. 35. Walters, 105. 36. For example, shows such as Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Designer Guys/Design Rivals (Canadian) and Million Pound Property Experiment (United Kingdom) all hinge upon the savvy style of their gay male stars. 37. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, “Foreword: The Letter ‘L,’ ” In Reading the L Word: Outing Contemporary Television, ed. K. Akass and J. McCabe (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2006), xxii. 38. Karin Quimby, “Will & Grace: Negotiating (Gay) Marriage on PrimeTime Television,” Journal of Popular Culture, 38, no. 4 (2005): 719. 39. Jack McPhee on Dawson’s Creek, Jack and Will on Will & Grace, Carter Heywood on Spin City, David Fischer on Six Feet Under, the closeted Josh on Veronica’s Closet. 40. Tropiano, 2002; James. R. Keller, Queer (Un)friendly Film and Television (London: McFarland and Company, 2002); Becker, 2006; Capsuto, 2000; and Walters, 2001. 41. Brian Lowry, “Showtime Skeds Sex in the Company of Women,” Variety, January 12, 2004, 52; and Janet McCabe and Kim Akass, Preface, Reading the L Word: Outing Contemporary Television (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2006). 42. Walters, 105. 43. The absence of lesbians on television is a topic that warrants further consideration, which I am unable to undertake here. I hope to examine this further in the future, including the differences in representation. 44. Anne Stockwell, “All Eyes on Ellen,” The Advocate, February 27, 2007, 38.

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45. As quoted in Stockwell, 40. 46. This hour-long special aired in April 1998 and parodied a documentary giving tribute to Ellen DeGeneres’s lifetime of comedy, seemingly situating her at the center of television. It was not exceptionally entertaining, and interestingly the queer subtext, although present, was lost on the viewer because there was no studio audience echoing back and haunting the text with the “knowing” applause discussed earlier. 47. This was the theme song used on the retrospective final episode of Ellen in 1998. The song was reminiscent of an old 1950s jingle.

REFERENCES Becker, Ron. Gay TV and Straight America. London: Rutgers University Press, 2006. Bellafante, Ginia. “Looking for an Out.” Time, October 7, 1996, 90–91. Capsuto, Steven. Alternate Channels: The Uncensored Story of Gay and Lesbian Images on Radio and Television. New York: Ballantine Books, 2000. Doty, Alexander. Making Things Perfectly Queer: Interpreting Mass Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993. Graham, Jefferson. “Ellen Happy with Women at Helm.” USA Weekend, December 19, 1995. Herman, Didi. “ ‘I’m Gay’: Declarations and Desire on Prime-Time TV.” Sexualities, 8 (2005): 7–29. Hubert, Susan. “What’s Wrong with This Picture? The Politics of Ellen’s Coming Out Party.” Journal of Popular Culture, 33, no. 2: 31–36. Keller, James R. Queer (Un)friendly Film and Television. London: McFarland and Company, 2002. Kosofsky Sedgwick, Eve. “Foreword: The Letter ‘L.’ ” In Reading the L Word: Outing Contemporary Television, edited by K. Akass and J. McCabe, xix–xxiv. London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2006. Lowry, Brian. “Showtime Skeds Sex in the Company of Women.” Variety, January 12, 2004, 52. McCabe, Janet, and Kim Akass. Reading the L Word: Outing Contemporary Television. London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2006. McCarthy, Anna. “Ellen: Making Queer Television History.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 7, no. 4 (2001): 593–620. “Problems & Questions Loom Large if DeGeneres’ ‘Ellen’ Comes Out.” Daily News, September 16, 1996. Quimby, Karin. “Will & Grace: Negotiating (Gay) Marriage on Prime-Time Television.” Journal of Popular Culture, 38, no. 4 (2005): 713–731. Shugar, Dara R. “To(o) Queer or Not? Queer Theory, Lesbian Community, and the Functions of Sexual Identities.” In Lesbian Sex Scandals: Sexual Practices, Identities, and Politics, edited by Dawn Atkins, 11–20. New York: Harrington Park Press, 1999.

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Stockwell, Anne. “All Eyes on Ellen.” The Advocate, February 27, 2007, 38–44. Tropiano, Steven. The Prime Time Closet: A History of Gays and Lesbians on TV. New York: Applause Theatre & Cinema Books, 2002. Walters, Suzanna. All the Rage: The Story of Gay Visibility in America. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2001. Yescavage, Karen, and Jonathon Alexander. “What Do You Call a Lesbian Who’s Only Slept with Men? Answer: Ellen Morgan. Deconstructing the Lesbian Identities of Ellen Morgan and Ellen DeGeneres.” In Lesbian Sex Scandals: Sexual Practices, Identities, and Politics, edited by Dawn Atkins, 21–32. New York: Harrington Park Press, 1999.

Chapter 2

“There’s Nowt So Queer as Folk” (Nor the Spaces They Seek) Mark John Isola

Queering the sense of place as it has been deployed in twentiethcentury gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer (GLBTQ) American and British narratives may allow for a more productive interpretation of content, and as such will permit content to be parsed in terms of spatial context. This queering can be accomplished by informing the spatiality and its intersecting acts of sexuality with the cultural, chronological, and geographic context surrounding it. This is a particularly important practice in the analysis of queer spaces, particularly homosexual spaces, given how time, place, and culture have greatly proscribed and prescribed same-sex physical and emotional relations. For indeed, many modish literary and cultural theories contend that such a context essentially negates or creates the possibility of homosexuality. The significance of context in the understanding of queer spaces can be demonstrated through a cursory consideration of the “tea room,” as it simultaneously signifies a range of queer and non-queer spaces from a heteronormative to a woman-only to a male-only space. Tea rooms do not offer the same trade in all times and places, and in order to understand the topography of a particular tea room, much less know how to dress for it, it is helpful to know something about the cultural, chronologic, and geographic context surrounding it. For example, is the tea room in question the Boston Taj, the Glasgow

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Willow, or the Cambridge Building four-second floor Men’s Room? These three tea rooms read very differently as queer and non-queer spaces, especially since they alternate between being mixed and unisex locations. Moreover, these three spaces differ greatly as sexual spaces, and to know how to comport oneself in the Cambridge tea room under discussion, it is essential to know whether the Cambridge in question is the British or the American and whether it is the Cambridge of the late nineteenth century or last Wednesday at 2:45 P.M. This parsing of the playful reference to Cambridge intentionally draws specific attention to the potential differences in queer spatiality between Britain and America. The failure to take these differences into account conflates the temporal, cultural, and geographic variances between the two countries, and this conflation homogenizes the interpretation of queer spaces by removing the particularities of spatial context. A comparative analysis of the sense of place in the British and American versions of Queer as Folk (QAF) suggests there are notable differences between the two cultures when it comes to queer spaces, particularly when it comes to the imaginative construction of a libratory gay space.1 Both the British and the American versions resolve the marginal social condition of the gay character by projecting this subjectivity onto a queer space where s/he may exist without proscription. In the absence of actual libratory spaces in both cultures, the gay subject is projected into this queer space in order to negotiate the cultural complication of homosexuality. In this similar narrative negotiation, however, there is an aesthetic and symbolic variance that can be understood as the degree of difference between a frontier and a liminal space, which is akin to the difference between terra firma and terra incognita. The British version concludes by transporting its two protagonists, Neil and Stuart, to the American Southwest, where they end up traveling as picaresque outlaws. Having literally run afoul of the law in Britain, they have achieved a criminal status. The props and costumes, which set Neil and Stuart wearing sunglasses and brandishing a gun, symbolically continues this idea. The projection of Neil and Stuart to the frontier truck stop is more a mythic construct than an invocation of the actual geographic location, and this interpretation is suggested by their astral transfer to the States. With this narrative device, the characters are projected into a queer space beyond the national borders of England, a space where they could, as Neil explains to Stuart, “dematerialize, step out, and find a new planet.”2 The truck strop

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functions as a simulacrum of the American West; however, there is something of the terra firma about this particular simulation, as the visual narrative specifically locates the duo on Route 15 West somewhere between Phoenix and Tucson. The implausibility behind this exact geography does not negate the narrative’s investment in specifically constructing a real yet idealized location. Moreover, it can be seen to further queer the queer space it constructs by underscoring the narrative’s investment in subverting a realistic representation of the geography. Although Stuart had originally planned to make his escape to London, Vince convinces him otherwise by containing Britain’s largest metropolitan area as being a place for juveniles. Therefore, the American “frontier” comes to serve as the location for Stuart and Vince’s adult queer departure. This construction suggests the British continue to read America as an ascendant culture that is decidedly closer to the edge of civilization, thereby signifying it as a queer geography in the sense it is exotic and beyond the domestic and familiar cultural and national boundaries of Britain. The American West can still function as a frontier location for those located east or otherwise outside the States. However, stateside, it failed to authentically signify as a frontier location by the end of the twentieth century, for by this time America’s westward expansion had been achieved and its expansionistic ideologies had long since redirected their energies from building the garden to maintaining it. By the 1999 premiere of QAF-UK (Queer as Folk in Britain), America was a century and a half away from the statehood of California and nearly as distant from the completion of the transcontinental railroad. Both events marked a significant change, if not loss, in the American symbolic economy of frontiers, for the West Coast ceased to authentically signify as an American frontier once the 1869 transcontinental railroad reduced the westward journey from a mythic voyage to a weeklong trip. The loss of this symbolic value was realized over time, and it was eventually mourned in the American literary tradition, particularly as this exhaustion impacted the conception of the American Dream, and its obituary was perhaps most aptly written in Nathanael West’s 1939 The Day of the Locust. However, the West Coat was evacuated of its symbolic potential significantly earlier for queer Americans, and this evacuation of meaning served as a fulcrum from which there emerged an embryonic modern gay American literary aesthetic. Having reached the new frontier, despite the rapid development of the urban center and the safe enclave of its bohemian subculture, the

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late nineteenth-century American male, who expressed a male-tomale desire exceeding friendship, found no room for Steve in the American garden. This awareness is literally and figuratively represented by Charles Warren Stoddard’s 1903 novel For the Pleasure of His Company: An Affair of the Misty City. Stoddard’s novel, which Thomas Yingling claims offers the first gay American protagonist, figures highly in tracing the exhaustion of the frontier ideology in the American authorial imagination, particularly for gay American narrative production.3 Stoddard’s novel obliquely explores its protagonist Paul Clitheroe as he struggles to survive economically and existentially beneath the social and sexual strictures of America’s Manifest Destiny.4 The novel’s narrative use of the wording manifest destiny when a non-gender normative male and female directly reference this concept in relation to the American response to the “girl-boy” and “boy-girl” and how such conceptions factor in the hierarchy of economic power and personal freedom, supports this assertion. Given the time and place of its setting, as well as its writing, Stoddard’s novel resolves Clitheroe’s otherwise seemingly irresolvable narrative complications by setting him afloat in a canoe with friendly South Sea islanders. With this narrative device, Stoddard’s deploys a problematic primitivism, which I explore in other writings, but to the point here, Stoddard’s narrative resolution constructs a watery terra incognita for the purposes of conflict resolution. The lack of a legitimate stateside frontier upon which to project Clitheroe for purposes of narrative resolution gave rise to Stoddard’s tropic deployment of water to negotiate the cultural complication of a male-to-male desire in America, and this formation follows what can be traced as a larger American literary impulse. Leslie Fiedler was the frontrunner in observing American literature’s reliance upon a tropic deployment of water to construct a queer liminal space. He offered this insight in his infamous essay “Come Back to the Raft Ag’in, Huck Honey!”: Nature undefiled—this is the inevitable setting of the Sacred Marriage of males. Ishmael and Queequeg, arm in arm, about to ship out, Huck and Jim swimming beside the raft in the peaceful flux of the Mississippi—here it is the motion of water which completes the syndrome, the American dream of isolation afloat. The notion of the Negro as the unblemished bride blends with the myth of running away to sea, of running the great river down to the sea. The immensity of water defines a loneliness that

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demands love; its strangeness symbolizes the disavowal of the conventional that makes possible all versions of love.5 Fielder’s critical insight, which also detects a problematic primitivism, contrasts the pastoral impulse underlying the British version’s western frontier projection, and this may well mark a primary distinction in the construction of queer spatiality between the British and American cultures. The syndrome Fielder detects is male-to-male desire, and the use of a watery poetics to express this proscribed desire constructs a liminal space for male desire in America. There is a significant tradition of American writers deploying water as a narrative device to express male-to-male desire, if not something akin to contemporary homosexuality. This tradition runs from Herman Melville to Walt Whitman to Charles Warren Stoddard, not to mention the tradition’s intertextual appearance in the paintings of Thomas Eakins. This tradition can be detected as late as Annie Proulx’s novella Brokeback Mountain. The exhaustion of Western frontier symbology in the American imagination served as the fulcrum for the concurrent narrative deployment of water to construct a queer space for a gay subjectivity. From terra firma to terra incognita, the closing of the American Western frontier forced American literary frontier projections further west, and this required a journey into and over water. This invocation of water marks a distinction between British and American constructions of queer spaces, and this difference can be detected in the American version of QAF. The American version opens with a familiar journey motif for its newbie character. The camera zooms in on Justin’s feet as he takes the requisite first step toward gayness, or in this case Babylon, a gay club in the gay part of town.6 The close-up catches the visual detail of Justin stepping into and over a puddle of water. The character’s bildungsroman has begun, and it is metaphorically represented through the conventional trope of water to signify a journey, particularly a journey to a distant and foreign land. The presence of water in this scene constitutes the motion Fiedler identifies, and through this motion the space of Babylon is queered. Unable to envision a geographic projection more freeing than its own national setting, the American version of QAF constructs a queer space in the metropole to position Babylon as an oasis in an otherwise arid topography. For all intents and purposes, the Babylon in the American version of QAF is as much a dance club in New York’s Greenwich Village as it is San Francisco’s Castro, for even the

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westernmost of these locations continues to serve as an important sanctuary, yet not an impervious space when it comes to the reach of America’s hegemony surrounding gender, sex, and sexuality. Here, it is the motion of water that constitutes this Western Babylon as a queer space. Living at the exhausted edge of the world’s last exhaustible frontier, at least as such has been ideologically established and discursively deployed in the western tradition—specifically in America’s rendition of this tradition—the fulcrum for the construction of queer spaces bifurcates between the impulse of frontier projection and a liminal construction, and something of the syndrome Fiedler identified can be detected in this water imagery. The American version of QAF continues its investment in a water motif that nearly framed the series five-year run. The DVD extras from the final season contain a scene that did not make it into the series’ final episode. In this deleted scene, titled “The New Kid on the Block,” a new newbie character approaches Babylon. The scene, which reads as part of the series’ concluding montage, reprises Justin’s first step toward Babylon. The camera pans from the newbie and centers on a restored Babylon (this is, after the bombing of the club in the final season), complete with new brightly lit panels of beaded water fronting its facade. The camera then zooms in on the newbie’s feet to capture him stepping into and over a puddle of water, as his gay Bildungsroman begins. As the anthemic voice of Heather Small soundtracks this scene, the motion of water reconstitutes the bombed out space of the nightclub by restoring it as a fluid space that survives to sustain the incoming newbie. The newbie may enter a room apart from his fellow countrymen, but it is not the location of the exile, refugee, or even the immigrant who finds him/herself having to construct the soughtafter version of self in a new country. This suggests something of the contemporary containment of the American gay subjectivity, as America fails to imagine—or cares to construct—an actual topography which holds more promise for freedom than its own national setting, and it speaks to the imperative as late as the American version of QAF for the continued queering of domestic spaces. Perhaps further inquiry into the queerness of space will reveal the limits of such theoretical endeavors, as they succeed or fail to meet the representational and presentational needs of the broader spectrum of the GLBTQ range of subject positions. Something of this limit is suggested by Melanie and Lyndsay’s move to Toronto. For despite the impending promise of the November 18, 2003, Goodridge vs.

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Department of Health ruling and its actualization with the issuance of the first legal state marriage certificates in American history on May 17, 2004, the final episode of the American version of QAF, which premiered as late as August 7, 2005, fails to envision or even gesture to a development in America that comes very close to what Melanie and Lyndsay sought through their expatriation. Perhaps the shows investment in gay male separatist politics, which includes the separatist impulse regarding gay marriage, as evidenced by Brian and Justin’s canceling their wedding, negates the narrative’s ability to represent this option from other subject positions within the gay as well as the rest of the GLBTQ spectrum. A sustained interrogation of this slender observation, as it resonates or not with other texts, may productively reveal a further difference in queer spaces. This possibility portends well for the potential behind the consideration of all the multitudinous contexts that surround the intersection of sexuality and queer spatiality. Establishing a distinction between the American and British sense of queer space is an important analytic, which if lost threatens to obfuscate the consideration of national cultural differences. Such a problem can be evidenced in Claude Summers’s Gay Fictions: Wilde to Stonewall; Studies in a Male Homosexual Literary Tradition.7 Despite the significant depth and breadth of this contribution to gay studies, the concerns of spatial context risk being obfuscated by the analytic trajectory of Summers’s approach to modern gay fiction, particularly as it positions Oscar Wilde as a starting point for this tradition. Perhaps this is best evidenced when Summers asserts he will focus upon “a particular tradition of fictional representation of gay males in twentieth-century Anglo-American literature.”8 Summers’s thesis represents a problematic tradition in reading gay fiction and demonstrates how—even as late as 1990—Wilde or other emblems of Britain are used as the primary lens for reading gay literature everywhere. As the hyphenation in Summers’s formation indicates, such an approach conflates the specific cultural concerns of Britain and America and homogenizes gay fiction by removing its context. This Anglo-centering threatens to obscure the particularities of queer narratives as they were crafted by particular voices in particular rooms. Something of this problem also appears in the approach to Annie Proulx’s Brokeback Mountain. For as much as Shakespeare’s green world may appear to help open Proulx’s text, Shakespeare’s pastoralism is as unique to his time and place as Theocritus and Virgil’s was to their time and place. Reading this tradition as an uninterrupted continuity risks the homogenizing application of a metanarrative and threatens to neglect the significance of its discontinuities. A rigorous engagement

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with the cultural, chronological, and geographic context surrounding the intersection of sexuality and spatiality reconstitutes the particular structure and function of these queer spaces. As Michel de Certeau points out, cultural topography has as much to do with dwelling in spaces as it has to do with designing them.9 In this way, de Certeau points toward an understanding of cultural place as it is transformed into a social space. This approach reconciles the ideals of cultural planning with the reality of social practice, and it underscores the essential nature of a context by which to understand cultural ideals and social realities. The apt detection and interpretation of queer spaces is highly dependent upon the particular cultural ideals and social practices that construct them, for as Raymond Williams has noted, the idea of place may very well be divorced from the real practice within it.10 NOTES 1. Russell T. Davies’s Queer as Folk premiered as an eight-episode series in Britain in 1999. The premiere season was followed by a two-hour movie sequel in 2000. Later that same year, the pay cable channel Showtime premiered the first episode of the American version, which ran as an annual series for the next five years: Queer as Folk: Series 2, DVD, directed by Menhaj Huda (1999; San Jose, CA: Wolfe Video, 2001). 2. Ibid. 3. Thomas Yingling, “For the Pleasure of His Company,” American Literary Realism, 21, no. 3 (1989): 91–93. 4. Charles Warren Stoddard, For the Pleasure of His Company: An Affair of the Misty City (San Francisco: Gay Sunshine Press, 1987). 5. Leslie Fiedler, A Fiedler Reader (New York: Stein, 1977), 9. 6. Queer as Folk: The Complete Series, DVD, directed by Michael DeCarlo, et. al. (2000–2005; New York, NY: Showtime Networks, 2007). 7. Claude Summers, Gay Fictions: Wilde to Stonewall; Studies in a Male Homosexual Literary Tradition (New York: Continuum, 1990). 8. Ibid., 11. 9. Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1984). 10. Raymond Williams, The Country and the City (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973).

REFERENCES de Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. Fiedler, Leslie. A Fiedler Reader. New York: Stein, 1977.

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Queer as Folk: Series 2. DVD. Directed by Menhaj Huda. 1999; San Jose, CA: Wolfe Video, 2001. Queer as Folk: The Complete Series. DVD. Directed by Michael DeCarlo, et al., 2000–2005; New York City, NY: Showtime Networks, 2007. Stoddard, Charles. For the Pleasure of His Company: An Affair of the Misty City. San Francisco: Gay Sunshine Press, 1987. Summers, Claude. Gay Fictions: Wilde to Stonewall; Studies in a Male Homosexual Literary Tradition. New York: Continuum, 1990. Williams, Raymond. The Country and the City. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973. Yingling, Thomas. “For the Pleasure of His Company.” American Literary Realism 21, no. 3 (1989): 91–93.

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Chapter 3

After Noah’s Arc: Where Do We Go from Here? Michael Johnson Jr.

Noah’s Arc is an American cable television dramedy (drama/comedy) that chronicles the lives of four gay African-American friends in Los Angeles. Noah’s Arc premiered on October 19, 2005, on the Logo television network and became Logo’s most popular program. From its inception, the program was well received at film festivals and independent circuits, and these screenings eventually resulted in the Logo channel running the series for an initial season and renewing for an additional season. Over the course of two seasons Noah’s Arc characters Noah, Chance, Alex, and Ricky all struggle with a variety of issues that include dating, marriage, HIV/AIDS awareness, infidelity, sexual curiosity, promiscuity, homophobia, gay bashing, and parenthood while simultaneously attempting to build careers and “search for Mr. Right.” At the conclusion of the second season Logo chose not to renew the series, and this decision was widely criticized by many in the African-American gay community as indicative of the Logo network’s inability or unwillingness to diversify its programming. Responding to this criticism, Lisa Sherman, Logo’s senior vice president and general manager, noted: I will tell you that the audience just flipped over “Noah.” They had a Web write-in campaign trying to advocate for a green light for season two. We were flooded with e-mails and phone calls.

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For our first time out for a scripted show, we were thrilled. (Lisotta 2006) Unquestionably Noah’s Arc is a “one-of-a-kind groundbreaking original series” because of its gritty, realistic representation of gay African-American men’s lives. As a first of its kind this show requires close scrutiny and analysis due to the visibility that it affords its gay African-American characters and, more importantly, to closely examine the content of the messages it communicates both about and to queer ethnic communities in the United States. This chapter argues that while Noah’s Arc is successful in elevating the visibility of Latino and African-American gay men, it ultimately fails to acknowledge the complex, sometimes contradictory messages embodied in its characters and plot about ethnicity, same-sex male desire, and masculinity. I selected Noah’s Arc because of its pivotal role, both for the Logo channel and for the larger television industry, in the representation of gay African-American men. Its failures and successes are subjects for scholarship in the complex, intertwined issues of African-American authenticity, masculinity, and sexual identity within the context of American popular culture. By employing a queer theoretical approach, which emphasizes that sexual identities do not function independently of other forms of racial differences, Noah’s Arc serves as an excellent example through which these differences are articulated against each other in a complex and sometimes contradictory negotiation of lived experiences in the “public space” of the Logo channel. This analysis is vitally important because of the historical marginalization of gay Latino and African-American men in the media, to challenge the “flat binary construction of Black [and Latino] manhood . . . and to expand the heterogeneous range of complex portrayals that transcend the one-dimensional, positive-negative characters usually contained within television’s formulaic narratives” (Guerrero 1995, 397). In conversation with Patricia Hill Collins, research about black sexual politics, and the damaging consequences of internalized LGBT oppression, my analysis looks at how black authenticity, lived experience, sex, and masculinity interact as areas of inquiry in order to make suggestions about the future role of queer ethnic minorities on U.S. television and the socio-cultural consequences which stem from these representations. To accomplish this I begin by examining how Noah, Chance, Alex, and Ricky navigate their approaches to their relationships and how they struggle within the economic confines of their professional lives. I also examine how their “search” for potential

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partners defines their existence and what these messages communicate and how they are potentially interpreted by Noah’s Arc’s queer ethnic minority audiences. ETHNICITY AND NOAH’S ARC: SEARCHING FOR BLACK AUTHENTICITY A critique of season one of Noah’s Arc reveals a positive and revolutionary approach to the subject of African-American ethnicity in the context of gay male relationships. Throughout the first season, all four central characters represent various iterations of African-American identity. Extensive scholarship suggests that black masculinity iterations have historically evolved beginning with the slavery era, which saw the socially constructed “Black Sambo” or “Coon” personas. These personas evolved over time to encompass a wide range of (mis) characterizations, from the obedient Sambo, the Jim Crow era’s “boy,” “cool cats” who vary from the non-threatening, middle-class black “sidekick” or effeminate “sissy” to the working-class, hyper-sexualized black male rapist, thug, or pimp. These representations have historically contributed to onedimensional understandings of black masculinity: Th[ese] narrow depictions of Black men only serves to reinforce negative stereotypes about this heterogeneous community. Moreover, because Black men’s sense of authenticity is often constructed within a heteronormative socio-historical framework, gay and bisexual Black men often remain invisible within the discourse on Black masculinity. (Ford 2008, 1104) Wade easily represents the “strong black man” image given his muscularity, physically domineering posturing, taciturn and hesitant dialogue, “street” clothing, and Afrocentric hairstyles, which range from cornrows to fades. But Wade also reveals an emotional sensitivity, physical tenderness, and unapologetic erotic attraction to Noah that serves to blur the lines that demarcate male hegemonic, AfricanAmerican identity. The same juxtaposition between emotional sensitivity and stereotypical black masculinity is true for Chance, who exposes the constructedness of ethnicity with his alternating adoption of conservative, subdued clothing, intellectualized dialogue, and Stepford Wives-like home decorating that embraces a historically white, affluent, “high society” ambiance. From his elbow-patched suede jackets, earth-toned

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color palettes of his craftsman-style home, Crate & Barrel furniture, and carefully self-censored lexicon, Chance communicates a constructed image that constantly vacillates between his physically identifiable African-American ethnicity to non-Afrocentric, “mainstream” influences. In episode 3, for example, Chance confronts an unfaithful Eddie, who reveals a sexual desire for “thugs.” Chance then abandons his articulate and gentle persona for the hyper masculinized street thug, and his adoption of this fac¸ade necessarily means that his complexity as a gay African-American man is reduced to a cultural stereotype of what constitutes an “authentic” black identity. Chance is trapped in the exquisitely painful confines of heterosexist society’s making. His education and professional career mark him as upper class, and this complicates his identification as an authentic black man given the stereotypical value attributed to working-class masculinities. And he also cannot be a “thug” because it is a cultural stereotype that serves to illustrate the socially constructed nature of “authentic” blackness. Spearman discusses episode 3 in which Chance seems to think he likes it more street and he decides to take thug lessons . . . and there were some great moments when Chance had to say things like “would you like me to break you off some cheddar” that indicate an appeal to the one-dimensional stereotypical “brothas” previously mentioned, albeit to highlight the contrast between authentic “blackness” and superficial “blackness” for laughs. And yet, as Yep poignantly observes, Chance’s “African-American garb and mannerisms imbue him with real, authentic blackness. Particular kinds of clothing worn in particular ways and the various mannerisms and gestures signify the kinds of class trappings that are closely associated with authentic blackness” (2007, 33). Chance still is forced to negotiate the precarious confines of his identity through a socially constructed minefield rife with “dangerous” outcomes. Although the episode ends on a positive note that reveals Eddie’s appreciation for Chance’s flexibility to fulfill his sexual desires, the criticism this reveals is powerfully valuable. The series makes great inroads into these types of complicated negotiations and concessions by its characters, and evidence of exceptionally high viewership reveals an appreciation for those efforts. The series first season concludes with a record number of e-mails soliciting Logo to continue Noah’s Arc for a second season, and thereby solidifies

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its success as a reoccurring series on the network. In its second season, Noah’s Arc continues to build upon this successful framework that complicates tropes of authenticity and the boundaries of prevailing iterations of African-American ethnicity. Noah’s Arc sees Chance increasingly adopt Afrocentric artwork, jewelry, and home furnishings in his attempt to “reconnect” to his African heritage during a trip to Kenya. Noah also increasingly appears with changing Afrocentric hairstyles and furnishings in a new apartment that conveys an unambiguous message of African-American ethnicity. These things serve to connote an adopted identity that he constructs for himself through a personal search of his ethnic heritage. Searching for authenticity is just that: a search. Noah’s Arc does not present frozen, static images of African-American masculinity, but reveals in its characterizations a continual, difficult, and self-reflexive quest for authenticity—even when notions of authenticity themselves are double-binds. REFUSING TO DEAL WITH LIVED EXPERIENCE OF BLACKNESS The lived experiences of African Americans are as diverse as the population, but some theoretical consistencies do exist through which individuals negotiate their lives that tenaciously hold true despite resistance efforts by socially progressive movements. The parameters of this discourse are defined by class and its intersectionality with African-American identification of black authenticity: “The romanticized view of working class as authentic renders middle-class, educated blacks as assimilated, capitulated and inauthentic. Furthermore an inner city lifestyle is associated with black authenticity” (Yep, 32). This association creates a romanticized and monolithic view of ghetto life without recognizing and recounting the harsh material realities of such experiences. In the process, it continues to divide middle-class suburban blacks from their working-class counterparts. If Noah’s Arc successfully negotiates black authenticity, it has been less successful at incorporating the lived experience of black people— experiences that include exclusion and discrimination, stereotyping, lack of critical recognition, and homogenization. Muting or ignoring these lived experiences dilutes the capacity of Noah’s Arc to complexify the meaning of black lives as represented on Logo. Unfortunately, during the entirety of the series’ first season, there is not a single episode which explicitly speaks to racial discrimination, exclusion, or any other problem which stems from racial marginalization. This only occurs in the second season, which begs the question: Why the delay?

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A variety of anecdotal evidence also suggests that the decision to include an episode in the second season that focused on AfricanAmerican ethnicity was a reaction to ongoing controversies associated with the show’s cancellation and lack of recognition. The controversy surrounding the abrupt cancellation of Noah’s Arc after only 17 episodes (after its second season ending 2006) reveals questionable judgment about Logo’s utility as a vehicle for ethnic visibility. Terrell accurately observes that “feature film(s) like Brokeback Mountain and television shows like Will & Grace and Queer as Folk have been a boon to gay visibility, but their almost entirely white casts have left people of color behind” (2007). While there have recently been a few complex gay African-American characters on television, such as “Keith” on Six Feet Under and “Omar” on The Wire (both on HBO), the majority of roles, “still fall under onedimensional stereotypes: Mandingo objects of sexual desire, sissies sashaying in the hair salon, and down-low ‘brothas’ spreading HIV” (Terrell 2007). To add insult to injury, Noah’s Arc failed to be recognized by GLAAD in its 2005 Media Awards ceremony: The interracial gay relationship in “Six Feet Under” also helped that show win a new nomination. But for the black LGBT community, the big television news of 2005 was Noah’s Arc on Logo. . . . I understand GLAAD’s decision but I think it’s a mistake. For the first time ever, we get a new black gay TV series and new black gay movies and they don’t get recognized. . . . So neither the black groups nor the gay groups will directly recognize some of the seminal achievements in black LGBT media during the past year. (Boykin 2006) Yet despite this controversy, during its brief lifespan the groundbreaking role of Noah’s Arc as a vehicle for gay African-American visibility is widely respected. Keith Boykin cogently observes that “Before Noah’s Arc, there were no gay black TV shows. So if nothing else, it created the possibility in the minds of the public and the industry that this is something that can happen and be supported” (Terrell 2007). That recognition, particularly in light of controversies which challenge the series value for social progress, is important to any critique about its role in American pop culture. When describing what the series is about, a variety of voices reveal a wide spectrum of views on how Noah’s Arc fits within the larger television industry and the social fabric of American popular culture.

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Many of these voices typify exclusionary rhetoric as a lived experience of black people. While Vincent Christian, who plays Ricky in the series, states that “(The show) humanizes a group of ethnic men,”1 the unasked question is: why do these ethnic men need to be humanized? This implies that humans are white; “ethnic men” are not. The inclusionary rhetoric of “love” also mutes black experience and gay experience. Heterosexual actor Jensen Atwood, who plays Wade, grossly oversimplifies racial and sexual specificity, couched in terms of acceptance. “The notion of family is greatly expanding and everybody can fit . . . love is what it is, it’s love, it’s not necessarily gay love, it’s just you know, two people sharing their feelings for each other.”2 Superficially this statement seems only to serve as an affirmation that promotes Noah’s Arc’s central position in the rhetoric of communitarian ideals of shared kinship, even as it refuses to deal with blackness. That rhetoric is premised on a shared kinship among gay African Americans that may or may not exist. Moreover, comments like, “it’s not necessarily gay love” by an actor central to the series suggests a thinly veiled heteronormative attempt to homogenize and diminish same-sex attraction at the expense of the series marketability. Logo’s Lisa Sherman blithely states, “I don’t see it as a story about a black gay community, I say that it’s a story about a family and community” revealing an amazing indifference to the centrality that ethnicity plays in the series. This indifference is reminiscent of the unsuccessful attempts at colorblindness used as a liberal attempt to remedy racial discrimination (West 1990). With a cast of 14 major reoccurring characters, 13 of which are African American, Noah’s Arc exists on Logo as the only show with an overwhelmingly ethnic minority cast, whose African-American creator describes it to be a “somewhat realistic view of these characters’ lives and ummm, real life is both fun and dramatic.”3 African-American lived experiences of discrimination and exclusion are not represented on Noah’s Arc; empty appeals to inclusion and harmful claims that homogenize the realities of these lived experiences. DEALING WITH SEX In terms of sex, Noah’s Arc has a contradictory record. There are substantial differences between both seasons of the show in its portrayal of gay sexual activity. Noah’s Arc’s first season reveals an interesting complexity in its treatment of African-American sexuality that’s alternately mediated by appeals to same-sex marriage, in the case of

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Chance and Eddie, and the rejection of monogamy by the stereotypically promiscuous Ricky in his relationship with Juanito. Notably, the issue of same-sex marriage arises amid the developing relationship between Chance and Eddie, but also because of the financial savings that the combined purchase of a new home would provide. Realistic depictions of sex are also curiously absent for the promiscuous Ricky, whose sexual encounters are brief, rarely nude, and extensively dialogued, perhaps in an attempt to support preventative measures about HIV/AIDS transmission. However, these sexual encounters do not accurately reflect the wide spectrum and variety of activities embraced by gay African Americans (Miller 2005) with the platonic, “vanilla” sex acts found in season one. One almost never sees any of its characters even partially unclothed, much less engaging in simulated fellatio or anal sex. The relatively innocuous sex lives of Noah’s Arc’s characters stand in stark contrast to the graphically accurate, completely nude, fictionalized depictions of gay sex across all seasons of Showtime’s Queer as Folk. Given that Showtime’s audience is not strictly an LGBT audience, this fact is a clear indictment against Logo’s depiction of gay sexuality. This dichotomy is tantamount to a capitulation to the Logo channel’s need to temper its representations of gay sex to the palatable by continuing a trend of desexualizing gays. Only after the series’ second season do the major characters attend a Gay Black Pride event, 4 where Wade accidentally catches Noah having sex in a bathroom stall. In many ways this “coincidence” serves as a crucially important critique about gay sexuality and ethnicity. How and why is this fictional moment crucial? In other words, what does it say about African-American sexuality? This moment uses controversial “tearoom” sex acts to vividly illustrate the complexities of real-life sexual experiences and their connectivity to an idealized, sexually potent, and perpetually virile AfricanAmerican ethnic identity. This scene is poignantly juxtaposed against an event sponsored by “mainstream” social movement organizations (in this case, Los Angeles’s Gay Black Pride organizing committee). An additional danger implicit in this depiction of black sexuality is the message that same-sex attraction between black males inevitably results in a sexual encounter. This serves only to perpetuate false assumptions about the promiscuity of gay men while obfuscating the sexual lives of these characters for Noah’s Arc’s viewers. Moreover, the reaction and subsequent behavior by Wade in this episode further illustrates how sexual

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spontaneity can be misinterpreted and “morally” coded as wrong, bad, and so forth where those sex acts occur in nontraditional locations. MASCULINITY AND ITS MANY PERFORMANCES Episode eight in season one serves to highlight the juxtaposition of ethnic identity and masculinity, with Noah participating in a runway fashion show, complete with knee-high boots, skirt, make up, feather fan, and wig. This episode is reminiscent of the film entitled Paris Is Burning that documents gay African-American fashion balls. Additionally, throughout season one and season two, the characters Alex (played by Rodney Chester) and Chance (played by Doug Spearman) serve as counterpoints that reveal the wide spectrum of AfricanAmerican masculinity. Rodney Chester describes his character Alex as “the comic relief of the show . . . the character Alex is so on, like really, really out there . . . everybody knows an Alex; the crazy but fun; just a crazy outrageous person. This season you have that other side of you [sic] not that happy person all the time.” Chester uses adjectives like “outrageous” and phrases like “really, really out there” and “on” to supplant meanings about highly feminized, verbose, and flamboyant caricatures of stereotypically gay African-American males. This is not to suggest that Alex does not accurately represent a segment of this demographic, but it does reveal the tacit understanding that there is a potentially negative meaning associated with Alex’s femininity. Yet, most of the show’s characters do create an idealized self in the gaze of other fellow gay characters by relying on external markers of sexual identity like designer clothing labels, vacation destinations, and home decorations appearing in the series that stereotypically associated with gay male identities. The range of performed masculinities is important because it undermines the potential deconstruction of hegemonic masculinity associated with African-American ethnicity and the framework that construction supports, which perpetuates the femininity equals gay arithmetic. It is no surprise that Ricky is the owner of a designer clothing shop located on Melrose Avenue. The choice of occupation for one of the main characters for the series reveals how, in this example, Noah’s Arc relies on how “appearance constitutes a primary way of asserting and displaying a lesbian and gay identity . . . lesbians and gay men use clothing and adornment to create a sense of group identity (separate from the dominant culture) . . . to signal their sexual

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identity to the wider world or just to those ‘in the know’ ” (Clark and Turner 2007, 267). The consequences of nonconformity result in negative feedback in the form of bitchy comments, disapproving looks, and being ignored by other characters. This feedback is sometimes unmerited because class affects the “access to credit and capital [which] determines who can wear what, and those who can be what” (Clark and Turner 2007, 271). This assertion is certainly true across all characters in Noah’s Arc from the economics professor Chance to the struggling writer Noah. NOAH’S ARC’S CONTRADICTIONS African-American ethnicity, same-sex desire, and masculinity are intricately linked in sometimes detrimental as well as beneficial ways. As Munoz persuasively points out “queerness is, for the queer of color, always about adjacent antagonisms within the social, including but not limited to, class and race” (2006, 102). Noah’s Arc is a show that is replete with contradictions, adjacent antagonisms, social subjectivities, and markers in a world in which “black homosexuality is viewed as a white disease and a threat . . . because homosexuality is believed to be a threat to hegemonic black masculinity, it is often dismissed, laughed at, and violently rejected” (Yep, 35). As such, the show invariably serves as a canvas upon which these issues are dealt with by its characters. The four main characters present both realistic and unrealistic depictions of African-American reality. In terms of ethnicity, Noah’s Arc initially failed to aggressively pursue any cultural criticism of the challenges associated with its characters’ racial minority status or to write creatively from the daily life of a minority viewpoint. The daily lived experiences of African Americans are replete with socially imposed challenges which restrict individual agency and social equality. Extensive studies suggest that from adolescence, African Americans develop and internalize a social hierarchy where heteronormative conformity is privileged. “Within this framework, homophobia, heterosexism, or antigay practices get interpreted as acts of masculinity that allow boys to gain power over other boys and construct themselves as ‘real men’ ” (Froyumm 2007). These interpretations of black masculinity adopted by both genders possesses distinct and unassailable boundaries. Scholarship reveals that these social challenges begin early in life and are often associated with the classist, socioeconomic position of black families, but does not necessarily minimize the prejudices

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experienced. Moreover, these challenges continue through adulthood but evolve into increasingly more subtle forms of discriminatory practices that insidiously undermine individualized attempts to escape the effects of racial prejudice. “Blacks . . . are seldom safe to roam public places: police and Whites harass them in White spaces and stores, while street violence and drugs infest their own neighborhoods. The public considers their nontraditional and interdependent families to be ‘broken’ ” (Froyumm 2007). Patricia Hill Collins notably argues that the role mass media plays in the perpetuation of negative stereotypes occurs through destructive depictions of black youth as hypersexed, dependent, stupid, lazy, violent, and dangerous (2005). Obstacles for this same demographic exist in education, where even their teachers treat them as troublemakers. These obstacles are only some (Froyumm 2007, 619) of the early barriers faced by this demographic across the lifespan, and the trajectory of social advancement is fraught with a variety of increasingly difficult challenges that range from economic insufficiency to elevated HIV infection rates. Given the plethora of challenges that this constituency faces, the added complication of gay sexuality makes the lived experiences of Noah’s Arc’s characters especially important and revealing. While some may argue that its unstated, matter-of-fact approach is indicative of an acceptance of the show’s premise, such an argument fails to acknowledge the inherent challenges of daily life for this constituency that Noah’s Arc purportedly seeks to personify. However, the series redeems itself in its second season with an increasing attentiveness to the unique challenges implicated in American society for gay African-American men. By candidly and realistically dealing with issues like HIV, Afrocentrism, economic inequality, crime, and “down-low, same-sex desire,” Noah’s Arc powerfully and persuasively exposes the connections between ethnicity, sexuality, and masculinity for African-American males. Noah’s Arc is extremely valuable as a commentary on the integral and inseparable ways in which signifiers produce a “racialized gender, sexual, and class subjectivity that challenge prevailing conceptions of blackness” (Yep 2007, 37). Logo President Brian Graden maintains that he “resent(s) the assumption that it takes more sex to tell my story than it does to tell my brother’s or my mother’s. It’s [those assumptions that are] based on outdated notions of what it means to be gay” (Fonseca 2005). It is not, however, an “outdated notion” that our status as a sexual minority revolves around the differences and nonconformity of our sex lives, and this fact is particularly true for ethnic sexual minorities

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already suffering under the weight of prejudices directed towards them based on ethnicity. So despite Graden’s misguided homonormative rhetoric, Noah’s Arc makes an excellent attempt to honestly and convincingly discuss gay sexuality in the lives of African-American and Latino men. Given the abject poverty about these topics on television today, this is one series that refreshingly begins a conversation that I hope will only improve in the future. NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4.

Bonus Video, Episode 2, Season 2. Ibid. Patrik Ian Polk, Bonus Video, Episode 2, Season 2. Episode 208, Season 2.

REFERENCES Boykin, Keith. Why Noah’s Arc Is Not in GLAAD Awards. January 24, 2006. http://www.keithboykin.com/arch/2006/01/24/why_noahs_arc_i (accessed June 8, 2008). Clark, Victoria, and Kevin Turner. “Close Maketh the Queer? Dress, Appearance and the Construction of Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Identities.” Feminism & Psychology, 12, n. 2, 2007: 267–276. Collins, Patricia Hill. Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender and the New Racism. New York: Routledge, 2005. Fonseca, Nicholas. “Gaytime TV.” Entertainment Weekly, July 8, 2005: 58–59. Ford, Kristie. “Gazing into a Distorted Looking Glass: Masculinity, Femininity, Appearance Ideals, and the Black Body.” Sociology Compass, 2, n. 3, 2008: 1096–1114. Froyumm, Charissa. “ ‘At Least I’m Not Gay:’ Heterosexual Identity Making among Poor Blacks.” Sexualities, 10, n. 5, 2007: 603–622. Guerrero, Ed. “The Black Man on Our Screens and the Empty Space in Representation.” Callaloo, 18, n. 2., 1995: 395–400. Lisotta, Christopher. “Logo Turns One.” TelevisionWeek, 25, n. 26, June 26, 2006: 28–29. Terrell, Kellel. “Black Is Back: To Many, the Cancellation of Noah’s Arc Meant the End of Black Gay Men on Television.” The Advocate, May 8, 2007. West, Cornell. Toward a Socialist Theory of Racism. 1990. http://race.eserver.org/ toward-a-theory-of-racism.html (accessed July 31, 2009). Yep, Gust A., and John P. Elia. “Queering/Quaring Blackness in Noah’s Arc.” In Queer Popular Culture: Literature, Media, Film, and Television, by Thomas Peele, 27. New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2007.

Chapter 4

Anatomy of a Lesbian Relationship and Its Demise: The First Lesbian Relationship of the Medical Drama Grey’s Anatomy Niina Kuorikoski

GREY’S ANATOMY 101 ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy premiered in the spring of 2005. Since then, the series has consistently been among the 10 most-watched television series, has garnered audiences as large as 21 million, and spawned a spin-off series, Private Practice, which premiered in 2007. The series has relaunched the career of actor Patrick Dempsey, and Katherine Heigl has become a star not only on the small screen but also in cinema. The series, created by Shonda Rhimes, depicts the lives of a group of surgical interns, later residents, and other surgeons working at the fictional Seattle Grace Hospital. Unlike other medical dramas such as ER (1994 to 2009) and House, M.D. (2004 to the present), Grey’s Anatomy places a lot of emphasis on the characters’ personal lives and their relationships with each other. The relationship of the main protagonist, Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) and surgeon Derek Shepherd (Patrick Dempsey) has been a consistent theme and a source of romatic tension throughout the first five seasons of the series.

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Until the beginning of the fifth season, the romantic storylines of Grey’s Anatomy have been rather heterosexually emphasized or heteronormative. The series has had a few episodes that have dealt with queer issues, but its main characters have remained heterosexual. During its fourth season, however, the series began to hint towards a lesbian storyline and later, in the beginning of the fifth season, Grey’s Anatomy embarked on its first lesbian storyline. The depiction of the relationship between surgeons Erica Hahn and Callie Torres, played by Brooke Smith and Sara Ramirez, respectively, signalled a change in the rather heterocentric narrative of Grey’s Anatomy and, as such, was greeted with glee by many of the series’ queer viewers. AfterEllen.com, a Web site devoted to chronicling lesbian and bisexual representation on television, quickly established a section for the series and commented on the relationship in articles, blogs, and other posts posted on the site. Also, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) wrote about the series and relationship on its Web site. The importance of a popular primetime series such as Grey’s Anatomy including a lesbian relationship in its storyline is apparent when one considers the history of sexual minorities in the media. LGBTQ representations have been practically invisible in media such as television until the 1990s. In addition to invisibility, available representations, characters, and themes have followed and maintained stereotypical notions of sexual and gender minorities, as has been shown in many studies (see Kuorikoski 2007; Russo 1987; Stacey 1995; Walters 2001). As a result, gay men have been portrayed as effeminate sources of laughter or tortured and tragic victims. Lesbians, on the other hand, have typically been depicted as masculine, violent, and unbalanced. Another characteristic in these representations has been that of asexuality, which has led to portraying gay characters in a manner that has not allowed the portrayal of their sexuality or relationships. This has been the case in American television series such as Melrose Place (1992 to 1999), NYPD Blue (1993 to 2005), LA Law (1986 to 1994), ER, and Will & Grace (1998 to 2006), among others. During the past decade, we have seen a slight increase in the depictions of same-sex relationships on television. However, this has generally been the terrain of cable television, which has seen gay and lesbian relationships in series such as Six Feet Under (2001–2005), Queer as Folk (2000–2005), and The L Word (2004–2009). The audiences of these series have been recognizably smaller—and certainly more queer—than that of Grey’s Anatomy, which is aired on a large national

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network, ABC. In addition, whereas the cable series mentioned above might have been directed at smaller, more specific audience demographics, Grey’s Anatomy is directed at a broad, mainstream audience. As such, Grey’s Anatomy is a series that calls for analysis. As Kathleen Battles and Wendy Hilton-Morrow (2002, 102) have noted, it is important to analyze ways in which “gays and lesbians are represented in popular culture texts targeted to a broad audience.” This chapter addresses the task of analyzing such television text by taking a look at the brief lesbian relationship of Grey’s Anatomy. The characters and the storyline are analyzed, placing them in the context of other earlier and contemporary lesbian representations. What can be said about ABC’s decision to end a relationship that had only just begun? The meanings and impact of its abrupt end are discussed here. PROFESSIONAL SURGEONS ON CALL: CALLIOPE TORRES AND ERICA HAHN The character of Calliope “Callie” Torres, an orthopaedic surgeon, was introduced in the second season of Grey’s Anatomy. The character, played by Sara Ramirez, was first linked to one of the main characters, George O’Malley (T. R. Knight), who later becomes Callie’s husband. Callie is portrayed as an empathetic and skilled surgeon with aspirations as she pursues, and later is chosen for, the job of chief resident at the hospital. She does not get along with Meredith Grey or Izzie Stevens (Katherine Heigl), who are George’s best friends, but she befriends another driven surgeon, Cristina Yang (Sandra Oh), with whom she later becomes roommates. In season four, Callie meets and becomes increasingly close with the new Head of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Erica Hahn. Dr. Erica Hahn, a skillful cardiothoracic surgeon, first appeared in the series as a minor character during the second season. Hahn, played by Brooke Smith, was a recurring character during the second and third seasons but became a member of the main cast in the fourth season when she was introduced as the replacement of Dr. Preston Burke, her rival on the show, who was written out of the series due to the actor, Isaiah Washington, being fired. From the beginning, the character of Erica was portrayed as highly professional, skilled, and competitive. The emphasis was clearly in her work rather than her personal life. As she became a regular cast member, however, she was shown attempting to be a part of the “boys’ club” of the other, male surgeons. In addition, she was the target of romantic advances

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by plastic surgeon and resident ladies man, Mark Sloan (Eric Dane), who, in Erica’s view, was “too pretty.” In addition to Hahn being portrayed as professional, she comes across as harsh and distant in her interaction with intern and aspiring cardiothoracic surgeon Cristina Yang, who was not only the student of Dr. Burke but also his romantic partner. Cristina, who desperately wants to be the best cardiothoracic surgeon there is, seeks guidance and attention from Dr. Hahn, whom she sees as her potential teacher and mentor. In addition to the relationship with Callie, the main plot device used for the depiction of Erica is that of the interaction between her character and Yang’s character. The toughness and bluntness of Dr. Hahn makes Yang, who had previously been seen as the driven and most career-oriented of the female characters of Grey’s Anatomy both within the series and in the view of viewers, seems softer and definitely more vulnerable in comparison to Erica. This emphasizes the characteristics of Dr. Hahn, who scares Cristina’s friend Meredith Grey. As Julie Levin Russo (2009, 4) observes, “working women on screen have been an object of interest for queer and female fans, perhaps since the early days of Mary Tyler Moore’s workplace family and Cagney and Lacey’s police partnership.” Strong and independent female television and film characters have a tendency to attract lesbian viewers, as in the case of Xena of Xena: Warrior Princess (1995–2001), Buffy and Faith of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997–2003), Olivia Benson of Law & Order: Special Victim’s Unit (1999 to the present), and Ripley of the Alien films, to mention a few. Some of these so-called working women have been portrayed as lesbians, but more often this has not been the case even though fans might have read them as lesbian, as in the case of Xena or Olivia. However, lesbian characters from ER’s Kerry Weaver to Queer as Folk’s Melanie Marcus to The L Word’s Bette Porter have typically been strong, professional women. In this context, it comes as no surprise that Callie and especially Erica fall into this same category. Even though they follow a long line of working women portrayed on television, they differ from most contemporary lesbian characters. Unlike in such series as Friends (1994–2004) and Queer as Folk and, to some extent, ER and many others, where the emphasis has clearly been on procreation and motherhood, Callie and Erica are all about their careers. Callie is driven, which is seen in her attempts to gain a leading position at work and the way in which she talks about her skills. Erica is very competitive, professional, and focused on her work rather than relationships or social situations, which

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becomes evident when she is first introduced as a rival of Dr. Burke and later after accepting the position as Burke’s replacement at the Seattle Grace Hospital. In terms of their looks and physique, Callie and Erica do not fall into the common pattern of lesbian representation prevalent in contemporary American television. As I have argued elsewhere (see Kuorikoski 2007), the characters of the lesbian drama The L Word, the most visible and central source of lesbian representation during the last five years, embody a category of almost exaggerated femininity. In the same manner as American women’s magazines, analyzed by Sherrie A. Inness (1997, 63−68), the series conveys an image of a beautiful and feminine lesbian. Through its very stylized depiction, The L Word maintains a feminine ideal of lesbian representation and constructs a specific image of stylish, middle class, thin, feminine, and white lesbian women. At the same time, the series maintains a heteronormative idea of gender by repeating the “right kind” of femininity traditionally associated with women. This is a common characteristic in contemporary media’s lesbian representation to a point where it is a pattern that does not leave room for any sort of variation. What is more, the more masculine, butch lesbian is invisible in contemporary American media culture, as has been very well established by Ann M. Ciasullo (2001) in her article “Making Her (In)Visible: Cultural Representations of Lesbianism and the Lesbian Body in the 1990s.” To some extent, the feminine pattern typical of lesbian representation can be seen in Grey’s Anatomy. Both characters being discussed here have long hair and can be labeled as feminine in their looks. At the same time, the characters differ from those offered by other television series in their body type. Unlike the lesbian and bisexual characters in Queer as Folk or The L Word, along with sitcoms and crime dramas that have short lesbian storylines or guest-appearing lesbian characters, the queer women of Grey’s Anatomy are not extremely thin and fit but, rather, have a more healthy-looking, fuller body type. They are clearly not stick figures. In addition, because they are most commonly seen at work, they most commonly wear white doctor’s coats with no or little jewelry, a common marker of femininity. Outside of the workplace, both Callie and Erica are seen in casual clothes such as jeans and basic shirts instead of the latest fashions that the gals of The L Word parade around in throughout Los Angeles. All in all, their femininity is not emphasized or stylized but is, rather, a more downplayed and professional kind of femininity.

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A crucial aspect of the feminine pattern of contemporary lesbian representation is race, or more specifically, whiteness. Even though The L Word has a biracial character in Bette Porter and had a Latina character during a few of its seasons, the series, along with almost any other contemporary series, has been marked by whiteness in terms of its image of lesbianism. Significantly, Grey’s Anatomy disrupts this very common pattern by casting Sara Ramirez, a Latina woman, in the role of Calliope Torres. Unlike The L Word which produces a repeating pattern in which there is no room for diversity, Grey’s Anatomy’s lesbian representation steers away from many of the common characteristics of contemporary media’s lesbian representations. FROM HETEROSEXUAL PANIC TO A COMMITTED RELATIONSHIP: THE BEGINNINGS OF CALLIE AND ERICA’S RELATIONSHIP The relationship of Callie and Erica was first hinted at during season four. Towards the end of the season, the characters grow closer and spend a lot of their time together both at work and during their free time. They go out dancing, hang out late, and go to yoga class together, among other activities. The possible romantic nature of their friendship is first commented on by Callie’s friend, Addison Montgomery (played by actress Kate Walsh), who returns to the Seattle Grace Hospital for a brief visit. When having lunch, Addison tells Callie she and Erica seem like a happy couple. Perhaps recognizing her own feelings, Callie feels uncomfortable and declares herself to be a big fan of the penis. After her brief talk with Addison, Callie is seen asking best friends Meredith and Cristina if anyone has mistaken them for a couple. By now, a lesbian-inclined viewer is quite convinced that Callie has feelings for Erica. Later in the same episode, Callie, Erica, and Addison are drinking in the local bar when Mark Sloan approaches them, asking them to dance. Callie accepts his request and sways her hips with Mark as Erica watches them from the table. Callie looks at the table and asks Mark if he wants to “get outta here” and, subsequently, leaves with Mark in tow. The next time Callie and Erica are seen talking, Erica asks Callie to meet her later at the same bar. Callie makes an excuse before Mark appears. Later, when they are preparing for their surgeries, Erica starts talking to Callie about how she does not make friends easily and how “the thing,” the excuse she used, is Mark Sloan. She goes on to say that she is mad at Callie for not telling her that she is sleeping with

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Mark and not admitting she is “one of those girls who goes all poofy when she gets a boyfriend” and subsequently disappearing. Soon after, Callie tells Erica what Addison had implied, to which they both respond by laughing. Laughing together at Addison’s comment seems to make them more relaxed, which is seen when they tease Mark Sloan about “sharing a Sapphic salad” at lunch and him dreaming of a threesome with them. At the same time, Callie continues to clearly feel troubled by the thought of having feelings for Erica, which she is trying to overcome by throwing herself at Mark. As Callie and Erica continue to tease Mark about a possible threesome during another scene at work, Erica aims to show him that he would not be able to handle the women by kissing Callie in front of him in an elevator. Dumbfounded, Callie resumes having sex with Mark. After this, Mark introduces talking about Erica when he has sex with Callie, which seems to excite her. This results in her being, once again, uncomfortable around Erica. Mark notices this and approaches Callie about her thinking about Erica. They talk about the issue briefly and in the same episode, the season four finale, Mark urges Callie “to finish what she started” when they see Erica outside the hospital. Callie approaches Erica, and when she does not manage to verbalize her feelings, she kisses her. The women kiss passionately as the camera shows Mark Sloan standing by, watching them before walking away. It seems as if Callie’s relationship and friendship with Mark helps her to come to terms with her feelings for Erica. The beginning of season five shows Callie and Erica avoiding each other. When they meet at work, the both say that they are incredibly busy at the moment. Soon after, Erica helps Callie in a tough situation at work when Callie is breaking under pressure, dealing with a difficult case. Later, Callie tells Erica that she is usually not an experimenter but that experimenting with Erica was “kind of a success.” They talk about their kiss and realize that they are both experiencing something new in being romantically involved with another woman. Quickly, they seem to come to terms with their feelings and agree to be scared together. They decide to take things slow, but their relationship seems to be moving forward. In the third episode of the season, Erica mentions, talking to Callie, that they “don’t know what we are yet.” In the next episode, Erica asks Callie on a date, during which they talk about having sex using metaphors after Callie makes it known that she is having trouble trying to come to terms with the idea of sleeping with a woman. They agree to take things slow but are both

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clearly intrigued about taking their relationship further. In the next episode, they go on another date and after it, end up kissing passionately in Callie’s apartment. The next day, Callie runs to Mark asking to talk to him about Erica. She tells him that she and Erica slept together but that it was not good “at all.” She explains that she was not able to perform oral sex on Erica because it felt weird and clinical and that she was so embarrassed that she left before Erica woke up in the morning. When she sees Erica later, Callie is surprised to hear that Erica wants for them to get together that night and that she had “a lot of fun last night.” When they meet again later, Callie tells Erica that she is “not cut out for this. . . . No, this, the touching and the . . . sex with a girl. I just, I, I can’t do it. I thought that I could but.” Erica soon leaves the room, clearly disappointed. After that, Callie goes running back to Mark and asks him to show her what to do, explaining that she is the kind of person who wants to be good at things and who does not fail. Mark tells her to take her pants off since he is going to show her the Sloan method. Next, Callie goes to find Erica at their workplace and tells her to take off her pants while removing her own shirt because they are “trying this again.” In the next episode, it is made apparent that the women have had sex, this time at home. While Callie gets up, Erica sits on the bed and has a revelation of sorts and declares to Callie that she is gay. This results in Callie ending up in a sort of a gay panic and running to Mark Sloan for some “sex, nothing fancy, just plain old missionary, boy-girl, penis-vagina sex.” After having sex with him, Callie talks to Mark about how she thought there would be a difference between the sex she has with Mark and that which she and Erica have had. They talk about the relationship, and Mark makes her realize that she has been unfaithful with him toward Erica. The next time we see Callie she admits to Erica about sleeping with Mark. They talk about it and Callie emphasizes that she wants to be honest with Erica and that she wants, in fact, to be with her. Soon after, Callie tells Mark that she is not going to sleep with him anymore and suggests that they be friends. In some readings, the development of the relationship of Callie and Erica can be seen as a coming out story, typical of earlier cinematic and also televisual representations of lesbians. The coming out narrative is perhaps the most common theme employed when introducing a queer character into a television series or film. In the context of television, it has been dealt with in such series as Dawson’s Creek (1998–2003),

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Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Six Feet Under, Desperate Housewives (2004 to the present), ER, Ellen (1994–1998), Melrose Place, and Greek (2007 to the present), among others. The series spends quite a lot of time, several episodes, depicting how the relationship between the two women comes to be. However, the series does not concentrate on the reactions of other characters to the coming out, nor does it mirror it against the society as a whole, making it an issue. Callie and Erica come out most to themselves as well as to each other rather than the people around them. This makes the representation, offered by the fourth and fifth seasons of Grey’s Anatomy, different from many other television series in which the storylines have often concentrated on the reactions of family members and other people close to the queer characters rather than the characters themselves. As such, the beginnings of Callie and Erica’s relationship can be seen as a welcomed change in the television landscape of queer representation. Malinda Lo (2008) points out: How striking that we can see that on television now: a largely positive launch into a same-sex romance, avoiding, so far, any homophobia. Instead, we have two women who have never been in love with another woman before, and when their eyes open to that possibility, whatever fear they feel is trumped by a thrill of anticipation. That is quite a change from the coming-out tales of the past. When watching the interaction between Callie and Erica, one cannot help but to agree with Lo’s statement. The way in which the relationship of the two women is depicted is not only interesting and different in the context of other queer representations of contemporary American television but also romantic, emotional, often funny, and, in a sense, recognizable to anyone who has gone through the agony and excitement of that very first relationship with a person of the same gender. Even though the series does not concentrate on the views of others on Callie and Erica’s relationship and although the women do not make their relationship public at any point, there are several other characters who know about their relationship. As was mentioned in the above description of the storyline, Addison Montgomery is the first person to verbalize what might be happening between Callie and Erica. In a funny but also rather poignant scene in terms of making Callie’s feelings known, Addison and Callie have lunch when Addison asks if Callie is “speaking in vagina monologues.” The comedic approach used here is employed also in a later scene in

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season five in which Callie attempts to talk to her colleague, Dr. Miranda Bailey, in an attempt to share her anxiety about going on a date and perhaps sleeping with Erica. In the scene, Callie uses metaphors such as “south of the border” and “northern mountains” to avoid using the actual, proper words. In a later scene, Miranda goes to see Callie and tries to give her advice, something she was not able to do in the first scene. She proceeds to tell Callie that “the vah-jayjay is undiscovered country. It is the motherland. You’ve never traveled there, you don’t know its customs and ways. Now, me, I’ve always wanted to go to Africa, but if I go, I’m gonna have to learn a few things first. I’m going to have to prepare. I’ll need shots, um, bring my own syringes in case something goes wrong. And I’d wanna know how to get to the embassy.” When Callie does not quite get what she is saying, Miranda goes on, “Just talk about it! Not with me, the other one. Talk about the rules, expectations. Figure out how to gracefully demur if you find you don’t like the local cuisine. In Ethiopia, they eat stew of a spongy sour bread. That’s not for everyone.” The scene is not only funny in its choice of vocabulary but it also manages to capture the emotions Callie is going through in the beginning of her first relationship with another woman. Her facial expressions and reactions to Miranda’s words convey her anxiety over what she is being told, but they also reveal the relief Callie is feeling after she has been able to talk to someone about her anxieties, be it through metaphor. The most central character that knows about Callie’s and Erica’s relationship from the very start is Mark Sloan. The resident ladies man, who the interns have previously named McSteamy, is Callie’s friend and occasional sex partner, who Callie confides in after Addison Montgomery has left Seattle Grace Hospital. Mark is repeatedly seen giving Callie relationship advice and acting as her friend when she needs him both mentally and physically. Mark acts as kind of an instigator for the kisses between Callie and Erica and, not insignificantly, he is present when Callie and Erica kiss not only the first time around but also for the second time. The role Mark has in the women’s relationship is reminiscent of the ways in which the relationship of Melanie and Lindsay was entangled with the character of Brian Kinney in the North American version of Queer as Folk. In the series, Brian was the middleman in the women’s reconciliation and the sole savior of their wedding. In a similar manner, it seems as if Callie might not take things further with Erica without Mark’s help, as in the last episode of season four in which Mark tells Callie to go “finish what she started” when the two of them walk out of the hospital and see

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Erica outside. In this example, the male character, Mark, is the one that dominates the order of events even when the storyline is that of the female characters. The idea of the male gaze, first developed by Laura Mulvey in the 1970s, is present in the storyline of Callie, Erica, and Mark. During the above-mentioned scene, Callie approaches Erica and, soon, kisses her. As the camera moves away from the women kissing, we see Mark standing close by, watching them. The scene seems to privilege the male gaze as Mark stands and looks at Callie and Erica without them knowing he is watching. This scene, in addition to the prior elevator scene in which Erica kisses Callie in front of Mark, links lesbian acts with the desiring gaze of a man, thus making a connection between lusting, heterosexual men and lesbian acts in a manner reminiscent of pornographic films, where sex between two women acts as foreplay for heterosexual intercourse. The series also verbalizes this connection through Mark’s dialogue, as in the scene in which he tells Callie that “two girls getting nasty and loving it, that’s hot.” However, it can be argued that the picture is not that straightforward. Even though Mark has a significant role in the relationship of Callie and Erica, ultimately the relationship is that of the two women and he is left out, as is done quite literally in the scene when Callie and Erica leave the elevator laughing, leaving Mark to figure out what it was that was so funny. What is more, in the sixth episode of season five, after Callie has cheated on Erica with Mark and confessed to her about it, Callie makes it clear to Mark that she is not going to be sleeping with him anymore, and thus removes him from the relationship once and for all. In addition to these examples, we might consider the ways in which the storyline says something about Mark, his character, and his relationships as he watches Callie develop feelings for Erica and sees the women establishing their relationship. Instead of him coming between the women as in many earlier lesbian representations from Three of Hearts (1993) to Kissing Jessica Stein (2001), Mark stands back and encourages the relationship, thus privileging the desire between the two women. A theme often commented on when discussing lesbian representation has been that of sex between women. As researchers such as Hantzis and Lehr (1994), Kennedy (1994), Moritz (1994), and Herman (2003) have observed, lesbian sex is generally not depicted on television. One example is a short-lived medical drama Heartbeat (1988–1989), analyzed by Hantzis and Lehr, in which the lesbian character, Marilyn, is an asexual character who, despite being in a relationship, is never

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shown having sex or even kissing. This stands in stark contrast to the representations of the straight people of the series. Moritz (1994, 136) points out that the lesbian couple of Heartbeat does not even approach getting physical, whereas the heterosexual characters of the series are “frequently shown in close-up passionately embracing, kissing, and alluding to their lovemaking plans.” According to Hantzis and Lehr (1994, 114–115), the heterosexual characters are shown in sexual encounters unlike Marilyn and Patti, whose “infrequent touches are gestures of concern and caretaking” or, as Moritz (1994, 136) argues, consoling and tender but not sexual. This results in limiting and denying lesbian desire as is done in most representations of lesbians on television. Grey’s Anatomy differs from the representation offered by Heartbeat, among others, as Callie and Erica are seen kissing several times. In addition, they occasionally touch each other on the back or shoulders and talk about their relationship, and the series includes scenes that take place both before and after sex. In one of these scenes, described briefly above, Callie goes to see Erica and tells her to take off her pants. The scene ends before she does so, but it is clear to the viewer that the women have sex soon after. As such, Grey’s Anatomy does not deny lesbian desire and sexuality but rather includes it in its narrative. However, the series remains on the level of innuendo in terms of depicting lovemaking between two women. Unlike in LA Law where “two women must not be shown making-out together; graphic visual representation of lesbian sexuality must remain outside the frame of liberal television” (Kennedy 1994, 136), we see Callie and Erica touch, kiss passionately, lie in bed, and also discuss sex a few times, but we do not see them actually making love in the similar manner that heterosexual couples are. Despite its somewhat relaxed attitude towards lesbian desire, this is a boundary Grey’s Anatomy does not cross. FROM LESBIAN TO QUEER AND BACK? THE POLITICS OF LESBIAN REPRESENTATION One point that arises from the above, lengthy description of the beginnings and formation of the relationship between Callie and Erica is the fact that Grey’s Anatomy unsettles the normative boundaries of gender and sexuality by having a character that cannot be placed in the strict, binary and dichotomous categories of homosexual or heterosexual. Callie, with her awakening feelings, heterosexual panic resulting in sex with a man, and later musings on her sexual orientation, can

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be called a queer character in the sense that she, by her mere existence, questions the binary of heterosexual/homosexual. Furthermore, like in the case of C. J. on LA Law, analyzed by Roseanne Kennedy (1994), Callie is not bisexual, either. Kennedy writes, “C. J. embodies queer by refusing to be identified as heterosexual, lesbian or bisexual; she refuses to identify herself, to pin herself down, choosing simply to say she is sexually ‘flexible.’ Abby, embodying heterosexual logic, mistakes ‘flexibility’ as bisexuality, and hence tries to pin down C. J.’s sexuality as an identity rather than a performance” (140). This is indeed true also in the case of Callie, who is unwilling or perhaps not ready to categorize herself. In her confession to Erica, Callie says, “You were crying and, and seeing leaves. And I wasn’t. Okay, I may never see leaves. Or maybe I will see leaves but I will also see flowers. I might be a whole forest girl, I don’t know yet. But I, I do know that I wanna be with you.” It might be argued that, here, Callie is still struggling with or processing her identity; that she is still going through a sort of a process. However, the dialogue can also be read as her unwillingness to categorize herself, to say that she is straight, gay, or other. This point is further supported by her insistence that she can be “kind of a lesbian” when Erica later claims she cannot. Instead of complying to Erica’s attempt to categorize her by saying that she cannot kind of be a lesbian, Callie insists that she indeed can. Erica, on the other hand, falls more clearly into the category of a lesbian. From the beginning, the viewer is made to notice the ways in which Erica interacts with Callie. When Callie is trying to come to terms with her awakening feelings, Erica seems to be falling for her. She also takes the first step and kisses Callie in the elevator with the disguise of trying to prove a point about and to Mark and, later, asks Callie out on a date. After sleeping with Callie in the sixth episode of season five, Erica declares her gayness and goes on to explain to Callie how she is leaves, comparing her to what she saw when she first put on her eyeglasses as a child. Instead of being undecided about her feelings or her sexual orientation, she is ready to declare that she is in fact gay, and extremely so as she repeats, “I am SO gay!” However, as is made clear during the first episode of season five, Erica is also experiencing something new when she and Callie embark on their relationship. Once again, Grey’s Anatomy differs from a familiar pattern in lesbian relationship in which the lesbian couple comprises a previously heterosexual, often younger woman and a more mature and experienced lesbian who teaches and initiates the other one into lesbianism. This plot device has been used in many television series

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and films from lesbian classic Desert Hearts (United States 1985) to a more contemporary example, The L Word. Watching Grey’s Anatomy, a viewer who is familiar with cinematic and televisual lesbian representation is left to wonder whether the writers have taken a crash course of some sort on how not to represent lesbians and their relationships. When discussing the characters of Callie and Erica, one is reminded of the analysis offered by Samuel A. Chambers (2003) in his article “Telepistemology of the Closet; or, the Queer Politics of Six Feet Under.” In Chambers’s argument, Six Feet Under offers a more subtle representation of queer sexuality that demonstrates the inner workings of the closet. He uses Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s influential work Epistemology of the Closet as his theoretical framework in analyzing the series and comparing it to such contemporary series as Queer as Folk. According to Chambers, Queer as Folk, among others, lifts the closet door off its hinges, thus offering the viewer a place of knowing: the characters do not have to come out of the closet since we already know their sexuality, which creates a sort of a closet space of its own. As such, the series creates an island of homonormativity rather than exposing how heteronormativity works.* Six Feet Under, on the other hand, manages to give the viewers an image of sexuality that touches upon the problematic nature of the closet and shows how one can never be out of the closet entirely but, rather, needs to come out repeatedly. In its depiction of the characters of Callie and Erica, Grey’s Anatomy does not expose the workings of the closet in the same way Six Feet Under does. However, the series does not resemble Queer as Folk or another example used by Chambers, Will & Grace, in its manner of dealing with homosexuality by creating “tiny islands of homonormativity” (Ibid.). Instead, the series offers an image of sexuality that is flexible and refuses to be labeled (through Callie) and a sexual identity that is, in a sense, revealed to and realized by the person herself after her first encounter with another woman (through Erica). As such, Grey’s Anatomy does not create a stabilized, coherent view of lesbianism similar to earlier as well as more current televisual representations. Instead, the series creates a more queer image in a manner that does not seem to support Russo’s point (2009, 3), according to which the appearance of explicit gay characters on television can, in fact, “serve to localize and thus contain what are otherwise more pervasive and destabilizing homoerotic undercurrents.” With its storyline, *For a discussion on heteronormativity and homonormativity, see, e.g., Berlant and Warner (1998), Chambers (2003), and Kuorikoski (2007).

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lesbian representations, and often funny dialogue, Grey’s Anatomy is, in fact, quite queer. THE PARKING LOT OF NO RETURN:† WRITING OUT THE LESBIAN As is clear from the above description of their relationship, Callie and Erica decide to be committed to each other after Callie has confessed to Erica about sleeping with Mark Sloan. When Callie talks to Mark later in that episode, it seems that the women are doing well and want to be together. In the seventh episode of season five, however, the series reintroduces a past storyline in which Izzie Stevens stole a heart for her fiance´e, Denny Duquette (Jeffrey Dean Morgan). The action comes up when Izzie and Meredith are asked to help Erica with her patient and Izzie soon realizes that it is the same man who was supposed to receive the heart she stole a few years before. When Meredith tells Erica about what Izzie had done, Erica becomes enraged and demands that the chief of the hospital launch an investigation. The chief replies by saying that he is not going to bring up the past. Later in the episode, Erica talks to Callie about the incident and tells her that she is going to report Izzie to the officials. An argument erupts when Callie sides with Izzie and tells Erica that reporting her would ruin Izzie’s career as well as damage the hospital. After Callie says that she does not understand how Erica can make a judgment, Erica responds angrily, “Easy. There’s right and there’s wrong. And this was wrong. And illegal. There is no grey area here, you can’t kind of think this is okay. You can’t kind of side with Izzie Stevens. And you can’t kind of be a lesbian.” When Callie tells her that she can and tries to explain that she thinks the chief is right, Erica finally responds, “I can’t believe I didn’t know this. . . . No you! I don’t know you at all,” and then walks away toward the parking lot. With those words ends the relationship of Callie and Erica. The consequences of the relationship and its abrupt ending for Callie are explored in the next episode of the series. In the beginning of the episode, Cristina climbs in bed with Meredith and Derek and tells them that “the wicked witch is dead.” At work, Cristina asks Callie what happened to Erica. Callie blows her away, saying that she does not want to talk about it. Later, Cristina approaches her †

The phrase was used by Kyle Buchanan in a post that discussed the ending of Callie and Erica’s relationship.

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again, this time with Mark in the room. When Cristina asks if Erica was fired, Callie tells her that she is not coming back and after Cristina says Callie does not know that, Mark interferes and says she does. Cristina is babbling on, and when she says that “it wasn’t like she was your girlfriend or something,” she realizes that that was indeed the case after she sees Callie and Mark exchanging meaningful glances. After this, we see Callie talking with Mark, clearly mourning Erica’s leaving before breaking into tears and leaning on his shoulder after a patient dies on the operating table. In her analysis of LA Law, Kennedy (1994, 136) notes that the relationship between C. J. and her former partner Maggie does not have “television history” and that, “chronologically, it doesn’t fit in with the series five.” The statement seems familiar in the context of Grey’s Anatomy when one considers the abrupt ending of the relationship storyline. The relationship of Callie and Erica has history in the sense that it is developed over several episodes, arching over the ending and beginning of two seasons, seasons four and five. There is no future, however, no proper ending, and no closure. The relationship comes to a sudden stop as Brooke Smith, the actress who portrayed Erica, was fired from the show. Her last episode, episode number seven of season five, was the very next one after Callie had confessed to Erica about sleeping with Mark and told her that she wants to be with her. Instead of embarking on a depiction of the relationship after the women had decided to be committed to each other, the series ended it in a very final yet vague way. The reasons behind the abrupt ending of Grey’s Anatomy’s first lesbian relationship began to unravel as it was reported in the media in November 2008 that Brooke Smith had been fired. The news was first published by Michael Ausiello of The Ausiello Files at EW.com. According to a post published on November 3, the network had fired Smith because “the suits ‘had issues’ with both the explicit direction Callica was taking (think: undiscovered country, south of the border, and so forth) and, more importantly, with the Hahn character in general” (Ausiello 2008). In the interview, quoted in the post, Smith tells the interviewer that the firing was very sudden, as she was told that the next episode would be her last. The episode of her last appearance was aired on November 6, 2008, only three days after the news of her firing was made public. After the post by EW.com several other sources commented on Smith’s firing. Within the same day, E! Online’s television critic Kristin Dos Santos wrote on the issue and revealed that the new supposedly

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bisexual character, played by actress Melissa George, would be “de-gayed”; in other words, rewritten as straight. In her article titled “Too Gay for Grey’s Anatomy,” Kaite Welsh calls the decision to fire Smith homophobic and maintains that the storyline represents “a wasted chance to show a positive portrayal of two women coming out later in life” (Welsh 2008). Also, AfterEllen.com was quick to comment. In a post dated November 3, 2008, Dorothy Snarker made her disappointment in the direction taken by ABC known by writing, “Callie and Erica’s relationship stood out as one of the few bright spots for lesbian and bisexual characters on primetime TV. Now it seems all we’re left with is taillights.” In her article “Critic’s Notebook: Brooke Smith’s Firing Is Bad for ‘Grey’s Anatomy,’ and the World,” Mary McNamara of the Los Angeles Times gives her reasons for Smith’s firing as she writes, “Smith probably got the boot not because her character wasn’t interesting enough or sympathetic enough but because she, especially when paired with Ramirez, just didn’t fit the visual template of ‘Grey’s’ or indeed, of most of network television. She is a character actress, not a tabloid star. In other words, and they are words I deeply regret, Ramirez, with all her lipglossed lusciousness, may be beautiful enough to be bi, but Smith is not beautiful enough to be gay. At least not on network TV. Some ground, it would appear, is too calcified to be broken” (McNamara 2008). In the light of points made above in this article in terms of the visual representation of Erica Hahn’s character and its difference in relation to other televisual representations of lesbians and women in general, one is inclined to agree with McNamara. Representing a 40-year-old career woman, a successful surgeon, who falls for another woman and, soon after, declares her gayness seems to be quite strongly at odds with the televisual landscape of contemporary America where lesbians are, by definition, young, good looking, stylish, and extremely feminine. As Russo (2009, 10) writes in relation to Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and its main female character, Olivia Benson, “we cannot solve the mystery of the motives behind what amounted to an assault on the character beloved by lesbian fandom.” Naturally, the actual reasons for why Brooke Smith was fired from Grey’s Anatomy remain unknown. However, quickly after the news of the firing had been made public, the creator of the series, Shonda Rhimes issued a statement in which she said that “Brooke Smith was obviously not fired for playing a lesbian. Clearly it’s not an issue as we have a lesbian character on the show—Calliope Torres. Sara Ramirez is an incredible

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comedic and dramatic actress and we wanted to be able to play up her magic. “Unfortunately, we did not find that the magic and chemistry with Brooke’s character would sustain in the long run. The impact of the Callie/Erica relationship will be felt and played out in a story for Callie. I believe it belittles the relationship to simply replace Erica with ‘another lesbian.’ If you’ll remember, Cristina mourned the loss of Burke for a full season” (quoted in Snarker 2008). When considering the statement in relation to the development of the storyline of Callie and Erica, it seemes at odds with the depiction of their relationship. Unlike what Rhimes says, the character of Callie has not been portrayed as a lesbian character in the series. Instead, she has been very poingant about not defining herself in terms of being either straight or gay, as is clear from the descriptions presented in this article. It seems as if Rhimes is quick to not only label the character as lesbian but also respond to those who have accused her and the network of homophobia. In addition, the statement seems to attempt to contain the queerness of Callie much in the same manner as in LA Law more than 15 years before. In her analysis of the series, Kennedy (1994, 140) writes, “C. J.’s queerness must be contained; otherwise it would risk queering the show as a whole. So while as a character C. J. resists being pigeonholed into a sexual identity, she functions, in terms of the logic of the show, as the site of a sexual identity—bisexuality.” Callie, despite refusing to label herself, is clearly labeled by Rhimes as lesbian. After reading the statement, the viewer is left to wonder how the show’s storyline and what the show’s creator says can be so at odds with each other. CONCLUSION In this chapter I have analyzed the first lesbian relationship of ABC’s popular medical drama, Grey’s Anatomy. Before the fourth season, the series had remained peculiarly straight despite including some partly gay-themed episodes in its first three seasons. In addition, the series and its production had been forced to deal with homosexuality when actor Isaiah Washington made a blunt remark and outed fellow actor, then-closeted T. R. Knight, in a highly publicized incident, resulting in his subsequent firing. Through the depiction of Callie and Erica and their relationship, the series added a queer relationship to its array of straight ones and introduced its viewers to the beginnings of a lesbian relationship and all the emotions that go with it. In addition, it

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portrayed lesbian and queer women in a manner that veered away from cliche´d patterns present in the lesbian representation of contemporary American television. The somewhat subversive nature of the series and its storyline was quickly put into question as the news about Brooke Smith’s termination from the show was made public. Instead of developing a relationship that had moved from previous heterosexual panic and tentative beginnings to a committed and honest union between two professional adult women, the series cut the story short and ended the storyline abruptly. This reminds a lesbian-inclined viewer of Russo’s (2009, 9) words, “The figure of Olivia’s lesbianism is a shifting jumble of diegetic references and absences, audience competencies and investments, industrial conditions, and political context that is not easily stabilized, and at the same time not easily dismissed. Both ephemeral online discussions and Sally’s more concerted manifesto are artifacts of fans’ struggles with the complexity and contradictions of the project of representing or locating lesbian desire in the televisual landscape—its frustrations and its inexhaustibly generative potential.” What started as a promise of a romantic relationship between two professional women on American network television was quickly replaced by a walk to the parking lot of no return. Now, how queer can that be? APPENDIX List of relevant episodes from the seasons analyzed in the article, including original air dates Source: ABC.com Season 4 Ep. 1 A Change Is Gonna Come—20070927 Ep. 2 Love/Addiction—20071004 Ep. 3 Let the Truth Sting—20071011 Ep. 4 The Heart of the Matter—20071018 Ep. 5 Haunt You Every Day—20071025 Ep. 6 Kung Fu Fighting—20071101 Ep. 7 Physical Attraction . . . Chemical Reaction—20071108 Ep. 8 Forever Young—20071115 Ep. 9 Crash Into Me, Part One—20071122 Ep. 10 Crash Into Me, Part Two—20071206 Ep. 11 Lay Your Hands on Me—20080110 Ep. 12 Where the Wild Things Are—20080424 Ep. 13 Piece of My Heart—20080501 Ep. 14 The Becoming—20080508

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Ep. 15 Losing My Mind—20080515 Ep. 16 Freedom—20080522 Season 5 Ep. 1 Dream a Little Dream of Me, Pt. 1—20080925 Ep. 2 Dream a Little Dream of Me, Pt. 2—20080925 Ep. 3 Here Comes the Flood—20081009 Ep. 4 Brave New World—20081016 Ep. 5 There’s No “I” in Team—20081023 Ep. 6 Life During Wartime—20081030 Ep. 7 Rise Up—20081106 Ep. 8 These Ties That Bind—20081113 Ep. 9 In The Midnight Hour—20081120 Ep. 10 All By Myself—20081204 Ep. 11 Wish You Were Here—20090108 Ep. 12 Sympathy for the Devil—20090115 Ep. 13 Stairway To Heaven—20090122 Ep. 14 Beat Your Heart Out—20090205 Ep. 15 Before and After—20090212 Ep. 16 An Honest Mistake—20090219 Ep. 17 I Will Follow You Into the Dark—20090312 Ep. 18 Stand by Me—20090319 Ep. 19 Elevator Love Letter—20090326 Ep. 20 Sweet Surrender—20090423 Ep. 21 No Good at Saying Sorry—20090430 Ep. 22 What a Difference a Day Makes—20090507 Ep. 23 Here’s to Future Days—20090514 Ep. 24 Now or Never—20090514

REFERENCES ABC.com Grey’s Anatomy Episode Guide. http://abc.go.com/shows/ greys-anatomy/episode-guide (accessed November 12, 2009). Ausiello, Michael 2008. “Exclusive: ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ Discharges Dr. Hahn.” Entertainment Weekly, November 3, 2008. http://ausiellofiles.ew.com/ 2008/11/03/brooke-smith-le/ (accessed October 23, 2009). Battles, Kathleen, and Wendy Hilton-Morrow. “Gay Characters in Conventional Spaces: Will and Grace and the Situation Comedy Genre.” Critical Studies in Media Communication 19.1 (2002): 87−105. Berlant, Lauren, and Michael Warren. “Sex in Public.” Critical Inquiry 24 (1998): 547–566. Buchanan, Kyle. “ ‘Grey’s’ Banishes Its Lesbian to The Parking Lot of No Return. November 7, 2008. http://defamer.gawker.com/5079882/greys -banishes-its-lesbian-to-the-parking-lot-of-no-return (accessed October 25, 2009).

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Chambers, Samuel A. “Telepistemology of the Closet; or, The Queer Politics of Six Feet Under.” Journal of American Culture 26.1 (2003): 24–41. Ciasullo, Ann M. “Making Her (In)Visible: Cultural Representations of Lesbianism and the Lesbian Body in the 1990s.” Feminist Studies 27 (2001): 577−608. Dos Santos, Kristin 2008. “Grey’s De-Gayed: Brooke Smith Axed; Melissa George’s Role Rewritten.” Watch with Kristin. E! Online.com. November 3, 2008. http://uk.eonline.com/uberblog/watch_with_kristin/b66996_greys _degayed_brooke_smith_fired.html (accessed October 25, 2009). Hantzis, Darlene M., and Valerie Lehr. “Whose Desire? Lesbian (Non) Sexuality and Television’s Perpetuation of Hetero/Sexism.” In Queer Words, Queer Images: Communication and the Construction of Homosexuality, edited by Jeffrey R. Ringer, 107−121. New York: New York University Press, 1994. Herman, Didi. “ ‘Bad Girls Changed My Life’: Homonormativity in a Women’s Prison Drama.” Critical Studies in Media Communication 20.2 (2003): 141−159. Inness, Sherrie A. The Lesbian Menace – Ideology, Identity, and the Representation of Lesbian Life. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1997. Kennedy, Roseanne. “The Gorgeous Lesbian in LA Law: The Present Absence?” In The Good, the Bad and the Gorgeous: Popular Culture’s Romance with Lesbianism, edited by Diane Hamer and Belinda Budge, 132−141. London: Pandora, 1994. Kuorikoski, Niina. “Sexuality Is Fluid”—or Is It? An Analysis of Television’s The L Word from the Perspectives of Gender and Sexuality. Interalia, 2007. http://www.interalia.org.pl/pl/artykuly/aktualny_numer/09 _sexuality_is_fluid1.htm (accessed October 20, 2009). Lo, Malinda. “Notes & Queeries: The Undiscovered Country.” AfterEllen.com, 2007. http://www.afterellen.com/notesandqueeries/10-21-08?page =0%2C0 (accessed October 25, 2009). McNamara, Mary 2008. “Critic’s Notebook: Brooke Smith’s Firing Is Bad for ‘Grey’s Anatomy,’ and the World.” Los Angeles Times, November 3, 2008. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/showtracker/2008/11/critics-noteboo .html (accessed October 23, 2009). Moritz, Marguerite J. “Old Strategies for New Texts: How American Television Is Creating and Treating Lesbian Characters.” In Queer Words, Queer Images: Communication and the Construction of Homosexuality, edited by Jeffrey R. Ringer, 122−142. New York: New York University Press. Russo, Julie Levin. “Sex detectives: Law & Order: SVU’s Fans, Critics, and Characters Investigate Lesbian Desire.” Transformative Works and Cultures, 3 (2009): 1−14. http://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2009.0155 (accessed October 22, 2009). Russo, Vito. The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies, Revised Edition. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1987.

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Snarker, Dorothy. “Grey’s Anatomy Fires Brooke Smith, De-Gays Melissa George’s Character.” AfterEllen.com, 2008. http://www.afterellen.com/ TV/2008/10/greys-fires-brooke-smith (accessed October 23, 2009). Stacey, Jackie. “ ‘If You Don’t Play, You Can’t Win.’ Desert Hearts and the Lesbian Romance Film.” In Immortal Invisible: Lesbians and the Moving Image, edited by Tasmin Wilton, 92−114. London: Routledge, 1995. Tosenberger, Catherine. “The Epic Love Story of Sam and Dean”: Supernatural, Queer Readings, and the Romance of Incestuous Fan Fiction.” Transformative Works and Cultures, 1 (2008): 1−11. http://journal .transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/30 (accessed October 22, 2009). Walters, Suzanna Danuta. All the Rage: The Story of Gay Visibility in America. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2001. Welsh, Kaite. “Too Gay for Grey’s Anatomy.” Guardian.co.uk. November 6, 2008. http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/tvandradioblog/2008/nov/ 06/greys-anatomy-gay-brooke-smith (accessed October 25, 2009). Williams, D. “Behind the Lesbian Story Line on “Grey’s Anatomy.” AfterEllen .com, June 15, 2008. http://www.afterellen.com/TV/2008/6/greysanatomy (accessed October 23, 2009).

Chapter 5

From Stereotypes to Characters: The Development of Queer Motifs in American Cinema from Wings to The Children’s Hour Florian Mundhenke

The rather abstract label “Queer Cinema” makes denominations and descriptions difficult, if not impossible. It cannot be described as a genre with certain persistent characters and recurring places, but more a set of descriptions to illustrate an environment of figures living a life that can be expressed as queer in various ways. There are two conceptions of the term “queer” in cinema that have developed throughout the years of cinema’s coming-of-age. On the one hand there is clearly something like “queer authorship,” with directors getting established in the art underground of the 1960s, with Andy Warhol and John Waters being two important figures (see Doty 2004). These directors mostly try to present and depict a certain lifestyle with certain types of people that could be described as queers. From the muscle-bound and virile bummer played by Joe Dallesandro in Warhol’s and Paul Morrissey’s Trash (1970) to the variety of strange and outlandish characters in Waters’s Pink Flamingos (1972), with the cross-dressing Divine as the most campy impersonation of that style, there are already two quite different kinds of queer conceptions

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in that period of time. This is the one shape of queer cinema, and in these films this label cannot only be applied to the characters, their lives, and their sexuality (as being gay or lesbian), but it also counts for narration, production design, and camera/editing style. The other strand of queer cinema has its roots within mainstream filmmaking and can be characterized as showing the everyday conflicts of queers with the common U.S. culture. These films focus on the one hand on the suppression and marginalization of queer people in working life and in other public spheres. On the other hand there is also a spotlight on the enrichment these characters can inject into everyday culture. The latter category, the fight between mainstream cinema’s attempt to build simple and general concepts and the queer idea of interfering with that, will be followed further in the following analyses. This chapter will focus primarily on the inception and development of certain queer stereotypes (some of them cultural exaggerations, some of them inspired by real life) that existed within cinema’s variety from the first short silent films (see Benshoff, Griffin 2005 for a historical overview). But second—with the articulation and refinement of these types in real life—it will also focus on the conflicts that came with conservative strands of culture within the United States in the twentieth century. The discussion of motifs is structured here in three sections. First, the early cinema (1890s to 1930s) will be analyzed for certain side characters and stereotypes that could take root within mainstream cinema of this time. The second period of time (1940s to 1950s) was an era when homosexuality was more and more openly discussed (if still quite rigidly fought against, especially with the means of the Production Code) and cinema reacted with some queer characters that were outsiders, often criminals, and operating as antagonists within more traditional plot lines. The 1960s still focused on suppression, but it also showed that queers were not the only ones with responsibility, but that the severe rejection of differences (not only concerning sexuality, but also race or class) clearly marks problems on both sides in the line of integration. As already mentioned, things have changed with the late 1960s, and the queer cinema movement has developed since then (see Aaron 2004). As rather formulaic films like Philadelphia (Jonathan Demme 1993) prove, however, stereotyping and ongoing fights against otherness prevail within society as well as within cinema culture. This look back into cinema’s heritage tries to render which types of queer characters have developed and how they got assimilated and incorporated into the mainstream cinema tradition.

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EARLY CINEMA: SIDEKICKS, STEREOTYPES, AND SISSIES The early years of filmmaking, the “cinema of attractions,” as Tom Gunning coined it (see Gunning 1989), the silent film era and the first talkies are generally seen as a time for trials and experiments within the general design of making commercial viable films. Shorter comedy films always played with motifs that could involve cross-dressing, gender-troubled performances, and the confusion of sexes, even if only in a very light and funny way. The two men in Arthur Edison’s The Gay Brothers (circa 1896) are not real “gay,” but are cheerful dancers who are amusing themselves. The same can be said about Charlie Chaplin disguised as a female in A Woman (1915) or Charles Farrell’s ambiguous queer side character Chico in Frank Borzage’s Seventh Heaven (1927). This hiding and disguising of the queer subtext is quite typical for early American cinema. In other countries queer issues were discussed more openly, like in the German educational film Anders als die andern (Different from the others, 1919, Richard Oswald) about a man accepting to have an affair with a homosexual musician to blackmail money from him for not reporting him to the police. The film is accompanied by a rather objective commentary by sexual scientist Magnus Hirschfeld, allowing a well-balanced, unscandalizing if not entirely sympathetic presentation of the conflict. In that time in America, this undisguised presentation was still impossible: queer issues were handled rather indirectly in the appearance of certain types that could be gay but also could be explained otherwise just as being odd or extraordinary. One popular example of dealing with stereotypes and establishing certain ambiguous situations within the plot line without ever making a clear statement is William A. Wellman’s 1927 silent film Wings. The film, produced with a large budget of around $2 million and being nominated with the first ever Academy Award for Best Picture, is primarily a rather simple retelling of the development of a friendship between two boys from the same town that also includes a love triangle (indeed, it is a quadrangle) between the soldiers and two quite different women from the same town. David (Richard Arlen) and Jack (Charles “Buddy” Rogers) are rivals from the very beginning. They are both in love with the refined girl-from-town Sylvia (Jobyna Ralston) and try to win her heart. However, there is also another girl involved, the rather boyish Mary (Clara Bow), who is deeply in love with Jack, though he does not recognize her as a girl of interest for him. When Jack and David enter the air corps, they gradually develop a friendship.

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While Mary tries to seduce Jack during a time of absence in Paris, with him being too drunk to be aware of her, Jack shoots David in the final fight sequence because the latter is flying a stolen German plane, and then heads back home to tell his parents about his sad demise. At the end Jack rejects Sylvia for Mary to let their comradeship become a liaison. Concerning situations and types of characters, Wings already contains the full panoply of possibilities of dealing with queers without openly challenging gender formations. First there is a side character, the soldier Herman Schwimpf (El Brendel), a classic sissy character who is involved in many funny situations. He is clumsy, always making jokes and funny faces, and is used for instruction by the training supervisor to show how to fight an enemy. There is a continuing joke of him trying to prove he is a real American, despite his name, when he pulls down his vest with people usually thinking he wants to fight until he presents an American flag tattooed on his right biceps. Schwimpf is condemned to stay at the air base to help there, while the other men are allowed to combat the enemy in the air. During the land leave he is still making fun, but he is not enjoying himself with girls and rather remains solitary. During the second half of the film he is disappearing from the plot. While Schwimpf’s behavior, movement, and attitude could be labeled as gay, he is rather an asexual sidekick to support the main conflict between the four protagonists, who seem to have a romantic concern in their relations. Despite Herman Schwimpf’s “light” sissy, Clara Bow’s approach of playing Mary is perfectly influenced by the tomboy stereotype. She is not only a girl knowing how to drive and to repair a car, but she also applies with the army working as a driver for the civil services. When she is reintroduced after Jack and David’s home leave, one can see her in uniform with high boots and the hair hidden under a bonnet. She is driving fast alongside a group of soldiers when she suddenly runs into a man, gets out of the car, and tries to help. While the soldier is feigning death to get a hug from the disguised woman, a passing-by colonel complains about the allegedly two men kissing. Later on, when Mary gets dressed as girl with costume and jewels in Paris, Jack—and almost all of the other soldiers—do not identify her anymore. At the end of the film, Mary again has changed from the wild and boyish flapper to the brave housewife waiting for Jack to marry her. Despite this rather predictable and commonplace ending, there is still something playful about the Mary character incorporating the privilege to step across marked boundaries and trying out

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new things to challenge customs and practices within the scope of her possibilities. The biggest nod towards a maceration of established rules and principles of behavior is the male friendship between Jack and David. When they are still antagonists during the first scenes in the armed forces, there is a hard fight of the two that is getting more and more gentle and tender until Jack offers the succumbed David his friendship. In a later scene we see the two men arguing about the relation to Sylvia, but finally giving in for saving their friendship, which has grown stronger than any heterosexual relation within the film’s design. This conception is deeply confirmed by the last scene involving the two men after Jack accidentally shot David’s airplane. Jacks runs to see the man a last time, he hugs and caresses him, and finally gives him the now famous kiss on the lips, almost replicating the farewell of vintage lovers before the final departure, like between Romeo and Juliet, or Orpheus and Eurydice. Unlike the sissy Schwimpf or the flapper Mary, there is a deep resonance about this scene involving David and Jack. They overcome their antagonism of love and of class (it is said at the beginning that David is the son of the wealthiest man in town) to develop a connection that is more profound than any other bond in the film. It is certainly not a sexual relation, but clearly a bodily, physical one that is accompanied by other scenes involving men and the corporeal attraction of their bodies during the military training. Their understanding and mutual tenderness sometimes recalls similar relations in genre films of later days like in Star Wars (1977, George Lucas, between the Luke Skywalker and the Han Solo character) or in the James Bond-series (from 1962, with Bond and Felix Leiter). There are always girls involved for certain kinds of pleasure, but male understanding is eventually more important and more resonant. In summary, Wings alludes to all the possibilities of representing queer lifestyles (the female man, the boyish woman, the bond between people of the same sex) without ever openly playing out one of them or making them definitively discernible. There is a mapping, trying out, and alluding of opportunities within the construction of a rather simple and heteronormative plot design that paved the way for similar constructions to follow. The idea of the sissy sidekick—the foolish, rather effeminate, and typically asexual supporting role—has been discussed in film comedy theory and studies of film history (see Morris 2002, Russo 1987, 3–60). It can be said that the sissy is generally designed to support the main plot

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line, but it also functions to challenge and dispute the heterosexual relation that is central to any Hollywood plot of that time. There were some actors specializing in this kind of role, like Edward Everett Horton or Franklin Pangborn. Most of them were characterized by large overacting—rolling eyebrows, speaking in a high voice, laughing childishly, and generally trying to steal the show from the people behaving normally—but there were also rules and limitations, like Herman Schwimpf suddenly disappearing from the final third of Wings to leave the stage to the four main characters. George Cukor—who is wellknown for directing female characters, especially in the pseudo-queer The Women (1939)—lets sissy Tyrell Davis resolve the plot in his film Our Betters (1933). In musicals and dancing films there is almost always one sissy to widen the established rules and lines of development, as one can see in Top Hat (1935). The last two examples prove to be an expansion to the characters in the Borzage and Wellman films mentioned above. Even if the sissy remains at the margins and his behavior seems rather harmless for us nowadays, these films cannot be underestimated for giving blueprints for role models in more direct queer films like To Wong Foo (Beeban Kidron 1995) or Priscilla: Queen of the Desert (Stephan Elliott 1994). POSTWAR FILM: OUTLAWS, ODD GUYS, AND OUTSIDERS It is primarily the sissy type that has developed from easygoing fools to heavier types of disguised queers in films of the following two decades. It should be mentioned of the film noir thriller Laura (1944, Otto Preminger) involving young detective Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews) investigating the death of Laura Hunt (Gene Tierney). The two main suspects are Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb), an elderly dandy and successful newspaper columnist, and Shelby Carpenter (Vincent Price), a good-looking but deceitful and not very wealthy young scalawag. Both man are antagonists, Lydecker trying to stop the engagement and planned marriage of Laura and Shelby, and Shelby himself not being fond of the influence the old man has on the young journalist girl. In the middle of the film, Laura suddenly reappears (having gone away to think about her marriage), and it is discovered that the victim is a friend of hers wearing one of her dresses the night the murder happened. Finally, it turns out that Lydecker killed the girl because he wanted her for himself despite having no sexual or love interest concerning her. Undeniably this film—made during a time when the Production Code was all-dominant—is even less queer in motifs and intentions

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than Wings, but it has some scenes involving the Lydecker character that clearly prove the change of the sissy character from harmless sidekick to a pathologic criminal. Vito Russo points out that in the preshooting script of Laura, Waldo was explicitly gay (Russo 1987, 49). Here is still something of a curiosity: On the one hand, he is a dandy having achieved fame and wealth, is well-known in town, and is making a comfortable living with his writings and radio talks. On the other hand, he never was married and he develops something like an ill-fated affection for Laura that could be described as him being a Svengali who controls and handles Laura and her public operations for his own purposes; there is never a notion of physical attraction between the two quite unlike people. Despite that, Lydecker is an exotic who is respected but who is damned to live at the margins. He comments and observes society from the outside as a columnist, but he is never really part of it; the sissy role of the fool has changed here into something fragile and delicate, which is sometimes convenient and useful but also can become threatening and uncontrollable. There is a scene where Lydecker first meets detective McPherson and shows himself completely naked to the other man—not to the audience—a scene that seems unnecessary concerning plot development and characterization. Roger Ebert describes this moment in a review of the film: The scene develops with more undercurrents than surface, as McPherson enters the bathroom, glances at Lydecker, seems faintly amused. Then Lydecker swings the typewriter shelf away, so that it shields his nudity from the camera but not from the detective. Waldo stands up, off screen, and a reaction shot shows McPherson glancing down as Lydecker asks him to pass a bathrobe. Every time I see the movie, I wonder what Preminger is trying to accomplish with this scene. There is no suggestion that Lydecker is attracted to McPherson, and yet it seems odd to greet a police detective in the nude. (Ebert 2002) The whole scene perfectly introduces Lydecker, who is also narrating the plot—quite unusual for a bad character—and tries to govern the development and widen his influence on people. He sees Laura’s potential (even the detective falls in love with her while she is still away at the beginning of the film), but he finally fails with his measures to contain her while he is getting more and more criminal. On the one hand, Lydecker is quite a tough character who is willing

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to prove his power, and on the other hand he remains an outsider who is finally doomed to fail with his perfectionism and compulsion to control. After the immense success of Laura, there were quite a lot of films with evil or condemned sissy characters, a stereotype that is standing out until today. A more multifaceted view on queer characters came only after World War II. One important example is Jack Garfein’s 1956 film The Strange One, based on a play and adapted by Calder Willingham. The film is about Jocko de Paris (the first role for Ben Gazzara), who is an almost nastily self-assured higher-grade student at a Southern military college. He plots his friend Harold Knoble (Pat Hingle) and the two freshmen Marquales and Simmons (George Peppard as a shy man coming from a poor background and Arthur Storch as an overacted ascetically religious outcast) into a scheme to beat down and make drunk George Avery (Geoffrey Horne) to get him dismissed from the school. This is all because Avery’s father (Larry Gates) has been an ill-treating drill instructor during de Paris’s training days. Like in Wings, the plot line is focusing almost primarily on men and their relations, competition, and hierarchy. There is only one female character involved, the young small-town girl Rosebud (Julie Wilson; sometimes in literature termed as a hooker, but that is never mentioned in the film), but she is basically of no interest for the plot. All the homosexual undertones have been cut from the version released in the 1950s, but they have been restored for the 2009 DVD release. The Strange One is principally a film about power, control over others, and the limits of social influence. Like Jack in Wings, Jocko de Paris knows how to gain authority over men and arouse their interest in games and intrigues. There are two story lines including allusions to homosexuality. The first is concerning Cadet Simmons, the religious freshman who never meets girls like the other students and is too shy to go into the shower with the others (probably because he is afraid of bodily reactions). Simmons is an odd guy, never clearly speaking about his intentions and shying away from any complicated situation. He could be a homosexual disavowing with his desires, but it is also possible that he is a really just a pious anchorite. There is another character—whose role was fully cut from the original version—in the writer and poet Perrin McKee (Paul E. Richards), called Cockroach in the film. The movements and behavior of McKee is typically queeny and feminine. There is a scene where he approaches de Paris and tries to blackmail him because he saw the men beating up Avery during that night; afterwards he reads a scene from his

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unfinished novel accurately depicting this one scene. McKee afterwards tenderly touches de Paris’ face—here he is the one trying to gain control over the other, who normally supervises the happenings and tries to intimidate the other students—and he finishes the scene with a deep look into the eyes of de Paris, smiling and saying to him, “All I want is just your comradeship.” Later on, there is a private trial arranged by the other students to get de Paris to sign a statement proving that he plotted the other participants into that scheme. In that scene, McKee is the only one to react positively to the man’s cry for a just judgment, lamenting that the end of his novel was different from what is happening now. That scene clearly marks the affection McKee has for the goodlooking and self-assured senior student, but this can be only openly uttered in this moment since de Paris will leave town after his dismissal anyway. Even if Simmons and McKee are not obvious gay characters, they illustrate some definitively queer characteristics that refer to a clear development from the simple “funny man” design of Herman Schwimpf in the silent movie mentioned above. McKee is not just hilarious and acting strange, but he is also cultivated and refined; he clearly knows how to handle situations to take advantage of them. Even if de Paris does not react positively to his advances, there is an underlying tension in these scenes with McKee enjoying the power and opening himself to let the other notice his desire for him. Both Waldo Lydecker and Perrin McKee are criminals, outcasts, and strange ones. There is a last quite different example from this period with a refined, well-characterized queer sidekick in Rebel Without a Cause (Nicholas Ray 1955). The famous “juvenile delinquent” film about James Dean as Jim Stark who moves with his family into a well-to-do Los Angeles neighborhood focuses on him befriending Judy (Natalie Wood), the girl living next door, and outcast Plato (Sal Mineo), whose life alone and disaffection with his parents is mirrored in Jim’s. After Buzz (Corey Allen) gets killed in a car race, Jim, Judy, and Plato are tracked down by Buzz’s friends and the police in a deserted mansion in the hills, and Plato gets killed during the final confrontation. The character of Plato operates like a reflection of Jim’s problems and his life situation: While Jim dislikes his parents for being cowards (especially his father), Plato has no parents at all: His mother is traveling all the time, only visiting him once a year, and his father has abandoned the family completely. The other kids are all living in groups and gangs, but Plato’s dreamy and rebellious side does not seem to

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fit into this system at all. He completely occupies Jim when he arrives as an “immigrant” in the neighborhood, asking him straight away to replace his absent father and come home with him after the dreadful death of Buzz. Jim declines, but he is fond of Plato’s affection and arranges for the two to stay as close as possible. Shortly after, Jim and Judy develop a shy liaison, but Plato nevertheless remains with the two. In the old mansion the three seem to live like an ideal family, with the younger Plato functioning as a child and a catalyst for the relationship between the heterosexual lovers. One can see him as a complete outcast during the slow development of the conflicts; he seems to be even more removed from “normal society” than Jim. That may be because of his family situation, but it is primarily the openly shown affection and adoration for Jim that supports the understanding that he does not fit into the heteronormative system. Chris Wood mentions that there was sexual tension between actors and crew of the film, and also between Dean and Mineo. He writes: If there is sexual tension between Plato and Jim in the film, then sexual tension between Mineo and Dean was also present on the set. “I realized later that I was homosexually attracted to him,” Mineo later recalled of Dean. “When he showed love to me, when he said it, that did it. He was really overwhelming.” Although nothing sexual ever transpired between the two actors, Plato’s obvious desire of Jim, both sexual and familial, is indicative of Mineo’s attraction toward, and deep respect for, Dean. (Wood 2000) This subtext is further carried out on the screen, especially in the way Mineo looks at Dean and how he caresses his shoulder during the planetarium scene. There are other hints at that understanding of the Plato character, further prolonged in an article Sam Kashner published in Vanity Fair magazine in March 2005. He explicates: Sal Mineo—so affecting as the essentially fatherless outcast Plato— later commented that he had portrayed the first gay teenager on film. There are little clues: the photograph of Alan Ladd taped to his locker door, his longing looks at Jim Stark, his disguised declaration of love in the abandoned mansion. Ray was aware of Dean’s bisexuality and encouraged the actor to use it in certain scenes. Dean instructed Mineo, “Look at me the way I look at Natalie,” for their intimate scene in the Getty mansion. It had to be subtle.

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A Production Code officer had written in a memo to Jack L. Warner on March 22, “It is of course vital that there be no inference of a questionable or homosexual relationship between Plato and Jim.” (Kashner 2005) Even if Plato is not exactly a positive character—he is represented as an outlandish and lonely young man and is the only one who has to die in the end—he is big step from the sinister sissy Waldo Lydecker or the pathological blackmailer Perrin McKee. He is a sensitive, beautiful, and first of all misunderstood boy, even abandoned by his own family. His queer appearance—so it is insinuated here—is also a product of circumstances. He emerges as being more tragic than threatening or diseased. That should change in the 1960s with a further weakening of the Production Code and other restrictions getting challenged by spectators worldwide. THE SIXTIES: SUPPRESSION VERSUS SISTERHOOD SPIRIT While the open representation of various queer stereotypes was important in American cinema from its beginning to the 1950s, all the tomboy or sissy stereotypes and the attraction or fascination between the same sexes in films mentioned above can also be characterized completely different with the people only behaving strange and not being queer as it is understood nowadays. With more direct and open addresses of issues since the 1960s, there are also are straighter responses from society, critics, and guardians of public morals, but also from audiences and communities representing certain interests. After having mentioned male connections and relations above, there is a focus on female linking in William Wyler’s The Children’s Hour (1961). The film is based on a play by Lillian Hellman and was made into a film by the director in 1936 under the name These Three, but at that time all queer undertones had to be deleted completely from the final draft of the script. The 1961 version tells the story of two young teachers, Karen Wright (Audrey Hepburn) and Martha Dobie (Shirley MacLaine), running a private school for girls in the country. Karen is engaged to Dr. Joe Cardin (James Garner), a local medicine man, but she regularly declines his proposals of marriage. After being punished, one of the girls, the bitchy Mary Tilford (Karen Balkin), spreads the rumor of the two women being lesbians and having kissed each other. Her grandmother, Amelia Tilford (Fay Bainter),

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believes her and arranges that all girls are taken from school. After a court trial and open exposure before the townspeople even Joe splits from Karen because he doesn’t believe her anymore. By chance, Miss Tilford finds out about the false statement of her grandchild, but when she goes visiting the teachers to apologize, she is too late: Martha— who just proclaimed having probably had feelings for Karen— commits suicide. Like Wings or The Strange One, The Children’s Hour is primarily about power relations between the central characters. In addition to the scandal-mongering girls, there is Martha’s aunt, Lily Mortar (Miriam Hopkins), working as a teacher at the school. When she is dismissed for her inappropriate behavior, she openly speaks about Martha’s strange manners of not having a man, something that eventually leads to the construction of the lie. Miss Tilford believes Mary, but only because the girl holds the string over Rosalie Wells (Veronica Cartwright), another child who saw the revealing kiss, but is also a magpie, stealing things from the other girls. Mary promises not to tell anyone about this secret, when Rosalie keeps her mouth shut over the lie. This all verifies to be waterproof so that the audience can witness an archetypal situation of breakdown, where no action helps to resolve the truth. The film has very profound characterizations and shows how the lie gradually destroys all the protective barriers of the two women at the center of the film: First of all, the proclamation is spreading outside, bringing the parents of the girls and the small town against the two, then with aunt Lily leaving, and finally with Joe rejecting Karen. Wyler focuses on the power of shame that is put on queer people—allegedly or real—when the milkman only enters through the back door or some rednecks watch the women from a pick-up truck at the fence. But he also shows how the internal securities and certainties are put into question and make it finally hard to live on. With the scene of the embarrassed Mrs. Tilford, who now has to live with the assertion to be a liar and intriguer, Wyler illustrates that mistrust and the construction of lies concerning otherness is not doing a good job for anyone, which is quite a step from the general affirmation of denunciating homosexuals in films and literature before. The two teachers are portrayed as strong characters, selfdetermined and immediate; they do not necessarily need to resign to heterosexual balances of power. After Martha’s funeral we see Karen somewhat relieved, watched by the others—including Jim—but not interacting or opening to a possible dependency from any of them.

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Concerning the lesbian feelings of the character Martha Dobie, it is important that the director shifted the plotting of a triangle of jealousness in the first version (where Martha cannot stand the idea of Joe and Karen getting married) into something more ambiguous. If not very lucidly executed, Martha’s confession of her affection for Karen is probably the most important scene of the film, even if words like lesbianism and sexual feelings are never uttered, while words like dirt and shame are. Despite the desperation in Martha’s voice, her speech is true and sincere; her feelings are nothing that can simply be talked away. She indeed has never had a man, and her feelings for Karen are obvious from the first scene when we see the two handling the opening of the school. In the film version of The Celluloid Closet, Shirley MacLaine remembers that situation of indirectly dealing with lesbianism in this film: We might have been forerunners, but we weren’t really, because we didn’t do the picture right. We were in the mindset of not understanding what we were basically doing. These days, there would be a tremendous outcry, as well there should be. Why would Martha break down and say, “Oh my god, what’s wrong with me, I’m so polluted, I’ve ruined you.” She would fight! She would fight for her budding preference. And when you look at it, to have Martha play that scene—and no one questioned it—what that meant, or what the alternatives could have been underneath the dialog, it’s mind boggling. The profundity of this subject was not in the lexicon of our rehearsal period. Audrey and I never talked about this. Isn’t that amazing? Truly amazing. (The Celluloid Closet 1996) One the hand, Wyler focuses on the principles of power that lead to social marginalization and takes a voice for the latent queer and outstanding Martha, who at the beginning has a social situation with the school, Karen, her aunt, and everything, she could survive in. On the other hand through her desperate confession, the permanent ruin of the main characters, and finally her suicide he clearly shows that there still is no place for queers in a small-town environment as it is portrayed in this film. Even if the film is not quite explicit, its statement is clear and it paved a way for the final death stroke on the Production Code, which was transferred into the less rigid Rating System in 1966. Afterwards— and following the Stonewall Riots in 1969—the depicting and

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mentioning of homosexuality, even in mainstream films, became more and more easy to handle. In 1967 Mark Rydell directed The Fox about two loving women (even kissing each other) on a remote island but getting disturbed by a macho seaman, embodying the destructive power of male sexuality. In 1969 John Schlesinger followed with Midnight Cowboy about two male hookers only finding solace in each other’s arms. His next film was Sunday, Bloody Sunday (1971), with Peter Finch playing a homosexual medicine man getting divorced from his wife to live with a man, the young Murray Head, who proves to be a bisexual, also being intimate with Glenda Jackson. The film avoids showing any actions and moments that could get defeated by moral watchdogs, showing the events in a slow everyday rhythm. But with that the film manages to normalize the look on queers being ordinary characters that have similar conflicts like everyone and do not need to get scandalized through exposure or need to act against their desires. CHANGES AND ADJUSTMENTS? QUEER CHARACTERS IN AMERICAN CINEMA TODAY The development from certain stereotypes to more general conflicts of queer people with regulations of the law and public responses to their expressed feelings gradually changed into something more usual in the 1970s with more diverse and multifaceted characters in non-stigmatizing environments (see also Gever 1993 for a general overview). Despite the establishment of a queer cinema by some established authors—from John Waters in the 1970s, Derek Jarman in the 1980s, and Todd Haynes and Gus van Sant Jr. in the 1990s—all delivering different attempts at an inside view to problems and issues of queer identity, U.S. mainstream cinema still has difficulties with dealing openly with queer characteristics. Many of the conventional aspects of stereotyping the extraordinary were surviving from the films mentioned. There are two different strands of portraying queers in Hollywood cinema: In genre films one still can find the bad guy/girl pigeonhole for gay or lesbian side or main characters. Catherine Trammell (Sharon Stone) is not only seducing the investigating detective (Michael Douglas) while being in love with Roxy (Leilani Sarelle) in Basic Instinct (Paul Verhoeven, 1992), but she is also suspected to be a serial killer. Gina Gershon and Jennifer Tilly are trying to steal money from Mob boss Joe Pantoliano in Larry and Andy Wachowski’s

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Bound (1996) while they fall in love with each other. They are definitively more positively rendered than the male protagonists, but nevertheless remain outcasts and criminals. Womanly power is an important aspect to other (pseudo-)queer female couples, like the Heavenly Creatures (1994) Kate Winslet and Melanie Lynskey in Peter Jackson’s film or Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon in Ridley Scott’s iconic Thelma and Louise (1991), but these duos are doomed to pay with death for their attempts at liberation. While these films may be conventional and standardized as part of their appearance as genre films, even dramas—and pictures based on real-life stories—focus mostly on futile efforts of reaching for justice. While Philadelphia’s Andrew Becket (Tom Hanks) wins over his law firm that fired him for having acquired the AIDS virus, the easy parallels between his discrimination and the racism against his black lawyer Joe Miller (Denzel Washington) are not quite well developed beyond that he has to pay for his juridical victory with his physical death. In Boys Don’t Cry (1999, Kimberly Peirce), tomboy Teena Brandon (Hilary Swank) manages to betray a whole town with the disguise of being the young ladies man Brandon before getting arrested after a car accident with the female identity being revealed. While his/her teenage lover Lana (Chloe Sevigny) stays true to Teena, the town violently and horridly seeks revenge, eventually killing the downfallen hermaphrodite. The same tragic downfall applies for the disturbed prostitute turned serial killer Aileen Wuornos (Charlize Theron) who is in love with fellow outsider Selby Wall (Christina Ricci) in Patty Jenkins’s Monster (2003). While the last two examples may be another case because they are based on true events, there are simply only a few positive examples of a just, smooth, and everyday representation of queers in Hollywood mainstream cinema today. This may be different in television, where Queer as Folk (2000–2005) and The L Word (2004–2009) prove to be successful with major audiences while depicting their characters within a normal discourse. Two films can stand as a counter movement to this general line: In In and Out (1997, Frank Oz), teacher Kevin Kline gets into difficulties when identified as gay by his former student Matt Dillon, but he can prove otherwise while retaining his seemingly queer character traits, and the two cowboys Jake Gyllenhall and Heath Ledger manage to have a shy liaison in Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain (2005) that is deep and profound while not being primarily coined as homosexuals by the film’s attention. Despite this, the director manages to sketch the two characters as believable humans and leaves them their secrets. One can say that

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these films prove that there are attempts at rejecting the familiar stereotypes of cinema’s legacy. Even if it seems apparently often easier and more convenient to stay with the accustomed patterns, there is a trend—influenced by art house films—to change views and alter preconceptions. APPENDIX Films A Woman (1915), dir. Charlie Chaplin. Included in: Early Masterpieces. 3 DVD-Set Koch Media 2000. Anders als die Andern/Different from the Others (1919), dir. Richard Oswald. Kino Video DVD 2004. Wings (1927), dir. William A. Wellman. Paramount DVD 2000. The Seventh Heaven (1927), dir. Frank Borzage. Suevia Films Import DVD 2006. Top Hat (1935), dir. Mark Sandrich. Turner Home Entertainment DVD 2005. The Women (1939), dir. George Cukor. Warner Home Video DVD 2005. Laura (1944), dir. Otto Preminger. 20th Century Fox 2005. Rebel Without a Cause (1955), dir. Nicholas Ray. Warner Home Video DVD 2005. The Strange One (1956), dir. Jack Garfein. Sony Pictures DVD 2009. The Children’s Hour (1961), dir. William Wyler. MGM Home Video DVD 2002. The Fox (1967), dir. Mark Rydell. Warner Bros. Archive Collection DVD 2009. Midnight Cowboy (1969), dir. John Schlesinger. MGM Home Video DVD 2000. Trash (1970), dir. Paul Morrissey. Imagine Entertainment DVD 2006. Sunday, Bloody Sunday (1971), dir. John Schlesinger. MGM Home Video DVD 2003. Pink Flamingos (1972), dir. John Waters. New Line Home Entertainment DVD 2004. Thelma and Louise (1991), dir. Ridley Scott. MGM Home Video DVD 1997. Basic Instinct (1992), dir. Paul Verhoeven. Artisan Home Entertainment DVD 1997. Philadelphia (1993), dir. Jonathan Demme. Columbia/TriStar DVD 1997. Heavenly Creatures (1994), dir. Peter Jackson. Buena Vista Home Video DVD 2002. The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994), dir. Stephan Elliott. MGM DVD 2000. To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar (1995), dir. Beeban Kidron. Universal Studios DVD 2003. The Celluloid Closet (1996), dir. Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman. Sony Pictures DVD 2001. Bound (1996), dir. Larry and Andy Wachowski. 20th Century DVD 2003. In and Out (1997), dir. Frank Oz. Paramount DVD 1998. Boys Don’t Cry (1999), dir. Kimberly Peirce. 20th Century Fox DVD 2000.

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Monster (2003), dir. Patty Jenkins. Sony Pictures DVD 2004. Brokeback Mountain (2005), dir. Ang Lee. Universal Studios DVD 2006.

REFERENCES Aaron, Michele. New Queer Cinema. A Critical Reader. Edinburgh, 2004. Benshoff, Harry M., and Sean Griffin. Queer Cinema. The Film Reader. New York: 2004. Benshoff, Harry M., and Sean Griffin. Queer Images. A History of Gay and Lesbian Film in America. Lanham, MD: 2005. Doty, Alexander. “Whose Text Is It Anyway? Queer Cultures, Queer Auters and Queer Authorship.” In Queer Cinema. The Film Reader, edited by Harry M. Benshoff and Sean Griffin, 19–34. New York: 2004. Ebert, Roger. “Laura.” Chicago Sun Times, January 20, 2002. http://rogerebert .suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20020120/REVIEWS08/ 201200301/1023 (accessed September 12, 2009). Gever, Martha. Queer Looks. Perspectives on Lesbian and Gay Film and Video. New York, 1993. Gunning, Tom. “The Cinema of Attractions: Early Film, Its Spectator and the Avant-Garde” In Early Film, edited by Thomas Elsaesser and Adam Barker, 56–62. London, 1989. Kashner, Sam. “Dangerous Talents.” Vanity Fair, March 2005. http://www .vanityfair.com/culture/features/2005/03/rebel200503?currentPage=1 (accessed September 12, 2009). Morris, Gary. “Film Sissies.” In Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Culture, edited by Claude J. Summers, 2002. www.glbtq .com/arts/film_sissies.html (accessed September 12, 2009). Russo, Vito. The Celluloid Closet. Homosexuality in the Movies. New York, 1987. Wood, Chris. “Finding the Father: A Psychoanalytic Study of Rebel without a Cause.” In Senses of Cinema, 2000. http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/ contents/00/5/finding.html (accessed September 12, 2009).

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Chapter 6

Women Actors and Male Performativity in Early Hollywood Sarah Smorol

The process of filmic image creation involves three basic components—filmmaking, film content, and film impact. Considered within an educational framework, filmmakers function as teachers (intentionally or unintentionally), films serve as their resulting textbooks (effective or ineffective). And viewers are learners (consciously or subconsciously). —Carlos E. Cortes, Chicanos in Cinema Contemporary readers will no doubt be familiar with the concept of social norms dictating what is appropriate behavior for men or women based upon their sex. Stuart Hall comments on norms, their formation, and their maintenance through visual media in the film Race, The Floating Signifier. Hall illuminates the way that images (the message being sent) and the societal ideals, beliefs, and values they represent are mutually dependant, creating each other rather than existing as fixed truths. Hall also claims that events, objects, and symbols have fluid meanings that are related to functions of power. One set of guidelines, that of gender, sexuality, and power, is reinforced with clothing and dress. This is an everyday signifying practice, the meanings of which are then circulated through media. The entity in power at any given time largely maintains control of which

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images are seen and, therefore, which messages are sent, with the purpose (and outcome) of permitting only messages to be sent which legitimize and perpetuate the dominant entity’s own situation of control. This theory plays into the status of women in the early twentieth century as relates to cross-dressing and Hollywood movies. In the time before televisions were ubiquitous in every home, when international Hollywood homogenization of Western patriarchal ideology was just taking hold, cinema was a pervasive medium of signification. The creation of this type of image, then, becomes part of the “diversification of images” that Hall credits with the power to break stereotypes and deconstruct the notion of an image’s fixed meaning. In the wake of this deconstruction a new meaning, or meanings, may be assigned to the image. In this case images of cross-dressing women seek to deconstruct meanings that had been portrayed as fixed and unchangeable by powerful forces. Namely, the ideas that women were dependant, that their sexuality needed to be controlled, or that their bodies were (or should be) subjects of a singularly male gaze, were all successfully challenged by these subversive representations. This chapter focuses on three women screen actors whose on-screen cross-dressing functioned in various ways and connected with the efforts towards women’s equality. Some even dressed in men’s clothing in their own lives, challenging public perceptions and societal mores. These women, portrayed in male or androgynous clothing, become agents in the diversification of images that Hall credits with the ability to change society’s perceptions, which in effect are society.1 I will explore the ways these women, by cross-dressing and depicting cross-dressing, acted as revolutionaries in the struggle for equality in dress, lifestyle, sexual freedom, including sexual preference, and everyday life. In the process, the ways that male-dominated society has sought to control women through dress codes, and by determining the visual representations and their meanings that the American public is subject to, will be exposed. Judith Butler points out that “gender reality is performative which means, quite simply, that it is real only to the extent that it is performed” (“Performative Acts and Gender Constitution,” 398), while Marjorie Garber suggests that cross-dressing “functions not simply to appropriate or displace one gender onto another but as a sign of the provocative destabilization of gender . . . cross-dressing is not just a category crisis of male and female, but the crisis of category itself” (Qtd. in Berry, 151). The active processes of destabilizing gender categories, challenging

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marriage and its effects on women, and creating space for lesbian spectatorship will be explored through the framework of a few of these film roles. MARLENE DIETRICH, MOROCCO, 1930 One of the most well-known occasions of a woman appearing on the silver screen in a man’s suit (in this case a tuxedo) is that of Marlene Dietrich in Morocco. If not the first, it was certainly the one the public took notice of. The famous scene constitutes Dietrich sauntering into a crowded entertainment hall looking dashingly debonair in tux and top-hat, the sharpness of the shirt against the jacket captured in the black-and-white imagery. She proceeds to approach a hyper-feminine guest at a crowded table and asks for the flower from the woman’s hair. The woman, obviously titillated by the outrageous yet stunning Dietrich, gladly obliges. In thanks, and before the eyes of the entire hall, which have been riveted on her since her entrance, she tilts the woman’s chin up in her hand and places a pressured and slightly lingering kiss upon her lips. The crowd is delighted and an uproarious cheer erupts. Shortly afterward she gives the flower to a handsome man (her clothing mirror), much to the chagrin of his date. This dual sexuality was daring for its time and yet was received quite well. (Performing, as Dietrich and Garbo did, before the McCarthy era meant that a certain amount of ambiguity was still acceptable and could slip surreptitiously past the censorship of the vigilant Hays Code.2) Arthur Laurents (screenwriter of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope3) comments on the scene as progressive for any time period, “I don’t think they’ve done anything as delicious sexually as that since. They didn’t pretend it was anything other than what it was. She was doing it to turn on both the woman and the man, as it should. It was so free” (The Celluloid Closet). Certainly, this type of bisexuality would have allowed lesbian filmgoers to see a woman portrayed as erotic for the pleasure of a woman’s gaze. This allowed them to enter the realm previously reserved for the active male spectator as defined by Laura Mulvey who describes “woman as image and man as bearer of look” as a power relationship. This ability to look may have carried over into real life as Dietrich chose to wear similar outfits off-screen. Even the suggestion of lesbian eroticism would have been a step towards visibility in an era when lesbians remained largely unseen and nearly completely unrepresented.

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At the same time, Dietrich’s character, and indeed Dietrich herself, appropriated one of patriarchy’s most elite male privileges: sexual freedom. If Dietrich was able to portray a woman who expressed her sexuality openly, especially a non-normative one as was the case in Morocco, and by doing so cause the celebration of an entire dance hall, then she has shattered the stigma of shame that has been ingrained on women the world over for enacting overt sexuality or even desire. It has been criticized by some that the necessity of having a woman in a suit to portray this sexuality has only reinforced the notion that sexual freedom is a male domain, but it was also, in this time period of heavy censorship, one of the only ways to have any representation at all; subtext and code were common if meager fare for homosexual viewers.4 One of Dietrich’s stills from this time period shows her sitting in her suit, one leg bent at the knee. One hand rests akimbo on her hip, while the other elbow rests on her open knee and holds a smoking cigarette. Her gaze is directly at the viewer. Contrary to her more “typically Hollywood” shots where she creates a long, slim, silky looking figure, this image shows how her suit allows her the freedom of motion and exaggerated assumption of space largely reserved for men. By extension, the very existence of women may be interpreted as being hindered by restrictive clothing, and the opposite effect might then be attained by shedding it: If feminine passivity was actually produced by restrictive clothing and restraints on gesture, social behavior and sexuality; then refusal of these restraints could be seen, instead, as facilitating the attainment of economic and social autonomy for women. A second-generation of “New Women” wanted not only economic opportunity, but also freedom from the restrictions of femininity. Public acknowledgemen of “inversion” could facilitate resistance to marriage, and to the economic dependence and passivity associated with “femininity” [Faderman 1991: 58]. (Graham, “Crossdressing in a Feminist Frame”) At a time when the mainstream audience was only just becoming aware of the existence of lesbians this could also be seen as a positive representation. “Crossdressing could be figured as a deconstructive ‘play’ with heterosexual gender-signifiers effecting a de-subjectivised lesbian desire” [Case 1988/9; Butler 1990; de Lauretis 1991] (Graham, “Lesbian Visibility in Cinema”). If crossdressing was considered play, as suggested here, it is likely to have been perceived as a less threatening

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form of deconstruction that could allow for progressive thought to reach audiences through its embodiment on the screen. GRETA GARBO, QUEEN CHRISTINA, 1933 Three years after Morocco Greta Garbo played the based-on-reality role of Sweden’s Queen Christina. The real life Queen Christina ruled Sweden from 1632 to 1654 and was famous for her addiction to knowledge (always reading), her taste for male attire, and her refusal to marry. In 1654 she abdicated the throne, naming her cousin (whom she was slated to marry) as her successor before moving to Rome (“Christina”). During her reign she firmly ruled parliament with equanimity and justice. In Christina of Sweden: A Psychological Biography, written by Elizabeth Goldsmith of the real Queen, there is account of her sexuality. This prompted the Herald-Tribune to come out of the closet, publishing that “the one persistent love of Christina’s life was for the countess Ebba Sparre, a beautiful Swedish noble-woman who lost most of her interest in Christina when Christina ceased to rule Sweden . . . the evidence is overwhelming, but will Miss Garbo play such a Christina?” (Russo, 64). While Russo retorts that Garbo “did not” we must remember that Garbo would have had higher powers to answer to. At any rate, she certainly offers enough behavioral (and literal) language to create a compelling subtext, or coded reading. And, of course, she does it wearing pants. The main conflict of the film arises when the people of Sweden and the members of parliament pressure Christina to marry and provide an heir. Her division between duty and self is apparent when a chancellor who often communicates the wishes of Sweden-at-large tells her that the people “clamor for war, they clamor for marriage and they clamor for an heir.” Garbo, with a hysterically wry wit, responds for the Queen, “In short, they clamor.” As the pressure to marry mounts throughout the film Garbo performs as a woman who wants nothing of it. While reading Molliere in her room an attendant comes to her. She shares with him a passage of the book in her hand, “I think marriage an altogether shocking thing. How is it possible to endure the idea of sleeping with a man in the room,” and laughs to herself, murmuring, “What a clever fellow!” Immediately following this the woman playing Ebba enters the Queen’s dressing room and they embrace warmly with a kiss on the lips. Ebba expresses discontent that they do not see each other more often, complaining that “at the end of the day you’re surrounded by

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musty old papers and musty old men and I can’t get near you!” The queen responds that she will “dispose of them, [the musty old men] and we’ll go away for two, three days in the country, would you like that?” Ebba answers with a resounding “I’d love it!” When Christina finds out later that Ebba has been planning to marry a young man of the court it is by overhearing it, and the discovery is shown as a betrayal, albeit of confidence only on the overt levels of the scene. Nevertheless, the exchange that follows reads like a lover’s quarrel: Christina: Ebba: Christina:

You pretended to be interested in me . . . Since you were angry with me I never slept. You look beautiful.

Probably the most famous line of the movie ensues when the Chancellor again urges the Queen to marry herself, imploring, “But your majesty you cannot die an old maid!” Christina’s retort? “I have no intention to Chancellor. I shall die a bachelor,” she replies. Again, Garbo’s voice and the presence she brings to the scene, stomping around the chamber in her fitted male riding suit, adds tangibly to the effect. Yet Christina rebels against more than the institution of marriage. She also rallies against living in a world that wishes to tell her whom she ought and ought not love, as expressed in her soliloquy-like rumination upon her refusal of a 13th male suitor: Why? Do I peer into the lives of my subjects and dictate to them whom they should love? I do not. It is intolerable! There is a freedom which is mine and which the state cannot take away. To the miserable tyranny . . . I shall not submit! Then, as she turns to face the unfortunate suitor, “Too bad!” While all of this may be read purely as heterosexual feminism, as was likely done by the mainstream audience, many viewers, starved for self-representation, were able to pick out the implications of forbidden love between Christina and Ebba. Ultimately, her unwillingness to marry causes Christina to abdicate the throne rather than marry her cousin, Prince Charles. Instead, she names him her successor before leaving for Rome. Ebba rides with her to the border in a carriage where Christina kisses her once more, this time breathing, “Goodbye Sweden,” implying again for the coded reader that Ebba was everything to her, her homeland.

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All of Christina’s behavior, ruling a nation, defying social pressure, and taking lovers at will, is again aligned with her masculine attire. One day, while out riding in sensible riding pants she gets caught in a snowstorm and passes for a mere lord, a young male lord, to rent a room at a villager ’s pub. While having a drink she overhears the men wagering on whether the queen has taken six or nine lovers in the past year. Breaking up the argument, still in the guise of a young man, she jumps up on a table and fires her gun into the air.5 Once she has their attention she assures them that the truth is that the queen has taken 12 lovers, “a round dozen” and the crowd is uproariously pleased. Once again we see that a woman must portray masculinity to be allowed sexual freedom. While this is problematic to be certain, it still offers a way, where there is otherwise little opportunity, to highlight this social structure.6 In the final reel of the film the queen stands alone at the bow of a ship. She has arrived just in time to see her male screen lover, a Hollywood addition, die. This may represent the real-life Christina’s parting from Ebba. As did the real Christina, however, Garbo remains firm in her decision to go to Rome. When asked upon the loss of her Hollywood love, whether they should not undock the ship after all, Queen Garbo replies, “We will sail,” mirroring the courage of the seventeenth century monarch whom the film was made to depict, although with certain omissions. This, too, echoes the uncertain future, the exile to lands unknown (even if the lands she hopes will offer freedom and happiness and beauty), of the woman who desires the freedom to be oneself, which equals that bestowed upon the heterosexual man, the one who wears the pants in Sweden’s seventeenth-century society, and in the Western world of the 1930s. Furthermore, while the filmmakers tried to downplay the sexuality of the real Christina, Russo points out that “the collision of Garbo’s chemistry, and Christina’s stubborn maleness” was an “accident” that “produced something more than [was] in the script” (66). Ironically, the result was a more honest portrayal of the real Christina’s life than was intended, something that did not go unseen by lesbian moviegoers. KATHARINE HEPBURN, PAT AND MIKE, 1952 Katharine Hepburn, although appearing here, is generally not associated with androgyny or ambi-sexuality, words that often appear when one reads about Dietrich or Garbo. This is all good and well since she apparently never intended to portray any such thing. After

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filming the much-altered (remember the Hays code here) Suddenly Last Summer, based on the short story by Tennessee Williams, in 1959, the film’s director is recorded as having said that he and several other cast members spent a number of hours “explaining homosexuality to Hepburn, but when they had finished, she flatly refused to believe that such people existed” (Russo, 116). Russo continues, noting that “in later years [Hepburn] has been a vocal opponent of homosexuality, linking it with other ‘social ills’ of society” (116). From this we see (as in the case of Rope and Suddenly last Summer) that not everyone was aware of homosexuality, and that it was not always necessary to have a knowing participation, even by the actors of a film, for a homosexual subtext to exist.7 It is also significant that 1952 was a central time period of the McCarthy era, where communism was a disease and homosexuality was only a step behind as a criminal offense. Diane Wood Middlebrook, author of an autobiography on the jazz performer Billy Tipton, a biological woman who lived as a man, makes reference to “hearings held by the House Un-American Committee . . . when the search for Communists had a way of turning into a search for homosexuals” (Suits Me: The Double Life of Billy Tipton, 218).8 Due to this, as Graham observes, “For lesbians (and gays), any relation to popular culture would have to be effected through the clandestine transmission of those codes which had come to constitute the visibility of their subcultures” (“Crossdressing in Lesbian Subcultures”). It is these codes which appear surreptitiously in Hepburn’s Pat and Mike. The film Pat and Mike is meant to depict a forward-thinking woman, Patricia ‘Pat’ Pemberton (played by Hepburn), who meets and falls in love with her sports manager Mike (played by Spencer Tracy). Hepburn begins the film as an amateur woman golfer who prefers to pursue her career over leaving the circuit to marry the man in her life. When she bumps into Mike after losing a match (because she is so nervous with her beau watching), he tells her, “I don’t think you’ve ever been properly handled,” to which Pat (Hepburn) agrees, adding that she has never been properly handled, even by herself. Sexual innuendo aside, the implication is far from feminist despite the fact that Hepburn’s character was the only woman performing in slacks that day, something she does intermittently throughout the movie. Here is where it gets juicy. The life represented on the screen can be seen to clearly mimic the real-life story of Babe Didrikson Zaharias, 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s multi-sport and Olympic athlete who met her husband/manager on the golf circuit she played on after co-founding

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the Ladies Professional Golf Association, or LPGA (Cayleff, back cover). The details are even similar, right down to the traveling lifestyle and the decision to “go professional.” Babe herself was instrumental in the changing of her amateur basketball team’s uniforms from bloomers and stockings to shorts, and she eschewed the ungainly dress code put forth by the Women’s Sports Federation and wore “short track pants” to compete in the 1932 national track and field event9 (Cayleff, 54). Furthermore, although married to a man, Didrikson had a live-in female companion for the last six years of her life.10 What makes all of this so interesting is that Babe plays herself in Pat and Mike, beating Hepburn out by a single stroke in the big tournament that is the opening segment of the movie. While Babe performs in a skirt (perhaps to further emphasize Hepburn’s brave independence, which ironically is modeled after Babe’s real-life heroism), she at least does not lose the match due to the insecurity she feels in being watched by a man, as does the Hepburn character. Hepburn’s own unawareness of these duplicities may have been at the root of Babe’s comment that Hepburn was “double-parked with herself” (Cayleff, 211). While the use of pants to facilitate her sporting lifestyle makes Hepburn’s Pat seem a possible proponent of women’s progress, there are glaring retractions of this message throughout the film. For example, while Pat literally jumps from a moving train to avoid the dissolution of her career into the mundanities of marriage with her initial boyfriend, she immediately signs up to be “managed” by Mike, whom she ultimately falls in love with.11 Hepburn’s performance is not completely without redeeming qualities, however. Pat refuses to leave the room during a “business meeting,” beats up on a crew of gangsters that threaten Mike, and teaches another athlete, “Nobody owns you, own yourself!” Nevertheless, by the end of the film she has the following conversation with Mike over dinner: Mike:

”Sure is a pretty dress you got coverin’ ya. It does more for ya’ then them pants yer’ always wearin.’ ”

Pat:

(simpering) “It’s easier to play in, that’s why, to wear the pants.”

Mike:

“I think sometimes ya ‘oughta change your armor, give the public a break.”

In one fell swoop every suggestion of equality is undone. At once Pat has explained that she only wears the pants when absolutely

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necessary, and the female figure is reverted to the property of the male gaze, the owners of which she really oughta’ “give a break.” She has been unfair to her male viewers by appearing so grievously unfeminine in trousers, even for a sporting event. Even worse, she takes his advice and appears for the final tournament in an ankle length skirt that opens when she bends to retrieve a ball, revealing a set of split leg pants built into the garment; double parked indeed! This unlikely outfit allows Hepburn to perpetuate the myth of self-control while the long skirt top-layer shows that she has retracted her stance to please her man, and for the poor male audience who have suffered from her previous unsightly use of pants. It is also during these later scenes when she admits to Mike, “I need someone to take care of me,” delivering the final blow. In the case of this last movie we see the pressures of an era colluding with the public desire to pretend to idolize female authority while, in actuality, maintaining a status quo. Graham writes, “The upheavals of the Wartime period had led to a compensatory conservatism in American society” (“Crossdressing in Lesbian Subcultures”). Combine these with Hepburn’s apparent confusion concerning homosexuality and the ways that male appropriation of the female body subverts feminist ideology, and we have the quandary that is Pat and Mike. Would women at the time of the film’s release have been able to take what they needed from the film without absorbing the negative aspects? While we cannot know this for sure, Cayleff reminds us that the film in its day was “a cultural anomaly” in that virtually no other films at this time were made depicting “fiercely competitive females” as heroines (211). We are bound here to recall the political and social climate that influenced the film to an indeterminable degree. In most cases, where any competitive spirit appeared in a woman, notably among the work force, it was treated as a negative character trait; a mold Pat and Mike sought to break. For this, along with the redemptive scenes mentioned above, Pat and Mike still offers moments making it worthy of mention here. It is significant that Hepburn’s reputation as a tough businesswoman behind the scenes was also associated with her use of pants. Director and screenwriter Garson Kamlin recalls that Hepburn stood up to studio moguls: “She usually got anything she wanted because she’d turn up, wearing the traditional slacks, and she’d barge into their offices and give ‘em hell!”(Katherine Hepburn: On Her Own Terms). Intentionally or not, Kamlin has revealed the connection between her clothing choice and her ability to be taken seriously as a woman among men.

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SYNTHESIS The image of women in pants, even by Hollywood’s leading ladies, was received with much attention, mostly negative in the 1930s. Berry gives us headlines from the leading rags and mags of the day: “Women are wearing the pants in Hollywood today . . . despite wild protests from men,” or “Artists, Showmen and Psychologists—They all view with Alarm the Strange Spectacle of Women in trousers,” (which cited a professor of “abnormal psychology” who claimed that the fad was a result of women’s “blind striving for accomplishment in a man’s field” (155). From this we see men in positions of influence, newspaper journalists, editors, or publishers attempting to eradicate a behavior by labeling it as psychologically abnormal, and thereby perhaps prevent women’s arrival into these “men’s fields.” However, Andrea Weiss acknowledges the roles that women actors sometimes played in affecting just such a subversion: Not only did the Hollywood star system create inconsistent images of femininity, these images were further contradicted by the intervention of the actress herself into the process of the star image production. Certain stars such as Katharine Hepburn, Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo often asserted gestures and movements in their films that were inconsistent with the narrative and even posed an ideological threat within it. (quoted in Berry, 157) As shown, this was more possible in the 1930s and early 1940s, even with the Hays Code (and especially before it was made more strict in 1934), than by 1952. Several factors played into the creation of a space for this type of signifying representations that favored a subjugated population and suggested social and gender mobility. One is that Hollywood was presenting lots of representations of gender ambiguity, both the male “sissy” (a preening prancing man) and the female androgyne in men’s attire. Another important factor was the emergence of women into the workforce during the first world war and their newfound confidence that work, and their own income, could provide them with a freedom from dependence on men, a social autonomy, which was another popular theme in Hollywood movies from this era (Berry, 144). Finally, there is a general freedom allowed “performers” of any kind to break rules since it is clear that they are “performing.” From this last point springs the issue of off-screen

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performance and the effect of donning slacks on everyday women. Berry offers insight on the ways that the trend was translated from screen to real life: In a social context in which working women were struggling to maintain their right to jobs and were (inaccurately) blamed for male unemployment, Dietrich’s assertion of her right to dress in either masculine- or feminine-coded clothing—simply depending on her mood—was a provocation. Her rejection of a subscribed social identity is illustrated by a publicity photo taken of her with her family: Dietrich stands dutifully beside her husband and daughter but wears a man’s jacket and tie. (148) When American women saw this type of image, they were presented— many for the first time—with the idea that they could define themselves outside the hegemony of the world patriarchy. Far more than just a fashion statement (as a fashion statement pants were disparaged in numerous articles), pants offered a basic physical mobility that was very liberating. One use of this mobility, besides sport, leisure, and play, was the type of job one could perform in pants. This, of course, led to financial independence that, in the end, is truly the great equalizer of a capitalist autonomy.12 By wearing pants in all types of activities, the lines were blurred between work and leisure and between public and private domains, and where women belonged in those realms. This also did not go un-attacked by the Powers that Were. As Berry shows us, many films posited women workers dressed in male attire only to contrast them against a more obedient, “desirable” female. This was, in part, due to the Great Depression and the emasculation assumed by some men while having women support a household.13 The resulting message from most of these movies was that female autonomy was counter to femininity, at least the type of femininity desired by the heterosexual male (Berry, 163–165). Nevertheless, many women did choose to wear pants and enjoy all their attendant benefits, including freedom of movement and self-definition. Unfortunately, this revolution did not speak equally to all American women. African-American women were still being given the screen roles of servants while Latinas were relegated to the role of smoky seductress. Asian-American women had enjoyed some fame as well, but only in a highly exoticized realm of the Western gaze. Even bigtime stars like Anna May Wong, Rita Hayworth, or Dolores del Rio were restricted to roles that were ethnically defined, and defined by

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the white majority. Berry points out that non-white ethnicity was considered by Hollywood types to be interchangeable. Lupe Velez, in films between 1930 and 1931, played, in turn, a Chinese woman, a Native American, and a Russian (111). Women from non-white ethnic groups who wanted to appropriate this new identity would have to translate the “white” Hollywood images they saw to fit their own lives or look elsewhere for representation. Early 1930s Hollywood had a certain freedom and enjoyed a sense of gendered play that would be almost completely eradicated by the tightened restrictions of the Hays Code in 1934 and by McCarthyism. Pants, once worn however, were never again fully disappeared from American women’s wardrobes. While their popularity waned and fell according to social climate and fashion trends, they had established a firm place in women’s lives and their decisions of choice and self identification. The great power of the visual image and the Hollywood dream factory are apparent in this revolution. NOTES 1. Although Hall’s arguments are based on race for the purpose of the film Race: The Floating Signifier, I believe that the principle stands, and may be applied to any segment of a population that is systematically held in subjugation, in no small part, through the visual media. 2. The Hays Code was a movie rating and censorship institution headed by Joseph Breen who commented thusly on his work: “The decent people don’t like to see this kind of stuff [cock-eyed philosophies of life and ugly sex situations], and it is our job to see they get none of it” (Celluloid Closet). “Under tremendous pressure from the catholic church and other civic and religious groups, the Code was strengthened in 1934” (Russo, 31). Note that these stricter guidelines come a year after Queen Christina and four years after Morocco, meaning that both films were passed through a looser set of restrictions. Onscreen homosexuality was not condoned by the Code until 1961 (Russo, 115). Pat and Mike, featuring Katharine Hepburn was made in 1952, and hence was also subject to the social disapprovals of McCarthyism and Hepburn’s own homophobia, factors which are significantly detectable, as will be shown. 3. Rope itself was cut up by the hays office for “homosexual dialogue.” Laurents remarked, “We never discussed, Hitch and I, whether the characters in Rope were homosexuals, but I thought it was apparent” (Russo, 93–94). 4. Russo writes, “Gay sensibility is largely a product of oppression, of the necessity to hide so well for so long. It is a ghetto sensibility, born of the need to develop and use a second sight that will translate silently what the world sees and what the actuality may be. It was gay sensibility that, for example, often enabled some lesbians and gay men to see at very early ages, even

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before they knew the words for what they were, something on the screen that they knew related to their lives in some way, without being able to put a finger on it. Often it was the simple recognition of difference, the sudden understanding that something was altered or not what it should be, perhaps the role reversal of a Dietrich or a Garbo evoking a hidden truth about the nature of sexuality in general” (92). 5. The firing of the pistol, the ersatz penis, is a further performance of masculinity. Other props attendant to this masculinity include cigars, or Dietrich’s cigarettes. 6. It may be interesting to note here that while staying the night at the pub she is forced, by lack of space and the rules of civility, to share her room with another man; through a twist of fate this man is another suitor on his way to ask her hand in marriage. She takes him as a lover that evening and, because his servant believes she is a man, a gay male byline occurs which results in the servant backing out of the room in shock after discovering his master still in bed behind a drawn curtain. When the servant asks at what hour his lordship will get out of bed he is shocked to hear his master’s reply that he will not get out of bed at all. Of course this is meant to be humorous, not sincere; reinforcing the idea that male homosexuality is to be laughed at, another of Hollywood’s messages. Russo also mentions this (65). 7. The Breen Office (which enforced the Code) determined that homosexuality could be “inferred but not shown” in the film version of Suddenly Last Summer (in which Hepburn played the mother, Mrs. Venable) and even that was a concession (Russo, 116). Russo quotes Gore Vidal on the topic, “My script was perfectly explicit, and then the Catholic Church struck.” Russo elaborates, “Sebastian Venable, it was decided, would not appear in the flesh . . . With this decision, Hollywood achieved the impossible; it put an invisible homosexual on the screen” (116). While there are other issues with the story itself regarding William’s representation of homosexuality as perverse and lecherous, the overall issue of visibility is pertinent here. The Code did not lift the ban on homosexual subject matter until 1961. 8. During the era of the McCarthy “witch-hunts” (the investigations of the House Committee on Un-American Activities), homosexuals were associated with subversive threats to the United States and were harassed and persecuted (Faderman 1991: 141–148; Rubin 1984: 270). As a result, lesbian sub-cultures went underground. “Lesbians often felt they could not trust close acquaintances with knowledge of their personal lives, even if they suspected those acquaintances might also be lesbian” [Faderman 1991: 148]. (Graham, “Crossdressing in Lesbian Subcultures.”) 9. Cayleff duly notes that Babe’s “mannish” behavior, associated with lesbianism or the “third-sex” classification, became threatening to her career and popularity. The pressures eventually caused her to perform for photographs, and in parts of her life, dressed and behaving as the more idealized housewife of the 1950s.

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10. Cayleff writes, “Although a sexual relationship was never publicly acknowledged, they became each other’s primary partner” (203). 11. Hepburn notoriously had majority control over The Philadelphia Story, 1940, having bought the movie rights to the Broadway play after starring in it. In this film she plays a pants-wearing divorcee, and the film is replete with feminist representations. While she does marry again at the end of the movie, an action that irks Berry, it may serve as a comparison between the political and social climates of 1940 and 1952. 12. According to Berry “For the Hollywood working-woman, a job is more than survival; it is a way of attaining a more desirable lifestyle and a social identity. More than a reiteration of the ‘pin money’ theory that women’s work is usually for disposable income rather than need, this emphasis on consumption represented work, as a means to a more important end: the autonomy, pleasure and adventure of being able to reinvent oneself. The consumerist work ethic . . . valorized work because it provided the resources for self-transformation as pleasure” (144). 13. Many women were working at this time, but it was frowned upon to continue to do so after marriage (Berry).

FILMOGRAPHY The Celluloid Closet. Dirs. Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman. Nar. Lily Tomlin. Sony Pictures Productions Home Box Office, 1995. DVD. Netflix, 2007. Katharine Hepburn: On Her Own Terms. Dir. Bill Harris. Nar. Harry Smith. A&E Biography. DVD. CBS News Productions, 1995. Morocco. Dir. Josef Von Stemberg. Perf. Marlene Dietrich, Gary Cooper. 1930. VHS. MGM, 2007. Pat and Mike. Dir. George Cukor. Perf. Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, and Babe Didrikson Zaharias. MGM, 1952. DVD. Netflix, 2007. Queen Christina. Dir. Rouben Mamoulin. Perf. Greta Garbo, John Gilbert. MGM, 1933. DVD. Netflix, 2007. Stuart Hall: Race, the Floating Signifier. Dir. Sut Jhally. Media Education Foundation, 1995. color. 50 min.

REFERENCES Barber, Elizabeth Wayland. Women’s Work, the First 20,000 Years: Women, Cloth and Society in Early Times. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1994. Berger, John. “From Ways of Seeing.” The Feminism and Visual Culture Reader, edited by Amelia Jones. New York: Routledge, 2003. Berry, Sarah. Screen Style: Fashion and Femininity in 1930’s Hollywood. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2000. Butler, Judith. “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory.” The Feminism and Visual Culture Reader, edited by Amelia Jones. New York: Routledge, 2003.

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Cayleff, Susan E. Babe: The Life and Legend of Babe Didrikson Zaharias. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1995. Chadwick, Whitney. Women, Art and Society. Third Edition. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2002. “Christina.” In The Concise Columbia Encyclopedia, edited by Judith S. Levy and Agnes Greenhall with the Reference Staff of Columbia University Press. New York: Avon Books, 1983. Cortes, Carlos E. “Chicanas in Film: History of an Image.” In Chicano Cinema; Research, Reviews and Resources, edited by Gary D. Keller. Tempe, Arizona: Bilingual Review/Press, 1985. Craddock, Jim, ed. Video Hound’s Golden Movie Retriever, 2005. Detroit: ThompsonGale, 2005. Graham, Paula. “Cinema and Lesbian Visibility.” Women Watching Women: Lesbians and Popular Cinema. Opengender, April 16, 2007. http://www .opengender.org.uk/node/42. . “Crossdressing in a Feminist Frame.” Women Watching Women: Lesbians and Popular Cinema. Opengender, April 16, 2007. http://www.opengender .org.uk/node/24. . “Crossdressing in Lesbian Subcultures.” Women Watching Women: Lesbians and Popular Cinema. Opengender, April 16, 2007. http://www .opengender.org.uk/node/26. Grohol, John. “Cross-Dressing” Psych Central. March 20, 2006. http:// psychcentral.com/psypsych/cross-dressing. Jamie-Ann. “Abomination unto God? What Would Zwingli Say?” He’s a Lady!” April 18, 2007, April 23, 2007. members.aol.com/jamieannatl/ index.html Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” In The Feminism and Visual Culture Reader, edited by Amelia Jones. New York: Routledge, 2003. Russo, Vito. The Celluloid Closet; Homosexuality in the Movies. Revised Edition. New York: Harper and Row, 1987.

Chapter 7

A Cinema of Contradictions: Gay and Lesbian Representation in 1970s Blaxploitation Films Novotny Lawrence

Historically, blacks and gays and lesbians have been inextricably linked by a legacy of oppression and struggle against socioeconomic, political, and cinematic discrimination. Specifically, during the early years of the motion picture industry black performers were relegated to stereotypical roles that reemphasized their status as second-class citizens in the United States. In his seminal text, Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films, Donald Bogle defines five archetypes that black performers played on the silver screen—the loyal Tom, buffoonish coon, tragic mulatto, the overbearing mammy, and the savage buck (Bogle 2003). For decades performers such as Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, Stepin Fetchit, Fredi Washington, Hattie McDaniel, and Walter Long assumed these roles in films such as The Littlest Rebel (1934), Hallelujah (1929), Imitation of Life (1934), Gone With the Wind (1939), and The Birth of a Nation (1915). Always happy to serve and ever so content in their inferior status in American society, the aforementioned films’ depictions of blacks perpetuated a stereotypical legacy that became embedded in American popular culture. Similarly, Hollywood films did little to promote authentic images of the gay and lesbian community, depicting them equally as objectionably as African Americans. Throughout the first century of motion

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pictures gay and lesbian characters were often relegated to three caricatures—the sissy, the villain, and the victim—which functioned similarly to those that circumscribed blacks (Russo 1985). For years films such as The Gay Brothers (1895), The Kid Brother (1927), Dracula’s Daughter (1936), Seven Sinners (1940), and countless others featured gay and lesbian characters constructed through a heterosexual lens that perpetuated skewed dominant ideologies about gays and lesbians. As a sexual “other,” gays and lesbians often suffered in the narratives and were sometimes killed because of their perceived sexual deviance. As America moved into the 1960s the social-economic and political landscape began to change. The aftermath of events including the lynching of Emmett Till, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and Brown vs. Board of Education, among others, led to the Civil Rights Movement. As swarms of blacks and liberal whites protested against America’s racial discrimination in the streets during the 1960s, performers like Sidney Poitier and former football player turned actor, Jim Brown, fought the battle for equality on the silver screen. Though Poitier and Brown forged their own unique styles, both emerged as significant precursors to black exploitation films, effectively challenging Hollywood’s stereotyped representations of blacks in films like Lilies of the Field (1963), A Patch of Blue (1965), In the Heat of the Night (1967), The Dirty Dozen (1967), and 100 Rifles (1968). America’s civil rights consciousness in conjunction with Hollywood’s financial struggles led to the emergence of the black exploitation or blaxploitation movement (1970–1975). Defined as movies made by black and white filmmakers in the attempt to capitalize on the African-American film audience (Lawrence 2008, 18), the blaxploitation movement began in 1970 with United Artists’s release of Ossie Davis’s Cotton Comes to Harlem, which chronicles the efforts by police detectives Coffin Ed Johnson (Raymond St Jacques) and Grave Digger Jones’s (Godfrey Cambridge) to find $87,000 that was stolen from the Harlem community during a Back to Africa rally. The film presented a fresh perspective of black inner-city life and cut against Hollywood’s hackneyed African-American caricatures, solidifying the major conventions—a black hero or heroine, a predominantly black urban setting, black supporting characters, a contemporary rhythm-andblues soundtrack, and plot themes that address the black experience in modern American society—that defined blaxploitation cinema. Harlem was extremely successful at the box office, accumulating over $8 million in its theatrical run (Chelminski 1970, 58). According to

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United Artists sales representative James Veld, an estimated 70 percent of the film’s total gross came from the black audience (quoted in Gold 1970, 1). Consequently, Harlem aided in establishing black filmgoers as a viable demographic. Harlem’s success inspired a wave of films, including Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (1971), Shaft (1971), Black Caesar (1972), Super Fly (1972), Coffy (1973), Foxy Brown (1974), Black Belt Jones (1975), and many others. Significantly, these films present black performers like Richard Roundtree, Ron O’Neal, Pam Grier, Max Julien, and Tamara Dobson in a range of multidimensional roles, including police officers, vigilantes, activists, pimps, prostitutes, private detectives, and secret agents. Although Hollywood films began to respond to African-American demands for equality in all aspects of American life, the struggles of gays and lesbians during the Gay Liberation Movement, which also emerged in the 1960s, were seemingly ignored by the film industry. Ironically, despite the legacy of second-class citizenship shared between blacks and gays and lesbians, blaxploitation filmmakers appropriated Hollywood’s institutionalized practice of misrepresenting homosexuals. Thus, a body of films that does a great deal to enhance the image of blacks reinforces negative dominant discourses surrounding gays and lesbians. This chapter discusses the representation of gay and lesbian characters in the blaxploitation films, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (1970), Blacula (1972), and Cleopatra Jones (1973). More specifically, this chapter demonstrates how blaxploitation filmmakers utilized iconography in addition to the stock caricatures, the sissy, villain, and victim, to further subjugate gays and lesbians in American cinema. BLAXPLOITATION CINEMA Although Cotton Comes to Harlem is the pioneer blaxploitation film, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song is often regarded as such because it generated substantial box office revenue and also created a great deal of controversy after its release. Sweetback was written, directed, produced, scored, and starred in by Melvin Van Peebles, who entered the Hollywood system via Europe where he had directed the awardwinning film The Story of a Three Day Pass (1968). Consequently, Columbia signed Van Peebles to a three-picture deal and he went on to make the moderately successful comedy, Watermelon Man (1969), which tells the story of a white bigot who one day awakens from his slumber to find that his skin has turned black.

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Well aware of Hollywood’s historic misrepresentation of blacks and inspired by the Civil Rights Movement, Van Peebles decided that his next project would tell the story of a black revolutionary. The result was Sweetback, which was shot in Southern California in roughly three weeks on a budget of approximately $500,000. This cost represented about $100,000 of Van Peebles’s own capital in addition to borrowed funds and fees he managed to defer. Van Peebles also received a $50,000 loan from his friend Bill Cosby, who came up with the money when it was vitally needed to continue production (Bogle 1998, 247). Sweetback opens with a title card that reads, “This film is dedicated to all the Brothers and Sisters who have had enough of the Man.” The film tells the story of Sweetback, a brothel performer who agrees to pose as a suspect for two white police officers that need to demonstrate to their boss that they are making sufficient progress on their latest case. The officers answer another call on the way to the station, where they arrest a young black militant who they handcuff to Sweetback. As they travel to police headquarters, the officers take a detour to an oil field where they plan on beating the militant for engaging in radical behavior that challenged America’s racial order. They uncuff the suspect and proceed to abuse him as Sweetback watches. Refusing to stand idly by and allow this injustice to continue, Sweetback intervenes, killing the officers. He then goes on the run using his sexual prowess and assistance from the black community to evade the police, who are hunting him in massive numbers. At the film’s end, Sweetback escapes to Mexico and a title card appears onscreen instructing audiences to “Look out! Cause a bad-ass nigger is coming back to pay some dues!” Sweetback functions as a critique of American racism, Hollywood’s misrepresentation of black performers, and a celebration of black heterosexual masculinity. Van Peebles explained, “I made this film for the black aesthetic. White critics aren’t used to that. This movie is black life unpandered. I wanted a victorious film. A film where niggers could walk out standing tall instead of avoiding each other’s eyes, looking once again like they’d had it” (quoted in Bennett, Jr. 1971, 112). To achieve this goal, Van Peebles challenges the oversexed black buck archetype as well as metaphorically castrated black male characters, depicting a strong heterosexual black hero. Sweetback emerges as a socially conscious black hero who relies upon his sexual prowess to sustain his life. For example, the title character uses his sexual dexterity to free himself from the police officers’ handcuffs, to out-duel the female leader of a motorcycle gang, and to evade police

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capture at a rock concert. This reliance upon sex prompted critic Lerone Bennett, Jr. to blast the film: It is disturbing to note Mr. Van Peebles’ reliance on the emancipation orgasm. Sweetback saves himself three times by seduction. . . . Now with all due respects to the license of art, it is necessary to say frankly that nobody ever f***ed his way to freedom. And it is mischievous and reactionary finally for anyone to suggest to black people in 1971 that they are going to be able to sc**w their way across the Red Sea. F***ing will not set you free. If f***ing freed, black people would have celebrated the millennium 400 hundred years ago. (118) Although problematic for some critics, Van Peebles’s Sweetback provided a portrayal of black masculinity rarely seen in motion pictures. Unfortunately, Sweetback’s only depiction of gay characters works to emphasize the title character’s masculinity at their expense. The scene is progressive in that it includes gay characters as a part of the black community that aids Sweetback in his escape from authorities. When questioned by the police, the characters play a pivotal role in helping him evade capture by refusing to provide them with information. This works against previous depictions of gays and lesbians as characters who, because of their deviant sexuality, exist on the margins of or in isolation from the heteronormative community. While Van Peebles’s depiction of gay and lesbian characters as productive members of the black community is important, they are constructed in true stereotypical fashion. In “Gay and Lesbian Criticism,” Anneke Smelik explains that “in contrast to gender or ethnicity, homosexuality is not . . . visible at first sight” (137). Therefore, “stereotypes can be introduced through iconography. Visual and aural details can be used to typify homosexuality immediately. For example, codes in dressing, certain gestures, stylistic de´cor, or extended looks can at a glance invoke the homosexuality of a gay character” (136–137). Although onscreen for less than a minute, Van Peebles’s use of visual iconography makes it apparent that the three males are indeed gay. Specifically, one of the characters wears a red, tight-fitting tank-top, while all of the men are made up like women. Additionally, the characters’ offer extended gazes into the camera, which also suggests sexual yearning. These characteristics are used in conjunction with aural cues to emphasize the men’s homosexuality. Each of the characters speaks with the stereotypical lisp often associated with gay men and respond to the

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police with sexually implicit lines such as “If you see Sweetback send him here,” and “What’s wrong officer won’t I do?” (Sweetback 1971). This demonstrates Smelik’s position that, “stereotyping through iconography . . . categorizes the gay or lesbian character as distinct from straight characters and maintains the boundaries between them” (137). Thus, while the aforementioned scene includes gays and lesbians as a part of the movement against social injustice, it perpetuates inequality against them by relying upon commonly held assumptions to further emphasize the heterosexuality of the black protagonist. Sweetback had a dramatic impact on blaxploitation cinema after its release. The film was wildly successful, grossing over $10 million by the end of its theatrical run. This further solidified black filmgoers as a viable demographic and led to the production of ensuing blaxploitation fare. In addition, Sweetback added the overt representation of black sexuality to the conventions established in Cotton Comes to Harlem. More importantly, while Sweetback’s portrayal of gay characters is brief, the film falls back upon the distorted representations of gays and lesbians that permeated Hollywood cinema. This seems to have inadvertently aided in establishing homophobia as a reoccurring theme in blaxploitation pictures as well. After Sweetback’s impressive performance at the box office other studios began producing blaxploitation cinema with the hopes of duplicating Van Peebles’s success. For example, MGM, Warner Bros., and Columbia released Shaft (1971), Super Fly (1972), and The Final Comedown (1972), respectively. Perhaps the most notable company to cash in on the bourgeoning trend was American International Pictures (AIP), which was founded by James H. Nicholson, Samuel Z. Arkoff, and Joseph Moritz in 1954. AIP became the quintessential exploitation picture producer by operating under the following guidelines: trends in emerging taste. much as possible about your audience. ANTICIPATE how you will sell your chosen subject. PRODUCE with prudence, avoiding expense for what won’t show on-screen. SELL with showmanship and publicity. HAVE good luck. (“AIP Formula” 1970, 54) OBSERVE

KNOW as

Following the aforementioned tenets, AIP produced a plethora of lowbudget films such as The Beast with 1,000,000 Eyes (1955), Girls in Prison (1956), I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957), How to Make a Monster (1958),

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The Wild Angels (1966), and Born Losers (1967). AIP had also ventured into the blaxploitation business, releasing Pam Grier films such as Women in Cages (1971), Black Mama, White Mama (1972), and the Jim Brown action vehicle, Slaughter (1972), among others. AIP’s previous experience with both horror and blaxploitation films inspired the company to create Blacula, the first black-themed horror picture to grace the silver screen. First-time screenwriters Joan Torres and Raymond Koenig penned the screenplay, while little-known black director, William Crain, directed Blacula. Blacula stars William Marshall as Mamuwalde, the first black vampire to appear on motion picture screens. Before starring in the film, Marshall appeared onstage in productions of Carmen Jones and Peter Pan and in television shows such as Mannix, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and The Nurses. In addition to Marshall, Blacula also stars Thalmus Rasulala as Dr. Gordon Thomas and Denise Nicholas as Michelle. Finally, the film stars Vonetta McGee in dual roles, initially appearing as Mamuwalde’s wife, Luva, and later as Tina, Blacula’s love interest. While Blacula was in development, William Marshall collaborated with the producers to ensure that the image of the first black horror monster contained a level of dignity. In the original script Blacula’s straight name was Andrew Brown, which is the same as Andy’s in the blackface white comedy team of Amos and Andy. Marshall criticized the name commenting, “I wanted the picture to have a new framing story. A frame that would remove it completely from the stereotype of ignorant, conniving stupidity that evolved in the United States to justify slavery” (Martinez et al. 1998, 42). With that in mind, Marshall suggested that that character’s previous life be one of nobility, proposing to the producers that Blacula’s straight name should be Mamuwalde, who had been an African prince before falling victim to vampirism. The producers were hesitant to accept Marshall’s suggestions, “Well we don’t know if any of that will work” (Martinez et al. 1998, 42). Marshall responded, “Well none of us really know, it’s an experiment. Getting up out of bed in the morning is an experiment. So it’s well worth the energy and time, let’s look and see and sit down together and talk about it like equals” (Martinez et al. 1998, 42). Marshall eventually persuaded the producers to incorporate his suggestions, and the first black vampire emerged as a regal character. Blacula opens in 1780s Transylvania with African Prince Mamuwalde and his wife Luva visiting Count Dracula to discuss the abolishment of his participation in the slave trade. Enraged by this suggestion, Count Dracula attacks Mamuwalde and locks him in a coffin where he is to

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spend all eternity craving the taste of blood. As Dracula closes the tomb he curses the prince with his name, calling him Blacula. Luva’s fate is sealed when Dracula locks her in the room that houses Blacula’s coffin. The film moves ahead 200 years where audiences are introduced to two interior decorators visiting Dracula’s old castle in search of antiques. Among the items that they purchase is Blacula’s coffin, which they ship back to Los Angeles, where they become the vampire’s first victims after opening his casket. At this point, Blacula begins walking the streets of Los Angeles in order to cure his bloodlust. One evening he sees Tina, who he believes is the reincarnation of his belated spouse. He befriends Tina and begins a relationship with her. Meanwhile, Dr. Gordon Thomas is investigating the mysterious deaths of the interior decorators and Blacula’s other victims, which he soon links to the vampire. The film ends with a final confrontation between the police, Dr. Thomas, and Blacula. Blacula’s portrayal of African Americans in the horror genre made it a significant film. Although Hollywood had been producing horror films since the 1930s, blacks were almost completely omitted from the genre. When they were included, the films were often horror/ comedy hybrids such as The Monster Walks (1931), The Ghost Breakers (1940), and A-Haunting We Will Go (1942) that featured performers Willie Best and Mantan Moreland as frightened coons whose bulging eyes provided comic relief in scary situations (Bogle 2003, 71–72). In contrast, Blacula depicts the first black horror monster as a dignified, noble, and sympathetic character. In Children of the Night, Randy Lauren Rasmussen explains, “Many of the horror genre’s most sympathetic monsters are victims of fate, circumstance or of their own minds” (196). “Blaxploitation horror films more than other horrors emphasize this “victim of fate” convention, redirecting audience sympathy “toward the figure of the monster, a specifically black avenger who justifiably fights against the dominant order—which is often explicitly coded as racist” (Benshoff 2000, 37). Indeed, Blacula is a victim of circumstance who succumbs to European vampirism that he did not realize even existed. Although he possesses the same bloodlust as previous Dracula incarnations, it manifests itself as a curse. For example, prior to attacking his victims, Blacula’s fangs become visible and hair grows out of his face. This metamorphosis visually transforms him from his previous noble identity into a bloodthirsty savage. Blacula’s actions throughout the film are righteous. Significantly, Bela Lugosi’s pioneering portrayal of Dracula presents him as a manipulative

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and evil character that uses his bite as well as his gaze to strike fear into the hearts of his victims and to control the woman that he desires. This theme is prevalent in Dracula’s reincarnations in Mark of the Vampire (1935) and House of Dracula (1945) as well. In contrast, Blacula’s behavior toward the film’s heroine is significantly different. He has no ill intentions towards Tina, whom he believes is the reincarnation of his late wife. He treats her with a great deal of love and respect. Unlike Lugosi’s character, Blacula does not attempt to control her with his gaze and he does not intend on passing his curse along to her. It is not until Tina is shot that he bites her in an attempt to save her life. Blacula’s death extends the horror genre’s narrative conventions. As Noe¨ll Carroll explains, horror films generally adhere to the Discovery Plot, which unfolds as follows: The monster appears or is created (onset); it is then noticed by the human protagonist (discovery); its horrible existence is acknowledged (confirmation); and the film ends with a fight to the death between human and monster (confrontation) (23). Blacula revises the Discovery Plot, changing the dynamic of the confrontation as it pits Blacula against multiple enemies which include several police officers as well as Dr. Thomas. During the confrontation, he kills many officers in his attempt to escape with Tina. After she is shot and he is unable to save her life, however, he loses his desire to live. Rather than succumbing to Dr. Thomas, he exposes himself to the sunlight, taking his own life. In Horror Films of the 1970s, John Kenneth Muir notes, “It is a powerful sacrifice, and another moment that speaks to the fact that, though cursed by Dracula, Mamuwalde is a man of noble character” (175). While Blacula made important strides in its representation of blacks in the horror genre and films in general, it was not as kind to gays and lesbians who, like black performers, had also been either omitted from horror films or misrepresented in them altogether. As Russo explains, “The essence of homosexuality as a predatory weakness permeates the depiction of gay characters in horror films” (49). This is visible in films such as Dracula’s Daughter (1936), which depicts “Countess Alesca (Gloria Holden) as having a special attraction to women, a preference that was even highlighted in some of the original ads for the film” (Russo 1985, 49). Specifically, the posters begged “Save the Women of London from Dracula’s Daughter!” (Russo 1985, 49). Other horror films, including Bride of Frankenstein (1935) and Blood and Roses (1960), feature similar constructions of gay and lesbian characters. Blacula moves away from the homosexual as predator mythology, yet falls back upon a longstanding gay archetype—the sissy or the comical

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effeminate male (Russo 1985, 4). In The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies, Vito Russo defines three prominent archetypes that have historically circumscribed gay and lesbian characters. His paradigm includes the “Sissy,” the “Victim,” and the “Villain.” Russo contends that of the three caricatures, the sissy has been the most evident, explaining that it perpetuates negative stereotypes about gay men because “it is supposed to be an insult to call a man effeminate, for it means he is like a woman and therefore not as valuable as a ‘real’ man” (4). The sissy has consistently aided in reinforcing commonly accepted myths about gay masculine identity, including “homosexuals are identifiable on the basis of their appearance and behavior” and “all gay men are effeminate” (Tropiano 2002, 189). The gay characters in Blacula are constructed through this stereotypical lens. When the audience is first introduced to Bobby McCoy (Ted Harris) and Billy Schaeffer (Rick Metzler) they are in 1970s Transylvania, where their occupation as antique dealers has led them in pursuit of items from Count Dracula’s now abandoned estate. Like Sweetback and a host of other films, Blacula relies upon visual and aural cues to code Bobby and Billy as gay. Bobby is introduced in a medium long shot which emphasizes his wardrobe. His shirt features a design composed of loud colors, and he completes his ensemble with a matching purse. Although Billy is dressed in a much more conservative suit, he and Bobby’s speech patterns work aurally to establish the men as queer. Specifically, both speak with the stereotypical lisp often associated with gay men, delivering their lines with the sassiness usually reserved for women as they consistently refer to the estate salesman as “honey” throughout the exchange. The language is used in conjunction with effeminate hand gestures to further signify their sexual orientation. Thus, the film aids in reaffirming the notion that all gay men are recognizable by their appearances and that all gay men are indeed effeminate. After purchasing several items during their transaction, including Blacula’s coffin, Billy and Bobby ship their goods to their Los Angeles warehouse, where they open the vampire’s tomb. After breaking the lock on the coffin Bobby is distracted by Billy, who has cut himself while attempting to open another crate. Both he and Bobby become squeamish at the sight of blood, which further highlights their effeminate nature. In the meantime, Blacula has emerged from his coffin and approaches them, grabbing Billy and drinking the blood from his wound. As he screams in pain, Bobby attempts to free him from Blacula’s grasp by hitting the vampire with a board. Importantly, the manner in which he

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swings the weapon makes it apparent that he cannot defend himself because he is simply not man enough to fend the monster off. He attempts to flee, but Blacula quickly overtakes him. This is a powerful scene because it operates on multiple levels. In true horror film tradition, the scene invites audiences to empathize with the victims as they fall prey to the monster. However, because the filmmakers go to such great lengths to establish Billy and Bobby as queer, the scene is equally about the fate of gay males. In true Hollywood fashion, Bobby and Billy are transformed into victims, who because of their perceived sexual deviance, must pay with their lives. This allows audiences to celebrate Billy and Bobby’s deaths or more importantly, the destruction of the gay menace that poses a threat to heteronormative masculine identity. Although Billy and Bobby die early on in Blacula, the film continues to subjugate gay men in the narrative by referring to the deceased as “faggots,” a word that functions similarly to the word “nigger.” The latter has been utilized to subjugate blacks since the days of chattel slavery. After America abolished the inhumane practice, the “N-word” continued to permeate everyday life, helping keep America’s racial order in place. For example, the “N-word” was regularly levied at blacks and commonly used as insults, including the following: Niggerish: Acting in a lazy and irresponsible manner. Niggerlipping: Wetting the end of a cigarette while smoking it. Nigger luck: Exceptionally good luck, emphasis on undeserved. Nigger rich: Deeply in debt but flamboyant. Nigger tip: Leaving a small tip or no tip in a restaurant. Nigger work: Demeaning, menial tasks. (Littleton 2006, 10) Indeed, the “N-word” is so demeaning that it has been described as “the most obnoxious racial epithet in contemporary American lexicon,” and “the filthiest, dirtiest, nastiest word in the English language” (Chideya 2000, 9; Russell 1997, 765). Blacula’s inclusion of the usage of the word “faggot” is illustrative of manner in which marginalized groups appropriate and implement dominant discourses. Like the “N-word,” “faggot” carries a great deal of cultural baggage. As Russo explains, the term, along with others such as “fruit, dyke, and pansy,” are often used to subjugate gays and lesbians in Hollywood films (46). Ironically, Blacula includes the same kind of verbal assault towards gay men that blacks had endured for years. Specifically, while investigating Billy and Bobby’s deaths Dr. Thomas visits the police department with the hope of performing

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another autopsy on Bobby. The police chief informs Dr. Thomas that Billy and Bobby’s corpses have disappeared from the morgue and wonders aloud, “Who would want a dead faggot?” This line of dialogue speaks directly to the worth of the gay males. As previously explained, Russo notes that “sissies” are not as valuable as “real” men. Hence, the police captain is confused by the disappearance of the corpses, but he is even more perplexed by the fact that the corpses of two gay men are missing. Here, the implication is that gays are unwanted when they are alive, let alone dead. Despite Blacula’s pervasive homophobic content, the film was successful on multiple levels after its release. First, Blacula performed extremely well at the box office, grossing over $1 million in domestic film rentals (“Big Film Rentals” 1972, 36). Second, Blacula provided blacks with greater exposure in the horror genre, inspiring blackthemed horror films such as the Blacula sequel Scream, Blacula, Scream (1973), Blackenstein (1973), Abby (1974), and several others. As the blaxploitation movement progressed, gay and lesbian characters continued to be misrepresented in the narratives. This is extremely apparent in Warner Bros. popular blaxploitation classic Cleopatra Jones (1973). Based on a screenplay by black actor and writer Max Julien, Cleopatra Jones marked Hollywood’s pioneering attempt at making an African-American female a full-fledged action heroine. To find the perfect actress to play the groundbreaking role, Warner Bros. conducted a national search, auditioning over 2,500 potential candidates in New York, Chicago, Cleveland, Atlanta, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles (“Cleopatra Jones” 1973, 49). Casting agents narrowed the field to 12 finalists before finally selecting the statuesque, six-foot-two-inch Tamara Dobson to play the title character. Dobson had previously worked as a fashion model, appearing in 25 television commercials and magazine photo spreads in Vogue, Ebony, Harper’s, and Essence (“Cleopatra Jones” 1973, 50). At the time she was chosen to star in Jones, Dobson’s previous film work only included small roles in Come Back, Charleston Blue (1972) and Fuzz (1972) (Bogle 2003, 385). In addition to Dobson, Jones also features football-player-turned-actor Bernie Casey as the title character’s love interest, Reuben Masters. Other notable actors include Antonio Fargas (Doodlebug), Brenda Sykes (Tiffany), and Academy Award winner Shelley Winters appearing as the evil lesbian villainess, Mommy. In addition to marking a significant moment for black performers, Jones was also important for African Americans working behind the scenes. As a part of Warner Bros.’s affirmative-action efforts,

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Jones employed a multiethnic crew that included African-American women and men: “three black women—Ann Wasslington, Cheryl Kearney, and Bertha Brock—filled key positions as hairdresser, set decorator, and wardrobe assistant, respectively” (“Black Craftsmen” 1973, 19). Paul Williams helped supply craft services, and Walter McCovey worked as an electrician (19). Finally, the film’s stunts were coordinated by Ernest Robinson and performed by the Black Stuntmen’s Association (Parish and Hill 1989, 96). Cleopatra Jones chronicles an international police agent working for an undisclosed government organization. The film opens in Turkey as Jones oversees the destruction of a $30 million poppy field belonging to Mommy, one of Los Angeles’s most notorious drug dealers. Upon learning of the field’s annihilation, Mommy arranges for crooked policemen to raid the B & S House, a halfway home for recovering drug addicts run by Jones’s boyfriend, Reuben Masters. This brings Jones back to Los Angeles, where she seeks out the corrupt police officers responsible for the raid and destroys Mommy’s underworld organization. Jones moved black women beyond the stereotypes that had circumscribed their filmic images for years. Prior to the emergence of blaxploitation films, African-American actresses were relegated to the role of “mammy” more than any other archetype. As Bogle explains in Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks, mammy is “characterized by her sex and fierce independence. She is usually big, fat, and cantankerous” (9). Finally, mammy is typically outfitted in an oversized dress, topped off with the handkerchief that she wears on her head. In The Birth of a Nation (1915), Imitation of Life (1934), Gone With the Wind (1939), Pinky (1949), and countless other films, the mammy archetype aided in perpetuating myths such as blacks are ugly, all black women are attitudinal, and that all black women are overbearing, yet caring matriarchs. In addition to perpetuating stereotypes about black female identity, the mammy also reinforced normative ideals about white women. In “Black Women in Film,” Edward Mapp explains that the parade of jolly and warm mammies were “huge, tough, and masculinized enough to emphasize the ultra-femininity of the white female stars” (42). Cleopatra Jones emerges as a physically capable heroine, yet she operates against previous constructions of masculinized black mammies. Screenwriter Max Julien noted, “She neither suffers indignities in silence nor does she put up a monumental struggle merely to survive. She fights with all of the tools available to every man in

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a battle against an evil that afflicts the black ghettos and yet she remains entirely feminine while doing it” (“ ‘Cleopatra Jones’ Stars” 14). This is clearly reflected in Jones’s wardrobe, which was directly influenced by Tamara Dobson’s career as a model. While the film was in production, the actress requested that fashion mogul Giorgio di Sant’Angelo design her character’s attire (Lucas 1973, 43). Thus, gone are the days of oversized mammy dresses. Instead, Jones dons an array of costumes that includes fur coats, eccentric blouses, and an assortment of different jewelry. She also wears turbans and sports several different hairstyles throughout the film. In 1970s America, Cleopatra Jones is living proof that black is beautiful. Unlike the asexual mammies that graced the silver screen in previous Hollywood fare, Cleopatra Jones is an attractive, sexually liberated character. As the narrative unfolds, it becomes clear that she can have any man that she desires. However, Jones shares a monogamous relationship with Reuben Masters that is based on a caring and understanding rarely depicted among black couples. This is obvious during their interactions as well as in an inexplicit love scene that the two share. Writer Mary M. Mebane viewed the scene as well as the film as a breakthrough: “Cleopatra Jones portrays relationships between black men and women as supporting and lasting” (8). Indeed, Jones and Masters’s relationship is a rare and important representation of black intimacy. Cleopatra Jones did much to challenge Hollywood’s distorted representations of black women. Like the other films discussed in this essay, however, Jones falls back upon the industry’s standardized subjugation of gays and lesbians in its portrayal of Mommy, the evil lesbian villainess. Prior to Jones, white women had portrayed villains on the silver screen. For example, they had assumed the role of the antagonistic femme fatale in noir films. In Film Noir: Reflections in a Dark Mirror, Bruce Crowther writes that the femme fatale “was calculating, manipulative, cruel and she used her sexual attractions blatantly” (115). Performers like Mary Astor, Barbara Stanwyck, and Gloria Swanson popularized the character type in The Maltese Falcon (1941), Double Indemnity (1944), and Sunset Boulevard (1950), respectively. In addition to the noir femme fatales, Faye Dunaway portrayed female gangster, Bonnie Parker, in Bonnie and Clyde, which at the time of its release featured one of the earliest depictions of a gun-toting female criminal. Throughout the film, Parker plays an equal role in the armed robberies, and like her male counterparts she meets her brutal demise at the film’s end.

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While white women had previously appeared as villains, their characters existed in predominantly white worlds where black femininity posed no threat. The appearances of black actresses (if they were present at all) in the aforementioned movies are not significant to the film’s diegesis, and the white female villains, while flawed, remain so in the presence of other whites. As Patricia Morton contends, the absence of blackness liberates the white woman from Southern lore, which constructed her as “delicate, pure, and devoted above all to her family” (8). This mythology is prevalent in Hollywood films such as The Birth of a Nation, Gone With the Wind, and Imitation of Life (1958), which present significant interaction between black domestics and beautiful white performers, Lillian Gish, Vivian Leigh, and Lana Turner, respectively. Mommy cuts against traditional representations of black and white females. Importantly, the character’s name, Mommy, is a play upon the mammy archetype which was historically constructed in opposition to white femininity, making black women “the antithesis of the American conception of womanhood” (Jewell 1993, 39). Mommy’s perceived sexual deviance positions her outside of the normative representations of white women, which works to justify positioning the white female in direct opposition to the black protagonist. History is reversed as Mommy assumes the role of an evil lesbian matriarch rather than a warm and jolly caregiver. Visually, save the white skin, Mommy is the embodiment of the mammy. Mommy is short and overweight, while Cleopatra Jones is tall, thin, and attractive. This extremely problematic construction further denigrates lesbians, perpetuating a heterosexual/ beautiful, homosexual/ugly binary. Although Mommy is the matriarchal figure, she is not a servant. She heads a criminal organization, taking care of the henchmen who carry out her evil deeds. Unfortunately, her male employees are incompetent, failing in their every attempt to kill Cleopatra Jones. For example, several of the henchmen unsuccessfully attempt to capture Jones at an airport, fail to shoot her from a rooftop, and are unable to overtake her in a car chase. These consistent failures spark Mommy’s irrational and domineering behavior toward the men. She is shrill, loud, and irrational when chastising the henchmen who are obviously failures because they allow themselves to be dominated by a lesbian. In contrast to the asexual mammy, Mommy is presented as a sexually charged lesbian whose behavior toward women perpetuates stereotypes about gay and lesbian relationships. For example, Mommy is

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often distracted from scolding her employees by her assortment of scantily clad girlfriends who temporarily soothe her nerves. She preys upon the women, often fondling their rear ends while telling them, “You’re the only one around here who understands Mommy.” This representation further perpetuates the stereotype that “homosexuality only has to do with sex while heterosexuality is multifaceted and embraces love and romance” (Russo 1985, 132). Mommy perfectly articulates this cliche´d mythology. As discussed earlier in this essay, Jones challenged dominant discourses about black relationships depicting Reuben and Cleopatra in a loving relationship. Unfortunately, the film celebrates black love at the expense of gays and lesbians by suggesting that they are incapable of engaging in and sustaining meaningful relationships. Cleopatra Jones falls back upon the standard action film plot structure. As Neal King explains in Heroes in Hard Times, after facing several challenges throughout the narrative, “heroes join forces with fellow employees or bystanders (sidekicks) who give support. By the conclusions of these stories, many heroes have bettered their lives—reconciled with intimates, forged bonds with sidekicks, massacred enemies, or earned reprieve from communities they have saved (2). Jones’s reliance upon this plot structure warrants Mommy death at the film’s end. In a final climactic scene that takes place in an automobile junkyard, Cleopatra Jones and Mommy square off. As Mommy feebly attempts to fight Jones, it becomes glaringly obvious that she is no match for the heroine. When Mommy retreats to the top of a crane Jones runs her down and throws her over the edge. Mommy falls to her death, which marks the demise of the villain, but more importantly the deviant sexual threat that had made life complicated for the beautiful heterosexual protagonist. CONCLUSION Although the blaxploitation movement marked a significant moment for blacks working in the film industry, the period was also embroiled in controversy surrounding the depictions of blacks in these motion pictures. African Americans had broken the chains of the tom, coon, mulatto, mammy, and buck, only to be transformed into what many considered more insidious characters—superspades, pimps, prostitutes, drug pushers, and vigilantes. The overreliance and perceived glorification of the aforementioned characters in films such as Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, Shaft, Super Fly, Foxy Brown, and a host of others prompted a group of Los Angeles civil rights organizations—the

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NAACP, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)—to combine their resources to form the Coalition against Blaxploitation (CAB). One of CAB’s main goals was to establish a review board to rate black movies with classifications such as “superior,” “good,” “acceptable,” “objectionable,” or “thoroughly objectionable” (“Black” Lash 1972, 5). CAB’s proposal sparked a public debate among a host of actors, producers, directors, writers, and intellectuals. Super Fly star Ron O’Neal was among the first to speak out against CAB: “They’re saying they know better than the black people themselves what they should look at, that they’re going to be the moral interpreters for the destiny of black people. I’m so tired of handkerchief-head Negroes moralizing the poor black man” (“Black” Lash 1972, 5). Walter Burrel, the chairman of CAB’s ratings board, fired back at O’Neal, “Since black people are hungry to see the black image on the screen they’ll go to see anything, there’s got to be some responsibility” (“Black” Lash 1972, 5). The dispute continued in a New York Times article titled “Black Movie Boom—Good or Bad?” When questioned about his position on the issue, Shaft director Gordon Parks Sr. stated: The so-called black intellectuals’ outcry against black films has been blown far out of proportion. It is curious that some black people, egged on by some whites, will use such destructive measures against black endeavors. . . . As for a black review board to approve scripts and pre-edit finished films, forget it. The review board is already established and is moving from one theater line to another. (“Black Movie Boom—Good or Bad?” 1972, 3.19) Jim Brown, former professional football player-turned actor, said, “The so-called ‘black’ film has made some important contributions not only to black people but to the film industry as a whole. It has allowed black directors, black producers, black technicians, black writers, and black actors to participate on a higher level than ever before” (“Black Movie Boom—Good or Bad?” 1972, 3.19). The apprehension over blaxploitation cinema ultimately played a major role in the demise of the movement. In the midst of the debate about blaxploitation films, however, it is interesting to note that no one expressed condemnation over the films’ pervasive homophobia. This exemplifies Stephen Ducat’s assertion that “antihomosexual hatred— whether expressed as discrimination, harassment, or violence—is the last acceptable form of bigotry in the U.S.” (197). At the time when

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blaxploitation cinema emerged, blacks and gays and lesbians had endured a history of oppression at the hands of Hollywood and society at large. Nevertheless, in the struggle for equality, black suffering took precedence over discrimination against gays and lesbians, who remained prisoners of the “sissy,” “victim,” and “villain” in a seemingly progressive body of cinema. Although this essay focuses on only three blaxploitation films—Sweetback, Blacula, and Cleopatra Jones— homophobia is a common theme throughout many of the movement’s most popular titles. Blaxploitation cinema emerged out of the 1960s, which witnessed blacks and gays and lesbians struggling for equality in all aspects of life in the Civil Rights Movement and the Gay Liberation Movement, respectively. While Hollywood took notice of blacks’ demands for equality, gays and lesbians continued to be misrepresented in cinema. Interestingly, some contend that a colorblind America also surfaced after the 1960s. Although great progress was made for blacks during the 1960s that is clearly reflected in blaxploitation cinema, the notion of a colorblind society is a great fallacy. Still, blaxploitation cinema exposed a significant revelation about black-and-white race relations as they pertain to homosexuality: Bigotry against gays and lesbians is colorblind because it is one thing that some whites and some blacks have historically been able to agree upon. REFERENCES “AIP Formula—Not Foolproof, But It Pays Off.” Variety, October 27, 1970, 54. Bennett Jr., Lerone. “The Emancipation Orgasm: Sweetback in Wonderland.” Ebony, September 1971, 106–118. “Big Rental Films of 1972.” Variety, January 3, 1973, 36. “Black Craftsmen Work on Movie.” Chicago Defender (June 9, 1973): 19. “ ‘Black’ Lash on ‘Black’ Busters.” Independent Film Journal (September, 4, 1972): 5+. “Black Movie Boom—Good or Bad?” New York Times, December 15, 1972. “ ‘Blacula’ Stars William Marshall.” Chicago Defender, July 22, 1972, 24. Bogle, Donald. Blacks in American Films and Television: An Encyclopedia: 1930–1971. New York: Garland, 1988. . 2003. Toms, Coons, Mammies, Mulattos, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films. New York: Viking Press. Carroll, Noe¨ ll. “Nightmare and the Horror Film: The Symbolic Biology of Fantastic Beings.” Film Quarterly 34 (1981): 16–25. Chelminski, Rudolph. “ ‘Cotton’ Cashes In: All Black Comedy Is a Box-Office Bonanza.” Life, August 28, 1970, 58–61.

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Chideya, Farai. The Color of Our Future: Race in the 21st Century. New York: Harper Perennial, 2000. “ ‘Cleopatra Jones’ Stars Black Woman Heroine.” Pittsburgh Courier, May 19, 1973, 14. “Cleopatra Jones: Tamara Dobson Plays Two-Fisted Crime Buster in New Black Action Flick.” Ebony, July 1973, 48–56. Crowther, Bruce. Film Noir: Reflections in a Dark Mirror. New York: Continuum, 1989. Ducat, Stephen J. The Wimp Factor: Gender Gaps, Holy Wars, and the Politics of Anxious Masculinity. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2004. Gold, Ronald. “Director Dared Use Race Humor: Soul as Lure for Cotton’s B. O. Bale.” 1970. Variety, September 30, 1970, 1 and 62. Jewell, K. Sue. From Mammy to Miss America and Beyond: Cultural Images and the Shaping of U.S. Social Policy. New York: Routledge Press, 1993. King, Neal. Heroes in Hard Times: Cop Action Movies in the U.S. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1999. Lawrence, Novotny. Blaxploitation Films of the 1970s: Blackness and Genre. New York: Routledge Press, 2008. Littleton, Darryl. Black Comedians on Black Comedy: How African Americans Taught Us to Laugh. New York: Applause Theatre and Cinema Books, 2006. Lucas, Bob. ”Super Tall Super Sleuth in ‘Cleopatra Jones.’ ” Sepia, September 1973, 40–45. Martinez, Gerald, Diana Martinez, and Andres Chavez. What It Is . . . What It Was: The Black Film Explosion of the ’70s in Words and Pictures. New York: Hyperion, 1998. Muir, John Kenneth. Horror Films of the 1970s. New York: McFarland, 2002. Parish, James Robert, and George H. Hill. Black Action Films. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1989. Russell, Margaret M. “Representing Race: Beyond ‘Sellouts’ and ‘Race Cards’: Black Attorneys and the Straightjacket of Legal Practice.” Michigan Law Review 95 (1997): 765. Russo, Vito. The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies. New York: Harrow and Row Publishers, 1985. Smelik, Anneke. “Gay and Lesbian Criticism.” In The Oxford Guide to Film Studies, edited by John Hill and Pamela Church Gibson, 135–147. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Tropiano, Stephen. Primetime Closet: A History of Gays and Lesbians on TV. New York: Applause Theatre & Cinema Books, 2002.

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Chapter 8

Tongues Untied: African-American Men Take the Spotlight Rodger Streitmatter

The gay presence in the American media had increased substantially between 1950 and the late 1980s, but a close look at that material reveals that virtually all of the individuals who had spent time in the spotlight—whether in the news media, in motion pictures, or on television—had one additional trait in common beyond the two facts that they were men and they were sexually attracted to other men: They were white. That situation changed in 1989 with the appearance of the single most controversial documentary ever created about the gay experience. Tongues Untied, which provided a candid view of African-American gay men, initially followed the path of other independent films and was shown only at a few art house theaters and esoteric film festivals. But then, two years later, the Public Broadcasting System decided to show the film to television viewers nationwide. Leading conservatives promptly denounced that decision, calling the work “pornographic,” “blasphemous,” and “grossly offensive.” The PBS decision combined with the negative comments, in turn, propelled an explosion of news coverage as Tongues Untied garnered huge quantities of journalistic attention. Some news organizations praised the film, while others condemned it—but none of them ignored it.

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And so, the hour-long documentary ultimately became merely one aspect of a high-profile phenomenon that cut across the media genres of film, television, and news as no other gay- or lesbian-oriented product before or since. Some of the messages that Tongues Untied and the stories about it communicated with regard to the lives of gay men were familiar ones, such as the prominent role of sex and the impact of AIDS. But this groundbreaking depiction of a previously ignored segment of society also illuminated several points that earlier media products had not. One of those statements was that homophobia was rampant in the black community, and another was that racism was equally rampant in the white gay community. Along with these race-oriented topics, the multimedia phenomenon also showcased a segment of American society that included both blacks and whites but that had previously been all but ignored: transsexuals. Marlon Riggs, who was 32 years old when he made Tongues Untied, grew up in the South and studied American history at Harvard University, graduating with honors. Riggs also earned a master’s degree in broadcast journalism from the University of California at Berkeley, where he later became a tenured professor. The filmmaker first gained national attention in 1987 when his documentary Ethnic Notions, which looked at 150 years of stereotyping of Americans of African descent, aired on PBS and then received a national Emmy and numerous other awards.1 Riggs knew that creating a film about African-American gay men and some of the issues in their lives would be controversial, especially because he was determined to approach the topic with candor. “I knew there were certain things that might get me in trouble,” he told one interviewer. “I was putting things out on the table that a lot of people feel very uncomfortable putting out there for public viewing.”2 SEX AMONG BLACK GAY MEN That sex plays a central role in the lives of African-American gay men was communicated by the prominent placement that Tongues Untied gave the statement, “Black men loving Black men is the revolutionary act.” Those nine words were the final ones to appear on the screen before the credits began to roll at the end of the film, suggesting that much of the documentary and its many earlier references to sex had been building up to that climactic conclusion.

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The documentary does not have an overall narrative structure but is a montage of visual images, monologues, and lines of poetry spoken by a variety of narrators—the Boston Globe called the mixture “dazzling.”3 Sometimes the elements come together to create cohesive vignettes, but other times the words seem to float on their own with no clear connection to what appears on the screen when a particular line is spoken. “Our lives tremble between pathos and seduction” is one such statement; “Our kisses are petals, our tongues caress the bloom” is another. Still other passages consist of several sentences, such as, “I’m chocolate candy, a handful of cookies, the goodies you are forbidden to eat. I’m a piece of cake, a slice of pie, an ice cream bar that chills your teeth. Think of me as your favorite treat, a pair of popcorn kernels waiting for the heat.” Many of the newspapers that reviewed Tongues Untied pointed to a scene near the end of the film as the most sexual.4 It shows one barechested man smiling seductively as he helps another man, also smiling, remove his T-shirt. The two men are then shown kissing and caressing as they lie in bed together. “Grinding my memory, humping my need,” the narrator states. “Been waiting for your light bulb to glow for me, waiting to exchange hard-ass love.” The fact that one man is lying on top of the other during part of the scene suggests that the two men engage in anal intercourse, although the camera never moves below their waists. While there is no question that Tongues Untied is sexual, the various news organizations that reviewed the film before it aired on television had differing opinions about whether it qualified as pornography. The New York Times described the film as containing “graphic material” but decided it was not pornographic, going on to say that the nudity as well as the “scenes of men making love” were fully justified in this particular work.5 The Wall Street Journal, by contrast, stated that the documentary definitely deserved to be labeled with a “scarlet P for pornography,” and then added, “Any television viewer happening onto this program is likely to be confused at first and imagine that the channel-changer has wandered to the local sex-oriented cable station.”6 AIDS AND AFRICAN AMERICANS At the same time that Tongues Untied celebrates the sexuality of black gay men, it also depicts the tragic impact that the AIDS epidemic has had on many members of that same group—including the director himself.

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The plethora of free-floating images and phrases include numerous references to the disease. Among the visual elements are the word “AIDS” filling the entire screen on one occasion, the letters a stark white against an all-black background, and one of ACT UP’s “Silence=Death” posters having a prominent place in an early scene. Among the cautionary phrases sprinkled into the script is, “There might be a pin-sized hole in the condom—a lethal leak.” By far the most poignant and powerful message related to the epidemic is one of the autobiographical elements of the film, as it focuses on the fact that Marlon Riggs was HIV positive when he made the documentary. The segment is introduced by one of the narrators stating that AIDS has transformed the lives of all gay men because they can no longer blithely engage in casual sexual encounters knowing that they now can contract the virus. This message is brought home to the viewer by a single statement that is repeated literally dozens of times: “Now we think as we fuck.” Riggs then takes over the role of narrator, looking directly into the camera as he recalls when, a year earlier, he began feeling fatigued. “At first I thought, ‘Just time passing,’ ” he says, but then his tone turns somber: “But I discovered a time bomb ticking in my blood.” The next image is of an obituary of Joseph Beam, a poet who died of AIDS complications at the age of 33; the image after that is of a similar item about James McLaurin, an activist who died at 38; and then another about Anthony Hooker, a chef who died at 25. As the newspaper clippings fill the screen, a dramatic heartbeat pounds in the background and Riggs says, “Faces, friends disappear. I watch. I wait.” As one face leaves the screen and another—all of them AfricanAmerican men—replaces it, the heartbeat grows louder and louder. The faces then change more quickly, reflecting how the epidemic picked up momentum during the second half of the 1980s and killed men at a faster and faster rate. Soon the faces on the screen race one to the next to the next to the next, changing too fast even to count, until the heartbeat suddenly stops—and the face on the screen is that of Marlon Riggs. The filmmaker then says, “I listen for my own quiet implosion.” During the uproar about PBS broadcasting the film, the Los Angeles Times called that segment “haunting” and praised it as a stunning departure from “run-of-the-mill television,”7 while the Washington Post used that part of the documentary as a segue into reporting several alarming facts about AIDS in the early 1990s. Not only was HIV spreading at a faster rate among African Americans than any other

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group, the Post reported, but, “black gays, in denial about their sexual preference, are less likely to practice safe sex than white gays.” The paper went on to report that “almost half of all gay black men continue to engage in anal intercourse without a condom—a percentage two-and-a-half times higher than that of the adult gay population as a whole.”8 Not all publications spoke of the sequence in positive terms, however, with several news organizations specifically taking aim at the line, “Now we think as we fuck.” The Chicago Sun-Times argued that the final word in the sentence was “raw language” that pushed the film into the category of “raunchy” television,9 while the Washington Times said PBS should be officially censured for broadcasting a word that is “scrawled in public restrooms.”10 HOMOPHOBIA IN BLACK AMERICA Because the media had largely ignored African-American gay men in the past, it is not surprising that they also had failed to portray the anti-homosexual feelings that pervaded much of black America. Tongues Untied changed that. One segment of the film that provides a dramatic depiction of homophobia begins with a grainy image of a young African-American man walking down a city street at night. His carefree stroll abruptly ends when three young black thugs emerge from the shadows and knock him to the ground. The victim’s sexuality is clearly a motivating factor in the attack, as one of the men calls out, “Hey, faggot, what you doin’ around here?” Before the gay bashing has ended, the men not only take the guy’s money but also spit on him and slash his face with a broken bottle. The segment ends with the young man lying in a pool of blood as the attackers walk away. The documentary’s longest section devoted to Black America’s hatred of homosexuals begins with a close-up shot of a black man slamming his hand down hard on a Bible as he screams, emphasizing every syllable: “A-bom-i-na-tion!” Following immediately after a soft and quiet scene, the combination of sound and image is jolting, demanding the viewer’s attention. The fire-and-brimstone style continues as the preacher quotes the scripture, “Mankind shall not lie with mankind, for it is an abomination in His sight!” and then adds his own interpretation of the words, “There is no corner in God’s church for perversion. God gave man a holy purpose—yes He did—to beget future generations, but the homosexual defiles his seed!”

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Other homophobic black men who are featured in the sequence, perhaps lay leaders of the church, add their words of denunciation as well. “We need strong black men to fortify the black family,” one says before adding a pair of rhetorical questions. “How does the homosexual help this agenda? In fact, isn’t he part of the crisis?” Various other comments—all of them negative—come screaming from the mouths of angry African-American men of varying ages. “Yeh, man, like this AIDS shit—all the innocent victims, man, mamas and babies dyin’ ’cause of dope fiends and faggots,” says one man. “We need strong role models, man. We can’t have cats lookin’ up to guys that are gay. How they gonna know what it means to be a man?” The segment ends by returning to the fiery preacher who calls out: “From Saddam and Gomorrah to San-Fran-cis-co, sodomy is a sin!” That particular section of the film is so memorable that the Wall Street Journal’s review made special mention of it. Tongues Untied identified several institutions as standing in opposition to the well-being of African-American gay men, the Journal stated, but, “the black church appears to rank highest on the list of those enemies, to judge from the film’s venomous images of black ministers preaching against sin and sodomy.”11 RACISM IN WHITE GAY AMERICA Marlon Riggs did not reserve all his venom for African Americans. Although the vast majority of the men appearing in the film are black, the director includes a handful of white gay men to illuminate the racist attitudes and behavior that the pioneering documentary portrays as being widespread in the white gay community. One example of the prejudice emerges from a monologue delivered by a Washington, D.C., man after he and several friends decide to visit a new gay club they have heard about. When the men—all of them African American—arrived, they were forced to wait outside under the disdainful eye of a white doorman whom the storyteller dubbed “Miss Attitude,” saying he had “bleached blond hair, body by Nautilus, and mind by Mattel.” The man telling the anecdote then explains the source of the conflict, saying, “Ten black men show up, and they get paranoid the place is gonna tilt”—becoming known as a club exclusively for blacks. When the men finally reached the entrance, the doorman said, “with much condescension, ‘You know, there’s a cover charge to get in.’ ” Still failing to dissuade the unwanted patrons, “Miss Attitude” then told the black men, “I need to see three

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pieces of ID,” even though the men had seen him requiring only one from white patrons. The storyteller concludes his anecdote by shaking his head in frustration and saying, “I thought this shit was through.” An even more dramatic statement on racism unfolds in one of the film’s autobiographical sections. Like many gay men, Marlon Riggs had been drawn, during early adulthood, to America’s most legendary gay Mecca—the Castro neighborhood in San Francisco. In his documentary, the filmmaker illustrates this period of his life with numerous images of bare-chested men, including several with their white buttocks protruding from leather chaps. “Cruising white boys, I played out adolescent dreams deferred,” Riggs says in his role as narrator. “I savored this single flavor, one deliberately not my own.” As one handsome man after another appears on the screen, a frenetic chant can be heard in the background, “Let me touch it, let me lick it, let me suck it.” Then the mood changes. More gorgeous men, in any number of flattering and seductive poses, continue to flash before the viewer’s eyes, but Riggs’s voice now points out “the absence of black images in this new gay life—in bookstores, poster shops, film festivals, even my own fantasies.” A copy of a gay men’s magazine appears on the screen with the words “Pick the Man of the Year” written across the cover, but the viewer—because of Riggs’s observation—now notices that not a single one of the hunky young candidates is African American. The sequence then provides three images of black men, Riggs stating that they show the only roles that white gay men allow the men of his race to fill. The first picture is of a white man towering over a black man who is bound in chains, the headline above the photo reading “Slaves for Sale.” The second illustration is a drawing of a white man beating a black man with a bullwhip, the activity so stimulating to the white man that his penis is erect. Several reviewers called the last of the three images the most offensive one in the entire film—the Washington Post and Washington Times both described it as “grotesque.” 12 The drawing is of a muscular African-American man standing naked, his large nipples jutting outward and yet tiny compared to his extraordinarily large penis. The fact that many white gay men view their black counterparts as nothing more than sex objects is reinforced by the shamefully demeaning words coming from the mouth of the dark-skinned stud, “Wull sure I packin’ a full head o’ cheese, baby! Yuh knows I save it all up jis’ fer yew!”

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This autobiographical sequence ends with the filmmaker speaking four defiant words: “I quit the Castro.” SHOWCASING TRANSSEXUALS Many journalists who wrote about Tongues Untied reported that the film broke new ground by highlighting the homophobia that pervaded black America and the racism that was rampant in white gay America, but they failed to point out that the documentary also moved into previously uncharted territory because it showcased transsexuals. One of the film’s most poignant scenes—shot entirely in slow motion—focuses on a pensive man dressed in a woman’s tank top, a yellow headband pulling his long hair back from his face. He is wearing jewelry and makeup, including fingernail polish. Although the man is never identified by name, viewers might easily think of him as a transsexual version of Billie Holiday because the jazz legend of the 1930s and 1940s can be heard singing her signature hit “Lover Man” throughout the scene. The words “I don’t know why, but I’m feeling so sad” are timed perfectly to the man taking a long drag off the cigarette he holds daintily in his hand, and “I long to start something I’ve never had” float through the air as he inhales deeply. “Never had no kissing. Oh, what I’ve been missing” drift by in the background as he looks mournfully into the camera, finally exhaling as “Lover man, oh where can you be?” concludes the hypnotic scene that is memorable, like Holiday’s unique style, because of its quiet subtlety and nuance. Another transsexual is showcased in the next scene, this one wearing a short, tight zebra-skin dress and high heels. This prostitute may or may not be a man anatomically, but the full-face makeup, shoulder-length hair, and large hoop earrings strive to erase all hints of masculinity. The background music this time is “Black Is the Color of My True Love’s Hair” by Nina Simone, best known for her soulsearching renditions of the 1960s, and again the overall tone is one of sadness. The sense of sorrow and loneliness is communicated partly by the subject’s facial expressions but mostly by the words the narrator speaks as the lady of the night is shown walking by herself along the edge of a body of water. “Standing out here on the waterside curbsides, I have learned to please a man,” one line states; “While I wait for my prince to come, from every other man I demand pay for my kisses,” says another. Though the words suggest the possibility of a more fulfilling life sometime in the future, the current picture is anything

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but happy. One of the final lines in the scene concedes, “While I wait, I’m the only man who loves me.” Also noteworthy is the extent to which male-to-female transsexuals are incorporated into other parts of the film. The numerous faces of AIDS victims, for example, include images of three men dressed in women’s makeup and clothing, and a clip of African-American men marching in a gay pride parade shows several of them prancing playfully like chorus girls. Two other segments of the documentary that highlight activities distinct to black gay men—snapping their fingers to punctuate a statement and posing like fashion models—also include numerous men swishing and cavorting with e´lan.13 While Marlon Riggs made a conscious effort to include transsexuals in his film, he never ridiculed them. In the world that the filmmaker creates, some African-American men prefer feminine attire and mannerisms while others opt for masculine clothing and demeanors, but they all—regardless of how they dress or present themselves—are treated with respect and dignity. AFRICAN-AMERICAN GAYS ON NATIONAL TV That the various themes communicated in Tongues Untied broke new ground in an impressive number of ways should not obscure the fact that the provocative documentary’s most significant contribution to the evolution of the depiction of gay people in the media is the fact that a huge number of American television viewers saw the film. Officials at PBS knew they were making a risky decision when they scheduled the film to air at 10 P.M. on July 16, 1991, as part of their P.O.V. (short for “point of view”) series that was created to showcase independent films. However, the executive producer of the series, Marc Weiss, believed that the documentary merited a national audience. “It’s an extraordinary piece,” Weiss said. “I was really blown away by it.” Part of the reason he selected the film, he continued, was that it had won more than a dozen awards, including top prizes at the Berlin International Film Festival and New York Documentary Film Festival.14 No list of awards, however, was enough to stop several of the country’s most outspoken social conservatives from expressing their outrage when PBS announced that it would air the film on national television. Syndicated newspaper columnist James J. Kilpatrick pronounced Tongues Untied “grossly offensive.”15 Right-wing commentator and politician Pat Buchanan, who was seeking the Republican nomination

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for president at the time, soon added two more derogatory adjectives: “pornographic” and “blasphemous.”16 The Rev. Donald Wildmon, president of the conservative American Family Association, condemned the film as an example of misusing federal funds because the National Endowment for the Arts had provided Marlon Riggs with $5,000 of the $40,000 it cost him to make the film. “What we’re talking about here,” Wildmon said, “is government funding of a particular perspective that the overwhelming majority of Americans find offensive.”17 Such statements propelled Tongues Untied into the media spotlight as few documentaries before it, producing an avalanche of coverage. The Los Angeles Times clearly had it right when the paper stated, a month before the film was scheduled to air, that “the discussion appears to be escalating into a full-blown national debate.”18 Daily newspapers in dozens of large as well as medium-sized cities soon joined the fray. Many of the papers covered the topic by publishing two pieces that ran side by side on the front page. One article was a news story reporting whether the local PBS station was planning to air the program, and the second was a review that assessed the film’s quality and articulated its major themes. The most ubiquitous sources in the news stories were the program managers at local PBS stations who were in the position of determining if the viewers in their market would or would not see Tongues Untied. Jim Lewis at the station in Wichita, Kansas, decided that his would not. “It flies in the face of community values so much that there was no way I could put it on,” he said.19 Tom Dvorak in Milwaukee also opted not to air the film; “A viewer in a general audience would be totally offended,” he said.20 Program managers at stations in other cities took very different stands. Jack Dominic in Cincinnati opted to air the film. “I don’t think small children or even young teenagers should watch the program, but that’s why people have ‘on’ and ‘off’ buttons,” he said.21 Terry Bryant in Washington, D.C., was adamant about broadcasting the piece; “It’s part of public television’s mandate to present diverse points of view that represent all segments of our society, and ‘Tongues Untied’ certainly fits that bill,” she said.22 Many of the stations that aired the program chose to move it to a late-night time slot, ranging from 11 P.M. to 3 A.M. Virtually all of the stations preceded the documentary with a warning that it contained language and images that were potentially offensive, and some of them repeated a “viewer discretion” crawl that moved across the bottom of the screen every five minutes.23

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Reviews of the film varied widely. The Dallas Morning News criticized the film for lacking depth and for becoming “tiresome” and “boring” because it repeated the same points about homophobia and racism too many times.24 The Atlanta Journal and Constitution was highly critical as well, placing its comments under the headline “PBS Fare Tonight Shatters Bounds of Taste, Morality” and then going on to write, “Innocently described as a documentary program about black homosexuals, ‘Tongues Untied’ is without doubt the most explicit, profane program ever broadcast by a television network.”25 Other papers praised the work. The Chicago Tribune called it “a powerful piece of filmmaking and a passionate personal story” that succeeds in “coming to grips with the rage and frustration that are part of the experiences of growing up gay and black.”26 The Denver Post agreed, calling the film “vibrant” and “artful” before observing that only a few years earlier television had ignored both blacks and gays but, “that was then, this is now, and the voices of black American homosexual men no longer will be ignored.”27 The debate about public television showing Tongues Untied extended to television news as well. National networks generally do not review documentaries, and yet this particular film provoked such a widespread conversation that it propelled some newscasters to break the rules. John Leonard on the CBS news magazine show Sunday Morning acknowledged that some of the images and narrative in the film were offensive—but then argued that they should be seen. “The shock of recognition is what public television ought to be about,” he told his national audience. “Public TV was supposed to be an alternative, not just for those of us who are into the Civil War or British hanky-panky or spoon-billed bee-eaters and midwife toads. Why not gay black Americans, fellow citizens defining their identity, speaking their bitterness? Why not a reality check—after which, just maybe, some empathy?”28 TONGUES UNTIED OR TONGUES STILL TIED? Who ultimately triumphed on the day that Tongues Untied was broadcast on public television depends on how victory is defined. On the one hand, supporters of the film argued that most of the country’s 20 largest PBS affiliates—all but the three in Detroit, Houston, and Tampa-St. Petersburg—broadcast it.29 On the other hand, opponents pointed out that a total of 110 of the country’s 284 stations, albeit many of them in small markets, refused to air the film.30

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Two dramatically different positions also can be persuasively argued regarding the success or failure of the media phenomenon that extended beyond the movie to encompass the genres of television and the nation’s news organizations. For those who adopt a positive view of the Tongues Untied case study, the biggest plus is that the documentary exposed millions of media consumers—either by watching it on television or by reading about it in the newspaper—to the lives of African-American gay men. What’s more, the film and the hundreds of news articles about it illuminated a number of issues that the vast majority of those viewers and readers may have never considered before. For the first time, consumers of the mainstream American media were told about such topics as the homophobia that is rampant in the black community and the racism that is rampant in the white gay community. That the documentary broke new ground with regard to transsexuals deserves special mention. Soap had shown television viewers a gay man dressed in women’s clothing in the late 1970s; that brief storyline had been tossed into the sitcom merely to garner a few laughs, however, and it ultimately was shamefully misleading with regard to why a man might choose to consider changing his gender. When Marlon Riggs included transsexuals in his documentary, by contrast, he clearly did so because he wanted to illustrate the diversity of the African-American gay community while also increasing awareness of this little-understood segment of society. What is more, Riggs depicted his subjects—such as the man who appeared on the screen as jazz icon Billie Holiday—as persons who fully deserved to be honored and respected, not denigrated and laughed at. Also earning a place on the list of positive aspects of the phenomenon is the fact that the various messages were sent to pockets of American society that often had been bypassed during previous stages in the evolution of media depictions of gay people. News coverage of the “Perverts on the Potomac” scandal and the Stonewall Rebellion, for example, had been dominated by such large news outlets as the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times. During this latest phase, by contrast, insights into the lives of gay men appeared not only in those elite publications but also in the much smaller papers that served the medium-sized cities that had PBS stations. Indeed, for news outlets such as Tennessee’s Chattanooga News-Free Press31 and West Virginia’s Charleston Gazette,32 reviews of the documentary and the brouhaha surrounding it marked one of the first times they had made any reference whatsoever to gay men.

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That a documentary with such provocative gay content aired on the Public Broadcasting System is highly significant. The decision by officials at this alternative venue to broadcast the program, even though they knew that a major controversy would follow, suggested that consumers who were interested in viewing depictions of gay men and lesbians in the future—regardless of whether those individuals be persons of color or not—might find that it would be necessary for them to turn to sources of television programming other than what was available on the major networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC. For those who adopt a negative view of the Tongues Untied phenomenon, there is no question that the program managers at more than 100 of the local affiliates around the country succeeded in preventing their communities from seeing the documentary. In addition, many of the affiliates that aired the film paid a high price. Two days after the broadcast, the Sacramento Bee quoted the local station manager as saying that she had received 310 telephone calls about the program—90 percent of them critical;33 three months after that, the Macon Telegraph reported that the leadership of the Georgia state legislature warned the state’s public television stations that if they ever aired another program as offensive as Tongues Untied, state funding—which amounted to 42 percent of their budgets—would be eliminated.34 A second and ultimately much more far-reaching reality is that the documentary failed to serve as a catalyst for the media to increase the presence of persons of color in their depictions of gay people. Marlon Riggs stated that he had hoped that his film would “start a dialogue” about the lives and the issues facing gay African Americans—although, in reality, he focused only on African American gay men, as his film did not include a single lesbian.35 But in that effort the filmmaker failed, and unequivocally so. In the years since Riggs’s controversial work created such a furor, myriad scholars have lamented the lack of racial diversity in the media’s depictions of gay men and lesbians. Time after time, authors have discussed the film not in the context of spawning other works but as one of the woefully small number of media products that have depicted Gay America as being something other than an all-white world.36 Regrettably, the film also has to be classified as a failure in its effort to change the depiction of transsexuals. Members of this sexual minority group were not only given considerable prominence in the nationally televised movie, but they also were consistently presented in a dignified manner. Despite Riggs intentionally sprinkling these positive portrayals throughout his documentary, the plethora of reviews and news stories

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about the provocative work ignored these images and concentrated, instead, on the sexual content. More significantly still, the vast majority of the media products that were to come after Riggs’s groundbreaking film chose to present no content whatsoever about transsexuals. One final—and painfully sad—aspect of the Tongues Untied phenomenon is that Marlon Riggs was not allowed to contribute for very long to the dialogue that he had hoped would continue in the wake of his provocative documentary, as he died in 1994, at the age of 37.37 NOTES 1. Marlon Riggs’s later films were Color Adjustment (1992), about 40 years of images of African Americans in television; No Regrets (1992), about five African-American men infected with HIV; and Black Is . . . Black Ain’t (1994, completed by Riggs’s crew after he died), about what it is like to be black in America. 2. Robert Anbian, “ ‘Tongues Untied’ Lets Loose Angry, Loving Words: An Interview with Marlon Riggs,” Release Print, March 1990, 5. 3. Ed Siegel, “Black Gay Men: From Pain to Pride,” Boston Globe, July 15, 1991, 34. 4. Walter Goodman, “Growing Up Black and Homosexual in America,” New York Times, July 15, 1991, C11. 5. Walter Goodman, “Growing Up Black and Homosexual in America,” New York Times, July 15, 1991, C11. 6. Dorothy Rabinowitz, “Homosexual Love; A Real Baseball Hero,” Wall Street Journal, July 15, 1991, A9. 7. Howard Rosenberg, “ ‘Tongues Untied’ Deserves to Be Seen and Heard,” Los Angeles Times, July 15, 1991, F1. 8. Courtland Milloy, “Film on Black Gays Is Bold, but Ignores the Big Picture,” Washington Post, July 18, 1991, C3. 9. John Carmody, “Major Markets Won’t Muzzle ‘Tongues,’ ” Chicago Sun-Times, July 16, 1991, 39. 10. Don Kowet, “PBS Turns TV Rooms into Gay-Strip Film Houses,” Washington Times, July 16, 1991, E4. 11. Dorothy Rabinowitz, “Homosexual Love; A Real Baseball Hero,” Wall Street Journal, July 15, 1991, A9. 12. David Mills, “Cry of ‘Tongues Untied’; Controversial Documentary on Gay Blacks,” Washington Post, July 19, 1991, B1; Don Kowet, “PBS Turns TV Rooms into Gay-Strip Film Houses,” Washington Times, July 16, 1991, E4. 13. On the significance of snapping and vogueing among African-American gay men, see, for example, Marcos Becquer, “Snap!thology and Other Discursive Practices in Tongues Untied,” Wide Angle, vol. 13, no. 2 (April 1991): 6–17.

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14. Paul Lomartire, “Explicit ‘Tongues Untied’ Challenges PBS,” San Diego Union, July 11, 1991, D9. 15. James Kilpatrick, “On the NEA, Poets, and Pornography,” Austin American Statesman, July 6, 1991, A15. 16. Patrick J. Buchanan attacked Tongues Untied in a campaign ad that criticized President George Bush; on the wording of that ad, see “Campaign Ad,” Dallas Morning News, March 10, 1992, A6. 17. Don Kowet, “ ‘Tongues’: Documentary for All Reasons,” Washington Times, July 16, 1991, E4. 18. Sharon Bernstein, “PBS Stations Balk at ‘Tongues Untied,’ ” Los Angeles Times, June 24, 1991, F9. 19. Paul Lomartire, “Explicit ‘Tongues Untied’ Challenges PBS,” San Diego Union, July 11, 1991, D9. 20. Don Kowet, “ ‘Tongues’: Documentary for All Reasons,” Washington Times, July 16, 1991, E4. 21. Frank Prial, “TV Film About Gay Men Is Under Attack,” New York Times, June 25, 1991, C13. 22. Don Kowet, “ ‘Tongues’: Documentary for All Reasons,” Washington Times, July 16, 1991, E4. 23. B. J. Bullert, Public Television: Politics and the Battle over Documentary Film (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997), 115. 24. Russell Smith, “ ‘Tongues’ Leaves a Lot Unsaid About Being Black and Gay,” Dallas Morning News, July 16, 1991, C5. 25. Dick Williams, “PBS Fare Tonight Shatters Bounds of Taste, Morality,” Atlanta Journal and Constitution, July 16, 1991, A17. 26. Rick Kogan, “A Lively Bunch,” Chicago Tribune, July 16, 1991, E5. 27. Joanne Ostrow, “Channel 12 to Carry Provocative ‘Tongues Untied,’ ” Denver Post, July 16, 1991, E1. 28. John Leonard made his comments on the edition of Sunday Morning edition that aired on June 30, 1991. 29. Matt Roush, “ ‘Tongues Untied’: PBS’ Knotty Documentary,” USA Today, July 16, 1991, D3. 30. B. J. Bullert, Public Television: Politics and the Battle over Documentary Film (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997), 115. 31. “More Filth on Your Tax Money,” Chattanooga News-Free Press, July 3, 1991, A8. 32. “Prim Public TV,” Charleston Gazette, August 2, 1991, A4. 33. Dan Vierria, “KVIE Draws 300 Calls on Show on Gay Blacks,” Sacramento Bee, July 18, 1991, E5. 34. Don Schanche Jr., “Budget Writers Criticize Ga. Public TV Boss over Documentary on Gays,” Macon Telegraph, October 18, 1991. 35. Essex Hemphill and Joseph Beam, eds., Brother to Brother: New Writings of Black Gay Men (Boston: Alyson Publications, 1991), 193.

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36. See, for example, B. J. Bullert, Public Television: Politics and the Battle over Documentary Film (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997), 119; Larry Gross, Up from Invisibility: Lesbians, Gay Men, and the Media in America (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 143, 146, 189–191; Larry Gross and James D. Woods, “Introduction: Being Gay in American Media and Society,” in Larry Gross and James D. Woods, eds., The Columbia Reader: On Lesbians and Gay men in Media, Society, and Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 7, 20; Terry Rowden, “African American Gay Culture,” in George E. Haggerty, ed., Gay Histories and Cultures: An Encyclopedia (New York: Garland, 2000), 19–20. 37. “Marlon Riggs Dies; Film Maker Was 37,” New York Times, April 6, 1994, B9; Evelyn C. White and Teresa Moore, “Film Maker Marlon Riggs Dies of AIDS,” San Francisco Chronicle, April 6, 1994, A13.

Chapter 9

When Straight America Starts “Queering”: Brokeback Mountain and Its Parodies Jennifer Malkowski

The year that Brokeback Mountain premiered in theaters, 2005, started out as a rough year to be queer. The pain of the recent U.S. election was still fresh: not only had Bush remained in office, but queer people were told that the “moral values” voters who showed up partly to cast votes against gay marriage had been crucial to his victory. Later in the year, that political and emotional blow was alleviated ever so slightly, for many of us, by the anticipation of a certain (cow)boy-meets-(cow) boy big-screen romance. Knowing how powerful respectful media representations of three-dimensional queer characters can be—both in dismantling prejudices and in psychologically supporting queer communities and individuals—I thought that Brokeback Mountain would be just what America needed at that moment in its history. Indeed, the film impacted our nation like a big gay meteorite. “The gay cowboy movie,” as it was inevitably dubbed, generated vast amounts of public discourse—on the news channels, in the op-ed pages, from critics, fundamentalist Christians, gays, and innumerable Internet bloggers and discussion board posters. The scholarly journal Film Quarterly compiled a special issue on Brokeback, and the one thing all of that issue’s essays have in common is their authors’ identification of the film as a cultural moment. These authors label Brokeback as “a mega-event,”1 a “cultural phenomenon,”2 a “talking-point or

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rallying-cry, a totem, milestone, and lightning conductor”3 and assert that “Brokeback Mountain immediately achieved an iconic status as a code word and cultural reference point that dominated its historical moment.”4 In 2005, it was the film everyone had to weigh in on, but this sprawling public discourse was dominated by politically ambiguous, comedic responses rather than by the earnest praise and condemnation we might have expected. Some of these comedic responses were produced in traditional formats—such as skits on MadTV (1995 to the present) or a New Yorker cover.5 But those that had the biggest impact and widest circulation were amateur creations fully dependent on Internet distribution: the wildly popular YouTube 6 parodies of Brokeback Mountain’s trailer. In these trailer parodies, video editors use the audio, intertitles, and structure of the official Brokeback trailer to “remix” other film trailers, amplifying queer subtext and extracting new gay romances from previously heterosexual films. This type of “queering” has its roots in Production Code-era queer spectatorship and in science fiction fandoms, but this more recent version happens publicly, in the mainstream, and is performed and viewed by people of varied sexual orientations. In their work, Back to the Future (1985, Robert Zemeckis) turns into “Brokeback to the Future,”7 creating a forbidden love story between Michael J. Fox’s young Marty McFly and Christopher Lloyd’s older Doc Brown. Subtext becomes text in “The Brokeback Redemption,”8 as Morgan Freeman’s narration for The Shawshank Redemption (1994, Frank Darabont) is reedited to narrate a sexual relationship between his character and Tim Robbins. Even kids’ cartoon shows are used, as the locale Snake Mountain from He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (1983–1985) transports its characters to “Brokeback Snake Mountain”9 for a romance between He-Man and Man-at-Arms. I will dissect one example of the trailer parodies at a later point, but it is important to note here that after the dust settled on the Brokeback trailer parody trend, approximately 100 films, TV shows, and videogames had been subjected to this queering. The most prominent of these trailer parodies, “Brokeback to the Future,” was so popular that it was recently included in a 12-clip list of YouTube’s “canon.”10 These queered trailer parodies helped catapult Brokeback to its “cultural moment” status and also served as a creative outlet for viewers to process their feelings about the film through humor. With the hugely diverse, participatory pool of authors and audiences that use YouTube, however, how can we interpret the spirit of these parodies’ creation and reception? Are they savvy editing successes that poke

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fun at macho men’s “homosexual panic” in the face of Brokeback? Or are these parodies appropriating the filmic language of Brokeback Mountain to make fun of how “gay” other films are? Significantly, how do the source format of the theatrical trailer and the distribution system of YouTube shape the production and reception of these trailer parodies? Just as Brokeback itself generated a broad spectrum of responses—from hysterical conservative articles with titles like “The Rape of the Marlboro Man”11 to the sentimental gay fan who bought the cowboys’ intertwined shirts for over $100,00012—it can be argued that these parodies generate a number of persuasive interpretations, which have very different implications for Brokeback’s legacy and for the mainstreaming of the niche queering practice. Though there is a favored interpretation—one that most strongly guides the way I watch the trailer parodies—this chapter attempts to make room for several different approaches to coexist. Most importantly, these approaches hopefully provide access points to the politics of the Brokeback trailer parody phenomenon—ways to talk about the cultural operations these videos are performing that may be obscured by their powerful humor (which seems to be recognized by viewers of all political persuasions). The following brief analysis of Brokeback Mountain as a film and of queering as an artistic practice will provide the necessary background for four possible interpretations proposed later on. BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, ANAL SEX, AND THE HISTORY OF QUEER CINEMA The biggest public feud about Brokeback Mountain (at least among those who were not simply out to gay-bash) was over whether the film was a specifically gay tragedy or a universal love story.13 For the most part, the queer community advocated the former and the film’s advertisers and straight proponents concentrated on the latter. The specifics of that debate are tangential here, but what its intensity does reveal is the high emotional stakes of how Brokeback fits into queer film history.14 The story itself, adapted from a 1997 New Yorker piece by Annie Proulx and helmed by acclaimed international director Ang Lee, dares to craft a gay romance from Western genre elements. Two young ranch hands, Ennis del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal), take summer jobs together in 1963 herding sheep in the wilderness of Wyoming’s Brokeback Mountain. Away from societal pressures, the two form an intimate friendship and eventually give in to their sexual desires. After the job ends, they part ways without any plans to

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reconnect. Ennis marries his sweetheart, Alma (Michelle Williams), and Jack settles down with a rodeo gal, Lureen (Anne Hathaway), in Texas. Once both men have started families, a postcard from Jack arrives and Ennis eagerly reunites with him. For the next two decades, they continue a fierce but fragile half-relationship, retaining their own lives in Wyoming and Texas, meeting only a few times a year on “fishing trips” to Brokeback Mountain. After a fight about Ennis’s unavailability and fear of having a real life together, Jack returns to Texas and is killed in either a freak accident or an anti-gay hate crime (the film leaves an ambiguity there). The story ends with Ennis living alone in a dingy trailer, where he cherishes the remnants of this romance—an old postcard and two shirts he and Jack wore that first summer up on Brokeback. The desire of gay audiences to claim the film as their own and save it from the “universality” label speaks to its singular nature as the biggest event in gay film history. Three main factors contributed to this success and singularity: Brokeback targeted and reached a mainstream audience, it was almost universally acclaimed for its artistic (not just its political) quality, and it had the most explicit sex scene in the history of mainstream gay male films.15 If you do not believe that this is an explicit depiction of gay sexuality, you have been watching too many lesbian movies! Although Hollywood loves to show hot women going at it, mainstream (and even many independent) movies about gay men have been surprisingly chaste. Gay male culture’s reputation for promiscuity and worshipping youth, beauty, and sex is often discussed by characters in gay films, but it is very rarely depicted on screen in any graphic, or even distinguishable, manner.16 In Brokeback’s gay sex scene, Jack and Ennis sleep in the same tent for the first time after Ennis gets too drunk to return to his usual sleeping place near the sheep. In the middle of the night, a drowsy Jack reaches over and pulls Ennis’s hand toward his crotch. Ennis wakes immediately and jumps up. Jack follows, and in the groggy moonlight of the tent, the two bodies come together in a strange mixture of mutual hesitance and aggression. Before their lips can meet, Ennis flips Jack over and the two quickly launch into anal sex, aided only by a little spit that Ennis applies to his erection. The sex is graphic and urgent, accompanied not by music but only by grunts of pain and pleasure from both men. Though we do not see any frontal nudity here, the performances and the cinematography make it crystal clear that these men are enjoying an act of anal penetration. Ang Lee uses long takes for this encounter, avoids close-ups, and lets the scene run long past the moment at which many directors would “tastefully” pan away or fade out. Details like the spit lubricant, the visible motion

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of Ennis’ hips thrusting into Jack, and the unembarrassed stare of the camera back and forth between the two men’s faces and along their bodies assure audiences that nothing but the sexual organs themselves (which would sacrifice the film’s R rating) is being hidden or avoided. Writing about Brokeback as containing a kind of primal scene17 for American audiences witnessing anal sex between men, Linda Williams identifies key differences between this scene and others of gay anal sex in film history. She notes the irony that “in the context of a film about two cowpokes who think their sexual pleasure is ‘nobody’s business but ours,’ gay anal sex received its widest publicity beyond the contained world of gay pornography”18 and argues that Brokeback is the first mainstream depiction of this sex as a pleasurable act.19 Though we have seen male-on-male anal rape in films such as Deliverance (1972, John Boorman), American History X (1998, Tony Kaye), and Pulp Fiction (1994, Quentin Tarantino), Williams correctly identifies these instances of anal sex as communicating the shame, humiliation, and powerlessness evoked by the act. On the other end of the spectrum, we have Brokeback’s most obvious mainstream precursor, Making Love (1982, Arthur Hiller), a film which celebrates love between men, but is so vague about sex between men—obscuring it in a long shot, under covers, and behind curtains—that audiences cannot even identify what sex act the leads are engaging in.20 Other scenes of explicitly anal gay sex are far more marginalized, to be seen mostly by niche gay audiences in the 1990s work of independent film director Gregg Araki or the more recent gay Showtime TV series, Queer as Folk (2000–2005). Thinking about the Brokeback Mountain’s revolutionary depiction of anal sex is important to my discussion of the YouTube trailer parodies because of the way these parodies, and other YouTube videos on Brokeback, so carefully avoid its anal scene. Or perhaps a more telling way to frame this idea is to say that I do not believe it is a coincidence that these trailer parodies which became Brokeback’s breakaway comedic responses—widely circulated and enjoyed by gay and straight Americans alike—were of a format that by nature excluded the film’s gay sex, a point I will return to. ORIGINS OF THE YOUTUBE PARODY TRAILERS IN QUEERING AND SLASH FANFICTION Any discussion of “queering” and cinema has to start with Vito Russo, the author of the landmark 1981 study of homosexuality in the movies, The Celluloid Closet.21 Whether Russo names it or not, that

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work is all about the practice of “queering,” of willfully reading film characters as homosexual by searching these films for queer “subtext”—a line of dialogue, a flamboyant gesture, a look imbued with desire. This practice was a necessity for queer spectators looking for themselves in the movies before 1962 because of Hollywood’s Production Code, a system of censorship that expressly forbade any depiction of homosexual themes or characters, along with a number of other “perversions.” As Russo explains, some filmmakers tried to get around the Code on this point, slipping in subtextual references to hint at a character ’s homosexuality: Cairo’s perfumed scent in The Maltese Falcon (1941, John Huston) or the particular way Rock Hudson’s characters would talk about and fondle their guns. To read Cairo’s perfume as an indicator that his character is gay is to “queer” The Maltese Falcon. These were the moments queer spectators latched onto in order to combat their invisibility onscreen. As my Rock Hudson example hints—and Russo’s book amply demonstrates— the Western genre has been ripe for the queering all along, so all the alarmism about a gay Western when Brokeback premiered revealed a certain tardiness and lack of imagination among the alarmists. The YouTube trailer parodies are all deeply engaged with unearthing queer subtext, but in addition to cinema spectatorship, the practice has roots in “slash” fanfiction. Slash is a writing practice within fandoms (of a movie, a TV series, a comic book) that focuses on creating non-canon22 relationships between specific characters, often by finding scenes and lines of dialogue that could be read/reframed as sexual or romantic and then building fictional stories from those. Slash as we know it began with Star Trek (1966–1969), a series that produced (and continues to produce) a huge quantity of fanfiction, written mostly by female fans.23 These writers would sometimes transform the popular “space opera” into a soap opera, writing the equivalent of paperback romance novels with Captain Kirk playing the lead role instead of a random, one-dimensional hunk. 24 Works like these are non-slash fanfiction, but what slash changed was the romantic leads (and often the level of sexual explicitness), pairing Kirk with Mr. Spock rather than with a generic female crew member.25 Slash fanfiction was initially distributed in fanzines by mail or at fan conventions, but now it is collected in huge archives for hundreds of different fandoms online. As distinct from most of the Brokeback trailer parodies, the tone here conveys intense fandom and love for the series and characters, mingled with desire. Sometimes there is a comedic element, but not to the same degree as in the Brokeback trailer parodies.

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With the advent of cheap, user-friendly video-editing technology, fans translated slash writing techniques into slash editing techniques, “remixing” footage from TV shows and films to queer character relationships. We might identify some avant-garde roots of this practice in Cecelia Barraga’s 1991 short Meeting of Two Queens, which Richard Dyer calls a “collage film.” 26 This film recuts footage from Queen Christina (1933, Rouben Mamoulian) and The Scarlet Empress (1934, Josef von Sternberg) to imagine an erotically charged meeting between the characters played by Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo, both icons in the history of lesbian desire on screen. A similar method is used in recent slash videos, with the frequent addition of pop music that amps up the sexual content with suggestive lyrics and mutes dialogue that often does not connote desire the way the images do. Our classic Kirk/Spock case has its slash videos—montages that take meaningful glances and shirtless scenes out of context and mix them together with songs such as The Divinyls’s “I Touch Myself”27 or Justin Timberlake’s “SexyBack.”28 A typical out-of-context slash moment in the “I Touch Myself” Kirk/Spock video happens when a scene of Spock sleeping restlessly is chopped up and cut together with a scene of a shirtless Kirk after a workout session from an entirely different episode of Star Trek. As the lyrics of the song hit “I close my eyes and see you before me,” the video editor shows a close-up of the restless Spock closing his eyes and then cuts to the shirtless Kirk, which s/he has altered to include an iris effect and de-saturated color, creating the look of a dream or fantasy. This restless-Spock-imagining-shirtless-Kirk scenario, coupled with a song about masturbation (“I don’t want anybody else/When I think about you I touch myself”) forces us to imagine some Vulcan masturbation going on below the edge of the frame on the restlessSpock close ups. These types of slash videos exist in many, many fandoms, from Star Trek to Buffy the Vampire Slayer to X-Men. Queering, slash, and their descendents in the Brokeback trailer parodies are all examples of Henry Jenkins’s important theoretical concept of fans as “textual poachers.” Jenkins reverses ignorant stereotypes of fans as passive consumers exploited by corporations, citing the above practices as examples of fans’ active creation and editing of their favorite texts into newly enjoyable forms. As Jenkins says, fans understand their chosen text as “not simply something that can be reread . . . [but as] something that can and must be rewritten to make it more responsive to their needs, to make it a better producer of personal meanings and pleasures.”29 These types of fans—and the Brokeback trailer parody creators especially—are emblematic of Jenkins’s larger concept

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of a new “convergence culture” in which the convergence of different media and the active participation of consumers in the creation of culture allow for new kinds of “work-and play” for spectators.30 With slash and Brokeback providing the format and the opportune cultural moment, with programs like iMovie providing the technical tools, and with YouTube providing access to an eager audience, these unique products of spectators’ “work-and play” were born. While many of the similarities between the Brokeback trailer parodies and these slash ancestors are revealing, we should also recognize a crucial difference: the Brokeback trailer parodies became far more broadly popular than any previous queerings or slash works. We can trace a direct lineage in concept (non-canon sexual pairings from Kirk/Spock to Marty McFly/Doc Brown) and technique (removing original contexts and adding suggestive ones through editing and the addition of music with romantic/sexual connotations), but there is a key difference in tone. While the fan slash videos are born from passion for the original text or series and genuine sexual desire for these imagined queer couples, the Brokeback trailer parodies place a much higher value on comedy, and a type of comedy that can be easily enjoyed by a mainstream audience rather than a cult fandom. A close look at one trailer illustrates this difference and provides a sense of how the trailer parodies operate. “Star Wars: The Empire Brokeback”31—a play on Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (1980, Irvin Kershner)—creates a Star Wars trailer that promotes the series as an epic romance between two droids,32 C-3PO and R2-D2, without using any footage that does not appear in the Star Wars films. Like most of the trailer parodies, this one integrates intertitles and music from the official Brokeback trailer. The twangy, sparse guitar notes from Brokeback’s score became so charged with cultural meaning (like the word “Brokeback” itself) that playing just a few seconds of it can immediately code a text as gay, as it does in “The Empire Brokeback.” As C-3PO and R2-D2 wander a vast desert together and the score begins, we also get a parody of the intertitles from the official trailer. The original line “It was a friendship . . . that became a secret,” transforms into “It was a friendship . . . that became a rebel alliance” in “The Empire Brokeback,” for example. Sexual innuendo is evoked both visually and through dialogue, as the two droids are shown going into a room together when C-3PO says “Lock the door, R2,” or when a lingering shot of R2-D2 inserting an electronic probe from his “body” into a wall conduit is followed by the intertitle “There is a force that penetrates us.” Mechanized visual metaphors for penetration and orgasm also appear in the views

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of blaster fire entering an orifice of a giant space station, followed by a long shot of that space station exploding. Social ostracism of gays also plays a role in this galaxy far, far away as a bartender tells the droids that he does not “serve [their] kind here” and ejects them from his bar. Finally, in its most brilliant adaptation of the Brokeback Mountain trailer, “The Empire Brokeback” manages to integrate famous lines from the original trailer by subtitling R2’s electronic “speech”—a series of blips and beeps which, in the actual Star Wars films, are never comprehended by or subtitled for the audience. When C-3PO asks R2-D2, “Where do you think you’re going?” the littler droid responds with his beeps and the parody’s creator adds the subtitle, “It’s nobody’s business but ours.” He later gets in Brokeback Mountain’s most famous line when R2-D2 beeps emphatically at C-3PO and the subtitle reads, “I wish I knew how to quit you!” All this is made technologically possible by the recent ease and affordability of non-linear editing software on home computers, and its distribution is made practical by free video-sharing sites like YouTube. While “The Empire Brokeback” showcases the skill and creativity required to produce these parodies—even with good editing software— it also highlights the extent to which the trailer parodies intentionally bypass real eroticism and desire in their comedic drive. As metal robots that presumably do not engage in sexual conduct or have sexual organs, I think it is safe to say that C-3PO and R2-D2 provide some of the fewest possibilities for sexual arousal in the Star Wars universe (even Chewbacca or the Ewoks might have groupies among the niche “furry” sexual community). Even the moments that seek to increase sexual content do so in a comedic, rather than an erotic, mode. The shot of R2 “penetrating” the wall conduit, for example, is more likely to make people laugh than to turn them on. We see no evidence here of the erotic motivations that dominate slash, particularly in the numerous “NC-17” erotica stories that graphically detail all kinds of sexual acts. Brokeback’s anal scene would read as downright tame compared to some of slash fanfiction that expands beyond “normative” oral and anal sex to include BDSM, rape, bloodplay, and sexual slavery. READING THE YOUTUBE TRAILER PARODIES: FOUR APPROACHES At this point, I will return to my earlier questions about how we interpret these trailers. If we can agree that the romances forged between Marty McFly and Doc Brown or C-3PO and R2-D2 are amusing

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viewers more than arousing them (a claim supported by responses on YouTube’s posting boards), then how do we interpret this popular leap from the raw sexuality and humorless tragedy of Brokeback Mountain to the sexless queering comedy of its parodies? Tragedy has always been a productive target for parody, but what are the consequences of losing this sexual element from the film that brought gay anal sex out of the cinematic closet? Presenting a single answer to these important questions would falsely streamline the range of persuasive interpretations—even more so in this case than in most, I believe—so instead I will identify and analyze four of those possible approaches. Approach #1: The Threat of Contagion Considering the public displays of “homosexual panic” generated by Brokeback Mountain—fears from straight male spectators that they might feel aroused when watching it, that its homosexuality might be contagious—we could read the YouTube trailers as an expression and extension of this reaction. Through this approach to analyzing the trailers, we can interpret Brokeback as generating such a strong wave of this panic that deriding the film itself as “so gay” is no longer sufficient. YouTube editors and viewers seek to further affirm their own heterosexuality by unearthing and mocking homoeroticism in other films, too. As we will see from my explanation below, the editors and viewers who fear contagion actually end up enacting it by creating and popularizing these trailer parodies. In an essay titled, “Brokering Brokeback: Jokes, Backlashes, and Other Anxieties,” B. Ruby Rich identifies this type of homosexual panic weighing heavily on the film’s reception, as exemplified by comedy writer Larry David’s comment about his fear that if he saw the film, a little voice in his head would try to make him gay while he was watching, saying, “Go ahead, admit it, they’re cute. You can’t fool me, gay man. . . . Go ahead, stop fighting it! You’re gay!” 33 Larry David’s comments evoke the old model of “contagion,” the fear that an aggressive gay person could seduce you to the dark side, that homosexuality could be spread like a disease. A number of scholars writing on Brokeback identify and condemn the fear of contagion cropping up in discussions of the film. Robin Wood balks at the fact that “there was even the suggestion (put tactfully, so as not to offend the gay readership whom you used to be able to offend without a thought) that Ennis wasn’t gay at all until Jack led him astray

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(the old ‘contagion’ theory that one hoped had died with the dinosaurs).”34 Rich makes reference to the theory, too, arguing, “Jokes [about Brokeback] most often took the form of a heterosexual man’s reluctance to expose himself (so to speak) to on-screen homosexuality, a new-fangled revival of the old-fashioned contagion theory,”35 and calling the many types of Brokeback jokes “viral mutations.”36 Linda Williams also points out that the fear of contagion circulates heavily in Brokeback Mountain itself, both as film and short story, through references to castration, which she describes as “a literal punishment specifically meted out to men whom other men fear might lead them down that same path of seduction.”37 In this first interpretive approach, the trailers enact contagion panic by using the lens of Brokeback to make beloved straight films start to appear more than a little queer—almost as if the mere act of seeing Brokeback could irrevocably set one’s media vision to “gay.” This “queer virus” spreads not only to spectators, but through film history, with compatibly-titled classics as the first to be infected, as in “Brokeback to the Future” and “Star Wars: The Empire Brokeback.” Legend has it that the most homophobic, macho guys often turn out to be gay, and the trailer parodies make the same terrifying accusation against the most hyper-masculine films. They parody military men in Top Gun (1986, Tony Scott), tough guy cops in Walker Texas Ranger (1993–2001), muscle-bound athletes in Rocky (1976, John G. Avildsen), notoriously macho and homophobic mobsters in Goodfellas (1990, Martin Scorsese), the gun-toting renegades from the videogame Metal Gear Solid (1998), and the most hyperbolically masculine hero of them all, He-Man (whose very name incorporates not one, but two assertions of his gender). Surely part of the comedy for those of us not suffering from homosexual panic lies in the intensely masculine nature of these preexisting characters, and the more macho the characters are, the funnier the parodies become. He-Man is among the kids or family-oriented fare that Brokeback trailer parodies also make queer, resonating with the branch of contagion panic about exposing children to queer people and themes. (Recall the hysterical conservative response to J. K. Rowling’s outing of Harry Potter ’s Dumbledore in 2007.) Republican Congressman Richard Martin, for example, asserted that Brokeback was “exactly the kind of thing that’s warping the minds of our youngsters,” and made his own bizarre entry into the comedic fray by joking that “the only time two cowboys should share a tent is when they’re planning a bank robbery,” that their horses should be slaughtered for letting gays ride

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them, and that these same horses should have sensed their riders were gay by the feel of their testicles.38 In addition to He-Man, I found trailer parodies of other family entertainment such as Bambi (1942, David Hand), March of the Penguins (2005, Luc Jacquet), Spongebob Squarepants (1999–present), and Sesame Street (1969–present). My “threat of contagion” reading assumes the worst about the parodies’ reception, framing it as predominantly homophobic. Viewed through this lens, the parody trailers tap into a cultural urge to interrogate heterosexual entertainment, sniffing out traces of homoeroticism and mocking them in the public forum of YouTube. Judith Butler explains this dynamic insightfully in Bodies that Matter through a discussion of mainstream drag films such as Tootsie (1982, Sydney Pollack), Victor/Victoria (1982, Blake Edwards), and Some Like It Hot (1959, Billy Wilder). She writes: though these films are surely important to read as cultural texts in which homophobia and homosexual panic are negotiated, I would be reticent to call them subversive. Indeed, one might argue that such films are functional in providing a ritualistic release for a heterosexual economy that must constantly police its own boundaries against the invasion of queerness.39 These Brokeback parodies seem to spread queerness through their very expressions of anxiety about its spread—enacting the contagion they fear—but like Butler’s drag films, they still seem to bolster heteronormativity more than they disrupt it. This interpretation finds support in the anti-gay content and comments that accompany some of these trailer parodies. The creator of a Pirates of the Caribbean (2003, Gore Verbinski) trailer parody includes an introductory intertitle that warns, “If you thought pirates looked gay in those shirts, wait till you get a load of this . . . ”40 Here, a text already marked as a little queer is pushed into the realm of the ludicrously gay (in a negative sense) through its contact with Brokeback Mountain. A similar negative use of the label “gay” occurs in the introductory remarks made by the author of a Rush Hour (1998, Brett Ratner) trailer parody: “I know it’s ghey and everything but whatever I was bored.”41 Defensively implying that he himself is not “ghey,”42 this author marks himself as a contagion victim, in an unintentionally amusing way: Brokeback seduces this innocent young soul into a trendy queer practice when a state of boredom makes him vulnerable. While it is easy to laugh off or dismiss these mild instances of homophobia

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from authors, the comment boards for these videos are disturbingly sprinkled with much more hostile occurrences, as embodied by a succinct, one-word response to the defensive Rush Hour editor’s video from a user with the screenname Yfckwitme: “faggot.”43 Approach #2: An Explosion of Queers and Queering An optimistic reversal of the “threat of contagion” approach would be to view the same model of infectious queer authorship and spectatorship with a more positive focus on the sharing of perspectives and expansion of queer themes. We have lots of cliche´s to describe the societal value of people taking on perspectives other than their own, of “walking a mile in someone else’s shoes,” and this kind of exercise in empathy is popularly considered a great strategy for reducing homophobia. The Brokeback parody trend compels straight video editors (like our non-“ghey” friend from the last section) to give “queering” a try. It also helps millions of straight viewers watch well-known films through the same mode of spectatorship that Russo’s Code-era queers had to use for so many decades—amplifying and recontextualizing the smallest hints of homosexuality. In terms of the expansion of queer themes, we can note that even as the Brokeback film project promised a homosexual screen explosion, the gayness of the production itself seemed rather to implode. Neither the writers, nor the director, nor the actors identified as queer; the role of women and the men’s heterosexual relationship were expanded from the short story; and the big, behind-the-scenes gossip that emerged from the production was not about the man-on-man action, but was instead about the straight romance that blossomed between Ledger and his on-screen wife, Williams, leading to their off-screen marriage. However, the biggest “straightening” of Brokeback came with the film’s marketing as a universal love story and the accompanying emphasis on the heterosexual relationships and Western themes in the trailer and other advertising. The Brokeback parodies do their part to reverse that implosion. Instead of draining the film itself of its queerness, the parodies push that queerness beyond the borders of this one film and into the reels of hundreds of other films. They vastly increase the exposure of the practice of “queering,” which has traditionally been a domain for queer people, for others who are aroused by gay male sex, and for hardcore fans of whatever text is being queered. The Kirk/Spock slash fiction, for example, got its pre-Internet distribution from fanzines and

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Star Trek conventions, which have always been a niche pastime. The “Brokeback to the Future” parody alone, by comparison, has been viewed around 5.5 million times44 and was one of those Internet crazes that got passed around by e-mail indiscriminately. Tallying the play counts of the hundred-plus Brokeback trailer parodies on YouTube would likely triple that 5 million count. Perhaps this expansion of queering serves to make gay love relationships more familiar and less fearful. After all, how threatening can love between quirky little robots C-3PO and R2-D2 really be? Also on the warmer-and-fuzzier side, there is greater potential for happy endings in the parodied films. Few, if any, of the trailer parodies hint at the troubling homosexual-gets-killed ending that dominates gay and lesbian film history and resurfaces in Brokeback.45 Approach #3: Adding to “A Palette of Affect” This third approach, taken from Joshua Clover and Christopher Nealon’s Film Quarterly article, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Me,” refocuses the idea of a positive queer expansion that my second approach proposes. In that second approach, we can read the parodies as queering mainstream texts by using Brokeback as a tool or opportune moment. In this third approach, YouTube editors instead try to expand the emotional reach of this specific queer text, Brokeback Mountain. Clover and Nealon propose that by blending elements from Brokeback with other texts, forms, and genres, editors can create a “palette of affect” to supplement the film’s one-tone tragedy color scheme—“to allow for a different range of feelings to flow out of (and back into) the movie.”46 Clover and Nealon elaborate: As important as the film has been to a substantial audience, the implication of these iconic afterlives seems apparent: make the most of the moment . . . there’s no point in waiting until next Friday for a queer comedy, a queer action flick or thriller. The endlessly-bruited wonder of Brokeback Mountain being made at all guarantees its reception as a singular event. This can’t help but read as a kind of advisory echoing a lifetime of ad campaigns: If you’re going to see only one gay love story this decade . . . get as much expressive possibility out of it as you can, even if the film itself resists such promiscuities.47 Here, we should think back to Jenkins’s “textual poachers,” like the slash fanfiction writers, and the ways they reshape texts to make them

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“better producers of personal meanings and pleasures.” YouTube video editors seek to perform this operation by adding other genres and modes to Brokeback’s range. Comedy, a mode largely absent Brokeback Mountain itself, is the most obvious addition that the trailer parodies make to this palette, though a few of the trailers aim for serious romance rather than laughs. One author introduces her or his Star Wars/Brokeback parody with the caption, “By the way, I am a Qui-Gon/ Obi-Wan slasher, so I have taken this pairing rather seriously instead of making the video in a humorous way.”48 Whether the affective aim is always reached is another question, as one user comments on this video, “the music was gay and the video was stupid!!”49 This instance of a perceived failure to achieve serious aesthetic goals—though perhaps not an enjoyable failure, in this case—hints at the particular branch of comedy that many of these trailer parodies connote: camp. Engagingly theorizing camp in her 1964 essay, “Notes on Camp,” Susan Sontag defines it as “a comic vision of the world50 . . . in terms of style—but a particular kind of style. It is the love of the exaggerated, the ‘off,’ of things-being-what-they-are-not.”51 Exaggerated renderings of things as they are not abound in the Brokeback trailer parodies, which fully embody camp’s “contrast between silly or extravagant content” (these often improbable or ridiculous gay romances) “and rich form”52 (the entirely earnest and formal Brokeback movie trailer format).53 Camp is a natural and valuable addition to Brokeback’s “palette of affect” because the film itself is so opposite the camp sensibility (and perhaps also because, as Sontag observes, the sensibility runs so deeply in queer communities).54 The Brokeback trailer parodies—which are mostly intentional, rather than naı¨ve camp, unlike the last paragraph’s Star Wars example—honor Sontag’s principle that camp “dethrone[s] the serious,”55 consciously positioning themselves against and playing off the effective tragedy of the original film. The YouTube editors make full use of the opposition between camp and tragedy, playfully using the somber score and intertitles of the Brokeback trailer to “be frivolous about the serious.”56 The fascinating irony is that while Sontag wrote about gays producing camp through their reception of mainstream, straight texts, the YouTube trailer parodies drastically alter those dynamics. Here, we have a mainstream audience producing camp through their reception and creative appropriation of a (mainstream) gay text. For further support of the “palette of affect” interpretation, I will briefly explore a related set of YouTube Brokeback videos that Clover and Nealon do not mention and that do not use parody as their mode

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of choice. These videos instead seek to infuse the gay melodrama with more “melos,” setting scenes from the film to the kind of incredibly weepy love song that the film itself scrupulously avoids. These clips add another color to the “palette of affect” as they intensify the romance that the film restrains and take it to a breaking point—often exceeding that breaking point and transitioning into the naı¨ve form of camp that Sontag enjoys so much. A typical example, set to Mariah Carey’s slow and sappy “Whenever You Call,”57 selects mostly shots of Jack and Ennis out in nature, particularly lingering on moments when they embrace, cry, or tenderly kiss. The author adds plenty of slow motion to these shots, as the song lyrics promise, “And I will breathe for you each day/Comfort you through all the pain/Gently kiss your fears away/You can turn to me and cry/Always understand that I/Give you all I am inside.” The image of emotional, communicative romance in an idyllic natural setting created here is a fantasy that Brokeback Mountain itself posits as unsustainable. But videos like this one enable fans to inhabit these alternate spheres of affect, allowing them to enjoy both the stunted love and tragedy of the film proper and also the untarnished, eternal romance YouTube editors can extract from its footage. After identifying comedy and romance as two primary colors that YouTube adds to Brokeback’s palette, I was surprised to discover another crucial shade missing from this proverbial color wheel: eroticism. In every fandom that generates YouTube videos, slash and canon couples are occasionally portrayed in music videos similar to the Kirk/Spock “I Touch Myself,” or the Ennis/Jack “Whenever You Call,” but with an earnest tonal emphasis on eroticism rather than tongue-in-cheek comedy or sentimental longing. The Ennis/Jack pairing offers more explicitly sexual scenes from its original film source than any slash couplings can draw from, and even more than most of fandoms’ canon couplings have to offer. I expected to find a bunch of videos using hot or sensual songs and the most sexual clips from the film to increase the arousal factor, which, like melodrama, is also muted in Brokeback itself. What I did not find in this investigation brings us to my last approach to reading the Brokeback trailer (and other) parodies. Approach #4: Finding a Fetish The conspicuous absence of actual sex scenes from the trailer parodies and the Brokeback music videos allows us to flip the inclusive

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“palette of affect” interpretation to an exclusive fetishization reading. Just as Freud theorizes that a body part or object may fixate a man and shield him from the scarier whole of the vagina and sexual difference, the Brokeback trailer serves as a fetish for YouTube trailer parody authors. The official trailer becomes an innocuous part of the film on which YouTube editors and their audiences fixate, shielding them from the scarier whole. D. A. Miller pinpoints a related fetish in his effective attack on the film, “On the Universality of Brokeback Mountain,” when he argues that “craft” conceals homosexuality and gay sex for the film’s reviewers, giving those from all political positions and with all levels of sexual discomfort something safe to praise. Miller argues: In the critical reception, as in the film itself, the topic of homosexuality and the practice of craft work antithetically: the former, by its violent divisiveness, breaks up the social body as effectively as a centrifuge; whereas the latter unifies all that it touches—and everyone whom it touches—in the spectacle of fine workmanship. . . . In “The Battle of Brokeback Mountain,” craft is our Switzerland.58 Regardless of the analogy—Switzerland or fetish—Miller promotes the idea of craft as one distinct part of the film that viewers feel comfortable confronting and that they fixate on to avoid confronting scarier parts involving gays and gay sex. If “craft” is the fetish Miller identifies in reception of the film itself, then the trailer template becomes the primary fetishes for its parodies (aided by the limits of the queering practice), shielding YouTube editors from the anal primal scene and anything like it. A key feature of these trailer parodies is that by nature they can nott show any actual gay kissing or sex because they draw only from subtext, not from actual scenes in the original films. Doc Brown and Marty McFly never tumble into bed together in Back to the Future, and R2-D2 never inserts his little probe into C-3PO in Star Wars. Furthermore, as the green MPAA warning reminds us at the beginning of many of these parodies, the trailer form prohibits most visualizations of sex, for legal and marketing reasons—an irrelevant tradition on YouTube that the parody trailers seem happy to uphold. My point here is not that we should expect the trailer parodies to depict sex, but rather that there is significance in the fact that these trailers, which inherently

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can not confront the sexuality of the film, became Brokeback’s most popular parodies. Returning for a moment to the “palette of affect” approach to illuminate the extent of this fetishization, the only place I found any attempts to expand on Brokeback’s potential for arousal that included sex scenes was about as far from the mainstream as one can swim: in the vaults of hardcore gay porn. Anyone can guess the morphing of the title for these parodies: Bareback Mountain. While the porn industry cheerfully parodied the film for the sexual pleasure of its target (gay male) audience, more mainstream fare on YouTube that actually used Brokeback’s footage (which the porn features cannot) consistently shied away from the anal scene. Even the one Brokeback music video I found that employed an erotic tone more than a romantic one pointedly avoid letting the anal scene play too far, always cutting it before the implied penetration through an elaborate editing strategy that deserves a close reading. In this example, set to Britney Spears’s “And Then We Kiss,”59 the editor starts out skillfully by paralleling the sultry opening of the song with sexy fade-ins and fade-outs on several shots of the two men staring at each other, removing clothing, and briefly touching. Creating a sense of anticipation along with the music, the editor builds the clips to the song’s first chorus, lining up the first time Spears sings “And then we kiss” with the first depiction of Ennis and Jack kissing in the video. For this chorus, the editor chooses the rough, urgent reunion kiss behind Ennis and Alma’s apartment as a visual accompaniment, and repeats snippets of it several times to fill out the length of the repetitive “And then we kiss” chorus. Each time the chorus occurs, the editor lingers in this way on a different sexual scene from the film, eventually showing the entirety of the scene through these repeated snippets. Note that to fill the four and a half minute running time of the song, the video editor must repeat the handful of sexual scenes from the film over and over. Even when low on material, she or he still refrains from enhancing the sexual atmosphere of the video with the film’s only explicit sex—the anal sex Jack and Ennis have in their tent. Furthermore, when the author does use surrounding material from that scene, she or he cuts before the implied penetration and reverses the chronology of the encounter. First, she or he shows a clip that begins with kissing and ends with belt unbuckling, then one that retreats further back into the kissing, and finally one that regresses to the very beginning of the scene with the groping attempt when the two men are sleeping. Employing the editing equivalent of backing

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away slowly from a threatening object, this author goes to great lengths to avoid the anal sex scene even in the service of a video designed to be sexy. In my searches, I found only one parody that confronts the anal scene directly; it is not a YouTube creation, but rather a scene from a feature film, Scary Movie 4 (2006, David Zucker). The film is the fourth in a series that started as horror movie spoofs and now churns out haphazard parody films, sampling indiscriminately from the most water-cooler-worthy pop culture. Unsurprisingly, Brokeback Mountain was an important target for that year’s installment, and part of the clip described below was used in Scary Movie 4’s TV advertising campaign. Far from avoiding the primal scene, this parody simultaneously de-eroticizes the moment and hyperbolizes its sexual nature.60 The clip sets up a Brokeback scenario in which two (African-American) ranch hands awkwardly share a pup tent and assure each other that they are straight. As they settle in to sleep, one reaches toward the other’s crotch and then explains to his friend, “I’m just trying to grab some nuts,” pulling away a bag of cashews. The two then spontaneously begin to sing a love ballad, jumping up to serenade each other face to face. But here, at what would be the anal moment in Brokeback, Scary Movie 4 keeps its romantic leads isolated on different sides of the tent and in their own shot-reverse-shot frames. From this chaste distance, they keep singing, remove their shirts, and then prepare a wide variety of implied accessories for the sex they will soon be having— candles, two types of lubricant, knee pads, spark plugs, a latex glove, and a disco ball. The clip channels anxiety about gay anal sex into comedy about its “accessories,” fetish objects that replace the actual scene of penetration. As the two men draw closer together, the scene cuts to an external view of the illuminated tent with bodies rocking back and forth inside it. Then we return to a frame story with the two men describing their “fishing trip” to a third man in a bar. “We caught a lot of fish,” says one, while the other sniffs him suggestively and intones, “Black cod.” At this moment, the neutral third male’s face registers panic; he makes an excuse and frantically bolts from their table. The clip creates a comedic mood of fear and disgust at the thought of whatever sexual act these men are going to perform with kneepads and spark plugs, and then that reaction of fear and disgust is validated and framed as normal by the viewer’s everyman standin: the third man who runs from the just-outed gays. ***

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As ambiguous and divisive as the Brokeback trailer parodies can be in terms of politics, they unite their viewers through undeniably effective comedy. Among my own colleagues and friends, and among those posting to YouTube comment boards, videos like “Star Wars: The Empire Brokeback” generate near-universal amusement. Thus, I will adapt D. A. Miller’s quotation above to assert that in the battle of the Brokeback Mountain trailer parodies, humor is our Switzerland. As that particular historical reference implies, though, neutrality can be an insidious position in moral conflicts. Just as we should not ignore the politics of the Brokeback Mountain discourse by agreeing that its craft is impeccable, we should not ignore the politics of its parodies by agreeing that they are funny. I believe that each of the four approaches I have offered in this paper is a persuasive and sustainable way to unearth the politics beneath the humor of these videos. Any one of them can provide a viable route for ascending Brokeback’s immense parodic mountain, but if asked to choose among those routes myself, I would not claim neutrality. To me, these trailer parodies serve most strongly as fetishes (as elaborated in my fourth approach). They shield their viewers from the “sex” part of “homosexuality,” which Brokeback Mountain as a film tries to make them confront and Brokeback Mountain as a trailer and then as a set of trailer parodies permits them to avoid. The glimmer of hope here comes from the function of fetishes in general, in that a fetish is always about engaging with the frightening object on some level, even as it helps to avoid that object.61 To return to Freud’s theory of the fetish, his patient is able to sexually engage with a woman because he has found a fetish object that lets him avoid her too-scary vagina. For those who eventually overcome their fear, then, the fetish is a kind of stopgap—a way to partially face something frightening before one can muster the courage for a full confrontation. Though there is the usual irony in employing Freudian psychoanalysis— overtly homophobic as it was—to support pro-queer arguments, there is a parallel here to the way the Brokeback trailer parodies rely on fetishism. They have certainly encouraged engagement, expanding and popularizing the public discourse on Brokeback Mountain and allowing some individuals to grapple with the issues raised by a film that they were not willing to actually watch. Perhaps if history progresses toward vast queer acceptance, it will later cast the Brokeback trailer parodies in a positive light: as a minor fetishistic phenomenon occurring during a transitional period, when America was learning to confront its fear of homosexuality.

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CODA: GAY MOUNTAINS AND LESBIAN VALLEYS I originally conceived this project as a study on parodies of the most mainstream gay male and lesbian media. I hoped, among other goals, to make gender-based comparisons in comedic approaches to the most widely known cases of queer media representation. But what is the lesbian Brokeback Mountain? There has yet to be a girl-on-girl equivalent of this tremendously successful and culturally important film, and thus queer women have not yet had their day in the mainstream parodic sun.62 I did find one Brokeback parody on YouTube, originally shown on MadTV, that offers a succinct explanation for this absence of a “cultural moment” lesbian film. The three-minute sequence is another type of trailer parody, creating a trailer for a fictional Brokeback Mountain 2: The Cowgirls rather than editing a new trailer for a preexisting film.63 The cast of MadTV act out a parallel story to Ennis and Jack’s, in which two same-sex ranch hands fall in love in the wilderness of Brokeback Mountain; but the ranch hands in this sequence are attractive women, Fanny Tulips and Regina Haylicker (you can guess what word they pronounce “Regina” to rhyme with). Regina tells her husband that she is cheating on him, and his initial macho anger turns to barely contained arousal when he finds out that the “other man” is a woman. Fanny’s husband does not even try to mask his excitement, exclaiming, “You’re a lezzie? Whooooo-eeeeeee! Hot damn! This is better than winnin’ the state lottery!” The women continue their affair, reprising lines from the film in tailored forms: “I wish I could quit you . . . but my husband won’t let me.” The husbands become voyeurs, watching their wives from the bushes of Brokeback and eventually selling tickets to other men, forming a crowd of spectators as Regina ironically utters Jack’s line, “Ain’t nobody’s business but ours.” Throughout the trailer, we get pensive intertitles that parody the official trailer’s “It was a friendship that became a secret” series: “There are stories that shouldn’t be told. . . . Then there are some stories that should be told. . . . Then there are some stories that you wish your wife was into also. . . . ” The parody ends with a final intertitle, the film’s tagline, “This time being gay is a good thing.” If the real Brokeback Mountain was an uphill battle for sympathy from straight audiences, then this hypothetical lesbian equivalent would be, as this skit demonstrates, an even steeper uphill climb—not for sympathy, but for serious treatment. Such a Hollywood film would bend

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so easily to a socially acceptable form of pleasure that it could hardly merit the kind of serious-issue public melee that the mere threat of pleasure in Brokeback did. Its audience would likely resemble the ticket-buyers in the MadTV clip: horny heterosexual men (and not the ones who give out awards or write op-eds). In such a film being gay would indeed be “a good thing,” in a bad way—a bitterly familiar way in the history of queer women’s media representation. While gay men on screen have been met with hostility and fear, gay women have long been a pleasing spectacle for straight male viewers, recipients of a condescending titillation that does not mix well with Oscar nominations. 64 As long as that overwhelming titillation factor remains, I doubt mainstream America will get a lesbian Brokeback to parody. NOTES For thoughtful and insightful feedback throughout this project’s development and revisions, many thanks to U.C. Berkeley professors Deniz Go¨ktu¨rk, Linda Williams, and Anne Nesbet, and to my graduate student colleagues in Berkeley’s Visual Cultures Writing Group and Prof. Go¨kturk’s “Comic Interventions” seminar. 1. Jim Kitses, “All that Brokeback Allows,” Film Quarterly 60:3 (2007): 24. 2. B. Ruby Rich, “Brokering Brokeback: Jokes, Backlashes, and Other Anxieties,” Film Quarterly 60:3 (2007): 44. 3. Rob White, “Introduction,” Film Quarterly 60:3 (2007): 20. 4. Kitses, 24. 5. That cover parodied the film’s heavily circulated poster and the news event of Vice President Dick Cheney accidently shooting a hunting buddy in the face. On the cover, Cheney is in Heath Ledger’s position holding a smoking shotgun and George W. Bush stands behind him in Jake Gyllenhaal’s spot. The New Yorker, February 27, 2006. 6. This paper will not engage heavily with (the very limited number of) theories of YouTube, but for two early attempts at that theoretical task, see Lucas Hilderbrand, “YouTube: Where Cultural Memory and Copyright Converge,” Film Quarterly 61:1 (2007): 48–57 and Henry Jenkins, “Nine Propositions Towards a Cultural Theory of YouTube,” Confessions of an Aca-Fan: The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins, posted on May 28, 2007, http://www.henry jenkins .org/2007/05/9_propositions_towards_a_cultu.html. More recently, two book-length have been published: Jean Burgess and Joshua Green, YouTube: Online Video and Participatory Culture (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2009) and an anthology, Patrick Vonderau and Pelle Snickars, eds., The YouTube Reader (London: Wallflower Press, 2009). 7. orangeohm, “Brokeback to the Future,” YouTube, http://www.youtube .com/watch?v=8uwuLxrv8jY.

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8. redredding, “The Brokeback Redemption Trailer,” YouTube, http://www .youtube.com/watch?v=FtRi42DEdTE. 9. editguy, “Brokeback Snake Mountain,” YouTube, http://www.youtube .com/watch?v=UKeDWCLajQk. 10. Hilderbrand, 52. 11. David Kupelian, “The Rape of the Marlboro Man,” WorldNetDaily, posted on December 27, 2005, http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/ article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=48076. 12. Jenny Stewart, “Brokeback Shirts’ Auction Winner Speaks,” PlanetOut, posted on February 21, 2006, http://www.planetout.com/entertainment/ interview.html?sernum=1188. 13. The debate is exemplified by the heated back-and-forth dialogue between critic Daniel Mendelsohn and Brokeback producer James Shamus in the pages of The New York Review of Books. See Daniel Mendelsohn, “An Affair to Remember,” The New York Review of Books 53:3 (February 2006) and the replies, “Brokeback Mountain: An Exchange,” The New York Review of Books 53:6 (April 2006). 14. From this current vantage point a few years after Brokeback’s release, the film seems to have cemented itself into a very prestigious place in that history for queer viewers. For example, in an annual survey of the best gay films of all time conducted by the popular gay (male) pop culture site AfterElton.com, Brokeback Mountain has claimed the #1 spot both times since the survey’s inception in 2008, reportedly winning by a huge margin. See Brent Hartinger, “The 50 Best Gay Movies (2009),” AfterElton, posted on September 14, 2009, http://www.afterelton.com/movies/2009/9/greatest-gay -movies?page=0%2C1. 15. The latest gay film to make a big mainstream impact as of press time, Milk (2008, Gus Van Sant), does not challenge Brokeback for this title. 16. See The Boys in the Band (William Friedkin, 1970), Making Love (Arthur Hiller, 1982), and Longtime Companion (Norman Rene´, 1990) for examples of this phenomenon. 17. At a basic level, the primal scene is Freud’s term for a child’s traumatic witnessing of a sexual encounter (usually) between his parents. The child, too young to understand what he sees as an act of pleasure, interprets the scene as an act of violence perpetrated against the mother by the father. 18. Linda Williams, Screening Sex (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2008), 241. 19. Ibid., 237. 20. Ibid. 21. Vito Russo, The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies (New York: Harper and Row, 1987). 22. By non-canon, I mean characters who are not expressly romantically linked in the original text, so Brokeback slash would not be about Ennis and Jack, but might feature a sexual encounter between Jack and the sheep boss,

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or imagine Ennis and Randall grieving and developing a romance after their mutual lover’s death. 23. Henry Jenkins, Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture (New York: New York University Press, 2006), 43. 24. Ibid., 50–51. 25. For those curious about why female fans write so frequently about gay male romantic and sexual relationships, consult Jenkins’ chapter in Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers called “Normal Female Interest in Men Bonking.” Minus the preexisting fandom aspect, we can count Brokeback’s short story writer, Annie Proulx, among these women. 26. Richard Dyer, Pastiche: Knowing Imitation (New York: Routledge, 2007), 17. 27. gin1119, “I Touch Myself (Kirk/Spock)” YouTube, http://www.youtube .com/watch?v=zdBNt7WNd2s. 28. gin1119, “SexyBack (Kirk/Spock)” YouTube, http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=8vqvH4mr2M8. 29. Jenkins, Fans, 40. 30. See Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (New York and London: New York University Press, 2006). 31. SLC17, “Star Wars: The Empire Brokeback,” YouTube, http://www .youtube.com/watch?v=omB18oRsBYg. 32. Robots, for those unfamiliar with Star Wars. 33. Quoted in Rich, 45–46. 34. Robin Wood, “On and Around Brokeback Mountain,” Film Quarterly 60:3 (2007): 30. 35. Rich, 46. 36. Ibid., 47. 37. Williams, 247. 38. gilmartini, “Ask a Republican: Brokeback, Stem Cells, Death Penalty,” YouTube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbR9FzqpIrQ. 39. Judith Butler, Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” (New York and London: Routledge, 1993). 40. ross2287, “Brokeback Pirates of the Caribbean,” YouTube, http://www .youtube.com/watch?v=7NjBZe0ggvE. 41. sinfayne, “Brokeback Rush Hour,” YouTube, http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=YjYJuODVc_o. 42. “Ghey” here is not a misspelling on the author’s part, but actually an alternate spelling of “gay.” Its creation can be traced to gaming communities’ desire to bypass automatic profanity filters in chat rooms or on message boards that would block the word “gay.” Clearly, there is a tangled mess of offensiveness in that original story, including the implication that “gay” was used as an insult often enough to need inclusion in these filters, the implication that “gay” was an important enough insult to birth an alternate spelling when banned, and the consequence that anyone (including out gay people)

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would be automatically blocked from using that word with a positive or neutral connotation. 43. Ibid., comment board. 44. As of September, 2009. 45. I am not suggesting that Brokeback should have a happy ending, but simply noting one sense in which Brokeback conforms to rather than breaks from Hollywood’s conventional gay stories. The inevitably grim fate of gay characters in Hollywood films has been a source of fierce complaints from the queer community and historians such as Russo. 46. Joshua Clover and Christopher Nealon, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Me,” Film Quarterly 60:3 (2007), 64. 47. Ibid., 64–65. 48. Nuuann, “Star Wars: The Brokeback Phantom Menace,” YouTube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7CRaC9lLB0. 49. Ibid., comment board. 50. Susan Sontag, “Notes on Camp,” Against Interpretation (New York: Octagon Books, 1964), 288. 51. Ibid., 279. 52. Ibid., 278. 53. I admit that Sontag herself might not have labeled movie trailers a “rich form.” Perhaps phenomena like YouTube have lowered the bar for richness in form in my generation. 54. Ibid., 290. 55. Ibid., 288. 56. Ibid. 57. 89Josh07, “Whenever You Call,” YouTube, http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=ePLtZLwcuXk. 58. D. A. Miller, “On the Universality of Brokeback Mountain,” Film Quarterly 60:3 (2007): 51. 59. CyCproductions, “And Then We Kiss,” YouTube, http://www .youtube.com/watch?v=XznV6fu9wSQ. 60. This clip from the film can be viewed on YouTube at http://www .youtube.com/watch?v=HX4DyFZqfWg. 61. I am grateful to my colleague Amy Rust for reminding me of this aspect of fetishism. 62. Perhaps the most mainstream, serious attempt to represent the lives of queer women has been Showtime’s ongoing series The L Word (2004–2009). But this nighttime soap on premium cable has not garnered the level of critical acclaim and water-cooler status of Brokeback Mountain, and its few parodies have received such limited distribution that I could not justify a parallel examination. 63. This clip from the show can be viewed on YouTube at http://www .youtube.com/watch?v=hH5cAtFV4D8. 64. The exception that proves the rule is Charlize Theron, who won an Oscar for playing a lesbian serial killer in Monster (2003, Patty Jenkins). Many

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speculate that it was the pounds of make-up applied to make this beautiful actress “ugly” (and, hence, reduce the titillation factor associated with screen lesbianism) that drew the Oscar attention.

REFERENCES 89Josh07. “Whenever You Call.” YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch ?v=ePLtZLwcuXk. “Brokeback Mountain: An Exchange.” The New York Review of Books 53:6 (April 2006). “Brokeback Mountain Trailer,” Brokeback Mountain Official Site. http:// www.brokebackmountain.com/splash.html. Burgess, Jean, and Joshua Green. YouTube: Online Video and Participatory Culture. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2009. Butler, Judith. Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex.” New York and London: Routledge, 1993. Clover, Joshua, and Christopher Nealon. “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Me.” Film Quarterly 60:3 (Spring 2007): 62–67. CyCproductions. “And Then We Kiss.” http://www.youtube.com/watch ?v=XznV6fu9wSQ. Dyer, Richard. Pastiche: Knowing Imitation. New York and London: Routledge, 2007. editguy. “Brokeback Snake Mountain.” YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=UKeDWCLajQk. gilmartini. “Ask a Republican: Brokeback, Stem Cells, Death Penalty.” YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbR9FzqpIrQ. gin1119. “I Touch Myself (Kirk/Spock).” YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=zdBNt7WNd2s. . “SexyBack (Kirk/Spock).” YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=8vqvH4mr2M8. Hartinger, Brent. “The 50 Best Gay Movies (2009).” AfterElton, posted on September 14, 2009, http://www.afterelton.com/movies/2009/9/ greatest-gay-movies?page=0%2C1. Hilderbrand, Lucas. “YouTube: Where Cultural Memory and Copyright Converge.” Film Quarterly 61:1 (2007): 48–57. Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York and London: New York University Press, 2006. . Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture. New York and London: New York University Press, 2006. . “Nine Propositions Towards a Cultural Theory of YouTube.” Confessions of an Aca-Fan: The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins, posted on May 28, 2007, http://www.henryjenkins.org/2007/05/9_propositions _towards_a_cultu.html.

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Kitses, Jim. “All that Brokeback Allows.” Film Quarterly 60:3 (Spring 2007): 22–27. Kupelian, David. “The Rape of the Marlboro Man.” WorldNetDaily, posted on December 27, 2005.http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article .asp?ARTICLE_ID=48076. Mendelsohn, Daniel. “An Affair to Remember.” The New York Review of Books 53:3 (February 2006). Miller, D. A. “On the Universality of Brokeback Mountain.” Film Quarterly 60:3 (Spring 2007): 50–58. Nuuann. “Star Wars: The Brokeback Phantom Menace.” YouTube. http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7CRaC9lLB0. orangeohm. “Brokeback to the Future.” YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=8uwuLxrv8jY. redredding. “The Brokeback Redemption Trailer.” YouTube. http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtRi42DEdTE. Rich, B. Ruby. “Brokering Brokeback: Jokes, Backlashes, and Other Anxieties.” Film Quarterly 60:3 (Spring 2007): 44–48. ross2287. “Brokeback Pirates of the Caribbean.” YouTube. http://www .youtube.com/watch?v=7NjBZe0ggvE. Russo, Vito. The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies. New York: Harper and Row, 1987. sinfayne. “Brokeback Rush Hour.” YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=YjYJuODVc_o. SLC17. “Star Wars: The Empire Brokeback.” YouTube. http://www.youtube .com/watch?v=omB18oRsBYg. Sontag, Susan. “Notes on Camp.” In Against Interpretation, 275–295. New York: Octagon Books, 1964. Stewart, Jenny. “Brokeback Shirts’ Auction Winner Speaks.” PlanetOut, posted on February 21, 2006. http://www.planetout.com/entertainment/ interview.html?sernum=1188. Vonderau, Patrick and Pelle Snickars, eds. The YouTube Reader. London: Wallflower Press, 2009. White, Rob. “Introduction.” Film Quarterly 60:3 (Spring 2007): 20–21. Williams, Linda. Screening Sex. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2008. Wood, Robin. “On and Around Brokeback Mountain.” Film Quarterly 60:3 (2007): 28–31.

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Chapter 10

Queerness Taking Place?: Constructing the “Urban Redecoration Project” of Showtime’s The L Word Rosemary Deller

Originally broadcast in 2004, the U.S. television show The L Word has sought to bring groundbreaking visibility to the lives of lesbian and bisexual women. Rendering palpable a complex social network of desire circulating within the urban environs of contemporary Los Angeles, The L Word challenges the presumption that lesbians lack “territorial consciousness” (Rothenberg 1995, 168). Yet while the show has ostensibly appeared to commandeer public space as a challenge to gendered and heterocentric norms, its subversive power is arguably neutralized by its enthrallment to the central tenets of consumer capitalism. This preoccupation not only risks conflating political empowerment with consumer agency, but its glossy veneer also obscures the exclusions bound up in market-regulated visibility. Focusing particularly on the way in which power comes to literally “take place” in the visual narrative of The L Word, one finds that the show’s reification of an economically privileged lesbian lifestyle negotiated through “community-commercial space” (Enke 2007, 63) is mobilized through a concurrent expulsion of the rural and the heterosexual familial home from this idealised vision. Caught up in nexuses of class, gender, and ethnicity, these two sites come to function as the “interior exclusion”

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(Wilton 1995, 48) that bolsters the urban centrism of The L Word. Through an exploration of representations of space within The L Word, focusing most particularly on the third season of the show, one finds that the narratives of lesbian belonging and becoming offered by its visual landscape threaten to perpetuate the “imperialising forces of metropolitan sexual voices” (Phillips and Watt 2000, 2) through its internal devalorisation of rural and domestic space. The “uneasy representational politics” (Sedgwick 2006, xxvii) brought forth through the: “urban redecoration project,” of The L Word consequently emphasizes the degree to which an ostensibly subversive form of “queer counterpublicity” (Berlant and Freeman 1997, 215) that generates its force through the spectacle of power literally taking place may itself function by reconstituting powerful lines of spatially enacted exclusion. FEMINIZING SPACE As Taylor has convincingly argued, “securing space, in whatever form, is a political act; whether through invasion of territories; colonisation; dispossession; appropriation; representation; the disciplining of knowledge (or) the purchase of real estate” (1998, 130). However, the emergence of a “spatialized feminism” in the past two decades has sought to give credence to the political potency of “taking place” by bringing attention to “the spatial dimensions of power relations between the sexes” (Aitchison, MacLeod, and Shaw 2001, 111). Aitchison, MacLeod, and Shaw acknowledge that this has not always embraced “the complex interrelation between gender, sexuality, spatiality and power” (112). As a consequence, otherwise groundbreaking studies into gay communities by theorists such as Manuel Castells have served to perpetuate the invisibility of lesbian populations through the assumption that lesbians, unlike gay men, lack “territorial consciousness” (Rothenberg 1995, 168). Castells contended that gay men acted primarily as men and were therefore more territorial, had more disposable income, and desire the visibly spatially defined commercial scene. Accordingly, lesbians acted as women, were not territorial, and were reliant on informal networks rather than commercial networks. (Binnie and Valentine 2000, 132–133). These gendered assumptions served to render as anathema the notion of a lesbian community defined through commercial public space. As a consequence, lesbian and bisexual women have often come to experience a dual exclusion within spatial theory, enacted at the intersection of their gender and sexual identities.

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However, while a growing body of research into lesbian communities since the 1990s has sought to interrogate the widely propagated belief that lesbians, “as women” lack “a geographical basis for political organisation” (Castells in: Rothenberg 1995, 167), The L Word not only presents a challenge to traditional depictions of same-sex desire in U.S. television drama, but moreover to the assumptions bound up in prevailing spatial theory. By showing myriad lesbian and bisexual characters forging complex social networks in contemporary urban Los Angeles, The L Word comes to provide what Boone deems “an overlay” (1998, 212) to dominant mappings of the city by rendering visible “the interstices or pockets within the urban grid where ‘forgotten’ or ‘invisible’ subcultures . . . take root and flourish” (213). Yet the power of The L Word does not merely lie in its uncovering of particular communities or “pockets” within hegemonic configurations of L.A. Instead, The L Word comes to secure a continuous reshaping of public space; forced less to expand than to be fundamentally and perpetually reimagined as the presence and fulfilment of same-sex desire is woven into its fabric. While this appropriation of space may be particularly apparent in signature scenes in which, for instance, the character of Bette is shown masturbating another character, Alice, in an opera house, it is achieved just as fully through the “pedestrian rhetorics” of the show, which in depicting the characters cruising and desiring on the streets of Los Angeles, “daily creates the city anew” through networks and interactions that challenge totalising configurations of social space (Boone 1998, 214). This reconfiguration of urban public space consequently serves to overturn the typical consignment of the lesbian subject to a sphere of default invisibility through its strident demand that such subjectivity “take place”; a move which also comes to contest “the over-determined narrative emphasis placed on coming-out scenes” that Davis (2004) attributes to U.S. television dramas attempting to depict same-sex desire. While certainly The L Word engages in such plotlines of self-revelation, the dramatic thrust of The L Word’s spatial “coming out”—the sense of exposing a clandestine world of subversive and multitudinous desire flowing through the urban networks of Los Angeles—is largely tempered by the unremitting everydayness of its spatial locales. That characters are shown to somewhat blithely occupy public space is an affront to U.S. television’s tendency to represent same-sex desire as a narrative secret borne by isolated, token gay characters to be rendered intelligible only through arcs of agonized and suspenseful narrative revelation. Instead, The L Word infuses the sidewalks of the urban environ with

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non-heterosexual and non-hegemonic sexual vernaculars, thus acting to make “same-sex desire uneventful, serial, everyday” (129). As a consequence, if, as Taylor claims, “the occupying of space is an assertion of power” (1998, 130), the potency of The L Word lies most particularly in its unapologetic assertion of the always-already presence of lesbian and bisexual interactions. These interactions reconfigure dominant mappings of the landscape in a manner that contests the dual gendered and heteronormative assumptions that have tended to render the lesbian subject a largely invisible figure. CONSUMING DESIRE Despite the claim that The L Word renders the somewhat ghost-like lesbian subject defiantly opaque amid the everyday public space of Los Angeles, these encounters are as “ordinary, serial and mundane” (Davis 2004, 137) as one would expect from a show that still markets itself as a prime cut of glossy U.S. television drama. As Sedgwick (2006) acknowledges, this means that the visual landscape of The L Word does not necessarily always offer drastic divergence from prevailing representations of urban women found on other shows. Making a brief allusion to Sex and the City, one observes that “like our gals in Manhattan, all the women are beautiful, all are thin, all enjoy material comfort” (xxv). This commitment to an unswerving spectacle of economic privilege is directly translated into the spatial interactions enjoyed by characters in The L Word as they predominantly come to inhabit aspirational sites such as country clubs, exclusive nightclubs, art galleries, expensive hair salons, and sprawling film studios. In almost religiously centering its vision of urban space upon sites inherently associated with luxurious consumption, the show risks conflating the substance of politicized representation with the style of consumer living (Hennessy 2000). In response to this somewhat common accusation leveled at the show, it could be argued that the attempt by The L Word “to play the game of citizenship through the medium of consumption” (Yudice 2003, 162) should be read as recognition of the degree to which contemporary citizenship is increasingly entwined with consumer agency. For a number of theorists this is particularly pronounced for gay and lesbian sexual politics for, as Patington suggests, “consumption is for most of us the only place where desires can be expressed and freedoms exercised . . . therefore it is a source of power” (Patington 2005; see also Binnie and Valentine 1995; Clark 1995). Drawing upon the recent work

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of Anne Enke whose work explores the historic role played by commercial space in helping to form and maintain “a culture of activism” (2007, 63) for lesbian feminists living in Chicago, The L Word can consequently be seen to reflect the relevance of what Enke has deemed “community-commercial spaces” (64) that do more than simply disseminate politically vacuous images of unbridled consumption. While The Planet, an expensive coffee shop in West Hollywood, functions as a hub for group interaction and plot development within the show, the circulation of billboard advertisements of Dana, the tennis player, by her sponsor Subaru enables her to “come out” and moreover, in so doing, become an inspirational gay icon. If The L Word comes to “commandeer permeable sites, apparently apolitical spaces” (Berlant and Freeman 1997, 208) of consumption into its fabric of urbanity, commercial space consequently comes to appear inherent to, rather than an obstacle, in the pursuit of power through spatial visibility. Indeed, it is the apparent flexibility offered by these “communitycommercial spaces” of the city that arguably marks The L Word as a particularly queer rendering of place; “queer” here functioning less as what Marcus deems “a compact alternative to lesbian-gay-bisexualtransgender” than for the broader unraveling of received norms that would appear to “line-up” gender, sexuality and identity (Marcus 2005, 196). If The L Word suggests that urbanity offers “a reservoir of unexplored experiences and a possibility for combining social affiliations and lifestyles” into multitudinous and shifting networks of desire, then the “heterogeneity” of the city (GUST 1999, 119) comes to take on a somewhat queer hue. Infused with a varied body of characters displaying different desires that nonetheless appear to unite under some loose and flexibly drawn commonality, urban space comes to bear properties associated with queerness that “makes it compelling as a metaphor of cultural and political possibility” (Taylor 1998, 129). As The L Word allows for the dominant social narrative of the city to be reconfigured in the blink of an eye, the flicker of an upturned gaze, or the racing moment of a heartbeat, this affirms the capacity of urban space to shift, expand and twist—to queer itself— in the continual recreation and accommodation of social networks and flows of desire that extend beyond, and consequently undermine, heterocentric preoccupations. It is this capacity to make “a connection, a linkage that can establish unity among different elements within a culture” (Clark 1995, 497) through its heterogeneous spatiality that consequently marks the urbanity of The L Word as a “possibilities machine” that allows for the particularly queer articulation of space.

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Yet although it may appear that the urban environment of The L Word acts as what Halberstam may refer to as a particularly impressive “stretch fabric” (2005, 19) that can accommodate the heterogeneity of pleasurable possibilities pursued by the ideal queer subject, it is arguable that the vision of the self vaunted by The L Word is in fact far more discerning in its scope. While the representation of lesbian consumerism may appear an oppositional spatial practice capable of engendering “a radical reconstitution of citizenship,” the surface fulfillment offered by the capitalist spaces of Los Angeles masks the concurrent exclusions that are nonetheless forged within such market-regulated visibility. Indeed, I would argue that The L Word comes to actively construct within its “urban redecoration project” (Berlant and Freeman 1997, 212, 214) representations of space that function as “an indispensable interior exclusion” (Wilton 1995, 48) to the centralized ideal of urban community-commercial space. By focusing particularly upon the representation of the characters of Max and Carmen in the third season of the show, I suggest that the rural and the heterosexual familial home both come to be positioned as the necessary outsides that bolster the domination by the urban; exteriors that are moreover interwoven with markers of class and ethnic difference. Consequently providing credence to Sinfield’s (2000) observation that urban centrism evidences the hegemony of U.S. gay ideology, the spatial representations of the rural and the home within The L Word perpetuate “the broader weakness with which economic, racial, ethnic and non-American culture have been enfolded into queer counter-publicity” (Berlant and Freeman 1997, 215). This suggests that the lesbian subjectivity that comes to spatially be allowed to “take place” in The L Word redraws boundaries in the same moment that it forces their ostensibly liberating reconfiguration. REPRESENTING THE RURAL In Long Slow Burn, Kath Weston acknowledges the degree to which the urban/rural divide has become a distinctive organizational feature of what she deems “the gay imaginary” (1998, 34); that is, an imagined community bolstered and sustained by cultural and media narratives of gay becoming and belonging. Although the rural is often positioned as a site of origin for the gay and lesbian subject, it is the urban that comes to be the valorised term within the coupling; representing a realm that provides the promise of escape and liberation into the webs of an all-embracing community. As Judith Halberstam argues, investment in

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this duality can thus be seen to impose a certain “metronormativity” that literally comes to take place. As she elaborates, “the metronormative story of migration from ‘country’ to ‘town’ is a spatial narrative within which the subject moves to a place of tolerance after enduring life in a place of suspicion, persecution and secrecy” (Halberstam 2005, 36–37). The result is an implicit urban centrism that constitutes an ideal gay and lesbian subjectivity that, driven by the imperative to “get thee to a big city,” can only flourish by shedding its rural roots. If the formation of a symbolic space of gay belonging functions through a “sexual geography in which the city represents the beacon of tolerance and gay community, the country a locus of persecution and gay absence” (Weston 1998, 40), this is no more evident than in the metronormative values espoused by the spatial politics of The L Word. With its central plotlines primarily unfolding within West Hollywood, ventures outside of the urban environment typically entail the “freezing” of narrative; a move that positions the rural as temporally static, if not outright “backward.” This is immediately apparent at the commencement of the third season of the show, which opens by showing a key character, Jenny Schechter, recuperating in her small midwestern hometown of Skokie following a breakdown at the end of the second season. As this supposedly healing sojourn is revealed to be an ultimately stultifying, if not outright damaging experience for Jenny, the rural locale comes to provide a physical manifestation of the suppressive attitudes of her mother and stepfather, who vehemently deny her desires as “a sickness.” The stasis of this world encourages the viewer to consider her stay in this rural setting as a perilous suspension of her “true” life in Los Angeles with its metropolitan freedoms that sustain, rather than attempt to erase, the queerness of Jenny’s subjectivity. This is later mirrored by the character arc of Bette, the driven head of a Californian art gallery, who seeks escape from the demands of city living in a secluded silent Buddhist haven only to find the experience stifling and suffocating, literally robbing her of the language necessary to speak her inner self. As with Jenny, the search for peace through a retreat from urban existence is revealed as being ultimately futile, as the rural is shown as a space that can only suspend, rather than progress the narrative streams of the show. The rural’s implicit elimination of lesbian subjectivity and desire consequently reinforces the notion that the city is “the place to be, not flee” (Weston 1998, 41). While the refusal to suggest that women will inherently find tranquillity in what is often presented as their ideal realm— nature—could admittedly be praised as a challenge to the limited

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spatiality typically afforded to women in prevailing cultural representations (Valentine 2000). Nonetheless, the suggestion that the rural cannot incorporate lesbian subjectivity, indeed, is a veritable threat to this very self and is nonetheless striking. However, while The L Word can only temporarily integrate the physical space of the rural into the landscape of the show, Weston has stressed that the conceptual valorisation of the urban over the rural is achieved less through an absence or silencing of the inferior term than through the contrast provided by the simultaneous presence of this pairing. What could be termed the dialectic between these two spaces consequently creates the symbolic framework through which the gay imaginary and its narratives function. In direct refutation of the idea that the rural is almost entirely expunged from The L Word as that which cannot be represented within the frames of the show, the introduction of the character of Max in the third season reflects Weston’s belief that gay identity is constructed in part through a perpetual elaboration of the opposition between rural and urban life (55). Although initially presented to the viewer as Moira, Jenny’s lover in her small-town home, the migration of the pair to Los Angeles provides Moira with a suitable locale to pursue the transition to become the trans-man Max. That this transition is only rendered possible through a move to the city—indeed, that Max’s desires become increasingly intelligible and readable to both Jenny and the viewer as the two get ever closer to the apparent beacon that is the LA metropolis—can certainly be seen to exemplify the metronormative narrative explicated by Halberstam (2005). Yet while the implication that it is only the city that can offer Max the heterogeneous space that will allow for his fulfillment appears to underline the queerness of Los Angeles, even within the urban environs of The L Word Max continues to function as the physical embodiment of rural values. This manifestation places his subjectivity in fundamental conflict with the values of the metropolitan city. What is important to recognize is that Max’s embodiment of one half of the urban/rural divide so necessary to the framework of the gay imaginary discussed by Weston is imbued with distinct class anxieties. If The L Word suggests that community is forged through commercial space, it is hardly surprising that notions of belonging are entwined with questions of economic status, providing fuel to the argument that “membership in and access to the institutions of ‘civil society’ via consumerism are limited on a class basis” (Yudice 2003, 174). Since the rural is associated with a stifling lack of affluence,

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Max becomes something of an outsider through his incapacity to truly immerse himself in the consumer values demanded by the urban interactions of The L Word; interactions that are revealed as vital for sustained entry into this particular community. This is immediately apparent upon Max’s initial introduction to Jenny’s friends in an expensive restaurant in which Max is clearly both unaccustomed and consequently uncomfortable with both the nature and the price of the food. Yet rather than have this economic difference function to critically present class as a gate-keeping mechanism that raises questions regarding the true heterogeneity offered by Los Angeles’s community-commercial spaces, Max’s unfamiliarity with haute cuisine is rather translated into a gaucheness that converges with the ignorant and sometimes violent attitudes previously displayed by other rural characters during Jenny and Max’s journey to “the big city.” Later, this “roughness” comes to be further imbued with a certain chauvinistic hue as Max begins to undertake his transition by injecting testosterone. Rather than allow this transition to demonstrate Halberstam’s argument that masculinity can be embodied in many forms, Max comes to display an aggressive attitude towards Jenny that is difficult to disassociate from a certain “redneck” sensibility linked to his class and spatial origins. His inability to express a masculinity other than that of what Jenny calls “some aggressive macho male pig” seems rooted in his positioning as the manifestation of small-town rural values that lie at the intersection of questions of class, sexuality, and gender. Moreover, the chauvinism expressed by Max while living in the city is bolstered by rigid understandings of gender and sexual identity that underscore the heteronormativity of the rural domain. Early in the season, this is made evident by the investment that Max appears to make in butch/femme as a means of coding the other characters; exemplified when he tells Carmen and Jenny to “just relax and let us butches unload the truck” upon his arrival in Los Angeles. This interpellation of Shane as butch by Max, with Jenny and Carmen playing the role of helpless girls, is later observed by other characters as a form of anachronistic role-play demonstrative of the rigidity of gender identity encouraged by rural existence. That this stands in fundamental opposition with the flexibility of identity idealized in the capitalist consumer world of The L Word is made evident as Bette comes to patronizingly suggest that Max (then Moira) “comes from a place where you have to define yourself as either/or. It’s probably the only language she has to describe herself.” Even Shane’s attempt to

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empathize with Max’s perspective serves to further construct the contrasting approaches of the rural and the urban, as her claim that “we should just leave labels alone and let people be who they are” continues to position Max’s investment in the sedimentation of identity through labels as being at odds with the open and fluid approach to subjectivity that is an inherent component of successful and fulfilling metropolitan life. Indeed, building upon the contrast introduced in this initial meeting between Max and the metropolitan characters of The L Word, the particular path that he chooses to undertake for his transition comes to be similarly inflected with a regressive air. While the other characters may appear to support his decision to undergo top surgery by helping Max organize a benefit party, the presentation of Max as a “macho pig” after injecting testosterone helps legitimize their concurrent discomfort with this decision. This general ambivalence towards Max’s desire to pursue surgery—perceived as a wish to in some way “fix” or cement his gender identity—consequently comes to be presented as further affront to the urban fluidity. Since the logic of the “possibilities machine” (Miles, Borden, and Hall 2000, 1) of urbanity functions in accordance with what Halberstam deems “a seemingly radical ethic of flexibility,” Max’s heteronormative desires—a wish to get a good job, a wife, a child and his wish to inhabit a four-bedroom house in the suburbs with a picket fence, along with his wish to pursue a job as a computer programmer in a sexist organization—all these desires are certainly tolerated. Tolerated, yes, yet nonetheless shown to be fundamentally misguided. Since Max’s embodiment of rural backwardness and heterocentrism can only function in contrast to the space of the city, his choices are presented as a fundamental misinterpretation of urban pluralism; as a waste of the opportunities that would otherwise be afforded to him by metropolitanism. Perhaps most disturbing of all in this representation is the degree to which the embodiment of conservative chauvinism and apparently rigidified gender identity is carried by the transgender subject within The L Word. That heterocentric desire and rural backwardness converges in the body of Max seems to position the transgender subject as though trapped in the mire of what Prosser has deemed “the hegemonic constraint” (2006, 274) of heterosexual ideology, thus rendering transgender subjectivity a threat to the “queer” freedoms otherwise pursued in the urban environs of The L Word. This is arguably foreshadowed in earlier seasons of the show through the character of Ivan, played by Kelly Lynch. While in the first season of

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The L Word Ivan and his drag king performances are presented as a valuable and moreover sexy example of a character “doing” masculinity, Ivan’s anger when Kit enters his home and sees Ivan binding his breasts is presented as a somewhat conservative overreaction at being revealed, at least in accordance to the interior narrative of the show, to be “doing” rather than “being” masculinity. In a similar vein, while Jenny and Claude are seen to play with and parody heterosexual values when dancing at the failed wedding reception of Shane and Carmen, Max’s announcement of wanting to marry one day—to be “like them,” as Jenny reads it—is similarly shown as a wish to be rather than to do that is not only seen as misguided for himself but moreover as a risk to Jenny’s contrastingly “liberated” queer subjectivity. (It is her, after all, who would be implicated as the potential wife to Max’s husband.) In consequently loading the transgender subject with the hegemonic constraint of normative heterosexual ideology associated with rural space as a necessary contrast to the vaunted freedoms of city living, The L Word engages in a troubling gate-keeping mechanism that utilizes the trangendered rural subject as a interior exclusion whose perpetual expulsion maintains the queer visual landscape claimed by the show. QUEER IN(G) THE HOME Alongside the symbolic construction of the rural as an “interior exclusion” that bolsters the urban as the ideal physical and conceptual space of belonging in The L Word, this notion of an interiorized outside also extends to the space of the heterosexual, familial home. Contesting the implicit association often made between the home and feelings of safety and security, a number of theorists of gender and sexuality such as Ahmed (2004), Fortier (2003) and Marion Young (2002) have come to question the ideal of the home as the emblematic model of comfort, care, and belonging (Fortier 2003, 115). Instead, they have sought to inscribe a certain ambivalence into the domestic realm by stressing its capacity to act less as an idyll of retreat and repose than as a site of secrecy, subjugation, and silencing. This refusal to subscribe to the illusory nurture offered by the home is demonstrated in The L Word, where depictions of the heterosexual family are rarely prolonged. When heterosexual familial engagements are permitted, they are moreover typically scored with anxiety and suspicion, whether in Dana’s fraught negotiations of her sexuality with her upper-class WASPish parents, Bette’s perpetual wrangling with her father over

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his refusal to acknowledge Tina as her life partner, or Jenny’s distressing memories of sexual abuse tolerated while in the supposedly safe bosom of the home. These representations consequently can be seen to offer something of a valuable decentring of the heterosexual familial home as the hallowed space of support and belonging, a default imagining that typically fails to account for gay and lesbian experiences within this realm. Nonetheless, if The L Word has often shied away from providing excessive screen attention to interactions in domestic settings, the development of the character of Carmen in the third season is notable in that she provides an entry point for the sustained representation of the heterosexual familial home. Although herself tightly interwoven into the urban fabric of Los Angeles nightlife through her career as a successful DJ, it is through Carmen that the de la Pica Morales family comes to be incorporated into the spatial landscape of The L Word. Mirroring the use of Max as the embodiment of the rural space seemingly antithetical to queer subjectivity, however, the de la Pica Morales home comes to be a site similarly unable to incorporate divergent gender and sexual identities. As Shane is forced to don hair extensions and a delicate white dress at a family quinceane˘ra, her interpellation as a straight feminine woman equates the home powerfully with the deprivation of female freedoms. That this feminization is shown to be a precursor to an attempt to “matchmake” Shane and a male admirer only further serves to reinforce the repressive qualities of this familial realm in concurrently highlighting its heteronormative assumptions. Although certainly a comic scene in tone, nonetheless the inability of the familial home to entertain divergent desire allows it to be presented as a site in which homogeneity and unity are assumed and expected (Gopinath 2005). Since homogeneity expels the possibility of queer desire and pleasure as otherwise present in the multitudinous public networks of urban Los Angeles, this scene foreshadows the eventual rejection of Carmen by her family following her somewhat explosive moment of “coming out” at a family meal. Moreover, since this scene marks the last depiction of the de la Pica Morales home in The L Word, the familial home is underscored as an unviable space for the queer subject to find fulfilment. To this degree, The L Word positions the familial home as the polar opposite of the plural space of urban Los Angeles in representing less “the emblematic model of comfort, care and belonging” (Fortier 2003, 115) than “gender and racial fixity and oppression” (Gopinath 2005, 128).

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While this depiction of the heterosexual family home may serve to accommodate the specific experiences of some lesbian and gay subjects by exploding the dominant and illusory assumption that home necessarily represents a place of comfort and nurture, it is nonetheless troubling that the familial home is constituted around ethnic difference. The L Word has at times been accused of encouraging the consumption of simplistic markers of ethnicity that appear to add “decorative flourish” (Swartz, 179) to the show. Yet the specific adoption of the Latina home as the symbol of conservative domestic conformity at odds with the sophisticated plurality of urban life extends some of the logic offered by “imperialising . . . metropolitan sexual voices” for whom ethnicity is either “stagnant and unchanging” or “aggressive and fundamentalist,” in contrast to the celebration of Western living as “dynamic and innovatory, tolerant and democratic” (Holton 1988, 164). As Gopinath argues in her exploration of female queer diaspora subjectivity, this conventional framing of home “as a space of racial and gender subordination” (128) marks it—like the rural—as a static space “condemned to a perpetual game of catchup” (Stam and Shohat 2005, 488) that bolsters public urban space as the central arbiter of progressive values, as the “freer elsewhere” (Gopinath 2002, 128). This entwinement of ethnicity and conservatism is most potently demonstrated as the third season develops with Carmen, the hip urban DJ, coming to be increasingly associated with values and images of heterosexually infused tradition, whether in her repeated talk of monogamy or her decision to don a white flowing wedding dress for her doomed marriage to Shane. This serves as a precursor to her inevitable expulsion from the narrative as her ethnic difference, loaded with the weight of the static heterocentric home, is unable to be borne within the vision of queerness proffered by The L Word; rendering Carmen ultimately “at a distance, out of place” (Fortier 2003, 126). Indeed, that the reconciliation of Carmen with her family at the end of the season can only be tolerated by consigning her to the “spacesoff” (de Lauretis 1987, 25) of the narrative suggests a fundamental lack of any appreciation for the capacity of the domestic realm to act as something other than a site of oppression and subjugation. Yet, as Fortier elaborates, home can provide “a spatial context where identities are worked on.” One real disappointment in the expulsion of Carmen and the familial home at the end of season three is that it prevents the show from exploring the possibility that such reconciliation reveals how “the identities of home as well as those who inhabit it

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are never fixed, but are constantly reimagined and redefined” (2003, 116). According to this alternative reading of domestic space, home does not necessarily suggest a homogeneous naturalized identity so much as a place in which to constitute an identity through a complex mixture of struggle and security (Marion Young 2002). However, while the heterosexual familial home may well suggest complicated processes of affiliation and be(longing), a depiction of the domestic realm as anything other than a monolithic, static space of unyielding heteronormative demands is revealed to be untenable within the narrative arcs of The L Word. Instead, the show demands that the home remains un-“reprocessed” (Foutier 2003, 116) by its characters in order to maintain the assumed superiority of community formation through urban public space. Since the exclusion of experiences of queer desire that “permeate home space rather than being extrinsic to it” (Gopinath 2005, 119) colludes in the presentation of ethnicity as an obstacle to queer becoming, the visual landscape of The L Word functions less to articulate a gay imaginary forged through loose and flowing territories of difference than to expunge that very difference from its narrative sidewalks. QUEERING THE SPACE-OFF If, as Taylor argues, the occupying of space is an assertion of power, The L Word’s defiant assertion of visibility through its visual landscape can be understood as a powerful challenge to totalizing visions of social space. In using the contestation of hegemonic mappings of social space as a key means by which to form a physical locus for lesbian community, however, one risks finding that it is a spatial paradox rather than spatial power that comes to take place (1998, 130). Since the construction of the gay imaginary would appear to rely upon “a semiotics that constructs sexuality through spatial contrasts” (Weston 1998, 40)—the urban and the rural, public space and domestic space— the imperative to vaunt the heterogeneous space of the city demands elaborations of oppositions that necessarily construct included outsides; interior exclusions. While this may appear to help bolster the manifestation of ‘us-ness’ bound up in the reworking of the dominant urban landscape, as Taylor elaborates, it is the foreclosures around this us-ness that in turns subsumes our internal differences, reducing the infinite possibilities of lesbian subjectivities into the common denominator of a single community identity. The fact that “imaginings of lesbian space . . . on the one hand open up the bounds of possibility

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for different lesbian expressions and, on the other hand, close in an essential sameness of all lesbians” comes to represent the spatial paradox of identity politics that seeks to take place (1998: 130). Ironically enough, the attempt to vaunt the heterogeneity of the city as a “possibilities machine” (Miles, Borden, and Hall 2000, 1) as the key to “inexhaustible plus” comes to instead secure an either/or world (Carter 1982, 206). Since this either/or world is itself bolstered by new gate-keeping mechanisms, by new notions of inside and outside, this comes to undermine the queerness of The L Word’s spatial articulation of identity. Despite the gate-keeping mechanisms that can be seen to expel divergent subjectivities and experiences from the gay imaginary, one should be wary of suggesting that spaces such as the rural and the heterosexual familial home are merely places of absence (Weston 1998). In a shift in emphasis from representation to reception, it could be argued that the necessary presence of spatial contrasts, as represented in characters such as Max and Carmen, not only allows for what Davis deems “extra-diegetic avenues for spectatorial dreaming and fantasy” (Davis 2004, 137) that extend beyond the spatial boundaries offered by the show, but moreover permits a degree of internal contestation and dialogue by providing hybrid voices (Bennett and Bhabha 1998, 40); voices that “deploy the partial culture from which they emerge to construct visions of community . . . that give narrative form to the minority positions they occupy; the outside of the inside; the part of the whole” (Bennett and Bhabha 1998, 40). Moreover, since Weston suggests that the presence of hybrid voices, of spatial others, breaks apart the very unity of the imagined community that are constructed to protect, it could even be suggested that these sites of interiorized exclusion function as the true nodules of queerness on the show, momentary and ephemeral moments that point to the capacity for binaries of urban/rural, gay/straight, public/private, female/male to rupture, albeit briefly. Max’s encounter with Billie Blakie in The Planet, the snatches of brief heady passion that Carmen and Shane experience while in her familial home; the suggestion of reconciliation offered by Jenny with her mother before leaving for “the big city”—all the moments come to represent the suggestion of a reprocessing of place (Fortier 2003) that extends beyond the frameworks offered by prevailing spatial contrasts; installing, moreover, the sense of a fleeting, ephemeral queerness that flickers over the dominant social landscape. Nonetheless, that these jolts of queerness are brought at the price of an otherwise “uneasy representational politics” (Sedgwick

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2006, xxvii) brought forth through the “urban redecoration project” in The L Word demonstrates the manner in which an ostensibly subversive form of “queer counter-publicity” (Berlant and Freeman 1997, 212, 215) may itself function along powerful lines of spatially enacted exclusion. CONCLUSION The L Word can certainly be welcomed as a cultural representation that challenges the perception that lesbians lack territorial consciousness (Rothenberg 1995, 168). Showing lesbian and bisexual women traversing a multitude of urban public space, The L Word not only contests the consignment of women to the private realm, but it also comes to secure the continuous reshaping of public space, made less to expand than to be fundamentally and perpetually reimagined as the presence and fulfillment of same-sex desire is woven into its fabric. That these spaces are predominantly commercial in nature reflects the manner in which gay and lesbian subjects have come to use consumer agency as a vessel through which to forge a radical reconstitution of citizenship. To this degree The L Word can be understood as attempting to forge, on the spatial terrain, what Stuart Hall calls an articulation: “a connection, a linkage that can establish unity among different elements within a culture” (Clark 1995, 497) whose interweaving of “community-commercial space” (Enke 2007, 63) into the fabric of urbanity comes to be inherent to, rather than an obstacle in the pursuit of power through spatial visibility. Yet it is undeniable that the equation of urban commercial space and community threatens to neglect the fact that “an apparently unified landscape may actually be composed of several fragmentary ones” (Hemmings 1997, 152–153); fragmented along lines of power that, within the spaces of late-modern capitalism, comes to enact potent exclusions. Upon closer examination of The L Word the vaunting of metropolitan space as the heterogeneous key to “inexhaustible plus” (Carter 1982, 206) is mobilized through the concurrent representation of the rural and the home in accordance to values of conservatism, backwardness, and homogeneity. As a consequence these spaces comes to serve as the “interior exclusion” (Wilton 1995, 48) that permits the re-centering of urban existence, as linked to values of tolerance, plurality, and dynamism. That these two sites are furthermore entwined with class and ethnic difference suggests that The L Word perpetuates the inability “to map a broader lesbian experience other

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than that of a white, middle-class urban feminist lesbian” (Valentine 2000, 3). For those such as Gopinath (2005) this can be more broadly understood as evidence of its concordance with “the imperializing forces of metropolitan sexual voices” (Phillips and Watt 2000, 2) that secures the hegemony of U.S. gay urban centrism. This suggests that the lesbian subjectivity that comes to be spatially allowed to take place in The L Word redraws boundaries in the same moment that it forces their ostensibly liberating reconfiguration. Tempering this pessimism, it could be argued that despite the exclusionary nature of representations of space within The L Word, the depiction of these sites through characters such as Carmen and Max nonetheless permits a degree of internal contestation and dialogue. As Fiske (1979) suggests, the presence of this included outside provides the viewer simultaneously with “the forces of domination and the opportunities to speak against them, the opportunities to oppose or evade them from subordinated, but not totally disempowered positions” (Ficke 1979, 25). It therefore becomes possible to suggest that these characters could function as the truly queer sites of the show; the sites at which the binaries of urban/rural, gay/straight, and female/ male come to rupture. The potential for such dialogic encounters that come to subvert the interior narrative arcs of the show could consequently be linked to the hybrid voices explicated in the work of Bhabha; voices that “deploy the partial culture from which they emerge to construct visions of community . . . that give narrative form to the minority positions they occupy; the outside of the inside: the part of the whole” (Bennett and Bhabha 1998, 40). Nonetheless, the “uneasy representational politics” (Sedgwick 2006, xxvii) brought forth through the urban redecoration project in The L Word demonstrates that one needs to remain attentive to the manner in which an ostensibly subversive form of queer counter-publicity (Berlant and Freeman 1997, 215) may itself function along powerful lines of exclusion.

REFERENCES Aitchison, C, N. E. Macleod, and S. J. Shaw. “Gendered Landscapes: Constructing and Consuming Leisure and Tourism.” In Leisure and Tourism Landscapes: Social and Cultural Geographies, edited by C. Aitchison, et al., 110–135. London and New York: Routledge, 2001. Bennett, D., and H. K. Bhabha. “Liberalism and Minority Culture: Reflections on Culture’s In-Between.” In Rethinking Difference and Identity, edited by D. Bennett, 37–47. London and New York: Routledge, 1998.

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Berlant, L., and E. Freeman. “Queer Nationality.” In Berlant, L., The Queen of America Goes to Washington City, 145–174. New York: Duke University Press, 1997. Binnie, J., and G. Valentine. “Geographies of Resistance—A Review of Progress.” In Lesbian and Gay Studies: An Introductory, Interdisciplinary Approach, edited by T. Sandfort, J. Schuyf, and J. W. Duyvandek, 132–145. SAGE: New York, 2000. Boone, J. A. Libidinal Currents: Sexuality and the Shaping of Modernism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. Carter, A. The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman. California: Penguin Books, 1982. Chisholm, D. Queer Constellations: Subcultural Space in the Wake of the City. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2005. Clark, D. “Commodity Lesbianism.” In Out In Culture: Gay, Lesbian and Queer Essays on Popular Culture, edited by C. K. Creekmur and A. Doty, 484–501. 1995. Enke, A. Finding the Movement: Sexuality, Contested Space, and Feminist Activism. New York: Duke University Press, 2007. Fiske, J. (1979), “Commodities and Culture”, in: Fiske, J. (2004), Understanding Popular Culture, Routledge, London and New York, pp. 23–47. Fortier, A. “Making Home: Queer Migrations and Motions of Attachment.” In Uprootings/Regroundings: Questions of Home and Belonging, edited by S. Ahmed, et al., 115–136. Oxford, New York, 2003. Gopinath, G. Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures. Duke University Press: Durham and London, 2005. GUST. “Classical Perspectives on the Urban Self.” In The Urban Condition: Space, Community and Self in the Contemporary Metropolis, edited by GUST, 110–125. Halberstam, J. Female Masculinity. Duke University Press: New York, 2000. Halberstam, J. In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives. New York: NYU Press, 2005. Hemmings, C. “From Landmarks to Spaces: Mapping the Territory of a Bisexual Genealogy.” In Queers in Space: Communities, Public Places, Sites of Resistance, edited by G. B. Ingram, A. Bouthilette, and Y. Retter, 147–162. 1997. Hennessy, R. Profit and Pleasure: Sexual Identities in Late Capitalism. New York: Routledge, 2000. Holton, R. “What Is Happening to Culture? Homogenization, Polarization, or Hybridization?” In Globalization and the Nation-State, 161–185. London and New York: MacMillan Press Ltd., 1988. de Lauretis, T. “The Technology of Gender.” In Technologies of Gender, 1–30. New York: Indiana University Press, 1987. The L Word DVD (2003), Series 1–3, directed by Chaiken, I., and S. Golin. MGM Entertainment.

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Marcus, S. “Queer Theory for Everyone.” In Signs 31, 1 (Autumn 2005): 191–218. Marion Young, I. “House and Home: Feminist Variations on a Theme.” In Gender Struggles: Practical Approaches to Contemporary Feminism, edited by C. Mui and J. S. Murphy, 314–346. Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2002. Miles, M., I. Borden, and T. Hall. “Introduction.” In The City Cultures Reader, edited by M. Miles, et. al., 1–14. London: Routledge, 2000. Patington, A. “Perfume: Pleasure, Packaging and Postmodernity.” In The Gendered Object, edited by P. Kirkham, 204–218. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996. Phillips, R., and D. Watt. “Introduction.” In De-Centering Sexualities: Politics and Representation Beyond the Metropolis, edited by D. Shuttleton, et al., 1–18. New York: Routledge, 2000. Prosser, J. “Judith Butler: Queer Feminism, Transgender and the Transubstantiation of Sex.” In The Transgender Studies Reader, edited by S. Stryker and S. Whittle. New York: CRC Press, 2006. Rothenberg, T. “ ‘And She Told Two Friends’: Lesbians Creating Urban Social Space.” In Mapping Desire: Geographies of Sexualities, edited by D. Bell and G. Valentine, 165–182. London: Routledge, 1995. Sedgwick, E. K. “Foreword: The Letter ‘L’ ”. In Reading The L Word: Outing Contemporary Television, edited by K. Akass, J. McCabe, and S. Warn, xix–xxv. New York: I. B. Tauris, 2006. Sinfield, A. “The Production of Gay and the Return of Power.” In De-Centering Sexualities: Politics and Representation Beyond the Metropolis, edited by D. Shuttleton, et al., 21–37. New York: Routledge, 2000. Stam, R., and E. Shohat. “De-Eurocentricizing Cultural Studies: Some Proposals.” In Internationalizing Cultural Studies, edited by A. Abbas and J. N. Erni, 481–498. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2005. Taylor, A. “Lesbian Space: More Than One Imagined Territory.” In New Frontiers of Space, Bodies and Gender, edited by R. Ainley, 129–141. New York: Routledge, 1998. Valentine, G. From Nowhere to Everywhere: Lesbian Geographies. New York: Haworth Press, 2000. Weston, K. Long Slow Burn: Sexuality and Social Science. London and New York: Routledge, 1998. Wilton, T. “The Nature of the Beast: What Is a Lesbian?” In Lesbian Studies: Setting an Agenda, 29–49. Londong: Routledge, 1995. Yudice, G. “Consumption and Citizenship.” In The Expediency of Culture: Uses of Culture in the Global Era, 160–181. Durham, N.C. and London: Duke University Press, 2003.

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Chapter 11

Nobody Wants to Watch a Beacon: Will & Grace and the Limits of Mainstream Network Television Kathleen Battles and Wendy Hilton-Morrow

The NBC television program Will & Grace is arguably the most significant mainstream television program depicting gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer (GLBTQ) characters to date. The program stood at the forefront of a new wave of popular representations of gays and lesbians at a historical moment when debates about queer rights and social acceptance gained increased social visibility and shifts in the television industry led to an increasing emphasis on pushing social boundaries. During its eight-year run (1998–2006) the critical and commercial success of the program was seen to alternately represent the worst excesses of television’s moral corruption and the promise of long-awaited social equality for gays and lesbians. This chapter examines Will & Grace as a key site in the struggle over meaning of queer identity and politics during this important sociohistorical moment. Will & Grace debuted on NBC in September 1998 opposite Monday Night Football. The situation comedy revolves around its two title characters: Will, a successful Manhattan lawyer, and Grace, an established interior decorator. Will and Grace are inseparable best friends

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completing each other in every way, except one. Following a “long history of perfect-couple gay-man/straight-woman texts,” both Will and Grace are looking for the perfect man (Allen 2003, 277). Completing the cast are sidekicks Jack McFarland, a flamboyantly gay, habitually out-of-work actor, and Karen, Grace’s wealthy, over-the-top assistant who organizes her workday around her various addictions. Some saw the premiere of Will & Grace as a daring move by NBC given ABC’s cancellation of Ellen six months earlier after the title character and actress simultaneously came out. From the beginning, however, Will & Grace’s creators Max Mutchnick and David Kohen distinguished their own program from the highly controversial program Ellen. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Mutchnick said, “Ellen was about the journey of that character. Ours is the celebration of this relationship. We’re in broader, more appealing territory” (Jacobs 1998, para. 27). Mutchnick was correct that Will & Grace was “more appealing,” particularly to a mainstream audience. The program found immediate ratings success. In its second season, Will & Grace moved to NBC’s highly coveted “Must See TV” Thursday night lineup where it remained in the Nielsen Top 20 for half of the show’s eight seasons. The program also received critical acclaim, winning the People’s Choice Award for Favorite New Comedy Series in its first season, a total of 16 Emmy Awards and 83 nominations, and seven Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) Media Awards. More than a decade after its original premiere, Will & Grace still remains popular today in the television after-life of off-network syndication and DVD sales. Will & Grace has been equally popular with academic critics, with dozens of articles arguing over the subversive potential or limitations of the text (see, for example, Castiglia and Reed 2004; Hart 2000; Mitchell 2005; Quimby 2005) and considering its ability to make America more gay-friendly (see, for example, Cooper 2003; Ortiz and Harwood 2007; Schiappa Gregg, and Hewes 2005; Schiappa 2008). Our own work contributed to these debates, as we argued that “Will & Grace makes the topic of homosexuality more palatable to a large, mainstream television audience by situating it within safe and familiar popular culture conventions, particularly those of the situation comedy genre” (Battles and Hilton-Morrow 2002, 89). Such attention by GLBTQ scholars to a single television program indicates a desperate thirst for rich television texts depicting queer culture at a time when GLBTQ issues were moving to the cultural forefront in America.

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During the eight-year run of Will & Grace, GLBTQ politics were becoming more visible, yet remained highly contested. For example, just three years after Congress passed and President Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, which defined marriage as “a legal union exclusively between one man and one woman,” the Vermont legislature passed a “civil unions” law, which offered legal recognition of committed same-sex relationships. By 2002, 34 states had enacted laws against same-sex marriage (George 2001), but in 2003 the Massachusetts State Supreme Court ruled it was unconstitutional to prohibit marriages between same-sex couples (Goodridge v. Department of Public Health 2003) and in 2004 began granting marriage licenses to gays and lesbians. Then, in a 2006 election-year move, Republican senators proposed an amendment that would have strengthened the Defense of Marriage Act. It was narrowly voted down 49 to 48 (Cable News Network 2006). While legal rights for gays and lesbians during this time period were largely following atrajectory of assimilation, GLBTQ scholars have questioned the limitations of such an approach. As Yep, Lovaas, and Elia (2007) explained, “The assimilationist position supports samesex marriage based on the premise that it will lead to more acceptable, equitable, stable, and healthier lives for gays and lesbians” (170). What Yep, Lovaas, and Elia refer to as a “radical position,” however, “challenges same sex marriage based on the notion that it subscribes to heteronormativity and is not a way of liberating individuals from oppressive attitudes and practices” (170). This position is most frequently associated with queer theorists, such as Michael Warner (1999), who critiqued the mainstream gay and lesbian movement for “threaten[ing] to become an instrument for the normalization of queer life” (80). Differing from gay and lesbian civil rights politics that argue for inclusion into existing social systems, queer politics work to challenge the “obvious categories (man, woman, Latina, Jew, butch femme), oppositions (man vs. woman, heterosexual vs. homosexual), or equations (gender-sex) upon which conventional notions of sexuality and identity rely (Hennessy 1993, 964). Tensions between these competing assimilationist and queer perspectives can be identified in Will & Grace. In order to more fully understand the complexities of this landmark program, we viewed episodes from all eight seasons. Using textual analysis, we coded episodes for intensity—“those aspects that stand out in the artifact”—and frequency—“patterns in the artifact” (Foss 2004, 414), paying particular attention to the way that the program challenged or reinforced a

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heteronormative perspective. Heteronormativity refers to the discourses and practices by which heterosexuality is constituted as the natural and compulsory norm, against which homosexuality is defined as its binary, and hence, negative opposite (see Butler 1991, 1993a, b; de Lauretis 1984, 1991; Foucault 1978; Warner 1993). Subversive potential can be read in Will & Grace as the show balances its unabashedly queer qualities with an underlying assimilationist understanding of gay rights. Resultant tensions are played out in the important shifts in the relationship between the title characters, the complexity of its queerest characters, and negotiations of shifting definitions of commercial masculinity. However much Will & Grace disrupted heteronormative logics, ultimately the program remained constrained by economic realities of a network television program targeting mainstream American audiences. Never meant to elucidate, the program was a situation comedy designed to appeal to a particular youthful, liberal, upscale audience in order to sell them the commodities associated with a particularly white, affluent urban lifestyle. Advocating assimilationist politics would remain entirely consistent with this audience’s socially liberal political proclivities, but a more thoroughgoing engagement with the repressive dynamics of heteronormativity, which might indeed involve a clash with corporate exploitation of gay culture, could only ever be hinted at within the dynamics of the program. “THE WAY IT WAS DESTINED TO BE”: ASSIMILATION AND THE QUEST FOR ROMANTIC COMPLETION From the pilot through the series finale, the relationship between Will and Grace provided both the program’s emotional anchor and, when tested, a key source of the program’s occasional parlays into emotional upset. Originally created as a “fresh approach to romantic comedy,” the program paired a straight woman and gay man as the couple who could love one another, but never consummate their relationship (Svetkey 2000, 28). On the one hand, their long-lasting loving friendship can be viewed as providing an important counterweight to more normative ideas of kinship by exploring the lives of characters who are intimately connected and whose emotional ties are significant, but that do not conform to normative ideas of heterosexual romance (Quimby 2005). On the other hand, their relationship also proved to consistently call into question the queer potential of the series, and ultimately cast the program’s understanding of relationships within the

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assimilationist model of gay liberation, where gay relationships were made sense of within the normative conventions of heterosexual marriage and family. While early seasons played with the possibility that audiences might both read and desire the relationship between Will and Grace as one of delayed consummation between romantic soul mates, later seasons began to represent Will and Grace’s new relationships as posing a threat to the program’s namesake dyad. Consistent with romantic comedy conventions where the true soul mates are frustrated by the frequent obstacles thrown in the way of their eventual coupling, Will and Grace can never be happy at the same time. The introduction of Grace’s future husband, Leo, at the start of season five and Will’s boyfriend, Vince, in season seven left the title characters trying to negotiate these romantic relationships and friendship with each other.Intermingled with issues involving parenting, Will and Grace’s relationship veered into increasingly heterosexist conventions regarding what constitutes a family. From the very beginning, the relationship between the central dyad of Will and Grace is framed within the romantic comedy convention of a couple that should be together but has yet to figure it out. In the pilot, Grace struggles with her relationship with longtime boyfriend Danny and the fact that he cannot offer the same kind of emotional maturity that Will does (Kohan, Mutchnick, and Burrows 1998). When Danny proposes in response to Grace’s attempt to break up with him, Will is dumbfounded, but after Grace leaves Danny at the altar, Will is quick to provide solace. When the two then go to a bar and are mistaken for newlyweds they share a loving toast and kiss. After the kiss, Grace jokingly asks Will if he feels anything, but he apologetically says he does not. While Quimby (2005) reads this scene as an indictment of normative marriage and notes the queer potential in Will and Grace’s relationship, she also notes that the status of their relationship could just as easily been read as one between potential heterosexual lovers. In fact, as we argued, this aspect of their relationship was frequently played up during the first three seasons of the program (Battles and Hilton-Morrow 2002). This structure continues through season four, which ends with Will and Grace deciding to have a child together. However, the dynamic between the pair begins to shift with the sudden introduction of Leo at the beginning of season five, literally on a white horse, in order to “rescue” Grace from her potential queered family (Barr and Burrows 2002). From the beginning, Leo is presented as “competition” for Grace’s affection and future life. Significantly, Grace decides that she would

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rather pursue a relationship with Leo rather than have a child with Will, leading to a serious rift between the pair that is only healed through the comic interference of Jack and Karen. When Grace marries Leo, she finds a petulant Will upset that she is moving on with her life without him and disappointed that he cannot share in the same “traditional” life that is open to Grace and Leo. When Leo suggests he can have his own marriage one day, Will impugns the idea of gay weddings for their lack of tradition, suggesting that “some witchy lesbian waves a stick over you on a beach somewhere while a drag queen sings ‘Evergreen,’ ” and insisting that he wanted “a traditional wedding” that he and Grace imagined for her (Greenstein, Wrubel, and Burrows 2002). Expressing a longing for a “traditional” life that is a constant for his character, Will is jealous both of Grace’s finding another significant person in her life and of her access to a normative heterosexual marriage, so much so that at her wedding he at first refuses to give her away. He finally agrees only after Grace recalls the first time they met, assuring him that “I may be getting married today, but when I said I was going to spend the rest of my life with you, I wasn’t wrong” (Greenstein, Wrubel, and Burrows 2002). In season seven, the tides are turned. In true romantic comedy style, viewers find Grace struggling over her divorce with Leo, just as Will has found happiness with Vince. In a program that rarely afforded Will the same kind of romantic and sexual life allowed Grace, the addition of a serious boyfriend for Will, including their exchange of occasional kisses, was a significant moment for the program’s representation of gay sexuality. From the start, however, the relationship is treated as a disruption to his relationship with Grace. Now it is Grace’s turn to express dismay that Will cannot be there for her all the time. Grace’s lack of enthusiasm upon meeting Vince leads Will to begin to question his new relationship. Deciding to confront her, he discovers not that Grace disapproves of Vince, but she is jealous of their happiness and misses her own relationship with Leo (Gordon and Burrows 2004). In another episode, Will is frustrated because Grace and Vince seem bent on making him choose between them. Vince implores him to “pick someone,” with both Vince and Grace begging Will to “pick me” (Poust, Kinally, and Burrows 2004). In all of these situations, some drawn more comically than others, the incommensurability between Will and Grace’s relationship with each other and their romantic partners is repeatedly emphasized. By the last season, this love quadrangle comes to a head and ends up closing down the queer potential of Will and Grace’s relationship. Grace

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gets pregnant after having sex with Leo on an airplane. On hearing that Leo is engaged to someone else, she decides not to tell him, and she and Will agree to raise the baby together. However, when Vince and Will get back together after the death of Will’s father, and when Grace discovers that Leo has broken off his engagement, problems ensue. In the penultimate episode, Vince offers Will an ultimatum between a future with him or as the father of Grace’s baby. Will returns home, before the audience knows his answer and finds Grace frantically pulling herself together, as she has just learned that Leo is no longer engaged (Janetti, Poust, Kinnally, and Burrows 2006). Will confronts Grace, reminding her of the commitment they made to each other and “our baby.” Dumbfounded, Grace responds “our baby?” Will emphatically responds, “Yeah. The one you’re naming after my father. Remember? Isn’t that the way you told me to think about this child?” After chastising Grace for being foolish to chase Leo, Will admits to Grace and viewers alike that he has ended his relationship with Vince to uphold his commitment to her. Here Grace explicitly compares her queered relationship with Will to her normative one with Leo, asking him, “Don’t we want each other to be happy? I mean, if Vince makes you happy, you never should have left him. And if I have a possibility of being happy with Leo, you should want that for me, instead of making me feel guilty about wanting a relationship with the real father of my child.” Her invocation of the “real” father, while factually true, in this instance calls into question the reliability of Will’s vow to co-parent and the seriousness of Grace’s commitment to him, but even more significantly, the possibility for imagining kinship bonds outside of the nuclear family unit. The finale begins with a dream sequence that plays with the potential monstrosity of a queer future (Kohan, Mutchnick, and Burrows 2006). In Grace’s dream she and Will are old, bitter, and fat. (And to add insult to injury, Will is also bald.) The pristine apartment is filthy and their son, Warren, is surly and uncooperative. Jack and Karen remain remarkably well preserved, with Karen happily married to a butched-up Rosario, and Jack bringing home his new husband, longtime celebrity crush, Kevin Bacon. The gang plays their old favorite game, Password, in a manner similar to the pilot, only this time with dread rather than sparkle. Grace spits out a series of clues, “a shirt, a bed, your tummy and chin last summer,” leaving Will to ruefully answer “things that are tucked.” A new clue brings up more despair, as Grace suggests “our souls, our hopes and dreams,” to which Will correctly responds, “things that are crushed.” The two acidly admit they have ruined each other’s lives.

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Spooked by her dream, Grace could not be happier when Leo arrives to win her back. The show flashes viewers forward in time where we find two normative family units: Grace, Leo, and their daughter Lila; and Vince, Will, and Will’s biological son, Ben. Within the assimilationist model of gay political progress, the extension of the concept of family is surely to be lauded. But it comes at a dear price. On the occasion of Will’s birthday viewers learn that the pair has not spoken in two years over Will’s anger at Grace for leaving with Leo and Grace’s anger at Will for not being present for the birth of her daughter. Some hijinks from Jack and Karen bring them together, but though happy to see each other both express a similar sentiment, that the relationship they once thought of as destiny seems to be over. Reflecting on their first meeting in college, the show takes viewers to what presumably is a flashback to a meeting between the two as viewers are presented with younger versions, in both looks and personality, of the program’s namesakes. Instead, viewers quickly learn that the pair meeting is Grace and Will’s children, Lila and Ben. Expressing the kind if instant attraction once felt by their parents, the two disappear, leaving Will and Grace to find each other. Only this time destiny is on their side. For it is here that viewers find the final resolution to the delayed consummation plotline. If Will and Grace could never be together romantically, their progeny can. The program ends on the eve of Lila and Ben’s wedding with a phone conversation between Will and Grace, where viewers are comforted to see them reveling in the joys of their renewed friendship, and more importantly, impending non-queered relationship in which they will be linked through legal marriage. While both characters sometimes embrace a less normative sensibility, on the whole they are more closely associated with the assimilationist model for gay and lesbian politics, and hence are bound to more normative notions of romance and kinship. Will and Grace were paired from the outset through the romantic comedy convention of delayed consummation, and their relationship was frequently constructed so that the reality of their relationship might be, as Quimby (2005) argued, disavowed. In many ways the finale represents the logical conclusion of this set up. Once finding other “partners,” Will and Grace’s friendship seems to no longer serve any purpose other than having been a placeholder for a more normative romantically linked dyad. More than this, the very queerness of their relationship is eventually presented as an obstacle to their happiness, which can only be achieved through normative coupling. Each is

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allowed their heteronormative family unit, but they are not allowed to intertwine. At the end, Will and Grace can only be reunited through surrogate consummation and through their impending, normative relationship as in-laws. “UNFORGETTABLE”: THE QUEERED LIVES OF JACK AND KAREN While we have stressed the ways that the commercial logic of network television constrained representations of queerness, a number of critics have pointed to the program’s gay sensibility as a key source of pleasure for audiences. For example, Cooper (2003) argued that unlike other shows of the period that focused on gay characters’ attempts to make sense of life in a heterosexual world, “Will [sic] and Grace is much closer to a culturally intimate style of humor in its scenes at gay bars and stores known for their gay male clientele, its frequent use of ‘gay vernacular’ and its references to gay movies and other markers of gay male culture” (517). Castiglia and Reed (2004) argue that the program holds on to and recirculates a cultural memory of gay community that by the late 1990s was under continual assault, particularly through calls on gay mean to reject the legacy of the immediate postStonewall generation and to reinvent ourselves along supposedly cleaner, healthier lines that end up looking just like the borders of “normalcy” defined by coupledom conceived as monogamous and (at least in Vermont) state-sanctioned, and by property rights, including the production of progeny. (159) While Will and Grace are frequently framed within this assimilationist logic, the key characters associated with this queer sensibility are Jack and Karen. Driven by a search for pleasure, never ashamed of their actions, finding emotional satisfaction in a broad range of relationships beyond the romantic dyad, they continually articulate an alternative worldview. Originally set up as the sidekicks to the namesake characters, Jack and Karen commanded an increasing amount of screen time as the seasons progressed. While the program had originally cast the pair as the second opposite-sex dyad, mirroring Will and Grace, as the series continued the interactions between the four main characters grew increasingly complicated. In our examination of early seasons,

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we argued that opposite-sex dyads were central to shutting down the possibility of same-sex interactions and their attendant threat of same sex intimacy (Battles and Hilton-Morrow 2002). As in many sitcoms, the program often featured a main plot combined with a minor, less serious one. Originally associated with these less serious plots, over time the popularity of sidekicks led to more fluidity in the arrangement of characters and plot lines, and it became more common to see Jack and Will paired in one plot, with Grace and Karen paired in another. Clear fan favorites, Jack and Karen were often reported to be the most popular characters among gay audiences (Cooper 2003). In their deployment of hyperbolic enactments of or resistance to cultural norms and through their strategic misreadings and reappropriation of popular culture, Jack and Karen most clearly express and revel in the logic of camp. Camp is the attempt by oppressed groups to subvert or appropriate mainstream media. “This classic gay (male) strategy of subversion is camp—an ironic stance toward the straight world rooted in a gay sensibility” (Gross 1989, 143). Jack and Karen embody a queer sensibility continually aimed at challenging the heteronormative ordering of society. Queer sensibility was expressed through frequent, campy references to what Castiglia and Reed (2004) call gay cultural memory. The show positively delights in references to musicals, disco, and other popular cultural texts and icons that have been central to the imagination of urban, gay male identity. Sometimes evidenced through one liners, and other times through entire plots built around elements of a shared gay culture, a gay sensibility was key to the program’s success with audiences. Many of the program’s guest stars are icons in the gay community, including Madonna, Jennifer Lopez, George Takei, and Britney Spears. Entire episodes are structured around queer cultural memory, including an episode from season eight built around the movie musical, The Sound of Music (Lerner and Burrows 2006). Camp misreadings of popular texts are also key to the program’s humor. For example, when Karen confesses she has made up with an old flame and the two are “shagging like two lieutenants on leave,” Jack goes on to playfully misread An Officer and a Gentleman, under the gentle corrective ears of Will and Grace (Herschlag and Burrows 2004). Dreamily putting his arm around Karen, Jack tells her, “That’s beautiful. It’s like An Officer and a Gentleman, when Richard Gere comes back at the end to get his guy,” to which Will and Grace in unison correct, “girl.” Jack continues, “and he carries him,” again corrected by Will and Grace, “her.” Completely oblivious, Jack perseveres in his misreading, “out of

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the bath house,” to which Will and Grace again in unison correct, “bus factory.” Caught up in the queer moment, Karen tells Jack that she is in love “with the sweetest, most adorable gal,” leaving Will and Grace to their final correction, “guy.” Karen, like Jack, shows little respect for normative ideas, especially those related to gender. Oftentimes their humor either inverts or makes fun of heteronormative conventions surrounding marriage and family. When Jack discovers that his boyfriend Stuart has a son, for example, he asks how it happened. Stuart tells him that “like many young people, when I was in college, I experimented with heterosexuality. Mindy and I shared a bathroom for two semesters, and now we share a son for the rest of our lives.” This inversion is one upped when Grace tells Stuart how Jack became a father, “When he was 17 he donated some sperm because he wanted to buy a leather coat. We used to call it his member-only jacket. But, you know, now that there’s an actual life involved, we just call it a jacket” (Bradford and Burrows 2004). Unlike Grace’s assertion of Leo as the “real father” of her child discussed above, these references call into question normative notions of paternity and fatherhood. The character who most upends traditional ideas of marriage is Karen. Married to the never-seen Stan, whose primary attributes are his great girth and wealth, Karen consistently treats marriage as an economic exchange of sex for money. When in the final episode Karen tries to persuade Jack to move in with her diminutive closeted nemesis, Beverley Leslie, stripping away any thought of romance, she tells him “Oh, you’ll do it. You’ll do it the same way any other self-respecting woman does. Get on your back, point your heels to Jesus, and think of handbags” (Kohan, Mutchnick, and Burrows 2006). Moreover, while all of the other characters are clearly marked as heterosexual or homosexual, Karen’s sexuality is frequently represented as more fluid, as the program often plays with the idea that she is bisexual, only further emphasizing her queerness. Yet the show moves beyond camp humor to actually representing alternatives to the heteronormative coupling desired by Will and Grace. While Will and Grace’s relationships are frequently framed through a logic of shame common to sitcom humor (Cooper 2003), Jack and Karen refuse to be judged. In the course of the series Jack only once pursues a serious monogamous relationship when Will bribes Jack (with chapstick and change from his pocket) into dating a high-profile but flakey client, Stuart (Kightlinger and Burrows 2004). The next day, Will discovers that not only did their date go well, but Stuart is now willing to let Jack in on his business decision as

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they are now “boyfriends.” When Will tries to embarrass them, insisting that their time together is too short to matter, Stuart and Jack insist that they have a bond with each other. In rejecting Will’s attempt to shame them for their sexual and relational exploits, Jack and Stuart challenge the tendency of the gay liberal political agenda to base gay identity on the separation between sex acts and identity, ironically upholding the logic of shame that undergirds homophobia (Warner 1999). Instead, Stuart forcefully asserts, “Look, you may not approve of our lifestyle. But Jack and I are a team. And if you’ve got a problem with that, then maybe we should find other representation.” Not only does Jack refuse to be shamed by normative definitions of courtship, he also refuses to give up his ties to queer culture through an exclusive monogamous commitment. When Jack impulsively accepts Stuart’s proposal that they move in together, he quickly begins to question the idea of “settling down” (Herschlag and Burrows 2004). The gift of a popcorn maker from Will, who expresses envy that they no longer have to engage in the club scene, sets off an exchange between Jack and Stuart. Stuart agrees with Will about “how lucky we are. There’s nothing left for us to do except sit back and grow old together.” Looking disturbed, Jack quickly responds that “I don’t know about you, but this girl ain’t growin’ old. That’s why I take care of myself. I eat right, I exercise, and I take a multi-vitamin to avoid iron-poor blood like Evonne Goolagong.” Stuart says, “You don’t have to worry about that anymore. You got the guy, give up the gym.” Dumbfounded, Jack says, “But I’ve been doing cardio ever since I was nine,” and looks disturbed when Stuart tells him he “can finally stop running.” Later Jack goes to Will and Grace to express doubts about his relationship: “I don’t know what happened. I was there with Stuart in that apartment and he was talking. And all of the sudden, we were old. There were cats, and housecoats, and CBS. And keeping tissues up our sleeves. I don’t think I’m ready to be an old married lady.” Then hugging himself he asks, “Does somebody have a shawl? It’s chilly in here,” and takes a tissue out of his sleeve. By the end of the episode Jack and Stuart admit they have moved too fast and Jack happily returns to the world of queer culture. Significantly, while the finale of the show locks Will and Grace into normative roles, the future for Jack and Karen is fully queered. Living in an arrangement that might be best described as a hyperbolic funhouse mirror version of the one Will and Grace’s individual family lives, viewers find Jack and Karen living together and taking care of their “child,” an injured Rosario. Karen notes that it is “funny how we’ve been with each other longer than we were with any of our

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husbands or boyfriends.” The two decide to share a song, with mutual compliments. Jack tells Karen, “your knockers are looking particularly full tonight,” with Karen’s return compliment that “you have the balls of a thirty year old,” each dispelling the age anxiety that marked these queered characters. The audience then enjoys the pair singing “Unforgettable” to each other. In this way, the program performs as Quimby argued, “in the ways it takes up Michael Warner’s call to eschew the ‘impoverished vocabulary of straight culture,’ and articulates one of the ‘lived arrangements of queer life’ that deserves our studied attention’ ” (713–714). While she was referring to the relationship between Will and Grace, we argue that this is more applicable to the relationship between Jack and Karen. In their refutation of shame, hyperbolic mocking of heterosexual norms surrounding marriage and family, and embrace of alternative forms of kinship and support, these two characters consistently carved out a space for the circulation of a decidedly queer worldview. These characters continued to be safely contained through infantilization and disdain by Will and Grace, yet their wide appeal with gay and straight audiences indicates that their queer perspective had the power to resonate with a range of viewers. “MAKING SOMEONE GAY IS EXHAUSTING”: NEGOTIATING COMMERCIAL MASCULINITY From its beginning, Will & Grace was applauded for presenting a range of representations of gay men, from Jack’s over-the-top campy sensibility to Will’s more grounded, sometimes even “uptight,” personality (Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation 1998). Will’s character can easily be read as a positive representation of a gay man— handsome, smartly dressed, and successful—especially when compared to earlier media representations that portrayed gays and lesbians as social deviants (Fejes and Petrich 1993). Will’s clean-cut character is highly palatable for the mainstream audience the program sought to attract. In fact, Cooper (2003) found that “viewers are much more likely to favor Will over Jack as a friend” (925). In short, Will fits into an assimilationist strategy for achieving gay rights. As Vaid (1995) wrote, “Proponents of legitimation argue to the straight world that gay people are ‘just like’ straights” (37). Although this assimilationist approach to gay politics has been around since the inception of the gay and lesbian movement in the 1950s (Vaid 1995), during the 1990s it coincided with advertising’s

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new found recognition of men—both gay and straight—as a potentially untapped consumer market. As a result, media representations of gay and straight men were remarkably similar. The image of the commercialized gay man as “young, white, Caucasian, preferably with a well muscled, smooth body, handsome face, good education, professional job, and a high income” (Fejes 2000, 115) mirrored depictions of the commercialized straight man who carried the new label of “metrosexual”: “the urbane, successful, sophisticated, and wellgroomed modern heterosexual man” (Shugart 2008, 283). Will & Grace tapped into this consumer culture trend to view all men as potential objects of adornment while simultaneously safeguarding a shifting definition of heterosexual masculinity against any threats of homosexuality by reinscribing identifiable, seemingly inherent differences between gay and straight men. During the first four seasons of Will & Grace, Will and Jack seemingly depict alternate representations of gayness. While Will might easily “pass” as a straight man, Jack’s gayness is marked by his flamboyant behavior. Just in case viewers somehow misinterpret Jack’s sissy-like conduct, in the pilot episode Will tells him, “Jack, blind and deaf people know you’re gay. Dead people know you’re gay.” Will routinely castigates Jack for his over-the-top femininity, even lamenting to Grace that “sometimes [Jack’s] just such a . . . fag” (King, Poust, and Kinnally 1999). Allan (2007) reads this scene from the first season as an example of “the possibility of gay homophobia, particularly between gender-conforming gay men and effeminate queens” (297). As the seasons progress, however, Will seemingly develops greater comfort with his own gayness, even embracing ostensibly queer behavior. Notably, though, Will’s increasingly effeminate depiction corresponds with the arrival of Dr. Leo Markus, Grace’s eventual husband and the first major recurring straight male character on the program. Using content analysis, Linneman (2008) found that beginning in the fifth season, the season when Leo arrives, and continuing through later seasons, Will became “the object of a feminine reference” more often than Jack (590). We suggest that this shift in Will’s level of effeminacy is not merely coincidence, but the result of a heteronormative logic that requires clear demarcation between gay and straight masculinity. The striking contrast between Will’s femininity and Leo’s traditional masculinity is evidenced in a scene in the fifth season episode “Marry Me a Little, Marry Me a Little More” (Greenstein, Wrubel, and Burrows 2002). In the episode, Will, Jack, and Karen are meeting

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Grace and Leo at the park for a picnic. Waiting for Grace and Leo to arrive, Jack laments the cold November weather and asks Will, “Why are we doing this?” Will responds: “Come on. It’s sunny. It’s New Yorky. I read this thing in ‘O,’ the Oprah magazine on tapas picnics, and I’ve been dying to try one.” Just then, Grace and Leo, holding hands, approach. Leo holds a football under his arm, and after an initial greeting the following exchange takes place: Karen:

[referencing the football Leo is holding]: Hey, Honey, you got a lump under that arm. You might want to have that looked at.

Leo:

Come on. It’s November in the park. I thought we’d, you know, toss around a football.

Jack:

Um, look, Leo. I know you’re new here. And, um, we don’t want you to think we’re really cliquey and don’t let anyone in our little group. But, um, well . . . we’re really cliquey. We don’t want anyone in our little group, so . . . [Will and Karen both nod].

Karen:

So, if you wanna break into the fag four, this symbol of gay oppression has to go. Come on Jackie. Get rid of it.

Jack then throws the football with a perfect spiral, which is followed by a laugh track response. Using a lisping Spanish accent, Will then unveils their tapas meal: Will:

Ladies and gentlemen. Prepare yourselves for the finest feast this side of Barcelona. My gift to you. Enjoy.

The football then comes flying back and lands on the picnic basket, ruining the meal Will has prepared. Will:

[horrified] My platanas bravas ruined, splattered all over this cashmere throw, and look at these broken ramekins.

Leo:

You’re a trip, Will.

Grace:

Oh, sweetie. It’s probably going to take awhile to clean up. We’re gonna go make out.

This scene and others involving Leo and Will establish a clear juxtaposition of Leo’s traditional, rugged masculinity—in this case, complete with props—and the growing effeminacy of Will. Will’s obsession with cuisine culture and other feminine markers like O magazine are played

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for laughs in a way that Leo’s traditional masculinity is not. Leo’s quip, “You’re a trip, Will” reinforces the notion that the two characters are inherently different from one another, and Leo will never be able to fully understand or relate to Will. Immediately following Leo’s dismissal of Will is Grace’s remark, which draws attention to their hyper-heterosexual relationship, creating another clear dividing line. While Will and Leo may outwardly resemble one another—both handsome examples of consumerist masculinity, their differences—Will as an effeminate, largely asexual gay man and Leo as a masculinized, sexually fulfilled man—are presented in this episode and others like it. Later episodes in season five make cracks in this equation of gayness with femininity by initially drawing attention to the performative nature of such sexed/gendered behavior. However, the potential subversiveness of the four-part “Fagmalion” story line is ultimately limited by a resolution that once again reinforces innate differences between gay and straight men. In this narrative arc, Will and Jack agree to help transform Karen’s cousin Barry, who has recently come out, into a proper gay man. Upon first meeting Barry, Will is immediately turned off by his appearance, including his unkempt hair and beard, large glasses, and baggy sweater (Poust, Kinnally, and Burrows 2003). The visual contrast between Will’s attractive, fit physique and that of Barry is striking and played for comedic effect. After agreeing to prepare Barry for the upcoming Human Rights Gala, Will and Jack— armed with “Tales of the City books, Kiehl’s non-alcohol face toner, Ethel Merman Gypsy, Angela Lansbury Gypsy, Tyne Dale Gypsy, and Pez—pay Barry a late-night visit to begin the work ahead of them. In a subsequent episode, when Will and Jack become overly frustrated with Barry’s inability to recognize gay Hollywood icons, tighten his abs, and learn hip dance moves, Jack announces, “Man, making someone gay is exhausting” (Janetti and Burrows 2003). The idea that Barry can be transformed into a proper gay man potentially challenges heteronormativity by drawing attention to the fact that the effeminate qualities of a gay man must seemingly be learned. In this way, the performativity of gender and sexuality (Butler 1993a) is unmasked. Barry even calls into question the superficiality of Will and Jack’s approach, offering a pointed critique: You call me pathetic, but I look at you guys, and all you care about are superficial things. . . . I didn’t come out so I could be in your twisted production of My Fairy Lady. I came out so . . . I-I could find a guy and fall in love. So what do you have to teach

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me? You got a 15-year head start, and you’re both alone. Now who’s pathetic? (Janetti and Burrows 2003) Despite Barry’s initial rejection of gay consumer culture and learned effeminacy, he eventually apologizes to Will and Jack and fully embraces their makeover transformation of him. These episodes focusing on Barry’s transformation are eerily similar to Queer Eye for the Straight Guy programs that debuted five months later and drew on gay culture as an accoutrement “in the service of conventionally masculine pursuits” (Shugart 2008, 293). Such a similarity can be read as potentially threatening to hegemonic masculinity, if the final products of both programs—in Will & Grace, the fully transformed gay cousin, and in Queer Eye, the fully transformed straight metrosexual—seemingly resemble each other too closely. However, Barry’s transformation differs from those on Queer Eye in one significant way. In Queer Eye, the effeminacy of straight men is, as Shugart (2008) wrote, “a qualitatively different phenomenon by virtue of its performed, obvious, ironic artifice and strategic nature” (293). Although the transformation of Barry initially involves similar performative qualities, his completed transformation results in his reveling in his now seemingly natural and perhaps pre-existing effeminacy. Unlike metrosexuality, which tolerates effeminacy, gayness is defined by the feminine, establishing a clearer divide between heterosexual consumer culture and gayness (Shugart 2008). Will & Grace’s assimilationist representations of gay men as outwardly similar to straight men coexists with, and perhaps leads to, this construction of gay men and straight men as inherently different. Ultimately, any potential threat to heteronormative masculinity is contained. “NO ONE WANTS TO WATCH A BEACON”: CONCLUSION A key story arc of the later seasons of Will & Grace involves Jack’s success at the fictional television network “Out TV.” In a clever response to critics of the show who called into question its refusal to deal with gay politics and lack of seriousness about the realities of gay life, the writers reveal the logic behind commercial television: entertainment first. Attending a focus group for the developing channel, Will expresses his frustration with some of the ideas and suggests, “As a gay network, we have a responsibility to our community. Right now, our programs in general are kind of on the fluffy side. . . . Where’s the historical perspective on gay life in this country? Where’s

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the show about our continuing struggles? Where’s the show that asks the hard questions? And I’m not just talking about the show called ‘The Hard Question.’ Later on, Will is disturbed to find Jack ensconced as Junior Vice President of New Programming, telling Jack that “this channel could be a beacon of intelligence and insight for our community, and it’s just a joke!” Jack voices the truth of commercially driven entertainment, “nobody wants to watch a beacon” (Bradford and Burrows 2004). Even Craig Chester (2001), in the Advocate, a magazine associated with the national gay political agenda, noted that “We can’t expect TV to do the work of social education for us. Even for those wonderful pro-gay executives who sincerely want to do their part, the first order of business is profit” (9). Indeed, as Ron Becker (2006) argued, NBC’s decision to schedule the potentially controversial program had less to do with advocating a queer political agenda than in appealing to the increasingly lucrative SLUMPIE audience of “socially liberal, urban minded, professional” that advertisers sought to reach. Scheduled alongside other programs geared at this audience, such as Friends, the program was designed to appeal to an audience that thought of itself as liberal minded, but at the same time not be so controversial as to step over potential boundaries of “liberal acceptance.” Such boundaries are primarily predicated on support of the nationally recognized assimilationist political agenda involving gay marriage and “civil rights.” While a number of scholars have indeed praised the program for potentially reducing sexual prejudice through the exposure to likeable gay characters, we have long insisted that there was more at stake for Will & Grace. The key issue is what definition of gayness is rendered as acceptable within the commercial constraints of network television. Despite the presence of a queer sensibility, we argue that by and large the program remained constrained by an assimilationist logic that constructed gayness largely through a narrow, urbane, consumerist, male framework. The logic of assimilation was evident in the initial setup of the program, which attempted to make a gay character palatable by placing him within the romantic comedy convention of delayed consummation, which reached its natural endpoint in the “break up” of Will and Grace. Presented as the only way to secure the continued happiness of each, the program simply could not allow them both their friendship and satisfying romantic lives. This logic meant that the queerest characters were the “sidekicks.” However queer their voices and however much they resonated with viewers, the program always left it possible for viewers

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to simply not take these characters seriously. Finally, the logic played out in the way the program negotiated shifting ideas of commercial masculinity. When the rise of metrosexuality coincided with positive representations of gay men, resulting in potentially indistinguishable representations, the program reinscribed inherent differences between them and, ultimately, reinforced heteronormative logic of gender and sexuality. For many viewers and critics, of course, this perspective is undoubtedly consistent with the gay liberation political perspective. No doubt for some critics, both in and outside the academy, Will & Grace might indeed be interpreted as having done good political and cultural work, even within the limitations of mainstream television. From a queer political perspective, however, we continue to believe that the limitations of the program were significant in narrowing the possibilities of gay politics, leading to a valuation of identities and relationships that cannot be so easily incorporated into heteronormative culture. The program certainly allowed straight viewers to feel good about supporting gay rights, but within the commercial logic of television it did so without ever truly questioning the pervasiveness or perniciousness of heteronormative culture. This is not to argue that Will & Grace needed to be “a beacon,” serious in intent and content, but it is to suggest that in the context within which it was produced, the show did forward, intentionally or not, a political agenda that congratulated people for their assimilationist, liberal politics but only ever marginally contributing to a more thoroughgoing questioning of the complex range of practices and discourses that undergird heteronormativity. REFERENCES Barr, A. (Writer), and J. Burrows. (Director). (2002). . . . And the horse he rode in on. [Television series episode]. In D. Kohan, M. Mutchnick, J. Burrows, J. Greenstein, J. Marchinko, and A. Herschlag (Executive producers), Will & Grace. Studio City, CA: KoMut Entertainment. Battles, K., and W. Hilton-Morrow. “Gay Characters in Conventional Spaces: Will & Grace and the Situation Comedy Genre.” Critical Studies in Media Communication, 19 (2002): 87–105. Becker, R. Gay TV and Straight America. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2006. Bradford, S. (Writer), and J. Burrows (Director). (2004). Courting disaster. [Television series episode]. In D. Kohan, M. Mutchnick, J. Burrows, J. Greenstein, J. Marchinko, and A. Herschlag (Executive producers), Will & Grace. Studio City, CA: KoMut Entertainment.

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Bradford, S. (Writer), and J. Burrows, (Director). (2004). One gay at a time. In D. Kohan, M. Mutchnick, J. Burrows, A. Herschlag, and D. Flebotte (Executive producers), Will & Grace. Studio City, CA: KoMut Entertainment. Butler, J. “Imitation and Gender Insubordination.” In Inside/out: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories, edited by D. Fuss, 13–31. London: Routledge, 1991. Butler, J. Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex. New York: Routledge, 1993a. Butler, J. “Critically Queer.” GLO: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 1 (1993b): 270–282. Cable News Network. Bush, Senators Renew Fight against Gay Marriage. (June 5, 2006). http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/06/05/same.sex.marriage .ap/index.html (accessed June 6, 2006). Castiglia, C., and C. Reed. “ ‘Ah, Yes, I Remember It Well’: Memory and Queer Culture in Will & Grace.” Cultural Critique, 56 (2004): 158–188. Chester, C. Typecastaways. Advocate, March 13, 2001, 9. Cooper, E. “Decoding Will and Grace: Mass Audience Reception of a Popular Network Situation Comedy.” Sociological Perspectives, 46 (2003): 513–533. de Lauretis, T. Alice Doesn’t: Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1984. de Lauretis, T. “Queer Theory: Lesbian and Gay Sexualities.” Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, 3 (2), (1991): iii–xviii. Fejes, F. “Making a Gay Masculinity.” Critical Studies in Media Communication, 17 (2000): 113–116. Fejes, F., and K. Petrich. “Invisibility and Heterosexism: Lesbians, Gays and the Media.” Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 10 (1993): 396–422. Foss, S. Rhetorical Criticism: Exploration & Practice (Second Edition). Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, 2004. Foucault, M. The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, Volume 1. New York: Random House, 1978. Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. Will & Grace come out on Monday. Retrieved from http://www.glaad.org/org/publications/ alerts/index.html (1998). George, R. “The 28th Amendment.” National Review, 32, July 23, 2001. Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, 440 Mass. 309, 798 N.E.2d 941 (2003). Gordon, A. (Writer), and J. Burrows (Director). (2004). Fred Astaire and ginger chicken. [Television series episode]. In D. Kohan, M. Mutchnick, J. Burrows, J. Greenstein, J. Marchinko, and A. Herschlag (Executive producers), Will & Grace. Studio City, CA: KoMut Entertainment. Greenstein, J., B. Wrubel (Writers), and J. Burrows (Director). (2002). Marry me a little more part II. [Television series episode]. In D. Kohan, M. Mutchnick, J. Burrows, J. Greenstein, J. Marchinko, and A. Herschlag (Executive producers), Will & Grace. Studio City, CA: KoMut Entertainment.

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Gross, L. “Out of the Mainstream: Sexual Minorities and the Mass Media.” In Remote Control: Television, Audiences, and Cultural Power, edited by E. Seiter, et al., 130–149 London: Routledge, 1989. Hart, K. “Representing Gay Men on American Television.” The Journal of Men’s Studies, 9 (2000): 59–79. Hennessy, R. “Queer Theory: A Review of the Differences Special Issue and Wittig’s The straight mind. Signs, 18 (1993): 964–979. Herschlag, A. (Writer), and J. Burrows (Director). (2004). Flip-flop: Part 2. [Television series episode]. In D. Kohan, M. Mutchnick, J. Burrows, J. Greenstein, J. Marchinko, and A. Herschlag (Executive producers), Will & Grace. Studio City, CA: KoMut Entertainment. Jacobs, A. “When Gay Men Happen to Straight Women.” Entertainment Weekly, October 23, 1998. Retrieved from http://www.ew.com. Janetti, G. (Writer), and J. Burrows (Director). (2003). Fagmalion part two: Attack of the clones. [Television series episode]. In D. Kohan, M. Mutchnick, J. Burrows, J. Greenstein, J. Marchinko, and A. Herschlag (Executive producers), Will & Grace. Studio City, CA: KoMut Entertainment. Janetti, G., T. Poust, J. Kinnally (Writers), and J. Burrows (Director). (2006). Whatever happened to baby gin? [Television series episode]. In D. Kohan, M. Mutchnick, J. Burrows, T. Kaiser, G. Janetti, T. Poust, et al. (Executive producers), Will & Grace. Studio City, CA: KoMut Entertainment. Kightlinger, L. (Writer), and J. Burrows (Director). (2004). Ice cream balls. [Television series episode]. In D. Kohan, M. Mutchnick, J. Burrows, J. Greenstein, J. Marchinko, and A. Herschlag (Executive producers), Will & Grace. Studio City, CA: KoMut Entertainment. King, M. P., P. Poust, J. Kinnally. (Writers), and J. Burrows (Director). (1999) Will works out. [Television series episode]. In D. Kohan, M. Mutchnick, and J. Burrows (Executive producers), Will & Grace. Studio City, CA: KoMut Entertainment. Kohan, D., M. Mutchnick (Writers), and J. Burrows (Director). (1998). The pilot. [Television series episode]. In D. Kohan, M. Mutchnick, & J. Burrows (Executive producers), Will & Grace. Studio City, CA: KoMut Entertainment. Kohan, D., M. Mutchnick (Writers), and J. Burrows (Director). (2006). The finale. [Television series episode]. In D. Kohan, M. Mutchnick, J. Burrows, T. Kaiser, G. Janetti, T. Poust, et al. (Executive producers), Will & Grace. Studio City, CA: KoMut Entertainment. Lerner, G. (Writer), and J. Burrows (Director). (2006). Von trapped. [Television series episode]. In D. Kohan, M. Mutchnick, J. Burrows, T. Kaiser, G. Janetti, T. Poust, et al. (Executive producers), Will & Grace. Studio City, CA: KoMut Entertainment. Linneman, T. “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Will Truman?: The Feminization of Gay Masculinities on Will & Grace.” Men and Masculinities, 10 (2008): 583–603.

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Mitchell, D. “Producing Containment: The Rhetorical Construction of Difference in Will & Grace.” The Journal of Popular Culture, 38 (2005): 1050–1068. Ortiz, M., and J. Harwood. “A Social Cognitive Theory Approach to the Effects of Mediated Intergroup Contact on Intergroup Attitudes.” Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 51 (2007): 615–631. Poust, T., J. Kinnally (Writers), and J. Burrows (Director). (2003). Fagmalion art one: Gay it forward. [Television series episode]. In D. Kohan, M. Mutchnick, J. Burrows, J. Greenstein, J. Marchinko, and A. Herschlag (Executive producers), Will & Grace. Studio City, CA: KoMut Entertainment. Poust, T., J. Kinnally (Writers), and J. Burrows (Director). (2004). Back up, dancer. [Television series episode]. In D. Kohan, M. Mutchnick, J. Burrows, A. Herschlag, and D. Flebotte (Executive producers), Will & Grace. Studio City, CA: KoMut Entertainment. Quimby, K. “Will & Grace: Negotiating (Gay) Marriage on Prime-Time Television.” Journal of Popular Culture, 38 (4) (2005): 713–731. Schiappa, E., P. Gregg, and D. Hewes. “The Parasocial Contact Hypothesis.” Communication Monographs, 72 (2005): 92–115. Schiappa, E., P. Gregg, and D. Hewes. “Can One TV Show Make a Difference? Will & Grace and the Parasocial Contact Hypothesis.” Journal of Homosexuality, 51 (4) (2006): 15–37. Shugart, H. “Managing Masculinities: The Metrosexual Moment.” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 5 (2008): 280–300. Svetkey, B. “Is Your TV Set Gay?” Entertainment Weekly, October 6, 2000, 24–28. Vaid, U. “Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Gay & Lesbian Liberation.” New York: Anchor Books, 1995. Warner, M. The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999. Yep, G., K. Lovaas, and J. Elia. “A Critical Appraisal of Assimilationist and Radical Ideologies Underlying Same-Sex Marriage in LGBT Communities in the United States.” In Sexualities and Communication in Everyday Life, edited by K. Lovaas and M. Jenkins, 165–177. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2007.

Chapter 12

“They Can’t Show a Whole Screen Full of Gay People”: Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Television Viewers Assess Portrayals of the Gay Community on Television Lyn J. Freymiller

In recent years, the American media has regularly implied that the socalled trend of gay* representation on American television is helping to facilitate heterosexual acceptance of gays and lesbians in society. Many newspaper articles chronicling the battle for gay marriage or other gay rights issues offer a comment suggesting that gay visibility from television shows such as Will & Grace and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy contributes to the sensitization of the heterosexual population to gay people. As Rich states about modern-day media in *Matters of nomenclature are challenging for researchers studying people who are members of the non-heterosexual population of society. Because of its simplicity, the term “gay” is used in this chapter as a generic term that refers to all male and female homosexuals (and television characters), unless otherwise noted. In keeping with its societal connotation, the term is also intended to encompass men and women who do not identify as either heterosexual or homosexual, where applicable. For the sake of variety, “gay” and “non-heterosexual” are generally used interchangeably. While the term “queer” has become more accepted in recent years, the term is not frequently used by gay, lesbian, or bisexual people or television characters to identify themselves. However, references including “gay” such as “gay identity” resonated with all gay male, lesbian, and bisexual interview participants in this project.

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general, “entertainment has often been the vanguard of familiarizing America with gay people, much as it was in spreading homophobia before that” (2003, 7). What effect, if any, television depictions of gay people have on straight people is indeed an intriguing question, but it is not the question this study explores. Instead, the present study seeks to hear from the most important voices related to the matter of the representation of gay people on television, voices that remains almost completely unheard: the voices of gay people themselves. With gay men and women gaining a degree of representation on television, what do members of the gay community think of the representations that are available to television audiences? Indeed, gay people have gained a degree of visibility on television in the last decade (Capsuto 2000; Svetsky 2000; Tropiano 2002), bringing gay identity into the open, but making it take on “the dubious distinction of public spectacle” (Walters 2001, 10). Several studies have pointed out that there are many limitations to portrayals of gay people on television (Battle and Hilton-Morrow 2002; Dow 2001; Fejes and Petrich 1993; Shugart 2003), but no notable studies have asked gay viewers what they make of their present-day television surrogates. Some speculate that television portrayals could be of great practical value to gay people. Fejes (2000) notes that “[m]edia images are very powerful in helping one develop a sense of identity” (115), and Gross (1998) also indicates that positive portrayals on television may be of benefit to gay people. This chapter discusses some of the responses lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) people have to portrayals of nonheterosexual identity on fictional television programs, specifically the sense of community the gay characters are shown to have or experience. The responses come from in-depth interviews with 22 selfidentifying lesbian, gay, and bi-sexual (LGB) people. The study is part of a larger project that seeks to understand how notable specific television programs depict gay identity on three different dimensions suggested by the communication theory of identity, and also assess the responses of LGB people to representations of gay identity on television on these dimensions. COMMUNICATION THEORY OF IDENTITY The thorny matter of identity has long preoccupied scholars, and an overview of identity research in general or even of gay identity research more specifically is beyond the scope of this essay (see Horowitz and Newcomb 2001, for an overview some of the approaches on the

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latter). The present study draws on the communication theory of identity, which posits that the complex concept of personal identity can be conceived as consisting of multiple dimensions (Hecht 1993). In this view, identity is not a single, arrived-at construct. Rather, a sense of identity is multifaceted and consists of sometimes-contradictory perceptions. The theory “extends identity beyond individual and societal constructions to consider interaction” as an influence on conceptions of identity (79). The communication theory of identity conceives of identity as consisting of four frames: personal, enacted, relational, and communal (summarized in Hecht 1993, 79–80; see also Hecht et al. 2002, 853). The personal frame focuses on a person’s self-awareness; that is, the sense of self he or she holds in his or her subjective perceptions. The enacted frame refers to how verbalizations express identity, and how by rhetorically constructing terms to describe identity, a person simultaneously constructs identity itself. The relational frame focuses on how an individual’s identity is often perceived in relation to one’s connection to other people. Finally, the communal frame is concerned with a person’s shared identity with those in each community or group in which he or she is a part. Individuals often conceive of themselves as part of multiple communities (a family unit, a profession, an ethnic group) that each carries some sense of identity. The four dimensions are interpenetrated, meaning that any specific experience or verbal reference related to identity might be understood in relation to more than one dimension of identity. For example, there may be discord between one’s self-concept and the perceptions one associates with a group with which one identifies. If a person recognizes homosexual inclination and struggles with his or her entrenched view that homosexuals are not good people, there would be a dialectical tension between the personal and communal frames of identity. Identity is best considered as “a negotiation among the individual, enactment, the relationship, and the community, or any combination of the four” (Hecht et al. 2002, 853). The communication theory of identity theory promises to be particularly useful for the investigation of gay and lesbian identity. Gay and lesbian people are likely to embrace the idea of having multidimensional identities, given the fact that they may be “out” as gay and lesbian individuals to certain people in their lives and closeted to others. This fact is likely to be a source of considerable identity negotiation, affecting the self-concepts of gay and lesbian individuals as well as their relationships with other people. This study seeks to

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investigate the representation of one dimension of identity for gay characters portrayed on television, in the assessment of LGB viewers. As opposed to directing investigation to how the LGB viewers assess the core sense of being of the characters (the personal level), how the characters describe themselves (the enacted level) or how the LGB viewers assess how the gay characters are shown in romantic relationships (relational level), the present study investigates the assessments of gay viewers regarding how gay characters are represented with a communal sense of identity on television. PROCEDURE The author conducted a single sit-down interview with 22 individuals that self-identified as gay, lesbian, or bisexual. While the general intention of the study was to see what gay and lesbian people feel about gay and lesbian portrayals on television, the decision was made to include anyone who self-identified as having a sexual orientation other than heterosexual in the study. This allowed for hearing the hugely underrepresented views of bisexual individuals. It should be noted that the great majority of transgender individuals self-identify as having a heterosexual orientation, and thus the focus here on “LGB” interviewees does not represent a willful exclusion of transgender people (the “T” in the common “LGBT” designation). Again, the main criterion for inclusion in the study was that a person selfidentified as non-heterosexual, not simply that the person was a member of the LGBT community. After the author received the necessary approval for the project from the proper channels at a large public university in the eastern United States, an informational e-mail about the study was sent to several email lists related to gay and lesbian groups at this university. Potential participants volunteered themselves by contacting the author via phone or e-mail to express interest, and interviews were scheduled. The author met interviewees in a public place on campus, or at the interviewee’s campus office, and interviews were conducted in private spaces, such as vacant classrooms or the interviewee’s office. Participants signed an informed consent form after being briefed on the project as well as their rights as participants and the trajectory of the interview questions. Participants also filled out a very brief demographic profile. Participants were not paid for their participation. The 22 interviewees include 12 women, 7 of whom identified as lesbian and 5 of whom identified as bisexual. All 10 male participants

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self-identified as gay. Participants ranged in age from 18 (the minimum age allowed to participate) to 54. The median age was 23 years and the mean age was just under 28.4 years. All participants identified as white or Caucasian except for one African-American woman and one man who self-identified as Hawaiian-American. Interviews lasted from approximately 40 minutes to about 85 minutes. Interviewees were first asked to discuss their “story” of how they came to be the person they are today in terms of their sexual identity. Participants were then asked about their perceptions of how gay identity is portrayed on television, with a focus on fictional characters on scripted shows. Participants were not told explicitly of the communication theory of identity, but instead were asked, in an early part of the interview, to describe their sense of identity on different levels/ dimensions that echoed with the theory. In the second part of the interview, they were asked to talk about the identities of fictional characters on television in regard to similar dimensions: who they are at the core and what they say about themselves, their relationships with other people (gay and straight), and the sense of community exhibited or portrayed. Finally, interviewees were asked to assess how, if at all, media portrayals of gay identity had influenced their own identities as gay, lesbian, or bisexual individuals. The comments in this essay are all culled from the segments of the interviews in which participants offered their observations and opinions of how LGB characters were shown in communities and/or with a communal identity on television. CODIFICATION OF THEMES Interviews were audio taped and then transcribed verbatim. Only code names appeared on demographic profiles, the cassette tapes of recorded interviews, and the written transcripts. A coding process was initiated to analyze the interview data. An initial phase of open coding identified the comments that reflected an interviewee’s thoughts related to the portrayal of communal identity for gay characters on fictional television programs. The author copied each relevant quotation into a document, which was then printed and cut so that each quotation appeared on a separate slip of paper. Then, a second phase of axial coding occurred. Axial coding is used “to refine and differentiate concepts that are already available and lends them the status of categories” (Bohm 2004, 271). The author sorted the quotes by hand into overarching themes. A theme is a

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recurring unit that is identifiable in the text, and is identifiable through such factors as repetition, restatement, and intensity (Strauss and Corbin 1990). Initial categories were refined, expanded, or collapsed together in an effort to accurately group the comments thematically. With the quotations related to communal level of identity for the television characters, axial coding found two major themes. These themes are identified in the next section. COMMUNAL-LEVEL OBSERVATIONS I’m kind of ambivalent on the issue of community. I think that sometimes it could be good but not necessarily in every case. Um, I don’t know if it’s that necessary. But, on the other hand it is true that most people who are LGBT know someone else who’s LGBT, you’re not usually in it by yourself, so there is a community there and that’s part of the honest portrayal of it.—Julie, 19-year-old lesbian It is not certain that such a thing as “gay community” exists in real life, so one might wonder if such a thing could be captured on television. Are gay people a recognizable societal subset or simply individuals who exist in all facets of a predominantly heterosexual society? Both could be true, of course; some gays live amongst other gay people, while other people may be or think that they are the only gay people in their areas. Of course, even if a gay-friendly neighborhood exists, that does not necessarily automatically reflect a community. The ambivalence noted by Julie speaks to how viewers/interviewees may be unsure about what they want or expect from television portrayals of a gay community. Julie suggests that it is not necessary to see community portrayed all the time; but in order to reflect the reality that most gay people know other gay people, it may be dishonest if it is not shown in some fashion. Two broad themes emerged when assessing the comments of interviewees regarding portrayals of gay community on television. First, many interviewees suggest that gay characters seemed to be disconnected, either from each other or from the larger straight society. In these views, there is no recognizable sense of community or no integration between gay and straight society. Secondly, and conversely, some participants express satisfaction with what they view as reasonable and valuable portrayals of a gay community on television.

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Disconnected—Individually or Collectively Numerous interviewees find that gay characters do not form a community on television in any observable way. Other interviewees do suggest that gay characters form something of a community, but not one that is necessarily integrated well with straight society. In this view, the gay characters form a group, but the group is kept out of the mainstream of society. Doug, a 21-year-old gay man, comments: Yeah, they just kind of have their own little world I mean, it’s like everywhere they go, they don’t have to interact with heterosexuals hardly at all and when they do it’s because they’re being protested against or something like that. I mean it’s always adversity or struggle when it comes to straight community. Doug finds an adversarial relationship between gay and straight factions on shows, with little common ground. The “little world” the gays inhabit generally insulates them from interactions with straights, but when the worlds are bridged there is only disagreement and disharmony. The equation is us-versus-them, or gays-versus-straights. While one could rush to judgment that a show such as Queer as Folk clearly depicts community by portraying its gay ensemble living in a very gay-positive neighborhood in Pittsburgh, we may question the definition of “community” and if such a designation is appropriately applied to the situation portrayed. Debbie, a 42-year-old lesbian, explains, “I, I haven’t—I, I would not say I’ve seen a representation of any community, but certainly not the gay community, on television, in any way. If anything, you know, gay parts of town maybe, but that’s not community.” Debbie diminishes the connection between a gay-friendly neighborhood and a legitimate sense of community, as community consists of more than similar people living in close proximity. Notably, though, she opines that television is not adept at portraying “any community,” so perhaps its failure to depict gay community is not significant. Similarly, Craig, a 28-year-old gay man, says the following: You see location as community but not relationship or groups as much, in what I’ve seen, but I—I mean, that may have developed over—since that I’ve, that I’ve seen those episodes but ya ‘know any time in my opinion that you really see community it’s this part of the storyline or it’s like a location. But not like an

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organization or, or s-, support groups or, AIDS wards or anything like that, that you usually see. Craig points out that while a neighborhood could possibly be assumed to be community, there is a lack of portrayals of deeper communal bonds forged by involvement in organizations. Images of community are built into certain episodes, but the sustaining daily ties are not much in evidence. Greg, a 23-year-old gay man, states, “I don’t feel—there’s no interaction with the straight community at all, it’s kind of like, we’re gay, this is our gay show. And it was just kind of like there’s this gay bubble, that’s it.” Similar to the implications of the gay “world” suggested by Doug, Greg finds separatism and disconnection with straight society. Just as other interviewees felt that gay television characters were essentially gay and little else, Greg implies that certain programs are essentially “gay shows” and little else. When asked if any form of community is shown on Will & Grace at all, Greg responds, “Not really. Unless you count the Banana Republic. I don’t think so, I really don’t.” This reference to the fashionable upscale clothing retailer that the character Jack worked at for a time indicates an example of “location” that perhaps Craig would not have anticipated. As presumably a portion of the male staff and clientele of trendy clothing stores is gay, such places may be the most likely places to find gay characters on television. The sense of disconnection that some non-heterosexual viewers find in relation to gay community on television bothers Heather, an 18-year-old bisexual woman, considerably. She finds “walls” rather than bridges between communities on television: I think maybe like, I think maybe the problem that I’m having with these shows is just that it’s, it’s keeping—you know like we’re all connected like we’re all you know we’re all somehow related and we’re holding each other, we’re keeping that wall up somehow instead of like integrating with each other. Which is what we should be doing in all aspects—in religion, um sexuality, race, any type of culture, so—that’s, yeah that’s the one thing I have with shows focused around a certain aspect like that although it is like— it’s still okay to have shows like that because . . . um . . . it’s a forum in which to address certain issues. With an ambivalence that characterizes many other observations by various participants, Heather sees a degree of benefit and a degree of

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lost opportunity in television portrayals of community. The shows exist as a “forum” but depict groups as separate that, in her view, need to be portrayed as integrated. The different groups mutually reinforce their separation through their lack of engagement. As Debbie noted above, a gay neighborhood does not necessarily reflect a gay community. Similarly, even when a show offers a group of gay people among its central characters, one could question whether community is indeed portrayed. Alex, a 38-year-old gay man, observes: Queer as Folk has its, you know its little cluster of people but I don’t see any community. I mean they go to a dance club or they go to wherever that back room is, that mythical back room where everybody’s perfect, um, but I’ve never seen any sense of community. . . . They don’t seem to be involved actively in their community, they don’t . . . they’re not involved in any civil organizations, they don’t participate in gay pride parades or—that I’ve experienced, so there’s, it’s not really any sense of a community, it’s five guys. In Alex’s view, “five guys” do not make a community, as they generally only interact with each other. They visit a gay dance club and check out the “back room” where much anonymous sex takes place, but lack further engagement with other gays outside of their close friendships. Alex finds that Queer as Folk’s central ensemble is distanced from civic engagement and from a real sense of their place in a larger social fabric. Marta, a 22-year-old lesbian, also finds a lack of political pulse that would connect individual gay characters to a community larger than themselves and notes that while references might be made to community involvement, such involvement is not often shown. She states: I don’t see that there is a lot of shows of activism or especially act-, I see very little political activism or even just activism in general. Even if it’s just you know AIDS activism or any other gay-related issues. I don’t see that a lot. Um, they will say occasionally, oh, we’re going to gay day at Disneyworld or something like that, like some kind of, like a festival, or—I know they mentioned once on Roseanne, that the mom was going to go down for um Fantasy Festival in Key West. Which is usually a very big gay festival down there, they mentioned that but they mention it but they won’t show it, like they won’t show them being there or anything like that or

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have anything to do with it when they get, allegedly get back they don’t talk about it or anything like, they’ll make brief mentions of going to gay and lesbian events, but they don’t really show them or have anything to do with them. I don’t see any examples of activism or any kind of even political alignment, or—well, they have made a couple jokes in Will & Grace about hating Bush which is, which is good, which is very good, but I don’t see them aligning themselves with a political party or along party lines or standing up and saying you know we’re this or we’re that, or for this or for that, so, and there’s a lot of political ties. Marta observes a significant disconnect between the gay characters and the political and social issues that are important to gay people. There may be references to involvement in events, but like gay sex on broadcast-network shows, the participation is kept safely off the screen. Political references provide needed punch lines, but the characters stop short of overtly endorsing political views. Again, there is a lack of engagement with others in a recognizable community. It must be kept in mind that many shows offer only a single gay character, and thus there may be limitations to what is likely to transpire regarding depictions of community. Julie, a 19-year-old lesbian, offers the following observations: I don’t know for sure if there’s any sense of community, but I think in a lot of shows where the gay characters are on the fringe, there’s only one or two of them so there’s not a community. Maybe in a show like Queer as Folk where it’s about gay people, there’s more sense of community. I mean, you have to have two people to have a community. Indeed, it’s difficult to depict any sense of community when a solitary gay character inhabits a show. Julie expresses that a gay-populated show like Queer as Folk at least has the potential to show more of a gay community, though she does not seem fully convinced. As other interviewees note that gay characters as a collective may be kept to the “fringe,” Julie notes that specific gay characters may be similarly marginalized. The community at the center of the action is the straight community. Similarly, Marta, the 22-year-old lesbian mentioned above, states: I, they usually have no more than three or four people that are gay or lesbian on the screen at one time. Like they never show

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like a whole bunch of people and it’s like they never show them going to any gay or lesbian fun-, like I said, they don’t show them going to any of these things they talk about. You know it’d be nice to see them say oh, “we’re going down to the community center” or something and then you (go) down and then there’s like a whole room full of people that are all gay. They, they don’t show that, they don’t show them in, I don’t know if it’s fear of a whole bunch of us together at the same time or, what’s gonna happen but they usually will show no more than three or four people at a time that are gay or lesbian. They usually show very few, have to be in little clusters surrounded by lots of other straight people, they can’t show like a whole screen full of gay people. I don’t know why that is. Marta finds there to be strict limits on gay representation on television, representation that is kept in check to a degree that gays remain an on-screen minority. She finds gays to be constantly flanked by straights and allowed to talk about though not visibly participate in gay-centered community events. Showing “more than three or four people at a time that are gay or lesbian” might challenge the dominance which straight characters have on the television screen. Chelsea, a 20-year-old bisexual woman, among other interviewees, expresses a degree of understanding that television portrayals might be unlikely to capture the complexity of gay people’s lives, though she still bemoans the absence of portrayals that hint at that complexity. Like Marta, Chelsea notes a lack of gay community and finds that television depicts gay characters separated from a larger social context: Again, it’s kind of like they have, they might have a couple gay friends and they’ll have a couple straight friends but it’s almost like they’re just kinda taken right out of the context that they, that they would live in if they were actual people and like, just simplified and set down on the stage and I understand that obviously you have to simplify to make, you know television like you know logical or watchable or whatever but it just seems like, there isn’t a gay community. Like it doesn’t really give you the idea that like you know they necessarily have like you know they have places to go and things that they do, as, like as a whole, you know what I mean it’s like they’re sort of, there’s some rituals for like, for certain groups.

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Television needs to reduce and simplify things in order to portray them, in Chelsea’s view. This arrangement shortchanges television’s ability to show the activities of the characters and their interaction with each other in a community setting. The characters exist on the screen, but in the portrayals available they do not seem to be on their way to participate in a social network with other gay people when they exit a scene, let alone exhibit such involvement on screen. Even when gays and straights appear to get along well on television, there can still be a sense of disconnection from others outside the amicable in-group of characters. Doug, a 21-year-old gay man, looks to Will & Grace and comments: Um, there’s Will and there’s Jack and I mean, they really don’t seem to have that many friends and I don’t know I mean but even then, the only people ever, that I’ve seen brought into the show mostly are people that one of them’s interested in there’s not, very rarely do I see a group of friends other than, Karen I think, the other lady. I mean it’s like the four of them and that’s it. So I don’t know if they could really, in a, in a half-hour show, portray any type of community and I think it’s shown as a positive way then but it’s just kind of, I don’t think it’s done fake, in a fake manner but it’s just kind of like, all the straight people they interact with are like, oh yeah, Will’s gay, whatever. But I mean, at the same time I don’t think they have enough time to show a community and keep up with their main characters cause I think they’re the one’s they’re trying to develop so. Doug fairly points out that perhaps we should not burden Will & Grace with the obligation of representing gay community in the midst of its 30-minute, sitcom-standard plots. The plots are organized around the central characters, and viewers expect these characters to be the focus, so there is little need to broaden the scope to a communal level, or any community context. But Doug finds more troubling implications as he continues with the following: You don’t really know much of anything outside of their lives other than being gay, other than interacting humorously with their friends. I mean it’s kind of, there is no real serious drama that doesn’t involve everyone having sex and all of their issues with everyone having sex and then, having to bring in every no-, like I guess every popular problem that the gay community

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faces, and having to make a show about that like Queer as Folk does. I mean it’s kind of, they don’t show them as normal, everyday, personal problems like a heterosexual television show would to me. Kind of like interacting as, not necessarily like a family but as relationships interacting with other I guess straight couples and you don’t very often see a mixture of the crowds coming together on any show either. In this second quote, Doug finds that gay characters lack complexity in their lives and experiences as they appear onscreen; on a “heterosexual television show,” the portrayals would be not necessarily issueoriented but still somehow “normal” and, presumably, universally resonant to viewers. Typically, gay characters are centered on concerns tied to their identifications as gay people, not on the breadth of problems that people in general face. Connecting back to the relational level of identity, Doug finds that different crowds don’t mix, leading to a disconnection between gay and straight community. Again, it must be kept in mind that each interviewee had seen a different distribution of programs with gay characters. While he sees some sense of community represented, Kaipo, a 31-year-old gay man, observes that accessibility to certain shows may dictate the visions of community available to viewers: Queer as Folk shows a sense of gay community, uh very strongly, but you have to pay to get Showtime and so it’s not available to everyone.Will & Grace shows uh gay people interacting in a straight world um, and the funny occurrences that can happen between those exchanges. Uh, but I don’t get a sense of gay community, the only gay community that Will has, like Will actually has difficulty plugging into the gay community and Jack acts as his conduit for those interactions so in, in many ways I see Will as being isolationist or um, removed from true gay culture, but that removal allows him to have um, a different perspective and it helps to highlight the heterosexual interactions that he has with Grace and Karen, uh so I think it’s possible but if you want to see gay community, then you have to pay for it. In Kaipo’s view, Will is engaged with straight folks but is isolated from “true gay culture,” with “culture” presumably used as a synonym for community. This arrangement perhaps allows him to interact better with the heterosexual women he consorts with, but it is humor that

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characterizes the interaction between gay and straights. Just as Scott noted that paying for Showtime is necessary to see a great motherson relationship on Queer as Folk, Kaipo suggests that portrayals of gay community are also only for paying customers. Speaking about Will & Grace, Craig, the 28-year-old gay man, opines: Go back to Will & Grace, you really don’t see much of a community, you see a friendship, you see a very strong friendship between Will and Jack, um, you see a very supportive relationship from people that you would quote/unquote call the “allies” in the form of, of Grace and Karen. But you really don’t see, um, like for example you don’t see the, the uh other gay couple who, who’ve adopted the baby as much as you used to and I really like those characters. Craig is satisfied with constructions of the gay characters at the relational level, but sees a paucity of representation of the communal level. Will and Jack do not lack straight friends, but instead lack much engagement with other gay people. Craig mentions that the gay characters have “allies,” which is a term often used to describe individuals who selfidentify as friends and supporters of the gay community, though they do not self-identify as gay. Such support from the straight community may be all well and good, but Will and Jack are shortchanged in their interactions with other genuine members of the gay community. Considering this focus on portrayals of gay community, it is certainly reasonable to question if there is indeed any obligation on the part of the creators of shows to depict any sense of gay community on fictional television programs. The contrasting views on this matter that viewers may take are well-summarized by Laura, a 24-year-old bisexual woman, in this passage: Well, given that I mean, there are a lot of people out there that are queer but by themselves and or are you know, forced to be such given the community of, you know, the environment in which they live, um, be that rural or you know whatever, um, in some ways it’s, I mean it is correct and it is a um, fair you know, uh evaluation of the particular environment in which we live, but on the other hand, you know, there are communities and there are places to go, people to see, and if you make efforts, you can almost always connect with someone, somehow if it’s by Internet, if only it’s potent-, potentiality.

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Laura notes that media portrayals depicting gay community and media portrayals depicting isolated gay individuals may both be accurate portrayals. Circumstances may make gay people feel truly alone in the environment they live in; however, with effort they are able to reach out to some form of community. Laura can see both sides of the coin; television can capture reality through gay characters both by showing disconnection from other gays and connection with other gays. While the participants discussed in this section see limitations or absence in regard to a gay community, this view is not universal. The next section collects comments from interviewees that find television portrayals of gay community to be praiseworthy. Reasonable Portrayals Some participants expressed relative satisfaction with what they saw as gay community on television. While sometimes they qualified their praise, these participants observed that television has made strides in depicting networks of gay people that are engaged with each other and/or with straight society. For example, Paige, a 37-year-old lesbian, notes the following: I think that, I think there’s always a sense of—I see a sense of community y’a know in one shape or another coming through on almost all of these shows um . . . y’a know um, some shows are simply about the gay community I mean Queer as Folk is pretty much just about the gay community. Um, y’a know, other than a few uh people like Mike’s mom, that character, um, ah there aren’t many straight people so it’s, it’s, that’s all it is about. Um, and shows like Will & Grace and Ellen, um there’s, they’re intergra-, interacting with straight society, y’know Will is having to work in his law firm and all the rest of his coworkers are straight. Y’a know, Ellen way back when had that coffee shop and she was ya’ know, all of her employees were, were straight, so ya’ know I think there, they vary again from communities to, to dom-, y’know, the show focuses on only the gay community too—ya ‘know, shows often focusing on just the um, the—more of an integration. Whether the characters are in primarily gay or straight environments, Paige finds that there is a sense of community coming through on television. Queer as Folk focuses heavily and primarily on gay community, with the straight characters reduced to the supporting roles, and even

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on broadcast-network shows such as Will & Grace and Ellen characters find themselves smoothly integrated into a larger societal context. Professional, workplace contexts allow a peaceful coexistence between gay and straight characters. Community takes many forms, and it’s almost always there in some capacity. Some interviewees support the idea that location, or the places that gay characters are shown in, may indeed be taken as representations of gay community. As noted in the previous section, some interviewees specifically discount this notion. Rob, a 40-year-old gay man, observes the following: I think people see gay culture as night life. As the bars and uh, you know, drinking drugs, and, and sex. And I think that’s a fairly significant part of gay culture. I mean I don’t think they’re wrong there, but I think there’s a lot more they just don’t get a chance to see. Rob’s mixed feelings are that while what may be called the bar scene is indeed operative in people’s free time, much else exists that would show gay people as having more going on in their lives. He indicates a limited representation of community that could be usefully expanded. As it is a “significant part of gay culture,” however, he is unable to tag the portrayal of the bar scene as altogether misrepresenting the gay community. Portraying “night life” is not inaccurate, but it is an incomplete picture of gay experience. However, according to Brandon, a 42-year-old gay man, television has indeed admirably progressed to more varied depictions than it offered in the recent past. He references the fictional gay dance club Babylon depicted on the show Queer as Folk and notes how the show has moved beyond showing the club scene as the primary representation of gay community. He says: I think that there’s becoming more of a portrayal, I think it used to be you know the gay community is basically portrayed as a bunch of partiers. You know, Babylon, you go out, you drink, you do ecstasy, you dance, you look at the go-go boys and, you know and I mean that, that’s certainly a part of the gay community and it’s part of the gay community that I’ve participated in um, but I think that the media’s starting to present other types of things, of things too. Um, you know, political uh you know, political organization for example on the part of

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uh gay men and lesbians. Uh they’re, in ah Queer as Folk for example, despite all the partying that they show they also show um gay people just hanging out socially you know in a social context as a community, they show them taking part in unified political activity. While the “party” scene is indeed represented, Brandon is heartened by how television has branched into portraying other aspects of gay experience. Like Rob, he does not take issue with having the club scene depicted, as it is “certainly a part of the gay community.” Rob and Brandon’s comments echo the comments of those interviewees who viewed personal-level portrayals of gay characters to be based on stereotypes, but hesitated to condemn the portrayals because they resonated to a degree. Similarly, Rob and Brandon find the communal-level depiction of club culture to be both stereotypical and somewhat accurate. Unlike what some interviewees said about Queer as Folk and other shows in the section just above, Brandon observes political engagement that provides more dimension to the characters and their experience. The deepening of experience for the characters has brought about richer portrayals of community. As discussed earlier, it is presumably necessary for multiple gay characters to exist on a show to allow for representations of gay community. Commenting on Six Feet Under, a program in which the gay characters are distinctly in the minority, Alex, a 38-year-old gay man, still finds affirming portrayals of both gay community and gay integration into straight society. He comments: Six Feet Under I think does a really excellent job of um, both presenting a community um, and also integrating the characters into the larger heterosexual world. Um, and maybe it’s because um, you know the one character was coming out so they got to explore that whole transition um, as opposed to just having this . . . gay person that they drop into the, to the mix. Viewers watched Michael on Six Feet Under as he gradually came out to more people and explored his place in the gay community. This allowed a rare chance for viewers to see a character move between communities with ease. Alex continues: Well I mean, you know I remember he participated in the gay men’s chorus, um, and is involved in his church and his

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partner ’s involved with the police department, you know, a bunch of other stuff, feeding the homeless, so you saw, really saw them interacting in, in a much broader context of community than just living in the one set that TV sitcom people live in. The dramatic format of Six Feet Under allows its major gay character, Michael, to venture out of his family home and into the community. Some of the Michael’s activities focused on involvement in the gay community, while others were more generally community-oriented. Meanwhile, Scott, a 24-year-old gay man, transitions from recognizing no real sense of community in Queer as Folk to finding that the show indeed gives its gay characters experiences that are rarely depicted on other shows. He says: We don’t really see much of the gay community outside of the characters on that show, which stands to reason, it wouldn’t be a very interesting show if it kept showing random people. But um, well I would say maybe the gay and lesbian center that Brian constantly comes into conflict with in Queer as Folk, that represents something and the, the hospital where uh people are going who are getting sick and dying from ah AIDS infection. That is a critical part of the community that doesn’t get shown very much on the shows. So, I, I think that show probably more than any that I know of is the most connected to gay community. Doug, in the previous section, did not take issue with Will & Grace for predictably focusing on its core characters and not the community outside. Similarly, Scott initially sees Queer as Folk to be reasonable in its focus on its core cast, with no major sense of gay community outside of the central ensemble. However, when he considers the gay and lesbian community center and the AIDS hospital ward the show portrays, he finds that these are uncommon and valuable depictions. This further attests to the many ways that one may define and recognize community in general or gay community more specifically. Though it is not the opinion expressed by Rob or Brandon, some may feel it is damaging to portray gay characters engaged in the party scene at all because it may reinforce the stereotype that all gay people care about is drinking and picking up sex partners. However, it may be possible for party-centered bar culture and community-oriented involvement to exist in a harmonious combination. Derek, a 21-yearold gay man, comments:

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Again, another thing I like about Queer as Folk, they do show the diversity within the community. So even though they all party on Liberty Avenue, they’re all in the bar watching the show about like the perfect gays, or—I forget what the, what the name is but um, they’re seeing like these two men are partners and they’re successful, they’re success-, successful doctor and lawyer and you know they help out with like the AIDS project and like the homeless shelter and like they’re doing all these great things, which is another part of the community, and it’s part of any community, um gay or straight, you have people who live on the social scene, people who help, who help out in the community, people who’re doctors and lawyers, people who are escorts and strippers I mean . . . it’s great so there’re different senses of the community um on Queer as Folk in particular. Derek views the characters of Queer as Folk as engaged with the bar scene as well as other community-related projects that are not necessarily gay-centered causes. Like the actual gay population, there may be characters that are employed in the social sector of the community or employed in occupations with no explicit tie to a gay community. Likewise, the social pursuits of individuals may be focused on the gay social scene or on parts of the community with no express tie to a gay community. Derek welcomes the portrayal of gay communal experience in any of the many forms that it takes. The comments in this section suggest that at least some nonheterosexual viewers find portrayals of gay community on television to be both present and worthy. They see the potential for television to reflect how gay people operate in a predominantly heterosexual society while simultaneously being part of a societal subset with some of its own norms. Sometimes, though, they are qualified in their praise and note that television representations are only partially portraying the intricacies of gay community. Overall, interviewees offered varied views about gay community on television. While some see encouraging portrayals of community that are potentially beneficial for both gay and heterosexual audiences, some interviewees see little evidence of community at all. However, there is at minimum a degree of hope for those who would like to see gay characters as part of larger communities on television, and at least some shows can be viewed as taking steps in the right direction.

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DISCUSSION It is possible that individuals who are struggling with recognizing and/or accepting a non-heterosexual orientation may feel alone, unable to discuss the matter with others around them and isolated from others with such an orientation. Therefore, media in general or television specifically may be a helpful outlet to see a sense of gay community represented. Possibly such media portrayals could facilitate the process of accepting a non-heterosexual orientation for such individuals. Television could represent what the isolated individuals do not see around them. For this reason alone, the portrayals of gay community on television are potentially socially significant. Communal-level observations in this study called into question the proper definition and understanding of what community is and where it might be found. The contradictions in the thoughts of interviewees suggest that a cohesive sense of community might be more elusive than might be assumed. Of course, each interviewee had seen a different sampling of available television programs featuring gay characters. Some had seen very little representation of gay characters on television, while others had seen much of what is on offer. The specific efforts of many interviews to view programs featuring gay themes and characters also suggest that television portrayals might be viewed as a form of gay communal experience. Participants often considered their viewing of programs with gay characters to be acts that supported the community and served to encourage programmers to offer more depictions. This study was limited by the sample. Participants were overwhelmingly white, generally well-educated, and included only individuals that are particularly well-adjusted in terms of their gay, lesbian, or bisexual identity. Further study should investigate a more ethnically diverse sample; as Caucasian viewers look to television and see mainly Caucasian gay characters, viewers of color have far fewer representations, and the implications of this are worth investigating. Also, more investigation should involve those (of any age) who are still in the process of self-defining themselves with a sexual identity other than heterosexual. Whether television portrayals of gay characters and community are of any particular use to individuals who are coming to terms with socially-stigmatized sexual identity is an important unanswered question. Interview participants found certain aspects lacking in terms of depictions of gay characters on television, but this should not suggest

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that they found no entertainment or social value in what they viewed. Interviewees differed on how successful or useful they found current depictions of gay identity on television to be. However, participants often expressed hope that in the future there would be more gay characters overall and more variety in the portrayal of non-heterosexual people and their experiences. Listening to the voices of people who are underrepresented or unrepresented in American popular culture can let us know what is missing from the media landscape which, for better or worse, is a source of a great deal of information for many people. Several interviewees noted how media representation either reflected or encouraged a degree of social legitimacy for lesbian, gay, and bisexual people. While no participants were wholly impressed with television depictions of gay characters or community, most were greatly pleased that representation does exist. Overall, there is reason to hope that in the future even more diversified non-heterosexual identities and communities are likely to be available to all television viewers. REFERENCES Battles, K., and W. Hilton-Morrow. “Gay Characters in Conventional Spaces: Will and Grace and the Situation Comedy Genre.” Critical Studies in Media Communication, 19 (2002): 87–105. Bohm, A. “Theoretical Coding: Text Analysis in Grounded Theory.” In A Companion to Qualitative Research, edited by U. Flick, E. von Kardorff, and I. Steinke, 267–275. London: Sage, 2004. Capsuto, S. Alternate Channels: The Uncensored Story of Gay and Lesbian Images on Radio and Television. New York: Ballantine Books, 2000. Dow, B. J. “Ellen, Television, and the Politics of Gay and Lesbian Visibility.” Critical Studies in Media Communication, 18 (2001): 123–140. Fejes, F. “Making a Gay Masculinity.” Critical Studies in Media Communication, 17 (2000): 113–116. Fejes, F., and K. Petrich. “Invisibility and Heterosexism: Lesbians, Gays, and the Media.” Critical Studies in Media Communication, 10 (1993): 396–422. Gross, L. “Minorities, Majorities and the Media.” In Media, Ritual and Identity, edited by T. Liebes and J. Curran, 87–102. London: Routledge, 1998. Hecht, M. L. “2002—A Research Odyssey: Toward the Development of a Communication Theory of Identity.” Communication Monographs, 60 (1993). 76–82. Hecht, M. L., M. J. Collier, and S. A. Ribeau. African American Communication: Ethnic Identity and Cultural Interpretation. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1993.

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Hecht, M. L., R. L. Jackson, and S. A. Ribeau. African American Communication: Exploring Identity and Culture. Mohwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2003. Horowitz, J. L., and M. D. Newcomb. “A Multidimensional Approach to Homosexual Identity.” Journal of Homosexuality, 42 (2001): 1–20. Rich, F. “Gay Kiss: Business as Usual.” New York Times, June 20, 2003, section 2, 1, 7. Shugart, H. A. “Reinventing Privilege: The New (Gay) Man in Contemporary Popular Media.” Critical Studies in Media Communication, 20 (2003): 67–91. Strauss, A., and J. Corbin. Basics of Qualitative Research: Grounded Theory Procedures and Techniques. Newbury Park: Sage, 1990. Svetsky, B. “Is Your TV Set Gay?” Entertainment Weekly, October 6, 2000, 24–28. Tropiano, S. The Prime Time Closet: A History of Gays and Lesbians on TV. New York: Applause Theatre & Cinema Books, 2002. Walters, S. D. All the Rage: The Story of Gay Visibility in America. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2001.

Chapter 13

Camp Figures of American Television in the Sixties and Seventies: A Boyhood Memory Walter R. Holland

For a teenager growing up in Lynchburg, Virginia in the sixties and seventies, Liberace was an extravagant, flamboyant, figure of mystery on the TV. With his flashy costumes and jewel-encrusted pianos and shiny candelabras he presented a view of visual showmanship I had never seen before on national television. His appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show and in the Batman series left me curious. My father and mother called it “schmaltz,” but I was captivated by his outlandish gowns and his way of joking and chatting with the audience. His lighting was dramatic, and his routine included split images, costume changes, and witty repartee as he shifted from classical songs to pop standards. My life back then was haunted by any number of queer figures who made the rounds of late night TV programs, game shows, or TV sitcoms. Television was beginning to change. Sitcoms were moving away from the fifties “family-oriented” competition. As Stephen Tropiano mentions in The Prime Time Closet: In the early 1960s, a second wave of sitcoms gave the backbone of American patriarchal society—the nuclear family—a muchneeded makeover. Although they advocated the same profamily values, The Addams Family, Bewitched, and The Munsters,

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all of which debuted in the 1964–1965 TV season, had definite gay appeal. They represented the “other” kind of American family— the one that didn’t live in the white-picket-fenced-in world of the Nelsons and the Cleavers.1 In regards to the characters in some of these shows and their gaystraight dynamic, Tropiano writes: The gay-straight male characters were typically flamboyant or had “feminine” characteristics: Bewitched’s practical joker Uncle Arthur (Paul Lynde), shy science teacher Mr. Peepers (Wally Cox), Ghost and Mrs. Muir’s scaredy-cat landlord Claymore Gregg (Charles Nelson Reilly) and The Odd Couple’s fussy Felix Unger (Tony Randall).2 Paul Lynde was a character who crossed the line of comedy and outrageous behavior. Charles Nelson Reilly appeared on Password, $10,000 Pyramid, and The Match Game and was also a queer celebrity. Truman Capote, the author, was a frequent guest on talk shows with his strange voice, hat, sunglasses, and affected manner. What I failed to understand back then was how all these men were connected by a gay sensibility and a camp sense of wit and display that I would learn later to decode. As I grew up and came out as a gay man I began to understand why they made me strangely uncomfortable back then and why I identified with them in my own way. Jack Babuscio, in his essay titled “Camp and the Gay Sensibility,” defines a gay sensibility as: a creative energy reflecting a consciousness that is different from the mainstream; a heightened awareness of certain human complications of feeling that spring from the fact of social oppression; in short, a perception of the world which is colored, shaped, directed, and defined by the fact of one’s gayness.3 This sense of difference led these men to use their brazen humor and bravado to say things that I sensed were shocking to most adults. They alluded to another way of life I could only imagine. In their play of male stereotypes from butch to swish, these swish comedians, performers, and authors taunted me by their effeminate poses. These were men who challenged the fringe of good taste and classic masculinity. Paul Lynde struck me as anything but butch, even before

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I understood the true meaning of the term. Likewise, Liberace was an odd vision of manhood with his outre´ clothes and elaborate make-up. And then there was Truman with his mincing voice and his odd highpitched locution, and finally Charles Nelson Reilly with his fey mannerisms and his erratic stories and manic demeanor. These court jesters or tricksters of the video world delighted their audience by their audacity to speak in a veiled lingo, by innuendo, and via double entendre to call attention to their queerness. Older now, I can not but marvel at how they negotiated the world of homophobia by the overriding cover of showmanship and “entertainment.” For how many years have homosexuals entertained the general populace or were tolerated for their cleverness or their language skills of wit, the rapier sword of their tongues countering oppression and intolerance. The fascination becomes one of seeing how much they get away with and with their uses of camp. This chapter intends to explore some aspects of camp and how it was reflected by these men on TV. As Susan Sontag writes in “Notes on Camp”: The history of Camp taste is part of the history of snob taste . . . who is the bearer of this taste? Answer: an improvised selfelected class, mainly homosexuals, who constitute themselves as aristocrats of taste . . . Homosexuals have pinned their integration into society on promoting the aesthetic sense. Camp is a solvent of morality. It neutralizes moral indignation, sponsors playfulness.4 In just such a manner Truman Capote could appear as a snob and as arrogant. He could manufacture lies on the spot and trade in gossip which could disarm and attack those he treasured as friends, as he did in his Answered Prayers, the tell-all book that betrayed the wealthy coterie that patronized him for years. Capote’s playfulness and wit gave him carte blanche. He became a humorous figure on the talk shows, known for saying things scandalous. On other fronts, Paul Lynde with his snickering banter and Charles Nelson Reilly with their double entendres could use humor as another aspect of their camp personae. Jack Babuscio describes camp humor as follows: Humor constitutes the strategy of camp: a means of dealing with a hostile environment and, in the process, of defining a positive identity. This humor takes several forms. Chief of these is bitter-wit, which expresses an underlying hostility and fear. Society says to

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gays (and to all stigmatized groups) that we are members of the wider community; we are subject to the same laws as “normals;” we must pay our taxes, and so on; we are, in short, “just like everybody else.” On the other hand, we are not received into society on equal terms; indeed, we are told that we are unacceptably “different” in ways that are absolutely fundamental to our sense of self and social identity. In other words the message conveyed to us by society is highly contradictory: we are just like everyone else, and yet . . . we are not. It is this basic contradiction, this joke, that has traditionally been our destiny.5 Playfulness is key here to gay sensibility and the sense of camp and irony, theatricality and humor which pervades much of these performer’s acts. American popular culture assimilated these men because of their homespun appeal as well. Liberace and Paul Lynde played the good uncle role or the caring father. Lynde was the father in Bye Bye Birdie. His conventionality and gullibility were a careful study in American mores. Liberace included his family in his audience and tried to project the image of a family man who was generous and supportive of his fan base, the middle-aged women who saw him as their sensitive, courteous shining knight, a knight in fur and sequins instead of shining armor. The discontinuity of this presentation of Paul Lynde as the heterosexual paternal figure and his effeminate, bitter, bitching self and Liberace as classically trained serious musician with Old World charm and aristocratic manner underscores the idea of camp irony. Babuscio again tells us that “irony is the subject matter of camp and refers here to any highly incongruous contrast between an individual or thing and its context or association. The most common of incongruous contrasts is that of masculine/feminine.”6 He goes on to state that “at the core of this perception of incongruity is the idea of gayness as a moral deviation.”7 These men stood in contrast to the more closeted men of TV. Dick Sargent comes to mind. “The second Darrin Stephens” on the television show Bewitched from 1969 to 1972, Sargent denied his sexual orientation and kept it hidden. He often appeared with lesbian actress Fannie Flagg on game shows and in public. In truth, Sargent lived with his life partner Albert Williams until his death. In June 1992 he was a Grand Marshal of the Los Angeles Gay Pride parade along with his former co-star Elizabeth Montgomery. Sargent “passed” as straight in playing a conventional role and playing it well. Like Rock Hudson, the importance of “passing” was

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tantamount for the career of a serious actor or leading man on TV. However, the gay comedian could get away with bloody murder by making fun of that very seriousness and pretense. Raymond Burr was another figure on TV who feared greatly exposure of his homosexuality. For years he shunned publicity which might reveal his true identity. In the late seventies, I went to visit my boyfriend at the South Shore Music Circus in Cohasset, Massachusetts. Liberace was to play that weekend. My boyfriend was stage manager. Rumor had it that he always came with an entourage of pretty boys, and so it seemed that there was one star-crossed boy after another to arrange his costumes and hang around outside the tent. His demands as a showman were well-known for the elaborate staging, lighting, and costumes. My boyfriend marveled at the excessive attention of the women, the housewives from Boston and the outlying areas who screamed and yelled like teenagers and crowded the stage to touch one of his gowns or receive a kiss on the hand. Such adoration from the opposite sex seemed at odds with the reality of the man my boyfriend and I encountered, if but briefly from the sound booth of a music theater. To my mind at that time, on the cusp of the AIDS eighties, the risky line between being queer and out was fraught with trouble and danger. Rock Hudson had flatly denied being gay and yet in later life was exposed in all the known tragedy of his secretive life. Liberace waged two lawsuits successfully in his lifetime, first suing The Daily Mirror in London in 1957 for an article that called Liberace “fruitflavored” and secondly against Confidential, a U.S. magazine that in 1957 shouted, “Why Liberace’s Theme Song Should Be ‘Mad About the Boy!’ ” And then there was the 1982 palimony suit brought by his alleged live-in boyfriend of some five years, Scott Thorson, who sued the pianist for $113 million after splitting up. In 1984 most of Thorson’s claim was dismissed, although he received a $95,000 settlement. There were links with actress Joanne Rio, skater Sonja Henie, aging icon Mae West, and transsexual Christine Jorgenson, all seemingly odd attempts to counter the gay rumors that swarmed around Liberace’s life. Fast forward to the spring of 2002 when my partner of 21 years and I went to Las Vegas, Nevada. It was there I went to The Liberace Museum, which opened in 1979. Located in a strip mall, the tacky environs seemed oddly appropriate for the museum’s collection. Where else could we indulge an hour out of the scorching Vegas sunlight to peruse a collection of cars, gowns, pianos, candelabras, and kitsch collected from his years in the business.

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At his death on February 4, 1987, from AIDS and at the age of 67, his legend lived on. Here we walked beside somber matrons who still seemed to be mourning the loss. The gift shop was arrayed with every known form of merchandising, from watches to pencils and from key chains to mugs to ties, the final act of a showman’s legacy. Standing in front of one of his jeweled capes, it was hard not to contemplate the magic charisma of a man who was born one Wladziu Valentino Liberace in West Allis, Wisconsin. The child of a Polish American, Frances Zuchowska, and an Italian immigrant father, Salvatore Liberace, Liberace was introduced to music by his father, who played the French horn in local bands and at movie theaters. Encouraged by his father and taking music lessons, Liberace began playing piano at four years old, while his father took him to concerts to further expose him to music. He studied the piano technique of the famous Polish pianist and later family friend Paderewski and at eight Liberace met the pianist backstage. During the Great Depression, the teenage Liberace suffered like all gay boys from the taunts of neighborhood children who mocked his avoidance of sports and his fondness for piano and cooking. Liberace also had a speech problem, which didn’t help matters. He focused on his piano and played music on local radio, for dance classes, for clubs, and for weddings. He played jazz with a local group called the “Mixers” in 1934. For a while he used the stage name “Walter Busterkeys” before settling on just plain Liberace. Between 1942 and 1944 he moved away from straight classical performance and reinvented himself into “playing pop with a bit of classics,” or as he later called it “classical music with the boring parts left out.” In the late 1940s he was performing in nightclubs in major cities around the country. In 1944 he made his first appearance in Las Vegas, which later became his principal home. And what better place for the showmanship and artifice of one who surrounded his life with kitsch and seemed to make himself larger than life. His eccentricity lent itself to the culture of the Vegas Strip. His stage show, which featured the classical and the mundane, cozy stage chatter and schmaltz, sentimental songs and flamboyant hand gestures, coalesced to present something strange and yet comfy for mass audiences. Custom-decorated pianos with sequins and mirrors, nothing was too excessive. In 1947 he moved to North Hollywood, California and performed at such local clubs as Ciro’s and Mocambo’s. Like Rock Hudson, Liberace had a very successful publicity machine behind him to rocket him to stardom. To reach a larger audience he began to

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appear in television and movies and on records. His New York City performance at Madison Square Garden in 1954 gave him $138,000 for one performance. By 1955 he was making $50,000 per week at the Riviera Hotel and Casino and had over 200 official fan clubs with a quarter of a million fans. He was making over $1,000,000 per year from public appearances and millions from television. He was the ultimate pitchman, selling to the crowd and shameless in his promotional tie-ins. In later life he made his way on television. In 1955, the producer Duke Goldstone mounted filmed versions of Liberace’s shows for syndication. These were immensely popular. He always created a sense of domesticity in his shows. His family often was present. His brother George appeared as guest violinist and orchestra director, and his mother was usually in the front row of the audience with brother Rudy and sister Angelina to lend a sense of “family.” These attempts at domesticity were to conform to the schmaltz of family-style programming. He appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show, where I first saw him. He was on the Edward R. Murrow program Person to Person and on the shows of Jack Benny and Red Skelton. He was a welcome guest on The Tonight Show with Jack Paar in the 1960s. During the 1970s he appeared in guest roles of Here’s Lucy and Kojack and The Monkees as well as The Muppet Show. His albums such as Liberace by Candlelight sold over 400,000 albums by mid-1954. His most popular single was Ave Maria, selling over 300, 000 copies. It was his sense of theatricality which made him seem a figure of pure camp. As Jack Babuscio mentions again in his essay Camp and the Gay Sensibility, theatricality is the third element of camp. Babuscio writes: To appreciate camp in things or persons is to perceive the notion of life-as-theater, being versus role-playing, reality and appearance. . . .Theatricality relates to the gay situation primarily in respect to roles. Gays do not conform to sex-role expectations: we do not show appropriate interest in the opposite sex as possible source of sexual satisfaction.8 He goes on to state: The art of passing is an acting art: to pass is to be “on stage,” to impersonate heterosexual citizenry, to pretend to be “real” (i.e., straight man or woman). . . .The experience of passing is often productive of a gay sensibility. It can, and often does, lead to a

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heightened awareness and appreciation for disguise, impersonation, the projection of personality, and the distinctions to be made between instinctive and theatrical behavior. The experience of passing would appear to explain the enthusiasm of so many in our community for certain stars whose performances are highly charged with exaggerated (usual sexual) role-playing.9 Who better than Liberace to show some of this exaggeration. His capes and pianos and persona as a Don Juan wooing through music were anything but an ironic expression given his femininity and sensitivity in real life. His flamboyant kissing of women’s hands and his display of chivalry and Old World charm were all meant to signify a swarthy, bold masculinity that was in truth campy and ridiculous. Liberace also embraces an aesthetic element, which is basic to camp. “It is through Art, and through Art only,” Babuscio quoting Wilde tells us, “that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence.” By surrounding himself with jeweled pianos and enforcing the standards of rigorous classical musicianship, Liberace dedicated his life to his artistry at the sacrifice of personal fulfillment or selfhonesty. Liberace covered the two worlds of Low Camp and High Camp. Low Camp was defined by Christopher Isherwood as “a swishy little boy with peroxided hair, dressed in a picture hat and a feather boa, pretending to be Marlene Dietrich,”10 where High Camp is “the whole emotional basis of the ballet, for example, and of course of baroque art.”11 High Camp “always has an underlying seriousness.”12 Liberace swings from the high seriousness of the world of classical music with it pretentious display of professionalism, sophistication, and snobbery to the more mundane world of the circus performer, dazzling with tricks and eye-grabbing costumes to delight a vulgar audience where “Home on the Range” or some popular ballad is the pinnacle of entertainment. This constant alternation between beauty and stylization and artifice and kitsch gave Liberace his camp value. Whether elitist or egalitarian, Liberace succeeds at bridging mass culture with a more refined, higher one. To Sontag, camp is “failed seriousness,” organized by “a disparity between intention and result,” something “good because it’s awful.”13 Liberace fails at his seriousness as a classical musician by the way he makes mediocre the high works of classical music and submits everything to the pure test of entertainment in a mass market. At times his performances were just “awful,” and it is this “awfulness” that lent

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their humor and irony. The debasement of Chopin works with pop ballads made one laugh. Camp lends itself to a consumerist market, and indeed Liberace became the ultimate spokesperson and marketer. He promoted many products during his lifetime, accepting the degree to which artifice ruled his life. Liberace embraces as well the image of the dandy. The dandy, Michael Bronski, tells us in his Culture Clash: The Making of Gay Sensibility, “cultivated refinement to con the upper classes into accepting him.”14 “The dandy catered to autocratic sensibility: all style and no content.”15 “Taste was life’s most important attainment: any politics, emotions, or ethics that conflicted with this goal were to be discarded.”16 Liberace saw “art, form, style, and ‘posing’ ” as “outside of accepted social and moral codes. Their value was intrinsic, their power was that they represented an alternative and a threat to those codes.”17 By making the artifice of his showmanship and his rarified aesthetic with candelabras, piano set-pieces, capes, and aristocratic pretensions the focus of his sensibility, Liberace could hide his own personal life and incongruous existence as a queer man. As Sontag has written: The essence of Camp is its love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration . . . something of a private code, a badge of identity. . . . Camp is a certain mode of aestheticism. It is one way of seeing the world as an aesthetic phenomenon . . . not in terms of beauty, but in terms of the degree of artifice, of stylization.18 In a way, Liberace mixed elements of drag with his performance. His exaggerated costumes constituted a frilly masculinity, draped in ermine or mink, and the assumption was he was impersonating something other than himself, larger than life perhaps and equally regal, portentous, seductive, and licentious. This was all outre´ entertainment but suggests the de´classe´ status of drag, its carnivalesque attitude, where one poses as another, transgressing codes of gender. Michael Bronski tells us: Drag allows the wearer to make a comment upon usual gender assignments, to perhaps act out his own feelings (which may not be acceptable for a biological man) or to act in a flamboyant manner acceptable for a drag queen but not for a “real” man or a woman.19

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Liberace’s true life did not come to the fore until 1988 when both ABC’s Liberace and CBS’s Liberace: Behind the Music aired on TV. These biopics dealt more explicitly with Liberace’s close relationship with his mother, his palimony suit, and his death from AIDS in 1987.20 Self-awareness and self-irony were the sly tools of comedians as well, such as Paul Lynde and Charles Nelson Reilly, and an author such as Truman Capote, who could make allusions to their double lives but never cross the line of actually proclaiming their sexuality. Their lack of masculine bravado, their fey responses and asides, showed but never told their true identities. As Bronski tells us: Gay men could use camp to protect themselves, but another, more aggressive strategy was needed to fight heterosexual oppression: wit. In its earliest meanings, “wit” referred to the capacity for thought, intellectual ability. In the mid-sixteenth century, it took on its contemporary connotation of “quickness of intellect or liveliness of fancy; talent for saying brilliant or sparkling things, especially in an amusing way.”21 Bronski goes on to tell us, in the case of Oscar Wilde: Wilde’s wit encompassed both the older and the more contemporary meanings of the term. Not only was what he said funny, it was also incisive and truthful. And, most importantly, it was a means of criticizing social mores and structures while shielding himself from retribution.22 It should come as no surprise that Lynde, Reilly, and Capote were extremely intelligent, well-educated men who often made comments that were truthful and tinged with bitterness and incisiveness in the Wilde mold. Bronski tells us: “Gays have hidden themselves from oppressive straight society through circumlocution—camp—and defended themselves through wit.”23 The hysterics of Lynde as the father, Harry McAfee, in Bye Bye Birdie is an expression of “emotions usually kept under wraps. By exaggerating, stylizing, and remaking what is usually thought to be average or normal, camp creates a world in which the real becomes unreal, the threatening, unthreatening.”24 The 1960 musical was later released in a film adaptation in 1963. Lynde was later, as we know, the regular “center square” guest on Hollywood Squares from 1968 to 1981.

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Born in Mount Vernon, Ohio, Lynde studied drama at Northwestern University. He graduated in 1948 and came to New York City, where he worked as a stand-up comic. He made his debut in New Faces of 1952, in which he co-starred with Eartha Kitt, Alice Ghostley, and Carol Lawrence. Bye Bye Birdie catapulted him to some fame, and before long he was a regular on shows such as The Phil Silver Show, The Munsters, I Dream of Jeannie, The Perry Como Show, and The Dean Martin Show. It was in Hollywood Squares that he seemed to give out adept oneliners, many of them gags that were veiled allusions to his homosexuality or double entendres. His snickering delivery often left me shocked. In actual life, Paul Lynde was involved in an accident in 1965 when his lover, a young actor, fell to his death from the window of their hotel room in San Francisco’s Sir Francis Drake Hotel. They had been drinking when Davidson slipped and fell eight stories. The incident drew attention to Lynde’s enjoyment of drinking and partying. Lynde’s own life ended with a heart attack in Beverly Hills in 1982. Even as a boy I detected something in his grimaces and snickering that alluded to another hidden world of deviance, to a place not talked about among adults. It was in this humorous way that I thought queer men were able to survive and be important in the workplace. Lynde in Bye Bye Birdie was the exaggeration of a heterosexual paternal figure. David Bergman tells us in his fine “Introduction” to Camp Grounds that “the hyperbolic, parodic, anarchic, redundant style of camp is the very way to bring heterosexist attitudes of “originality,” “naturalism,” and “normalcy” to their knees.”25 “For [Judith] Butler nothing succeeds in subverting the straight like excess.”26 And so indeed does Lynde strike a humorous tone as we see the irony in him “playing it straight,” when it is obvious he is anything but the exemplar of heterosexual values and stereotypes. A sample of some sound bytes from Paul Lynde on Hollywood Squares include the following: Peter Marshall: Paul Lynde: Peter Marshall: Paul Lynde:

Paul, why do motorcycle riders wear leather? Because chiffon wrinkles. Paul, at what age does a person understand the meaning of a spanking? The true meaning?—Twenty-three.

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Kate Smith was once quoted as saying, “That’s the most disgusting thing I could ever imagine.” What was she talking about? Showering with Orson Welles.27

The wit and bravado of these answers make veiled allusions to another life, a homosexual one. Such exchanges are similar to those of Charles Nelson Reilly, who used the spontaneous power of live TV to create a camp performance of larger-than-life proportions. Sometimes like a drunk who has been loosened of inhibitions, Nelson Reilly would preen and pamper a male guest to the detriment of a female one, would make fun of celebrity and all its trappings, and in one episode of The Match Game take over as host to hilarious effect. Nelson Reilly was born in the Bronx in New York City, the son of an Irish Catholic commercial artist and a Swedish Lutheran mother. He made his first motion picture appearance in 1957 in Elia Kazan’s A Face in the Crowd. His big break came with Bye Bye Birdie in 1960 on Broadway. He had a bit part but was a standby for Dick Van Dyke in the leading role of Albert Peterson. In 1961 he was in the original cast of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, for which he earned a Tony Award for his role of Bud Frump. In 1964 he received a second Tony Award nomination for his performance as Cornelius Hackl in Hello Dolly! In the sixties he appeared regularly on TV. He was on What’s My Line and The Steve Lawrence Show. He was also in the television series The Ghost & Mrs. Muir, which starred Hope Lange and Edward Mulhare. By the 1970s Reilly was a regular on The Dean Martin Show and made other appearances on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. He made appearances on McMillan and Wife; Here’s Lucy; Laugh In; The Love Boat; and Love, American Style. Truman Capote was no stranger to queer celebrity. I remember him on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and was intrigued by his notoriety. In Cold Blood his non-fiction novel which was serialized in The New Yorker in 1965 and was published in hardcover by Random House in 1966, had brought him literary acclaim. His November 28, 1966, Black and White Ball in honor of the Washington Post publisher Katherine Graham has become a legendary event. His tell-all Answered Prayers: The Unfinished Novel began to appear in 1975 and 1976. In the late 1970s Capote was frequently in and out of rehabilitation clinics and had a series of breakdowns. He died in 1984 at the age of

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59 of liver disease and multiple drug intoxication. His longtime companion, author Jack Dunphy, died in 1992, and in 1994 both his and Capote’s ashes were scattered on Long Island. Capote was one who could quip, “We all know a fag is a homosexual gentleman who has just left the room.”28 Quotations such as this were joined by many others over the years, shared on TV shows and celebrity interviews. A sampling of some Capote quotations include:29 A conversation is a dialogue, not a monologue. That’s why there are so few good conversations: due to scarcity, two intelligent talkers seldom meet. All literature is gossip. Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor. Fame is only good for one thing—they will cash your check in a small town. Finishing a book is like you took a child out in the back yard and shot it. Friendship is a pretty-full-time occupation if you really are friendly with somebody. You can’t have too many friends because then you’re not really friends. I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil. I can see every monster as they come in. I don’t care what anybody says about me as long as it isn’t true. I got this idea of doing a really serious big work—it would be precisely like a novel, with a single difference: Every word of it would be true from beginning to end. I like to talk on TV about those things that aren’t worth writing about. Mick Jagger is about as sexy as a pissing toad. That’s not writing, that’s typing. Venice is like eating an entire box of chocolate liqueurs in one go. And such other quotations as:30 It’s a scientific fact that if you stay in California you lose one point of your IQ every year. Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act. These witty epigrams or truthful bon mots exhibit the expert crafting of camp and a gay sensibility and drew attention to the author.

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The barbed tongue of Capote provoked an air of controversy which drew many supporters and protractors to his side. Like Judy Garland and other tragic figures, there was a certain camp sensibility in watching the self-destructive behavior of Capote as he appeared on the talk shows, revealing his dependency on drugs and alcohol and his terrible insecurities and loneliness. To each of these figures I felt an uncommon bond, for each introduced me in their own way to a sensibility I would later share. They taught me how to camp it up and to live within the ironic dictates of a gender-stereotyped world. NOTES 1. Stephen Tropiano, The Prime Time Closet: A History of Gays and Lesbians on TV (New York: Applause Theatre & Cinema, 2002), 185. 2. Ibid., 186. 3. Jack Babuscio, “Camp and the Gay Sensibility,” in Camp Ground: Style and Homosexuality, ed. David Bergman (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts, 1993), 19. 4. Susan Sontag, “Notes on Camp,” in Against Interpretation and Other Essays (New York: Dell, 1966), 277. 5. Babuscio, “Camp and the Gay Sensibility,” 27. 6. Babuscio, “Camp and the Gay Sensibility,” 20. 7. Ibid., 20. 8. Ibid., 24. 9. Ibid., 25. 10. David Berman, “Introduction,” in Camp Grounds: Style and Homosexuality, ed. David Bergman (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts, 1993), 4. 11. Ibid., 4. 12. Ibid., 4. 13. David Bergman, “Introduction,” 9. 14. Michael Bronski, Culture Clash: The Making of Gay Sensibility (Boston: South End Press, 1984), 57. 15. Ibid., 57. 16. Ibid., 57. 17. Ibid., 58. 18. Ibid., 42. 19. Ibid., 43. 20. Tropiano, The Prime Time Closet, 149. 21. Ibid., 43. 22. Ibid., 43. 23. Ibid., 46. 24. Ibid., 42.

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25. David Bergman, Camp Grounds, 11. 26. Ibid., 11. 27. The Gay Almanac (New York: Berkley Books, 1996), 212. 28. Ibid., 70. 29. http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/t/truman _capote.html. 30. http://www.quotes.net/authors/Truman+Capote.

REFERENCES Bergman, David. Camp Grounds: Style and Homosexuality. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts. 1993. Bronski, Michael. Culture Clash: The Making of Gay Sensibility. Boston: South End Press, 1984. http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/t/truman_capote.html. http://www.quotes.net/authors/Truman+Capote. http://en.wicipedia.org/wiki/Truman_Capote. http://en.wickipedia.org/wiki/Liberace. http://en.wickipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Lynde. http://en.wickipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Nelson_Reilly. The Gay Almanac (New York: Berkley Books, 1996). Sontag, S. “Notes on Camp.” In Against Interpretation and Other Essays. New York: Dell, 1966. Tropiano, S. The Prime Time Closet: A History of Gays and Lesbians on TV. New York: Applause Theatre & Cinema Books, 2002.

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Chapter 14

“We’ll Have a Gay Old Time!”: Queer Representation in American Prime-Time Animation from the Cartoon Short to the Family Sitcom Jo Johnson

With its inherent plasticity, the medium of animation has a long history of distorting, moulding, and subverting reality, rendering the boundaries of anatomy, gender, and sexually as infinitely malleable. Both animated animals and humans alike have the inbred capability for subversion, challenging the traditions of male and female, heterosexuality and homosexuality. Popular prime-time characters such as Bugs Bunny and SpongeBob SquarePants have consistently challenged the signifiers of traditional masculinity, and human characters such as Disney’s Mulan possess the ability to successfully “pass” as the opposite sex. Controversial issues such as gay marriage and adoption are addressed in subversive sitcoms such as The Simpsons, where social norms, traditional “family values,” and the definitions and boundaries of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender representations are satirized and challenged. The queer character lies not only in the few “outed” residents of animated suburbia, but also in the archaic antics of cat versus mouse. The representation of early anarchic cartoons by the nineties subversive

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sitcom has enabled the queer character to emerge from its relegated position between the cels of animation, and drop an anvil on the head of heteronormativity. But could the comedic representation of the queer character arguably be just another opportunity for satire? Or could it finally and successfully function to prompt the queer character and its controversy out of the realm of make-believe and into reality? THE JERRY-GO-ROUND OF ANTHROPOMORPHIZED GENDER “The notion of being a [cartoon] man or a woman is merely alluded to through the ambiguous traits associated with masculinity and femininity” (Wells 1998, 50). These traits are plentiful throughout animation history, as defining what one perceives to be a male or female character. Wells explains that “the cartoon female, as defined through the assumed traits of femininity, is designed in relation to the primary representation of the male character” (204). Traits such as long eyelashes, high heels, bows, and dresses represent the traditionally feminine cartoon aesthetic and run in direct opposition to the male aesthetic. When comparing Disney’s Mickey Mouse to Minnie Mouse, it is clear that the overall character design is the same; underneath their attributed aesthetic traits they are completely identical. What separates animated characters in terms of gender is a set of signifiers: Minnie’s eyes are larger and defined by overtly long eyelashes; her mouth is smaller, and her movements are contained and graceful. Also of significance is the representation of genitalia, frequently implied in the female characters by visible panties. The anatomical differences that traditionally indicate a certain gender, however, are rarely evident in the asexual anthropomorphized cartoon characters created by Disney, Warner Brothers, or Hannah-Barbera. Warner Brothers’ Looney Tunes shorts often utilized the malleability of their animated characters by squashing, stretching, and sometimes completely morphing their anatomy, literally embodying the idea of physical humor. As introduced by Stabile and Harrison, “By and large, animation did not strive for verisimilitude, but rather was characterized by a plasticity and mobility of graphic forms, a style that was reflective of the mediums native potential” (2003, 5). The notion of creating an ‘unreliable space,’ as put forward by Klein (1993), destabilizes narrative by revealing the mechanisms of the medium; it pulls the audience out of the comfort of the traditional narrative and challenges the conventional notion of anatomy and gender. By using the

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medium’s ‘native potential’ of malleability and physical defiance, the characters of the cartoon short are able to re-mold their physical appearance, seamlessly switching gender, sexuality, or defying death by literally bouncing back to their original shape. Wells explains that this malleability demonstrates that “both the physical and ideological boundaries of the anthropomorphised body as it exists in the cartoon are perpetually in a state of transition, refusing a consistent identity” (1998, 206). GENDERING JERRY Tom and Jerry embody the age-old rival of opposites: cat versus mouse and, when it comes to the traditionally masculine and feminine signifiers associated with gender performance, male versus female. Chuck Jones’s 1963–1967 realizations of the characters strongly enhanced the feminine aspects of Jerry’s aesthetic make-up, arguably gendering Jerry as female. Jerry’s eyes are enlarged and the eyelashes exaggerated, adhering to the artistic traditions of animated femininity. Her other facial features are less significant and her body is cuter; more round and plump. While the character and design of the cartoon mouse is consistently androgynous, the cartoon cat is interestingly not faced with the same uncertainty. Tom’s exaggerated eyebrows and grotesque facial expressions substantiate his hefty, masculine body movements; Jerry is comparatively delicate and graceful. This variance in bodily expression not only mirrors their differing intelligence regarding their ongoing rivalry, but simultaneously codes Tom and Jerry as gender opposites. Patrick Brion raises the question of Jerry’s gender: “The relationship of Tom and Jerry is very curious. It vacillates between hostility and friendship. The complicity of a latent love is carefully sustained by the ambiguity of Jerry’s sex” (Brion in Wells 1998, 208). Another possibility put forward by Wells is that in addition to a heterosexual love sustained by Jerry’s occasional feminization, there is also a “possibility of a homo-erotic sub-text and, indeed, notions of cross-species coupling and the blurring of gender caused by cross-dressing” (1998, 208). Tom and Jerry not only symbolizes the perpetual conflict between cat and mouse, but also the constant shift in gender boundaries displayed by the varying representation of masculine and feminine signifiers. As Wells explains, characters such as Jerry are “involved in momentary performances which demonstrate that the definition and recognition of gender representation is in flux” (206).

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SEXING THE SPONGE This flux in gender representation has most recently taken up residence at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Former marine biologist Stephen Hillenburg, one of the producers of the 1993 cartoon Rocko’s Modern Life, created SpongeBob SquarePants, which centers on a yellow sea sponge who lives in a pineapple in the town of Bikini Bottom. He has a house snail named Gary and his best friend, Patrick, a pink starfish, lives under a neighboring rock. Like many children’s cartoon characters, SpongeBob lives a simple life. He loves his job as a chef at the local burger joint, The Krusty Krab, and enjoys jelly-fishing, karate, and blowing bubbles. On first viewing, SpongeBob SquarePants appears to be like any popular children’s cartoon. It is a brightly coloured concoction of sugar-coated anarchy, yet in 2007 Time magazine voted SpongeBob SquarePants, alongside fellow animated shows Beavis and Butthead, The Simpsons, King of the Hill, and South Park as one of the top 100 greatest television shows of all time. SpongeBob sprang onto the screen in 1999 and captured the hearts of children and adults alike. Sporadically reminiscent of the grotesque style of shows such as Rocko’s Modern Life and Ren and Stimpy, SpongeBob switches from cute and cuddly preschool character to a darker, carnivalesque incarnation of subversive mayhem. This perhaps accounts for the show’s global appeal. Akin to the anthropomorphised Looney Tunes characters, SpongeBob is primarily asexual, and like other male non-human characters, his wardrobe is traditional. He sports proportionally high-waisted, fifties-style, brown shorts with a belt and a short-sleeved shirt with a bright red tie. Teamed with unfashionable sport socks pulled up high and sensible shoes, his wardrobe reflects a hybrid schoolboy-bachelor aesthetic, which, like Mickey Mouse, projects an ambiguity when it comes to his age; he can swap between playful pre-pubescent or responsible adult at whim. As explained by Wells, “the chief mode of physical differentiation lies in the face” (1998, 204). The signifiers that traditionally govern the gender of the anthropomorphized character are particularly evident in their facial design, and the face of SpongeBob is no exception. Possibly the most interesting aspect of his design is the hybrid of masculine and feminine signifiers within his facial features. His eyes and eyelashes are exaggerated, his cheeks rosy and freckled: traits most commonly found in female characters. Conversely, his long protruding nose and wide-toothed mouth are male signifiers. Female

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characters keep their mouths small and their teeth contained and frequently sport cute button noses. Movement is another key part of gendering an animated character. With hobbies ranging from karate to blowing bubbles, SpongeBob has the ability to fluctuate between a display of overt masculine aggression and flowing feminine passivity. He displays the same application of femininity and level of juvenility as Mickey Mouse. It seems, however, that the juvenile associated castration of impropriety and anarchy has not affected SpongeBob in the same Ritalin-induced way as Mickey. He has not become docile or domesticated by his femininity. Ironically, it has rendered him able to use his ambiguity to subvert not only his gender but, moreover, his sexuality. Hailed as a gay icon, SpongeBob has caused a recent media stir surrounding his ambiguous relationship with his similarly androgynous best friend, Patrick. Frequently seen holding hands or exchanging Valentine’s gifts, the couple also “adopted” a baby scallop in the episode “Rock-A-Bye Bivalve,” resulting in a same-sex, yet traditionally role-governed partnership. With his innate gender ambiguity, SpongeBob became the stay-at-home wife and mother, complete with frilly apron, while Patrick and his fifties-style hat and jacket became the working husband. In the last line of the show, Patrick turns to SpongeBob after they watch their “offspring” fly the nest and joyfully says; “Let’s have another!” This line, implying the act of reproduction between a sponge and a starfish, has often been removed before airing. Reminiscent of the outcry over “male” Teletubby Tinky Winky’s handbag, the gender ambiguity displayed by characters such as SpongeBob, Jerry, and Bugs Bunny consequently promotes an asexual blank slate for analysis and interpretation, with particular orientation towards their sexuality.

THE GENDERING OF THE ANIMATED HUMAN The sets of signifiers for gendering male or female cartoon characters have ultimately spawned from the human aspects of stereotypical gender-typing. Separated into a pink world for girls and blue for boys, these gender types have additionally governed the creation of plastic adult dolls such as Barbie or Action Man. With their exaggerated proportions and various joints incorporated into their construction: “The cliche´ of ‘feminine’ as passive and ‘masculine’ as active is literally imprinted into the design of the toys” (Attfield 1996, 85). Barbie’s

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limited arm, leg, and waist movements contrast with Action Man’s completely poseable figure, clearly demonstrating the concept of the “gendering of movement.” It is interesting to compare this with Jennifer Mather Saul’s argument that “Women are expected to keep close track of the way that they move their bodies. In general, women’s movements are tightly constrained. Where men take large steps relative to their bodies, women take smaller ones, and women hold their arms close to their bodies and sit so as to make themselves as small as possible” (2003, 151). The gendering of movement is widely characterized by characters such as Mickey and Minnie, yet is also apparent within the “human” characters that inhabit the world of the animated sitcom. The family melodrama probably best perpetuates the stereotypical societal roles that govern the nuclear family; the father works, while the mother takes care of the home and 2.4 children. This longestablished familial typecast is the primary feature lampooned in the animated family sitcom. Hanna-Barbera’s The Flintstones so successfully parodied the family melodrama that it subsequently changed the face of prime-time animation from the anarchic short to the rebellious satire. It is these roots that raised today’s animated sitcoms. The Simpsons, Family Guy, and King of the Hill all function to subvert not only the melodramatic model of the nuclear family, but also the stereotypical gender roles assigned to it. As previously explained, the construction of the human in the animated sitcom is primarily based on the same sets of signifiers that dominate the anthropomorphized character. These visual signifiers, together with the gendering of male and female body movements, combine to create a stereotypical caricature of man and woman, or as tradition dictates, husband and wife. It is interesting to consider the evidence, presented by Barry Gunter, that the attractiveness of the male and female cartoon character is traditionally connected to marital status: Prominent women in children’s TV were sleek, agile and attractive regardless of marital status. Marriage did however seem to influence the physique of men in different ways. Married men were invariably overweight with poorly defined physiques, as opposed to the physically attractive single men and women. (1995) The model of the overweight husband and the slim attractive wife has dominated the animated sitcom from the outset. The Flintstones, based on the fifties sitcom The Honeymooners, successfully created the

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proverbial model sheet for the design of the animated husband and wife, carefully amalgamating traditional cartoon signifiers with melodramatic gender roles. The design of the cartoon “human” male completely demonstrates Gunter’s theory of attractiveness based on matrimony. The cartoon husband is conventionally overweight and physically unhealthy. Husbands such as Fred Flintstone, Homer Simpson, and Family Guy’s Peter Griffin all display the same level of unattractiveness in direct relation to their established gender role: they are the husband and father-figure to three traditional, albeit satirical, nuclear families. The overweight and overbearing construction of the animated husband also directly affects their physical movements. Similar to the movements of male anthropomorphized characters such as Tom (from Tom and Jerry), animated husbands are large and clumsy. Although physically best-suited to comparison with the unmarried animated man, the construction of movements in the male doll (such as Action Man) traditionally informs the “completely posable” range of body movements that are suitably gendered male. Husbands such as Homer and Peter regularly display overtly exaggerated and masculine-gendered movements, often reminiscent of the squash and stretch style of animation utilized by the traditional cartoon short. Correspondingly, they also display the same associated penchant for violence and aggression. The female animated character, or wife, also adheres to Gunter’s theory of attractiveness. She is consistently trim, regardless of marital status, and usually conforms to the traditional Disney aesthetic of the slim-waisted child-woman. Wives such as Wilma Flintstone, Marge Simpson, and Family Guy’s Lois Griffin are all physically attractive and desired, not only by their male animated counterparts, but also in reality, regularly featuring in men’s magazines as sexual icons. Informed by the traditions of the Barbie doll, their movements are confined and delicate in comparison to their husbands. Their impossible body design, as informed by their plastic counterpart, renders the cartoon wife aesthetically incapable of fulfilling her traditionally gendered role as mother and housewife. Just as Barbie’s design would, in reality, render her incapable of supporting her weight on such tiny feet, the design of the animated housewife, with such a tiny waist, would not only render her physically incapable of giving birth, but also of fitting any kind of reproductive organs in such an anatomically incorrect body. The signifiers of femininity used in the characterization of anthropomorphic creatures such as Minnie Mouse are also apparent in their human counterparts. Jewelry (usually pearls) is the common

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adornment for the animated housewife, as is her feminine, often impractical attire. Marge Simpson’s perpetual wardrobe consists of a gravity-defying strapless dress and tiny heels, and Wilma Flintstone sports a skimpy halter neck and walks around barefoot. Neither woman forfeits their traditionally feminine dresses for a more practical and consequently masculine-coded wardrobe. Conversely, Lois Griffin sports a very practical trouser and shirt outfit reminiscent of Martha Stewart, but what she lacks in feminine signifiers she makes up for in overt sexual ignominy. Gender characterization of the anthropomorphized male or female relies solely on visual signifiers and associated physicality, but it is the positioning within traditional melodramatic roles that is perhaps the most significant in the gendering of cartoon humans. Unlike characters such as Jerry, there is little doubt in correctly identifying the sex of a cartoon human, yet it is the infringement of the conventional social and aesthetic gendering that creates ambiguity within their characterization. DRAWING HOMOSEXUALITY Richard Dyer explains, “There is nothing about gay people’s physiognomy that declares them gay, no equivalents to the biological markers of sex and race” (1993, 19). Like the necessity of gender signifiers within the coding of the anthropomorphic or androgynous character, “there are signs of gayness, a repertoire of gestures, expressions, stances, clothing, and even environments that bespeak gayness, but these are cultural forms designed to show what the person’s person alone does not show: that he or she is gay” (19). Like the assignment of often stereotypical and outdated gender signifiers (such as bows and skirts for girls), the notion of “typification,” as explained by Dyer, “dispenses with the need to establish a character’s sexuality through dialogue and narrative by establishing it literally at first glance” (22). The assigning of sexuality to a character draws on the subversion of the traditional signifiers associated with masculinity and femininity. As Dyer explains, “The queen and the dyke both represent homosexuality through what is assumed to be a gender correlation—that is, both are represented as if their sexuality means they are in-between the two genders of female and male” (30). As examined previously, this gender ambiguity is a common trait of the anthropomorphic, and even the human animated character. This flux in gender representation allows not only a flexible assignment of gender to a character for

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comedy scenarios, but also allows a gender associated or subverted assignment of sexuality. As previously discussed, the animated adult male and female are constructed according to strict gender signifiers, placing them into two heteronormative categories: husband or wife. The homosexual character is consequentially constructed to break with the traditional gender norm and take on characteristics more frequently displayed by the opposing gender. Gay men, therefore, adopt feminine gestures: facial signifiers such as exaggerated eyes, high pitched voices, and a feminine-influenced wardrobe. The lesbian construction is similarly subversive: women take on masculine gestures, display a reduction in their traditional feminine signifiers such as smaller, less emphasized eyes or shortening of the hair and also a more masculine wardrobe. The subtraction and addition of characteristics can also be seen in males and females that intend to “pass” as the opposite sex. Bugs Bunny and Mulan display the subversion of their traditionally assigned gender signifiers, not for the interpretation of their sexuality, but as a way to identify themselves as their preferred gender. The height and weight of a character is also significant in assigning sexuality. The overweight husband and the slim wife motifs are traditionally inverted. The gay male is often slimmer, and more athletically built, than the husband or the bachelor. The lesbian, and interestingly the single woman, is usually fatter, shorter, and less attractive than the wife. The representation of the lesbian often goes hand in hand with the representation of the spinster. This notion is perfectly demonstrated by Marge Simpson’s twin sisters Patty and Selma; one is a spinster, the other a lesbian, and both are identical. In addition to gender signifiers, societal roles visually assign homosexuality to a character. The queering of gender roles is a tradition recently adopted by the animated sitcom. The heterosexual married woman is often confined to her kitchen, her assigned role centering on her home and her family. With no husband to support them, the homosexual or single woman is typically employed. The Simpsons characters Patty and Selma work at the local DMV, and the other single women of Springfield are chiefly employed in education (a traditionally female occupation). The occupations of the gay men (or man) of Springfield are rarely in a position of power. Wayland Smithers, Springfield’s most closeted character, is nuclear power plant owner and tyrant, Montgomery Burns’s assistant. The other gay characters, only assigned to one episode each, have been Karl, Homer’s short-lived assistant, and John, owner of a novelty shop selling kitsch collectables. While there have been several

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homosexual guest starring characters, only Springfield’s resident (closeted) gay, Wayland, and lesbian; Patty, are recurring. Investigating the animated anthropomorphized body, Wells concludes that “not only are aspects of masculine and feminine sometimes made indistinguishable, but the received notion of what constitutes the conditions of homosexuality and heterosexuality is also made ambivalent” (1998, 206). The coupled instability of gender and sexual representation thus enables one to read between the cels of the animated character. READING JONES’S JERRY According to Paul Wells, “Tom and Jerry texts generate reading which can support both a cross-species heterosexual bond, a crossspecies homosexual bond, and same-sex species heterosexual bonds” (211). As previously discussed, the realization is Jerry’s character often strongly enhances the feminine aspects of her aesthetic make-up. The following reading of the episode “Jerry-Go-Round” consequently demonstrates Wells’s theory of cross-species homosexuality when paired with the overt feminising of Jerry and Dyer’s theory of representing homosexuality through “gender correlation.” Set within a circus, Jerry comes to the aid of a crying female elephant with a tack stuck in her foot. Jerry has to ward off ongoing malicious advances from rival Tom and subsequently develops a close friendship with the elephant, who consequently becomes her protector. Battling with the prowling tom-cat, the elephant not only takes the place as Jerry’s protector, but, illustrated by tiny cartoon hearts, simultaneously begins courtship in an unlikely paring of elephant and mouse. Strongly gendered by Jones as female, delicately animated Jerry becomes part of a coded same-sex relationship with the overtly aggressive female elephant. Both are shorter, plumper, and in the elephant’s case, less attractive versions of femininity, displaying the distinct typifications of the lesbian. Together they fight the malicious advances from the prowling tomcat in a symbolic rejection of masculinity. In a circus ring performance, the female elephant (dressed in a pink tutu) and rosy cheeked Jerry (dressed in a tuxedo reminiscent of a drag king performance) toss an inflatable ball between them in an elaborately graceful dance routine. Tiny hearts flutter around them as they return and catch, in an arguable representation of dominance and submission within their constantly role-reversing butch-femme relationship. This moment of idyllic

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exchange is shattered by the heterosexual Tom firing a slingshot at the ball. The last scene is set (quite fittingly) with the elephant and mouse at the head of a triumphant parade, which could be read as a prophetic depiction of Gay Pride. ANTHROPOMORPHIC PASSING AND GENDER PERFORMANCE Traditional cartoons such as those of Warner Brothers have long used the aesthetic of “gender-bending” for comedic effect. Male characters such as Daffy Duck and Wile E. Coyote often dress as women in order to seduce and enrage their overtly heterosexual rivals. The autonomy of the cartoon character, especially the anthropomorphic characters, enables comprehensive reading when it comes to their representations of gender and sexuality. The “drag” performances of male or female characters are frequently conflated for comedic or justificatory purposes and are not based exclusively on their homosexuality. Indeed, the LGBT initialism adopts the category of transgender or transsexual in order to represent both sexual and gender based cultures. Interestingly this initialism often includes a Q, representing queer, a recently re-appropriated socio-political term defining sexual or gender identity that does not conform to heteronormative society. The character of Bugs Bunny has appeared in drag on a least 45 separate occasions; it only took Bugs until his third ever screen appearance to dress in drag for the first time. Although characters such as Daffy Duck appear unconvincing and crude in their female attire, often retaining most of their masculine signifiers, Bugs manages to transform seamlessly into a convincing female, adopting many traditionally feminine gender signifiers while discarding his masculine traits, usually by concealing his ears. Bugs’s transformations fluctuate with the speed of the chase, and his ability to morph from one scenario to the next resembles a split-personality pattern, seamlessly switching between genders. Wells observes that animation “reduces the status of ‘the body’ and, in doing so, extends its vocabulary of representation, thus using it as an infinitely malleable property less fixed by biological or social constraints” (1998, 50). This malleability not only serves as a comedic device, but can also be read as a representation of the fluxing gender ambiguity present in cartoon characters such as Bugs. This ability to “pass” as the opposite sex is portrayed in Chuck Jones’s 1957 animated short What’s Opera, Doc. Featuring Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd parodying Wagner’s Opera Der Ring des Nibelungen?, What’s Opera, Doc? was produced in the final years before the demise of

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the Hayes Code, which governed the censorship of American motion pictures from the early 1930s to the late 1960s. Interestingly, it was the first cartoon deemed “culturally significant” by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry in 1992. After disguising himself as the female Brunhilde, Bugs sits atop a plump white horse decorated with flowers, bathed in a feminine ray of sunlight. His ears are covered with a horned helmet with blonde braids at each side and he is wearing a revealing, short, translucent dress that accentuates his bust. In addition to softening his voice, his eyes have enlarged, accented by large eyelashes and pink eye shadow, and his mouth is unusually small, his white teeth barely protruding. Bugs displays all of the common signifiers of femininity, down to the physical morphing of his eyes and mouth from masculine to feminine and the concealment of his ears, his primary masculine and phallic signifiers. As he dances, lace panties are deliberately visible beneath his dress, indicating an implicit and significant statement about his genitalia. It seems that anatomical changes, in addition to aesthetic changes, have also taken place. If reading Bugs as a fresh character, knowing nothing of his previous escapades, one would interpret him, in his drag state, as a female. Paul Wells describes Bugs Bunny’s performance: “Bugs remains ‘male’ and retains his masculinity, yet looks ‘female’ and clearly affects his posture and gesture in a feminine way. This is both the performance of gender practices and the significant blurring of gender distinctions, offering the opportunity for humour but also for subversive appropriation” (1998, 206). Bugs’s subversion of the typifications usually associated with the “Queen” evades the usual interpretation of homosexuality, maintaining his heterosexuality throughout. Equally androgynous, SpongeBob displays the same mix of masculinity and femininity to the extent of habitually cross-dressing, but has radically different interpretations; ironic considering the achievements in sexual equality gained since Bugs’s airing in the 1950s. Regardless of his demonstration of feminine signifiers, graceful movements. and a higher pitched voice, Bugs’s (unlike SpongeBob’s) heterosexuality remains unfaltering. IT’S A BOY/GIRL THING: HUMAN PASSING Parker explains: “Passing seems more and more like rereading, reinterpreting the codes, reworking the masks, the disguises. It is a radical refusal of a fixed place” (Parker in Inness, 160). This statement can be

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applied perfectly to the ambiguity of the cartoon character, whether anthropomorphic or human. As previously explored, the traditional anthropomorphic character comes with an associated asexuality, ready for gender assignment by way of traditional signifiers. The human character, however, comes with an anatomically associated gender, which, if in divergence from the stereotypical norm, results in the interpretation of the character based on socially accepted roles and relationships. The theory of characters such as Bugs “passing” is based on a comedic structure of hunter versus hunted, with the morphing of gender signifiers used only for disguise and trickery. When examining human characters that have specific gender placements, such Disney’s Mulan, the theory becomes more complex and increasingly about the subversion of social and heteronormative ideals. While male-to-female impersonation has been commonly and comically used throughout cartoon history, female-tomale impersonation is comparatively less frequent. Within the realm of the drag monarchs, the addition or subtraction of traditional gender signifiers is a fundamental part of the transformation process. The main tools for female-to-male (or drag king) impersonation include breast binding, facial hair, eyebrows, hair, packing and performing masculinity. Disney’s 1998 film Mulan, based on the Chinese legend of Hua Mulan, tells the story of a young girl who disguises herself as a man to join the Chinese Imperial Army in place of her injured father. Unlike other Disney heroines, Mulan is immediately coded as a tomboy, talking in her opening scene with her mouth full of rice as she writes cheats for her meeting with the marriage “matchmaker” on her arm. “Quiet and demure, graceful, polite, delicate, refined, poised and punctual” are the words associated with matchmaking her with her perfect husband, words used all too often when describing the typical construction of the Disney heroine. These are not qualities that Mulan naturally possesses; indeed, her design is very different from the usual waif-like princess. In her inherent tomboy appearance, Mulan displays large shoulders, strong arms, and muscular legs. She is dressed in masculine shorts and a baggy t-shirt that shows no curves or the traditionally slim Disney waist. Her face, however, is overtly feminine and her hair is long and flowing, with a rebellious curl in the middle of her forehead. She has large eyes with dark lashes, rosy cheeks, and red lips and her hands are pale and slender. Coded as feminine, yet with an unusually masculine body, she is seen lifting heavy grain bags while she goes about her daily chores, and

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she displays overtly masculine and clumsy movements when undertaking traditionally feminine tasks, such as pouring tea. Late for her matchmaking, she hurriedly undergoes the traditional Disney female beautifying transformation scene reminiscent of Cinderella. Unlike her predecessors, she displays none of the magical self-worth that comes with the end result. In what is suitably described as the “recipe for an instant bride,” she is changed into a painted, slim-waisted geisha, her dress hiding her strong arms and legs and her waist dramatically cinched in. She deliberately springs her rebellious curl back out of her neat hair. After deciding to take her father’s place when drafted to war, she undertakes her own transformation. In the poster “Glen or Glenda” shot of the movie, the right half of her face is made up as a geisha, and the left half a man. Her rebellious curl leans completely to the left, arguably insinuating that her true nature, embodied in her trademark strands of hair, is essentially masculine. Undergoing her transformation, she cuts her hair with her father’s sword and dons his armour. The battle dress accentuates her broad shoulders, and her short hair tied into a knot makes her ears protrude. When revealed as a girl in a later scene, we see that Mulan has also bound her breasts with bandages to conceal her curves. Her face is also made masculine. She has on no make-up and her lips are pale, her eyes small and her eyebrows thick. Even with the traditional absence of facial hair or the technique of “packing” to simulate a phallus, Mulan is the perfect embodiment of a drag king. Mulan’s transformation into womanly geisha and manly soldier is not one of conventional hunter versus hunted drag performance. Like her anthropomorphic counterparts, Mulan displays gender signifiers associated with both masculinity and femininity. Despite her masculine body design with no visible curves, strong arms and legs and large clumsy gestures, her face, in its natural state, is undoubtedly feminine, signifying her intended anatomy and supporting Wells’s notion that “the chief mode of physical differentiation lies in the face” (1998, 204). In terms of design, to enable Mulan to successfully pass between male and female, her ability to display these signifiers in her natural state is paramount to her authentication. This assigned androgyny allows her to seamlessly move between genders, an ability more often displayed by characters such as Bugs Bunny, SpongeBob, and Jerry. This amalgamation of male and female is an unusual aesthetic for a human, especially Disney, character to posses. It is perhaps this

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unconventionality that forces a stronger emphasis of gender positions and heterosexuality in the final scenes of the movie. After defeating the Huns and returning home, Mulan is courted by her male suitor. She is dressed in feminine clothes, her waist accentuated and her eyes once more large and painted. Her rebellious strand of hair is still present though, signifying the existence of her latent masculinity. The reinterpretation of the codes and signifiers by ambiguous characters such as Jerry, Bugs, and even Mulan demonstrates not only the instability of the boundaries between conceived traditional masculine and feminine appearance and behavior, but also between the confines of traditional male/female cross-gender performance. Like Bugs Bunny’s, Mulan’s sexuality is never questioned. Completely enthralled by Captain Li Shang, Mulan manages to retain her heterosexuality throughout her aesthetic transformation as a man, which would traditionally typify her as a lesbian. Along with her aesthetically masculine signifiers, Mulan also subverts the traditional male/female societal roles, another indicative sign of animated homosexuality. Like Bugs, Mulan not only succeeds to subvert the traditional notions of gender, but also subverts the conflation of homosexuality with cross-dressing. LIFE’S A DRAG!: BUGS, MULAN, AND TRANSVESTISM As described by Suthrell, “The male transvestite must disconnect from man-world with its masculine properties and reestablish his identity in woman-world, exchanging the gender indicators in a deliberately fashioned manner” (2004, 18). When disguising himself as a woman, Bugs not only undergoes a transformation of costume, but also a transformation of identity. Bugs’s drag masquerade includes the creation of a plausible setting, or “woman-world” such as a beauty parlour, with him as the manicurist and his captor as his client. Even without the thrill of the pursuit, Bugs often emerges from his rabbit hole as a fifties housewife complete with headscarf, humming as she goes about her daily housework. This personality alteration, detached from the interaction with his adversary, displays gender and sexual ambiguity even within the confines of Bugs’s home. This placement within the traditionally feminine role of housewife is yet another homosexual typification that Bugs, like Mulan, succeeds in subverting. The resolution of What’s Opera, Doc? is arguably the most subversive. Bugs passes as a woman throughout the majority of the cartoon, yet it is his reveal and consequential death scene that shrouds the most

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ambiguity. During a final dramatic embrace with his nemesis Fudd, Bugs’s helmet complete with golden locks falls from his head to reveal his ears, often the primary signifier of his masculinity. This provokes the full wrath of Fudd’s “sword and magic helmet,” resulting in Bugs’s final death scene. Coding himself as a woman for most of the short, Bugs simultaneously creates a “woman-world” as explained by Suthrell, dressing his surroundings, as well as himself, in pastel colors and warm light. While coded as male, there is no dramatic light or emphasis in the mise-en-scene to suggest femininity. In his death scene, however, Bugs lies limply draped over a rock, a shaft of warm sunlight surrounding him as rain gently drips from a pink flower onto his cold body. With his ears exposed, Bugs is coded as male, yet his surroundings are undoubtedly feminine. Reminiscent of his regular, and implicitly natural feminine appearance when emerging from his rabbit hole, this arguably creates a “woman-world” for Bugs, outside of his drag performance, or even his consciousness. Within his final moments, Bugs is shrouded in femininity, implying not only gender ambiguity, but emphasizing the significance of his transvestism, resulting in the coding of “bugs-world” as feminine. Although not as dominant as male drag within the confines of comedy, female-to-male impersonation has been a common occurrence in the media in recent years. The gradual emergence of ambiguous female characters with an ability to shift gender as convincingly as Bugs Bunny signifies a massive change in the depicted flux of feminine gender performance and its conflation with homosexuality. With characters such as Bugs or Mulan displaying the fundamentals of cross-dressing, the ambiguous animated character has paved the way for transvestite or transgender characters such as South Park’s post-op transgender character Mr./Mrs. Garrison. SUGAR-COATED SUBVERSION AND HETERONORMATIVE PALATABILITY Referring to the advertising industry, Danae Clark explains that “gays and lesbians can read into an ad certain subtextual elements that correspond to experiences with or representations of gay/lesbian subculture” (Clark 1993, 188). Investigating the androgynous models recurring in many Calvin Klein advertisements, Clark highlights the significance of the ambiguous character within the representation of homosexuality. Furthermore, “If heterosexual consumers do not notice these subtexts or subcultural codes, then advertisers are able

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to reach the homosexual market along with the heterosexual market without ever revealing their aim” (Clark 1993, 188). The suggestion of covert homosexuality is a tool successfully used by many primetime animated sitcoms. Stretching as far back as the 1950’s cartoon short, the androgyny of characters such as Jerry or Bugs enabled the reading of not only gender instability, but also a coded homosexuality. Described by Wells, “The instability of form, an intrinsic credential of the animation medium itself, has led to an instability of representational norms, particularly in the creation of comic effects. This is important because the comedy in the films distracts the viewer from noticing how the characters actually look and behave” (1998, 208). Masking gender positions as well as sexuality, the comedy and ambiguous aspects of prime-time animation can, as many successful advertisements do, “reach the homosexual market along with the heterosexual market without ever revealing their aim” (Clark 1993, 188). It is both the prime demographic and the social and political era of such cartoons that creates the need for such stealthy sexual subversions. As Lynda Hart argues, “Homosexuality is . . . most predominantly represented when it is virtually under erasure” (1994, 66). The reading of Jerry’s lesbianism or Bugs’s transvestism comes from the ambiguity of their characters, coded within their design and movements, providing a possible reading of homosexuality while avoiding heteronormative detection. The same issues of concealed marginalized representations are at work, carefully censored and monitored, within the Disney animation, which is widely regarded as shrouding restrictive gender, racial and ethnic representations under a veil of innocence or “family values.” Disney has annually hosted “Gay Day” at the Disney World resort in Florida since the early nineties, yet refuses to represent a homosexual character within its animated films, perpetuating the careful censorship of homosexuality within family programming. This reluctance of accurate homosexual representation reflects the widespread, sugar-coated “after-school programming” tradition born out of the recent necessity of representation. It is perhaps for this reason that queer representation within Disney animation is kept to a minimum, masquerading as highcamp androgyny. Methods of homosexual disguise and denial range from comedy to palatability, in a radical refusal of any alteration to the concept of “family values,” a catchphrase strongly promoted by the republican presidential campaigns of the nineties. This concept is also used to promote the intolerance of the radical American evangelical groups

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Focus on the Family and now disbanded group The Moral Majority, which have publicly condemned characters such as SpongeBob SquarePants and Teletubbies’s Tinky Winky for promoting homosexuality to children. Matthew Henry explains that such political rallying was in favor of a “return to “traditional family values,” meaning, it seems, male dominance, female submission, and compulsive heterosexuality. Concurrent with this argument was a push for the reflection of these family values in mainstream popular art forms such as film and television” (2004, 226). The ability to read and recognize otherwise overlooked homosexual suggestion within animated ambiguity was pivotal within the interpretation of the 1950’s cartoon short. The representation of “actual” homosexuality was arguably harder to find. Out of the strict censorship of the nineties republican political movements came a “revolution” that Entertainment Weekly hailed as “The Gay 90’s.” As Jess Cagle reported in the September 1995 issue, “Just look around—look everywhere. Gay characters are multiplying on screens big and small. Comedy’s most popular styles now utilize the gay sensibility—a reliance on irony that’s omnipresent in products as varied as The Lion King (in which Timon and Pumbaa are . . . well, whatever you want them to be)”(1995). The revolution, as told by Cagle, “happened two ways: gradually and suddenly.” John Leo has a different account of the “revolution.” He notes that “although the media have opened up significantly in recent years, they have done so out of necessity. This is predominantly true of television . . . what used to be censored as controversial is now welcomed as sensitive themed programming” (Leo in Henry 2004, 229). THE GAY 90S AND THE SUBVERSION OF THE ANIMATED SITCOM Along with the sugar-coated revolution of “The Gay 90s” came another uprising. Filling the 23-year void of family satire that The Flintstones left behind, Matt Groening’s The Simpsons was launched in 1989 and created, as Wells describes, “a sustained satire on American mores, using animation as the vehicle through which to reveal contradiction, hypocrisy, banality and the taboo, which may be read, perhaps ironically, as a return to the fundamental anarchy of early cartoons” (2003, 30). The age of anarchistic animation began with shows such as The Simpsons, Beavis and Butthead, King of the Hill, Ren and Stimpy, and South Park, leading a rebellion against the regimental construction of

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“family values” and threatening the heteronormative structure of gender and sexuality within the animated sitcom. Male dominance was subverted into stupidity, females were liberated from their kitchens, and homosexuality was revealed and represented. No longer clandestinely shrouded in heteronormative denial, homosexual characters became part of the family in The Simpsons, King of the Hill, South Park, and recent descendants Family Guy and American Dad. These characters not only represented overlooked and socially taboo issues, but also represented themselves, shirking the cloaks of comedy and palatability by representing uncensored reality. Demonstrated by the nineties political emphasis upon traditional “family values,” the deviance from the “norm” of the nuclear family is one of the most controversial issues facing the representation of queer characters within the media. The nineties subversion of the animated family sitcom, led by The Simpsons, subsequently ran in direct opposition towards the exclusion and censorship of issues surrounding sexuality, gender, and the “alternative” family unit. As Henry explains, “The show seeks to expose cultural homophobia, sharply criticize the institutional apparatuses that maintain it, and deplore the attendant exclusionary practises based on sexual orientation” (2004, 242). Indeed, Matt Groening has a longstanding relationship with drawing queer characters into his cartoon strips and animated shows. Groening’s successful cartoon strip Akbar and Jeff, a tale of two ambiguous “Bert and Ernie” types, has become very popular within the gay community, representing issues such as HIV testing and homophobic Supreme Court rulings. On asked why there are so few gay characters in cartoons, Groening told The Advocate reporter Doug Sadownick, “As Marge Simpson says, ‘the fear of the unknown’. . . . There’s virulent homophobia in our culture. Cartoonists deal with exaggerated caricatures, comics are seen as a kiddie medium” (1991). The animated medium is habitually associated with the “innocence” of children’s programming. Animation, like the comic strip, has a deeply rooted history within the realm of political and social satire, and this history was reclaimed as anarchy returned in nineties animated sitcoms. The Simpsons creator Matt Groening, and Seth MacFarlane, creator of its animated progeny Family Guy, have both aired their protest towards homophobic and exclusionary practices within the perpetuation of traditional “family values.” It is perhaps for this reason that their shows contain the portrayal and exploration of some of the most controversial issues surrounding homosexuality.

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Despite featuring the questionable cross-species marriage of family dog Brian’s cousin and his human lover, representation of homosexuality in Family Guy is probably most interestingly portrayed by baby Stewie, recently “outed” by his creator Seth MacFarlane. Interviewed in The Advocate, MacFarlane explained that Stewie “originally began as this diabolical villain, but then we delved into the idea of his confused sexuality. We all feel that Stewie is almost certainly gay, and he’s in the process of figuring it out for himself . . . we treat him oftentimes as if we were writing a gay character” (Voss 2008). The depiction of a gay a prepubescent character, especially an infant, is an extremely controversial issue. The representation of homosexuality within animation is treading on thin ice already. With the medium’s traditional association with children’s programming, post-watershed shows such Family Guy or South Park are attracting an increasingly younger audience, which consequentially results in the breaking of “adult-only” barriers that radical religious and political groups like to enforce upon issues of homosexuality. These barriers of “unsuitability” resulted in the parental disclaimer before The Simpsons’s season-16 episode, “There’s Something about Marrying,” in which Springfield legalizes gay marriage and “outs” long-term character Patty Bouvier. With previous and future episodes of The Simpsons depicting drug use, gambling addictions, theft, crime, and violence, the sudden “unsuitability” for children is a common sideeffect of homosexual themed programming. A similar parental warning was displayed before the airing of ABC’s sitcom Ellen’s groundbreaking “Puppy Episode,” in which lead character Ellen Morgan, played by Ellen DeGeneres, controversially came out as a lesbian. TO PASS OR NOT TO PASS: PATTY BOUVIER VERSUS WAYLAND SMITHERS The “unsuitability” associated with gay or lesbian characters appearing within prime-time not only provokes the addition of disrespectful parental disclaimers, but also governs how a homosexual character can be most palatably portrayed. As previously examined, the coding of homosexuality within androgyny is the most common form of palatability. With the sudden necessity of actual queer representation brought upon by the “Gay 90s,” other means of homosexual palatability and dilution for the heteronormative viewer have become essential. Reporting on the “outing” of Ellen DeGeneres’s prime-time character Ellen, Jess Cagle explains that “Ellen Morgan not only came

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out of the closet, but became the first leading gay prime-time character ever, and a test case for the nation’s tolerance”(1998). Considered palatable because of her comedic and harmless character, Ellen was also the perfect “test case” because she was a woman. Traditionally considered more acceptable, the lesbian, unlike the gay male, is often represented as an eroticized object for male heterosexual fantasy. This not only functions to more easily represent the lesbian within the heteronormative media, but also renders her as “harmless.” As explained by Louis, “Viewers are given a fantasy image of lesbians, which is as unrealistic as the image that all lesbians are ugly. Also, using models who look stereotypically heterosexual pretending to be lesbians provides titillation without threat as there is an implicit understanding that these are not ‘real’ lesbians” (Louis in Inness 1997, 65). Like Ellen Morgan, Springfield’s resident lesbian Patty Bouvier was therefore considered a better candidate for “outing” than Wayland Smithers, who remains closeted under a veil of sycophancy. Patty Bouvier, however, is not the highly eroticized male lesbian fantasy you would expect; she is the irrepressible product of animated anarchy. Patty Bouvier perpetually displays the typification of androgyny and associated homosexuality in her embodiment of the vice-ridden, unattractive spinster sister to slim housewife Marge Simpson. True to representational norms, Patty represents the shorter, fatter, uglier unwife. Her spinsterhood and continual chain-smoking endows her (and her sister Selma) with a masculine voice, and her drab waistless wardrobe and sibling twinning implies an asexuality. Unlike her sister who has married several times, Patty typically steers away from relationships. Her one venture into the world of heterosexuality saw her dating and turning down the marriage proposal of school Principal Seymour Skinner, flimsily claiming that her strong bond with her sister made it impossible for her to ever marry (an excuse frequently disregarded by her sister Selma). With the news that The Simpsons was to not only “out” its first regular homosexual character, but legalize their marriage, Patty’s palatability had to first be firmly established. Emphatically and repeatedly stated within the press coverage surrounding “There’s Something about Marrying,” Patty’s incapability to find an eligible man in Springfield is used to explain, and consequently justify, her switch to lesbianism. This not only dilutes the homosexuality, but assigns it a specific cause. The same justification of homosexuality is used within the characterization of Wayland Smithers. Frequently dubbed (by the shows

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writers) as a “Burns-asexual,” his overt sycophancy has long been used to conceal his sexuality, despite being depicted as taking a holiday on a gay cruise and fantasizing about his male employer. Wayland Smithers’s and, to a subtler extent, Patty’s homosexuality has been present from the beginning of the show. Marge’s denial of her sister’s sexuality is reiterated by Patty’s proclamation, “You could see it from space Marge!”(“There’s Something about Marrying,” 2005). As Inness explains, “The heterosexual spectator has the power to make a lesbian pass, whether or not she wishes to, and this must be taken into account. The passer should not solely bear the responsibility for passing” (1997, 174). As demonstrated in the GLAAD awardwinning episode “Homer ’s Phobia,” the presence of “passing” as threatening towards the heteronormative audience can be seen in the characterization of gay, kitsch shop-owner, John. When Homer fails to detect John’s homosexuality, he shouts “You know me Marge, I like my beer cold, my TV loud and my homosexuals flaming!” (Homer’s Phobia, 1997). Smithers has arguably been “passing” his entire life. His remaining in the closet has often been the source of many jokes and sketches, including being spotted alongside an indeterminable Bouvier sister (which turns out to be Patty) in a closeted Gay Pride Parade float in season-13 episode “Jaws Wired Shut.” As Inness previously explained, the heterosexual, as well as the homosexual has the power to “pass or not to pass” an ambiguous character. It is when the character becomes unambiguous, undeniable, and unpalatable that the heteronormative audience starts to question their “suitability.” The device of undeniability has been used perfectly by Matt Groening and Seth McFarlane to subvert the traditional “denial” in the representation of their homosexual characters. Arguably Patty Bouvier has not been particularly palatable from the start; she certainly does not adhere to the eroticized male lesbian fantasy or fit into the loveable, asexual guise of the comedy lesbian. She is rude, crude, and not ashamed of declaring her sexual preferences. Similarly, baby Stewie is undeniably gay and has been “outed” by his creator before he has even realized himself. The twist at the end of There’s Something about Marrying revealed that Patty’s fiance´e was in fact a man passing as a woman, meaning the narrative could have easily U-turned. With the tradition of the animated half-hour narrative returning to normality after unbelievable adventures, the declaration of love from Patty’s unveiled bride could have provided the show-runners with a way out, an exit clause for Patty’s homosexuality. Subversively, The Simpsons chose to take a more

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unpalatable route, with Patty simply exclaiming, “Hell no! I like girls!”(2005). CONCLUSION Matthew Henry ends his discussion of animated homosexuality with the examination of a prank phone call scenario from the season four episode “New Kid on the Block,” in which Bart phones Moe’s Tavern asking for “Amanda Hugginkiss.” Moe subsequently proclaims, “Why can’t I find Amanda Hugginkiss?” As Henry explains, one would think the usual response from a crowd of barflies would be obscene and bigoted, but the nonchalant reply from barfly Barney is, “Maybe your standards are too high!”(1992). This indifferent scenario is similarly used when Homer is looking for a new bar to frequent in the season six episode “Fear of Flying.” Walking up to an all-female bar with pink neon double Venus symbols and through a crowd of butch-femme couples, Homer stops as something suddenly dawns on him. “Wait a minute,” he exclaims, “This lesbian bar doesn’t have a fire exit! Enjoy your death trap ladies!” (1994). Ellen’s premature, unpalatable attempt to address “actual” gay issues rather than “just being funny” arguably resulted in her cancellation. Yet 10 years later, within the largely heteronormative prime-time segment and within the confines of a traditionally children’s associated medium, a cartoon rabbit is revered by drag queens, a yellow sponge has become a gay icon, an outed lesbian lives with her twin sister and adoptive Chinese baby, and a monogamous dog and his human husband, a gay baby, and a transgender teacher grace our screens every week. Even with the forces of heteronormativity keeping Smithers firmly locked in his closet, he remains undeniably gay. Nuclear power plant employees Lenny and Karl’s pairing as an interracial best friend duo shrouds a Bert and Ernie-esque homosexual ambiguity, and upon seeing Bart skateboarding nude in The Simpsons Movie, prepubescent Ralph Wiggum simply proclaims “I like boys now!”(2007). Across the animated border, Texan residents of King of the Hill embrace neighbour Dale Gribble’s “gay rodeo star” father, the spirit of high-camp show-business is alive in Bobby Hill, and neighbour Bill Dauterive enjoys wearing pretty, pretty dresses. Even with increasing pressure from radical religious groups attacking animated characters that they claim promote homosexuality to children, the media response is encouragingly reminiscent of the blase´ resident barflies of Springfield. Upon viewing a video (hailed by Focus

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on the Family as “pro-homosexual”) in which a host of children’s television characters (including SpongeBob) sing along to the song “We are Family,” MSNBC news reporter Keith Olbermann simply stated that “not only did I not see any sexual identity in that, I didn’t even see very much of SpongeBob either . . . although Winnie the Pooh wasn’t wearing pants” (Olbermann 2005). The current blase´ attitude towards homosexuality (as displayed by Olbermann or the residents of Springfield) creates comedy, not out of the representation of homosexuality but the opposition against it. Increasing representation of male and female signifiers within primetime cartoon characters represents the flux in gender boundaries that exist not only within the animated realm, but in reality. Providing children with ambiguous cartoon characters such as SpongeBob does not function to withhold the representation of sexuality, but more fully expresses its diversity. Indeed, the very medium of animation, with its innate innocence, is now being used to represent prime-time sexuality and gender in a more progressive way than the live-action show. The progress made by shows such as The Simpsons, King of the Hill, Family Guy, and SpongeBob SquarePants has consequently enabled the audience of prime-time animation to laugh with, not at, the queer character. REFERENCES Attfield, J. “Barbie and Action Man: Adult Toys for Girl’s and Boy’s. 1959– 1993.” In The Gendered Object, edited by P. Kirkham, 80–89. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996. Cagle, J. “Special Report: The Gay 90’s: American Sees Shades of Gay, A Once Invisible Group Finds the Spotlight.” Entertainment Weekly. September 8, 1995. Cagle, J. “As Gay as It Gets?: Ellen DeGeneres Speaks Out—The Prime-Time Crusader Led TV into a New Era, But at What Cost?” Entertainment Weekly. May 8, 1998. Clark, D. “Commodity Lesbianism.” In The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader, edited by Henry Abelove, Michele Aina Barale, and David Halperin, 186–201. New York: Routledge, 1993. Dyer, R. The Matter of Images. Second Edition. London: Routledge, 1993. Gunter, B. Television and Gender Representation. London: John Libbey & Company Ltd., 1995. Hart, L. Fatal Women: Lesbian Sexuality and the Mark of Aggression. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. Henry, M. “Looking for Amanda Hugginkiss: Gay Life on The Simpsons.” In Leaving Springfield: The Simpsons and the Possibility of Oppositional Culture,

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edited by John Alberti, 225–243. Michigan: Wayne State University Press, 2004. Inness, S. A. The Lesbian Menace: Ideology, Identity, and the Representation of Lesbian Life. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1997. Klein, N. M. Seven Minutes: The Life and Death of the American Animated Cartoon. London: Verso, 1993. Olbermann, K. “Will SpongeBob Make You Gay?: Countdown with Keith Olbermann” (Transcript). In MSNBC.msn.com, January 21, 2005. http://www .msnbc.msn.com/id/6852828/(accessed August 10, 2008). Sadownick, D. “Groening Against the Grain: Maverick Cartoonist Matt Groening Draws in Readers with Gay Characters Akbar and Jeff.” In The Advocate, February 26, 1991. Saul, J. M. Feminism: Issues and Arguments. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Stabile, C. A., and Harrison Mark. Prime Time Animation; Television Animation and American Culture. London: Routledge, 2003. Suthrell, C. A. Unzipping Gender: Sex, Cross-Dressing and Culture. Oxford: Berg 2004. Voss, B. “Big Gay Following: Seth McFarlane.” In The Advocate, February 26, 2008. Wells, P. Understanding Animation. Fourth Edition. London: Routledge. 1998. Wells, P. “Smarter than the Average Art Form”; Animation in the Television Era.” In Prime Time Animation; Television Animation and American Vulture, edited by Carol A. Stabile and Mark Harrison, 16–32. London: Routledge, 2003.

FILMS AND EPISODES CITED “Fear of Flying.” 1994. In The Simpsons: The Complete Sixth Season [DVD Region 2 encoding]. Kirkland, M. Twentieth Century Fox. “Girls Just Want to Have Sums.” 2006. Sky One. [off-air recording: VHS] The Simpsons, Season 17. Kruse, N. Twentieth Century Fox. April 30, 2006. “Homer’s Phobia.” 1997. In The Simpsons: The Complete Eighth Season [DVD Region 2 encoding]. Anderson, M. B. Twentieth Century Fox. Mulan. 1998. [DVD Region 2 encoding]. Bancroft, Tony and Cook, Barry. Walt Disney. “New Kid on the Block.” 1992. In The Simpsons: The Complete Fourth Season [DVD Region 2 encoding]. Archer, W. Twentieth Century Fox. “There’s Something about Marrying.” 2005. Sky One. [off-air recording: VHS] The Simpsons, Season 16. Kruse, N. Twentieth Century Fox. February 20, 2005. The Simpsons Movie. 2007. [DVD Region 2 encoding]. Silverman, D. Twentieth Century Fox.

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Chapter 15

Recuperating and Reviling South Park’s Queer Politics James Keller

In the tug-o-war between right- and left-leaning analysts over the political allegiances and thus the irreverent and coarse humor of Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s South Park, both sides have claimed undeserved victories. In his book South Park Conservatives, Brian C. Anderson claims that the comedy series signals the end of the mythic “liberal media bias,” but his evidence for the program’s conservatism (in the single chapter that addresses the subject) seems restricted to examples of a more moderate liberalism than he deems commonplace in the American culture industry. Indeed, his strongest evidence comes from the oft quoted duo responsible for the consistently outrageous program. Matt Stone asserts, “ ‘I hate conservatives, but I really fucking hate liberals’ ” and adds that he and his co-creator Trey Parker are “ ‘more right-wing than most people in Hollywood.’ ” Anderson further qualifies his claim by adding Stone’s concession that their politics simply are not as extreme as Hollywood insiders such as Alec Baldwin (76). Clinging to such statements in order to affirm the conservative leanings of Comedy Central’s hit series, now in its eleventh season, seems desperate. The creators’ statements hardly constitute an endorsement of right-wing values, but are instead a clear assertion of a moderate liberalism. Anderson’s citations of South Park’s social conservatism include issues that no liberal would even broach, let alone defend, including,

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but not limited, to gay sadomasochistic “fisting” in an elementary school classroom and the activities of the North American Man Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) (Anderson 78–80). Moreover, the South Park celebrity bashing includes Hollywood insiders whose activities are notoriously excessive, and while they are the focus of constant media fascination, they are also subject to derision and condemnation from the right and the left. South Park’s satire of Paris Hilton is not inconsistent (save in its hyperbole) with much media coverage of the heiress. Parker and Stone’s contention that Paris Hilton is famous for being a “whore” ignores that fact that she is first and foremost famous for being the rich and beautiful progeny of one of America’s most well-known families. There are plenty of “whores” who get no attention at all. Paris remains fascinating because she is rich, beautiful, and out of control, not just out of control. Of course, the above discussion does not attempt to elide the fact that the show can be extremely hostile toward topics that are close to liberal hearts, such as the protection of some civil liberties, the imposition of compulsory health codes and standards (i.e., smoking bans), and the influence or intervention of celebrities in local and regional ballot measures. Other pet targets include political correctness, environmentalism, and hate crime legislation. The show’s apparent evenhandedness is, by the estimation of numerous critics, attributable to the South Park creators’ “liberatarian” values. Paul A. Cantor, in The Invisible Gnomes and the Invisible Hand: South Park and Libertarian Philosophy, defines libertarianism as “a philosophy of radical freedom,” one that “celebrates the free market as a form of social organization,” and he argues that the application of these values in the comedy series ends up offending both liberals and conservatives because Stone and Parker revile extremism or intrusions into individual freedoms from both the right and the left (101–102). Cantor specifically focuses on the episode “Cripple Fight” as an example of South Park’s balanced treatment of the controversy over civil rights. Here Big Gay Al is removed as Boy Scout troop leader for being gay, and even after he is vindicated by the pedophilic actions of his heteronormative replacement (the embodiment of hegemonic masculinity, a marine or marine wannabe, Mr. Grazier), Big Gay Al rejects the opportunity to restore himself to his former role, generously citing the parents’ right to protect their children from perceived threats (Cantor 101). One of the persuasive techniques employed by the South Park creators is to place some of their most politically right wing ideas into the mouths of presumed left-leaning characters, as is the case here

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when Big Gay Al speaks out against radical measures in the social and political progress of gays and lesbians, but the success of this ploy is undermined by the fact that Big Gay Al is channeling the ideas of his ostensibly heterosexual creators. His concession validates heterosexist bias against homosexuals, indicating that the former have a fundamental right to discriminate against minorities based upon unfounded and irrational fears and that the only appropriate redress of such exclusionary action is the appeal of reasoned argument, an approach that waits patiently for the dominant culture to change its collective mind and begin treating gays and lesbians as full citizens. Parker and Stone’s libertarianism is naively utopian, embracing the belief that people are basically kind and well-meaning. Big Gay Al asserts that he knows the gentlemen who forced him from his role as Scout Leader are good men, but how should our society address those circumstances in which the opponents of civil liberties are not known to be good and well-meaning? Such a philosophy—taken to its logical conclusion—would have the civil rights revolution of the midtwentieth century wait for the white Southern political hegemony to change its mind about segregation or would make the basic human rights of minorities contingent upon the vicissitudes of popular vote, the tyranny and/or magnanimity of the smug and condescending majority. Such a scenario can hardly be countenanced. And here indeed, the left wing can hardly claim any territory within the political terrain of South Park’s values. Why are homosexuals so frequently the subject of such debates in South Park? Why are not other anxious minorities, such as Latinos or African Americans, treated with the same condescension, paternalism, and sometimes contempt, invited to wait patiently while the heartland makes up its mind about vexing social issues? South Park can be construed as homophobic on its surface and in its subtext, yet it is not subject to the vitriol of gay activism as are other manifestations of homophobia in the media, such as the contemporaneous and legendary abuses of rapper Eminem, who was the target of constant protests by the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) and who is a big fan of South Park. Perhaps this inconsistency can be attributed to the belief that South Park usually comes down on the side of freedom on many GLBT social issues in spite of the highly negative and stereotypical representations of its characters, or perhaps the gay community is fearful of being construed as having no sense of humor—of being too uptight to get the joke, the perennial accusation against feminism and other factions of the political left. A more

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probable explanation is that the GLBT community sees South Park gay bashing as a form of insider humor, the kind of jokes that gay men and women tell about themselves but that are forbidden to outsiders and interlopers, the same humor that drives the hysterical banter of Will & Grace and Ugly Betty. In other words, the gender excesses of South Park are construed as so camp that they must be the product of an anonymous gay sensibility, which has led to the belief that one or both of the series’ creators must be gay. The character Jimbo offers the platitude—“We’re all a little gay” (Johnson-Woods 246), and Parker and Stone reiterate this sentiment in their introduction to the DVD series. Since the remark is a Freudian cliche, it is hardly revealing. If neither of the South Park creators are willing to admit to an alternative sexual identity, then we have no choice but to assume that neither is gay, but does this mean that the negative portrayals of gays in the series are irredeemable, that the show, in spite of its support for many gay social issues, is hostile toward homosexuality, revealing “blatant homophobia” as Michael Chaney describes it in “Coloring Whiteness and Black Voice Minstrelsy” (174)? THE GAY DRAMATIS PERSONAE The three principal gay characters in series are caricatures, types often ridiculed and marginalized even within GLBT culture. Big Gay Al is perhaps the least embarrassing, but he is, nevertheless, a representation of the rotund, effeminate, oversexed, and scrupulously manicured dance hall queen with one nipple permanently exposed and a drink in his hand. He may not be wicked or predatory, but he is a caricature of the stereotypical frivolity and ineffectuality of men. He acquiesces to the abuses of heterosexism, creating a sanctuary for gay pets (“Big Gay Al’s Big Gay Boat Ride”) and conceding to the prejudices of the homophobic parents of his Boy Scout troop. Mr. Slave is the gay S&M cliche´ —a leather queen, with emphasis on queen. He wears chaps, a leather vest over a bare hirsute chest, and a biker’s hat. His personality and speech patterns are incongruous with the image of hegemonic, even hyper-masculinity implied in his ruggedly muscular body and his handlebar mustache. He lisps every expression, his tone invariably plaintiff, his tag line revealing exasperation—“Tsesus Chriiisss.” The slave is even more effeminate than Big Gay Al in both character and erotic role playing. Mr. Slave is sexually passive, enjoying any anal insertion, including, but not limited to, gerbils and Paris Hilton. When Mr. Garrison has a sex change operation, he is no longer

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able to satisfy Mr. Slave, who then turns to the only other openly gay man in South Park—Big Gay Al. Mr. Garrison is certainly the most pathological and self-loathing homosexual in the small mountain town. He embodies and exceeds the paranoia of the oft ridiculed “closet case” because he conceals his desires even from himself. Unable to develop and sustain a healthy gay subjectivity, Garrison first projects his desire onto Mr. Head, a hand puppet and his alter-ego. After a brief period in which he appears to accept his homosexual desire openly, he abruptly elects to undergo sexual reassignment surgery (“Mr. Garrison’s Fancy New Vagina”); as a transgendered person, s/he can both embrace and deny h/er sexuality, claiming that s/he is a “real woman” whose libidinal appetites constitute normative heterosexuality. The gender identities of both Slave and Garrison are not only pathological, but also incoherent. Perhaps this is because a cartoon does not require realism either visually or psychologically, but this inaccuracy may also suggest a failure of South Park’s creators to fully understand the same. From this perspective, Garrison’s gender dysphoria, leading to her sex change, may be a metaphor for the queer politics of the comedy series. The movement from one extremity to another does seem consistent with the show’s targeting of radicalism on the left and the right. Mr. Slave, the image of heteronormative masculinity, but not its substance, demonstrates one aspect of the performativity of gender—its masquerade—his exterior belying his social and sexual submissiveness. He remains subordinate to Mr. Garrison until the latter has a sex change operation and can no longer play the role of master convincingly. The disconnect between Slave’s image and his behavior expresses his “ego-ideal” and/or his psychic castration; he embodies his own desire, the idealized masculinity which he projects onto his sexual partners. He desires and reflects what the Oedipal mother desires, the idealized phallic body, but the failure to separate from the mother in the castration phase of the psychosexual development compels the evolving subject to embody and desire what the mother desires, becoming that which the mother loves and loving the same (Ragland-Sullivan 31). The sad reality of Slave’s libidinal desire is that it can find no better objects than Big Gay Al and Garrison, the former a kind, gentle, and considerate person who is hardly the embodiment of hegemonic masculinity that could dominate a hyper-masculine form such as Slave’s, the latter an ill-adjusted, self-loathing, and abusive elementary school teacher who elects to become a woman rather than to accept his homosexuality. In this latter instance, Mr. Slave is drawn to love a subject who

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can only despise him in return. When he rejects the newly gender reassigned Garrison, the same reproaches him for remaining a “faggot” while s/he Garrison has transcended the limitations of biological sex and its compulsory gender identity and sexuality. Mr. Garrison himself figures the stereotypical closet case who maintains the masquerade of normative sexuality even after it has become absurdly transparent. When he no longer has deniability he escapes social stigma and further self-loathing via gender reassignment, becoming a proud and stridently sexual woman, who enjoys getting her “vaj pounded.” Garrison’s gender identity seems incoherent. His initial relationship with Mr. Slave may be the literalization of a figure of speech: Garrison the schoolmaster requires a “school slave.” However, the teacher’s dominance is belied by the implicit sexual subordination in his gender reassignment. The dysphoria that led to Garrison’s operation seems abrupt; she has not complained about being a woman trapped in a man’s body until the episode in which she submits to surgery. Her sudden and enthusiastic sexual receptiveness seems inconsistent with the insertive role that s/he would have to play in her relationship with Slave. South Park essentializes and pathologizes homosexuality. Slave claims to be “born a whore” (Paris Hilton) and Garrison claims to be a genetic mistake, trapped in a man’s body. Prior to her sex change, her behavior is borderline neurotic as h/er hand puppet has become the symbolic repository of all that s/he reviles in herself and has taken on a separate personality, a process that in psychoanalysis is known as “projection,” or “the expelling of feelings or wishes the individual finds wholly unacceptable . . . by attributing them to another” (Gay 281). Mr. Hat may even constitute a metaphor for Garrison’s penis and his sublimated libidinal drive. Garrison repeatedly chastises Mr. Hat for his homosexual longings, and Mr. Hat seems to act independently of his handler. In one episode, Mr. Hat masturbates Mr. Garrison while the latter expresses disapproval, and in the episode “Cartman Joins NAMBLA,” Mr. Garrison blames Hat for soliciting school children online. Mr. Hat signifies the penis’s tendency to act independently of rational control, a subject dealt with in the “Erection Day” episode in which Jimmy is inconvenienced by his tumescence, deterring him from performing in a local talent show. Garrison disassociates himself from the homoerotic stimulations of Hat. While the name “Mr. Hat” has phallic implications in and of itself, its pronunciation by Mr. Garrison in his Southern drawl makes it virtually indistinguishable from “Mr. Head,” an even more phallic appellation.

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Medicalizing and essentializing homosexuality may seem relatively innocuous, even compatible with trends in gay research and politics; after all, the search for a gay gene has been given a good deal of attention and has produced some impressive conclusions. And these successes would seem to be consistent with the objectives of gay politics, which have been long committed to disproving the assertion that homosexuality is a choice. However, the history of homosexuality in the twentieth century is a history of subjugation and degradation by the medical and psychiatric institutions. The power structure’s efforts to interdict the spread and repress the manifestation of homosexuality has generated the sickness and contagion tropes so common in homophobic discourse, which constructs homosexual desire as “sick,” “perverse,” “predatory,” and communicable, thus invoking the need for a cure. Through this practice, the gay subject is deemed mentally ill and is, therefore, discredited, thrown among the doctors and psychiatrists and their often barbaric cures.1 While Slave and Garrison appear to function adequately most of the time, they occasionally engage in wildly inappropriate behavior such as is depicted in the above-mentioned episode “The Death Camp of Tolerance” where Garrison inserts a gerbil into Slave’s rectum in front of an elementary class in order to facilitate his own dismissal and subsequent lucrative lawsuit for discrimination. The language used to revile this graphic display includes the old standards “sick” and “perverse,” and while in this case the labels are accurate, they are also reminiscent of the intolerance and discrimination which preceded and followed the 1973 decision by the American Psychiatric Association to remove homosexuality from its nomenclature of mental pathology.2 The South Park characters who revile Garrison and Slave’s actions are deemed intolerant and are sent to harsh reeducation camps. The episode parodies the overly enthusiastic support of minorities, particularly gay men, by the heterosexual power structure, implying that those who criticize the antisocial behavior in gay men are subject to the criticism which ought to be directed at the rampaging minority. The episode implies that American culture has become too liberal or too tolerant, accepting the unacceptable in order to avoid the appearance of discrimination. However, here the South Park creators have manufactured a completely specious scenario in order to make their point. The rumor that gay men are inserting gerbils into their anuses is an abusive and absurd urban legend, one calculated to ridicule, demonize, and pathologize same-sex desire. While it could be true that some people have engaged in such a ridiculous and potentially

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dangerous practice, the suggestion that inserting rodents inside one’s body is a fad among gay men is simply stupid and mean spirited and an example of just how far people are willing to go in order to denigrate the gay male population. Add to this the exhibitionism in the elementary school room, and the entire pretense of the episode becomes outrageously hostile. Chef is unexpectedly sent to “The Death Camp of Tolerance” for verbally reviling Garrison and Slave’s public display, creating a sense of injustice within the viewing audience who support Chef’s right to call Garrison a “sick faggot” and a “pervert.” By forcing the television audience into a supportive position on behalf of Chef, Stone and Parker posit an antithetical and mythical cadre of liberals who have gone too far in their tolerance, endorsing the grotesque and unthinkable. In other words, the creators have set up a straw dog in order to make a point about an excess of tolerance and the right to use derogatory epithets when minorities are “really out-of-control,” manufacturing a violation of moral principle, of self-preservation, and of good sense so revolting that the television audience is urged to conclude that gay men are deserving of their abuse. They have appropriated a highly negative urban legend, one too absurd even to constitute a stereotype, and have treated it as a truth, using it to justify the imposition of limitations on tolerance. The only redeeming feature is that Garrison is at least not motivated by an irrepressible libidinal appetite, but by greed. Garrison’s vicious homophobia prior to his coming out and his subsequent sex change can be construed as dismissive of the reality of homophobia among the heterosexist population. When one of the children asks Garrison about homosexuality, the latter offers a hyperbolic condemnation of “gay people” whom he regards as “evil all the way down to their cold black hearts.” His hysterical hatred is obviously a parody of the polarizing right-wing evangelical discourse defining much of the public debate over gay rights. Gays and lesbians have been invested with an absurd amount of culpability in the debates over the so-called decline of American “family values,” such that they are roundly condemned not only on earth but in the mythical heaven of the evangelical imagination. This slur would be an effective demonstration of the extremity of homophobic discourse, sufficient to condemn through example the demonizing of gays and lesbians from the pulpit and pundits each serene Sunday morning, were it not articulated by a character who has been coded as homosexual from the beginning of the series. Garrison is just as hypocritically sanctimonious after his sexual reassignment surgery. He leads a campaign to

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ban gay marriage in Colorado, not because he feels strongly about the sanctity of marriage, but because he is rebuffed by Mr. Slave when he tries to reconcile only to find that Slave and Big Gay Al plan to marry. Garrison’s rage and zeal in the effort to interdict more inclusive marriage legislation is regarded as excessive even by those who agree with his passionate position on the issue. This implies that those who oppose gay marriage do so from a position of rational consideration, not from a position of hatred and prejudice, and it further suggests that those who are so completely moved to rage by such subjects must be gay themselves and have either an axe to grind or a desperate need to disassociate themselves from the lifestyle. The gay marriage episode would be an effective (if childish and cliche´) satire were it not for the implication that irrational homophobia does not exist within Middle America’s heterosexual population. When Garrison’s hatred for gays is revealed, his own supporters protest that they “don’t hate gays,” they just do not want them to be able to marry. The absolution of the dominant culture is quite naı¨ve. It assumes that the average person is motivated by good will even in the formation of his/her most prejudicial convictions. It suggests either that people arrive at the decision to discriminate via rational processes (a slippery slope indeed) or that emotional decisions or spiritual considerations are acceptable in the formation of public policy regarding civil rights. Moreover, the reductiveness of the conclusion that only closet cases really hate gays offers further absolution to mainstream America, the same who are responsible for decades of repressive and bigoted policies towards people with same-sex orientations (including sodomy laws and prosecutions, sting operations, hate crimes, housing and job discrimination, and censorship). The people of South Park are more moderate in their political convictions than much of Middle America. The placement of Garrison at the center of the movement to ban gay marriage constructs a political binary that further marginalizes gay sensibilities. Garrison’s involvement in heterosexist politics suggests an infusion of the irrational and intemperate into a debate that would otherwise be conducted on entirely balanced and judicious considerations. The binary created in this alliance equates gays with the irrational and emotional while the heterosexual population is sane, dispassionate, and logical. Thus, homosexuality becomes the hysterical interruption of rational and discipline discourse. The conclusion of “Follow that Egg” in which Stan and Kyle successfully nurture an egg for one week demonstrates scientifically

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(within the context of the program) that two males can successfully care for a child, and this is sufficient proof to warrant the governor’s endorsement of a bill condoning gay marriage. The gubernatorial dimension of the episode is fraught with absurdities. First it suggests that politicians vote their consciences rather than their constituency on controversial issues. More importantly, the Colorado Governor indicates that he would be influenced by scientific evidence if any were available regarding gay parenting. He then falsely claims that there has never been a study that proves the resolution either way. In fact, multiple studies have demonstrated that the only difference between children raised in same-sex households and those reared in a traditional heterosexual families is that the former have a higher tolerance for sexual diversity. There is no indication of a higher incidence of homosexuality in the children raised by gays and lesbians (Lehr 139). Moreover, Garrison’s campaign against same-sex marriage is based upon the specious assumption that s/he can legally marry Slave because s/he (Garrison) is a real woman. On the contrary, the state does not recognize gender reassignment; in the eyes of the law, the sexually reassigned remain the gender of their birth. The transgendered do not have undisputed rights to marry members of their original gender. In the episode “Mr. Garrison’s Fancy New Vagina,” Stone and Parker satirize the sexual reassignment surgery in which men become women, first by emphasizing the mutilation of the sex organs that is a part of the procedure. They show graphic documentary footage of the procedure, explaining just what is being split and severed in the course of the operation, and thus they create a truly harrowing depiction of the process, one that emphasizes mutilation. The doctor severs Garrison’s testicles and throws them away. The callous dispatch of the testicles is intended to evoke the most thoroughly “abjected”3 eventuality in the conscious life of the heterosexual male, one even more fundamental and potentially inimical to the male ego than anal penetration. Freud taught us that the fear of castration lies at the heart of our most basic psychic development.4 Here the satire evokes the terror of losing one’s “manhood” via the disposal of the sex organs, and in the case of Garrison the decision is rash and ill-considered. The ignorance with which Garrison approaches his sexual reassignment constitutes calculated inaccuracy exploited in the satire. Following his transformation, Garrison is entirely ignorant of what to expect as a woman, unaware of the most fundamental limitations of transsexuals. First, Garrison miscalculates the level of acceptance that he will

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receive when he attempts to reenter society as a woman. S/he appears all around town flaunting h/er “fancy new vagina” expecting acceptance, yet s/he no more resembles a woman after the change than he did before, still sporting male pattern baldness, and when s/he enters a women’s lavatory, the scandalized occupants flee. In addition, Garrison is misinformed about the limitations of her new body. Eager to experience her first menstruation, s/he is disappointed when s/he does not bleed like the other women and s/he believes that s/he is pregnant. When s/he asks a doctor for an abortion, s/he is incredulous to discover that s/he cannot have a period, a pregnancy, or an abortion, and s/he abruptly reviles the plastic surgeon who performed her life-altering surgery, accusing him of fraud (“What kind of woman can’t have an abortion and bleed out her snatch once a month?”) and demanding to be changed back. Garrison’s misapprehensions about the effects of her surgery and her strident flaunting of her new sex ignore the meticulous counseling processes required before the individual can submit to the knife. Psychiatrists determine whether the subject is seeking the sexual reassignment for the appropriate reason—gender dysphoria—and only grant permission when they are satisfied that the subject is psychologically prepared for the eventualities of the change. Garrison’s breasts are the cause for much revulsion in the “Girls Gone Wild” parody in “Mr. Garrison’s Fancy New Vagina.” H/er naked chest literally clears the room. H/er breasts are revealed to the South Park audience while s/he is making passionate love to the controversial evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in the episodes “Go God Go” and “Go God Go XII” from season 10. However, the misshapen and mismatched mammaries do not quell Dawkin’s sexual appetite. Here the South Park creators are obviously parodying the notorious self-assurance of Dawkins, whose pugnacious defense of evolution and criticism of creationism have earned him the facetious title “Darwin’s Rottweiler.” Yet he cannot recognize a transsexual when he is having sex with one. The Dawkins narrative brushes up against the argument that sexual reassignment is wrong because it is a perversion of a natural evolutionary teleology. Dawkin’s union with Garrison results in a future where otters have evolved into a species competing with humanity, where God has been obliterated, even from language (all profane references to God replaced by the terms “science” and “logic”), and where the competing factions of sentient beings go to war over the appropriate name for a collection of atheists. The episodes imply that embracing sexual reassignment is a slippery

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slope that will lead humanity away from divine plan and result in an incoherent and godless future of internecine warfare. Only Dawkins’s disgust at the discovery of Garrison’s reassignment surgery rescues the future from disaster. The monstrosity trope that Stone and Parker associate with transsexuals is more heavy-handed in “Mr. Garrison”s Fancy New Vagina” where the unscrupulous (or perhaps just stupid) plastic surgeon agrees to give Kyle a “negroplasty” so that the disappointed boy can become a basketball player and offers to transform Kyle’s father into a dolphin. These two latter incidents of “plastic surgeons gone wild” carry to absurdity the argument that transsexuals are trapped in the wrong gendered bodies, suggesting that many people are unhappy with their physical condition, but they cope with it. Although Kyle is transformed into an African American, he is still unable to play basketball because his transformation is only cosmetic; his knees are too weak for the game. And his father undergoes a trans-species operation that turns him into a monster, half human and half dolphin. At the arena where he goes to see his son play basketball, he complains that there are no facilities for interspecies creatures. The silliness of his expectations produces more satiric bile for Stone and Parker’s critique of sex change, suggesting that those who undergo radical reconstructive surgery cannot be disappointed when they find themselves alienated and excluded. The either/or argument in which people have a choice between male and female and those in between can fend for themselves oversimplifies the politics of sexual reassignment and for that matter of GLBT rights. The predictable bathroom anxiety that influences many discussions of same-sex desire appears in “Mr. Garrison’s Fancy New Vagina” where the titular character clears the ladies room with obscene farting and defecating and where Kyle’s father is unable to find a facility in which dolphin/men can be comfortable. The episode “Goo Backs” creates another socially reductive vision of homosexuality. “Goo Backs” are time travelers who have come to the twenty-first century looking for employment because overpopulation and dearth in their own time has made it impossible for them to provide for their families. Obviously double-coded, the episode constitutes a satire of the controversy surrounding illegal immigration from Mexico, with “goo backs” a thinly veiled analogue to “wet backs.” The immigrants are taking jobs away from contemporary laborers because the former are willing to work for so little money. That aspect of the episode which suits the purposes of this discussion

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is the absurd solution that the men of South Park adopt in order to deter the wretched time travelers: they decide that they will commit themselves to same-sex relations exclusively, thus undermining the population base of the future by deterring procreation in the present. The solution resembles the argument that the surge in homosexuality in the twentieth century has been the objective manifestation of an evolutionary imperative, a biological process attempting to reduce the numbers of Homo sapiens to assure the continuance of the species. The idea is interesting insofar as it repudiates the evangelical caveat that every child who can be born must be born, without any consideration of overpopulation or the looming crises in environment, economics, food/water supply, or energy production. The idea that humanity is not being a good steward of the earth is certainly a worthy subject, but in the past Stone and Parker have ridiculed environmentalism in multiple episodes (“Two Days Before the Day After Tomorrow,” “Rainforest Shmainforest,” “Earth Day 2000,” and “Man Bear Pig” to name only a few), have mocked the idea of exploiting the unborn for the advancement of medicine and science (“Cripple Fight”), and have remained hostile toward the idea of abortion (“Mr. Garrison’s Brand New Vagina” and “Dog Whisperer”). The decision to fight immigration from the future by pursuing same-sex relations is a screwball solution, one motivated by lust more than social and environmental activism; the men simply have a latent desire for each other and the goo backs provide them the pretext under which they can act out their lust in good conscience. When a more insightful member of the male community suggests that they abandon their homosexual activities and attempt to accomplish their goals via deliberate and rational environmental action—planting trees and becoming responsible stewards of the earth—the other men become bored and opt instead for their original solution. This “cluster fuck” resolution generates many misrepresentations and inaccuracies in the sexual politics of the episode. First, it relishes that old slur that homosexuality is inimical to procreation and subsequently the future of humanity, a conclusion that ignores the lesbian baby boom and the other solutions that childless gay and lesbian couples have embraced in this age of in vitro fertilization, surrogate motherhood, and test tube babies. Second, from a philosophical vantage, the argument that homosexuality may have a practical dimension, one that can address social and environmental crises, can be regarded as a slippery slope. Embracing homosexuality for its pragmatic applications in a period of procreative abundance could

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legitimize the contrary directive in a period of population decline. Thus, the individual’s right of sexual self-determination becomes conditional upon the approval of the heterosexist majority and the vicissitudes of demographics and population growth. Homosexuality is then carnivalized, flourishing in a period of temporary permissiveness when the masses are permitted to flaunt their disrespect for the social hierarchy, all for the purposes of social control.5 By extension, there would be times when homosexuality could not be tolerated because it wasted the eggs and sperm that would kindle population grow. Third, the economic dimension of the decision to limit population growth in the present in order to stave off dearth and illegal immigration from the future brushes up against the vexing reality that the recent success in gay rights can be traced to the perception that gays and lesbians are an emerging economic force, a previously untapped market that does a significant amount of spending. The growing visibility of gays and lesbians in the media acknowledges the economic clout of the “DINK” (“Double Income No Kids”). Since the objection to immigration from the future is economic, the resolution to engage homosexuality for the purposes of assuring that the goo backs have no motivation for immigration in the future is exploitative, reducing the GLBT community to commodity and economic strategy in a grand scheme that advances the interests of heterosexual institutions, particularly the traditional nuclear family. The economic dimension also plays upon several cliche´ s about straight men’s sexual experimentation—the homosexual act becomes acceptable (less emasculating) if it involves a financial incentive, and more archaic, the contagion theory which holds that those who once experience same-sex desire will become addicted, unable or unwilling to control further incidents of the same, a notion that promotes the spurious claim that gays and lesbians are heterosexuals who have been led away from the “natural” course in life by an infecting human agency. Finally, the men’s indifference to the looming crisis and their decision to abandon decisive and rational action to return to “the pile” of male bodies invokes that old slur that homoerotic activity arises from an excess of lust. Here the homosexual lifestyle shirks the responsibilities and demands of the adult world in favor of an uninterrupted and indiscriminate indulgence of libidinal urges. The episode in which the South Park creators satirize Queer Eye for the Straight Guy (“South Park Is Gay”) contains a potentially violent homophobic subtext. Parker and Stone see the Bravo series as prime mover in the proliferation of “metrosexuals,” straight men sufficiently

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confident in their masculinity to embrace more genteel traits, not to mention spend time in the company of gay men without worrying about their own reputations. In this episode, the men become attentive of their appearances and develop refined tastes in fashion, hygiene, food, and design. However, while South Park does not stereotype gay men any more than Queer Eye itself does, it does take the ostensible project of the show overly seriously, spreading gay tastes ubiquitously throughout the heterosexual population to the applause of straight females who have presumably longed for males more cultured than their shallow beer chugging, football cheering, face painting, monster truck watching, NASCAR driving, buffalo wing eating, fag bashing, wife beating, barroom brawling, crotch scratching husbands, fathers, brothers, and boyfriends. Garrison’s complaint that the Fab 5 are adversely effecting gay men’s unique stylishness by making it commonplace can be extrapolated to the women of South Park, whose objection is that the metrosexual is eliminating the distinction between men and women and undermining desire. The men are becoming so effeminate that they are more like girlfriends than husbands. Garrison and several others decide that the Fab 5 must die for daring to assume a national profile and for eliminating straight acting men, the “Other” of the male homoerotic binary. While the homophobia implicit in the “South Park Is Gay” episode remains muted by the fact that the assailants are also gay, the scenario is all too familiar. Gay men who are bold enough to reveal their sexuality in mixed company are threatened with violence or death, an exercise in “abjection” in which the subject attempts to eliminate a threat to the ego ideal by radically excluding it via rash and sometimes violent action. Adolescent boys police each other’s gender conformity by threatening with violence or ostracism those who fail to reproduce compulsory gender appropriate behavior, a practice all too often retained and literalized among adult heterosexual males who feel entitled to punish homosexuality (real or imagined) at will. Moreover, the narrative evokes the sexual predator trope of the gay man who aggressively pursues and seduces straight men without taking “no” for an answer. Garrison once again demonstrates his pettiness, as in his opposition to the Colorado Gay Marriage Initiative (“Follow That Egg”). The true reason that he wants to kill the Fab 5 is because they made straight men indistinguishable from gay men and, thereby, made it more difficult to determine who was available for his sexual predation. One silent acknowledgement partially redeems the oversimplifications and outright hostilities and paranoia evident within the episode, making the episode more

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progressive and savvy in its sexual politics—the repudiation of sexual essentialism, the recognition that gender is a performance, not a biological inevitability.6 In the eleventh season, the episode “Cartman Sucks” once again addresses issues fundamental to the evolution of gay civil rights. Cartman’s sexually predacious efforts to humiliate Butters gets the latter sent to a camp where clergymen try to deprogram (de-gay) and reprogram young homosexual males. The camp slogan ridicules the Religious Right’s presumption in believing it can cure homosexuality after the psychiatric community has abandoned the effort. The camp slogan makes the project ridiculous: “Pray Away the Gay.” The vicious gallows humor of the episode lies in the rash of suicides by young boys subjected to the tedious indoctrination and in the victimization of clueless Butters, who in actuality has no same-sex desire, but who is so gullible he believes anything his parents tell him. While Butters is victimized by the anti-gay establishment, Cartman goes unaffected save for the need to explain to his mother his photographically documented sexual indiscretion with Butters. In its satire of the Exit Ministries, “Cartman Sucks” initially seems fairly progressive, demonstrating that such programs do more harm than good, victimizing young boys who are simply following their indomitable inclinations. This position essentializes sexuality and subsequently characterizes homosexuality as disorder or pathology, a genetic mistake that could potentially be bred out, but not prayed away. The rash of suicides among the EXIT residents remains consistent with South Park’s humorously extravagant violence; however, in this case it evokes a commonplace stereotype about gay men, one that served to legitimize the medicalization of homosexuality for decades: that gay men and lesbians are so unhappy that they are suicidal. While the episode evokes the “homophilic” explanation postulated by the psychiatric community, which contends that whatever unhappiness gays and lesbians experience beyond that of the heteronormative community results not from psychological instability or pathology, but from the poor treatment that people with alternative sexual identities receive from the dominant culture (Bayer 53). Yet the placement of undeserving Butters into the reeducation camp generates a tension and is potentially homophobic. The episode hinges upon the victimization of Butters by Cartman and the irony that the former ends up in the inimical grasp of EXIT Ministries while the true perpetrator escapes similar rehabilitation/punishment. The dichotomy between the innocent and the predator, the undeserving and the deserving,

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the straight and the gay raises the specter of AIDS politics of the 1980s in which the dead and dying where neatly categorized between those who deserved it because they engaged in a homosexual act or used intravenous drugs and those who were the innocent victims of the pandemic, contracting it through medical blood products or philandering spouses. (It is difficult to forget and forgive the sanctimony and imperiousness of Arthur Ashe and Kimberly Bergalis, who took such pains to differentiate themselves from the people who really deserved to be sick.) Butters is coded as heterosexual, thus his suffering in the reeducation camp is construed as more unjust than that of the other unwilling subjects. While the episode raises sympathy for all captives of Exit Ministries, it suggests that a greater injustice is reserved for non-gays. SOUTH PARK IS GAY Perhaps the most inimical aspect of South Park’s heterosexism is the appropriation of the term “gay” to describe anything that is undesirable. In his book Masculinities, R. W. Connell identifies homosexuality as the “symbolic repository of all that is excluded from hegemonic masculinity” (78). Constructed as the antithesis of what is normal, natural, desirable, and presentable, homosexuality becomes an anti-ideal of masculinity, “smacking of every sin that has a name,” all that has been radically excluded from male heteronormativity, and this is consistent with the way in which the Kyle, Stan, and Cartman (perhaps Kenny too if we could tell what he was saying) use the word “gay,” which can variously signify silly, pretentious, affected, effeminate, uncool, stupid, boring, tired, embarrassing, annoyingly happy or precious, and virtually any negative demeanor. In “Rainforest Schmainforest,” the children travel to Central America on a school chorus tour entitled “Getting Gay with Kids.” The performances are an embarrassment to the boys who do not want to sing and dance. In addition, the title “South Park Is Gay” carries both the meaning that all of the men of South Park have become more effeminate in emulation of the Fab 5 and the presumption that the town’s tendency to get carried away by every new trend makes them stupid, naı¨ve, pretentious, and ridiculous, at least in the eyes of fifth graders. The episode “The Red Badge of Gayness” uses the term to capture the stupidity and pretentiousness of civil war reenactments. The frequency with which the boys label each other “gay” in order to maintain control and to monitor gender performance demonstrates

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the extent to which they have abjected and/or abominated the concept in the construction of the self. In his book One of the Boys: Masculinity, Homophobia, and Modern Manhood, David Plummer discusses the role that homophobic slurs play in the male child’s construction of masculine subjectivity: Homophobia is the wedge that splits modern male sexuality along the lines of “otherness” and in that sense, (early, presexual) homophobia precedes and underwrites homosexuality and heterosexuality. (150) Plummer notes that boys begin to use homophobic slurs to impose gender-appropriate behaviors even before they reach puberty. Terms such as “faggot,” “poof,” “poofter,” “pussy,” and “sissy” are commonplace in the verbal interaction of boys even before they understand what those terms actually mean in relationship to sexuality (41), and the result is a prolonged, even lifelong desire to avoid behaviors that might warrant such opprobrium. Plummer continues: Since homophobia is consistently characterized as a powerful rejection of boyhood otherness, it might be anticipated that homophobia will lead males to avoid any associations with homosexuality, and to restrict the circumstances in which such an association might arise. As Greg Herek puts it, “Because of the stigma attached to homosexuality, many heterosexuals restrict their own behavior in order to avoid being labeled gay.” (150) This process in male gender construction certainly seems descriptive of the South Park boys usage of the term “gay,” which may be more broadly defined as that which must be avoided if one is to remain a boy, and particularly one permitted to form friendship bonds with the other boys. Here the usage brushes up against Eve Sedgwick’s formative study which asserts that men must repudiate homosexual longing in order to gain admission to homosocial contexts (1–2). Kyle, Stan, Cartman, and Kenny are indeed prepubescent, and they repeatedly demonstrate their ignorance of sexual behaviors, as can be seen in Ms. Cartman’s directive to her son that if he wants to be a lesbian he will have to learn to “lick carpet,” and the boy can be seen licking the floor throughout the episode. In the feature-length film, Bigger, Longer, Uncut, Stan is told by Chef that he needs to find the “clitoris”

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if he wants to make Wendy like him, and he takes this to mean that the clitoris is a creature separate from the female herself, an oracle to consult in the effort to discover the secret to male-female relations. The South Park creators use the term “gay” in binary opposition to all that the boys would eventually like to become as adult males, thus again stigmatizing homosexuality with each usage, urging the boys to avoid the shame of being accurately labeled “gay.” While the term is literally polarizing in the boy’s usage, it gradually loses its specific signification as indicative of alternative sexual identities. The negative signification is constructive of hegemonic masculinity, and, therefore, not intended to insult gays. The boys know that Garrison, Al, and Slave are “gay,” but they are not generally prejudiced against them for that particular reason. The usage is reminiscent of Eminem’s harebrained defense of the term “faggot,” which he naively argues is not about gay people, but about “chopping down” an opponent’s “manhood.”7 Nevertheless, one can hardly imagine a television show using the term “black” as an expression that robs the recipient of their humanity, identifying all that is excluded from the lives and consciousnesses of “regular” or “normal” people. The South Park creators and writers use “gay” as a signification of opprobrium because they can still get away with it, homophobia having not yet been fully abominated by mainstream culture as racism has been. The fact that the most unsympathetic characters in the South Park canon are coded as gay certainly contributes to the milieu of homophobia in the series. Satan, Saddam Hussein, and Mr. Garrison are gay, and even the ostensible homophobe Eric Cartman is repeatedly associated with same-sex desire. Garrison probably even beats out Satan in persistent wickedness, selfishness, and insensitivity. Early in the series one can attribute much of Garrison’s despicable behavior to his closeted lifestyle; however, we find that he is still despicable after his coming out and his sex change. He is so selfish and narcissistic that he has no allegiances to anyone but himself and his own appetites. Satan can show a similar selfishness and vanity, as in “Hell on Earth 2006,” where he throws himself a birthday party and forces one of his demonic familiars to surrender his Britney Spears costume so that he can have the best costume at the party. Satan is surprisingly sympathetic in most of his appearances insofar as he is very muscular and simultaneously very sensitive, passive, and effeminate; he even seems to be an analogue to Mr. Slave. His lover, Saddam Hussein, is coded as the dominant and sexually exploitative one. It is actually easier here to see Parker and Stone’s progressive point about

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homosexuality than in other textual circumstances. While the satire appears to play into the hands of evangelical homophobes, it actually has the effect of demonstrating through literalization the absurdity of demonizing the GLBT population in religious rhetoric. The satire literally imposes homosexuality on the devil as well as the various attendant stereotypes and creates the ridiculous and incongruent image of Satan. Beyond the creator’s understandable urge to lampoon the former Iraqi leader, the image of Saddam Hussein in South Park may be derived from the mispronunciation of his name by George Herbert Walker Bush, who throughout his presidency insisted on referring to the Iraqi leader as “Sodom,” but here again the idea that “gay” is the most humiliating thing that can be said about a heterosexual male informs the portrait. If one really wants to insult a man, one need only suggest that he is gay. The relationship between Satan and Saddam is funny not because they are having sex, but because they are trying to emulate a normative heterosexual couple. Their efforts to negotiate their relationship are absurdly domestic, two great icons of violence and evil reduced to squabbling over the pettiness and insensitivities of daily cohabitation. Satan is funny and ridiculous because he is weak and emotionally sensitive, not terrifying and powerful. By literalizing the beliefs of the right-wing demagogues, the satire undermines the hysterical homophobic rhetoric that characterizes gays and lesbians as devils, showing how ridiculous such images are, but it simultaneously suggests that the worst thing a man can be is gay. Same-sex relations can even emasculate the devil. Cartman, too, the funniest but most vicious of the children, is subtly constructed as gay in several episodes. He frequently masquerades as a woman, and from the very first episode the narrative is fixated on his anus, such as when aliens plant an anal probe—a huge satellite dish— in his rectum. In the episode “Bebe’s Boobs Destroy Society,” he is associated with the psychotic transvestite serial killer Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs. Cartman’s private life is subject to scrutiny by the other boys, and they see him at alternate times having tea parties with his stuffed animals (“Cartman’s Mom Is a Dirty Slut”) and dressing up like Britney Spears while dancing with a cardboard cutout of Justin Timberlake (“AWESOM-O”). The clearest sign of Cartman’s evolving homosexuality occurs in the eleventh season when, as a practical joke, he takes a picture of himself with Butters’s penis in his mouth, mistakenly believing that the act would be humiliating to Butters. Cartman becomes desperate to reaffirm his masculinity when he learns that the photo makes him gay, not Butters.

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REHABILITATING AND REVILING SOUTH PARK’S HOMOPHOBIA One way that the residual homophobia of South Park may be recuperated is through the gay/queer binary. The rehabilitation of the epithet “queer” was partially predicated upon the idea that the term “gay” has become too bourgeois, too integrationist, and too compromising of the diversity within the GLBT community. “Gay” seeks to be accepted on heterosexist terms, generating lifestyles that are safe, solicitous, and apologetic. “Gay” argues for inclusion because it is just like “straight” only with inverted sexual object choices. “Queer” was embraced by a radicalized and desperate population in the first decade of the pandemic. The callous indifference of the political structure (particularly the White House), the pharmaceutical industry, and the medical community, not to mention the open hostility and hatemongering of many religious institutions, generated the more confrontational political agendas of ACTUP and Queer Nation, agendas that embraced those groups which had been excluded or at least hidden in the air-brushed image of the conformist and conventional gay and lesbian community—the transgendered, bisexual, sadomasochistic, intergenerational, interracial, for example. “Queer” problematized and denaturalized gender division and identity, expanding the field of gender play (Jagose 1–6). Like the Black Power movement which followed the successes of the Civil Rights revolution, the queer nation sought/seeks to be accepted on its own terms with all of its indiscretions, improprieties, indelicacies, and indefensible differences. “Queer” further diversifies gender diversity. The gay/queer binary may help to recuperate the apparent conservatism of South Park’s gender politics. In “The Death Camp of Tolerance” episode, Garrison argues that “tolerance” neither implies nor requires “acceptance.” One does not necessarily approve of that which one tolerates, one simply resolves not to oppose the “other’s” pursuit of happiness so long as it remains within the scope of legality and does not inhibit another’s ambitions and desires. This concept of “tolerance” is compatible with the notion of “Queer,” which does not plead for acceptance, but demands equal rights without capitulation to safe bourgeois ideals. South Park rarely if ever presents any homosexuals who are easy to like. Big Gay Al is too effeminate and sexualized; Mr. Slave is too kinky; and Mr./Ms. Garrison is too testy, sarcastic, and hostile, moving from savage homophobia to loud and in-yourface self-acceptance and from gender reassignment surgery to further

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gender dysphoria in which she imagines that she is a sassy biological woman, physically and legally. The mainstream population of South Park, itself very quirky, oscillates between indifference and outrage when it comes to the queer collection of characters and is even a little queer itself sometimes (“Two Guys Naked in a Hot Tub”). Garrison’s speech in “The Death Camp of Tolerance” need not be understood as a slight against the GLBT community, relegating them to second-class citizens who exist by the leave of the heterosexist power structure. It can instead be understood as an assertion that the Queer community does not need to be accepted by the mainstream; it needs only to be left alone to ply its own music within a socio-political environment that does not discriminate or persecute. Garrison’s reaction to the Fab 5 in “South Park Is Gay” becomes more complex within this “queer” context. The Queer Eye team is not “queer” at all; they are promoting conformity and cultural integration and are making gays and straights indistinguishable. Perhaps, Garrison and the others object not only to the widespread commoditization and dissemination of gay culture, but also to the portrait of gay men as safe, obliging, well-integrated, frivolous, and effeminate performers who can easily be accepted into the mainstream without evoking the apprehension of its longtime members. The Boy Scout incident involving Big Gay Al (“Cripple Fight”) can also be understood within the gay/queer negotiation. Big Gay Al’s surprising argument that the parents of Boy Scouts should not have to accept a gay scout leader if it makes them uncomfortable can be read as a refusal to conform to the dominant culture’s description of idealized manhood, the same that the Boy Scouts hope to facilitate in their charges. Big Gay Al’s replacement, Mr. Grazier, is a traditionally masculine male who looks like a marine drill sergeant, but who, against expectations based upon appearances, turns out to be a child molester. The episode offers an important lesson on the indefensible presumption that gay men are sexual predators, demonstrating that such proclivities are not so easily identified with a particular social group. The resolution of this conflict bolsters audience expectations that Al will be reinstated and vindicated, but those expectations are frustrated when Al elects to step aside, respecting the parents’ anxieties, but vowing to change their minds through reason rather than court order. Perhaps Al recognizes that there is more at stake than the ever-present threat of molestation. What is second in importance only to the Boy Scouts continued sexual propriety is the construction of their masculinity: Big Gay Al cannot teach children the performance of hegemonic male behavior. The parents want a

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leader who can teach, through example, an idealized masculine gender performance, one even the fathers cannot enact convincingly. Big Gay Al’s refusal to be reinstated as the Scout leader may be motivated by the realization that he does not have the particular knowledge requisite to the Boy Scout outdoorsman and survivalist agenda. He urges the boys to conduct bake sales. Big Gay Al refuses to play the victim, being reinstalled in his office via the court system so that he may assume a place where he is not wanted. In this light, his actions may not be concessionary, but empowering. He will not change his demeanor; he will not teach conformity to compulsory masculinist expectations and assumptions. He will remain Big (Queer) Al without apology or compromise. While the gay/queer binary cannot obliterate all of the offense in South Park, the queer sensibility is certainly more compatible with Parker and Stone’s libertarian politics than is the gay activism and conformist mentality, which constructs gays and lesbians as victims in a culture war in which they only want to be recognized as the same as everyone else. Gay activism is compatible with the political correctness that is so frequently the topic of derision and interrogation in South Park. As the rehabilitated slur suggests, queer is not interested in the heteronormative majority’s approval and thus is less sensitive to slight and generally more lifestyle affirming. In this sense, the libertarian ideology unleashes a more radical politics for the sexually marginal, one that demands queers of all types be accepted on their own terms, not as the apologetic, conformist, and solicitous gay person who only wants the bourgeois ideal of domesticity and gender appropriate object choices. While the invocation of libertarian politics and the evolution of the “queer” lend a small amount of respectability to the carnival of excrement and infamy that is South Park, it does not completely redeem Parker and Stone’s homophobic bias. By “homophobia,” I do not mean hatred of gays and lesbians but rather an anxiety and a fear of association as it was defined in George Weinberg’s original postulation of the term (4). The representation of queer sensibilities and activities within the series is filtered through the consciousness of white heterosexual males. The simultaneous fear and fascination with the idea of anal penetration captures the primary conflict of straight men regarding the homosexual act. The revulsion of straight men toward gay intimacy has two principal trajectories—the potential for pain surrounding anal penetration and the anticipation that two men might kiss and become romantically intimate. Heterosexual men often have

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a greater revulsion to romantic intimacy than they do to the idea that two men might fuck. The homosexual act can still construct one of the participants as fully male (the penetrative partner), but kissing makes both men “fags.” This apprehension can be seen in the South Park episode “Two Guys Naked in a Hot Tub.” Here Randy Marsh and Gerald Broflovski, the fathers of Stan and Kyle, respectively, find themselves alone in a hot tub at a neighborhood party. After a few tentative moments of verbal probing, the men decide to gratify each other, assuming that they will then go back to their families and their heteronormative lives without experiencing or retaining any emotional attachment. To his deep horror and anxiety, however, Randy Marsh discovers that Gerald has become emotionally intimate and wants to talk about what has transpired between them. Randy spends the rest of the evening trying to extricate himself from the unintended intimacy that has resulted from the one-time sex act. The fear that “the awful daring of a moment’s surrender” might result in emotional entanglement and public humiliation constitutes one of the anxieties that lies at the center of homophobia—the return of the repressed desires intruding upon the present. The South Park creators’ hostility toward celebrity activism is notorious, but they seem particularly punitive toward movie stars who use their fame to advocate for gay rights. Parker and Stone have repeatedly protested their contempt for Barbra Streisand and have specifically attributed this hostility to the singer/actor’s reproach of right-wing efforts to deny gays and lesbians equal rights in Colorado (Johnson-Woods 189–190). Apparently she had vowed never to perform in Colorado again if the electorate passed the proposition permanently denying equal rights based on sexual orientation. This defense of civil rights was evidently enough to inspire the wrath of the animation duo who produced an episode in which a mechanized and monstrous Streisand terrorizes and destroys the town (“MechaStreisand”). Ostensibly, the South Park creators object to those celebrities who try to influence the electoral process by speaking out loudly and emphatically in defense of civil rights for gays and lesbians. They argue that Coloradoans are not children who need to be directed toward politically correct action by West Coast millionaires who know nothing of their town, disposition, or lifestyle (Johnson-Woods 210–211). In effect, they consider such intrusions infantilizing. While their position does seem consistent with the principles of libertarian ideology, their conclusions are myopic, ahistorical, geographically constituted, naı¨ve, and sophomoric. First, they assume that all citizens

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within our nation are generally treated equally, pursuing their efforts on an even playing field, a position which conveniently forgets the centuries of oppression of minorities, including gays and lesbians, as well as unequal treatment under the law which was only changed via the activism of community leaders, celebrities, socially motivated members of the population, sympathetic politicians, and activist judges. Evidently, Parker and Stone would have civil rights legislation dictated by popular vote, a practice which could legitimize any kind of villainy and discrimination so long as the majority consented. The duo naively or callously assume that left to their own devices, the electorate will opt for the humane solution, and if they choose not to, then minorities have no recourse but to appeal to their sense of reason, the same that is, by definition, suspended in prejudicial thought processes, “prejudice” meaning “before thought.” Their libertarian laissez faire doctrine fails to recognize that whatever social equality has already been attained has been won partially through the social activism of people with high public profiles as well as regular people who employed posters and songs and letter-writing campaigns in the pursuit of social equality. The laissez faire principles of Parker and Stone are also geographically constituted. Half of the time that South Park has been on the air, sodomy was illegal in more than 20 states. Spending one’s time on the liberal West Coast might give the false impression that gay men and women are treated with much more deference than is common in the heartlands. While the blue states argue about gay marriage, the queer denizens of the red states are still trying to dodge entrapment, arrest, and public humiliation even after the Lawrence versus Texas Supreme Court decision. As is so often the case in public discourse, the gays and lesbians of South Park are expected to carry an unrealistic burden of responsibility for the mainstream disaffection with civil rights in general. Frequently one can read the mainstream contempt for other minorities in the arguments against gay rights. The objection to the creation of another privileged minority reveals a prior disaffection with the “privileges” of those groups who have preceded the GLBT community’s pursuit of equal treatment. Right-wing demagogues have argued that civil rights for gays will result in an overburdening of the welfare system and the social services, thus refusing to recognize that the gay rights movement is largely middle class and that gays and lesbians are the wealthiest and most well behaved of America’s many minority groups. Implicitly in the politics of Parker and Stone, the same group should be denied protection from discrimination in work and housing

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until the heterosexist majority is more comfortable with the idea of working with or living near them. The South Park creators claim to speak for the proletariat (JohnsonWoods 210–211), arguing that the heartlanders are capable of making reasonable decisions without the intrusion of smug and selfcongratulatory members of what George Herbert Walker Bush termed the “cultured elite” (“Smug Alert!”). Yet despite this egalitarian attitude, Parker and Stone are every bit as patronizing as those whom they satirize. The conclusion of virtually every episode of South Park begins with the phrase, “I’ve learned something today,” and is followed by a sophomoric platitude which captures the lesson of the story. While these are highly ironic and often parody the sitcom formula, they nevertheless capture the principal idea that the writers and creators hope to convey. The show itself is a tableau for moral lessons, which is why it, in the grand sitcom tradition, starts over anew with each episode, as though nothing had gone before. Dire and complicated previous entanglements are completely unwound, this signified by the reiterated massacres of Kenny, which are usually wiped away with each new episode, or by the instantaneous restoration of the town following the intermittent devastations. Just like their satiric targets, Parker and Stone emphatically advocate their personal philosophies, usually portraying as stupid, shallow, or malignant anyone who does not maintain a similar position. Indeed, in the “Mystery of the Urinal Deuce,” they conclude that “one-fourth of the American population is retarded.” Indeed, the population of the small mountain town repeatedly flies into a panic or a mob mentality over what are only perceived threats: “Jared Has Aides,” “Two Days Before the Day After Tomorrow,” “Terrance and Phillip—Behind the Blow.” The crowd is irrational but quite predictable, easily inflamed by the gossip mongering and the media. Parker and Stone’s high-minded condemnation of “political correctness,” construed as an intrusion into the personal freedoms of the population, is constantly undermined by their own narrative choices. They never treat the African-American community with the callous disregard to which they subject the GLBT. They do not argue that the civil rights of this long-established minority group should be subject to the vicissitudes and petty prejudices of the popular vote. Moreover, there are no black, Hispanic, or Asian characters who are as degenerate as the gay characters. Even Chef, who is highly lascivious (usually possessing more than one white woman at a time), is often the only helpful adult, one who is well-meaning, worldly, and rational. In the episode “Chef

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Goes Nanners,” the titular character understandably and vociferously objects to the flag that includes the image of a black man being lynched. In the resolution of the conflict, the flag contains the image of people of all races being lynched. In this conclusion, Chef recognizes that anyone can be a racist or the object of racism if s/he gets carried away in the effort to eradicate racism. Nevertheless, at the end of the episode, the marginalized African American is represented as a member of the collective. In contrast, at the conclusion of the Boy Scout episode, Big Gay Al is still marginalized, excluded from participation until the wise white men of South Park magnanimously choose to include him. Doubtlessly, South Park does much to advance the interests of gays and lesbians simply by addressing their issues, by refusing to erase their presence, and occasionally by taking a meaningful stand against homophobia. However, the comedy series’ support is qualified, and it offers evenhanded treatment of issues, which for one group is a matter of life, liberty, and happiness while for the opposition merely the exercise of prejudice predicated upon an irrelevant and outmoded morality or an irrational fear. The creators of South Park treat the GLBT community with a qualified sensitivity because it is the only minority group whose degradation and exclusion can still find a sympathetic television audience. Thus the GLBT issues are partially representative of a broader interrogation of political correctness which the South Park creators seem to maintain as a primary entertainment and didactic objective. So gays and lesbians are treated as the “symbolic repository of all that is excluded” from mainstream American culture (Connell 78), the embodiment of the antithetical or countercultural margin that defines the center. The GLBT community cannot afford to be so generous as to embrace a half-baked libertarian pretense—one that disguises an adolescent, narcissistic, and satiric misanthropy calculated to render coherent a randomly selected collection of targets whose inclusion is the consequence of spleen and individual distemper, not of a systematic application of a philosophical paradigm. It urges patience and qualified acceptance, and the overtures of limited recognition and tolerance are no longer adequate appeasement, no longer sufficient explanation for the delay of a full and unrestricted citizenship. NOTES 1. In his study Homosexuality and American Psychiatry: The Politics of Diagnosis (Princeton, NJ: Princton UP, 1987), Ronald Bayer examines the medical diagnoses of homosexuality in the twentieth century as well as the struggle

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of the gay community to have homosexuality removed from the The American Psychiatric Association’s nomenclature of psychopathologies. Bayer discusses the principal psychiatric theories of homosexuality: Freud argued that all people traversed a period of homosexual identification on the way to normative heterosexual desire (22); Sandor Rado concluded that “there was no innate homosexual drive,” so the development of homosexual tendencies must result from a “overwhelming environmental force, some profound fear or resentment” (quoted in Bayer 28–29). Irving Bieber rejected the notion that “every homosexual is a latent heterosexual,” and he blamed the “condition” on dysfunctional “parent-child relationships and early life situations,” specifically blaming the psychology on clinging mothers and distant fathers (quoted in Bayer 30–31); and finally Charles Socarides concluded that all sexualities were “learned behaviors” and that homosexuality could be explained by “massive childhood fears,” developing prior to the oedipal phase of psycho-sexual development (quoted in Bayer 34–35). 2. Between 1970 and 1973, gay and lesbian activists lobbied the annual conventions of the American Psychiatric Association, demanding that homosexuality be eliminated from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorders that was set to go into a new edition. Finally in 1973, the APA Board of Trustees agreed to remove homosexuality from its official list of pathologies (Ellen Herman, Psychiatry, Psychology, and Homosexuality. New York: Chelsea House, 1994. 95–103; Ronald Bayer, Homosexuality and American Psychiatry: The Politics of Diagnosis. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1987. 101–154). 3. “Abjection” is Julia Kristeva’s theory of revulsion. She identifies the abject as that which is “radically excluded” from consciousness in the construction of identity, that which has been repressed in defining of the “I,” but that which is also constantly intruding upon the “I,” forcing the subject to (re)initiate the process of rejection the (re)assertion of the self (Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. New York: Columbia UP, 1882. 1–31). Central to the process is gender identity; the gendered self is constantly rejecting those qualities which are commonly associated with the opposite sex in order to maintain a convincing gender performance. 4. In The Ego and the Id, Freud identifies the fear of castration with the subsequent dread of conscience and authority (Sigmund Freud, The Ego and the Id, Ed. James Strachey, Trans. Joan Riviere. New York: Norton, 1960, 60). The development of the castration complex is the beginning of morality forcing the Oedipal child to abandon h/er claim upon the mother (Madan Sarup, Jacques Lacan, Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1992. 4–5; Jonathan Scott Lee, Jacques Lacan, Amherst: U of Massachsetts P, 1990, 173–174). 5. Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of the carnivalesque is developed in his book Rabelais and His World (Trans. Helene Iswolsky. Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 1984), where he describes the celebratory period in which the populace are permitted to indulge themselves and to act out against the social hierarchy, flaunting their disrespect and affecting airs that would not be tolerated

Recuperating and Reviling South Park’s Queer Politics

301

under normal circumstances. This form of civil disobedience is a pressure valve for the people, allowing them to let off steam in the effort to undermine real seditious activities borne of frustrations and pent-up rage. However, the carnival is also controlled insofar as it is subject to spatial and temporal limitations. At the conclusion of the carnival period the formerly liberated must quietly and contentedly return to their daily loyalties and labors. 6. In her highly influential study Gender Trouble, Judith Bulter, distinguishing between sex and gender, concludes that gender is a collection of socially, geographically, and historically constituted behavior traits that are in effect a performance rather than an inevitability such as biological sex. There is nothing inevitable about gender: “There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; that identity is performatively constituted by the very ‘expressions’ that are said to be its results” (New York: Routledge, 1990, 25). 7. Eminem has tried to explain his usage of the term “faggot” in an effort to be conciliatory toward the gay community; however, his explanation simply demonstrates with even more clarity that he perceives homosexuality as the antithesis of the authentic masculinity and the worst thing that one can say to a hostile opponent: “That’s the worst thing you can say to a man, it’s like callin’ girl.” He adds that calling another man a “faggot” is the linguistic equivalent of saying “I’m not gay” (Weiner 83). Further confirming his ignorance of the subtleties of gender and sexuality, he states, “hip-hop is all about manhood, it’s about competition, about bein’ macho. . . . If you’re battling another dude in a freestyle battle, calling him a faggot, you’re choppin’ down [his] manhood” (Kenyatta 110).

REFERENCES Anderson, B. C. South Park Conservatives: The Revolt Against Liberal Media Bias. Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 2005. Bakhtin, M. Rabelais and His World. Trans. Helene Iswolsky. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1984. Bayer, R. Homosexuality and American Psychiatry: The Politics of Diagnosis. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987. Bozett, F. W. “Gay Fathers.” In Gay and Lesbian Parents, edited by Fredrick W. Bozett, 3–22. New York: Praeger, 1987. Butler, J. Gender Trouble. New York: Routledge, 1990. Cantor, P. A. “The Invisible Gnomes and the Invisible Hand: South Park and Libertarian Philosophy.” In South Park and Philosophy: You Know I Learned Something Today, edited by Robert Arp., 97–111. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007. Chaney, M. “Coloring Whiteness and Black Voice Minstrelsy: Representations of Race and Place.” In Static Shock, King of the Hill and South Park. Journal of Popular Film and Television 31.4 (2004): 167–75. Connell, R. W. Masculinities. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995.

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Freud, S. The Ego and the Id. Ed. James Strachey, Trans. Joan Riviere. New York: Norton, 1960. Gay, P. Freud: A Life for Our Time. New York: Doubleday, 1988. Herman, E. Psychiatry, Psychology, and Homosexuality. New York: Chelsea House,1994. Jagose, A. Queer Theory: An Introduction. New York: New York University Press, 1996. Johnson-Woods, T. Blame Canada: South Park and Contemporary Culture. New York: Continuum, 2007. Kenyatta, K. You Forgot About Dre: A Tale of Gangsta Rap, Violence, and Hit Records. Los Angeles: Busta Books, 2000. Kristeva, J. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. New York: Columbia University Press, 1882. Lee, J. S. Jacques Lacan. Amherst, MA: University of Massachsetts Press, 1990. Lehr, V. Queer Family Values: Debunking the Myth of the Nuclear Family. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1999. Plummer, D. One of the Boys: Masculinity, Homophobia, and Modern Manhood. New York: Harrington Park Press, 1999. Ragland-Sullivan, E. Jacques Lacan and the Philosophy of Psychoanalysis. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1987. Sarup, M. Jacques Lacan. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992. Weiner, C. Eminem . . . In His Own Words. New York: Omnibus, 2001. Weinberg, G. Society and the Healthy Homosexual. New York: St. Martin’s, 1972.

Index

ABC/Disney, 47, 63, 64; Ellen and, 1, 2, 3, 13, 14–15, 16, 188. See also Disney Advocate magazine, 19–20, 204, 265, 266 African-American men, 284, 299; AIDS and, 42, 45, 125–27, 128, 131. See also Black masculinity; Blaxploitation films; Noah’s Arc (television dramedy); Tongues Untied (documentary) AfterEllen.com (Web site), 48, 63 AIDS (autoimmune deficiency syndrome), 83, 124, 226, 289; African Americans and, 42, 45, 125–27, 128, 131 Aitchinson, C., 168 Alexander, Jonathon, 5, 6, 7 American frontier, 26–27, 28, 29 American International Pictures (AIP), 108–9 American Psychiatric Association, 279, 300 anal intercourse, 125, 295; in Brokeback Mountain, 142–43, 156–57; in South Park, 276, 279–80 Ander als die andern (film), 71 Anderson, Brian C., 273

androgyny, 93, 97; in animated films, 251, 263, 266, 267 Anglo-American literature, 31 animation, queer representation in, 247–70; anthropomorphized gender in, 248–51; gay 90s sitcoms, 264–69; gendering humans in, 251–56, 259–61; Mulan, 259–61; homosexuality in, 254–56, 261; human passing, 258–61; passing and gender performance, 257–58; subversion of heteronormativity, 262–64; Tom and Jerry, 249, 256–57; transvestism, 261–62. See also South Park, queer politics in Asian-American women, 98 assimilation, of gays, 189, 190–95, 199, 204 Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 133 Atwood, Jensen, 41 Ausiello, Michael, 62 Babuscio, Jack, 232, 233–34, 237–38 bad guy/girl stereotype, 82 Barbie doll, 251–52, 253 Barraga, Cecelia, 145 Basic Instinct (film), 82

304

Index

Battles, Kathleen, 49 Becker, Ron, 204 Bennett, Lerone, Jr., 107 Bergman, David, 241 Berry, Sarah, 98, 99, 101 n.12 Bhabha, H. K., 183 bisexuality, in cinema, 82 black masculinity: authenticity and, 37, 38, 39; in blaxploitation films, 106–7; in Noah’s Arc, 37–39, 43–44. See also African-American men “Black Movie Boom—Good or Bad?” (New York Times), 119 black women, in blaxploitation films, 114–18 “Black Women in Film” (Mapp), 115 Blacula (film), 109–14 Blaxploitation films, 103–20; Blacula, 109–14; Cleopatra Jones, 114–18; gay stereotypes in, 104, 107–8, 113–14; lesbian villain in, 114, 115, 116, 117–18; Sweet Sweetback’s Baadassss Song, 105–8 Bogle, Daniel, 103, 115 Bonnie and Clyde (film), 116 Boone, J. A., 169 Bound (film), 81–82 Boykin, Keith, 40 Boys Don’t Cry (film), 83 Brion, Patrick, 249 Brokeback Mountain (film), 83, 139– 60; anal intercourse in, 142–43, 156–57; comedy and, 153, 158; as cultural moment, 139–40, 146; fear of contagion and, 148–51; fetishization of, 154–58; lesbian equivalent, 159–60; palette of affect in, 152–54, 156; queering in, 151–52; trailer parodies, 140–41, 143, 146–60 Brokeback Mountain (Proulx), 29, 31, 141 “Brokeback to the Future” (parody), 140

“Brokering Brokeback: Jokes, Backlashes, and Other Anxieties” (Rich), 148–49 Bronski, Michael, 239, 240 Brown, Jim, 104, 119 buck stereotype, 106. See also black masculinity Bugs Bunny, 257–58, 261–62 Burr, Raymond, 235 Burrel, Walter, 119 butch/femme coding, 175 butch lesbians, 51 Butler, Judith, 88, 150, 241, 301 n.6 Cagle, Jess, 264, 266–67 camp, 69, 153, 154, 196–97; Capote and, 242–44; Liberace and, 235–40; Lynde and, 232–33, 240–42; in South Park, 275–76; in television (1960s–1970s), 231–44 “Camp and the Gay Sensibility” (Babuscio), 232, 237 Cantor, Paul A., 274 Capote, Truman, 232, 233, 240, 242–44 Castells, Manuel, 168 Castiglia, C., 195, 196 Castro neighborhood (San Francisco), 129, 130 Cayleff, Susan E., 96, 100 n.9 The Celluloid Closet (Russo), 81, 143–44 censorship, in film, 264. See also Hays Code; Production Code Certeau, Michel de, 32 Chambers, Samuel A., 60 chauvinism, 175, 176 Chester, Craig, 204 Chester, Rodney, 43 Chicago Sun-Times, 127 Chicago Tribune, 133 Chicanos in Cinema (Cortes), 87 Children of the Night (Rasmussen), 110 The Children’s Hour (film), 79–81

Index

Christian, Vincent, 41 Ciasullo, Ann M., 51 cinema, queer motifs in, 69–84; early years (1896–1939), 71–74; postwar (1944–1955), 74–79; Production Code and, 70, 74, 79, 81; 1960s, 79–82; sissy sidekick in, 72, 73–74, 75, 76, 79; stereotypes in, 70, 72, 76, 79; 1970s to present era, 82–84. See also Brokeback Mountain; cross-dressing women, in cinema civil rights, gay, 275, 280, 284, 286, 288, 296–98 Civil Rights Movement, 104, 106, 120 “civil unions” law, 189 Clark, Danae, 262–63 Cleopatra Jones (film), 114–18 closet case, in South Park, 277, 278, 281, 291 closet space, 60. See also coming out Clover, Joshua, 152, 153 Coalition Against Blaxploitation (CAB), 119 Collins, Patricia Hill, 36, 45 “Come Back to the Raft Ag’in, Huck Honey!” (Fiedler), 28–29 comedy, in YouTube parodies, 153, 158. See also Camp coming out, 54–56, 169; of Ellen DeGeneres, 2, 3–4, 7, 9, 10–12, 13, 266–67 communication theory, 210–12 Connell, R. W., 289 consumerism: in The L Word, 167, 170–72, 174–75; in Will & Grace, 200, 202 contagion theory, 148–51, 286 Cooper, E., 195, 199 Cortes, Carlos E., 87 Cosby, Bill, 106 Cotton Comes to Harlem (film), 104–5, 108

305

cross-dressing: in animated film, 249, 257–58, 261–62; by Dietrich, 89–91, 98; by Garbo, 91–93; by Hepburn, 93–96; by women, in cinema, 71, 87–99. See also drag performance Crowther, Bruce, 116 Cukor, George, 74 Culture Clash: The Making of Gay Sensibility (Bronski), 239 Daffy Duck, 257 David, Larry, 148 Dawkins, Richard, 283–84 Day of the Locust (West), 27 Dean, James, 77, 78 Defense of Marriage Act (1996), 189 DeGeneres, Ellen, coming out of, 2, 3–4, 7, 9, 10–12, 13, 266–67. See also Ellen (television sitcom) Desert Hearts (film), 60 desire, identity and, 7 Dietrich, Marlene, 89–91, 98, 145, 238 DINK (Double Income No Kids), 286 Disney, 248, 263; Mulan, 259–61. See also ABC/Disney Dobson, Tamara, 114, 116 “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Me” (Clover & Nealon), 152 Dos Santos, Kristin, 62–63 Dracula’s Daughter (film), 111 drag performance, 150, 239; in animated film, 257, 259, 261–62. See also cross-dressing Ducat, Stephen, 119 Dunaway, Faye, 116 Dyer, Richard, 254, 256 Ebert, Roger, 75 effeminate men, 112–13, 201, 276, 289; metrosexuals, 200, 203, 205, 286–87. See also camp; sissy stereotype Elia, J., 189

306

Index

The Ellen DeGeneres Show (talk show), 5, 19–20 Ellen (television sitcom), 1–20, 188, 223, 224, 269; academic response to, 5, 7; boundary crossing in, 2, 9, 16–17; coming out on, 2, 3–4, 7, 9, 10–12, 13, 266–67; media campaign for, 3, 5; “The Puppy Episode,” 1–2, 3, 4, 5–6, 7, 266; queer subtext on, 6, 8, 9, 12; season five (1997–1998), 12–17; season four (1996–1997), 8–12; 10 years after, 17–20 Eminem (rapper), 275, 291, 301 n.7 “The Empire Brokeback” (parody), 146–47, 158 Enke, Anne, 171 Entertainment Weekly, 264 Epistemology of the Closet (Sedgwick), 60 ER (television series), 18, 47, 50 ethnicity, 179; sexuality and, 42 Ethnic Nations (documentary), 124 Exit Ministries, 288, 289 faggots, 301 n.7; black homophobia and, 127, 128; in blaxploitation films, 113, 114; in South Park, 280, 290, 291 family: animated sitcoms, 252–53; gay parenting, 191, 193, 282; Will & Grace and, 191, 194–95 Family Guy (animated sitcom), 265–66 family values, 231, 263–64, 265, 280 fatherhood, 193, 197 Fejes, F., 210 female-to-male impersonation (drag king), 259, 262 femininity, 97, 98, 178, 200, 202; in animated films, 248, 249, 251, 253–54, 258; restrictive clothing and, 90; of television lesbians, 51–52. See also effeminate men

feminist agenda, in Ellen (television sitcom), 14 femme fatales, 116 fetish, 154–58 Fiedler, Leslie, 28–29 Film Noir: Reflections in a Dark Mirror (Crowther), 116 Film Quarterly, 139–40 Fiske, J., 183 The Flintstones (animated sitcom), 252–53 For the Pleasure of His Company (Stoddard), 28 Fortier, Ahmed, 177, 179 The Fox (film), 82 Freud, Sigmund, 276, 282, 300 n.4; fetish theory of, 155, 158 Friends (television sitcom), 50 Ganis, Sid, 20 Garber, Marjorie, 88 Garbo, Greta, 91–93, 145 Garfein, Jack, 76 gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT), 187, 188–89, 210, 257; South Park and, 284, 286, 293, 294, 297, 298, 299 Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLADD), 5, 48, 268, 275; Media Awards, 40, 188 “Gay and Lesbian Criticism” (Smelik), 107 Gaycom, 13, 21 n.19. See also Will & Grace (gaycom) gay community, 195; South Park and, 275–76. See also television, gay community on Gay culture, 221, 224, 294 Gay Fictions: Wilde to Stonewall (Summers), 31 gay humor, in Ellen (television sitcom), 10. See also camp gay identity. See identity Gay Liberation Movement, 105

Index

gay marriage. See same-sex (gay) marriage gayness, defined, 204 gay panic, 54. See also homophobia gay politics, 225; assimilationist agenda and, 189, 190–95, 199, 204. See also South Park, queer politics in gay/queer binary, 293–95 gay rights. See civil rights, gay gay television network, 203–4 gender: ambiguity in, 254–55; of animated humans, 251–56, 259–61; anthropomorphized, 248–51, 259; rural/urban divide and, 175–76. See also femininity; heteronormativity; masculinity gender dysphoria, 277, 278, 283, 294 gender performance, 257–58, 289. See also drag performance gender reassignment, 278, 282. See also sexual reassignment surgery GLADD. See Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation GLBT. See Gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender Goldsmith, Elizabeth, 91 Goodridge v. Department of Health (2003), 30–31, 189 Gopinath, G., 179, 183 Graden, Brian, 45–46 Graham, Paula, 94, 96 Grey’s Anatomy (television series), 47–65; coming out on, 54–56; firing of actress on, 62–64, 65; Heartbeat compared, 57–58; lesbian kiss in, 53, 54, 56; lesbian relationship in, 47–65; male gaze in, 52, 56–57, 62; politics of lesbian representation in, 58–61 Groenig, Matt, 264, 265, 268. See also The Simpsons Gunning, Tom, 71 Gunter, Barry, 252, 253

307

Hahn, Erica. See Grey’s Anatomy (television drama) Halberstam, Judith, 172–73, 174, 175, 176 Hall, Stuart, 87, 88, 182 Hantzis, Darlene M., 57–58 Harrison, Mark, 248 Hart, Lynda, 263 Hays Code, 97, 99 n.2, 258 Heartbeat (television drama), 57–58 Heavenly Creatures (film), 83 He-Man (animated series), 149 Henry, Matthew, 264, 265, 269 Hepburn, Katharine, 93–96, 101 n.11 Herek, Greg, 290 Herman, Didi, 7 Heroes in Hard Times (King), 118 heteronormativity, 78, 288; in animated films/television, 248, 265, 268, 277, 296; in blaxploitation films, 107, 113; challenge to, in Will & Grace, 189–90, 191, 196, 202, 205; family home and, 177–79, 180; hegemonic, 177; male chauvinism and, 175, 176; subversion of, in animation, 262–64; in television programming, 16, 18, 41, 44, 48, 51, 60 heterosexual/homosexual binary, 58–59, 281 heterosexual values, 6. See also heteronormativity Hillenburg, Stephen, 250–51 Hilton, Paris, 274 Hilton-Morrow, Wendy, 49 HIV/AIDS, black men and, 42, 45. See also AIDS Holiday, Billie, 130, 134 home, queering of, 177–80 homogeneity, 178 homonormativity, 60 homophobia, 55, 158, 200; in black community, 124, 127–28, 130, 134; in blaxploitation films, 114, 120;

308

Index

Ellen (television sitcom) and, 5, 12, 13, 16; contagion theory and, 148–51, 286; shame and, 198; in South Park, 275, 276, 280, 281, 287, 288, 291, 293–99 homophobic slurs. See faggots; sissy stereotype homosexual panic, 148. See also homophobia Horror Films of the 1970s (Muir), 111 Hubert, Susan, 6 Hudson, Rock, 144, 234–35, 236 humor, in South Park, 275–76. See also camp Hussein, Saddam, 292 identity: communication theory of, 210–12; on Ellen (television sitcom), 7, 10, 13; in The L Word (television drama), 175–76, 181; public vs. private, 2, 6 In and Out (film), 83 Inness, S. A., 268 The Invisible Gnomes and the Invisible Hand (Cantor), 274 Isherwood, Christopher, 238 Jenkins, Henry, 145–46, 152 Jones, Chuck, 249, 256, 257 Julien, Max, 114, 115–16 Kamlin, Garson, 96 Kashner, Sam, 78–79 Kennedy, Roseanne, 59, 62, 64 King, Neal, 118 Kohen, David, 188 The L Word (television series), 19, 48, 83, 167–83; consumerism in, 167, 170–72, 174–75; feminizing space in, 168–70; Grey’s Anatomy compared, 50, 51–52; queering space in, 180–82; queering the home in, 177–80; representations

of space in, 167–83; urban/rural divide in, 172–77 Ladies Professional Golf Association, 95 LA Law (television series), 59, 62, 64 Latinas, 52, 98, 179 Latin gay men, 36, 46 Laura (film), 74–76 Laurents, Arthur, 89 Law and Order: Special Victims Unit (television series), 63 Lee, Ang, 141, 142. See also Brokeback Mountain Lehr, Valerie, 57–58 Leo, John, 264 Leonard, John, 133 lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered (LGBT) people, 210, 257. See also gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered (GLBT) lesbian coming out, 54–56, 169; on Ellen (television sitcom), 2, 3–4, 7, 9, 10–12, 13, 266–67 lesbian community, on television. See The L Word lesbian kiss, in films and television, 2, 16, 79; Grey’s Anatomy, 53, 54, 56; Morocco, 89; Queen Christina, 91 lesbians: in Children’s Hour, 79–81; in Grey’s Anatomy, 47–65; male gaze and, 52, 56–57, 62; villain, in Cleopatra Jones, 114, 115, 116, 117–18 Liberace, 231, 233, 234, 235–38 liberalism, South Park and, 273, 279, 280 libertarianism, in South Park, 274, 295, 296, 297, 299 Linneman, T., 200 Lo, Malinda, 55 Logo (television network), 35, 36, 39–40, 45 Long Slow Burn (Weston), 172 Looney Tunes (animated shorts), 248, 250

Index

Lovaas, K., 189 Lugosi, Bela, 110–11 Lynde, Paul, 232–33, 234, 240–42 MacFarlane, Seth, 265, 266, 268 MacLaine, Shirley, 79, 81 MacLeod, N. E., 168 MadTV parody, 159, 160 Making Love (film), 143 male gaze, 96, 159, 160, 267; in Grey’s Anatomy, 52, 56–57, 62; in Morocco, 89 male-to-male kiss, 73, 125, 295–96 mammy archetype, 115 Mapp, Edward, 115 Marcus, S., 171 marriage, 191, 194, 197, 252–53. See also same-sex (gay) marriage Marshall, William, 109 Martin, Richard, 149–50 Masculinities (Connell), 289 masculinity: in animated film, 248, 249, 250–51; black, 37–39, 43–44, 106–7; commercial, 199–203; drag king performance, 177; hegemonic, 291; heteronormativity and, 175; sexual freedom and, 90, 93; in South Park, 276, 277, 294–95 McCarthyism, 94, 99, 100 n.8 McNamara, Mary, 63 Mebane, Mary M., 116 Meeting of Two Queens (film), 145 metronormativity, 173, 174 metrosexuals, 200, 203, 205, 286–87 Mickey Mouse, 248, 250, 251 Middlebrook, Diane Wood, 94 Midnight Cowboy (film), 82 Miller, D. A., 155, 158 Millman, Joyce, 7, 8 Mineo, Sal, 77–79 Minnie Mouse, 248, 253 Monogamy, 6, 42, 116, 198 Monster (film), 83

309

Moritz, Marguerite J., 58 Morocco (film), 89 Morton, Patricia, 117 Muir, John Kenneth, 111 Mulan (animated film), 259–61 Mulvey, Laura, 57, 89 Mutchnick, Max, 188 NBC (television network), 187, 204 Nealon, Christopher, 152, 153 New Yorker magazine, 141 New York Times, 119, 125 Noah’s Arc (television dramedy), 35–46; black authenticity and, 37–39; contradictions in, 44–46; lived experience of blackness and, 39–41; masculinity and, 37–39, 43–44; sexuality in, 41–43 North American Man Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), 274, 278 “Notes on Camp” (Sontag), 233 N-word, 113. See also African Americans Olbermann, Keith, 270 O’Neal, Ron, 119 One of the Boys: Masculinity, Homophobia, and Modern Manhood (Plummer), 290 parental guidance advisory, 13, 255 parenting, 191, 193, 282. See also family Paris Is Burning (documentary), 43 Parker, Trey, 273, 295, 296, 298. See also South Park, queer politics in Parks, Gordon, Sr., 119 Passing, art of, 234–35, 237–38, 268 Pat and Mike (film), 93–96 paternity, 197. See also parenting Patington, A., 170 Patriarchal hegemony, 98 Pedophiles, 274, 278

310

Index

Philadelphia (film), 70, 83 Pink Flamingo (film), 69 Plummer, David, 290 Poitier, Sidney, 104 political correctness, 295, 298, 299 politics, 2–3, 181, 218. See also South Park, queer politics in Preminger, Otto, 74, 75 The Prime Time Closet (Tropiano), 231–32 Production Code, 70, 74, 79, 81, 140, 144 promiscuity, 42 Prosser, J., 176 Proulx, Annie, 29, 31 Public Broadcasting System (PBS): Tongues Untied and, 123, 124, 126, 127, 131–33, 134–35 QAF. See Queer as Folk (television series) Queen Christina (film), 91–93 Queer as Folk (television series), 19, 48, 50, 83; Babylon club in, 29–30, 224, 225, 226, 227; British and American compared, 26–27, 29, 31; gay community in, 215, 217, 218, 221, 222, 223, 226, 227; gay sex depicted on, 42; Grey’s Anatomy compared, 56; sexuality in, 143 queer authorship, in films, 69. See also cinema, queer motifs in queer community, 4. See also gay community; television, gay community on queer culture, 198 Queer Eye for the Straight Guy (television program), 17, 203, 286–87, 294 queer/gay binary, 293–95 queer identity: in Ellen (television sitcom), 10, 13; in The L Word, 181. See also identity

queering: Brokeback Mountain parodies and, 151–52; in cinema, 140, 143–44, 145; of gender roles, in animated sitcoms, 255; of home, in The L Word, 177–80; in Will & Grace, 195–99 queer representation, 13; politics of, 2–3. See also animation, queer representation in queer sensibility, in Will & Grace, 196 queer spatiality, 25–32; American frontier, 26–27, 28, 29, 30; tea rooms, 25–26; water trope and, 28–29, 30. See also The L Word (television series) Queer theorists, 189 Quimby, Karin, 18, 191, 194, 199 Race: The Floating Signifier (film), 87 racism, 299; of white gays, 128–30 Ramirez, Sara, 49, 52, 63–64 Rasmussen, Lauren, 110 Rebel Without a Cause (film), 77–79 Reed, C., 195, 196 Reilly, Charles Nelson, 232, 233, 240, 242 Religious Right, 288 Rhimes, Shonda, 47, 63–64 Rich, B. Ruby, 148–49 Rich, F., 209–10 Riggs, Marlon, 124, 126, 129, 134, 135–36; AIDS and, 126, 128, 131. See also Tongues Untied (documentary) rural/urban divide, 172–77; gender and, 175–76 Russo, Julie Levin, 50, 60, 63, 65, 91, 99 n.4, 100n.7 Russo, Vito, 75, 112, 113, 114, 151; The Celluloid Closet, 81, 143–44 Rydell, Mark, 82 sadomasochism (S&M), 276 Sadownick, Doug, 265

Index

same-sex (gay) marriage, 13, 30–31, 41–42, 189, 192; in animated sitcoms, 266, 267, 281, 282, 287, 297 Sargent, Dick, 234 Saul, Jennifer Mather, 252 Scary Movie 4 (film), 157 Schlesinger, John, 82 Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky, 60, 170, 290 self-concept, of gays and lesbians, 211. See also identity separatist politics, 31 sex change. See sexual reassignment surgery sexual freedom, cross-dressing and, 90, 93 sexual harassment, 14 sexuality, 143; bisexuality, 82; black gay male, 41–43, 124–25; in blaxploitation films, 106–7 sexual predator trope, 287, 294 sexual reassignment surgery, in South Park, 276–77, 280, 282. See also transsexuals shame, 80, 197–98 Shaw, S. J., 168 Sherman, Lisa, 35–36, 41 Showtime/Showcase network, 17, 19, 42. See also The L Word (television series) Shugart, H., 203 The Simpsons (animated sitcom), 247, 264, 265; gay marriage in, 266, 267; homosexuals in, 255–56, 267–69 Sinfield, A., 172 sissy stereotype, in films, 72, 73–74, 75, 76, 79, 97, 200; in blaxploitation films, 104, 111–12, 114. See also camp; effeminate men Six Feet Under (television series), 48, 60, 225–26 “slash” fanfiction, 144–45, 151–52 slash videos. See Brokeback Mountain, trailer parodies

311

SLUMPIE (socially liberal, urban minded, professional), 204 Smelik, Anneke, 107, 108 Smith, Brooke, 62–64, 65 Snarker, Dorothy, 63, 64 Sontag, Susan, 153, 233, 238 South Park, queer politics in, 273–99; celebrity bashing and, 274, 296; “The Death Camp of Tolerance,” 279–80, 293–94; environmentalism and, 285; “gay” appropriation in, 289–92; gay dramatic personae in, 276–89; gay/queer binary in, 293–95; liberalism and, 273, 278, 280; libertarian pretense in, 274, 295, 296, 297, 299; “Mr. Garrison’s Fancy New Vagina,” 282–84 South Park Conservatives (Anderson), 273 Sparre, Ebba, 91–92, 93 SpongeBob SquarePants (animated series), 250, 251, 258, 270 Stabile, C. A., 248 Star Trek, slash fanfiction and, 144, 145, 151–52 Star Wars (film), 73; parodies of, 146–47, 158 Stereotypes. See Sissy stereotype, in films Stoddard, Charles Warren, 28 Stone, Matt, 273, 295, 296, 298. See also South Park, queer politics in The Strange One (film), 76 Streisand, Barbra, 296 Suddenly Last Summer (film), 94, 100 n.7 suicide, 288 Summers, Claude, 31 Sunday, Bloody Sunday (film), 82 Suthrell, C. A., 261, 262 Sweet Sweetback’s Baadassss Song (film), 105–8

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Taylor, A., 168, 170, 180 tea rooms, 25–26, 42 television, animation on. See animation, queer representation in; South Park, queer politics in; specific animated series television, gay community on, 209–29; codification of themes, 213–14; communal-level observations, 214–27; communication theory and, 210–12; disconnected, 215–23; interview procedure for, 212–13; in Queer as Folk, 215, 217, 218, 221, 222, 223, 226, 227; reasonable portrayals, 223–27; in Six Feet Under, 225–26; in Will & Grace, 216, 218, 220, 221–22, 223, 224. See also Ellen (television sitcom); Grey’s Anatomy (drama); The L Word (television series); Noah’s Arc (dramedy); Tongues Untied (documentary) Terrell, Kellel, 40 Thelma and Louise (film), 83 Thompson, Emma, 16 Time magazine, 3–4, 250 Tom and Jerry (animated series), 249, 256–57 tomboy stereotype, 72, 79, 83, 259 Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films (Bogle), 103, 118 Tongues Untied (documentary), 123–36; AIDS in, 124, 125–27, 128, 131; homophobia and, 124, 127–28, 130, 134; on national television, 131–33; PBS and, 123, 124, 126, 127, 131–33, 134–35; racism in, 128–30; sexuality and, 124–25; transsexuals in, 130–31, 134, 135–36 transgender subjectivity, 176–77, 277, 282

transsexuals: in South Park, 282–84; in Tongues Untied, 124, 130–31, 134, 135–36 transvestism, 261–62. See also Cross-dressing Tropiano, Steven, 15, 17, 21 n.19, 231–32 TV-14 rating, 13, 15 United Artists, 105 urban/rural divide, in gay community, 172–77; gender and, 175–76 Vaid, U., 199 Vampires, in Blacula (film), 109–14 Vanity Fair magazine, 78–79 Van Peebles, Melvin, 105–7, 108 Velez, Lupe, 99 victim, gay character as, 104, 112, 113, 127, 288 villain, gay character as, 104, 112, 114, 115, 116–18 Wall Street Journal, 125, 128 Warhol, Andy, 69 Warner, Michael, 189, 199 Warner Brothers Studios, 114, 248 Washington Post, 126–27 Watermelon Man (film), 105 Waters, John, 69, 82 Weaver, Kerry, 18 Weinberg, George, 295 Weiss, Andrea, 97 Weiss, Marc, 131 Wellman, William A., 71 Wells, Paul, 248, 249, 250, 256, 257, 258, 263; on The Simpsons, 264 Welsh, Kaite, 63 West, Nathaniel, 27 Western (American) frontier, 26–27, 28, 29 Western film genre, 144. See also Brokeback Mountain

Index

Weston, Kath, 172, 174, 181 What’s Opera, Doc? (animated film), 257–58, 261–62 whiteness, 52, 99 Wilde, Oscar, 31, 238, 240 Will & Grace (television gaycom), 60, 187–205; academic critics and, 188; assimilationist agenda and, 189, 190–95, 199, 204; commercial masculinity and, 199–203; Ellen and, 17–18, 19, 188; gay community in, 216, 218, 220, 221–22, 223, 224; heteronormativity and, 189–90, 191, 196, 202, 205; queered lives in (Jack and Karen), 195–99 Williams, Linda, 143, 149 Willingham, Calder, 76

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Wings (film), 71–73 Winters, Shelley, 114 Wit. See Camp Women, cross-dressing by (drag kings), 259, 262. See Crossdressing women, in cinema Women’s Sports Federation, 95 Wood, Robin, 148–49 Wyler, William, 79, 80, 81 Yep, G., 189 Yescavage, Karen, 5, 6, 7 Young, Marion, 177 YouTube parodies. See under Brokeback Mountain; trailer parodies Zaharias, Babe Didrikson, 94–95

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About the Editor and Contributors

EDITOR Jim Elledge’s most recent book, A History of My Tattoo (Stonewall, 2006), won the Lambda Award for poetry and was a finalist for the Thom Gunn Award. His collection of prose poems, H, an impressionistic biography of Henry Darger, is due from Busman’s Holiday Press in 2011. His poems have appeared in Barrow Street, Denver Quarterly, Five Fingers Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Indiana Review, North American Review, Paris Review, and others. His essay on Tina Turner, “Tina and I,” appears in My Diva: 65 Gay Men on the Women Who Inspire Them (ed. Michael Montlack, 2009), and his “Dunstan Thompson’s ‘beautiful and butcher beast’ Unleashed and on the Prowl” is forthcoming in Dunstan Thompson: On the Life and Work of a Lost American Master (eds. D. A. Powell and Kevin Prufer, 2010). He directs the MA in Professional Writing Program at Kennesaw State University, just outside of Atlanta, and the Writers Workshop of Puerto Rico, a summer study program in San Juan, Puerto Rico. CONTRIBUTORS Kathleen Battles, who earned her PhD from the University of Iowa, is an assistant professor at Oakland University. Her work focuses on U.S. radio history and contemporary representations of gays and lesbians on television. In Calling All Cars: Radio Dragnets and the Technology of Policing (2010), she examines the development of reality-based

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crime dramas on radio during the Depression years, exploring their connection to police reform discourse of the period. Additionally, she works with Wendy Hilton-Morrow on issues surrounding contemporary representations of gays and lesbians in the media, for which they received a grant from the GLAAD Center for the Study of Media and Society. The paper that resulted from this grant is published in the national communication journal, Critical Studies in Media Communication. Rosemary Deller received her undergraduate degree in Politics from Newcastle University and is a recent graduate of Central European University, where she earned an MA in Gender Studies in 2008. While “Queerness Taking Place?” was initiated as part of her studies in Budapest, its subsequent development forms part of her longstanding interest in the negotiation of sexuality through bodies and space. Currently working on understandings of the body as “meat,” she spends her spare time trying—and failing—to remember to feed her fish. Lyn J. Freymiller is on the faculty of the Communication Arts & Sciences department at Penn State University. He received his MA from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and his PhD from Penn State University. His research focuses on issues of gay identity and media portrayals of gay characters. He has analyzed such television programs as Six Feet Under, Queer as Folk, and Will & Grace. Wendy Hilton-Morrow, who earned her PhD in Communication Studies from the University of Iowa, is Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Augustana College. She also teaches in the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies at Augustana. Her recent publications underscore her interest in exploring the limitations of mainstream network television on GLBTQ representations. A previous article on the generic constraints of Will & Grace was published in Critical Studies in Media Communication (with Battles, 2002). Her other primary research area, local television news, stems from her professional background as a broadcast news anchor and reporter. Walter R. Holland, PhD, is the author of A Journal of the Plague Years: Poems 1979–1992 and Transatlantic as well as one novel, The March. His work has appeared in The Antioch Review, HazMat, Redivider, Rhino, and other journals and anthologies. He teaches literature in New York City at the New School and is also a physical therapist.

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Mark John Isola, who earned his PhD in literature from Tufts University, is an Assistant Professor of English at the Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston. Mark John’s interests include American literature, gay studies, AIDS literature, and critical theory. Isola has published journal articles in the Nordic Journal of English Studies and eSharp and has contributed to several GLBTQ reference collections, including critical essays on the Violet Quill and the impact of AIDS on literature. He has been selected to chair panels and present papers at several national-level conferences, including MLA, ALA, and PCA/ ACA, and serves as the LGBT Studies Area Chair for the Mid-Atlantic Popular/American Culture Association. Jo Johnson is an Animation graduate from the International Film School Wales, University of Wales, Newport, United Kingdom. Much of her study is dedicated to analyzing the representation of gender and sexuality within the animated sitcom. Her published work includes Femininity and the Spinster; The Representation of the Single Woman in The Simpsons (Modernmask.org); and most recently, “Won’t Somebody Think of the Children?; The Nineties Subversion of the Animated Mother” (Mediated Moms: Mothering in Popular Culture, ed. Elizabeth Podnieks, currently under contract with McGillQueen’s UP). Michael Johnson Jr. (MLA, MSIS) is currently a PhD candidate in the American Studies Department at Washington State University, where he previously held the Ronald E. McNair Fellowship (2008–2009). He has also been a finalist for the nationally prestigious Senator William J. Fulbright Fellowship and The Davis-Putter Scholarship. Michael serves as an Associate Editor for The Neo Americanist, and his work can be found in South to a Queer Place, The Dictionary of American History, and The Encyclopedia of the Culture Wars. He currently serves as Chair of the Gender & Sexual Identity Area at the Southwest Texas American Culture/Popular Culture Association’s Annual Conference. His research interests include Latino ethnicity and masculinities, queer sexual citizenship, and media representations. James Keller is Professor of English and Chair of the English and Theatre Department at Eastern Kentucky University. He is the author of five monographs, most recently V for Vendetta as Cultural Pastiche, and he has co-edited with Dr. Leslie Stratyner four collections, most recently The Deep End of South Park. Keller has published over

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60 articles and chapters on a variety of subject areas, including early modern literature, film, drama, queer theory, and cultural studies. Niina Kuorikoski is a post-graduate student of English Philology at the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Oulu, Finland. She wrote her master’s thesis on the television series Queer as Folk’s two versions and their lesbian representation. After earning her master’s degree she has devoted her time to teaching Women’s Studies at the University of Oulu, planning and executing courses in Lesbian Studies, media and audiovisual representations of women, as well basic courses in Women’s Gender and Queer Studies. She has published articles on television series such as Queer as Folk, The L Word, and Six Feet Under, among other topics. Her academic interests lie in gender and sexuality in popular culture, particularly television. She spends her free time listening to and gushing about Adam Lambert and drinking lots of tea while watching her favorite television series on DVD. Novotny Lawrence received his PhD from the Department of Theatre and Film at the University of Kansas. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Race, Media, and Popular Culture in the Radio-Television Department at Southern Illinois University–Carbondale where he teaches courses such as Understanding Electronic Media, Media and Society, Documenting the Black Experience, and the History of African American Images in Film and Television. Dr. Lawrence is the author of the book Blaxploitation Films of the 1970s: Blackness and Genre, which was published in 2007. His article, “The Jeffersons Redux: Repositioning a Popular Television Sitcom,” was published in Screening Noir, and he has also written book chapters on the comedy of Dave Chappelle and the sci-fi series The Twilight Zone. Jennifer Malkowski is a PhD candidate in the University of California Berkeley’s Film Studies program. Currently in her fifth year, she writes and teaches mostly about documentary forms and gender and sexuality in cinema. She is working on a dissertation on documenting death and how the development of video and digital technologies altered that practice. Her work has been published in Film Quarterly. Florian Mundhenke has earned MA and PhD degrees. From 2004 to 2007 she was Accountable Editor for MEDIENwissenschaft and Lecturer in media studies at Philipps-Universita¨t in Marburg/Germany. Her PhD dissertation is on the phenomenon of chance in film with

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the publication Zufall und Schicksal. Mo¨ glichkeit und Wirklichkeit. Erscheinungsweisen des Zufalls im zeitgeno¨ssischen Film (Marburg, 2008). Since 2008 she has been Assistant Professor and chair for media studies and media culture at the University of Leipzig/Germany. Currently working on a postdoctoral qualification thesis (“Habilitation”) about the evolution of hybrid documentary filmmaking, her research interests include cultural and social questions of media studies, contemporary media theories and queer theories, narration and aesthetics of contemporary world cinema, and (new) media art. Sarah Smorol is a PhD student and graduate assistant in American Studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. She is concurrently earning the Advanced Graduate Certificate in Women’s Studies. Her most recent publication is a book review in the spring 2009 Rocky Mountain Review on Kalenda Eaton’s Womanism, Literature and the Transformation of the Black Community, 1965–1980 (Routledge, 2008). Her areas of study include Mixed Race Studies and Ethnic Filmic Representation as well as Gender and Sexuality Studies with a focus on film and literature. Read more at http://sites.google.com/site/sarahjean1111/. Rodger Streitmatter is a Professor in the School of Communication at American University in Washington, D.C. He is the author of eight books, including Unspeakable: The Rise of the Gay and Lesbian Press in America, Empty Without You: The Intimate Letters of Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena Hickok, and From “Perverts” to “Fab Five”: The Media’s Changing Depiction of Gay Men and Lesbians. Streitmatter is a former reporter for the Roanoke Times & World News in Roanoke, Virginia, and he holds a PhD in U.S. History from American University. Rachel Loewen Walker is a PhD candidate in Philosophy at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, and a researcher for the Indigenous People’s Health Research Centre. Her research interests lie in television and film studies as well as feminist philosophy and queer theory. Her recent publications include “Becoming Queer: Performance Art and Constructions of Identity,” Gnosis (2008), and “ ‘Queer’ing Identity/ies: Agency and Subversion in Canadian Education,” The Canadian Online Journal of Queer Studies in Education (2004).

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Queers in American Popular Culture

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Queers in American Popular Culture Volume 2 Literature, Pop Art, and Performance

JIM ELLEDGE, EDITOR

Praeger Perspectives

Copyright 2010 by Jim Elledge All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Queers in American popular culture / Jim Elledge, editor. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–313–35457–1 (set. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978–0–313–35458–8 (set : ebook) 1. Gays in popular culture—United States. I. Elledge, Jim, 1950– HQ76.3.U5Q447 2010 2010023183 306.760 60973—dc22 ISBN: 978–0–313–35457–1 EISBN: 978–0–313–35458–8 14 13 12 11 10

1 2 3 4 5

This book is also available on the World Wide Web as an eBook. Visit www.abc-clio.com for details. Praeger An Imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC ABC-CLIO, LLC 130 Cremona Drive, P.O. Box 1911 Santa Barbara, California 93116-1911 This book is printed on acid-free paper Manufactured in the United States of America

For David

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Contents

Set Introduction Jim Elledge Chapter 1: The AIDS Memorial Quilt and the Contemporary Culture of Public Commemoration Carole Blair and Neil Michel

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1

Chapter 2: Transgender Women in the Blogosphere Anne R. Richards

31

Chapter 3: La Macha, the Stealth Lesbian, and the Transvestite: Queer Representation and Female Friendship as Revisions of Traditional Gender Roles in Latina Popular Fiction R. J. Lambert

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Chapter 4: Bechdel’s Dykes to Watch Out For and Popular Culture Judith Kegan Gardiner

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Chapter 5: Open the Book, Crack the Spine: 69 Meditations on Lesbians in Popular Literature Julie R. Enszer Chapter 6: Gay Pulps Sarah Boslaugh Chapter 7: Evolving Depictions of “Coming Out” in Young Adult Literature: A Range of Possibilities in 12 Lambda Literary Award Winners (1992–2006) Katherine Mason

103 123

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Discophobia: Antigay Prejudice and the 1979 Backlash against Disco Gillian Frank

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When a Door Is a Jar, or Out in the Theater: Tennessee Williams and Queer Space Anne Fleche

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Chapter 10: “Artfully Dressed in Women’s Clothing”: Drag Queens on Chicago’s Burlesque Stage; An Account from the Summer of 1909 Jim Elledge

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Chapter 11: A Transgressing Identity: Buck Angel—“The Man with a Pussy” Carlnita P. Greene

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Chapter 12: Like a Man: Signs and Symbols of Masculinity in Gay Pornography Jeffrey Escoffier

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Chapter 13: Queer Vampires in Literature and Film Rita Antoni

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Index

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About the Editor and Contributors

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Chapter 8:

Chapter 9:

Set Introduction Jim Elledge

Queers in American Popular Culture attempts to cover, in a comprehensive way, the presence of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and the transgendered persons in popular culture venues of the United States. Although largely post-Stonewall in scope, this three-volume set also, at times, investigates queers and their representation in periods as early as the late 1880s. The topics covered may be new to a non-queer readership (and even to some queer readers), perhaps even strange to them, but they are always eye opening and thought provoking. While most readers will have seen episodes of Will & Grace or may even be diehard fans of the popular television sitcom, for example, only a handful will have heard of—much less seen—the post-op, female-to-male-with-a-vagina porn star, Buck Angel. Fewer yet will have been enthralled by his body, his rugged sexuality, and his sexual appetite(s). Transforming from man to woman to pop icon, RuPaul has “sashayed shante” very visibly across Billboard’s charts, becoming the best-known drag queen entertainer in the United States and across the globe since Boy George. Yet while RuPaul is taking her turn on the catwalk, “boi”—a personality as important to contemporary queer culture as the fairy was to our grandfathers and grandmothers a century ago—scoots along the streets, hangs out, and clubs hard virtually unknown and unnoticed by all but those in the know. Queers in American Popular Culture gives notice to, and provides a forum for discussion about, both “boi” and Buck Angel, along with the much more visible RuPaul and Will.

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Queers in American Popular Culture attempts to be comprehensive and strives diligently to obtain that goal. The number of possible topics to cover is so immense that it would be impossible to produce a work that truly covered, even only minimally, every queer topic and every queer personality in American popular culture. Queers have been associated with U.S. popular culture for so long now that many of those involved with it, their representations in it, and what they produced have simply faded away—“like sand through the hour glass”—from current, cultural awareness. Those of us of a certain age will remember when the country’s attention was focused on Glenn Burke and Colonel Martgarethe Cammermeyer or when Torch Song Trilogy and Go Fish caused a stir, although not one of them is mentioned in these pages. The truth is that what was once so important to gay men, for example, has now all but vanished from the scene. Beginning with the riots at the Stonewall Inn in New York’s Greenwich Village during the last weekend of July 1969 and for the next two or three decades thereafter, personalities like Paul Lynde, who was a regular “center square”—an oxymoronic handle if there ever was one—on the TV game show Hollywood Squares, was perhaps the most recognizable queer funny man to most Americans. During the approximate same period of time in which Lynde was delivering belly laughs, many of the diehard fans who watched the wigged-out, dark comedy Soap became fascinated by the quirky boy-next-door Jodie Dallas, played by Billy Crystal, a less bitchy and bitter, and a more bittersweet, character than Lynde’s persona. Jodie, who did not elicit the guffaws that Lynde did, tempered the image most Americans had when they thought of queer men. A third personality appeared during the same period, one that would further complicate the image. Hunky, handsome, blonde Steven Carrington of the nighttime soap opera Dynasty, a number-one hit within a few seasons, got no laughs, only ooohs and ahhhs. He quickly won the hearts of gay men and imaginative straight women alike. Played first by Al Corey, then by Jack Coleman, Steven seemed, at the time and to many gay men, to be the first “realistic” depiction of a gay character, one who struggled with his sexual identity and took missteps, but eventually “got it together.” He was vastly different from both Lynde and Jodie. As important as these three television personalities were in queer male popular culture in the 1970s and 1980s, few remember them now and, perhaps, even fewer care. There were many others, including lesbians and bisexuals, who like Paul Lynde, Jodie Dallas, and Steven Carrington would become

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well-known, even liked, admired, and emulated, gathering a large fan base and accruing large revenues—and a great deal of right-wing, fundamentalist hatred—but each has now been edged out by the new. Typically, what any book like Queers in American Popular Culture covers depends, to a large extent, on what is currently hot, what is currently the buzz, what is currently aflutter in our—queers’ and non-queers’—collective consciousnesses: gay marriage, Ennis and Jack (or is it Heath and Jake?), Ellen, and so on. In short, currency is all too often the capital for critical or scholarly interest in popular culture whether we want it to be or not. Nevertheless, Queers in American Popular Culture purposefully includes a number of chapters that cover topics that are not currently hot, not the buzz, nor even vaguely on our minds as we drive or walk or take the subway to and from work, but which have a timeless value. Certainly, we do not typically mull over the place of lesbian and gay pulp fiction in the larger, non-queer culture during coffee breaks, nor do most of us ponder lesbian cookbooks (of which there are a surprising number) while eating a Big Mac at lunch. Yet in these volumes, some little-thought-of subjects as well as some forgotten personalities point out the fact to us over and over again that popular culture, and the queer’s place in it, is remarkably vast and varied, flexible, and timeless. Even some topics covered in Queers in American Popular Culture that are current have had lives in previous eras. Some were extant and even recorded decades before the dawn of the twentieth century, helping in their own way to give birth to the Pansy Craze, approximately a decade and a half or so (from the 1920s through the mid-1930s) in which gay men were quite visible, particularly on stage and screen but also in restaurants, department stores, on the streets, and elsewhere. By 1935 or so, the pansy began to fade from popular culture. Through the 1940s and 1950s, and almost to the close of the 1960s—decades that are often dubbed the Lavender Scare—queers, so visible during the Pansy Craze, were forced into invisibility, finding refuge in the closet. Police raided their meeting places time after time and closed them. They were arrested, tried, jailed—then fired from their jobs, expelled from their families, and rejected by their friends. During the Lavender Scare, if popular culture represented queers at all, they were targets of ridicule, paranoia, even outright hatred. As one might expect, the majority of the chapters in a set of books like Queers in American Popular Culture will focus on television and film, not because those two media are more important in queer

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popular culture than others are, but because they are the most accessible of all popular culture venues and so are the most “popular” of all, what most people think of when they think about popular culture. Whether developed by heterosexuals or queers, the popular culture scene in which queers find their most immediate and overt representation these days is in TV Land. The vast majority of U.S. citizens have television sets, often very large ones and often more than one per household, and the producers of television programs have found that some series with substantial queer representation have been a lucrative business proposition. (Advertisers, too, have come to realize that such programs bring in the loot.) Queers in American Popular Culture does not ignore television and film. It acknowledges both, and it puts them on equal par with other popular culture venues. Said in a different way, “popular culture” is far larger than sitcoms on the boob tube or flicks on the silver screen. In fact, television and the cinema, as popular as each is in our culture, are only two facets of a multifaceted phenomenon that includes sports, fashion, literature, art, music, performances of various sorts, advertising (in popular magazines and even on television: between individual programs and within the programs themselves), and the Internet that, as many believe, is giving both television and the film industry a run for their money. The chapters in Queers in American Popular Culture are divided into large categories that highlight the range of popular culture venues. Volume 1 is devoted to television and film; Volume 2 contains chapters on many different topics, among them, popular art, the Internet, popular literature, performance, and youth-related subjects; and Volume 3 covers advertising, fashion, leisure, lifestyle, and sports. These categories are decidedly subjective, and a different editor might have arranged the volumes quite differently. All but four of the chapters have never appeared elsewhere in print before, giving this three-volume set a fresh approach that is rare in other popular culture anthologies. As readers of these pages will quickly discover, each of the authors is an acute observer of U.S. popular culture and the queer’s place in it. In fact, contributors to Queers in American Popular Culture include a number of scholars from countries other than the United States. Also unlike other anthologies on similar topics, “popular culture” is broadly defined by the authors whose chapters fill the three volumes’ pages to cover what many might not think of as “popular culture” in its narrowest definition. In short, while the expected is certainly represented in Queers in American Popular Culture, the unexpected has also

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found its way into the collections. Readers will expect chapters on Brokeback Mountain, The L Word, and Queer as Folk in Volume 1, for example, but they will also be delighted to discover chapters on Noah’s Arc, a series on Logo about a group of African-American gay men in Los Angeles, and on queers in 1970s blaxploitation films, and on gay themes/representations in animation. Students who open Volume 2 will probably anticipate finding a chapter on gay pulps and Dykes to Watch Out For, but they will be surprised by chapters on lesbianism in Latina popular literature, on queer vampires, on the blogs of transwomen, or on pornography. Also, readers of Volume 3 might be amazed to read that the concept of gay marriage has been discussed since the 1950s, that there are cookbooks aimed at lesbians, that the father of modern bodybuilding was queer, and that not all queers worship within any mainstream faith system. While the authors of the chapters in all three volumes are to be thanked for their devotion, intelligence, and savvy, Queers in American Popular Culture could not have been produced without the help and diligence of my graduate research assistant, Sara Meyer, or Lindsay Claire, my second set of eyes at Praeger. I owe both more gratitude for their help than I could ever express.

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Chapter 1

The AIDS Memorial Quilt and the Contemporary Culture of Public Commemoration Carole Blair and Neil Michel

The AIDS Memorial Quilt marks the lives and deaths of tens of thousands of individuals. It represents the deaths of hundreds of thousands of others it does not name explicitly. It creates spaces for moving rituals to remember the dead. AIDS Quilt displays often have been attended by events and demonstrations that advocate for those who continue to live with HIV-AIDS. It sometimes moves the otherwise uninvolved visitor to tears.1 The AIDS Quilt executes, in other words, multiple rhetorical feats and gives rise to a great many others. All of those are important in evaluating the legacy of this unusual commemorative monument. But so too is the place of the AIDS Memorial Quilt in the history of U.S. public commemoration. In this chapter, we situate the Quilt in the cultural milieu of late twentieth-century public commemorative building practices. It is our position that the AIDS Memorial Quilt marks an important, tensive moment in that milieu, a conjuncture of a sort,2 in which public commemoration harbored both the potential for a progressive political practice and the conditions for subversion of that practice. The Quilt

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Literature, Pop Art, and Performance

neither created nor resolved the conjuncture, but the particularities of its rhetoric display a range of anxieties and tensions that continue both to enable and disable contemporary public commemoration. Thus we attempt here to understand the AIDS Memorial Quilt within an emerging, late twentieth-century culture of public commemoration that began with the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (VVM). We note how the AIDS Quilt appropriated and radicalized the VVM’s potent rhetorical patois. We suggest further how a number of later commemorative sites took up an apparently similar set of issues and rhetorical features but depoliticized them, or perhaps more accurately, re-politicized them, to serve more conservative interests. The situation of public memory practices is no small matter for politics, for culture, or for rhetoric. The importance of public memory has been recognized by scholars in multiple disciplines, as well as by many in the popular press. Although memory’s significance is manifold, most commentators agree about its gravity for the present moment. Public memory is often the very battleground upon which are fought issues of contemporary concern. Because of the pronounced tendency of contemporary public commemoration to take up subject matter that yields to ongoing fractiousness or at least to cultural anxiety, it is more likely that issues of the present will be deliberated by debating memory.3 Moreover, with the ever-decreasing interval between event and public commemoration, it becomes increasingly difficult to perceive a distance between past and present; if we attend to how rapidly, for example, moves have been made to commemorate the Oklahoma City bombing or the attacks of September 11, 2001, the past seems hardly “the foreign country” David Lowenthal has called it.4 The formal— and at the time highly unusual—features of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the AIDS Memorial Quilt as well as the reception of both memorials prefigure the issues and divides that characterize more recent attempts to commemorate significant events. The Quilt has been many things, but it certainly may be seen as a barometer of contemporary commemorative culture. THE VIETNAM VETERANS MEMORIAL AND THE AIDS MEMORIAL QUILT The AIDS Quilt has been linked to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial by others, most notably by Marita Sturken and Peter S. Hawkins,5 and we rely to varying degrees on their observations as well as our own. We are less concerned here with the influence of the VVM than with

The AIDS Memorial Quilt

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how the AIDS Quilt appropriated and changed its rhetoric. The AIDS Memorial Quilt was an early participant in a groundswell, called by some a “mania,” of public memorializing, rivaled in the United States perhaps only by the aftermath of the Civil War.6 It is arguable that most, if not all, of the public memorial projects undertaken since the VVM have been enabled by it. Certainly the large number of local and state Vietnam veterans’ memorials were. And there is little question that the VVM provoked the Korean War Veterans Memorial project, which in turn gave rise to the more recent World War II Memorial. But commemorative building projects completely unrelated in substance also were given impetus by the publicity and success that the VVM generated.7 Equally important, though, was that many of the memorials following in the wake of the VVM during the final two decades of the twentieth century and extending into the first decade of the twentyfirst took up elements of its rhetoric, appropriating and adapting it to their own ends. For example, its signature black granite became for the first time a popular primary material for memorial designers. Naming the dead in the 1980s and 1990s also was au courant, to such a degree that Daniel Abramson labels that practice as well as the use of black granite as “cliche´s.”8 The naming gesture, of course, did not originate with the VVM, nor is it obvious that the VVM supplied the inspiration for the names on the AIDS Quilt. Indeed, Cleve Jones has identified his principal source as a family quilt.9 Whatever its source, though, the naming feature of the two memorials—and the ways that it works rhetorically with each—sparks the reading together of the two artworks. There are, however, multiple continuities besides that admittedly important one. The VVM design probably does not seem very radical to most Americans now, but in the early 1980s it generated a bitter conflict, resolved only by the addition of Frederick Hart’s synecdochic, “realistic” sculpture and a flagpole on the site. That controversy was precisely about its genre-busting character; the objections raised at the time were all about the expectations of scale, color, and representational realism that were produced by experience with other major U.S. memorials. One need only think of some memorials within the VVM’s proximity, such as the Lincoln, Grant, Jefferson, or U.S. Marine Corps Memorials, to understand why it was seen as a departure from the norm. The VVM did not render the beaux arts-inspired or representational monument irrelevant, but it did declare both inadequate to the representation of the Vietnam conflict.

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The AIDS Quilt extended that challenge to genre even further, in a number of its semiotic features. If the VVM seemed horizontal beside its earlier predecessors, the Quilt intensified the horizontality, at least in its full displays in Washington, D.C., where it was laid out on the ground of the Mall or the Ellipse. If the VVM had darkened the color palette of memorials in Washington, the AIDS Quilt carnivalized it, with its individual panels screaming out every shade and hue one could imagine and in combinations perhaps never imagined. The VVM’s narrative certainly was fragmented; its chronology of death begins at the apex, breaks at the end of the east wall, begins again on the west wall, and ends at the apex. The panels of the AIDS Quilt are linked together in different combinations for different displays, so if it can claim a narrative at all, it is a protean one. All of these features essentially changed the subject of classic commemorative form,10 rendering a major departure from genre and opening them to charges of inappropriateness or worse. Although all of these gestures are important to the rhetorics of the two memorials, we focus our attention principally upon three other issues: the two memorials’ modes of democratic representation, their blurring of the contexts of invention and reception, and their coding of the balance between public and private spheres. Those are central to how the two memorials “work” rhetorically, but they also shed light on some troubling issues that have arisen with commemorative sites that have followed them or that are currently under development. DEMOCRATIC REPRESENTATION U.S. memory studies have been fairly consistent in the claim that memory practices and representations in this country have become increasingly democratized over time. Michael Kammen is as explicit as anyone in claiming that, at least since the beginning of the twentieth century, there has been a rather steady move toward democratization. He concludes that “successful monuments, historic places, and museums increasingly had to be compatible with democratic values and assumptions.” 11 John R. Gillis appears to take the trend toward democratization of memory as a given.12 And while John Bodnar does not accept the assumption so readily, his conclusions about the successes of vernacular resistance to official cultural memory make his conclusions at least consistent with those of Kammen and Gillis.13 That memory practices, and in particular commemorative art practices in the United States, became more democratic over the course of the twentieth century is difficult to contest.

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There can be little question that the VVM was a major contributor to the democratization of national public commemoration. The most prominent memorials within its immediate orbit represented singular governmental and military figures—George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant.14 Even national memorials that honored groups, especially soldiers from various U.S. military conflicts, had settled on the synecdoche or the abstract representation, with a sculptural figure or group standing in for the larger group or an allegorical figure marking the group’s ethos. The U.S. Marine Corps Memorial was an example of the former, with the soldiers raising the flag over Mt. Suribachi standing in for the Marine Corps at large. The Second Division Memorial, a few blocks east of the VVM on Constitution Avenue, rendered tribute to the soldiers of that unit with a sculptural flaming sword. The VVM names the name of every U.S. soldier killed or missing in action from the Vietnam conflict. The names are recorded in absolutely uniform fashion; the only differences among them are the markers for KIA or MIA. There are no military ranks or units listed, not even military branches. This represents a departure from the representations of the dead in U.S. military cemeteries and on most of the walls of the missing from the two world wars. Military gravestones almost always mark rank, unit, and branch of the service, as well as major commendations. Most walls of the missing do the same. At the VVM, though, every individual is represented, and each is marked as absolutely equal in death.15 The AIDS Quilt arguably democratizes its representation even further, but its mode of democratization is very different. There is no attempt to name everyone who has died of AIDS. Indeed, the NAMES Project is careful to note in its materials the relatively small percentage of AIDS deaths it marks. For example, the approximately 83,900 names on the Quilt, in June 2006, “represent approximately 17.5% of all U.S. AIDS deaths,”16 and of course, a minute percentage of worldwide AIDS-related deaths. Nor is there any uniformity of representation in the Quilt. The democratic trope of the AIDS Quilt is not personal equality but individual difference. Granted, most of the individual Quilt panels name one individual, as well as his/her birth and death dates. Almost all measure three feet by six feet, essentially the size of a coffin, but even those features vary. For example, a number of the earliest panels carry only a first name, protecting the individual’s legacy or his surviving partner or family from the stigma of the disease or from being outed. That sentiment is made even more

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explicit in a panel that says, “I have decorated this banner to honor my brother. Our parents did not want his name used publicly. The omission of his name represents the fear of oppression that AIDS victims and their families feel.” Others name someone in terms of relationship, for example, Daddy or My Brother. In addition, a number of panels name more than one individual. One is dedicated to the San Francisco Gay Men’s Choir, another to Federal Express employees who died AIDS-related deaths, and another to members of the wonderfully outrageous Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.17 Apparently due to a misunderstanding, a few quilt panels were submitted that measured three by six inches rather than feet; these were attached to a standard-sized panel so that they could be displayed. 18 Some panels are double size or even larger, usually those that represent more than one death. The individual quilts are made of very different materials, from simple cotton sheeting to leather. Some panels are relatively unadorned, spray painted with a name, for example, while others are carefully sewn or decorated with symbols or significant objects from a person’s life. The NAMES Project lists some of the materials used in the Quilt: 100-year-old quilt, afghans, Barbie dolls, bubble-wrap, burlap, buttons, car keys, carpet, champagne glasses, condoms, cookies, corduroy, corsets, cowboy boots, cremation ashes, credit cards, curtains, dresses, feather boas, first-place ribbons, fishnet hose, flags, flip-flops, fur, gloves, hats, human hair, jeans, jewelry, jockstraps, lace, lame, leather, Legos, love letters, Mardi Gras masks, merit badges, mink, motorcycle jackets, needlepoint, paintings, pearls, photographs, pins, plastic, police uniforms, quartz crystals, racing silks, records, rhinestones, sequins, shirts, silk flowers, studs, stuffed animals, suede, t-shirts, taffeta, tennis shoes, vinyl, wedding rings.19 Objects from the individual’s life adorn each quilt-a professional uniform, a favorite photograph, a beloved stuffed animal, old blue jeans, even a bowling ball. Many tell stories about the individual’s professional, social, or home life. Some individuals are remembered by multiple quilt panels. At last count, Ryan White had nine panels.20 Michel Foucault is named on at least three. Many are marked as “Anonymous,” while others name very famous names, such as Rock Hudson, Liberace, Robert Mapplethorpe, or Arthur Ashe. Some are poignant, others tacky, some funny, and still

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others caustic.21 The crucial point is that the many and tremendous differences of representation serve a democratizing function, as does the tight focus on the individual as an individual. As Richard D. Mohr suggests, “The moral point of the NAMES Project is the valorizing of the autobiographical life, not necessarily because such a life issues in the honorable, but just because it is unique, the working out, even if stumblingly, of a self-conceived plan of life.”22 It was not just these memorials’ formal features, of course, that democratized. Their subject matter played perhaps an even more important role in the commemorative explosion that would follow. Certainly no one could have predicted that there would be a memorial on the National Mall to the veterans of the most unpopular military conflict in which the United States had ever engaged, much less one that the nation lost. The organizers of the effort to build the VVM were careful to designate it as a veterans memorial, decidedly not a war memorial, to distinguish the warrior from the conflict. Although that distinction has been lost on numerous commentators and even on some scholars, it was a significant one.23 Even more improbable was a giant memorial to those stricken down by an epidemic, especially one that manifested first in the gay male community. Neither Vietnam veterans nor gay men, especially gay men with a communicable disease that kills, were the most likely subjects for commemoration in the 1980s. And yet, perhaps because of the ingenious formal characteristics of the VVM and the AIDS Memorial Quilt, these two memorials enjoyed nearly unprecedented cultural success. The positive reception of the VVM has been well documented. But the AIDS Quilt’s popular success has been less discussed, perhaps because fewer people have made a deliberate commemorative pilgrimage to a Quilt display than to the VVM. However, it seems quite remarkable that an estimated 15 million people have seen the AIDS Quilt in its 20 years, especially given (1) that most of its displays are small and fragmentary, and (2) that all of its displays are temporary and brief. It has also been a great fundraising success, generating millions of dollars not only to continue its display journey, but also for direct services to people living with AIDS.24 CONTEXTS OF INVENTION AND RECEPTION The standard, if not always accurate, view of public memorials and monuments tends to be about state power, about “official” renditions of the past, about the imposed authorization of heroes who become

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models for the everyday life of a polity.25 But that view is not always or even frequently accurate, because many of the most prominent memory sites in the United States were the result of citizen efforts, often even funded by popular subscription. Still, as attested by both Mike Wallace’s and John Bodnar’s very different histories of memory practices in the United States, there have been moments of imposition, of officially sanctioned attempts to “educate” the masses in their patriotic, occupational, and cultural “responsibilities.”26 As a generalization, it is fair to suggest that most U.S. national memorials, even those projects that have arisen as a result of grassroots efforts, have had the benefit of founding support from a group with considerable cultural capital. That is true in the cases of the VVM and the AIDS Memorial Quilt as well. Both projects were initiated by individuals, Jan Scruggs and Cleve Jones, respectively, who hardly were shrinking violets. Scruggs was a well-educated and articulate spokesperson who proved quite capable of shaming Americans to open their wallets to contribute to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund (VVMF), to muster the support for a major design competition, and to successfully lobby Congress to supply the prime real estate for the VVM. Jones, who had been a visible gay rights advocate in San Francisco, had the recognition and networks to turn his vision of the Quilt into a reality by soliciting not only donations of money, but more importantly, of Quilt panels. By the time of its first Washington, D.C., display in the fall of 1987, the AIDS Memorial Quilt had grown from a single panel made by Jones for his friend Marvin Feldman to 1,920 separate panels, a number that would quadruple in just one year. These “origin stories” offer only the most narrow understanding of the contexts of invention of these two contemporary memorials, however.27 Both of the memorials are cases of the social character of invention, in the most literal of terms.28 The rhetorical invention of the VVM extended well beyond Jan Scruggs, the VVMF, and VVM designer Maya Lin, in at least two senses. First, the VVM was allowed to be constructed on public land only after a fractious conflict over its design, a conflict played out in public as a result of objections lodged against Lin’s design by a handful of Vietnam veterans. Although the conflicts did not result in the sought rejection or alteration of the Lin design, the opponents were successful in forcing a compromise that added Frederick Hart’s Three Fightingmen sculpture and a flagpole to the site. In turn, that augmentation raised objections that women who had served in Vietnam were not represented adequately by the Memorial. The Vietnam Women’s Memorial sculpture was added as a further

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augmentation to the site in 1993. That these sculptural additions have altered the site’s rhetoric is virtually undisputed.29 The ultimate success, if we wish to call it that, of these two attempts to augment the VVM suggests that the U.S. public is not just an audience, but also has been a collective participant in the invention of the site. In addition to the sculptural amendments to the VVM, visitors to the Memorial reinvent its rhetoric daily, in the common practice of leaving “offerings” at the wall—everything from combat boots to poems.30 Each day those artifacts modify the rhetoric of the VVM, leading visitors to focus on the relationship of artifact to architecture, on the character of a particular person listed on the wall, on a particular event in Vietnam, and so forth. In these senses, the VVM may be declared complete (as it has been by the National Park Service), but its rhetoric is never “complete,” as long as it remains open to such inventive augmentation on the part of its visitors. Still, the VVM—apart from the offerings that adorn it—has an official status, governmental sanction and maintenance, and a fixed location, attributes that distinguish it, as Hawkins points out, from the AIDS Memorial Quilt.31 Although we may understand—and many people have treated—the VVM as a context for rhetoric more than as a rhetorical text in its own right, it retains in its design a relatively stable rhetorical imprint, especially in comparison to the AIDS Memorial Quilt. Hawkins calls the Quilt “authorless,” elaborating this way: It is true that Jones “invented” the initial three-by-six-foot panel, which he then imagined as one patch taking its place in a larger patchwork. Since then, however, he has had no control over how the Quilt would look, either in its parts or in its larger configurations, nor has the NAMES Project, beyond requiring specific dimensions for each panel and the name of the person to be remembered. Otherwise, design depends entirely on the quilters.32 Of course, the Quilt is not really “authorless,” but instead has literally tens of thousands of “authors.” Still, Hawkins is correct in observing that there is no author in the classic sense that offers unified interpretive authority. Now, at more than 46,000 panels, the AIDS Quilt has been invented by a massive collection of individuals, most of them strangers to one another. They have each designed a small part of this giant memorial and have done so with very different aesthetics, tastes, and goals. As we have already noted, even those strictures of naming

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and size that Hawkins mentions have not been adhered to by all of the individual panel “authors.” If the invention and reception contexts of the VVM are complex, with visitors and public advocates reinventing the site, those contexts become even more complicated with the AIDS Memorial Quilt, again in at least three important senses. First, any individual or small group that makes a Quilt panel is already engaged, during that process, in a private mourning activity, one that bears a strong similarity to the memory quilt tradition.33 Unlike in that tradition, however, the AIDS Quilt panel is not retained by the individual or intimate group, but is relinquished to the NAMES Project for inclusion in the larger, collectivized, public memorial. The intimates of the dead, those who have designed individual Quilt panels, are almost certain to become audience members too, after the fact of relinquishment.34 Many of them attend AIDS Quilt displays. But they are audience members among a great many others, some Quilt panel makers, some not. So the relatively private inventional creation of mourning becomes a part of a larger, more public performance, over which the individual panel designer wields no control. Second, the AIDS Quilt is literally not finished. Although no one legitimately expects that all AIDS-related deaths will be acknowledged by the Quilt, the invitation to submit panels remains perpetually open. One of the most disturbing features about the AIDS Quilt’s rhetoric always has been its massive growth, an urgent reminder that AIDS continued to claim more lives, despite medical breakthroughs with drug therapy. In the most recent full display of the AIDS Quilt, in Washington, D.C., in 1996, its roughly 40,000 panels covered the National Mall, twice as many panels as in the full display in Washington just four years earlier.35 Even the photos from atop the Washington Monument cannot capture its scale, for trees block the view of about one-third of the Quilt panels. Each Quilt display becomes the impetus for new additions to it, again transforming audience members into rhetors. And so, it continues to grow larger, its message elaborated by each addition. Third, the NAMES Project has actively cultivated visitors’ contributions of supplemental discourse to the Quilt at its displays. While no one perhaps anticipated the desire to leave “offerings” in the form of artifacts or messages at the VVM, it was an early expectation at sites of Quilt exhibitions. Signature blocks are set aside for people to write their reactions, and these blocks become part of the Quilt’s rhetoric of display. 36 Here, an invited mode of reception becomes an

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inventional process, with visitors becoming rhetors. In our experience, these blocks, in turn, receive a significant amount of attention; visitors eagerly read the recorded reactions and messages of other visitors. PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SPHERES Almost no matter where one begins in the massive, interdisciplinary literature about “the public,” the distinctions and relationships between public and private emerge as crucial issues.37 We often refer unreflectively to collective memory sites as “public” memorials when, indeed, they represent differential relationships of publicity and privacy, just as certainly as they occupy public space.38 But some of these public memorials code those relationships much more explicitly than others. In recent times, the naming memorials have done so most prominently. No matter how much these commemorative works may differ from one another, naming multiple individuals in public space not only nominates those individuals as particularly significant members of the collective, but that gesture also marks a general relationship between individual and collective. The VVM strikes a relatively precise equilibrium between private and public concerns. Close views reveal the inscription of individual names that, of course, imply much more than the identity “Vietnam veteran.” From that close perspective, one must focus on individuals, for the larger view of the wall disappears from view. Still, the names reveal only limited information. They announce that this individual lived, was a U.S. soldier, and died in (or on the way to/from, or as a direct result of) the Vietnam conflict; visitors are offered little information beyond that, unless through the supplement of an “offering” left at the wall. Of course, names are symbolic harbingers of individual lives, but this is a rhetoric of implicature. The large majority of the names belong to people who are strangers to any one visitor, and thus visitors cannot know much about them as individuals. From a more distant vantage point, the individual names disappear, and the massive cost of war comes into view. The visual character of the wall is such that the names of individuals are legible in tight focus, but even in a close-up view, the name of one individual cannot be seen in the absence of others’ names. Moreover, the names share space with the mirror images of visitors; the interpellation is inevitable. Whether or not the visitor has a private relationship with anyone whose name appears on the wall, and whatever the visitor might think about the advisability of the U.S. military involvement in Southeast Asia, a

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public relationship is forged indelibly by reflection. The names of the dead are “our” representatives, those sent to their deaths under the sign of a national public good. The relationship of private individual to the public collective shows up very differently in the AIDS Memorial Quilt. There are similarities to the VVM, to be sure. Visitors to an individual Quilt panel see the quilts of other individuals that are grommeted to it, at least in a block of eight, the usual manner of displaying the Quilt groupings. At a larger distance, one sees the massive loss, one giant memorial rather than the thousands of smaller ones. A visitor may focus on the loss of one, but not in the absence of others. Visitors may also attend to the collective loss, but not without consideration of the individuals composing that collective. But there are also significant differences in the ways in which the two memorials cast the specific lives and their relationships to a larger, public realm. Private lives are rendered visible in the AIDS Quilt much more than in the VVM. Granted, some of the Quilt panels bear only a name, offering little information about the individual. And of course, those panels honoring “Anonymous” seem to offer even less information than an inscription on the VVM wall. Nonetheless, most of the Quilt panels tell rather than imply stories. Visitors learn about the hobbies, political leanings, cultural status, age, work lives, favorite vacation spots, intimate relationships, personal accomplishments, and aspirations of the individuals represented by the AIDS Quilt. Some individual panels are performances of coming out. Visitors often see photographic representations of the individuals commemorated. In the large majority of the panels, names are named, but the names take on faces, personalities, and personal histories. In sum, private lives are displayed publicly, not by means of commemorative supplement, but by design of the memorial itself. Some of the panels composing the AIDS Quilt portray the public identities of the commemorated individuals. Individuals of high profile often have quilt panels that link their lives to the source of their fame. For example, Liberace’s panel incorporates as its principal visual element a grand piano. Rock Hudson’s panel is covered with stars along with a rainbow that says “Hollywood.” Other Quilt panels, bearing names not so well known, link the individual to public causes. Many of the 46,000 panels incorporate a rainbow flag or a smaller representation of one. Some identify their subjects as members of the military. Some use national or state flags or parts of patriotic symbols as background. Others make claims on

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public issues verbally. For example, the Quilt panel for Paul Burdett says, “The San Diego 50 Hour Prayer Vigil was his creation. PleaseMore Prayers. More Funding.” A panel in honor of Roger Lyons reads, “I CAME HERE TODAY TO ASK THAT THIS NATION WITH ALL ITS RESOURCES AND COMPASSION NOT LET MY EPITAPH READ HE DIED OF RED TAPE.” Another Quilt panel, identified as honoring a military officer, says, “They gave me a medal for killing two men, and a discharge for loving one.” In various ways, then, many of the Quilt panels, however straightforward or sardonic they may be, render the relationship of the deceased to a larger, political collective by means of effigy or elegy. A remarkably high percentage of the AIDS Quilt panels, though, assert the identity of their subjects in terms of personal, rather than public, relationships. Quilt panel makers often sign the panels. Many mark the individual by familial or social role: lover, father, son, brother, child, friend, husband, wife, sister. Some bear messages to the deceased, such as “I didn’t get a chance to say good-bye.” The much-reproduced panel in honor of Jac Wall surrounds a silhouette of the deceased man with these words: Jac Wall is my lover. Jac Wall had AIDS. Jac Wall died. I love Jac Wall. Jac Wall is a good guy. Jac Wall made me a better person. Jac Wall could beat me in wrestling. Jac Wall loves me. Jac Wall is thoughtful. Jac Wall is great in bed. Jac Wall is intelligent. I love Jac Wall. Jac Wall is with me. Jac Wall turns me on. I miss Jac Wall. Jac Wall is faithful. Jac Wall is a natural Indian. Jac Wall is young at heart. Jac Wall looks good naked. I love Jac Wall. Jac Wall improved my life. Jac Wall is my lover. Jac Wall loves me. I miss Jac Wall. I will be with you soon.39 The marking of identity by interaction and by relationship is such a pervasive feature that it simply cannot be ignored. It is remarkable not only because of the frequency with which it appears in the AIDS Quilt, but also because it so exceeds the norms of public memorial. Public memorials clearly are always about relationships. In the absence of survivor memories, there would be no public memorials. Their inventional contexts may even be, in some respects, about personal relationships. For example, veterans groups often are sufficiently motivated by the closeness of their relationships with their GI “buddies” to commemorate them, sometimes even by taking on the wearisome work of advocating for a public memorial to be constructed.

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But it is not at all within the boundaries of the typical for a public memorial to code the specifics of personal relationships. More than any public memorial before, the AIDS Quilt seems to be as much about the survivors as about the deceased. That is not to say simply (and obviously) that it is for the survivors; its rhetoric is very much about them. Quilt panels often tell visitors the nature of the panel maker’s relationship to the deceased, how s/he felt about the deceased, and what he/she feels about the loss, as in Jac Wall’s case. If public memory has always been about the present, and thus more about survivors than the dead, this memorial is more explicit about that than any predecessors we have observed. With the AIDS Memorial Quilt, then, the private-public representation is weighted toward the private.40 That weighting toward the private is reinforced in an odd way by the fact that these memorials have been characterized in popular interpretation, academic writing, and cultural practice as “therapeutic.” For example, Charles L. Griswold asserts, without apparent hesitation or evidence, that “a main purpose of the Memorial is therapeutic, a point absolutely essential for an adequate understanding of the VVM. . . . It was generally understood that what the nation needed was a monument that would heal the veterans as well as the rest of us, rather than exacerbate old wounds and reignite old passions.”41 The AIDS Memorial Quilt is, if anything, referenced in the terms of psychoanalytic metaphors more explicitly, assertively, and frequently than even the VVM. These typical newspaper headlines demonstrate just how pervasive this terminology became: “AIDS Quilt Comforting U.S. Grief,” “The NAMES Project: A Catharsis of Grief,” “A Healing of Hearts.”42 Terms like “therapy,” “therapeutic,” “rehabilitation,” and “healing” are ubiquitous, not appearing very often in the discourse of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund or the NAMES Project, but instead in the popular and academic interpretive milieu. That these memorials should be understood as offering therapy for trauma can be accounted for in any number of ways.43 The terminology may reach back to the realm of physicality, wherein the figures of both the Vietnam veteran and the person with AIDS represent abject bodies, the wounded soldier and the terminally ill patient, in need of therapy and healing. But it more frequently seems to reference psychoanalytic forms of treatment, either literally or metaphorically. Literally, of course, the reference makes sense. Many returning Vietnam veterans were treated for PTSD (posttraumatic stress disorder). With AIDS, especially in urban gay communities, people often have sought out grief therapy

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to cope with the loss not just of a loved one, but sometimes of whole friendship networks—often within a very short time period.44 But there is also a metaphoric use of this terminology, which assigns ill health to the public realm and suggests that the memorials work their therapeutic processes on the diseased polity. At the very least, most commentators that use the terminology tend to tack back and forth between the literal sense of individuals seeking therapy and figurative “therapy” being worked on a larger, political collective. This usage, of course, not only shifts issues of privacy into the public, but it also reinforces the blurring of the contexts of invention and reception discussed earlier, and in ways that seem to us to be problematic. This unfortunate headline suggests part of the problem: “Powerful Images: Quilt Softens Pain of AIDS Deaths.”45 The article that follows is about panel makers working on a Quilt panel for their loved one, not about an AIDS Quilt display. The AIDS Quilt, of course, was intended to do precisely the opposite of the headline; its distinctly political mission was to confront people with the enormity of loss, to intensify, not “soften,” the pain. As Christopher Capozzola argues, the AIDS Quilt was “intended as a tool of political mobilization and as a weapon in the battle for access to economic resources that could be used in the fight against AIDS.”46 Unfortunately, the language of therapy, when the metaphor reaches too far, depoliticizes the AIDS Memorial Quilt, rendering it as comforting and curative rather than as angry and confrontational. The political climate that inspired the NAMES Project should not be discounted here. As Capozzola points out, “During the 1980s, many AIDS activists condemned the Reagan administration for its silence on the issue of AIDS; the President did not even mention the word AIDS publicly until over 21,000 Americans had already died of the disease.”47 It was not until 1996, in fact, that a U.S. president attended a Quilt display, in spite of the proximity to the White House of the four prior full displays of the AIDS Quilt, an absence that was much remarked in the 1980s and early 1990s. As Alan Zarembo concludes, “In the 25 years of the epidemic, no symbol has managed to capture the sense of rage and loss like the quilt.”48 Mourning and activism, as Douglas Crimp has pointed out, do not have to be mutually exclusive.49 When the language of therapy overwhelms the political, however, the AIDS Memorial Quilt is diminished. It unbalances understandings of the Quilt as a vehicle of both productive mourning (especially, but not exclusively, in its inventional contexts) and political activism.

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That is also the conclusion Zarembo implies, bemoaning what he sees as the Quilt’s recent devolution to “a museum piece.”50 He attributes the Quilt’s much slower growth, its nearly moribund fundraising capacity, and its relative lack of attention to a number of conditions, especially the exportation of concern that has occurred “as new drugs have driven down the death rate here and shifted the epicenter of anguish abroad, where the disease kills 2.8 million people a year.”51 He also notes as a factor the shifting demographics of the disease in the United States . But the subtext of the article gets at an important, final issue having to do with the shifting ground of public and private concern: the ownership of the AIDS Quilt. Since nearly the beginning of the NAMES Project, “ownership” issues have been in play, particularly with respect to questions of the Quilt as a “gay memorial.” As AIDS demographics shifted from the “risk groups” of gay men, hemophiliacs, and intraveneous drug users to a larger population, there were debates about “de-gaying” the AIDS Quilt. There were conflicts too, from time to time, between the national NAMES Project headquarters and local chapters. But “ownership” is now literally ownership, and the NAMES Project is at odds with Cleve Jones (who was fired from the project in 2003), as well as with many of the local chapters, the ones that are still in existence. This is, in part, a conflict of purpose, with Jones insisting that “Everything about AIDS is political,” and that “[t]he people with the quilt have a weapon that they have decommissioned.”52 Meanwhile, according to Zarembo, “The [NAMES Project] foundation recently completed writing a twopage strategic plan, saying that the quilt has outgrown its activist roots and should now serve as an inspiration to those living with AIDS.”53 The ownership disputes seem now to have been almost inevitable given the democratic character of the inventional process and the frequent linkages of AIDS activism and gay identity issues. But they have had the unfortunate result of relegating the Quilt to near repose in its warehouse in Atlanta.54 A NEW POLITICS OF COMMEMORATION? The VVM is typically credited with, or blamed for, initiating the contemporary culture of commemoration, one in which the issues we have raised here continue to be addressed with a variety of results. Although some claims may be made to the progressive character of this new culture, there are reasons to approach it with a certain degree of skepticism. The VVM is a touchstone; new commemorative works

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are inevitably compared to it. But we believe that this contemporary commemorative culture may be more understandable if we consider it against the backdrop of a conversation between the VVM and the AIDS Memorial Quilt-their agreements and disagreements, continuities and discontinuities-about how to commemorate in the contemporary United States. Like many others, we have placed these two important memorials in conversation with one another, not because they always “agree,” but precisely because they often do not. Their most important shared attribute, in our view, is an attitude toward public commemoration that is straightforwardly rhetorical, rhetorical in the sense of being accountable to its subject matter, if not always to generic expectation. Their differential departures from the norms of traditional, Western commemoration were an important source of their success. It is not just formal differences-height, color, and so forth-that distinguish the VVM and the AIDS Memorial Quilt from that tradition. The works display an attitude of sincerity, an attempt at honesty about the difficulties of commemoration, particularly about public commemoration in a sometimes troubled republic. These two memorials focus in different ways on the individual, but they also dignify a spirit of collectivity marked by mutual obligation. The rhetoric of both subverts the (sometimes perhaps disingenuous) claims of their spokespersons that they are “apolitical.” Both make the claim that the political collective does not always do right by its citizens, but they insist that it should. The number of new, public commemorative sites of both national and local interest in the United States since 1982 is staggering; indeed, we have no way of enumerating them, because there are so many, and because they continue to spring up. Even the number of national projects is difficult to track, for similar reasons. It is no small matter to plan, design, and build a national memorial, but literally hundreds of groups have made the attempt in recent years, and many of them have succeeded. In addition to the VVM, its sculptural supplements, and the AIDS Memorial Quilt, the following is a sample of those projects that have been completed: African American Civil War Memorial (Washington, D.C.) Astronauts Memorial (Cape Canaveral, FL) Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial (Washington, D.C.) George Mason Memorial (Washington, D.C.) Indian Memorial (Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, MT)

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Korean War Veterans Memorial (Washington, D.C.) National D-Day Memorial (Bedford, VA) National Japanese American Memorial (Washington, D.C.) Oklahoma City National Memorial (Oklahoma City, OK) U.S. Air Force Memorial (Arlington, VA) U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (Washington, D.C.—both a dedicated memorial and a museum) U.S. Law Enforcement Officers Memorial (Washington, D.C.) U.S. Navy Memorial (Washington, D.C.) Women in the Military Services for America Memorial (Arlington, VA) World War II Memorial (Washington, D.C.) In various stages of planning, but not yet completed, are national memorials honoring American Veterans Disabled for Life, Dwight David Eisenhower, John Adams (and family), Martin Luther King Jr., and Victims of Communism. Also in process are memorials at each of the three death sites from September 11, 2001. The rash of new projects has led to a number of attempts to limit additional commemorative building, particularly in the monumental core of Washington, D.C. The restrictions so far have been undermined, frequently by the same decision makers who put them in place; congresspersons, presidents, and agency heads have found that the politics of memory is realpolitik.55 Not included in these already lengthy lists are memorials that have generated broad national interest but that are not, technically speaking, national memorials, like the Civil Rights Memorial (Montgomery, AL), the Witch Trials Tercentenary Memorial (Salem, MA), the Freedom Forum Journalists Memorial (Arlington, VA), and the Kent State May 4 Memorial (Kent, OH).56 In any case, the issue is not just how many, but how rapidly these have appeared. In the United States, it clearly was the VVM that set in motion the rush to commemorate, but Holocaust memory work, especially in the 1990s, fueled the drive further. It is well beyond the scope of this essay to outline in any exhaustive way the culture of commemoration these new memorial projects represent. But we take up some fragmentary features of the culture in order to reach back to the conjuncture marked by the AIDS Quilt. Even a cursory glance at the list of new commemorative works must suggest at least the amazing diversity of projects, from those undertaken to honor the “dispossessed” (Japanese American internees during World War II, African-American soldiers in the Civil War, women in

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the military, Native Americans killed at the Little Bighorn, civil rights workers, those accused of witchcraft in seventeenth-century New England, students killed by the Ohio National Guard in May 1970) to those that acknowledge groups already possessing some cultural capital, like U.S. presidents and statesmen, astronauts, police officers, journalists, and U.S. soldiers from various periods. It is a dizzying array that defies easy explanation. In a sense, an explanation—however incomplete—begins to arise from our examination of the VVM and the AIDS Memorial Quilt. These 1980s memorials reeducated the U.S. political culture about the importance of affect in public life and about the significance of the past to the formation and maintenance of political identities, even when the past sometimes is not what we wish it had been. Following a period of almost 40 years in which commemoration was coupled to an affectless public works project mentality (taking the form of “functional” or “recreational” memorials), the 1980s memorials rearticulated commemoration and public art.57 The popular success of that rebuilt relationship was profound, and it points back to the democratization of public commemoration, discussed by memory scholars and enacted by the VVM and the AIDS Memorial Quilt. Almost all of these many new additions to the political geography were undertaken by grassroots groups and became national-scope efforts. Some, like the U.S. Navy Memorial and the FDR Memorial, had been proposed years before but gained new impetus in the late 1980s. Others took shape only in the wake of the VVM and the AIDS Memorial Quilt. Still others reflect the increasingly rapid move to commemorate an event. The Oklahoma City Memorial was dedicated just five years after the 1995 Murrah Building bombing. Editorials urging public commemoration of September 11, 2001, began to appear in major newspapers just days after the attacks, sometimes with quite specific suggestions of what the memorials should look like.58 Initial plans for the Pentagon memorial projected its dedication for the first anniversary of the attacks, but apparently clearer heads prevailed, at least on the issue of how long the project might require.59 The establishment of new public commemorative sites in recent years seems to us, on balance, to be a positive contribution to U.S. public memory. Not only has it “recovered” some events from the past that clearly were worthy of commemoration, but it also has begun to further democratize the memory landscape, with heretofore underor unrepresented groups being recognized. Some of the new memorials, such as the VVM and the AIDS Memorial Quilt, raise serious

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questions about the U.S. political imaginary, about its inclusiveness, its adherence to principle, or the soundness of its policy. The juxtaposed representations in the National Japanese American Memorial of Japanese Americans marching off to military duty in World War II while members of their families were stripped of their possessions and marched off to internment camps is but one example. Others of the new memorials, especially the World War II Memorial, are overtly and unquestioningly nationalistic, offering a counter of sorts to the attitude of commemoration forwarded by the VVM and extended by the AIDS Memorial Quilt. Some new memorials follow slavishly the VVM’s stylistic features, but do not seem able to capture its capacity to move. Some of the new memorials are exceptional artworks, though, offering not only acknowledgment, but also eloquent enhancements to the aesthetic of their settings. On one hand, then, much of the new culture of commemoration seems to reflect, even advance, the progressive attitude of its progenitors. But there is also another hand, and its character emerged perhaps most obviously with the Oklahoma City National Memorial, and later in the planning and debates about September 11, 2001, commemoration. The issues we have taken up here to characterize the VVM and the AIDS Memorial Quilt, those related to democratization, context of invention and reception, and publicity and privacy, are all in play with these projects, but they emerge in very different, recombinant, forms. Most obvious is a clear rush to commemorate. Placed in historical context, the rapidity of commemorative responses to the terrorist attacks of 1995 and 2001 is breathtaking. Consider, for example, that the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial was not dedicated until more than 20 years after the attack on Pearl Harbor. It was relatively speedy by contrast to the major presidential memorials on the Mall. The VVM was dedicated in 1982, about seven years after the U.S. withdrawal. The AIDS Memorial Quilt is exceptional, of course, because the NAMES Project was founded not to mark the end of the pandemic but to contribute to the effort to end it. The Oklahoma City National Memorial was dedicated just five years after Timothy McVeigh’s bomb exploded. Planning to “officially” commemorate September 11 was in process within less than a year after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Although the three projects in New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia remain incomplete, they all were initiated very quickly. But these projects lacked the overtly urgent demands that brought the NAMES

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Project into existence; there certainly was no shortage of sympathy or support on the part of the U.S. public and the U.S. government in the immediate aftermath of the 1995 and 2001 attacks.60 The very early planning to commemorate, regardless of whether there was really such urgency, almost certainly accounts for some of the features of the planning as well as for some of the decisions made in those processes. The planning processes for the memorials in Oklahoma City, New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, of course, have differed markedly from one another.61 Nonetheless, reports such as Edward T. Linenthal’s careful documentation of the process in Oklahoma City, the thorough press coverage of September 11 commemoration, and the wellmaintained websites from each of the memorial projects point us toward several notable features.62 Among them are the related figure of “the survivor” and the “therapy” motive. Linenthal’s account of Oklahoma City, of course, is the most complete, because that memorial is finished. It is also-so far-the most chilling, especially if we heed Sturken’s admonition about U.S. culture’s “tendency to romanticize trauma.”63 Linenthal discusses the difficulty, for example, of defining “survivor,” a task made necessary because the mission statement for the Oklahoma City Memorial had specified that names of survivors appear on the memorial site. As he suggests, “Given the cultural prestige of the category of ‘survivor,’ there was a clear danger that the allure of being so anointed could tempt some to claim such status inappropriately, thereby trivializing the wrenching experiences of others.”64 Some of the more compelling images from Linenthal’s account are about the conflicts and competitions among family members of the deceased and survivors, many of whom were participating in the Oklahoma City planning process as a mode of therapy.65 Before the project was off the ground, survivors were engaging in recrimination, fighting with one another about who was more injured than whom, and in a (probably grief-induced) loss of perspective, insisting that the memorial to the 168 people who died there should be of the same scale as the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum-a museum that commemorates the deaths of six million people.66 One cannot help but wonder, in reading Linenthal’s account, if the process helped to resolve pain or simply inflicted more for those most directly affected. We will leave the question of the quality of the “healing” process here to social workers and psychologists, but its effectiveness seems to be an open question.

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Paul Goldberger’s general observation, in his assessment of the World Trade Center site, raises additional, related questions: “The monument issue is complicated by a tendency in the last few years to think of public memorials as ‘healing’ places for families. But great memorials also inspire awe, and make it possible to transcend the simply personal meaning of an event.” 67 Whether he is correct in implying that awe is what great memorials always inspire, he does at least help us raise the question of whether the participation in the inventional process of those closest to the tragedy is likely to produce the conditions for great public art. With due respect to the bereaved, it is a question worth posing, for memorials often play a major role in an ongoing public process of negotiating and renegotiating the meaning of an event for generations to come. Nikki Stern, whose husband was killed on September 11, makes the case starkly: “Does losing someone in a terrorist attack make one an expert on terrorism or memorial design? Obviously not.”68 The second issue raised by Goldberger’s statement, however inadvertently, is especially ironic, given our understanding here of the AIDS Memorial Quilt as a harbinger of some of these issues. That is the issue of “family” as the preferred way of referencing survivors. As tempting as it might be, we do not point to that terminology to scold Oklahoma City or New York for not being more like the Castro in San Francisco, where the NAMES Project was initiated. The point is how the boundary between invention and reception has been further breached, with family/survivors fully engaged in the planning and decision making processes. The family/survivor also reconfigures the relationship of public and private as they are marked in the memorials’ designs. “Special” areas will be restricted to family members of the deceased in the September 11 memorials, a feature that is shared by the Oklahoma City National Memorial. There, only family members are allowed access to the area called the “field of chairs,” where each of the 168 stone and glass chairs names one of the individuals killed in the bomb blast. This area of the Memorial, probably the most recognizable from press accounts, clearly was intended as the centerpiece of the site. But the family-only interdiction is enforced by a chain enclosure and by security guards. If a family/survivor is present, s/he is incorporated by visibility as part of the commemorative site, to be gazed upon as another accoutrement of the Memorial. Other visitors, members of the public, are denied contact with the Memorial’s representation of the individual victims, in other words, to the most significant symbol

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of the site. There are several effects of this decision, not the least of which is to render “family/survivor” as spectacle, but another is a literal dislocation of the public at allegedly public memorial sites. This is a very serious “ownership” issue, of more consequence than various groups’ attempts to control a commemorative artwork. Oklahoma City’s restrictions, as well as the planned “private” areas at the September 11 memorials, raise the question of whether these really are public memorials at all, or whether they are private memorials that merely tolerate public spectators. It is a new development in commemorative design, and it is a rather troubling one. CONCLUSION The VVM may have been the model, the prototype, or the enabler for these new memorial projects. But we believe it is the AIDS Memorial Quilt that most clearly signaled some of the developments in new commemorative works. Of course, the NAMES Project, Cleve Jones, and the panel makers are not responsible for the developments. Nonetheless, we might understand the Quilt’s rhetoric as having been an early sign of things to come. It did its rhetorical work, first, with its bold and fractious departures from traditional generic expectations. It pushed the boundaries further even than the VVM had done before it, particularly in its foregrounding of difference as a legitimate marker of democracy and in its particular mode of blurring reception and invention contexts without completely erasing the line between them. Important and unprecedented too was its weighting of the public-private dialectic toward privacy, but without defacing the public. It initiated the inscription of the survivor as an explicit figure of commemorative work. Along with the VVM, it prefigured the motifs of therapy and healing that have become so pronounced in more recent years, for good or ill. We believe the AIDS Memorial Quilt still has the potential to be more than “a museum piece.” Whatever its fate in the years to come, though, we believe a part of its legacy will (and should) be as an important commemorative artwork in its own right. Another will be its capacity, particularly in its initial decade, to move visitors to tears and to open their wallets for medical research and for support of people living with HIV-AIDS. A sincere and stirring tribute to the dead, it was also a provocative political instrument. We hope that another part of the legacy of the AIDS Memorial Quilt will be to caution those who plan and design public commemorative artworks,

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in two senses. The first warning is, in Marita Sturken’s words, that “[c]ultural memory is not in and of itself a healing process.”69 And second, public commemoration is unlikely to survive the displacement of the public. NOTES Blair, Carol and Neil, Michael. “The AIDs Memorial Quilt and the Contemporary Culture of Public Commemoration.” This work originally appeared in, Rhetoric & Public Affairs, Vol. 10, No. 4, Winter 2007, published by Michigan State University Press. 1. E. G. Crichton put the case well: “The NAMES Project Quilt has an unusually large [audience]: hundreds of thousands of us across the nation who have walked amidst the panels, stood in the sea of colorful memories, cried, found panels of people we have known, hugged strangers—in general been awed, moved, and inspired by the power of the total vision. . . . The NAMES Quilt bridges the gap between art and social consciousness. Art is too often peripheral to our society, seen as superfluous fluff. Political activism, on the other hand, is often perceived as uncreative and separate from culture. The Quilt is a rare successful integration of these two worlds . . . ” E. G. Crichton, “Is the NAMES Quilt Art?” OUT/LOOK 1, no. 2 (1988): 7–8. That is not to suggest that everyone agrees with her assessment. The project has been tarred with labels like “kitsch” and snubbed for promoting exploitative commodification. See Daniel Harris, ”Making Kitsch from AIDS,” Harper’s Magazine, July 1994, 35. Regardless of whether one thinks of the AIDS Memorial Quilt as art or as kitsch, it has enjoyed remarkable public success, in terms of popularity (as measured by the number of exhibits and attendees) and press coverage. 2. See Lawrence W. Grossberg, “Does Cultural Studies Have Futures? Should It? (Or What’s the Matter with New York?): Cultural Studies, Contexts, and Conjunctures,” Cultural Studies 20 (2006): 1–32. We are not certain that our understanding of a “conjuncture” matches Grossberg’s. The commemorative “conjuncture” is not of the same scale as in his use of the term to describe macrocultural phenomena. Although what we describe here as a conjuncture is “small” by contrast, it is culturally significant in its impact on collective memory practices. 3. For example, Brown et al. argue that the national debate over issues of race in the contemporary United States turns on the “profound disagreement over the legacy of the civil rights movement.” Michael K. Brown et al., Whitewashing Race: The Myth of the Color-Blind Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 1. 4. David Lowenthal, The Past Is a Foreign Country (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985). 5. Marita Sturken, Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the AIDS Epidemic, and the Politics of Remembering (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997); and

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Peter S. Hawkins, “Naming Names: The Art of Memory and the NAMES Project AIDS Quilt,” Critical Inquiry 19 (1993): 752–79. The original inspiration for this paper, however, comes from Enrico Pucci Jr. and Marsha S. Jeppeson. Their insights about the relationships between the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the NAMES Project AIDS Quilt have been instrumental in shaping our views of the continuities between the two memorials. Also see Timothy P. Brown, “Trauma, Museums and the Future of Pedagogy,” Third Text 18 (2004): 247–59; and Christopher Capozzola, “A Very American Epidemic: Memory Politics and Identity Politics in the AIDS Memorial Quilt, 1985–1993,” Radical History Review 82 (2002): 91–109. These and many other sources take the VVM as a touchstone for the AIDS Quilt and/or place them in critical conversation with one another. 6. See, for example, “Washington’s Memorial Mania,” Newsweek, May 27, 1991, 25; and George F. Will, “The Statue Sweepstakes,” Newsweek, August 26, 1991, 64. 7. These have enabled, in turn, still others. See Carole Blair, “Contemporary U.S. Memorial Sites as Exemplars of Rhetoric’s Materiality,” in Rhetorical Bodies, ed. Jack Selzer and Sharon Crowley (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1999), 16–57. 8. Daniel Abramson, “Maya Lin and the 1960s: Monuments, Time Lines, and Minimalism,” Critical Inquiry 22 (1996): 679. 9. Hawkins, “Naming Names,” 756–57. 10. Carole Blair, Marsha S. Jeppeson, and Enrico Pucci Jr., “Public Memorializing in Postmodernity: The Vietnam Veterans Memorial as Prototype,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 77 (1991): 279. 11. Michael Kammen, Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991), 702. 12. John R. Gillis, “Memory and Identity: The History of a Relationship,” in Commemorations: The Politics of National Identification, ed. John R. Gillis (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), especially 14, 17. 13. John Bodnar, Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992). 14. Both the Roosevelt Memorial and the George Mason Memorial, also nearby, were constructed after the VVM. 15. See Carole Blair, “Reflections on Criticism and Bodies: Parables from Public Places,“ Western Journal of Communication 65 (2001): especially 278–83. 16. NAMES Project Foundation, http://www.aidsquilt.org/quiltfacts .htm, updated June 15, 2006 (accessed January 7, 2007). 17. Anyone not familiar with the Sisters might wish to access: The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, Inc., http://www.thesisters.org/. Its mission statement reads as follows: “The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, Inc. is a leading-edge Order of queer nuns. Since their first appearance in San Francisco on Easter

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Sunday 1979, the Sisters have devoted themselves to community service, ministry and outreach to those on the edges, and to promoting human rights, respect for diversity and spiritual enlightenment. The Sisters believe all people have a right to express their unique joy and beauty and use humor and irreverent wit to expose the forces of bigotry, complacency and guilt that chain the human spirit.” 18. Cindy Ruskin, The Quilt: Stories from the NAMES Project (New York: Pocket Books, 1988), 126. 19. NAMES Project Foundation. 20. Ryan White was an Indiana boy, diagnosed with AIDS in 1984 at age 13. His fight to continue to attend a public school brought international attention to him and his cause. He died in the spring of 1990. 21. For example, a Quilt panel for Roy Cohn, infamous for his role in the Ethel and Julius Rosenberg trial and for his public homophobia (although he was homosexual), bears simply his name and the words “Bully,” “Coward,” “Victim.” Another for Cohn inscribes his name on a flag of the Soviet Union. See The AIDS Memorial Quilt Archive, http://www.archive.aidsquilt.org (accessed January 8, 2007). 22. Richard D. Mohr, Gay Ideas: Outing and Other Controversies (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992), 110–11. Although we are uncomfortable with Mohr’s diremption of the moral and the political, his reading of the Quilt is an important one, and on the issues he raises on mourning and the moral we are indebted to his work. 23. See, for example, Mark Gottdiener, The Theming of America: Dreams, Visions, and Commercial Spaces (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997), 122–23. Gottdiener recognizes the distinction at first, in his description of the effort to build “a memorial to the veterans of the Vietnam War” (122), but then, without comment, abandons it; in further discussion it becomes the “Vietnam War Memorial” (123, 170). 24. NAMES Project Foundation. 25. See, for example, Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1991), 220–28. Also see Malcolm Miles, Art, Space and the City: Public Art and Urban Futures (London: Routledge, 1997), 58–83. 26. See Bodnar, especially his chapter “The National Park Service and History.” Bodnar, Remaking America, 169–205. See also Mike Wallace, Mickey Mouse History and Other Essays on American Memory (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996). Especially pertinent on this point is his essay “Visiting the Past: History Museums in the United States.” Wallace, Mickey Mouse History, 3–32. 27. See Sturken, Tangled Memories, 71, 185–86. 28. Karen Burke LeFevre, Invention as a Social Act (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987). 29. See, for example, Christopher Knight’s astute assessment of the impact of the Vietnam Women’s Memorial. Knight, “Politics Mars Remembrance,”

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Sacramento Bee, November 7, 1993, Forum 1. For the origins of the second sculpture augmentation, see Karal Ann Marling and John Wetenhall, “The Sexual Politics of Memory: The Vietnam Women’s Memorial Project and ‘The Wall,’ ” Prospects 14 (1989): 341–72. 30. See Thomas B. Allen, Offerings at the Wall: Artifacts from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Collection (Atlanta: Turner Publishing, 1995); Kristin Ann Hass, Carried to the Wall: American Memory and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998); and A. Cheree Carlson and John E. Hocking, “Strategies of Remembrance at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial,” Western Journal of Speech Communication 52 (1988): 203–15. 31. Hawkins, “Naming Names,” 762. 32. Hawkins, “Naming Names,” 763–64. 33. Hawkins, “Naming Names,” 766–67; Sturken, Tangled Memories, 191–94. 34. This “relinquishment” may be the most difficult part of the process. Both Kerewsky and Krouse address the fact that panel makers often have a hard time letting go of their contributions. Shoshana D. Kerewsky, “The AIDS Memorial Quilt: Personal and Therapeutic Uses,” The Arts in Psychotherapy 24 (1997): 431–38; and Mary Beth Krouse, “Gift Giving, Identity, and Transformation: The AIDS Memorial Quilt,” Journal of Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Identity 4 (1999): 241–56. 35. Allegedly because of the major expense and massive organizing effort required and the difficulty of finding a location large enough to display the full Quilt, the last full display was in 1996. To our knowledge, there have been no plans on the part of the NAMES Project to attempt it again. The AIDS Quilt weighs more than 54 tons, and spread out horizontally with walkway fabric, it would cover 1,293,300 square feet. According to the NAMES Project, with the walkway, that is the approximate equivalent of 275 NCAA basketball courts. See NAMES Project Foundation, http://www.archive.aidsquilt.org/ quiltfacts.htm (accessed January 3, 2007). 36. The important nuances of the idea of a “rhetoric of display” are elaborated effectively by Lawrence J. Prelli, “Rhetorics of Display: An Introduction,” in Rhetorics of Display, ed. Lawrence J. Prelli (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2006), 1–38. 37. See, for example, Robert Asen and Daniel C. Brouwer, eds. Counterpublics and the State (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001); Nancy Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy,” in Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. Craig Calhoun (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992); G. Thomas Goodnight, “The Personal, Technical, and Public Spheres of Argument: A Speculative Inquiry into the Art of Public Deliberation,” Journal of the American Forensic Association 18 (1982): 214–27; Ju¨rgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, reprint ed. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991); Gerard A. Hauser, Vernacular Voices: The Rhetoric of

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Publics and Public Spheres (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1999); Richard Sennett, The Fall of Public Man (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977); and Michael Warner, Publics and Counterpublics (New York: Zone Books, 2002). 38. We take seriously efforts to rethink the public sphere as a spatialized notion, but such spatialization calls even more attention to the relationship of public and private. See Setha Low and Neil Smith, eds., The Politics of Public Space (New York: Routledge, 2006). 39. Hawkins, “Naming Names,” 774. 40. Also bearing this out is the practice of submitting a letter along with a Quilt panel to the NAMES Project. See Joe Brown, A Promise to Remember: The NAMES Project Book of Letters (New York: Avon, 1992). 41. Charles L. Griswold, “The Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the Washington Mall: Philosophical Thoughts on Political Iconography,” Critical Inquiry 12 (1986): 712. Also see Kim Servart Theriaut, “Remembering Vietnam: War, Trauma, and ‘Scarring Over ’ After ‘The Wall,’ ” Journal of American Culture 26 (2003): 421–31. 42. Gary Abrams, “AIDS Quilt Comforting U.S. Grief,” Los Angeles Times, March 22, 1988; Gerry Gentry, “The NAMES Project: A Catharsis of Grief,” Christian Century, May 24–31, 1989, 550; and Tom Dixon, “A Healing of Hearts,” Frontiers, April 6–20, 1988, 60. Such usage has been just as pervasive in academic discourse. See, for example, Timothy P. Brown, “Trauma, Museums and the Future of Pedagogy”; Hawkins, “Naming Names”; Kerewsky, “The AIDS Memorial Quilt: Personal and Therapeutic Uses”; Krosue, “Gift Giving, Identity, and Transformation”; and Sturken, “Tangled Threads.” See also Jacqueline Lewis and Michael R. Fraser, “Patches of Grief and Rage: Visitor Responses to the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt,” Qualitative Sociology 19 (1996): 433–51; Gregg Stull, “The AIDS Memorial Quilt: Performing Memory, Piecing Action,” American Art 15 (2001): 84–89. 43. See Timothy P. Brown, “Trauma, Museums and the Future of Pedagogy.” 44. One often reads accounts of gay male urban dwellers attending a funeral every month or even more frequently. Cleve Jones’s report of his experience is hardly atypical: “I wasn’t just losing friends, but also losing all the familiar faces of the neighborhood-the bus drivers, clerks and mailmen . . . . When I walk up 18th Street from Church Street to Eureka Street, a distance of eight blocks, just looking at all these houses and knowing the stories behind so many of the windows, makes me feel so old. To know that’s where Shane died, that’s where Alan died, that was Bobby’s last house, that’s where Gregory died, that’s where Jimmy was diagnosed, that’s the house Alex got kicked out of.” Quoted in Ruskin, The Quilt, 18. 45. Rochelle D. Lewis, “Powerful Images: Quilt Softens Pain of AIDS Deaths,” St. Petersburg Times, March 31, 1989, 1D. 46. Capozzola, “A Very American Epidemic,” 93. 47. Capozzola, “A Very American Epidemic,” 98.

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48. Alan Zarembo, “Once a Mighty Symbol of Love and Loss: The Tribute to Victims of AIDS Has Gone from Large to Largely Forgotten,” Los Angeles Times, June 4, 2006, A1. 49. Douglas Crimp, “Mourning and Militancy,” October 51 (1989): 3–18. 50. Zarembo, “Once a Mighty Symbol of Love and Loss,” A1. If his position seems rather unfair, it is worthwhile to contemplate the NAMES Project’s own account of itself. On the back of the 2007 NAMES Project Foundation’s calendar, sent out each year to donors, is this self-representation: “The NAMES Project Foundation, Inc.-the international, non-governmental organization that is the custodian of The AIDS Memorial Quilt-was established in 1987. The mission of the NAMES Project Foundation is to foster healing, heighten awareness and inspire action in the age of AIDS. At the close of 2005, The NAMES Project Foundation/AIDS Memorial Quilt was awarded a prestigious Save America’s Treasures Federal Grant. The Quilt is now recognized as part of America’s priceless historic legacy, an enduring symbol that helps define us as a nation.” 51. Zarembo, “Once a Mighty Symbol of Love and Loss,” A1. 52. Quoted in Zarembo, “Once a Mighty Symbol of Love and Loss,” A1. 53. Zarembo, “Once a Mighty Symbol of Love and Loss,” A1. 54. The NAMES Project moved from San Francisco to Atlanta in 2001. Cleve Jones was fired by the Foundation in 2003. 55. To resist, for example, the pressure to build the World War II Memorial, even in the face of bitter reaction against its location and design, would have been a major political risk. And indeed, Congress and the president finally just ordered it built, bypassing any further hearings or reviews. 56. It also does not include the establishment of “virtual memorials,” like the one announced on January 18, 2007, in Robert Greenwald’s blog and Brave New Films’s website: “In thinking of how we at Brave New Films can contribute, and inspired by the AIDS Quilt, the Vietnam memorial, and the New York Times biographies of the 9/11 victims, we decided to create a living online memorial to U.S. soldiers killed during the Iraq War.” http://www.robertgreenwald.org/2007/ 01/announcing_the_iraq_veterans_memorial.php (accessed January 19, 2007). 57. Andrew M. Shanken, “Planning Memory: Living Memorials in the United States during World War II,” Art Bulletin 84 (March 2002): 130–47. Also see Carole Blair and Neil Michel, “The Rushmore Effect: Ethos and National Collective Identity,” in The Ethos of Rhetoric, ed. Michael J. Hyde (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2004), especially 172–75. 58. See, for example, Judy Mann, “Peace on Earth Would Be the Best Memorial,” Washington Post, September 19, 2001, C11. 59. The dedication of the Pentagon Memorial is now planned for the fall of 2008. See Pentagon Memorial Project Schedule, http://memorial .pentagon.mil/schedule.htm (accessed January 12, 2007). 60. We are aware, of course, that some saw an urgency in the fact that the September 11 sites were functionally “gravesites.” However, this fact cannot

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account for the Oklahoma City site, where the physical remains of all the dead were recovered. Moreover, even in the case of the World Trade Center site, where physical remains often were not recovered, the desire to commemorate quickly was pragmatically futile, given the massive cleanup efforts and the large number of “stakeholders” in the battle over the site. 61. To keep this discussion reasonably manageable, we discuss here principally the Oklahoma City project and the planning and projections for the memorial at the World Trade Center in New York City. Some of the characterizations here would be parallel, others not as much, if we discussed in more detail the Flight 93 Memorial, planned for Somerset, Pennsylvania, and the Pentagon Memorial, planned for Arlington, Virginia. 62. See Edward T. Linenthal, The Unfinished Bombing: Oklahoma City in American Memory (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). Also see, Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, World Trade Center Site Memorial Competition, http://www.wtcsitememorial.org; Flight 93 National Memorial, http://www.flight93memorialproject.org; and Pentagon Memorial Fund, http://www.pentagonmemorial.net. 63. Sturken, Tangled Memories, 257. 64. Linenthal, The Unfinished Bombing, 190 (emphasis added). 65. Linenthal, The Unfinished Bombing, 4. “In Oklahoma City,” he says, “the memorial process involved hundreds of people, and it was consciously designed to be therapeutic.” 66. Jesse Katz, “Driving Need for Catharsis,” Los Angeles Times, Orange County Ed., April 19, 1997, A1+. 67. Paul Goldberger, “Groundwork: How the Future of Ground Zero Is Being Resolved,” New Yorker, May 20, 2002, 95. 68. Nikki Stern, “Our Grief Doesn’t Make Us Experts,” Newsweek, March 13, 2006, 20. 69. Sturken, Tangled Memories, 259.

Chapter 2

Transgender Women in the Blogosphere Anne R. Richards

THE INTERNET AND LGBTQ AUTHORS In spring 2009, a prominent blog-search engine indexed upward of 1.5 million English-language blog posts daily (Technorati, “Welcome,” n.d.). According to the engine’s latest data, of the 112.8 million blogs written in English (Helmond 2008), 79 percent are personal (Technorati, “State,” 2008). All told, 26.4 percent of Internet users in the United States have at least one blog. Although it is impossible to know how many of these blogs are written by transgendered authors, that number doubtless is substantial and growing rapidly. Blogs are only one in a long list of electronic media that have been used by LGBTQ people to explore their diverse identities, embodiments, and experiences. Woodland writes that many closeted LGBTQ folk have found the frank materials accessible on electronic mailing lists and forums to be invaluable (1999, 73). He notes that “people coming out and coming into the larger community use online resources in three major ways: to get information, to explore their identity, and to find an audience” (78). Michelle, a transwoman who began estrogen therapy in preparation for sex reassignment surgery (SRS) and whose parents advised her to take testosterone instead, writes that she blogs for yet another reason: because she needs “support from anyone” who can give it (“Getting Personal” 2007).

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Describing his own coming out as a protracted period notable for its fits and starts and for an absence of both information and community, Woodland characterizes the coming out process in the age of the Internet as contracting quickly and quotes a number of interview subjects who were helped to come out and who found supportive partners through a panoply of online media, from electronic bulletin boards to newsrooms. He observes that individuals can join chat discussions in which they: create virtual identities, trying on new definitions of self, performing those identities to see what fits. They panic and leave and come back six months later with a new virtual self, one based less on stereotypes and fantasies and more on their experience of what other LGBT people are like. They meet other people like themselves, form friendships, flirt with strangers, fall in love, and break up—all in a virtual space somewhere between the physical world and the life of the mind. (76) As a number of scholars have suggested, a key difference between coming out today and coming out a decade ago is the relative safety of electronic communication.1 Internet users, obviously, enjoy a degree of anonymity and flexibility that is rarely available IRL (in real life). Since the late 1980s, when the Internet’s potentials first became widely apparent, LGBTQ people have been active on the Internet (Finlon 2002, 99); and today many are contributing to the blogosphere. According to Mitra and Gajjala, “the issues of identity representation . . . are truer for blogging than for any other Internet tool” (2008, 403). The comparatively large percentage of personal, compared to corporate, blogs in the United States supports this conclusion. Blogs by transgendered authors model a salient aspect of the Internet by focusing on their experiences with or journeys towards embodying a desired gender identity. The tendency to characterize electronic literacy as having a unique capacity to empower and to transform individuals and societies through unfettered and often transgressive expression (an assumption that Marxists and other critics of new media often dispute) is, not surprisingly, prominent in scholarship on both the Internet and LGBTQ experiences. Woodland, whose “respondents offer ample and moving testimony to the importance of online spaces,” extols the Internet’s potential to help individuals arrive at “a voice and an identity” (79). “For many people,” Woodland writes:

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performing a gender identity online is a rehearsal for acting out that identity offline. An 18-year-old undergraduate explains the shaping of her bisexual identity this way: “I’ve been able to tell all of my net pals about my sexual identity. This has helped me to be more confident about telling people, my boyfriends, and my close friends at school. Telling people I didn’t know over the net encouraged me to join a campus organization that I didn’t think I had the guts to join. It was much easier incorporating my ‘hidden life’ into my ‘real life’ because I was able to speak freely without having any possible serious backlashes.” (79) Less sanguine, Tan Hoang remarks that in transforming “queer male cruising,” the Internet is simultaneously giving rise to “an alarming conflation of queer communities with a singular marketing demographic” and that membership in this community seems to require “buying a Gay.com membership” (Dinshaw et al., 2007, 193). Furthermore, the Internet has given rise to a publicly searchable catalogue of queer desires, bodies, and behaviors. That the Internet has become known as the “primary venue where barebackers locate sexual partners” should, says Tan Hoang, “give us pause to consider the ‘consolidation’ and ‘refuge of the good’ of queer community” (194) online. Sheena, one of the bloggers I studied for this chapter, is outspoken in her disappointment both in the online transgender community and in the discourse that has come to characterize her own blogging: I’ve got to stop packaging myself like a product—as if I have anything to sell. Eight years after our first computer, and really my first look at what was “out there,” I’ve come to the disappointing realization that there is no crossdressing community that share any kind of collective vision. Any given tranny, tgirl, gurl, or weekend crossdresser that I’ve come across on the internet is not more likely to have anything in common with me as a grease monkey I’d bump into at the auto parts warehouse. (“oh, seven,” 2007) Mitra and Gajjala suggest that the blogosphere is little more than a web of nodes/individual sites whose dispersal inhibits rather than promotes social action, all the while creating a simulacrum of community (409). Yet many of the bloggers I studied claim to have found comfort in their online relationships. As one of Woodland’s transgendered interview subjects states, “ ‘on-line resources may have actually saved my life—spiritually if not physically’ ” (81).

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FLUID SELVES? Transgender is a term based on the Latin words for “across, through, beyond” and for “type.” Thus its etymology denotes fluid movement along a spectrum of gender identities.2 A transgendered person usually does not identify comfortably with the sex assigned to him or her at birth although this need not be the case. MacDonald elaborates that transgendered people may “identity with [no] gender at all” or may “move back and forth between self-presentation as women and men. [The term] also includes those whose gender presentation is ambiguous in ways which don’t permit them to present as either gendered male or female” (4). Importantly, the term reveals nothing about sexual preference. A broader term than transsexuality, transgender takes into account a very wide variety of people and behaviors that trouble gender role expectations generated on the basis of assigned sex. This troubling is taking place with increasing frequency in the public sphere—and notably on the Internet. Although the term transgender connotes fluidity, and although gender itself is increasingly understood as socially constructed and thus open to revision, gender identity in the United States continues to be constructed within the regimes of patriarchy, heteronormativity, and capitalism. As Jason Cromwell reminds us, “Although some individuals are comfortable with ambiguity and even play with it, nonconformity . . . frequently has its costs. One is ridicule. Another, extreme and brutal, is violence or even murder” (cited in Davis 2008, 115). What is more, transgendered individuals do not necessarily believe that “their core gendered selves are transitory, ambiguous, or simply a matter of personal choice” (110) and thus their “practices of disclosure may be geared towards normalizing a sense of self rather than an attempt to disrupt.” Because this essay concerns both transwomen and blogging, the notion of fluidity must play an important role. Transgender identity and the Internet are often constructed as sites of special instability in which the values of choice, play, freedom, and difference have pride of place. Although studies of the fluidity of the Internet/new media and transgender identity can be illuminating, neoliberal discourse regarding online “freedom” can and does cover over the realities of lives constrained by class, gender, race, and so on. Such effacing is encountered not only in advertising by also in scholarship and is recognizable in the way that it: [c]elebrate[s] the unfettered mobility of identity and travel in cyberspace, invoking the idea that one can leave behind the

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drudgery of life and enter cyber-worlds where bodies, race, gender, and class no longer matter. Some Internet and technology scholars replicate this corporate marketing ethos by arguing that the transgressive qualities of electronic mediation reside in the ability of individuals to flexibly recombine their identity and social power in cyberspace, de-linked from the constraints of the body. (Schaeffer-Grabiel, 895) Through her research on Internet/romance tourism and Latinas who underwent plastic surgery in order to access lifestyles permitting greater opportunities for self actualization, Schaeffer-Grabiel concludes that “the emphasis on play and fluid identities has led to a theorizing away from the materiality of the body and the actual borders that limit one’s flexibility, mobility, and expression of subjectivity on- and off-line” (895). In short, neoliberal frameworks for representing the Internet can underestimate the power of material conditions to influence a person’s choices regarding gender presentation. As was abundantly clear in the blogs I studied, attempting to live as a transwoman can be prohibitively expensive, and many do not have the means to journey as far as they might wish. For SRS to be covered by insurance, transwomen must convince their doctors not only that they believe themselves to be, but that they can live for at least one year as, a woman. Since most doctors presumably subscribe to gender normative ideologies, transwomen who wish to transition may feel obliged to perform a conventional gender role as they undergo therapy and the prelude leading up to SRS. If scholars of the Internet and of new media have tended to represent electronic media as representing opportunities for users to escape norming systems by creating online identities that are substantially different from their quotidian selves, LGBTQ and feminist scholars have also participated in this work, by “celebrat[ing] the queering of cyber interactions that contribute to the dislocating of sex and/or gender from a natural location in the body and detaching the visual cues of the body (race, sex, gender) from the inner realm of the self” (Schaeffer-Grabiel, 894). Allucque´re Stone, for instance, has identified transgendered individuals as “natural” inhabitants of cyberspace (Schaeffer-Grabiel, 894, 895). Perceptions of queer space as qualitatively different from “the real world” of normative heterosexuality are widespread. For instance, Blackwood observes that the Indonesian idiom for “coming out” is “to fall into the gay/lesbian world” (492), and Larry Gross describes the

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lives of “gender non-conformists” as “masquerading and passing, or living in the margins” (2007, vii; cited in Mitra and Gajjal 2008, 401): In responding to the question of why the Internet can be viewed as “somehow queer,” [Gross] writes, “Well, for one thing, there’s the disembodied performativity of cyberspace, the place where no one knows you’re a dog, or whatever you choose to present yourself as. Queer folks are past masters at this game.” (Cited in Mitra and Gajjal 2008, 401) But for Judith Halberstam, an insistence on the fluidity of LGBTQ identity within that community reflects “subtle homonormativities” in that such an assumption marginalizes “people with strong identifications as pathological in relation to their rigidity” and “ascribes mobility over time to some notion of liberation and casts stubborn identification as a way of being struck in time, unevolved, not versatile” (190). Halberstam describes herself as a “stone butch” although she has met people who tell her “there are no stone butches around anymore! People often tell me,” she observes mordantly, “That stone butch was an identity bound to the 1950s and apparently dependent on a preliberation understanding of lesbianism or queerness” (190). Jagose also questions the wisdom that fluidity and its counterparts automatically arise “in the service of queer political projects and aspirations” (191), and Tan Hoang identifies fluidity and its close relations as characters in a kind of Grand Narrative of Homosexuality (191). MacDonald, like other scholars, attributes the privileging of fluidity in LGBTQ identity to the ubiquity and overwhelming influence of postmodern theory, which is at the root of claims regarding the ephemerality of virtual lives as well. She explains why such assumptions can be damaging: In its promotion of transgender identity as a transcendence of identity, postmodern theory assimilates transgender to its own intellectual project through presenting transgendered experience as chimera, play, performance or strategy. It does so at the expense of investigating the actual lives, political demands, or feelings expressed by transgendered people of having an identity that is often experienced as “authentic” or “integral” and that is considered to be neither “chosen” originally nor “performed” strategically. (4) By exploring, along with expressions of liminal gender identities, more fixed identities and the various forces that stabilize online

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and transgender selves, this essay attempts to acknowledge the co-presence of fluidity and stability in constructions of gender. OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY In a sense, the transgender blogosphere is an archive of a community. Whereas gays and lesbians before the U.S. civil rights movements “dream[ed] of collectivities” (Nealon, quoted in Dinshaw et al., 2007, 179) of their experiences such as those made possible through Cornell University’s human sexuality library, such collectivities were all too rare. In contrast, the transgender blogosphere is a contemporary, perpetually updated archive of LGBTQ experiences. The immediacy of much writing that takes place there is evident in a post by Michelle, who is about to undergo a series of operation in preparation for the 12-month “real-life test” preceding SRS: “After the next 24 hours have passed,” she writes on October 3, 2007, “I will come to a milestone. . . . Twenty-four hours from now, I will finally be free to be myself, the person I’ve always meant to be, if I wasn’t born in the body that I was” (“Welcome,” 2007). This chapter discusses blogging discourse in terms of three frameworks for thinking about the texts and images that authors have written or selected. In order to generate a multifaceted discussion, blog posts are discussed in light of C. Jacob Hale’s, Gloria Anzaldu´ a’s, and Mary Louise Pratt’s writings on culture and gender. The discourse of transgendered authors can be challenging both lexically and conceptually, and I have hoped that approaching it from a range of perspectives will illuminate important aspects of the subject that I might otherwise have passed over. While a picture may be worth a thousand words, I study the ways in which images and texts work separately and in concert on the blogs. Susan Sontag (1979) insists that images can be made to “say” virtually anything (see also Omidvar 2008), and because of concerns about the slipperiness of visual representation, this essay takes into account, where possible, substantial textual evidence about the images it explores. These images have constituted something of a dilemma for me. As a scholar of visual rhetoric and new media, I am appreciative of the role that images play in contemporary literacies and cannot easily justify writing a chapter about blogging without considering this key element. Additionally, the subject itself seems to cry out for visual interpretation and analysis. The literature on LGBTQ (and perhaps

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especially transgender) lives is replete with visual metaphors and suggests a special connection between visuality and the work of expressing gender—the ideas that transbodies perform, present, and are read come to mind immediately. Yet, acutely aware of postcolonial critiques of ethnography, I wish to avoid, to the extent possible, othering my subject beyond what is already bound to happen in writing about a community I am not part of. I fear that by presenting images from these blogs in the denatured context of my essay, I will be opening the authors to additional misunderstanding and unwanted exposure. The fact is that images have a special power to influence and will have a more compelling immediate effect on their audience than words will. I am moved by the remarks of Amber Smith, a transwoman blogger I studied, who writes of a recent request that she post images of herself in her underwear. “Our friend here wants to . . . come up with a profile [of me] based on what I have on in a couple of snapshots” (“How to Approach a Kitten in the Wild,” 2005), she ruminates. After placing numerous images from the blogs into the essay, removing them, and repeating that process, I decided on a compromise that is unsatisfactory but that I hope will help minimize the problem of visual representation that has vexed this scholarship. Although I do not include images in the text of this chapter, I hope that readers who are interested in exploring the blog sites of the authors referenced will consult the bibliography for the relevant URLs. The blogs I discuss here represent a very small sample of a rapidly expanding online network of transgendered authors who occupy a wide variety of positions along the gender spectrum and who, offline and on, choose to be revelatory to various extents regarding their gender identities. The remainder of this essay explains the study and discusses three frameworks by prominent American cultural and gender theorists whom I reference to interpret the blogs. STANDPOINT AND OBJECTIVES A straight white feminist raised during the second wave of the women’s movement, I have chosen to study this topic because I hope that the blogs of transwomen may both help illuminate the layered subjectivities of the authors and of other transwomen and suggest responses to questions that persist in feminist circles on the topic of gender roles and identities. The overarching framework of my research is feminist in that it affirms the value of difference and attempts to explore a gap in scholarly understandings of women’s

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lives and experiences. It also recognizes the gender aspirations and experiences of transwomen as having a unique potential to help readers arrive at a deeper understanding of what it can mean to be a woman in this century. Thus, the chapter participates in the move to reconcile tensions that exist between certain woman-centered and transgender communities. Like cisgendered women (i.e., “womenborn-women”), transwomen have no fixed attitudes towards the goals conventionally associated with feminism, and in this essay I make no assumptions about, although I am very interested in and at time draw attention to, the authors’ seeming comfort or discomfort with traditional gender roles. METHODS The blogs discussed in this essay were identified during a search for a source of excellent transblogs, a term I use to refer to blogs by transgendered writers. A Best of the Web (BOTW) directory for transblogs is available at http://botw.org/, under the links to “Society” and, subsequently, “Transgendered.” In spring 2008, the BOTW directory for transgblogs identified 30 URLs. The first BOTW was uploaded in 1994. Originally focused on the granting of prizes, the site, in its own terms, “transformed into a comprehensive directory categorizing content-rich, well designed websites” soon after (BOTW, “The Internet’s Oldest Directory,” 2008). The BOTW is free and does not sell advertising space. “To rank among the Best of the Web, a site must adhere to the strict criteria of editors who ensure that it contains substantive unique content, navigates in a user-friendly manner, contains no broken links or pictures, is up and running 24/7, and conforms to universally accepted web standards”; in short, sites discussed in this essay are reasonably sophisticated technologically. Because not all the transblogs listed on the BOTW were individual blogs, I studied only 21 of the 30 blogs. Twenty of these 21 blogs were written by bloggers who identified, at some point in their online writings, as transwomen. So why were so few blogs by transmen represented on the BOTW? This imbalance may be the result of factors such as the BOTW editors’ preferences, gender-linked issues such as digital literacy and access (indeed, many of the authors indicated that they worked with computers for a living), or differences in leisure time available to the writers. Likely, the reasons for the near-absence of transmen’s blogs on the BOTW were complex. Two-thirds of all

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bloggers are male (Technorati, “State of the Blogosphere,” 2008), and the prior histories of our transgendered authors may simply reflect this fact. Because of the preponderance of blogs by transgendered individuals on the female spectrum, I chose to focus on that demographic. As a result, I viewed at least the first page and profiles (where available) of 20 blogs and studied their images and text in concert. PERSPECTIVES ON GENDER REPRESENTATIONS IN TRANSBLOGS This chapter applies only a handful of the countless possible lenses for viewing and understanding the transblogs: C. Jacob Hale’s writings on gender negotiation, Gloria Anzaldu´a’s on borderlands, and Mary Louise Pratt’s on transculturation. C. Jacob Hale: Negotiating Gender C. Jacob Hale’s “Are Lesbians Women?” is, among other things, a thoroughly engrossing anatomy of prevailing notions of womanhood in Western societies. An academic and activist, Hale asserts that it is necessary to “Gender [ . . . ] ourselves in ways that challenge the ‘natural attitude’ towards gender,” thereby undermining both heteronormativity and patriarchy. “To shift ourselves, our subjectivities, our embodied gender performativities, to shift our own gendered beings” (297) he writes, we might focus on the infinite multifaceted micro ways in which the gendering of individuals is made to seem both natural and unavoidable. Rebecca, author of the blog “Beck’s Cafe´,” describes herself as a transwoman who does not intend to seek SRS and is “just trying to find some degree of balance and just be . . . me. Without tags, hassles, or horror stories” (“About,” n.d.). Her online identity is feminine and her “interests” section, for instance, suggests that she is engaged, by and large, in activities that cisgendered women are often expected to take pleasure in: “cooking, calligraphy, technology, pets, hiking, crafts, kayaking, jazz and blues music, gardening, the smell of grass freshly mowed, warm kittens in my lap, kids when they giggle, old movies with friends and pizza” are associated in the main with a domestic/natural/feminine orientation. Hale mentions “engaging in leisure pursuits (including hobbies, club memberships, loose social affiliations, recreational activities, entertainment interests, and nonoccupational religious activities) considered to be acceptable for a woman and pursuing these

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in ways considered acceptable for a woman” (292) to be one of the key defining characteristics of the gender. Following are two other defining characteristics from among the thirteen that Hale identifies as socially constructing the category “woman.” Note how key visuality is to these activities—how crucial the ability is to appear to be a woman, so as to cause no viewer to question or doubt: 1. “Achieving and maintaining a physical gender selfrepresentation the elements of which work together to produce the gender assignment ‘woman’ ” (293). “[A]ttire, jewelry, cosmetics, hairstyle, distribution, density, and texture of facial and body hair, fingernail and toenail appearance, skin texture, overall body morphology and size, odor, facial structure, and vocal characteristics” (293) are among the physical elements to which transgendered and cisgendered women are expected to direct their attention. 2. “Behaving in ways that work together to produce the gender assignment ‘woman’ ” (293). “Movements, posture, facial expressions, manners, decorum, etiquette, protocol, and deportment considered to be within acceptable ranges for women” (293) also must be presented. Freiya, a 34-year-old transwoman, posts images of herself that focus on certain microlevel physical features of the sex “woman,” such as delicate arms and breasts, and long, thick, curly hair, the cultivating of which, as Hale reminds us, is part of the complex negotiations of gender. Freiya scrupulously avoids posting portraits in which she looks directly at the viewer. While this choice may help preserve her anonymity, it also results in images that seem to enact “the gaze,” objectifying her for the pleasure of the viewer and presenting her identity as a mere appendage to jewelry, scarves, dresses, spaghetti straps, curls, and discreet anatomical features. One especially provocative image is of Freiya’s neck and thin shoulders, her face turned from the viewer at a 90 degree angle, a composition reminiscent of John Singer Sargent’s infamous Madame X. In a way, Freiya’s self-portrait is more arresting than the painting, as the photograph crops most of Freiya’s body, leaving the viewer to stare directly at her vulnerable neck. Likewise, Schaeffer-Grabiel discusses the efforts that Celia, one of the many enterprising Latinas seeking a White North American husband, makes in order to be viewed as an ideal woman and marriage

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mate, in this context defined as someone who values traditional gender roles in the home and within marriage. Celia is engaged in being perceived as a middle class, not poor, woman. And it seems that many poor women may have difficulty being perceived as women at all—at least according to Hale’s terms, which emphasize visual markers of middle-class or affluent lifestyles and of freedom from grinding work, markers such as jewelry, smooth skin, cosmetics, hairstyle, fingernail and toenail appearance, odor, manners, decorum, etiquette, and protocol. One might just as well ask whether poor women can be “real” women according to neoliberal ideologies that posit choice, freedom, and self-actualization as the individual’s highest values: [Celia’s] soft voice, graceful gestures (reminiscent of women groomed for beauty pageants), and desire for an enlarged behind [to be achieved through plastic surgery] articulate a complex desire for a more pliable construction of identity, ethnicity, and sexuality that has both local and global currency, that situates her subjectivity as both embodied and translatable in a broader context. Depending on the spaces and social situations Celia moves through, she feels that she can rework the meanings of her race and class. . . . (909) The women Schaeffer-Grabiel describes, who “must upgrade their bodies to blend into . . . tourist zones so they are not mistaken to be prostitutes or ‘green card sharks,’ ” also relied on electronic technologies such as the World Wide Web to disseminate information about themselves to potential partners. The blogs I studied provide many illustrations of how transwomen may strive to present a recognizably normative, feminine identity. Windy Cissy, who describes him/herself as, alternatively, a “California girl,” a “regular guy,” the “girl next door,” and a “straight hetero guy who digs the rush from dressing up like a girl” (“Ask Windy Cissy,” n.d.), offers to help readers familiarize themselves with many of the intricacies of being a woman that are identified by Hale: “From shopping to shaving, make-up to mannerisms, I’ll share with you techniques that have enabled me to pass convincingly as a woman, time and again,” Windy writes. His/her advice columns concern topics such as using “scrunchies” to create an alluring hairdo (“Creating the Perfect Ponytail,” 2007) and filing fingernails to create “feminine ovals” (“Hair and Nails,” 2006). Michelle, who is about to undertake a year of living as a woman as a prelude to SRS and who is preparing for plastic

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surgery on her face, breasts, and midsection, describes other efforts she has been making to embody normative womanhood: I’ve been taking steps to transition since Last July, which includes undergoing laser procures to remove my facial hair (yeowtch!), starting hormone therapy, growing my hair, developing a female voice through speech training, buying clothes and learning to use make-up. . . . Once I go full-time starting in October, I will have my name legally changed on all my identification documents (driver’s license, social security card, etc.). (“Frequently Asked Questions,” 2007) If it is not possible for transwomen to groom, to conduct themselves, and to otherwise present themselves so as to be seen by others as “real women,” the next stage in negotiation may be to avoid inciting violent a response, for example, rape, assault, or other type of abuse, to their presence. I include here a posting from Freiya, whose author page states, “I don’t want to fit in, I just don’t want to stand out” (“Freiya,” n.d.), and whose at-times unsuccessful efforts to present are a poignant topic of her blog. In this post, she expresses her frustration on being assumed, because of what she calls her “alternative” appearance, to be involved in a local activism event. After being singled out by a fellow commuter as an “outsider,” Freiya tacitly admits that she is not achieving either the physical or the behavioral self-representation of “woman.” In the post below, she describes her experience as she waits for a train: A man came up to me and asked if i knew where the protest was. I kind of pulled my best “why are you even talking to me” face but he must of [interpreted] my expression as a “ask me more stupid questions” face. Apparently there was some sort of protest involving climbing trees and maybe some tunnel digging as well and i looked like the sort of person who’d y’know know about protest stuff. (Freiya, n.d.) The author was disturbed because, as an evident social outsider, she was being treated as “generic alternative woman,” someone likely to be interested and involved in any protest within commuting distance. “I know that i shouldn’t be offended,” she wrote (tentatively displaying and then dispensing with the womanly virtues of tolerance and uplift): protesting can be good, it can change things and we should have the right to protest and this fundamental right didn’t cause me

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offence, no my friends, no it was the assumption that because i look “alternative” that i’d know where trees were being climbed in order to save the countryside/urban environment/toads/sad 3-legged horses/world (delete as appropriate). (Freiya, n.d.) As has been suggested, one way of describing the gender work that many transwomen do may be to think of this activity as a form of “negotiation,” the term used by Hale. In the commuter incident, the questioner ostensibly wanted information about a protest from Freiya (though there may well have been more at stake), and Freiya seemed to have been hoping for a degree of respect, both as a commuter and as a woman. The questioner did not receive his information, and Freiya did not receive respect although she evidently responded in a typically “feminine” way, that is, politely and nonconfrontationally, which indicates that the negotiation may have been something of a success in terms of her own goals. In fact, Freiya displayed “manners, decorum, etiquette, protocol, and deportment considered to be within acceptable ranges for women.” As Hale explains, behavior befitting a woman “may include degrees and styles of aggressiveness in communicating with others, and, more generally, how one uses and negotiates power in interactions” (293). Amy, like Freiya, writes of her concerns about being read: “I assume that every time I katch someone looking at me,” she confesses, “or when I meet practically anyone for the first time, I get Function called” (“Big Bottle of Krazy,” 2007). But she describes with unabashed pleasure a recent negotiation in a local post office. As she often does, she enters the building and says hello to “the rocking-ist kewl post office staff,” whom she has known since before her transition. Her male identity, Joe, owned the post office box she now does and also knew the service workers. “So,” she writes, “I just always assumed they knew my function.” On this day, she is annoyed to receive a notice to pick up a package of doubtless little worth at the front counter . . . for Joe. She hands the slip to the staff person, receives the package, and begins to open it: You know, To see what it was, Maybe it was a calendar!!! Woot! And that’s the moment I got a pleasant Monday morning surprise.

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“You’re not going to open his mail, are you?” I was queried. “Ah . . . ” I intelligently proffered in order to buy some time for composing a response, [. . .] “I’m definitely not going to . . . . At least in front of you.” I delivered accompanied with the “Snarky Eyes Moving Side to Side” move. “Good, because that you’re not supposed to do.” I generated the intended laugh, change topic response . . . And a new topic was gravitated towards. But when I eventually turned to leave, I did thank them for making my day, Though now, I’m not sure if they have any idea why. . . . Although Hale does not mention flirtatiousness, it is a conventional feminine behavior that Amy seems to have mastered. Transwomen, like cisgendered women, both resist and concede to pressures to adopt traditional gender norms of behavior and appearance. But transwomen who strongly resist are aware that they can be especially likely to disrupt the social scenes they enter. To avoid negative responses to such undesirable disruptions and/or for other reasons, transwomen like Amy may be in the process of developing a normative gender identity. Gloria Anzaldúa: The Borderlands Danger can attend the failure to negotiate gender successfully, as demonstrated by an article posted by one of the bloggers I studied. This piece stated that in the first eight months of 2008 “several young gender non-conforming people of color have been murdered. . . . in a year in which we are still working to include transgender provisions in a federal bill to protect lesbian, gay and bisexual workers from discrimination in employment” (Boyd, “Vital National Trans Survey,” 2008). Many Westerners are outraged by the fact that women in fundamentalist Islamic states can be forced to cover themselves or risk violence or death. At the same time, in the West, individuals who do not appear and act in a way conforming to local gender norms, e.g., a transwoman such as Freiya, is at risk of attack. Tellingly, the community’s slang for being

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outed is “getting clocked.” As mentioned, the Internet’s potential as a venue for expressing one’s preferred gender identity away from the threat of physical violence has helped solidify the affiliation between it and the LGBTQ community. Although in Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987) Gloria Anzaldu´a identifies the southern U.S./Mexican border as the literal boundary at the heart of her book, she reflects that: [t]he psychological borderlands, the sexual borderlands, and the spiritual borderlands are not particular to the Southwest. In fact, the borderlands are physically present wherever two or more cultures edge each other, where people of different races occupy the same territory, where under, lower, middle and upper classes touch, where the space between two individuals shrinks with intimacy. (Anzaldu´a 1987, 19) Anzaldu´a’s borderlands are spaces that she has traversed literally, and her subject is firmly the unfirm ground of the real, unavoidable, daily interactions between heterogenous cultures. Thus she does not make the error noted by MacDonald with respect to postmodernism’s appropriations of liminal space. Noting that “postmodern theorists risk romanticizing” that concept, MacDonald writes: [t]ransgender identity is useful in giving flesh to this postmodern conceptualization of “liminality” in identity. Because transgender identity is experienced as exclusion from or harm by the existing categories of “gender,” it provokes the question of how those categories are established. How are they maintained? How are the boundaries of what is normal “policed”? How can they be transgressed? Transgendered people often experience, and frequently painfully so, living on these borders, and the costs of transgressing them. (9) Like the unpredictable context that Freiya creates on entering a scene, Anzaldu´a’s borderlands are a “place of contradictions. Hatred, anger, and exploitation are the prominent features of this landscape” (preface). Both Woodland and Davis, in their interviews of LGBTQ individuals, found that a number had remained, or had been strongly tempted to remain, closeted because of threats or attacks on their person, and Davis’s transgendered subjects noted that these could at

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times be the result of unsuccessful presentations. Robert, one of Davis’s subjects, states: “going through my transition, I was molested, sexually assaulted and raped and so, it’s almost like, it’s really important for me because I want to be able to be in public and know that I can conquer my general fear of what I went through before and know that it won’t happen again. So to me, it’s totally important to me to pass totally and not just half-assed or half-way.” Similarly, Pamela explains, “I’ve had a lot of rejection in my life and I’m tired of it. That’s number one and number two [is] my own safety. I have had those two attempts on my life because people have read me and didn’t like it.” Being visibly trans can draw attention. (Davis, 116) The dangers of borderlands are not necessarily public, and the home, of course, may not be a haven. A self-described male and “nonpracticing tranny,” Charlotte Downs illustrates the potential precariousness of transgender domestic life with partner and children: Had an interesting reaction from the SO [significant other] the other night, I was teasing everyone saying I would get my ear repierced and grow a pony tail (because now I can [because Downs had found a job]) and my youngest Cygnet [child] ran upstairs and grabbed a set of clip-on earrings, so I put one on remembering to fumble. . . . cannot be seen to be too proficient and the SO was horrified, claiming it made me look effeminate and it made her feel really uncomfortable, the Cygnets howled thinking it was hilarious! SO there has not been any thawing on her part to the concept of trannying them! (“Officially Clever,” 2006) Anzaldu´ a’s borderlands have much in common with the “contact zones” described by Mary Louis Pratt, a theorist whom I rely on in the next section of this chapter. Pratt is concerned with those who inhabit the “metropole” and the “periphery”—the central spaces of privilege and power, and the distant spaces of oppression. Focusing on the evolution of this relation starting from about 1750, lasting throughout European expansion and colonialism, and extending into the most recent era of globalization, Pratt explores “the relations among colonizers and colonized, or travelers and “travelees,” not in terms of separateness or apartheid, but in terms of copresence,

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interaction, interlocking understandings and practices, often within radically asymmetrical relations of power whose trajectories now intersect” (7). Charlotte’s situation, which presents ample evidence of a home life in which one partner is hostile to the other’s gender identity and in which the other thus may be in jeopardy of losing custody of children, can be viewed as a borderland or a contact zone—that is, as a situation of radical inequality, coercion, and “intractable conflict” (Pratt, 6) based on deep and abiding difference. In sharp contrast to Charlotte’s story of the troublous earring, is the story told by the transwoman Rapunzell about a moment when one of her own family members respected her desire to wear jewelry, one of the characteristics allurements of “woman” mentioned by Hale. “After giving my dad a hug,” Rapunzell writes: he presented me with a precious white opal ring much to my surprise. I did not want to accept it at first, but he insisted and I tried it on my ring finger. It was a bit small (likely a size 7.5) to fit past my knuckle . . . Pretty! This is also my birth stone and the first honestly feminine gift from my dad. I have never been much of a ring wearer in the past. I never wore my wedding band after the day we were married. I will very likely wear this ring in the future as remembrance of my dad’s first girly gift to me. This is one gift to cherish in my future. (“Surprise Gift,” 2008) Indeed it would be a mistake to characterize the borderlands as essentially negative. For, like many of the bloggers I studied for this chapter, Anzaldu´a considers herself, and often those who journey with her, to have evolved a heightened spiritual awareness as a result of inhabiting those spaces. “[T]here have been compensations for this mestiza,” she acknowledges, “And certain joys. Living on borders and in margins, keeping intact one’s shifting and multiple identities and integrity, is like trying to swim in a new element, an ‘alien’ element. There is an exhilaration in being a participant in the further evolution of humankind, in being ‘worked’ on” (Preface). According to Woodland’s study of LGBTQ writing, “virtual crossings are much more widely available over the Internet [than IRL]. But, once that crossing is made, people’s capacity for growth is astounding” (79). Anzaldu´a writes that the borderlands are inhabited by los atravesados, or the crossers. She uses this term to refer to “the squint-eyed, the perverse, the queer, the troublesome, the mongrel, the mulatto, the half-breed, the half dead; in short those who cross over, pass over, or go through

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the confines of the ‘normal’ ” (25). The etymology of atravesado, whose connotations Anzaldu´a faithfully lists, is the Latin word transversare, which denotes lying or traveling across something, as a bridge does water. In Spanish, atravesrar can denote pierce, a meaning Anzaluda does not mention, but might well have. Outsiders have a unique potential, in her view, to be engaged fruitfully in spiritual work. Rebecca, author of “Beck’s Cafe´,” uses the symbols of noon, sunrise, and sunset to describe the lives of the women in her home (“Setting Sun,” 2008), placing her post below an image of the sun lowered over a city street. She confesses that she is sitting at noon in a cafe´ “tearing up as [she thinks] about [her] grandmother and reflecting on her life”: As some of you know my home is empty of some family members for whom the sun is rising, my daughters, and now my home is full of family members for whom the sun is setting. . . . It’s a bittersweet time of releasing. Releasing some for new life and others for death. It’s that simple. This post demonstrates Rebecca’s acceptance of the inevitability of change, birth, and death as well as a sensitivity to nature and metaphor. Like Rebecca’s post, Anzaldu´a’s writings reflect the spiritual evolution that can arise from the struggles of marginal status. Anzaldu´a cherishes the Aztec goddess Cuatilucue, or Lady of the Serpent Skirt, whose skirts enfold all of human experience, including joy, pleasure, life, pain, suffering, and death, thereby balancing “the dualities of male and female” (54). According to Anzaldu´a, the Lady of the Serpent Skirt was routed as the Aztecs devolved into an imperialist patriarchy (53). After her overthrow and as Aztec culture repudiated the goal of integration of humans, animals, spirits of all kinds, and indeed of all nature and the supernatural, many members of the tribe were ostracized. In this newly discordant society, “the females, the homosexuals of all races, the darkskinned, the outcast, the persecuted, the marginalized, the foreign,” as Anzaldu´a tells the story of los atravesados, were in increasing danger of annihilation. In response, they developed la facultad, or “the capacity to see in surface phenomena the meaning of deeper realities. . . . It is an acute awareness mediated by the part of the psyche that does not speak, that communicates in images and symbols. . . . The one possessing this sensitivity is excruciatingly alive to the world” (60). Michelle, a female transsexual, describes in her blog how she listened to her “female spirit” in an environment that rejected it, eventually

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discovering the strength to undertake the difficult inner and outer journeys of transition. Michelle offers no picture of herself on her blog, instead substituting on the author page a reproduction of tranquil reflected water from one of Claude Monet’s paintings of water lilies— an image that alludes to physical and spiritual peace and to a degree of stability in the presence of abiding fluidity. Michelle writes, “When I was born, I was born with a female spirit or soul, if you will. This spirit does not manifest itself in conscious thought, but is a core part of my identity as a human being”: As I was [growing] up and conscious thought started to develop, I was taught to be . . . male because I was in a male body. I gradually built up my male identity—learned my name, learned how to dress, how to act, how to treat others. But all that time, the spirit I was born with—Michelle—[was] sleeping inside me, growing very slowly. The male persona I had built kept Michelle under wraps, except for brief moments, the times I felt that something was wrong with me but I could never understand what it was. During those rare times, Michelle was able to grow a little bit at a time, but was never strong enough. (“Getting Personal,” 2007) Michelle’s blog illustrates how, by listening to an inner voice that insisted she act to preserve herself, she honored the idea of male/ female balance in a hostile environment. She states that she has arrived at a point where the material advantages she and her thenwife and son enjoy don’t "matter to [her] anymore.” “If I couldn’t express my inner identity,” she explains, “I realized that those things would never make me happy if they cost me the opportunity to be myself” (“Living an Honest Life,” 2007). Michelle’s post also reflects a sense among many transgendered people that they are on a journey towards expressing physically a truth that is already available to them emotionally or spiritually. Calpurnia Addams describes how her inner and outer selves were rectified through transitioning: From an early age, I experienced feelings that led me to believe I was female. Not just “liking boys” or other feelings relating to sexuality, but also feelings relating to gender—the feeling that I was female. Upon reaching adulthood, after every effort to fake male behavior in an effort to fit in and deny my true feelings [e.g., she served as a male combat specialist in the Navy], I corrected

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my hormonal imbalances and had surgery to correct my body so that it aligned more perfectly with my soul. Now, obviously, I am a whole person whose body matches her emotional, mental, and spiritual self. (“What Is ‘Transsexual,’ ” n.d.) Journeys of physical self-discovery and self-actualization are often reported on the Web and in blogs. And there seems to be a connection in the minds ofsome authors between embracing a “true” gender identity and expressing one’s feelings about that process. “To be able to present this side of me to the world,” writes Amber Smith of her blog, “has been liberating, to say the least” (“Bio,” 2006). Likewise, many of the Latinas studied by Schaeffer-Grabiel felt that their Internet communications with eligible marriage partners were “similar to the process of discovering one’s true self, unobstructed by the disciplining eye of their families and social norms of behavior” (904). “Through this research,” Schaeffer-Grabiel writes: I discovered that embedded within the use and understanding of technology were new notions of the body organized around pliable subjectivity, new race and class formations of mobility across space, and ideals of neoliberalism, development, and the march of social progress across borders. Through their use of the Internet to find romance and marriage, many women described this process as a form of self-help, of discovering their “true” self that transcended local meanings of their identity. Similarly, women from Cali turned to cosmetic surgery to emphasize their desire to become more “authentic” in the eyes of foreign courters to bring into harmony the outer signs of the body with the inner self. (894) In practice, achieving her desire to rectify inner and outer self is not necessarily dependent in the main either on the strength of a transwoman’s gender identity or on the extent or sincerity of her efforts to conform inner with outer person. “Although I have never been a large person by many means,” writes Amber Smith, “still I have at times wished for a more diminutive figure. It is tough coming to terms with duality and also realizing that certain things cannot be changed, and accepting the way I look on both sides of the gender line has been and continues to be a struggle” (“Bio,” 2006). And as Michelle writes: How passable a [transsexual] is can determine how far they are willing to transition. If a MTF is hopelessly masculine in

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appearance (think Arnold Schwarzenegger) and can’t afford the extensive surgeries to correct her appearance, transition may not be possible because that person could not survive the inevitable discrimination she would have to face. (“Basics of Transition,” 2007) As with the Latinas studied by Schaeffer-Grabiel, the self-fashioning of transwomen occurs under patriarchy, where gender is conceptualized strictly and dualistically and where transgressing “normal” identities and roles involves high stakes. Mary Louise Pratt: Transculturation Mary Louise Pratt’s Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation explores how “colonized subjects undertake to represent themselves in ways that engage with the colonizer’s own terms” (7) in order both to explain the world views and lifeways of the peripheral and to “document and denounce . . . exploitation and abuse” (2). Through transculturation, or efforts of the peripheral bricoleur, “subordinated or marginal groups select and invent from materials transmitted to them by a dominant or metropolitan culture” (6). An example of transcultural discourse, a rhetoric of extremely unequal reciprocity, is an approximately 1,200-page letter written in the early seventeenth century by a native Andean named Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala and addressed to King Philip III of Spain. The letter, which utilizes genres or features of both the native author and the foreign reader (containing, for instance, 400 drawings with captions in the European style and employing “Andean structures of spatial symbolism” [2]), represents an ultimately unsuccessful or impossible attempt on the part of an individual in the colonial periphery to explain himself and the situation of his people to a leader of the metropole. Similarly, an example of a blog that blends discourse from the center with discourse reflecting the transgender periphery and that seems directed at influencing viewers in the center to recognize transgendered lives, communities, and issues, is RuPaul’s. RuPaul is, obviously, a flamboyant transwoman—and a model that only one of the bloggers I studied seemed likely to be comfortable with. In fact, on sharing this chapter with a colleague who is knowledgeable about transgender issues, I discovered that she felt my decision to include RuPaul at all was problematic. Citing his choice of makeup and

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clothing, his wealth, and his publicity seeking as evidence, she stated that he was “everything a [typical] transperson isn’t.” Bearing in mind the crucial point that many transwomen prefer to be identified as “normal women” (a fact I explore at length throughout this chapter), I have chosen ultimately to include RuPaul because of the way his blog site illustrates Pratt’s notion of transculturation. RuPaul’s multipage movie star biography provides extensive information, including text and images, not surprisingly, of his glamorous feminine persona. A conventional bio in many ways, it departs from the genre by employing symbols and vocabulary likely to be new to viewers outside the transgender community, highlighting the slang, flamboyant rhetoric, and images of RuPaul not only as an attractive member of his assigned sex, but also as an attractive member of the other sex. In one of the images uploaded to the site, the star is the focal point of an advertisement incorporating conventional masculine imagery for men’s footwear. Dressed in a three-piece suit, a dapper RuPaul suggestively brandishes a cane, in a composition highlighting his long legs in a way usually reserved for female models, while alluding to his famous cheesecake poses. As Pratt explains, although marginalized individuals “cannot readily control what emanates from the dominant culture, they do determine to varying extents what they absorb into their own, and what they use it for” (6). This advertisement, in part through the incorporation of a raunchy visual metaphor, strongly suggests that the reader has misunderstood the author on a fundamental level. By incorporating on his blog an image blending commonplace advertising idioms with the idioms of transgendered performance, RuPaul complicates the viewer’s understanding of him and of the transgender community. The visual rhetoric of Selina Morse’s blog is also transcultural in Pratt’s sense because she adopts the props and scenery of upper middle class, domestic, “normal” heterosexual romance, placing herself in the midst of these symbols and, in so doing, calling into question their seeming naturalness and unquestionable coherence. Her blog contains, for instance, images that represent her outdoors, dressed in an evening gown of crushed black satin and silver crepe, gazing over her shoulders as she stands between two ornamental urns; dressed in a costume ball mermaid suit, wearing a purple wig, with her back to the viewer and gazing out over a fairly extensive lawn with large trees, bird feeders, and shrubbery; wearing a low-cut black gown and crouching by a nude garden statue, and placing her

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manicured hands on its head; wearing a gold lame´ dress slit to her thigh and leaning against a turquoise silk sofa in a living room decorated with heavy floral curtains, a Persian rug, and a Christmas tree; and standing in her kitchen, her hand resting on what seems to be a refrigerator, in front of a dishwasher and lead glass windows, the gold lame´ dress half removed, her lingerie revealed. In one sense, the consuming woman can be considered the ultimate passive recipient, the ultimate object. And not surprisingly a number of the bloggers I studied wrote that they were busy appropriating the household accessories and designer fashions that so many affluent straight women desire and consume. For instance, the transblogger Michelle describes traveling with her transsexual friend Kyla to the upscale department store Sepphora, where Kyla purchased “a moisturizing tint from Smashbox, then spent some time picking out a four-color eye shadow palette from Stila. And [Michelle] got a beige glitter pencil from Nars” (“Eye of the Beholder,” 2007). Transblogger Rupunzell, too, catalogues a materialist womanhood: As for my closet, it turns out I have a bent towards “Designer Clothes.” Some of the “Designers” that I like; Anne Kline, Clavin Kline, Jones New York, Ralph Lauren, Donna Karan & DKNY, Nicole Miller, Elie Tahari, Malo, D&G, and . . . Of the clothes from Europe, I like many designers from Italy, the French tend to be a bit over the top for my taste, but the French really know how to make Lingerie that I like. . . . Recently I discovered a JovovichHawk dress at Loemann’s that I had to have which got me curious as to who this designer might be, It turns out, they are quite the fashion success story. (“Cleaning out the Closet,” 2008) But unlike the simple or even stark tableaux and portraiture appearing on Kyla’s and Rapunzell’s and many of the other transblogs I studied, Morse’s self-representations are elaborately constructed. Digitally echoing Morse’s photographic tableaux, Kei Mars creates an animestyle avatar who lives among stylish settings created for the blog “Hypergeekette II” (“Thereddragnet_5.0,” 2008). The blogs of both women remind me strongly of the visual art of Cindy Sherman, whose typical approach has been to recreate iconic scenes from popular and high culture by inserting her own body into the space previously occupied by a woman in the thrall of the heterosexual male gaze. Sherman’s photographs reminiscent of marketing for upscale home decorations came to mind as I browsed the sites of Morse and Mars.

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These authors present themselves, no doubt with some irony, as happy homemakers—but with a kick: no matter how bourgeois, tasteful, or demur, their self-portraits cannot avoid transgressing. They also evoke Lefebre’s observation that “only if a revolution transforms this passivity into a festival will humanity escape the banality of the everyday” (cited in Poster 745). The artist-subject/consumer-object tension of Morse’s and Mars’s online self-portraits is shared by Internet representations of the enterprising Latinas whom Schaeffer studied. While taking steps toward greater economic freedom and moving beyond the bounds staked out by family and society, these Latinas also participated in a marketing culture where women’s bodies tend to be represented “within tropes of family, nature, and malleability, while men are often the unmarked consumer whose bodies matter less than their association with mobility, affluence, and benevolent power on the global stage” (896). The women’s Web sites represent them as: stuck in place and locked in nature, yet also as flexible or adaptable to new challenges when given the opportunity (presumably by U.S. men and capital). This is visually apparent in Web site images of young, modern women set against ancient landscapes such as pyramids. (Schaeffer-Grabiel, 896) In a twist that might well have surprised even Anzaldu´a, Web sites that broker marriages between Latinas and North American men articulate the term mestizaje to indicate Latin women’s supposedly special flexibility, fluidity, cultural heterogeneity, and receptiveness as opposed to U.S. men’s supposedly special inflexibility, stability, and cultural homogeneity, arguing the mestiza’s special womanliness and “natural affinity for traditional domestic life untainted by feminism and global capitalism in the United States” (Schaeffer-Grabiel, 897). Thus, we might add to the seeming fluidity of online and transgender identities, the seeming fluidity of that person gendered woman. CONCLUSION In her critique of Boys Don’t Cry, Judith Halberstam regrets that director Kimberly Peirce allows the hero’s transgender identity to slip into a lesbian identity and ultimately presents his murder as the “outcome of vicious homophobic rage” (298). It may be that Peirce assume a mainstream audience will feel more sympathy toward Brandon

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Teena, lesbian, than for Brandon Teena, transman, for presumably in the popular consciousness lesbians will be perceived as more “natural,” “human,” and “real” than transmen. The Halberstam piece points to a dubiousness about transgender identity that is by no means limited to Hollywood film makers and movie goers. Lawless writes of a recent Womyn’s independent film festival that screened The Gendercator, the story of a dystopic future in which Christian fundamentalists and ubiquitous transgendered people constitute an unholy alliance against cisgendered women. The film was eventually removed from the line-up of the festival (censored), but not before it had morphed into a cause ce´le`bre and given rise to heated online discussions between, among other parties, cisgendered feminists who were deeply suspicious of the behaviors and motivations of transwomen, and transwomen who felt they were being discriminated against and rejected by cisgendered women. Certain activists accused the festival’s organizers of “policing” gender at the festival and even of questioning transgendered and cisgendered women’s sexual and gender authenticity.3 Although Denise, author of the blog, “Musings on Life, Law, and Gender,” seems concerned that reflections on the tensions between feminist and lesbian, and transsexual groups may “just be rehashing . . . this decade-long debate” (“Rethinking Sexism: How Transwomen Challenge Feminism,” 2008), relations between the groups do remain uneasy. To mention one of the most widely discussed instances, after 15 years of protest, the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, “the world’s largest annual woman-only event” (Serano 2008), continues to restrict transgendered (although not transsexual) women from attending the festival. Why the exclusion? One reason that transgender identity may be suspect in activist circles is that transwomen may appear, as suggested by the sample of blogs studied in this essay, to be inclined to embrace gender norms that the American feminist movement, in particular, has thoroughly deconstructed. In this sense, transwomen may present a dilemma to the U.S. women’s movement that is not unlike the dilemma posed by many third wave feminists and many feminists who reside outside the West. As Blackwood reminds us, “the traditional/modern dichotomy of Western thought perpetuates the assumption that individuals who do not reflect ‘modern’ sexual identities are somehow marginalized, left behind, or in need of education to become fully liberated modern queers” (482). The “from-Stonewall-to-diffusion fantasy,” as she describes it, “situates the origin and foundation of the

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modern queer movement at a particular U.S. American moment in time” (Blackwood 2008, 482). In her transnational study, she illustrates how such assumptions are disseminated from the United States to Indonesia, eventually resulting, for instance, in a specific local instance in which a set of definitions for LGBTQ terminology imported from the Western center proves useless if not an impediment for a young tomboi (male-identified lesbian) who travels to an urban area for support and information. Massad thoroughly critiques the imperializing tendencies of American LGBTQ circles, providing a snapshot of a well-intentioned movement that is, in his view, nonetheless destructive in countless ways, on the ground abroad. But the imperializing tendencies of the U.S. civil rights movements, including the feminist movement, are not played out exclusively offshore. Activists and theorists advocating either a “postgender” culture or the abolition of traditional gender roles, goals that are cherished by many feminists and transgendered people, can nonetheless marginalize the gender identities of Westerners as well, as has been noted (see also MacDonald, 5). Like Freiya, who “just want[s] to fit in,” and like Michelle, who chooses her name to sound “as ordinary as someone like me can possible be” (“Frequently Asked Questions,” 2007), Linda, one of Davis’s interview subjects, hopes to embody what she described as “a normal gender identity”: [Her] decision to be an openly transsexual facilitator at the local gay and lesbian center is partly a result of wanting people to have a better understanding of what it means to be trans. She wants people to know that she is not the typical “Jerry Springer type person,”4 that she is “normal like anyone else.” She tries to present a more human alternative to the sensationalized talk show images of transsexuals as crazy or freakish. Rather than destabilize gender categorization, Linda is attempting to normalize transgendered lives. While not intentionally transgressive, these attempts to either normalize trans experiences or politicize gender oppression expand the boundaries of acceptable gender presentations. (122, 123) Davis is not specific regarding the character of Linda’s gender presentation: Does she present a stable nonnormative identity or a stable normative identity? We might well ask, what kind of woman is she? All gender presentations take place under and are influenced by the disciplining hand of patriarchy. Despite the claims made by some of the

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bloggers quoted in this essay, it seems to me impossible that any one of us, no matter how enlightened or empowered, might somehow move parallel to this universe in order to express with complete abandon our “true” gender identity. But of great importance to me is Schlichter’s observation that “[i]t is the critique of stable identity positions that creates spaces for a critical rereading of heterosexuality” (545). Transgender lives and experiences can help remind all women of the fact of their own constructed and ultimately unstable gender identities, surfacing the process all humans begin on their very entry into the world.

NOTES 1. It seems likely, however, that people in real life are not as prepared for some newly empowered transgender youths. Prepubescent and teenaged individuals who identify as transgendered may, through online communities, be gaining the confidence to discuss their sexuality openly IRL, but support online does not necessarily translate into support offline, and a number of bloggers I studied allude to what they perceive as increasing violence against young TG people. 2. In addition to being articulated metaphorically in relation to the development of gender identity, the root trans evokes literal travel, and indeed travel (e.g., from small town to big city) is a spatiality commonly associated with LGBTQ life. Blackwood, for instance, writes that male-identified lesbians (tombois), unlike female-identified lesbians or heterosexual women, are allowed to travel widely in Indonesia such that “much of the queer knowledge that comes to Padang [a significantly smaller place than Jakarta] is through tombois’ interactions with lesbi, gay, and waria [transvestites] in other cities” (490). Of course, liberating migrations to cities such as San Francisco and New York are part of the mythos of U.S. LGBTQ lives. 3. According to MacDonald, Janice Raymond’s Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male has been influential in parts of the lesbian and feminist communities in its characterization of MTF transsexuals as utilizing Trojan Horse style of infiltration and violation of the “safe space” of the women’s community. . . . [T]ransgendered men are, in turn, often treated as dupes of the patriarchy and as traitors to their sex, as women who might have been “sisters in the struggle,” but who instead joined the ranks of (presumable always anti-feminist) men” (3). 4. Michelle mentions in her blog that the primary reason for her beginning the blog is to “balance the distorted view of transsexuals caused by past portrayals in the media” such as “shows like Jerry Springer” (“Getting Personal,” 2007).

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REFERENCES Addams, Calpurnia. n.d. “Calpurnia.com” (accessed September 22, 2008). http://www.calpurnia.com. Amynews.com (accessed September 22, 2008). http://www.amynews.com. Anzaldu´ a, Gloria. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. Aunt Lute Books: San Francisco, 1987. Best of the Web Blogs. n.d. “Blog Directory: Society: Transgendered” (accessed September 22, 2008. http://blogs.botw.org/Society/Transgendered. Blackwood, Evelyn. “Transnational Discourses and Circuits of Queer Knowledge in Indonesia.” GLQ 14 (4) (2008): 481–507. Broad, Kendal L., and Kristin E. Joos. “Online Inquiry of Public Selves: Methodological Considerations.” Qualitative Inquiry 10 (6): 923–946. Cromwell, Jason. Transmen and FTMs: Identities, Bodies, Genders, and Sexualities. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1999. Davis, Erin Calhoun. “Situating ‘fluidity’: (Trans) gender identification and the regulation of gender diversity.” GLQ 15 (1) (2008): 97–130. Denise. “Musings on Life, Law, and Gender” (accessed September 22, 2008). http://musingsonlifelawand gender.typepad.com. Dinshaw Carolyn; Edelman, Lee; Ferguson, Roderick A.; Freccero, Carla; Freeman, Elizabeth; Halberstam, Judith; Jagose, Annamarie; Nealon, Christopher; and Tan Hoang, Nguyen. “Theorizing queer temporalities: A roundtable discussion.” GLQ 13 (2–3) (2007): 178–195. Downs, Charlotte. n.d. “Charlottes Web” (accessed September 22, 2008). http://slipperyw2003.blogspot.com. Finlon, Charles. “Internet Resources.” Journal of Gay & Lesbian Social Services 14 (1) (2002): 99–107. Freiya. n.d. “The other side of the world” (accessed September 22, 2008). http://other-side-of-the-world.blogspot.com. Greenblatt, Ellen. “Exploring LGBTQQ online resources.” Journal of Library Administration 33 (3–4) (2005): 85101. Gross, L. “Foreword.” In Queer Online: Media Technology and Sexuality, edited by K. O’Riordan and D. J. Phillips, vii–x. New York: Peter Lang, 2007. Halberstam, Judith. “The transgender gaze in Boys Don’t Cry.” Screen 42 (3) (2001): 294–298. Hale, Jacob. “Are lesbians women?” In The Transgender Reader, edited by Susan Stryker and Stephen White, 281–299. New York: Routledge, 2006. Helmond, Anne. “How many blogs are there? Is someone still counting?” The Blog Herald, February 11, 2008 (accessed March 11, 2009). http:// www.blogherald.com/2008/02/11/how-many-blogs-are-there-is-someone -still-counting/. Lawless, Jessica. “The Gendercator, or how I learned to stop worrying and love the blogosphere.” GLQ 15 (1) (2008): 131–151.

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MacDonald, Eleanor. “Critical identities: Rethinking feminism through transgender politics.” Atlantis 23 (1) (1998): 3–12. Mars, Kei. n.d. “Thedragnet_5.0.” (accessed September 22, 2008). http:// www.thedragnet.org/blog. Massad, Joseph. “Reorienting desire: The gay international and the Arab world.” Public Culture 14 (2): 361–385. Michelle. n.d. “Waterlily” (accessed September 22, 2008). http://michelletg .blogspot.com. Mitra, Rahul, and Radhika Gajjala. “Queer blogging in Indian digital diasporas: A dialogic encounter.” Journal of Communication Inquiry 32 (4) (2008): 400–423. Morse, Selina. n.d. “Selina’s universe” (accessed September 22, 2008). http:// t-girlselinamorse.blogspot.com. Omidvar, Iraj. 2008. “A study of photographs of Iran: Postcolonial inquiry into the limits of visual representation.” In Writing the visual: A practical guide for teachers of composition and communication, edited by Carol David and Anne R. Richards, 124–145. West Lafayette: Parlor Press. Poster, Mark. “Everyday (virtual) life.” New Literary History (33) (2002): 743–760. Pratt, Mary Louise. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. Routledge: London and New York. RuPaul. n.d. “Rupaul.com” (accessed September 22, 2008). http://www .rupaul.com. Rupunzell. n.d. “Nici’s journal” (accessed September 22, 2008). http:// rupunzell.blogspot.com. Schaeffer-Grabiel, Felicity. “Flexible technologies of subjectivity and mobility across the Americas.” American Quarterly 891–914. Schlichter, Annette. “Queer at last? Straight intellectuals and the desire for transgression.” GLQ 10 (4): 543–564. Sheena. n.d. “The lipstick diary” (accessed September 22, 2008). http:// thelipstickdiary.blogspot.com. Smith, Amber. n.d. “Amber waves” (accessed September 22, 2008). http:// amberkitten.blogspot.com. Sontag, Susan. On Photography. London: Penguin Books, 1979. Technorati Media. 2008. “State of the blogosphere/2008.” (accessed March 11, 2009). http://technorati.com/blogging/state-of-the-blogsphere/ Technorati Media. n.d. “Welcome to Technorati.” (accessed March 11, 2009) http://technoratimedia.com/about/ Windy Cissy. n.d. “Ask Windy Cissy.” (accessed September 22, 2008) http:// askwindy.blogspot.com Woodland, Randal. “ ‘I plan to be a 10’: Online literacy and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender students.” Computers and Composition 16: (1999) 73–87.

Chapter 3

La Macha, the Stealth Lesbian, and the Transvestite: Queer Representation and Female Friendship as Revisions of Traditional Gender Roles in Latina Popular Fiction R. J. Lambert

Cultural critic David T. Abalos identifies in The Latino Male: A Radical Redefinition the “need to create alternative stories to replace those from which we have emptied ourselves: patriarchy, romantic love, the disappointed male . . . and uncritical loyalty” (2002, 126). In three contemporary examples, Latina popular fiction provides narratives that transcend and revise traditional gender roles by representing transgressive queer identities and strong female friendships. With Latina characters authored by Latina writers, Latina popular fiction often provides an appropriate representation of what critic Gloria E. Anzaldu´ a describes as “the perverse, the queer, the troublesome, . . . those who cross over, pass over, or go through the confines of the ‘normal’” (1987, 25). Latina popular fiction also represents the phenomenon that sociologist Sasha Roseneil describes where “popular culture is proving rather better than sociology . . . stories which explore the burgeoning diversity of personal lives [in which] it is the sociability of a group of

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friends, rather than a conventional family, that provides the love, care, and support essential to everyday life” (2007). As exemplified by the pickup truck-driving Felice in Sandra Cisneros’s story “Woman Hollering Creek,” queer identities in contemporary Latina fiction empower heterosexual women to transcend the constraints of traditional gender roles. Here, la macha Felice enables Cleo´filas to escape her abusive husband Juan Pedro and find a voice of her own, returning to Mexico with her children and a newfound sense of agency and self-respect. A similar, although more intimate and sustained, friendship unfolds in Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez’s The Dirty Girls Social Club, where the “stealth lesbian” Elizabeth is unintentionally outed to the public and to her friends. Elizabeth’s support following her best friend Sara’s spousal abuse encourages Sara to thrive without her husband. Similarly, the male-to-female transvestite True-Dee in Nina Marie Martı´nez’s ¡Caramba! serves as a model and savior of traditional femininity, even though her anatomically male sex prevents her from fully acquiring the love of a man. True-Dee thus challenges the traditional correlation of female gender performance and physical sex. Similarly, the female co-protagonists, Natalie and Consuelo, solidify their mutual support outside of the traditional male-female relationship paradigm, providing validation and companionship as an alternative to the attention of men. REVISING GENDER ROLES: LA MACHA FELICE IN “WOMAN HOLLERING CREEK” Sandra Cisneros’s story “Woman Hollering Creek” is prototypical for the ways in which an ostensibly queer character can alter the traditional gender paradigm for a female character in contemporary Latina fiction. Cleo´filas, the female protagonist, grows up in a Mexican town “watch[ing] the latest telenovela episode and try[ing] to copy the way the women comb their hair, wear their makeup” (44). These shows, along with songs like “Tu´ o Nadie” (“You or Nobody”), instill in her the traditional desire for passion and “great love” for which one “does whatever one can, must do, at whatever the cost” (44). Given the influences of her local culture, she grows to believe that “to suffer for love is good. The pain all sweet somehow. In the end” (45). As a young woman, Cleo´filas leaves her father and family in Mexico for a relationship with a man, driven in a new pickup truck by her husband Juan Pedro to Seguin, Texas. Behind their new home in Seguin runs a creek called La Gritona, recalling a Llorona-type character who

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“hollered from anger or pain” (6). Her neighbors are the mysterious widower Soledad and the grieving Dolores, who lost both sons and her husband within the same year. Both women are “too busy remembering the men who had left through either choice or circumstance and would never come back” (47). As contemporary Llorona characters, they each embody the traditional female reliance on husbands and sons. In Seguin, Cleo´filas is shaken from her romantic notions of marriage when Juan Pedro begins to abuse her, although she is initially too shocked to defend herself or react in any way. Each abuse is followed by Juan Pedro weeping “tears of repentance and shame” like a child, positing Cleo´filas as both the mother or caretaker and as the abused wife (48). Indeed, Juan Pedro presents a mixture of traits which define an unstable sense of masculinity. In reality he “farts and belches and snores as well as laughs and kisses and holds her . . . cuts his fingernails in public, laughs loudly, curses like a man, and demands each course of dinner be served on a separate plate like at his mother’s” (49). However, by elevating her husband to an idealized masculinity, Cleo´filas continues to see Juan Pedro as “this man, this father, this rival, this keeper, this lord, this master, this husband till kingdom come” (48). Author and critic Rudolfo Anaya argues that machismo, “in large part, revolves around the acting out of sex roles,” and thus “the power to subjugate is also inherent in our relationships” (Anaya, 60). However, Anaya argues against the harmful and abusive machismo demonstrated by Juan Pedro, which negatively impacts the community and family and “hurts and demeans women” (60). Cleo´filas returns after giving birth to her son to discover her room rearranged, at which point she suspects that Juan Pedro has been unfaithful to her. Despairing, she feels ashamed at the thought of returning to her father’s home, but neither does she find sanctuary in Seguin: “Because the towns here are built so that you have to depend on husbands. Or you stay home. Or you drive. If you’re rich enough to own, allowed to drive, your own car” (50–51). Cleo´filas begins to understand the extent to which the local culture has made her dependent on her husband. In Seguin, driving a car represents a specific kind of freedom she feels is inaccessible to her, and this freedom is understood as one of the only means of returning to her family in Mexico. Feeling trapped with Juan Pedro in Seguin, Cleo´ filas becomes increasingly desperate in her violent marriage. As an alternative to the improbable option of leaving town, Cleo´filas considers turning to the

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neighbor women or to the creek behind the house, which is “a goodsize alive thing, a thing with a voice all its own” following the springtime rains. She begins to project her sadness to the nearby creek as well—she hears “its high, silver voice” and wonders if it is “La Llorona, the weeping woman” (51). In her desperation, she determines that “La Llorona [is] calling to her,” and “wonders if something as quiet as this drives a woman to the darkness under the trees” (51). Cleo´filas feels increasingly marginalized and neglected, and identifies with stories of other women who have been found dead by the interstate after having been “pushed from a moving car” (52). She continues to relate her life to telenovelas, although she views her life as much more sad and without a happy ending. Despite the traditional narratives she has internalized, Cleo´ filas ultimately must confront the realities of her health during her second pregnancy. Following continued abuse by Juan Pedro, Cleo´filas is advised to visit the doctor to ensure that her pregnancy is still healthy. A woman at the clinic contacts a friend named Felice to arrange transportation for Cleo´filas to the San Antonio Greyhound station, from which she can bus home to Mexico and away from Juan Pedro. Felice agrees to drive Cleo´filas to the bus station and, as a female driver, she presents a new symbol of female freedom and autonomy. Importantly, she drives a pickup truck, which Cleo´filas previously associated with Juan Pedro and the first long drive that brought Cleo´filas to Seguin. The traditionally masculine characteristics implied by driving a pickup truck surface during their ride together: Felice “open[s] her mouth and let[s] out a yell as loud as any mariachi,” literally asserting her own voice as they drive over a creek. Felice thus draws attention to herself in a non-traditional way, fittingly remarking that “nothing here is named after a woman[.] Unless she’s the Virgen” (55). Cleo´filas is understandably impressed by Felice, who drives her own pickup truck because she doesn’t have a husband to rely on: “She herself had chosen it. She herself was paying for it” (55). As a nontraditional, arguably macha female character, Felice here provides the metaphorical and literal vehicle to free Cleo´filas from her abusive marriage and reunite her with her family in Mexico. She represents Rudolpho Anaya’s notion that the Llorona myth offers great potential in “describing the new macho” as women “are taking a greater role in defining male/female relationships” and thereby redefining what it is to be male or female (Anaya, 71). Anaya calls for new interpretations of the Llorona myth that confer new meanings, rather than perpetuating the same gender accusations. He argues that

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“the new Lloronas can be liberating mothers creating new concepts and behaviors by which to live” (71). Cleo´filas, as empowered by la macha Felice, can be understood as a manifestation of this liberating new female archetype for which Anaya has argued. Cleo´filas later tells her father and brothers about Felice, who “started yelling like a crazy” in a way that was somehow neither from “pain or rage” (56). Cleo´filas internalizes the agency of Felice to the extent that laughter “was gurgling out of her own throat, a long ribbon of laughter, like water” (56). Here, the painful feelings she was subjected to by Juan Pedro have been subverted by the nontraditional female role of Felice. As a mother who has escaped her abusive husband with the help of these women, Cleo´filas can raise her children with sensitivity to the proper treatment of women, and also with the strength and self-sufficiency that Felice inspired in her. This new narrative might be understood as a response to David T. Abalos’s notion of “alternatives to the competing stories of the womanizer and of patriarchy” (Abalos, 127). In the same way that Cleo´filas had previously lived her life according the stories of telenovelas and even the book which Juan Pedro threw and hit her with, she can now raise her children with alternative stories of the happy, self-sufficient mother empowered by la macha Felice, who drove them to safety in her truck. FRIENDSHIP BEYOND STEREOTYPE: ELIZABETH THE STEALTH LESBIAN IN THE DIRTY GIRLS SOCIAL CLUB Central to the narratives of six Latinas in Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez’s The Dirty Girls Social Club is how several of the women react to their friend Elizabeth Cruz’s accidental outing as a lesbian. The confused reactions surrounding Elizabeth’s lesbian sexuality are largely because her queer identity is understood to contradict her physical beauty and traditional femininity. Early in the book, it is made clear that queer sexuality is visually and behaviorally marked, as in the case of co-protagonist Rebecca’s “swishy” beauty editor, Erik Flores, who “might as well be a woman” for how he dresses and acts (50). Erik participates to some degree in essentializing himself as the stereotypically sex-obsessed gay man during an editorial meeting in which shows interest in a joke about pictures of “Men in g-strings” (52). As he raises his hand to make an earnest suggestion of his own, Rebecca can barely “suppress a giggle” when she notices “his nails are buffed shiny” (53). Despite being “a wonderful editor, very reliable, [who is] always on

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time with deadlines,” Rebecca is annoyed that “he’s a diva,” and finds his queer sexuality laughable (53). As a beautiful local television personality, then, Elizabeth’s lesbian sexuality thus challenges this degrading stereotypical view of homosexuals. Whereas Erik is treated as laughable in the ways he attempts to perform femininity, “fold[ing] his hands in a prissy way in front of him and cock[ing] his head to the side with a girlish smile,” Elizabeth remains beautiful and feminine despite her queer sexuality (53). Elizabeth nonetheless anticipates a possible negative reaction from her friends, particularly her best friend Sara. She is never able to convey her sexuality because “The risk would be too huge, losing her. Facing her polite rejection. I couldn’t bear it. Coward in my own skin” (61–62). Elizabeth wants to disclose her lesbian sexuality to her friends, to expose “how differently” her heart beats, but she is sure that they will judge her based on stereotypes (64). Instead of acknowledging the societal pressures acting against queer women, Elizabeth blames herself for her cowardice in failing to be truthful about her sexuality. She understandably fears that her best friend Sara “does not seem to like gay people, and she has told all of us this fact once or twice—a hundred times that I can remember she has told jokes at the expense of people like me” (66). Critic Miche`le Aina Barale argues that “it is indeed the common case that femininity can obscure dykehood and that the clarity of public perceptions of lesbian visibility gets severely myopic if all the queers are wearing dresses” (99). Thus, it becomes difficult not only for the public and her friends to accept Elizabeth as lesbian when she seems otherwise to fit into the traditional gender role defined by beauty and femininity, but it also becomes difficult for Elizabeth to identify with other queer characters—particularly those like Erik, who perform their queer identity for everyone to see. As a “stealth lesbian,” Elizabeth struggles with the larger problem of asserting an identity and feelings that are not expected by her coworkers and friends. This is reflected eloquently in her reflection on bilingualism: “sometimes I still have trouble finding the right words to say what I mean. I mean, I have trouble finding them in English and in Spanish. After ten years of bilingual life, I don’t know where all my words have gone” (63). Elizabeth thus lives not only in the two worlds of English and Spanish, but also concurrently in different relationships with women. She is a romantic partner to lesbian poet Selwyn Womyngold, friend to the heterosexual co-protagonists, and coworker with the newswoman at work with “makeup” and a

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“perky smile” (65). Tellingly, she seems to sacrifice part of each identity, losing words from both languages by participating in both. Ultimately, Elizabeth feels entirely separate from the traditional image of lesbians held by her and others: “though I knew I felt something particular and pink for girls and not for boys, I did not know loving women was an option until I got to college and learned the word for it. Lesbian. Such a clumsy, ugly word, buzzy and not at all like the way it feels to be one” (65). While she takes issue with the particular word, more of her discomfort seems to derive from the internalization of a negative stereotype of lesbian sexuality that conflicts with her positive and loving feelings. In reflection, she analyzes the sexual roles of men and women in her native Colombia, where she lived until she was 17. There, she describes that “almost every man has had sex with another man at least once,” and that for the most part this does not determine how they are viewed (65–66). Women, however, are constrained by the traditional roles of domestic mother, virgin, or whore: “Sexual women are bad in Colombia”—“Women are mothers . . . and cooks” (66). Thus, part of the challenge to traditional femininity by lesbian women is the predication of active female sexuality without men. Furthermore, Gloria Anzaldu´a posits that a lesbian like Elizabeth is particularly rebellious precisely because of her ethnicity: “For the lesbian of color, the ultimate rebellion she can make against her native culture is through her sexual behavior. She goes against two moral prohibitions: sexuality and homosexuality” (1987, 41). Elizabeth’s lesbian sexuality thus simultaneously emphasizes her sexual agency and independence from men, rebelling against prescribed female gender roles. Her sexual agency may also influence some of Elizabeth’s own homophobia as she attempts to avoid rejection: “some of us conform to the values of the culture, push the unacceptable parts into the shadows. Which leaves only one fear—that we will be found out and that the Shadow-Beast will break out of its cage” (42). As the faithful wife of an abusive husband, Elizabeth’s best friend Sara represents a polar antithetical to gender rebellion. Sara is the mother of twin sons and is pregnant with what she hopes and believes to be a long-awaited daughter, although she hides her pregnancy from her husband, Roberto, to surprise him with the news at the right time. Roberto represents the most negative stereotype of machismo, believing also in the virgin/whore dichotomy: “He thinks women come in two flavors: pure and dirty. Pure women are sexless and you marry them and pump them full of babies and they are not supposed to like sex. Dirty girls love sex and you seek them out for pleasure” (72).

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Roberto is thus constrictive in his view of femininity in that a good, pure wife cannot simultaneously be a sexual creature. Interestingly, Sara at first believed Roberto’s views until Elizabeth convinces her to take feminist theory classes in college, thereby providing a different perspective on gender roles. Nonetheless, Sara remains admittedly attracted to aspects of machismo she believes reflect “a real man, a tough guy” (80). Despite her carefully guarded sexuality, Elizabeth is accidentally outed very publicly in the morning newspaper. When her friend Sara first reads that Elizabeth is a lesbian, she refuses to believe it is true, but feels, “If she is a lesbian, if it’s true, then I will feel as betrayed as I would if I’d found Roberto cheating on me. Or worse. Yes, worse” (84). However, she quickly moves past her initial reaction and instead questions her own homophobic feelings, remembering “all the times I’ve said homophobic things to Elizabeth, all the times I’ve pointed out gay or lesbian couples for her at the movies or mall and laughed” (84). Roberto’s reaction to the revelation is less accepting. He categorically judges her as “disgusting,” while also positioning her lesbian sexuality in terms of traditional masculinity—as the result of “never [meeting] the right man” (84). In the process, he further marginalizes her because of her skin color, telling Sara, “I don’t like Black women” (86), conflicting with the women’s frequent observation that Roberto was previously attracted to Elizabeth. Roberto finally accuses Elizabeth of being attracted to Sara and “staring at you like a man,” and forbids his wife to have contact with the “pervert” (87). Public reactions to Elizabeth’s accidental outing closely approximate Roberto’s violent negativity. A male neighbor calls to her in her car: “What a waste. Look at ya. Good-lookin’ nigger, too. What you need is a good man to set you straight” (175). This outburst not only reduces her sexuality to the object of a man’s lust, but also emphasizes her dark skin as a means for degradation. Similarly, an AM radio talk show host asks, “What is it about these Spics, Jack? Are all the good-looking ones gay?” (176). His question not only foregrounds Elizabeth’s Latina identity, it emphasizes the deviance of her queer sexuality as wasteful because men find her attractive. These reactions reflect the objectification of women which Rudolpho Anaya argues leads to “a hierarchy of needs and behavior” that defines the male role in a power relation over women (61). He posits that “the truer essence of male and female doesn’t need this hierarchy,” and that “macho needs partners, not objects” (60). Anaya’s proposed subjective partnering as a response to and revision of expressions of negative machismo applies equally to

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Anglo men, who similarly demean and sexualize Elizabeth after her queer sexuality is revealed. The media’s response to Elizabeth’s outing provides a telling example of the way in which friends and society as a whole must respond to a queer identity that challenges traditional gender and sexual roles. Literary critic Carolyn Dever describes how queer “dykes” are an aptly named force which figuratively impede or redirect a current or flow, helping to shape it (Dever, 19). As a word and as a queer identity, it “presupposes the complication, conflation, and even the collapse of binary categories” (20). This was the case of Felice intervening to free Cleo´filas from her abusive marriage in “Woman Hollering Creek,” and it is equally true in The Dirty Girls Social Club when Elizabeth’s lesbian sexuality forces the entire city, including Elizabeth’s friends, to confront their homophobia and reconsider certain presumptions held about lesbian women: that they are ugly, “masculine,” and manhating (21). Elizabeth is particularly interesting as a queer character in that she simultaneously challenges the stereotype of beautiful women being straight as well as that of lesbians being masculine or butch. Still, there are signs that Elizabeth is not fully comfortable with her own sexuality. Having internalized the negative associations of queerness, she notices a female “guard, a fat, masculine woman,” who gives her a sympathetic look at work and tries to offer emotional support (179). Similar to the “swishy” Erik Flores, this ostensibly lesbian guard is posited as the stereotypical “butch” lesbian, which contrasts with Elizabeth’s beautiful and feminine appearance. This is a notion that Sara shares, later expressing disbelief: “I just can’t believe it’s true, not you. I mean, I always thought lesbians were ugly. You’re so feminine. So pretty” (187). In her attempts to be accepted as a lesbian after being accidentally outed, Elizabeth eschews any explicit display of queerness and continues to see such people as different than herself. Like Rebecca’s annoyance with Erik’s overt homosexuality, what Elizabeth “hates the most is the two drag queens who have decided to show up in full regalia, looking like the biggest, hairiest, ugliest women on earth; this does nothing to help my cause” (292). She identifies their overt display of sexuality as ugly, failing to see the ways in which she is homophobic towards others. Much of this is reducible to her deep lack of selfacceptance: “I didn’t want to be a lesbian, I wanted to be straight. I fought it all the time. I went home and cried” (263). Ultimately, Sara accepts Elizabeth’s queer identity without judgment, assuring her, “I don’t care who you sleep with,” and telling her to “worry about your happiness” (183, 186). Sara, however, continues

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mostly to conceive of her female identity in relation to the attention of men. Continuing to emphasize Elizabeth’s beauty, she thinks: “How is it possible? If I were that pretty I’d want every man in the world wanting me” (188). Thus, Sara envisions feminine beauty as a means for attracting the attention of men to validate her worth. Sara’s close friendship with Elizabeth leads her to act of her own will against Roberto’s demand that she not see Elizabeth. This angers the abusive Roberto, who fabricates a violently physical sexual encounter with Elizabeth as a means of asserting his own masculine prowess— telling Sara that “she’s a whore just like you” (197). Having minimized her as the dirty whore rather than the pure wife as a way of justification, he proceeds to attack Sara to the point of threatening her life, resulting in the miscarriage that effectively ends her dream of having a daughter. During this attack, which results indirectly from supporting her friend Elizabeth, Sara finally begins to recognize that Roberto “is a monster” for abusing her (196). Sara learns in the hospital that her son Jonah dialed 911 after Roberto’s attack on her. That her children knew Sara was being harmed more than she, herself, was willing to admit, suggests their ability to transcend Roberto’s constricting, abusive masculine role as they mature. Sara ultimately overcomes some of her reliance on men’s attention by replacing it with the attention of her friends, especially her best friend Elizabeth. In her recovery from Roberto’s abuse and the resulting miscarriage, she looks to Elizabeth to provide the validation she normally sought from her husband. She jokes with Elizabeth that she is hurt “that you were never even remotely attracted to me,” and feels redeemed when Elizabeth assures her there were times she found her attractive (262). Sara pushes further and asks for validation despite her current state: “Would you, right now, do me? With all the bruises, and with that stupid social worker watching” (264). Sara thus seeks the deep acceptance and validation that she never received from her husband, but Elizabeth jokingly responds, “No. You look like shit right now, Sara. And I prefer my women butch. There’s nothing butch about getting the crap beat out of you by a man” (264). Their lighthearted conversation, while subversive in terms of transcending their prescribed gender roles, is not without problems, such as the invocation of “butchness.” Author and critic Ana Castillo notes that “a lover of women had no role models in the past” and, therefore, lesbian women are “forced to emulate those roles played out through heterosexist relations, which are antithetical to human evolution” (Castillo, 132). However, Elizabeth ultimately urges Sara to be more “butch,”

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subversively ascribing the positive attributes of strength and selfrespect to a previously negative term, thus giving Sara the strength to take care of herself instead of sacrificing herself for men. These friends end the evening by holding each other in a way that is comforting but “no[t] remotely sexual” (Martı´nez, 264). The narratives of Elizabeth and Sara effectively transcend the traditional gender roles prescribed by society for their particular circumstances, exemplifying the supportive friendships that Sasha Roseneil describes. Living without a man for the first time, Sara exudes “a genuine joy” and finds great success with her interior design talents (Martinez, 306). The support of Elizabeth and the other friends helps Sara to become successful at starting her own business and developing a television show for a Spanish-language television network. The show unites Elizabeth and Sara professionally, as Elizabeth “devote [s] herself full-time to producing the show,” thus continuing to support her friend (306). As was the case with Cleo´filas, Sara now has the opportunity to raise her sons to accept non-traditional female roles, including Elizabeth’s queer sexuality. This forges the next generation of men in which Elizabeth’s queer identity necessarily has an accepted place. Here, as in “Woman Hollering Creek,” a mother’s escape from her abusive marriage becomes an opportunity not to “just say no to the inherited stories of the past with nothing to put in their place” (Abalaos, 126), but instead forges new narratives of female agency and worth. One such story that Abalos proposes is “that of the faithful partner,” which in the case of Sara’s children could either be influenced by the presence of Elizabeth as a faithful and supportive friend, or by the lesbian relationship between Elizabeth and her partner, Selwyn (155). As nurturing and unabusive, Elizabeth’s relationship here serves as a more positive example of a romantic partnership than Roberto and Sara’s abusive marriage would have. FEMALE PERFORMANCE AND FRIENDSHIP: TRUE-DEE, NATALIE, AND CONSUELO IN ¡CARAMBA! In Nina Marie Martı´nez’s 2004 novel ¡Caramba!, the male-to-female transvestite True-Dee fully embodies Gloria Anzaldu´a’s idea of “the prohibited and forbidden” person who inhabits borderlands (25). Anzaldu´a’s notion of a border as “a vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary” (25) aptly describes True-Dee’s marginalized transvestite identity. Although

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True-Dee is unmistakably attracted to men, her constructed performance of femininity transcends her anatomically male sex. In addition, her convincing performance of traditional femininity and her desire for a man transgress the prescriptive gender dichotomy of traditional heteronormative relationships. True-Dee truly exists as what Anzaldu´a calls “the perverse, the queer, the troublesome, . . . those who cross over, pass over, or go through the confines of the ‘normal’” (25). True-Dee thus inspires the articulation of alternatives to traditional heteronormative sexuality and gender performance. True-Dee first appears inside her beauty salon, True-Dee’s Tresses, when Natalie arrives for her scheduled hair appointment. As Natalie arrives, “True-Dee high-heel[s] her way across the black and white checkerboard floor and out to the lobby,” followed by her poodle, whose hair she has just colored platinum blonde (44). Everything in this introductory scene, down to her “French-manicured fingernails,” signals what is emphasized throughout the novel: that despite her anatomically male sex, True-Dee is a model for beauty and traditional female gender performance (45). As True-Dee convinces Natalie to try “chin-length hair all done up in pincurls,” her gender identity is foregrounded in relation to Natalie and Conseulo: “Even though, technically, True-Dee had been born a man, when it came to personal appearance, to the exciting world of fashion, Natalie trusted True-Dee’s opinion second only to Consuelo’s” (45). Given Natalie and Consuelo’s close friendship, the inclusion of True-Dee as a trusted authority about femininity speaks to their high esteem for True-Dee. True-Dee often serves as a beacon of femininity, not only in her outward expression of gender, but also in her explicit effort to perpetuate its performance by other women—an effort known by local women as “The Cause.” In Natalie’s first visit to have her hair done, True-Dee assesses Natalie’s outward expression of femininity, ultimately approving of her accessories, saying: “That’s what I like to see. Two things that define a lady, a decent handbag and quality shoes” (45). While True-Dee believes these accessories, as an outward expression of femininity, define gender, it is important here that she, as someone who performs traditional femininity so convincingly, both presents herself and is accepted by other women as an authority on traditional femininity. This is quite subversive, given that True-Dee’s performance of femininity necessarily challenges traditional gender roles and definitions of femininity. In “Sexuality versus Gender,” literary critic Colleen

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Lamos describes how homosexual love can be “dispersed or generalized rather than solidified as the defining essence of any particular individual” (91). In the same way, True-Dee’s attempts to be defined by her performance of the female gender role actually call into question the basic assumption that she, or anyone, can be defined by an essential gender. True-Dee’s efforts to “save” femininity are explicitly explored when she holds one of her annual Tupperware parties, attended by both women and transvestites from town. Importantly, True-Dee creates the Tupperware party primarily as a site for the defense of her traditional conception of female gender performance. Her active defense of femininity—“The Cause”—is “True-Dee’s crusade to save the female species from what she considered a conspiracy of the highest order designed to deprive women of their most volatile asset: their femininity” (98). She believes this conspiracy to be “enacted by none other than the leaders of the feminist movement,” likely because of the ways in which the traditional female role she emulates has been challenged by feminism (98). Along these lines, critic Cecilia Rosales, in discussing the chueco— Mexican slang for a transvestite passing as a woman—notes that “the most common concern for many feminists is that transvestites reinscribe the norms of patriarchal domination, while at the same time they parody ‘women’” (43). However, she argues against this supposed affront to feminism: “Though cross-dressers rework the specificities of gender as a social construct to ‘make up,’ it is also true that in so doing they make manifest the absurdity of such constructions” (43). Thus, the physical fact of True-Dee’s male anatomy contrasts with and therefore emphasizes her outward performance of femininity, freeing gender performance from traditional notions of femininity as tied to anatomical sex. Nonetheless, Tupperware is an apt party theme with which to confront feminism, given how it invokes domesticity as an aspect of traditional femininity, drawing specifically on notions of women working in the kitchen and women’s traditional place in the home. Fittingly, at one point in the novel, True-Dee explicitly mentions that she considers herself “a fine cook” (187). Tupperware here accentuates True-Dee’s performance of femininity in a different way than her feminine makeup and clothes do; namely, it reflects the performance of femininity through domesticity rather than expressing it through appearance. One elusive aspect of femininity for True-Dee is the heteronormative romantic relationship with a man. Just as True-Dee is far more attentive

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to the performance and expression of femininity than Natalie and Consuelo, she is also more concerned with finding a man to love. This is perfectly illustrated at the Tupperware party, which features Leo, described as “a large muscular young man . . . dressed only in a pair of bikini shorts” (99). The women and transvestites can “hardly contain themselves” in Leo’s presence. This positioning of both the women and transvestites in relation to an attractive man effectively unifies them as “women” defined by their desire for a man, thus highlighting the heteronormative attributes of True-Dee’s conception of femininity (99). In other aspects of her life, True-Dee similarly strives for the traditional romantic relationship with a man that has forever eluded her full attainment outside of isolated sexual experiences. One of the ways in which True-Dee most successfully approximates a heteronormative performance of male-female attraction is by performing in the show transvestis at El Aguantador night club. The show creates a space in which the transvestites are embraced not only by women in the audience, but also, surprisingly, by heterosexual men who often leave their wives or girlfriends at home. Regarding the interaction of men with the transvestites at the show, Natalie and Consuelo conclude: “the only way a woman could be that sexy, i.e., as sexy as the transvestites, and not be called a slut or worse, was either by having her own telenovela, or by being a man” (70). True-Dee uniquely achieves both feats by being anatomically male and also by portraying popular telenovela actress and singer Thalı´a in the show. During one performance, True-Dee seeks out “a middle-aged man in a silky, yellow western-tailored shirt,” drinks his beer, then “spill[s] some down into the valley of her cleavage” which he then drinks off of her body (71). That these heterosexual men embrace her performed femininity to this extent at the show transvestis, while she is yet unable to forge a more authentic romantic relationship with men, becomes understandably problematic for True-Dee. Cultural critic Stephen Maddison discusses a phenomenon that may relate to how and why True-Dee is accepted and even fetishized in the show transvestis— namely, the way in which such shows “reinscribe authoritative structures within camp rhetoric, flouting the category of normality by reversing its terms and celebrating perversity” (Maddison, 66). While the performances are not necessarily perverse in a negative sense, their performance of femininity in general, and of specific celebrities like Thalı´a in particular, indeed flouts traditional conceptions and relations of gender roles. Maddison argues that framing “desire as eroticism and the concomitant idea of perversity” essentializes the overtly sexual

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aspects of gender performance, which makes addressing the real “attraction women and female identification hold for gay men” more difficult (67). Although True-Dee clearly does not identify herself as a gay male, her location outside of traditional gender roles and her participation in the show tranvestis can be understood to essentialize the sexual aspects of gender as Maddison describes. While Cecilia Rosales claims that passing as a woman in bed “represents the ultimate chueco [transvestite] achievement” (Rosales, 26), the goal of True-Dee’s feminine gender performance is ultimately to establish a deeper romantic relationship with a man, which has mostly been impossible given her anatomically male sex. As an example, True-Dee didn’t attend high school because no one would have asked her to the prom; as an adult, she laments, “I have been completely intimate with men only a few times,” and thus she has never had an intimate emotional relationship with a man (Martı´nez, 187). True-Dee clearly prizes a man’s love as the primary aspiration in a woman’s—and therefore in her own—life, in large part because it validates and completes her heteronormative relationship-centered conception of female identity, as also described by Roseneil. Toward the salvation of femininity, True-Dee also uses the Tupperware party as a venue for announcing her planned gender “transformation” since “nothing good ever happens in limbo” (102). It is telling that True-Dee considers a “costly and painful” sex-change operation in order to attain a man’s love and companionship (189). Thus, the construction of her feminine identity from the erasure of her male anatomy is understood as mutually necessitated by True-Dee. This view likely follows from actively imposed external forces—she decides to undergo the operation hoping to attain a relationship within the existing heteronormative gender dichotomies that most often marginalize her and dissuade men from pursuing her romantically beyond the superficial attention she receives at the show transvestis. Whereas True-Dee clearly views her physical transformation as a necessary predicate to full femininity and attaining a man’s love, a scene in which Natalie, Consuelo, and True-Dee hold a se´ance serves as an alternative to this view, instead stressing the importance and usefulness of True-Dee’s gender duality. When Natalie and Consuelo cancel an appointment at True-Dee’s Tresses, True-Dee decides to accompany the women to meet with Maestro Salome´ to communicate with Consuelo’s deceased father, the traditionally masculine Don Pancho. In order to channel Don Pancho during the se´ance, the Maestro requires a man to act as the spiritual medium. Despite the outward femininity of a “denim

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skirt she prized for its versatility and a striped red and white scoop neck T-shirt,” True-Dee volunteers as the male medium to channel Don Pancho (90). True-Dee’s male presence at the se´ ance importantly allows Consuelo to communicate with her father about his death and how Natalie can free him from purgatory. This also creates an improbable situation wherein the spirit of Don Pancho becomes physically embodied within the feminized male body of True-Dee. When the True-Deeembodied Don Pancho realizes he is wearing a skirt, he screams—a reaction seemingly more fitted to True-Dee than to a traditionally masculine man like Don Pancho. Similarly, when he “gesture[s] to freshen his nonexistent sombrero”—a typically masculine accessory—he has “to settle for running his hands through the long black hair that had somehow sprouted from his head” (92). Importantly, in order for Don Pancho to communicate with Natalie and Consuelo and escape from purgatory, he must first inhabit True-Dee’s outwardly feminized body. In addition to mediating the male spirit of Don Pancho, True-Dee’s physically male sex here serves as an integral part of who she is, obtaining value and utility for her close friends Natalie and Consuelo. This role validates True-Dee’s male body as something inherently valuable which should not be sacrificed for the attainment of traditional femininity, and which can instead coexist with her female gender performance. Literary critic Beatriz Cortez analyzes a similar “game of transformation” in Guillermo Reyes’s Deporting the Divas. Her description applies equally when applied to this scene: True-Dee “extends . . . beyond the limits of gender [in] a sort of drag performance within the performance that allows for the denaturalization of all categories” (Cortez, 132). Here, the exceedingly feminine True-Dee becomes the body through which the masculine Don Pancho communicates. The layers of identity transformation—from True-Dee’s male anatomy, to her performed femininity, and further still to Don Pancho’s masculine voice and mannerisms embodying True-Dee’s feminized body—subvert the “easy notions of binary, putting into question the categories of ‘female’ and ‘male’” (Garber qtd. by Cortez, 132). True-Dee thus represents a “hybrid identity through which an individual can be part of different spaces at the same time, even spaces that are contradictory or incompatible among themselves” (133). True-Dee’s position “in limbo,” as outside of the traditional gender dichotomy of male and female—or, rather, her simultaneous identity as simultaneously male and female—connects her to Natalie and

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Consuelo while also setting her apart. She is connected to the co-protagonists in her emphasis on femininity and its role in Natalie and Consuelo’s lives as women, as well as in the ways that they partake in certain performances of femininity—such as having their hair styled by True-Dee. However, she remains separate from them in what might be called her overemphasis on the performance of femininity and the desire for male companionship, which they do not share. Indeed, as with the empowering female friendships in “Woman Hollering Creek” and The Dirty Girls Social Club, Natalie and Consuelo also challenge traditional gender roles because their close and supportive friendship exists mostly outside the realm of traditional malefemale gender relationships. This friendship presents an interesting alternative to the heteronormative relationship-centered femininity sought by True-Dee. Natalie and Consuelo rely primarily on each other as friends, thereby replacing the traditional articulation of gender identity in relation to men. The ability of both women to deny certain aspects of traditional female gender performance recalls True-Dee’s ability to construct a female gender identity despite her physical maleness. Just as Don Pancho requires the use of True-Dee’s outwardly feminized male body to communicate from purgatory, he ultimately depends upon Natalie traveling to Mexico to free his soul. Her solo trip to Mexico presents a situation in which she must affirm her close friendship with Consuelo, who stays behind. When Natalie arrives in Mexico, she is regarded by the locals as La Catrina: as an ideal wife by young men, and as a fashionable woman by the other ladies. The women of the town borrow one of her dresses and “reduc[e] it to a simple mathematical equation” so that they can duplicate it in their own proportions; all are soon wearing it with high heels (Martı´nez, 139). Natalie’s femininity, influenced in part by True-Dee, creates a fascinating feminine ideal during her stay in Mexico. Natalie falls asleep after freeing her father’s soul and later awakens wearing a different outfit, described as “a long, light blue brocade evening gown with bustles and trains, roses and rosettes, but most annoyingly, a hoop skirt” with a corset underneath, clear plastic pumps, and rhinestone earrings (176). Having been transformed by Don Pancho into his idea of a traditionally feminine princess, Natalie is literally and metaphorically constrained by “all of that rigid and unyielding clothing” (176). However, Natalie’s close friendship with Consuelo here provides an empowering alternative to traditional relationships with men,

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including the relationship with her father: Natalie moves herself and runs down the street for a phone call with Consuelo. Notably, Consuelo—instead of a prince or male savior—is able to overcome the constrictive clothing and Don Pancho’s rigid traditions to connect with Natalie. In addition, Consuelo views a male suitor from the town as a potential threat to their close friendship, telling Natalie over the phone: “Last thing I need is for you to go fallin for some vato over there and the next thing I know I never see you again” (179). Fittingly, after they finish speaking by phone, Natalie comes upon two groups of children segregated by gender along the street and decides to deconstruct her rigid dress into toys for the children. Natalie asks the girls to assist in “unlacing, unhooking, untying, unbuttoning, and unsnapping, until she was down to her corset and bloomers” (179). The boys cross the street to join them, so that young boys and girls unite in the literal undoing of Don Pancho’s fairytale princess myth, leaving Natalie freed from the constrictive material accessories of traditional femininity. Although Natalie still entertains a date with a 19-year-old suitor named Amador while in Mexico, she quickly reflects on relationships, yearning for “something more substantial than a tiptoe across his living room floor, down the hall, and into his bedroom. She craved somebody who understood and appreciated all she entailed—her quirks, wisdoms, and misgivings” (196). In contrast with the seemingly empty and unfulfilling attention of Amador, Natalie realizes that “at no point during her life had the Universe ever indicated that this person even existed, except, of course, when It introduced her to Consuelo” (197). Consuelo is thus understood as Natalie’s full partner, who appreciates and fulfills her in ways that a romantic relationship with Amador cannot. Natalie’s epiphany might also inform True-Dee’s yearning for relationships with men—perhaps, like Natalie and Consuelo, True-Dee could rely on support from other women rather than defining her feminine identity largely in relation to men. The mutually supportive friendship of Natalie and Consuelo thus serves as an alternative to the traditional relationship that True-Dee originally sought. Their narrative thus fulfills David T. Abalos’s call for alternative stories, like “that of the faithful partner” (155). Similarly, much of ¡Caramba! sees True-Dee and the co-protagonists legitimizing her female gender identity by supporting her in the show transvestis, the Tupperware party, and the beauty salon. Thus, the friendship of all three challenges traditional gender boundaries, freeing gender performance from traditionally sex-specific identities. As in “Woman

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Hollering Creek” and The Dirty Girls Social Club, the close friendship between female co-protagonists Natalie and Consuelo similarly offers a potential revision to traditional gender roles, instead prioritizing female friendship over heteronormative relationships (Roseneil). REFERENCES Abalos, David T. The Latino Male: A Radical Redefinition. Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2002. Anaya, Rudolfo. “ ‘I’m The King’: The Macho Image.” In Muy Macho: Latino Men Confront Their Manhood, edited by Ray Gonza´lez. New York: Doubleday, 1996, 57–73. Anzaldu´a, Gloria. La Frontera/Borderlands. San Francisco: Aunt Lute, 1987. Barale, Miche`le Aina. “When Lambs and Aliens Meet: Girl-Faggots and BoyDykes Go to the Movies.” Cross Purposes: Lesbians, Feminists, and the Limits of Alliance. Edited by Dana Heller. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997, 95–106. Castillo, Ana. Massacre of the Dreamers: Essays on Xicanisma. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1994. Cisneros, Sandra. “Woman Hollering Creek.” Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories. New York: Vintage, 1991. Cortez, Beatriz. “Hybrid Identities and the Emergence of Dislocated Consciousness: Deporting the Divas.” Chicano/Latino Homoerotic Identities. Edited by David William Foster. New York: Garland, 1999, 131–45. Dever, Carolyn. “Obstructive Behavior: Dykes in the Mainstream Feminist Theory.” Cross Purposes: Lesbians, Feminists, and the Limits of Alliance. Edited by Dana Heller. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997, 19–41. Lamos, Colleen. “Sexuality versus Gender: A Kind of Mistake?” In Cross Purposes: Lesbians, Feminists, and the Limits of Alliance, edited by Dana Heller. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997. Maddison, Stephen. Fags, Hags and Queer Sisters: Gender Dissent and Heterosocial Bonds in Gay Culture. New York: St. Martin’s, 2000. Martı´nez, Natalie Marie. ¡Caramba! New York: Knopf, 2004. Rosales, Cecilia. “Cheuco Sexualities: Kaleidoscopic I’s and Shattered Mirrors.” In Chicano/Latino Homoerotic Identities, edited by David William Foster. New York: Routledge, 1999. Roseneil, Sasha. “Living and Loving Beyond the Heteronorm.” Eurozine, May 29, 2007 (accessed November 15, 2009). http://www.eurozine.com/ articles/2007-05-29-roseneil-en.html. Valdes-Rodriguez, Alisa. The Dirty Girls Social Club. New York: St. Martin’s, 2003.

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Chapter 4

Bechdel’s Dykes to Watch Out For and Popular Culture Judith Kegan Gardiner

For over two decades, Alison Bechdel has chronicled lesbian life in her comic strip series, Dykes to Watch Out For (hereafter DTWOF), widely published in alternative, campus, and GLBT publications, and now gathered in the volume The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For, 2008. Bechdel began publishing cartoons in 1983, and a first volume of DTWOF appeared in 1986, but the collected volume as a continuous serial with coherent characters begins in 1987 and runs through 2008, creating what Bechdel calls her “half op-ed column and half endlessly serialized Victorian novel.”1 Her goals in beginning the strip were ambitious: “I would name the unnamed. Depict the undepicted!” and “derive a universal lesbian essence from these particular examples” (xiv). 2 Although she found it “comforting” to see her “queer life reflected back” in her own drawings, the lack of models in United States popular culture was part of what made “being an out dyke . . . not an easy row to hoe. We had no ‘L-Word.’ We had no lesbian daytime TV hosts. We had no openly lesbian daughters of the creepy vice president. We had Personal Best, and we liked it.” Thus Bechdel explains that she saw her cartoons as able to be “an antidote to the prevailing image of lesbians as warped, sick, humorless, and undesirable,” or, alternatively, as less negatively portrayed but still inauthentic “supermodel-like Olympic pentathletes” attractive to the male gaze. (xv).

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Bechdel describes herself as “a kind of cultural anthropologist” who has made American lesbian feminist “subculture more visible through my comics” but who has by the same means “had a hand in contributing to its demise.”3 As she thus wryly notes, Bechdel’s twin goals of visibility and community are partially synergistic and partially contradictory, as the markers of subcultural legibility become available to the dominant culture and as the dominant culture incorporates and so alters the subculture. The proper relationship of the subculture to the dominant culture is contested throughout the series, as is evident in a strip mocking Mo’s rapid reversal during an argument. First she claims that “moving invisibly, being on the outside— that’s where the real, subversive power lies!” but when a crush of hers counters that “subversive power is lesbians in Banana Republic ads,” Mo pulls a 180-degree turn to say that “shattering the myth that lesbians aren’t real people is our single most effective tool in countering the rampant homophobia and misogyny in society today” (112). When the strip begins, the DTWOF characters are both inside and outside mainstream United States culture. On the one hand, they live close together in a comfortable and stable common community. The inside covers of the hardback Essential DTWOF provide a map of locations referenced in the strip, and allusions in the text indicate a site like the Twin Cities, where Bechdel lived when she began creating the series.4 The graphic form insists on the visibility of its subjects, and Bechdel’s drawings embody an egalitarian lesbian feminist politics, with faces lightly sketched, no shading to indicate racial identifications, and last names or ethnic identifiers usually omitted unless the characters are visiting their families of origin or at mainstream work sites like the university. It takes Bechdel a few years to find a comfortable style in clearly outlined black and white drawings that pay homage to classic male graphic artists and cartooning predecessors, including Norman Rockwell, Charles Addams, Edward Gorey, Jules Feiffer, Herge´, Robert Crum, and Howard Cruse.5 After that, her main characters retain a remarkable stability of appearance. Mo wears the same haircut, glasses, and striped shirts for decades. Most of the characters have a youthful every-woman look, with casual clothing and thin but clearly female figures, though larger-bodied and older women appear as well. All the women’s bodies look cheerfully erotic in the frequent sex scenes. Over the years, as lesbians become more accepted and visible in the culture at large, Bechdel shows the distinctiveness of the lesbian subculture at risk: its

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institutions dwindle or are engulfed by the dominant U.S. corporate culture, and the characters increasingly live and work outside of their sub-cultural comfort zones. The opening episodes in 1987 focus on the familiar soap opera scene of women talking to one another about their romantic lives, except that in this case the preferred attachments are also with other women. Bechdel’s quasi-autobiographical spokeswoman Mo (Monica) complains to her friend Lois that she hasn’t had sex in months because her standards are too high, but Lois disputes Mo’s rationalizations. Mo responds, “I have to go watch Oprah Winfrey now. At least she has some understanding of the word compassion!” (2). Thus while Mo’s life is almost entirely enclosed within the lesbian community, her romantic ideals are nevertheless shaped by the popular culture she often scorns as too conservative, too masculine, or simply too shallow. Another of Mo’s friends, the African American law student Clarice, teases Mo by claiming she wants marriage, children, and “quiet evenings” with her lover “poring over our stock portfolio” (4). In the early days of the strip, such establishment desires are stated only to be disowned, though Clarice, a college lover of Mo’s, later becomes not only an environmentalist lawyer but also a gay-married mother coupled with Puerto Rican accountant Toni in a house in the suburbs. At the series’ inception, Mo is still seeking a post-college career. All of her prior jobs have been with progressive, women’s, and GLBT organizations, and her job search is futile until she joins Lois working at Madwimmin Books, owned by Jezanna, a stout, middle-aged African American lesbian. Like her employment, Mo’s leisure is also framed within the lesbian community. Her karate class includes lots of happy, multicultural lesbians, and she hangs out at the “lesbo hangout” Topaz cafe´ (5). So in 1987 the series begins by describing a coherent counterculture and posing its characters’ choices as finding happiness within it or selling out to mainstream conventions. Mo begins with a network of lesbian friends who remain friends throughout the series despite changing lovers, jobs, and sometimes even sexual orientation and gender. In an interview with Eva Sollberger, Bechdel explained that “the characters in the comic strip were like my friends, my imaginary friends,” made “to be my fantasy community.”6 This community is largely independent of and adversarial to the political culture of Reagan’s America. Often the strip shows lesbian or LGBT culture as more varied than its characters expect, as when two scary cowboys turn out to be fellow gay rights marchers on Washington. It is also largely self-correcting, as when Mo teaches Lois to give up

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unprotected casual sex because women, too, can catch and transmit AIDS. The activism of the counter culture is the glue of community and of heightened eros, for example when Mo finally links up with her love interest Harriet in jail after they commit civil disobedience together after the 1987 March on Washington. In the kinder, gentler community the characters inhabit, the protagonists fight against social ills but mostly don’t suffer from them. Several characters experience long-term depressions that hurt their relationships, but depression is also portrayed as an understandable response to a world out of whack, and Lois’s secrecy about her antidepressant use propels a story line emphasizing the community’s expectations of openness, not substance abuse or medical problems. A character’s mother may be an alcoholic, and Sparrow first works in a battered woman’s shelter, then rises to become a state coordinator for NARAL, but none of the characters in DTWOF is battered or a batterer, and when the accidentally-pregnant Sparrow contemplates an abortion, she is dissuaded after hearing Mo’s unpersuasive jeremiad that what’s “immoral” is “bringing a kid into this world” of “pollution, global warming” and “weapons of mass destruction” (278). The almost self-sufficient lesbian community of DTWOF has a full set of alternative women’s institutions, including the Topaz coffee shop and the vegetarian Lentille d’Or restaurant. Lois browses the “Politically Correct Palate” cookbook, which features “creamed burdock with turnip loaf,” and she wants to dine out on “Portobello mushroom flambe´ and smoked Atlantic seaweed” (25, 143). The joke on alternative foods is apparently good enough to repeat frequently. Sydney the women’s studies professor sarcastically comments that no lesbian potluck is complete without an “impassioned vegetarian diatribe” (160). Lesbians are everywhere. Madwimmin Books specializes in lesbian publications and gifts. The characters get their hair styled by a lesbian beautician, and they patronize lesbian physicians and veterinarians. Their favorite car mechanic is a transgendered man, formerly a lesbian. When Jezanna’s mother is stricken with breast cancer in another city, the hospital oncology nurse is a lesbian. Rather than feeling isolated in a hostile straight world, Bechdel’s characters move comfortably in a social milieu staffed by lesbians who work in feminist and other progressive organizations. Lawyer Clarice gets injunctions against corporate polluters, while her partner accountant Toni helps organize the books of the Madwimmin store. The characters’ bond as they attend the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festivals and progressive political protests.

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In some ways the strip resembles an ensemble television sitcom like NBC’s Friends, in which a constant cast of characters retain their friendships while changing romantic partners, problems, and jobs. For critic Audrey Bilger, the more pertinent analogy for DTWOF’s milieu goes back to the classic chick lit author, Jane Austen. Bilger claims that the “evolving saga of politically righteous, stressed-out heroine Mo and her truly diverse group of fellow travelers” follows Austen’s formula of engaging the reader in the lives of a few families in a country village, but transposed to “‘family’ in the queer sense” living in an “alternative village”7 (64). In DTWOF, the core characters grow two decades older together while sustaining the impression of a coherent lesbian community. They observe and comment upon U.S. society from a position partly outside the mainstream, so the strip fulfills Bechdel’s goals of reflecting the lesbian counterculture back to itself and simultaneously defining its borders, for example, by paying little attention to those who are closeted, elderly, rural, or affluent. DTWOF both disputes and reinforces mainstream stereotypes about lesbian life in the United States. As we have seen, Bechdel claims her goal was to “derive a universal lesbian essence from these particular examples. . . . But to be honest, it was so comforting to see my queer life reflected back at me, I would have kept drawing these Dykes to Watch Out For just for myself” (xiv). Reflecting lesbian lives accurately serves to de-pathologize them. As Bechdel claims, “By drawing the everyday lives of women like me, I hoped to make lesbians more visible not just to ourselves but to everyone” (xv). The characters of DTWOF are a very American cross-section, a resounding rejoinder to the stereotype that feminism, and especially lesbian feminism, is primarily for and about privileged white women. By example the lesbian community of DTWOF is antiracist, multiracial, and religiously tolerant, as are their gay male friends and allies. Sexual relationships, too, are often interracial, and no one expresses a racial preference or exclusion in their quests for romance, sex, friends, or stable employment. Other negative stereotypes of lesbians are mitigated by the drawing style: the outlined characters are not either glamorous or ugly, not obviously paired as tough butches with girly femmes, and certainly not predatory to straight women. Unlike the current popular positive images of television and other celebrity lesbians, those in DTWOF don’t all look like models or movie stars, and Bechdel’s minimalist cartooning style can thus be seen as a political statement in itself. And while one character, Lois is portrayed for much of the series as cheerfully promiscuous, other characters are intermittently celibate, serially

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monogamous, faithful, unfaithful, romantically sexual, or just too tired, depending on all the other contexts in their lives. The one prejudice that Mo is shown indulging—and being reproved for—is her claim that Thea gets her buyer’s job at Madwimmin Books precisely because she is disabled by her multiple sclerosis rather than because of her superior credentials (78–79). Reviewer Lisa London quotes Bechdel as saying that “the comic strip observes culture, but it also is culture.”8 DTWOF delineates a lesbian subculture that it depicts positively and that it simultaneously helps create in its own image, an image appreciated by many of the strip’s readers. For instance, Kate Woolfe remarks, “I saw myself reflected, validated, and loved through the queer images all around me, from DTWOF to my own girlfriends.”9 Other fans reinforce the idea that DTWOF is not merely a portrait of an existing community but also a representative upholding the community’s image for society at large. For example, Trina Robbins claims that “Bechdel’s characters are alive. You know them, you recognize them. . . . They are the dykes next door, or the dykes you didn’t know lived next door.”10 Harriet Malinowitz, too, emphasizes Bechdel’s verisimilitude, even as her characters inhabit “a multi-culti, wheelchair-accessible utopia” that attains “epic dimensions” while still describing a “romance” of “community” where everyone is basically “good at heart.”11 Popular culture references throughout the series provide historical context and ironic contrast to the characters’ lives. Malinowitz highlights DTWOF’s immersion in contemporary popular culture as “friends” in the series “gather in front of the television to watch the O. J. [Simpson] verdict and Ellen DeGeneres coming out on the Rosie O’Donnell show,” creating what Malinowitz calls “a stunning amalgam of the best of high and low culture,” a psychologically acute “melodrama-verite´” that is “simultaneously novelistic, cinematic and soap-operatic,” “sincere, overwrought and edgy all at once.”12 Bilger similarly notes that the political context of American culture is ever present in DTWOF as “TV captions and newspaper headlines” drawn into the series “offer the comic-strip equivalent of a cable news crawl.” “Pop culture junkies,” she continues, “will revel in allusions to Murphy Brown versus Dan Quayle, Thelma and Louise, The Talking Heads, and Michel Foucault,” and insider jokes like the Newsweek cover querying: “Ex-gay or just badly dressed?” The result is “a whip-smart soap opera—The L Word meets queer theory meets Virginia Woolf crossed with Rachel Maddow” that the reader will “want . . . to go on forever.”13

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Mo solaces herself after her girlfriend Harriet breaks up with her by endlessly playing k.d. lang (93), while in the lesbian “fifteen minutes” of fame, Scientific American magazine headlines ask, “Lesbians: Better at Math? KD Lang on Fractal Theory” (112). Watching Roseanne is the prelude to Mo and Harriet’s final sex together, while the last straw before the breakup is anti-consumerist Mo censuring Harriet for buying a VCR to tape All My Children. In 1992, Lois and friends protest the “latest crazed lesbian psycho-killer flick,” presumably Basic Instinct, in which a manipulative bisexual novelist is accused of killing men with an ice pick (85). Emerging with Mo from the film Thelma and Louise, Lois enthuses “What a treat to see them blow that rapist away!” but she prefers their imaginary alternate ending where the two women escape into Mexico, “consummate their love for one another, open a guerilla training camp for women, and start fomenting armed resistance against rapists” (74). As is often the case, these tough responses to popular culture are counterpointed by the women’s effective but very low-key rejoinder to a fraternity guy harassing them on the street outside the movie. Bechdel notes other cultural fads in her characters’ lives, like Sparrow’s therapy groups, Lois’s Queer Nation kiss-in at the local mall, and the lesbian kitsch sold at Madwimmin Books, like Venus of Willendorf coffee mugs and the “Dicks for Chicks” dildo catalog (162). Often Bechdel parallels political news with popular culture, for example when the first Gulf War of 1991 is described like the Super Bowl, with television commentators chortling about “interception,” and “some butt getting kicked out on the field today” while the strip’s core characters shout, cry, and contemplate tax resistance at an antiwar rally (68). In contrast to the characters’ Left politics, conservative lesbians are a nightmare, as Mo experiences in a bad dream of “Camille Paglia forcing Rush Limbaugh to suck her foot-long, strapon Tofu pup” (107). For much of its first decade, the DTWOF community leads a relatively tranquil life. Almost all the people are women, and all the women are above average, to allude to another idealized yet gently satirized Minnesotan community, Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon.14 Bechdel warns against nostalgic evocation of the past, even as that is one of Mo’s continuing temptations: Lois at one point accuses Mo of having her “clock stopped in 1981,” that is, during her college days and before the period chronicled in the series (93). In contrast, Bechdel explains to readers, “I really want the comic strip to reflect reality, however painful that is, and not get frozen in time like Family Circus.15 After the first few

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years, as her drawing becomes more self-assured, Bechdel’s characters do look “frozen in time,” as indicated by Mo’s permanent outfit of glasses and striped shirt. However, despite the characters’ constant costumes, the strip does change as the times change. The relationship between Bechdel’s visual style, her political outlook, and a changing culture is graphically displayed in an episode labeled “Leadership Vacuum,” dated 1999 (214). The episode refers to Republican efforts to impeach President Clinton for extramarital dalliance and to air strikes against Iraq, which the strip interprets as intended to distract Americans from the President’s public relations problems. Here it is clear how Bechdel’s goal of making “lesbians more visible not just to ourselves but to everyone” by “drawing the everyday lives of women like me” is conveyed through specific graphic choices (xv). This unusually self-reflective strip also illustrates Bechdel’s dual relationship to popular culture as both embedded within it while also attempting to maintain a critical distance from it. Here Mo speaks directly to the reader to report on the cartoonist’s supposed breakdown in the face of confusing, fast-breaking news. In the first box, Mo says to the reader, “Hey, how’s it going? Listen, I have to ask you to bear with us. We’re experiencing some technical difficulties with the strip,” as though the comic is a broadcast in progress as we read. In the next box, Mo speaks aside to the reader while the cartoonist stays in the background, looking pretty much like Mo but without the glasses or signature striped shirt. Mo says that “the cartoonist seems to be suffering from a touch of the vapors.” The cartoonist appears at her drawing board, spluttering to herself, “Ha Ha! Rule of law! Coup d’e´tat! . . . You’re trampling the Constitution.” The floor is littered with crumpled papers, apparently the cartoonist’s discarded efforts to keep up with events. Mo explains that “it’s been a rough week, what with all the breaking news.” A television shows a white male talking head, and a computer displays the “Times Online.” The cartoonist makes a futile telephone call to National Public Radio’s authoritative liberal newswomen Nina [Totenberg] and Cokie [Roberts]. Going through the cartoonist’s discards, Mo says, “When we started out, the judiciary committee had just passed Articles of Impeachment.” In the background the cartoonist is muttering, “Not germane!” as she talks back at the news and thumps her drawing board. What she draws is a box within the box containing the characters Jezanna, Lois, and Mo, all drawn more roughly than usual to indicate their meta-cartoon status. They apparently all agree with Jezanna,

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who says “This Republican lynch mob just wants payback for every shred of social progress that’s been made in the last 30 years!” When Lois cites the statistic that 75% of Americans don’t want to impeach Clinton, Mo says “people aren’t stupid!” But when polls show that the majority backs bombing Iraq, she declaims, “people are idiots!” (Mo thus humorously echoes a continuing ambivalence in Left counterculture, which celebrates the wisdom of “the people” as a democratic force but decries the masses when they believe the establishment’s version of reality.) In the next box Mo is again the narrator, saying, “but then Clinton decided to buy some time by blowing up Baghdad, so it was back to the uh . . . drawing board” (ellipses original). Presumably this news requires a critique rather than a defense of President Clinton, so Mo is shown throwing one of the discarded papers over her shoulder while the cartoonist is saying “only 3 bombing days left till Ramadan!” with her pen stuck up her nose. Here the President’s situation parallels the cartoonist’s. Both need to go “back to the . . . drawing board” to respond to the current overload of contradictory news, public opinion, and political conflicts. The next square is again set in a box within the cartoon box. The characters are pictured at an outdoor demonstration where Jezanna holds a sign saying “Impeach Clinton for war crimes,” while a protester holds a megaphone in the background with the words “Stop the bombing! Stop the war!” floating above him. Jezanna says, “The man’s a sociopath! Like anyone’s gonna believe he’s not attacking Iraq in a last ditch attempt to save his own bony ass!” A small head of Mo appears above the next cell, commenting, “as our deadline closed in, the news kept coming.” Within the box, the frazzled cartoonist muses “how’m I supposed to top this?” as the television continues to spew confusing news: “the speaker-elect confesses to affairs! The speakerelect resigns! The president has been impeached! The president’s approval rating skyrockets!” Above the next box Mo comments that the cartoonist “finally went off her trolly.” The picture below shows the cartoonist with spiral eyes, electrified hair, and word bubbles referring to her blown “irony fuse,” “satire chip,” and “nuance calibrater.” Jezanna chides, “We gotta ship this episode off!” and the cartoonist holds up what she’s drawn. Mo apologizes to the reader, “I’m sorry you had to see this.” The finished drawing is a single cell cartoon framed in a circle and patterned after Bill Keane’s Family Circus, a widely syndicated newspaper cartoon series promulgating proChristian family values.16 This drawing shows two children who are simpler, chubbier, and younger versions of Lois and Mo, with child

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Mo holding a newspaper with the headline “Impeachment.” The caption has Mo saying, “See Lois? Fornication is a sin!” In the final box, the adult Mo is slapping a goggle-eyed cartoonist with her tongue hanging out who seems to be experiencing a breakdown as she mouths “Onward C-C-C-Christian so-oldiers!” The cartoonist’s breakdown is demonstrated most vividly, not by her dazzled eyeballs but by her imitation of a Family Circus style that connotes conservatism, traditional religious values, simplistic morality, and an unwillingness to grow up. “Leadership Vacuum” is one of the most graphically complex in DTWOF in charting the levels of self-reference that distinguish the counter-cultural community from the mainstream, distinguishing Bechdel’s familiar style from a more loosely drawn version in the inset cartoons and from the Family Circus style. Another cartooning style incorporated into DTWOF from its beginning is the visual homage to Belgian cartoonist Herge´’s popular Adventures of Tintin, since Bechdel’s character Lois, described as a sexual adventurer, looks very much like the boy hero Tintin.17 The overt content of the episode “Leadership Vacuum” has nothing to do with the themes of lesbian relationships and issues that identify DTWOF as a lesbian-focused strip. However, the drawings here, as throughout the series, constitute a representational politics: they show an almost all-female and all-lesbian cast of characters who agree in their views. They are uniformly opposed to war, hypocrisy, and sexual repression. They are informed about current events, savvy to the mass media, casually interracial and intergenerational, and politically active in an outdoor political demonstration at the same time that they collectively participate indoors in helping produce the cartoonist’s cartoon: the “leadership vacuum” of the episode’s title thus refers both to the U.S. president and to the cartoonist whose “irony fuse” has blown. The cartoonist’s breakdown apparently comes not only from the impact of contradictory news, but even more from the difficulty of her goal of “topping” the news with her own commentary and hence evincing her own “leadership.” What she finally produces when “off her trolley” is still a coherent satire against a Conservative Family Circle viewpoint that endorses simple moral judgments like “Fornication is a sin!” and so supports a presidential “impeachment,” while the cartoonist’s befuddled singing of “Onward C-C-C-Christian soldiers” blames U.S. warmongering and sexual obsessions on rightwing Christian militarism. As DTWOF enters its second decade, themes of lesbian community and visibility continue, but new challenges increasingly appear. There

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is more emphasis on alternative family structures and on the difficulties of socializing the next generation in their parents’ values. The characters remain politically committed, but the umbrella of LGBT unity sometimes frays. Furthermore, more heterosexual characters enter the strip, particularly Sparrow’s partner Stuart, who claims he thinks he’s “a butch lesbian in a straight man’s body” and who becomes their daughter’s stay-at-home father (230). Explaining their complicated household, Sparrow says, “Sometimes people change. Identity is so much more complex and fluid than these rigid little categories of straight, gay, and bi can possibly reflect,” only to have her words turned against her when she objects to the gender transition of Jerry, now identified as a gay man though previously a “butch dyke” (230). Another challenge is the socialization of the next generation as Clarice and Toni’s son Raffi faces mainstream schooling: he defends his sparkly nail polish—though kicking the boy who claims only girls wear it, is teased about having “two mommies” and teases another boy’s uncircumcised penis (300), asks for a “gay” “wifebeater” shirt like his “cool” caregiver Carlos’s (263), and, most troublingly, enjoys playing “smear the queer” and refutes his mother’s claim that “queer” is “a very mean word” because his mothers “are always saying it” (282). At age eleven, Raffi apparently accepts his mothers’ values, asking for donations to Move-On for his birthday, but at thirteen, when Toni and Clarice’s long relationship is failing, he announces, “I wish you guys would get divorced. Then I could be normal” (353). At the college level, professors Sydney and Ginger both attract some lesbian students to their classes, but the majority of Ginger’s straight students at Buffalo State are challenging not through their homophobia but their general apathy. In addition, lesbian unity of opinion breaks down as conservative lesbians enter the strip, like right-wing Cynthia, whose coming out is complicated by her virginity pledge. Toni and Clarice “read the same-sex commitment ceremony announcements” in the Times, noting the upper-class names and colleges of partners who “work at the same investment bank in the global rapine & pillage division” (282). Similarly, Mo attacks the Human Rights Campaign for partnering with a church to sponsor a millennial rally on “faith and family,” lamenting that this isn’t a “Movement anymore” but a “closely-held corporation, run by a bunch of white, power-hungry marketing strategists” (206). She despairs, moreover, that a magazine claims that one of “America’s 10 best lesbian places to work” is Monsanto: “Did I have to live to see the principles of

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lesbian-feminism betrayed so utterly?” Mo’s disappointment with the remnants of the Movement is perhaps most evident when she declines her friends’ invitation to attend Pride 2004, instead picketing for “Gay Shame . . . to protest how Pride has gotten so corporate” (311). As DTWOF’s main characters succeed in the American dream of home ownership and upward mobility that Clarice teasingly foreshadowed in 1987, the lesbian community is already diminished, pushed into smaller and smaller spaces by an engulfing consumer and market culture. Two aspects of these changes are shown in the 2002 episode ironically entitled, “Same as it Ever Was” (281). In the first half of the strip, Sparrow, pregnant and still living in a communal household with Lois, Ginger, and her partner Stuart, complains to housemate Ginger, “he’s so completely into this baby, there’s no room for me. . . . What if all the estrogen turns me into one of those women who yammer about calories and self-esteem and shoes? I used to be a radical lesbian feminist, goddamn it. . . . I haven’t felt this lonely and confused since I came out.” Ginger tries to comfort her by suggesting she do what she “did then,” and a hunched and dispirited Sparrow replies, “Right. I’ll move to the bisexual neighborhood and start volunteering at the coffee house for unintentionally pregnant bi-dykes with overzealous male partners.” Thus the proliferation of alternative family formations and sexual identities chronicled in DTWOF deprives Sparrow of her former anchor in 1980s lesbian feminism. She no longer finds a secure and clearly-defined community with which to identify—both because she herself has changed by partnering with a man and because her lesbian community has changed to a more varied and dispersed assortment of relationships, institutions, and identities. The second half of the same strip announces, “Meanwhile, just down the street from Bounders Books and Muzak, the last independent bookstore in town bites the dust-jacket” (281). After years attempting to stay afloat awhile being undersold by corporate booksellers Bounders, Bunns and Noodle, and online giant Medusa Books, Jezanna, announces that she’s too far in debt and will soon close Madwimmin Books. “When I opened this place 25 years ago,” she says, “this store was an outpost in a hostile environment. The future was uncharted. I had no idea what I was getting into, except that it wasn’t going to make much money.” Her employee Mo responds, “Jeez, I thought we were gonna make the world safe for feminism,” and Jezanna replies, “we did. To be packaged and sold by global media conglomerates.”

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The two story lines in this strip highlight the double blow dealt the counterculture by early twenty-first century culture: a widening of opportunities and acceptance for alternative families and sexualities but a simultaneous broadening of a corporate market culture that swallows its rivals and threatens the identity of those whose sense of self has been tied to a GLBTQ or specifically lesbian subculture. Bechdel says she modeled Madwimmin Books on the Amazon Bookstore Cooperative, which was founded in Minneapolis in 1970, making it the oldest independent feminist bookstore in North America. It was originally owned not by one woman but by a collective. It fell on hard times, like its fictional counterpart, but was saved from becoming another corporate outpost when bought in 2008 by Ruta Skujins, who promises that “our store,” now renamed True Colors Bookstore, still “offers products and services that foster the strength, wisdom, beauty and diversity of women, girls, and their families.” Skujins explains that she bought the bookstore with gratitude to “Barb Wieser and the other members of the co-op who kept the store going all these years,” and she assures her customers that the store’s focus will remain “woman-oriented, feminist and lesbian.”18 Like leading members of the old Amazon collective, the new owner is a white lesbian, so that Bechdel’s fictional bookstore seems more progressive by being owned by an African American entrepreneur, but less so in being solely owned rather than a cooperative. Skujins notes her own countercultural background as an editor at two lesbian publishing houses. After a bad motorcycle accident, she says, she retired from a corporate career and used her retirement money to buy the bookstore. So the real Amazon Bookstore Cooperative has not been subsumed by a corporate giant, though it had to change its name through an agreement with Amazon.com, the model for DTWOF’s mythologically monstrous Medusa books, while the fictional Madwimmin Books recalls the title of Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar ’s pioneering feminist literary collaboration, The Madwoman in the Attic, 1978, and Second Wave feminist ideas about the suppressed creativity of women. In the early twenty-first century, DTWOF displays a key paradox of popular culture: American popular culture is what people want as they spontaneously invent alternative institutions—like the Madwimmin book store and the multiracial, two-generational, mixed-sex communal household—but it is also the commercial mass culture that both permits and circumscribes opportunities for the countercultural institutions. Thus the bookstore depends on alternative publishers and

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independent authors but also on a clientele willing to buy at higher prices than the megastores, a dual system that is shown collapsing. In its later years DTWOF and the community it represents continue to evolve, incorporating more outsiders while also facing centrifugal forces towards dispersal, with Mo often playing the role of observer and commentator. In the later years of DTWOF, the consumerist pressures of American culture are highlighted more emphatically, even as the LGBTQ community becomes more diverse in its conceptions of gender and sexuality. In earlier episodes of the strip, Lois enjoys performing as a drag king and even teases Mo by pretending to be transitioning in her own gender. However, she finally reassures Mo that she enjoys “being a girl. In a perverse kind of way” (262). She continues to expand Mo’s more restricted views of gender, for example with her friend Percival, “a genderqueer boydyke geek with an Oxford cloth fetish” (248). Then she becomes involved with Jasmine, whose son Jonas is gender dysphoric. Whereas Toni and Clarice’s son Raffi is portrayed as a flexible but decidedly masculine boy growing up in a lesbian household, Jonas becomes Janis and fights having to go through puberty as a boy. He watches the “Oprah episode on transgender kids more times than The Little Mermaid,” and later disconcerts his mother by turning into a “valley girl” who swipes her clothes and ignores her (312). As Janis begins taking hormones, she adopts some of the more obnoxious aspects of teen femininity, refusing to help with tasks because she “just did (her) nails.” When her mother tells her to stop the “bimbo routine” because “women are strong and capable, not just objects of desire,” Janis complains that her mother is going “all Alice Walker” on her. Lois apparently summarizes the viewpoint of the strip as pro-gender diversity but anti traditional femininity when she says that she “liked” Janis “better when she was taking the boy hormone-inhibitors, and before she started on the girl hormones” (372). But gender issues are often submerged by political ones in the later years of DTWOF. One of Bechdel’s sharpest satiric targets in this period is the overlap between political rhetoric and the world of advertising. In an April, 2008, strip, the adults are arguing over their election choices, divided between backing Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama as the Democratic nominee for president. Toni asks Raffi and his friend Stella why the teenagers are “so sold on Obama” when his political views are “virtually identical” to Clinton’s. Stella answers, “He’s a Mac!,” and Raffi says, “She’s a PC!” Stella concludes, “Need we say more?” (389). The Mac versus PC discussion assumes the

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viewer’s familiarity with the successful Apple Computer ad campaign in which a stodgy, suit-wearing John Hodgman plays the inept PC against the hip young MacIntosh computer played by Justin Long.19 The Apple computer advertisement plays on a sense of youthful— and masculine—countercultural insurgency and technological savvy for a thoroughly corporate product, one that Stella and Raffi, children of children of the counterculture, associate with youthful Barack Obama’s successful presidential campaign. Thus DTWOF’s continuing political commentary always acknowledges immersion in a pervasive market and consumer culture as well as being contrasted with the counter-cultural world of the primarily lesbian main characters. In recent years the main vehicle for Bechdel’s mockery of both U.S. consumerism and the pretensions of academic theory is the character of Sydney Krukowski, a Women’s Studies professor who initially irritates Mo but then becomes her long-term lover. On her introduction to the strip, Sydney dismisses a lesbian student’s poetry as “a hackneyed take on the phallic pretensions of the penis” (151). She publishes in the Journal of Ludicrous Queer Theory (224). She teaches jargony courses that use high theory to talk about popular culture, like “Gender, Race, and Miniature Golf: The Social Construction of Leisure” (249), as well as “Critical Foreplay and the Seduction of Theory” and “Textual Intercourse” (375). She ruins Brokeback Mountain for Mo by her analysis of its “nostalgic fallacy” that “things were worse in the past, but also better. . . . Who wouldn’t prefer a ruined life with a few pristine moments to a regular, banal, disappointing life?” (346). For all her theory about consumerism, she runs up huge bills by shopping binges of new televisions, an “iPud,” CD player, and clothing, proposing marriage to Mo after one shopping spree as “some kind of postmodern intimacy avoidance strategy” (305). The naughty culmination of the pair’s fascination with consumerism is their fantasy role playing as Martha Stewart and her pool girl, where they exchange provocative lines like “Tie me down on your 310 thread count sheets!” (226). To Mo’s horror, the fantasies become known not only to her lesbian friends but to the readers of mass-market Panthouse magazine, to whom Sydney has sold the couple’s online correspondence in order to pay off her credit card debts (226). The tensions in the relationships between mainstream United States culture and a lesbian subculture, a main theme of DTWOF, continue in a valedictory strip featuring Mo and Sydney that Bechdel produced after the publication of The Essential DTWOF and posted on her Web site. Labeled “Gift of the Magi” and dated on Christmas day,

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2008, it is a single scene showing Mo and Sydney seated on a cozy if bedraggled couch, with a cat napping above them, in front of window panes piled with still falling snow.20 Mo, barefoot, bespectacled, and wearing her perennial striped t-shirt and sweatpants, is holding up Sydney’s gift to her, a lacy black bra from Velma’s Secret, while Sydney, in black tank top, plaid pajama bottoms, and socks, has just unwrapped a book entitled The Wisdom of Menopause. Both women are looking down at their gifts, not at each other, and neither looks overjoyed. The cartoon contrasts lesbian culture, consumer culture, popular ideas about lesbians, and changing standards of gender and sexuality within a continuing drama about the two women’s relationship. The Wisdom of Menopause is a real 2001 title by gynecologist Christiane Northrup with new-age overtones.21 Its subtitle is “Creating physical and emotional health and healing during the change,” and the book is an upbeat look at the increased sexuality and creativity possible post menopause. But of course for the protagonists in their late forties, the book may seem to smack more of aging and defeat than of zippy sex. Sydney has already had a bout of breast cancer—in which she used her disease as an excuse for binge buying consumer items on credit. Mo, despite her countercultural seriousness, has indeed shown herself passionate in their relationship. The book’s first line is, “It is no secret that relationship crises are a common side effect of menopause,” an ominous note that may well be intended. On her Web site, Bechdel says she was in fact reading this book, a gift to her, and heeding its call that “perimenopause is a time when you are meant to mother yourself.” Continuing the creation as child metaphor, she claims that creating DTWOF “doesn’t feel as necessary as it once did, both inside myself and outside, in the world. Whatever it was I was creating, it’s old enough to get its own dinner now.”22 This last strip, a gift to readers after she left us without DTWOF, like many of her strips incorporates both canonical and popular culture references to deepen its resonances. The brassiere from Velma’s Secret alludes to the Victoria’s Secret lingerie company, which mails millions of catalogs with sexy models and has stores in the shopping malls where Sydney loves to overspend. But Bechdel’s rebranded Velma’s Secret refers to a very different kind of model, the hyper-intelligent role model for teenage girls Velma Dinkley, the super sleuth and linguist of the animated Scooby Doo cartoon series. The two references together thus connote the combination of intelligence and sex appeal that the strip has offered its readers for decades, along with a sense of in-group special knowledge.23

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The title “The Gift of the Magi” of course refers Bechdel’s graphic to the sentimental short short story of the same name by early twentiethcentury author O. Henry, whose birth name of William Sydney Porter includes Bechdel’s character’s. O. Henry’s story of deep mutual love and mismatched sacrifice begins with its heroine on a “shabby little couch” trying to figure out a worthy Christmas present for her mate, and it ends, after they buy each other expensive brushes and a watch fob that they can no longer use because they have sold hair and watch to pay for their gifts, with O. Henry’s unctuous conclusion, “of all who give gifts these two were the wisest.”24 Thus the reference to loving but inappropriate gifts ironically hints at the fraying relationship of the two DTWOF characters at the same time that it validates their lesbian love with reference to one of America’s best-known love stories.

The Gift. (Dykes to Watch Out For © 2008, Alison Bechdel. Reprinted with permission.)

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Finally, the cover of The Essential DTWOF, patterned after Norman Rockwell’s “The Gossip,” 1948, highlights the issues of visibility and community that run through the series in paradoxical ways. Rockwell’s “The Gossip” image for a Saturday Evening Post cover includes fifteen pairs of heads, each one telling another person something, but without captions, so that we viewers don’t know the content. Each listener passes along the chain of conversation to another person until the last tells the first. Rockwell’s gossipers are reasonably realistic portraits of white Americans, predominantly middle-aged, including nine women and six men, three pairs talking by telephone and the rest speaking only face to face, with expressions ranging from scandalized to angry to amused. Over his 60-year career until his death in 1978, Rockwell was the leading exemplar of American magazine illustration, central to the dissemination of American popular culture in the pre-electronic era. Often derided as excessively sentimental and jingoistic, Rockwell was willing to illustrate the injustice of white racial prejudice during the turmoil of school desegregation battles in the 1950s.25 Bechdel’s Essential DTWOF book jacket is both an homage and an update to Rockwell. Bechdel’s cover features twelve pairs of faces. Three people are shown with telephones and one with a Blackberry or similar device. Furthermore, the book is published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, so that Bechdel recapitulates the gesture repeated through the series and invariably decried by Mo: joining and becoming visible to the mainstream at the same time that the gesture diminishes the existence of an alternative lesbian culture, here the publishers of her prior books, Alyson and Firebrand Books.26 Whereas her own cartoons are all in black and white without shading for racial identification, the book jacket colors its faces, highlighting the differences between the five pale Euro-Americans and the seven people of color—three African American, two Hispanic (one of whom is black), one Asian, one Middle Eastern, and one mixed ethnicity baby. Bechdel’s cover updates Rockwell’s all white world of “The Gossip” while fulfilling the hope for a more integrated society adumbrated in Rockwell’s famous illustration of “The Problem We All Live With,” 1964, which shows a small, neatly-dressed African-American girl going to school surrounded by U.S. marshals and passing racist graffiti splattered like the tomato on the wall behind her.27 Bechdel’s cover thus recalls Rockwell’s vision of small-town American community, occasionally satirized but lovingly close, and the book jacket implies that what all the figures on the cover are gossiping about is

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the appearance of their exploits in a major book publication, exactly the volume of The Essential DTWOF that chronicles their stories. Like Rockwell’s gossips, the majority of those pictured on The Essential DTWOF’s cover are women. Of the 13 people portrayed, three are male—including Jerry the gay transman, formerly a lesbian; Carlos another gay man; and Stuart, the un-representative straight white man who is attracted to and identifies with lesbians while being a stay-at-home father and community activist. The 10 women pictured include Sparrow and Stuart’s baby Jiao Raizel and the other main characters of DTWOF—beginning and ending with protagonist Mo, all lesbian-identified women, including Sparrow, who begins the strip as a lesbian but calls herself a “bi-dyke” after she becomes Stuart’s partner. All the characters share common interests in the subject of their gossip. The players know one another, care for one another, and all are connected. Thus Bechdel’s cover, like Rockwell’s and like the entire text of The Essential DTWOF, makes visible a group portrait of what Civil Rights leaders like to call a “beloved community,” one that exists both within and outside of U.S. popular culture.28 NOTES 1. Dwight Garner, “Days of Their Lives: Lesbians Star in Funny Pages,” New York Times, December 3, 2008, C1. 2. Alison Bechdel, The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2008). Texts in the comic strip’s bubbles are written in all capitals with considerable bolding. I have changed texts to normal capitalization and rendered bold into italics. All future references to this text are parenthetically noted by page number below. 3. Lisa London, “Review: Dykes to Watch Out For,” The Women’s Review of Books, 21, No. 3 (December 2003), 10–11. 4. Alison Bechdel, DykestoWatchOutFor.Com, http://dykestowatchoutfor .com/frivolous-aimless-queries (accessed June 28, 2009). 5. Ibid. 6. Eva Sollberger, “Seven Days Blog: Stuck in Vermont.vlog: Alison Bechdel,” http://7d.blogs.com/stuckinvt/. Posted December 13, 2008 (accessed May 27, 2009). 7. Audrey Bilger, “Review of the Essential Dykes to Watch Out For,” Bitch: Feminist Response to Popular Culture, 43 (Spring 2009) 64. 8. London, 10. 9. Kate Woolfe, “It’s Not What You Wear: Fashioning a Queer Identity,” in Looking Queer: Body Image and Identity in Lesbian, Bisexual, Gay, and Transgender Communities, ed. Dawn Atkins (New York and London: Harrington Park/ Haworth Press, 1998), 87.

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10. Trina Robbins, “Desperate Housemates: Review of The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For,” The Women’s Review of Books, 26.3 (May/June, 2009), 11. 11. Harriet Malinowitz, “Keeping Tabs on the Dykegeist: Review of Hot, Throbbing Dykes to Watch Out For,” The Women’s Review of Books, 15.2 (November 1997), 6–7. 12. Ibid. 13. Bilger, 64. 14. As featured in Garrison Keillor’s long-running radio program, A Prairie Home Companion, http://prairiehome.publicradio.org (accessed June 8, 2009). 15. Bechdel, http://dykestowatchoutfor.com (accessed June 15, 2008). 16. Family Circus has been drawn from 1960 to the present by artists Bill Keane and his son Jeff Keane. http://www.familycircus.com/ (accessed June 4, 2009). 17. Adventures of Tintin. Comedy Zone. The artist is Herge´, pseudonym of Georges Remi. Tintin.com (accessed June 6, 2009). 18. Rita Skujins, Amazon Bookstore Cooperative now, True Colors Bookstore, Minneapolis, http://www.truecolorsbookstore.com/index.html (accessed May 28, 2009). 19. Apple.com. http://www.apple.com/getamac/ads/ (accessed June 28, 2009). 20. Bechdel, “Gift of the Magi,” Dykes to Watch Out For. http:// dykestowatchoutfor.com/xmas-check-in (accessed May 24, 2009). 21. Christiane Northrup. The Wisdom of Menopause: Creating Physical and Emotional Health and Healing During the Change. Second Edition (New York: Bantam, 2006). First sentence from Amazon Web site http://www.amazon.com/ Wisdom-Menopause-Christiane-Northrup (accessed June 28, 2009). 22. Bechdel, http://dykestowatchoutfor.com/workaday-logo-appreciation -perimenopausal-perversity. Posted December 30, 2008 (accessed May 23, 2009). 23. Scooby Doo television show. Warner Brothers. http://www.freewebs .com/scooby317/characters.htm (accessed June 24, 2009). 24. O. Henry (William Sydney Porter), “Gift of the Magi,” published 1905. http://www.auburn.edu/~vestmon/Gift_of_the_Magi.html (accessed June 23, 2009). 25. Steven Axelrod, “The Virtue of Gossip,” Open Station. Posted May 2, 2009 with the image of Norman Rockwell’s “The Gossip.” http://open.salon .com/blog/steven_axelrod/2009/05/02/the_virtue_of_gossip (accessed June 29, 2009). 26. Firebrand Books is a feminist and lesbian publisher that published the first nine collections of DTWOF. http://www.firebrandbooks.com/about.html. Alyson Books says it is “world’s oldest and largest publisher of LGBT literature”; it published two of the DTWOF series after Firebrand. http://www.alyson.com (accessed June 29, 2009).

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27. Norman Rockwell Museum, “About Norman Rockwell,” “The Problem We All Live With,” http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl, http://www .artknowledgenews.com/files2007a/NormanRockwellProblemWeAllL.jpg (accessed June 29, 2009). 28. See, for example, Charles Marsh, The Beloved Community: How Faith Shapes Social Justice, from the Civil Rights Movement to Today (New York: Basic Books, 2004).

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Chapter 5

Open the Book, Crack the Spine: 69 Meditations on Lesbians in Popular Literature Julie R. Enszer

Alison Bechdel’s graphic memoir, Fun Home, has sold over 60,000 copies in hardback and paperback in the United States, according to BookScan.1 In addition, Fun Home was Entertainment Weekly’s top pick for Nonfiction Books of the Year in 2006.2 Fun Home tells the story of Bechdel’s family, focusing on her experiences coming out and the experience of her father as a married gay man with an affection for adolescent young men, and his eventual death, either by a tragic accident or an intentional suicide. Bechdel speculates about both, but draws no conclusions. In spite of these weighty issues, Fun Home grapples visually and aesthetically with the stories in Bechdel’s family with both humor and levity. Like her earlier work in Dykes to Watch Out For, Fun Home delivers political and social commentary in a single page split between 8 and 12 panels and wrapped with a narrative arc. Bechdel’s gift is combining words and art that are politically charged and visually appealing and accessible to her readers. Bechdel’s talent as an artist and writer alone deserves the accolades that Fun Home earned, but the commercial and critical success of Fun Home also represented the convergence of three strands of American popular culture: graphic novels, increasing interest in memoir among the American reading public, and interest in lesbian life stories.

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In short, Fun Home is a popular book, and perhaps one of the most popular pieces of lesbian literature. To affix the moniker of the most popular piece of lesbian literature ever” depends on how you define popular and how you define lesbian literature. Throughout this essay, I grapple with definitions for both “popular” and “lesbian literature,” suggesting and gesturing to meaning, but, like Bechdel, not resting on easy answers. The dictionary definition of popular is “of, pertaining to, or representing the people, especially the common people,”3 that is the common people writ large without a particular gender or sexual orientation. In my thinking and reading, I am most interested in popular as determined by lesbians and within various communities of lesbians. As opposed to the broader common people, I consider popular to be that which achieves status, reception, and recognition within communities of lesbians. Like most definitions, this one raises additional questions. What are and where are communities of lesbians? Particularly, in the case of literature, what are and where are lesbian readers? Bechdel as an author is entrenched firmly in relationship to communities of lesbians and communities of lesbian readers. While her two most recent books, Fun Home and The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For, were published by the large commercial publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Bechdel’s early publications were in gay/lesbian and feminist serialized publications like off our backs, the Washington Blade, Lesbian News, and the Windy City Times. Bechdel’s work is rooted in the history of lesbian-feminist and queer publishing. Bechdel began penning the comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For in the early 1980s, and her “first cartoon was published in the 1983 Lesbian Pride issue of the local feminist newspaper.”4 She then sold the strip to a variety of gay and lesbian and feminist periodicals. Eventually, Bechdel syndicated Dykes to Watch Out For in hundreds of feminist, gay, lesbian, queer, and alternative publications around the United States and the world. The success of Dykes to Watch Out For as a syndicated comic strip resulted in collections—more than a dozen in total to date—published initially by the independent feminist publisher, Firebrand Books. In reflecting on the genesis of Dykes to Watch Out For in her 2008 introduction to the collection of her work, The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For, Bechdel writes that she wanted to “name the unnamed. Depict the undepicted! And by following a meticulous inductive methodology . . . derive a universal lesbian essence.”5 In short, she asserted, “By drawing the everyday lives of women like me, I hoped to make lesbians more visible not just to ourselves but to everyone.”6 Twenty-five years later with the success of Fun Home and the publication of The Essential Dykes

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to Watch Out For, it is evident that Bechdel did just that. However, I argue, she did it in conjunction with a network of readers and publishers that supported the process of making “lesbian” visible and legible to a community of lesbians and to the broader community. Bechdel’s publishing history is important because it illuminates part of what I want to discuss about “popular lesbian literature.” In order for a category such as “popular lesbian literature” to exist, there must first be literary creations that include lesbians as central characters; then, there must be mechanisms for these literary creations to be published; finally, these publications must reach a community of readers. Thus, part of what makes Bechdel popular within lesbian communities is that Dykes to Watch Out For helped to create lesbian culture and a community of lesbian readers. Initially, Dykes to Watch out For appeared in local publications, but as broader cultural shifts happened and lesbians became more legible and apprehensible outside of circumscribed lesbian/gay and feminist communities, Bechdel’s work drew a larger audience. Eventually lesbians became possible as an element of popular culture writ large. In other words, when lesbians could be imagined, drawn, and written by people like Alison Bechdel (and now a handful of other lesbian graphic artists including Diane DiMassa, Ariel Schrag, and Jennifer Camper), they could exist in the popular culture and be understood as a part of the populace. As intimately tied with the creation of the artistic object, the comic strip in Bechdel’s case, and poetry and novels in other cases, there must be an apparatus for the distribution, promotion, and consumption of lesbian literature. For this reason, while Fun Home may be a crowning jewel of popular lesbian literature and a testament to the increased visibility of lesbian writers in the mainstream media, it is also an object that came into the world and into the hands of a community of readers through a matrix of various lesbian/feminist identity formations and publishing sources. Exploring the embedded nature of the artistic object (here “lesbian literature”), the publishing apparatus, and the community of readers is one of the objectives of this chapter. What is lesbian literature? Who publishes lesbian literature? Who promotes lesbian literature? Who reads lesbian literature? What makes lesbian literature popular? What are the consequences of popularity for lesbian texts? These are the questions that I explore here, again with few answers and more gestures and intimations. I cast a broad timeframe for my considerations of contemporary. Rather than circumscribe my ruminations to the recent decades or even to dates associated with contemporary

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lesbian or feminist struggles, I begin my inquiry in 1890, when the term “lesbian” came into popular circulation to describe physical and sexual love between women. For nearly 400 years in English, lesbian primarily meant “of or pertaining to the island of Lesbos, in the northern part of the Grecian archipelago.”7 A common usage of the adjective came from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics 8 in which he describes a Lesbian rule, which meant “a mason‘s rule made of lead, which could be bent to fit the curves of a moulding.”9 This became used figuratively for “a principle of judgment that is pliant and accommodating.”10 In 1890 the meaning of “lesbian” began to change, however, with a new definition emerging from medical and sexology literature. In 1890 in the Billings Medical Dictionary, the term “lesbian love” was used to refer to tribadism, or sexual activity between women.11 In 1892, Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia Sexualis was published in England; it also refers to love between women as “lesbian love.”12 By 1897, when Henry Havelock Ellis with J. A. Symonds published the second volume of his series, Studies in the Psychology of Sex, titled Sexual Inversion, lesbian meant both female homosexuality13 as well as a Greek geographic location. While the naming of “lesbian” may have been formalized by these medical and sexology texts and rendered for prosperity in the Oxford English Dictionary, Terry Castle traces a more robust etymology of the word lesbian, dating it to 1646.14 Castle notes that the beginning of the twentieth century is the juncture at which the “pattern of symbolic ownership” of the idea of lesbian by men was disrupted by women writers. That is, in the twentieth century, women, and more specifically lesbians, began writing about lesbians and lesbian experience for themselves.15 Lesbian as a term to describe sexual and affectionate relationships between women derives from the association of love between women with the Lesbian poet Sappho. Often described as the tenth muse in Greek mythology, Sappho is associated not only with her home island of Lesbos, but also with sexual relationships with women, though these relationships are discussed and refuted throughout the literary history of Sappho. During the Victorian era, attention to Sappho and new translations of her poetry, which by then exist only in fragments, circulated widely in England. Yopi Prins examines “the emergence of Sappho as an exemplary lyric figure in Victorian England”16 in her book Victorian Sappho. It is, as Prins argues, the Victorian conception of Sappho that shapes lesbian writer’s imaginations of and identifications with Sappho during the next century.

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Sappho’s story and translations of her fragments of poetry are passed down through time and retold and reinterpreted by many writers, but by the end of the nineteenth century Sappho’s story is focused on death, suicide, and lost love—hardly circumstances that would satisfy many contemporary lesbian readers, particularly readers seeking an imaginative narrative to live their lives loving women. Yet this is the persistent, even pernicious, narrative that lesbian writers and readers inherited at the beginning of the twentieth century, and Sappho’s death by suicide became an important consideration for lesbian identity and lesbian literature during the twentieth century. Sappho’s narrative is worked and reworked in novels and poetry that concern themselves with the creation of lesbian identity by prominent twentieth century writers, including Radcliffe Hall, Marguerite Yourcenar, and Dorothy Strachey. As the twentieth century dawned in both England and the United States, poetry is the site of most literary representations of lesbianism. Michael Field, the nom de plume of Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper, who were “aunt and niece” and “lived as a married couple,” published a book of poetry, Long Ago, in 1895.17 Long Ago takes Greek lines from Sappho and expands them into brief lyric poems that tell stories of lesbian love and passion, though the poems are deeply encoded. Pauline Tarn, who wrote under the name Rene´ e Vivien, was another poet at the beginning of the twentieth century known for being an open lesbian and for her sensuous, erotic verse. Vivien’s work was rediscovered and celebrated during the lesbian-feminist movement in the United States during the 1970s and published by the lesbian-feminist press, Naiad. Vivien was also known for her relationship with American bon vivant, Natalie Clifford Barney, another poet and writer who lived as an expatriate in France. Barney published many collections of poetry, notably Pense´es d’ une Amazone in 1920. The salons that Barney convened with other writers and artists during the 1920s in Paris were legendary. In the United States, the lesbian poet Amy Lowell published her first collection of poetry, A Dome of Many Coloured Glass, in 1912 and continued her poetic output until her death in 1925. She also had what Louis Untermeyer described as “a flair for publicity which would have made her another fortune as a promoter” and was influential in promoting Imagism as a new poetic movement.18 The Victorian obsession with Sappho, and the subsequent attention that lesbian writers gave to Sappho, resulted in one of the great literary spoofs of all time. The same year as Michael Field’s Long Ago was

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published in Britain, Pierre Louy¨s’s Les Chansons de Bilitis was published in France. Les Chansons de Bilitis (The Songs of Bilitis) are a series of prose poems about Bilitis, a mythical Greek figure who shared a lover with Sappho. Pierre Louy¨s, the author/translator, passed off the book as a translation from the original, newly discovered Greek documents. In fact, the entire book, from its name (on which Andre Gide punned chansons debilities19) to each of the lyrics, was fabricated by Louy¨s and not based on any historical record. Some Greek scholars at the time were duped successfully. Although some classics scholars believed Louy¨s’s farce to be a diminishment of Sappho as the “great poetess” and protested Louy¨s work for that purpose,20 for women who were sexually, emotionally, and erotically interested in other women, Sappho had already been of great intellectual and personal interest, and now Bilitis was. Both Sappho and Bilitis were taken up as women who express an imaginary past and future possibility for women who identified themselves as lesbians. Les Chansons de Bilitis is of interest to the development of contemporary lesbian identity and contemporary lesbian literature for many reasons. First, Les Chansons de Bilitis was in wide circulation among women in England and France at the turn of the twentieth century. Louy¨ s was embraced by lesbians as a writer who expressed the passions of women who loved women; his writing influenced contemporary lesbian writers. Vivien, among others, found Louy¨ s’s Les Chansons de Bilitis to be an inspiration for her own work. Second, Les Chansons de Bilitis was translated into English and circulated in the United States as early as 1933. As it had been in England and France, Les Chansons de Bilitis was received by lesbians with great delight and interest. When the first lesbian organization in the United States was forming in 1955, the founders of the organization, having read The Songs of Bilitis, named their organization The Daughters of Bilitis, (DOB) after the book. The founders remarked about the selection of the name that if anyone pressed a member on the meaning of the name and the member did not want to reveal herself as a lesbian, she could always use the cover of The Daughters of Bilitis as a Greek-ophile organization.21 In some ways, The Songs of Bilitis has more to offer women seeking literary representation of their lives than Sappho. Louy¨s’s book is a complete narrative, accented by line drawings and an entire backstory. The Songs of Bilitis, while leaving some things to the imagination, does not rely on archeology, additional ancient languages, intense scholarly scrutiny, or long study to understand the story of lesbianism

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and the possibilities of lesbianism in women’s lives. Sappho, however, is fragmented and partial. Sappho’s poems, as they have been passed down through generations, are as intriguing as they are bewildering. How can an identity—and a literary tradition—be constructed on fragments from papyri? While the poems of Louy¨s’s The Songs of Bilitis were a hoax, a joke that delighted Louy¨s and his contemporaries, they became a dynamic and creative spark of inspiration for a lesbian in the twentieth century. The words of Pierre Louy¨s spoke to women and engaged them in a dialogue—a dialogue that they continued and that continues today. Of course, Sappho does too. The narrative of Sappho and the fragments of her work provide a space and the spark for new conversations and new dialogues on which new narratives can be written. Women seeking to imagine and create lives in which they could live and love other women openly found inspiration in the poetry of Sappho. Dialogue between women and the imagined Sappho is foundational to the construction of lesbian identity in the twentieth century and has significant implications for activist communal formations in the twentieth century. Real or imagined, material or mythic, Sappho, the woman and the poet, has significance to lesbians throughout the twentieth century when her geographic moniker is transformed into an adjective and identity label. While poetry flourished during the early part of the twentieth century responding to the Sapphic muse, during the period between the two great wars, lesbian literature continued to be written, published, and circulated. At the risk of being too circuitous, I want to tell another publishing story that involves lesbians, not as creators but as central to the publication and distribution of an important literary novel. James Joyce’s Ulysses, considered one of the great modernist classics, found its way into the world through the publishing knowledge and savvy of not one but two lesbian couples. Ulysses was first serialized in the United States between 1918 and 1920 in The Little Review, run by Margaret Anderson and her partner, Jane Heap. The Little Review began in Chicago and was later moved to New York. Under the editorship of Anderson, The Little Review published much influential modernist poetry and artwork. While Ulysses found its initial audience through serialization, it was not released as a full-length novel until 1922 when it first was published in France by Shakespeare and Company, the independent publishing house owned by Sylvia Beach and Adrienne Monnier. Beach and Monnier were well-known in Parisian literary circles for their bookstore by the same name. A few

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years later Ulysses would be published by a commercial publisher in both the United States and England, but the initial production of the book was done by an independent literary press run by two lesbians. While I do not mean to suggest that Ulysses is part of any lesbian literary canon, the story of its publication is important as it highlights the numerous people involved in bringing forth books into the world and the power of literary presses. The theme of publication and circulation of texts is significant to lesbian literature because of the challenges lesbian work faces in some environments and historical moments as well as how it is republished and recirculated at different times. Virginia Woolf recognized this connection between the production of literary text and the publication of them in Three Guineas, Woolf’s extended essays on the questions of women and war. Woolf wrote in 1938 about the advent over the past decade of smaller and more accessible private printing presses, duplicators, and typewriters that “[t]hey will speak your own mind, in your own words, at your own time, at your own length, at your own bidding. And that, we are agreed, is our definition of intellectual liberty.”22 Literary publishers (and I might even call them activists) like Anderson, Heap, Beach, and Monnier realized the power of press and utilized it to circulate works that they deemed beautiful and important. In addition to Sylvia Beach, Adrienne Monnier, and Natalie Clifford Barney, the west bank of Paris included Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. Stein’s poetry was first published in 1909 and throughout the next two decades; her poetry in Tender Buttons is read by many critics as her most erotic and lesbian-centered poetry. Stein’s tender and enchanting Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, published in 1933, garners her widespread public attention and appreciation. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas explores the lives that the two shared. Though very different in its approach, imagination, and experience, Virginia Woolf’s novel, Orlando, is another extended love poem about women; Woolf dedicates Orlando to Vita Sackville-West to honor their intimate friendship. Orlando tells the story of a man born into the court of Queen Elizabeth I and, refusing to die or grow old, transitions from being a man to a woman during the course of his extraordinary life. Orlando was published in 1928 by Hogarth Press, the small press owned by Woolf and her husband, Leonard. Orlando explores issues of sexuality and love and affection between women as well as the consequences of the constructions of gender on the lives of women. Nella Larsen’s Passing explores race in a similar way to Woolf’s exploration of gender. While the relationship between Clare Kendry

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and Irene Redfield was not read as a lesbian relationship at the time of its publication, many contemporary critics receive Passing as concerned with questions of both race and sexuality. Passing and Orlando raise the question: must lesbian literature have lesbians as central characters or are women and women’s friendships sufficient? Radcliffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness was published in Britain in 1929 and in the United States in 1930. In both countries, The Well of Loneliness was greeted with controversy and censorship. Hall’s tale of Stephen Gordon, a young woman who lives as an “invert,” another term that described an experience of gender and sexuality outside the socially circumscribed norms, includes the accounts of many love affairs between women, not only Gordon’s amorous episodes, but also glimpses of lesbian life in stories about Gordon’s childhood nanny and other women couples in Gordon’s social circles. While many regard the tale of The Well of Loneliness as depressing, the narrative of Stephen Gordon closely mirrors the mythos of Sappho that circulated earlier in England. In the United States during the 1930s, three significant lesbian books were published. In 1930, Margaret Anderson’s autobiography My Thirty Years’ War details her work with The Little Review and her impressions and experiences with many authors that she published and worked with through the magazine. In 1936, Djuna Barnes’s semi-autobiographical novel, Nightwood, was published. Nightwood focuses on love affair between Nora Flood and Robin Vote. Like The Well of Loneliness, for some contemporary readers Nightwood is a challenging book but it openly represents lesbian love and relationships, even if they are difficult and ultimately not destined for happiness. Similarly, Gale Wilhelm’s We Too Are Drifting, published in 1935, tells the story of lesbian love that ends with the lovers separated. Neither Nightwood nor We Too Are Drifting were popular at the time of their release, either among lesbians or a broader reading audience, but each experienced revivals from communities of lesbian readers later in the century. While as contemporary readers, we may wish for other narratives and other endings, the presence of these books in libraries around the world have been lifelines of hope for many lesbian readers looking to find themselves between the pages, which is to me another type of popularity. Mid-century prosperity in the United States brought interesting new developments for popular lesbian literature. On the one, hand mass-produced “pulp” novels began circulating and was read eagerly by lesbians and non-lesbians alike; on the other hand, few works were

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published that received the recognition of Stein, Hall, and Barnes. One novel is an exception and harkens back to these modernist works of the 1920s and 1930s, even though it was published in 1949. Olivia by Olivia, a pseudonym for Dorothy Strachey Bussey, was published by Hogarth Press (the publishing company of Leonard Woolf) tells the story of a young women at a boarding school in France observing the love between two teachers that ends with the suicide of one. Why do so many examples of lesbian literature include suicide? There are many reasons for this; certainly one reason is the connection between Sappho and lesbianism in popular literature. Ever since Ovid’s rendering of Sappho plunging to a self-inflicted death, lesbianism has been associated in some literature with suicide. Another close association in literature with lesbianism is the possibilities of lesbianism in all women’s schools. Olivia is a novel that combines both of these tropes into a work that is most characterized by modernism in terms of its style and structure. Like some of the other modernist novels that deal with lesbianism, Olivia was not a commercially popular book, but again recently readers interest in portrayals of lesbianism have sparked renewed interest in the book. Arno Press published a new edition in the United States in 1975, and, in 2006 the independent publisher Cleis Press, released a new edition of Olivia. Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun was published in 1959 and is now a part of the theatrical cannon. A Raisin in the Sun has neither lesbian characters nor lesbianism as a part of the play. Yet, I mention it as a classic play because it was written by a lesbian during the 1950s. Hansberry wrote for the publication of the Daughters of Bilitis, The Ladder. The Daughters of Bilitis was the first organization for lesbians in the United States and was founded in 1955 in San Francisco. I mention Hansberry’s play here to raise the question again of what constitutes lesbian literature? Must it be about lesbians? Must it feature lesbian characters? Must it be written by women who identify as lesbians? Generally, my answers to all of those questions are yes, as evidenced by the list I have assembled here, but the history of what constitutes lesbian literature is more complex. For instance, during the 1940s and 1950s Jeannette Howard Foster researched what would be the first comprehensive book of “sex-variant women” in literature. Sex-variant is another description for lesbian that was popular during the 1950s. Foster’s work, Sex-Variant Women in Literature, takes as its object of study portrayals of lesbianism in literature, whether by men or women, heterosexual or homosexual. Foster ’s book was first

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self-published by the New York-based Vantage Press in 1956. It was acquired by libraries but received little attention otherwise. Later editions of Sex Variant Women in Literature were produced by Diana Press in 1975 and by Naiad Press in 1985, demonstrating the interest her work generated during the lesbian-feminist movements of the 1970s and 1980s. During the feminist movements of the 1970s and 1980s, feminist literary scholarship had as a central part of its work the reclamation of lost women writers, and lesbian literary scholarship takes a similar tact identifying women writers who are lesbian, regardless of the content of their work. Thus, I include Hansberry here and her extraordinary play in the similar way that I include Angelina Weld Grimke’s play, Rachel: A Play in Three Acts. Both are lesbians (or bisexual women in some scholarly estimations) and both contribute important information to considering our question of what constitutes lesbian literature and what makes it popular. The real action, though, of lesbian literature during the 1950s was in “pulp” novels, where lesbians and lesbian relationships were a regular subject. The books were called “pulp” novels for their small size, low-quality paper, and cheap price; they were mass-market paperbacks designed for mass consumption. Ann Bannon was one of the most popular authors of pulp novels and published nearly a book a year, including the titles Odd Girl Out, I Am a Woman, and Journey to a Woman. Other pulp novels from the 1950s include Valerie Taylor’s Whisper Their Love and Claire Morgan’s The Price of Salt. Claire Morgan is a pseudonym for Patricia Highsmith, who did not publish The Price of Salt using her own name out of concern for her literary career. This, as we’ve seen, was a common choice made by lesbian writers in the first half of the twentieth century. One very popular and commercially successful author who did write about lesbianism using her own name is May Sarton, a very popular poet and novelist during the 1950s. In her 1962 novel, Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing, which was published by W. W. Norton, tells the story of Hilary Stevens, a well-known poet and novelist, who is being interviewed and talks openly and candidly about her lesbian relationships and the importance of them in the production of her art. Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing marked the beginning of Sarton’s portrayals of lesbianism in her work. Though this book was initially not well-received by critics, it found an interested and committed audience as feminism in the United States grew during the following decade. Similarly, Jane Rule’s Desert of the Heart, published in 1964, tells the story of a women getting a divorce in Las Vegas and the relationship

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she has with another woman while there. Initially, Desert of the Heart had a small audience, but it became an important book during the early women’s liberation movement. Twenty years later, both Desert of the Heart and Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing inspired a new generation of lesbian film artists. In 1985, Donna Deitch reinterpreted Rule’s book for the silver screen with the title Desert Hearts, and a quirky Canadian film takes inspiration from Sarton’s work in the film I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing. This cross-generational engagement with lesbian literature, including in publishing practices and adaptations across genres, demonstrates an enduring interest and popularity in lesbian literature. Isabel Miller’s A Place for Us suggests the dramatic changes that come to lesbian literature as a result of the women’s liberation movement. A Place for Us was originally published in 1969 by a small publisher, Bleeker Street Press, and found a grateful and excited audience. In 1972, the large commercial publisher McGraw Hill released the book under the title Patience and Sarah. Something similar happened with Rita Mae Brown’s first novel about Molly Bolt’s coming out and coming of age. Rubyfruit Jungle (28) was first published by Daughters Inc. in 1973 and sold 60,000 copies by 1975. Daughters Inc sold paperback reprint rights to Bantam for $250,000, making Daughters Inc one of the best-known feminist presses. 23 The increasing visibility of communities of lesbian readers generated new commercial markets for lesbian literature and helped it achieve greater popularity. The women’s liberation movement was a catalyst for new lesbian literature and new-found popularity for lesbian literature. Feminists took advantage of new technology that increasingly democratized printing and production, creating not only new magazines, journals, and periodicals, but also pamphlets, flyers, and other bulletins that became a vital part of feminist communications networks. During the decades between 1969 and 1989, lesbian literature was widely published and reviewed, particularly through the powerful engines of feminist journals and feminist presses. Newspapers and magazines were one way that women shared their experiences in women’s liberation and built feminist theory and analysis. Early examples of feminist journals include the newspaper of The Furies, a Washington, D.C.–based radical feminist organization, and the Lavender Monthly in Chicago. During the two decades a number of feminist journals that featured lesbian writers flourished, including Chrysalis, Sinister Wisdom, Conditions, Feminary, and dozens of others. In addition, women founded small presses to publish and promote

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their own work and the work of others. Judy Grahn with Wendy Cadden founded the Women’s Press Collective in Oakland, California, which published Grahn’s early work, Edward the Dyke and Other Poems. Small anthologies of lesbian poetry, prose, and artwork were published by these presses. For instance, Violet Press in New York City published an anthology, We Are All Lesbians, in 1973 and also the work of lesbian poet Fran Winant. In Baltimore, Diana Press, both a publisher as well as a commercial printer, was responsible for publishing a number of important lesbian poets and novelists, including Rita Mae Brown and Elsa Gidlow, as well as collections of short stories edited by Barbara Grier and Coletta Reid, from The Ladder, the newsletter of the Daughters of Bilitis which published from 1956 until 1972. In addition to Rubyfruit Jungle, Daughters Inc., a feminist press based in Plainfield, Vermont, published Elana Nachman/Dykewomon’s Riverfinger Women and reissued French writer and theorist Monique Wittig’s novel, Opoponax, in 1976. The women’s liberation movement of the 1970s created a powerful new audience for books that had been previously forgotten, complicating conceptions of contemporary in relationship to lesbian literature. At the same time, when feminists became more influential in universities, particularly in literature, books like H. D.’s memoir, HERmione, originally written in 1927 but published in 1981, were published for the first time. At what moment are these contemporary literature? At the point of publishing? At the point of creation? Rather than making particular definitions, lesbian literature realizes waves of popularity that are connected with various political, social, economic, and intellectual climates. During the 1970s, poetry flourished as well with collections like Adrienne Rich’s Diving into the Wreck, published in 1973, and Audre Lorde’s The Black Unicorn, published in 1979. One of the things that characterized lesbian literature during this time was the hybrid nature of the genre. Lorde’s memoir, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, is an example of the combining of poetry, memoir, and mythology as well as Michelle Cliff’s book, Claiming and Identity They Taught Me to Despise. Other popular novels include utopian fantasies, The Female Man by Joanna Russ and The Wanderground by Sally Miller Gearhart; Lover by Bertha Harris; and Ann Allen Shockley’s Loving Her, about an interracial lesbian couple. Politics and political analysis informed by the women’s liberation movement and lesbian-feminism shaped these books as well as books like Noretta Koertge’s Valley of the Amazons and Gillian Hanscombe’s Between Friends.

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Coming out and relationships are two themes that are common to much literature of the era as well as lesbian literature more broadly, though these themes are treated with greater complexity during this time. Part of the complexity stems from the large number of books being published during this time. Publishers like Naiad Press released dozens of books each year, primarily romance novels, but other books of interest to readers as well. Naiad Press authors included Katherine Forrest, whose portrayals of lesbian relationships have been widely praised by readers and critics. The poet Marilyn Hacker’s collection Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons is a sonnet sequence that narrates the entire story of a lesbian relationship, reclaiming the literary tradition of the sonnet as a location to express lesbian desire. Literature was then and continues to be a way that lesbians could imagine and construct their lives. During the fin-de-sie` cle of the twentieth century, more novels by lesbian writers with lesbian themes were published by mainstream publishing houses—and many of these were met with critical acclaim. Coming of age and coming out were predominant themes in some novels, like Jeannette Winterson’s debut novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina, Jacqueline Woodson’s Autobiography of a Family Photo, and Emma Donoghoe’s debut novel Stir Fry. Though novels about lesbians published by mainstream publishing houses were not only about coming out. Sarah Schulman’s After Delores, a funny and wry mystery about a lesbian living in the East Village, and Sarah Water’s debut novel, Tipping the Velvet, a Victorian euphemism for cunnilingus, explore the gender and its transgressions in the Victorian era. One of the consequences of the commercial publishing world’s acceptance and promotion of lesbian writers, combined with the backlash against feminism in the United States during the 1980s, is that many lesbian-feminist publishers of books and periodicals suffered during the 1990s and the early part of the new millennium. Some small feminist presses like Seal Press in the United States and Virago in the United Kingdom were sold to large commercial publishing houses, while others struggled, limiting their publishing output or folding. In spite of this contraction of independent feminist publishing, small presses continued to bring out important books. Often work published by small presses represents provocative and challenging ideas like Drawing the Line, a collaborative book by the Kiss and Tell Collective. Small presses also published important works by writers of color that explored lesbian sexuality in communities of color.

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Examples include Terri de la Pena’s Margins, the story of Veronica Melendez and her Chicano family in Los Angeles, Shani Mootoo’s imagined world on the Caribbean island of Lantanacamara and the town of Paradise in Cereus Blooms at Night, Cherry Muhanji’s novel Her, Jewelle Gomez’s vampire novel, The Gilda Stories, and Sky Lee’s exploration of the Chinese-Canadian community in Vancouver Canada in her novel Disappearing Moon Cafe´. In addition, the turn of the millennium brought the founding of new, small lesbian publishers dedicated to the romance genre like Bella Books, Bold Strokes Books, and Bywater Books. These publishers continue the legacy of Naiad Books, which published many romance novels during the 1970s and 1980s as well as reprinted numerous books which would become lesbian classics, like the poetry of Renee Vivien and the literary criticism of Jeannette Howard Foster. In addition, in recent years genre novelists like Ellen Hart and her series of Jane Lawless and Sophie Greenway mysteries, Barbara Wilson with mysteries like Murder in the Collective, and Nicola Griffith with fantasy/science fiction novels like the award-winning Ammonite demonstrate the enduring appeal of genre fiction to communities of lesbian readers. At the beginning of the second millennium, the output of lesbian writers continues. Michelle Tea, a writer, poet, and bon vivant in the same fashion as Natalie Clifford Barney, published her second novel Valencia in 2000; Stacey D’Erasmo’s debut novel, Tea, was also published in 2000 and well-received critically. Lest I suggest that the struggle for visibility and recognition for lesbian literary artists is one of continual progress, consider the words of novelist, playwright, and activist Sarah Schulman in her 2009 book Ties That Bind, “The one thing that has substantially changed in the publishing world is that a writer can be openly lesbian personally and still be accepted as an American writer as long as she produces some work with no primary lesbian content. So, the current state of affairs is that books where the lesbian content is coded, sub-textual, involved with secondary characters or sub-plots, written in what is called ‘lesbian sensibility’ or featuring strong women characters with ambiguous sexualities are considered ‘well written.’ Books in which the protagonist is a lesbian in the first and last chapter? These books are not ‘well written.’ They are considered to not deserve to be part of American fiction because the lives that they depict are not acceptable lives. Books with primary lesbian characters are diminished and demeaned because the prejudice and stigma against the characters results in a

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series of institutionalized lies.”24 From Schulman’s assessment the state of lesbians in popular literature today may not be very different than where we began in 1895, though each generation of lesbian writers and readers struggles with the conditions that the world presents and relies on those who follow to remember, reassess, and re-imagine. As I began with Alison Bechdel’s graphic memoir and her collection of comic strips, I want to conclude with some thoughts on the current popularity of lesbian poets. The United States and the United Kingdom in 2009 each have lesbian poet laureates, Kay Ryan and Carol Ann Duffy, respectively. In July 2008, Kay Ryan became the sixteenth poet laureate of the United States by Librarian of Congress James Billington. Ryan is the first open lesbian to occupy the position; Elizabeth Bishop, of course, filled the predecessor role of Poetry Consultant in 1949 to 1950, but she was not open about her sexual orientation. In the announcement about Ryan’s laureateship, Billington noted, “Kay Ryan is a distinctive and original voice within the rich variety of contemporary American poetry.” He continued, “She writes easily understandable short poems on improbable subjects. Within her compact compositions there are many surprises in rhyme and rhythm and in sly wit pointing to subtle wisdom.”25 The same could be said about Carol Ann Duffy’s work. It, too, is characterized by wit and humor, though Duffy also uses dramatic monologue extensively in her work. Duffy, who is alternately identified in press accounts as bisexual or lesbian, became poet laureate in the United Kingdom in 2009. What is it about the current moment in politics and in literature that both of these positions are filled by lesbian poets? Are they only in these roles, as Schulman suggests, because they do not write their lesbianism openly in their work like Marilyn Hacker or Adrienne Rich? Moreover, by most estimates the most popularly selling poet in the United States today is Mary Oliver. Mary Oliver’s earliest work was noted by Barbara Grier and other lesbian critics in The Ladder as important and as filled with Sapphic undertones. This was well before she won the Pulitzer Prize for her collection, American Primitive in 1983, and long before she began openly writing about her long-term lesbian partner. Writing about Oliver’s first collection of poems No Voyages and Other Poems, Grier, using the nom de plume Gene Damon, described Oliver’s poems as having “fire and vigor” as well as “technical virtuosity.”26 Another review likened Oliver ’s work to Edna St. Vincent Millay, though said that Oliver had “a fresh, tangy, modern tone” and was a poet “we will hear more from . . . and it will be worth listening to.”27 These words from 1965 described the passion and excitement of

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Mary Oliver’s early work without suggesting that she was a lesbian. Forty years would pass before Oliver would write openly about being a lesbian, but that openness would not detract from her large following of readers and her widespread popularity. The public recognition of these three women and the wide acceptance and embrace of their work suggest an insurgence of popularity for lesbian writers. Perhaps it is only conditional as Sarah Schulman suggests; perhaps it is only temporary; perhaps it is only among small, circumscribed groups of readers; perhaps it is dependent on the means and methods of publication that exist; perhaps it is all of this. Whatever the conditions of the current moment that brings lesbian poets more into the popular imagination, the echoes of the past remain. Fanny Kemble’s address, O Lesbian, to the long dead Sappho, becomes an address to lesbians today—O Lesbian, a apostrophic call to a people no longer absent, dead, or mythic. O Lesbian, the call to share in dialogue. O Lesbian, still a contested formation; O Lesbian, the apostrophic motion to animate a people. While Victorian predecessors wrote verse about Sappho and the tragedy of her love which plunged her into the depths of the sea that was death, lesbian poets today actually are fulfilling the final intimation of Fanny Kemble, “ ‘Tis more than death—’tis all of life—/And parcel of Eternity.”28 Contemporary lesbian literature is “our parcel of Eternity.”

NOTES 1. In hard cover, as of July 20, Fun Home had sold 31,850 copies while in paperback it had sold 29,325; booksellers generally regard the BookScan number to represent 70–80 percent of the total copies of the book sold. 2. “Nonfiction Books of the Year,” Entertainment Weekly 913/914 (2006): 137–138. 3. Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random House, Inc. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/popular (accessed November 30, 2009). 4. Alison Bechdel, The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2008), xiv. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid., xv. 7. Oxford English Dictionary. 8. Aristotle Eth. Nic. V. x. 7. 9. Oxford English Dictionary. 10. Ibid. 11. Ibid.

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12. Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Psychopathia Sexualis (New York: Rebman, 1886), 417–418. 13. Havelock Ellis. Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2, Sexual Inversion (Philadelphia: F. A. Davis Company, 1901), 125. 14. Terry Castle, The Literature of Lesbianism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 33. 15. Terry Castle, The Literature of Lesbianism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 6. 16. Yopi Prins, Victorian Sappho (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 3. 17. Ibid., 74. 18. Louis Untermeyer, “A Memoir,” in The Complete Poetical Works of Amy Lowell, xxiii (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1955). 19. Roger A. Pack, “Two Classical Forgeries,” The American Journal of Philology, 110, no. 3 (Autumn, 1989), 482. 20. Ibid., 483. 21. Marcia M. Gallo, Different Daughters: A History of the Daughters of Bilitis and the Rights of the Lesbian Rights Movement (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2006). 22. Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1938), 98. 23. Kate Adams, “Built Out of Books: Lesbian Energy and Feminist Ideology in Alternative Publishing,’’ Journal of Homosexuality 34, no. 3/4 (1998), 127. 24. Sarah Schulman, Ties That Bind: Familial Homophobia and Its Consequences (New York: The New Press, 2009), 154. 25. Library of Congress, “Librarian of Congress Appoints Kay Ryan Poet Laureate,” July 17, 2008, http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2008/08-127.html. 26. Gene Damon, “LESBIAN LITERATURE IN 1965,” Ladder 10.7 (1966): 17–19. 27. Lennox Strong and Terri Cook, “Poetry of Lesbiana,” Ladder 11.2 (1966): 20–28. 28. Frances Anne Kemble, “Lines Written by the Seaside” in Poems (London: Richard Bentley, 1883), 203.

SIXTY-NINE SELECTIONS (Works mentioned in the text are listed here in order by initial date of publication.) Sappho: Memoir, Text, Selected Renderings and a Literal Translation by Henry Thornton Wharton, 1885. (See also twentieth century translations by Mary Barnard, Willis Barnstone, and Anne Carson.) Long Ago, Michael Field, 1895. Les Chansons of Bilitis, Pierre Louy¨s, 1895.

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A Woman Appeared to Me, Renee Vivien, 1904. A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass, Amy Lowell, 1912. Tender Buttons, Gertrude Stein, 1914. Pensees d’ une Amazone, Natalie Clifford Barney, 1920. Rachel: A Play in Three Acts, Angelina Weld Grimke´, 1920. Orlando, Virginia Woolf, 1928. The Well of Loneliness, Radcliffe Hall, 1929. Passing, Nella Larsen, 1929. My Thirty Years’ War, Margaret Anderson, 1930. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, Gertrude Stein, 1933. We Too Are Drifting, Gale Wilhelm, 1935. Feux, Marguerite Yourcenar, 1936 (published in English in 1981). Nightwood, Djuna Barnes, 1936. Olivia, Olivia, 1949. The Price of Salt, Claire Morgan (Patricia Highsmith), 1952. Odd Girl Out, Ann Bannon, 1957. Whisper Their Love, Valerie Taylor, 1957. A Raisin in the Sun, Lorraine Hansberry, 1959. I am a Woman, Ann Bannon, 1959. Journey to a Woman, Ann Bannon, 1960. Desert of the Heart, Jane Rule, 1964. Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing, May Sarton, 1965. A Place for Us, Isabel Miller, 1969 (republished in 1972 by McGraw Hill as Patience and Sarah). Edward the Dyke and Other Poems, Judy Grahn, 1969. Rubyfruit Jungle, Rita Mae Brown, 1973. We Are All Lesbians, various authors, 1973. Diving into the Wreck, Adrienne Rich, 1973. Riverfinger Women, Elana Nachman (now Elana Dykewomon), 1974. Loving Her, Ann Allen Shockley, 1974. The Female Man, Joanna Russ, 1975. Opoponax, Monique Wittig, 1966, 1976. Lover, Bertha Harris, 1976. The Wanderground, Sally Miller Gearhart, 1978. The Black Unicorn, Audre Lorde, 1979. Claiming an Identity They Taught Me To Despise, Michelle Cliff. HERmione, H.D., 1981 (written in 1927). Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, Audre Lorde, 1982. Curious Wine, Katherine Forrest, 1983. Valley of the Amazons, Noretta Koertge, 1984. Between Friends, Gillian Hanscombe, 1984. Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons, Marilyn Hacker, 1986. Oranges are not the only fruit, Jeannette Winterson, 1987. After Delores, Sarah Schulman, 1988.

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Hallowed Murder (first in the Jane Lawless Series), Ellen Hart, 1989. Her, Cherry Muhanji, 1990. Disappearing Moon Cafe´, Sky Lee, 1990. The Gilda Stories, Jewelle Gomez, 1991. Drawing the Line: Sexual Politics on the Wall, Kiss & Tell Collective (Persimmon Blackbridge, Lizard Jones, and Susan Stewart), 1991. Bastard Out of Carolina, Dorothy Allison, 1992. Margins, Terri de la Pena, 1992. Ammonite, Nicola Griffith, 1993. Murder in the Collective, Barbara Wilson, 1993. Hothead Paisan: Suicidal Lesbian Terrorist, Diane DiMassa. Autobiography of a Family Photo, Jacqueline Woodson, 1994. Stir Fry, Emma Donoghue, 1994. Cereus Blooms at Night, Shani Mootoo, 1996. Potential, Ariel Schrag, 1997. Tipping the Velvet, Sarah Waters, 1998. Valencia, Michelle Tea, 2000. Tea. Stacey D’ Erasmo, 2000. Juicy Mother: Celebration, Jennifer Camper, 2004. Fun Home, Alison Bechdel, 2005. The Niagara River, Kay Ryan, 2005. Thirst, Mary Oliver, 2006. Rapture, Carol Ann Duffy, 2006. The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For, Alison Bechdel, 2008.

Chapter 6

Gay Pulps Sarah Boslaugh

In the period between World War II and Stonewall pulp paperbacks played an important role in the lives of many individual gay men and in the formation of the gay community. For many gay men, particularly those living in small towns, a pulp novel may have provided the first indication that they were not the only gay person on the face of the earth. Additionally gay pulps supplied information about contemporary gay life to their readers and provided an alternative to the often gloomy portrayal of gay life offered by many literary novels. While the “golden age” of gay pulps runs from about 1950 through the late 1960s their spirit lives on today in the many gay popular fiction and erotic titles published by companies such as Alyson Books, Cleis Press, and Arsenal Pulp Press. Although most of the golden age pulps were far from literary masterpieces some are still enjoyable to read today while others are best remembered for their role in gay history and their documentation of contemporary gay life. A BRIEF HISTORY OF PULPS In literary and cultural studies the term “pulp” has several distinct but related meanings. First of all, pulp refers to a type of inexpensive, high acid content paper made from wood pulp. Second, it refers to books and magazines printed on such paper, whether they contain original or reprinted material and whether said material is high-, middle-, or low-brow. Third, it refers to books and magazines originally printed on

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that type of paper: a pulp novel reprinted on acid-free paper with a library binding remains a pulp at heart. And finally it refers to a style of writing and art originally associated with pulp novels and magazines but which has now become a familiar popular culture style recognized by people who may never have seen a golden age pulp novel. The origins of pulp fiction reach back into the nineteenth century when the expansion of primary school education in Great Britain and the United States greatly increased the number of people who could read. Pulp magazines and books were created to meet the desires of this new class of readers for affordable, enjoyable reading matter: terms such as “penny dreadful” and “dime novel” give an indication of just how inexpensive these new genres were as well as how disdainfully they were viewed by more educated readers. Pulp novels and magazines were generally written quickly, intended for an audience of common rather than elite readers and relied on formulas and conventions many of which remain associated with pulps today. For most authors of these popular works literary merit was a secondary concern while they focused their energies on squeezing sensational content (crime, sex, and the supernatural were staples of popular fiction then as now) into formulaic plots (Server 2002, xi–xii). The modern paperback book dates from 1939 when Pocket Books (a division of Simon & Schuster) issued the first mass-market paperback. World War II gave a great boost to the industry as the U.S. government provided paperbacks to soldiers thus creating a generation of readers among young men who might never have thought to buy a hardcover book for themselves. Paperbacks became popular on the home front as well. They were so inexpensive that almost anyone could afford to buy one and were sold primarily through the same outlets which carried magazines—including bus stations, drug stores and newsstands—giving people who lived in towns too small to support a bookstore their first real opportunity to buy books. The fact that they were printed on cheap paper with glued rather than sewn bindings meant that they quickly fell apart but while this poses a problem to the archivist and researcher it was of minor concern to the original purchaser since the books were so inexpensive to begin with. Although printed on wood pulp paper, the first paperbacks were not the trashy volumes later associated with the designation “pulps.” For instance, Lost Horizon by James Hilton, a selection of Shakespeare plays, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie and Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte¨ were among the first ten Pocket Books titles. The great success of the Pocket Books format encouraged other publishers to

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bring out their own paperback lines which were also initially reprints of books already released in hardcover. This changed in 1950 when Fawcett began commissioning paperback originals, that is, titles which were published initially as paperbacks (Server 2002, xiv). The first paperback originals mark the beginning of the “golden age” of pulp fiction which continued into the 1960s and only came to an end when the sexual revolution, decreasing censorship concerns and the increasingly assertive gay liberation movement (particularly after Stonewall) created other avenues for the publication and distribution of gay books. There is no sure way to determine how many gay pulp novels were printed. Libraries were disinclined to collect them, publishers and distributors often operated clandestinely due to legal concerns, and the books themselves were not made to last: their pages quickly yellowed and cracked while the glued bindings broke almost as quickly. But as an indication of the popularity of the genre consider that the Gay Pulp Fiction collection at Brown University includes over 4,600 volumes and the library maintains a list of about 700 other volumes which it does not own but would like to acquire (Brown University 2000). In this chapter we will include both pulp originals and reprints of novels or other books in pulp paperback format in the category of gay pulps. It is unlikely that contemporary readers were concerned with the distinction between original and reprinted volumes and both types of books were marketed and distributed in the same manner. Identification of authors poses another issue because gay pulps were often published under pseudonyms for a variety of reasons including the risk of criminal prosecution, the desire to avoid being publicly identified with the gay world, or to disguise the fact that a single author was churning out many books per year. When an author’s real name is known it will be used in this chapter as well as the pseudonym. HOW GAY PULPS WERE WRITTEN AND DISTRIBUTED Both reprints and paperback originals are important in the history of gay pulps: just as the paperback industry began with Pocket Books re-issuing books originally published in hardcover so many of the first gay pulps were reprints of titles first published as literary novels. Despite repression of gay people in the 1940s and 1950s quite a few respectable literary novels (the type issued by mainstream publishers and collected by academic libraries) published in those years included gay content: examples include Carson McCullers’ Reflections in a Golden Eye (Houghton Mifflin 1941), The Brick Foxhole by Richard

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Brooks (Harper 1945), and The Fall of Valor (Rinehart 1946) by Charles Jackson. Michael Bronski estimates that at least 100 novels including gay characters or gay themes were published in the years 1940 to 1969 by mainstream U.S. publishing houses as well as hundreds more with incidental gay content (Bronski 2003, 25–26). When these novels were reissued as pulps they became accessible to a much wider public, both because of the broader distribution channels and because while some bookstores refused to carry gay titles would-be censors seldom considered inspecting the titles offered in newsstand paperback racks (Bergman 1999, 36; Gunn 2005, 2). Paperback originals are often typified as poorly written books with stereotypical plots, little or no character development and lots of sex shoehorned in without regard to plausibility. Many gay pulps are guilty on all counts but this is less surprising if you consider the conditions under which they were written. Most pulp authors were paid a flat fee to deliver a manuscript of 50,000 to 65,000 words, sometimes with the additional stipulation that 20 percent of those words had to be devoted to “hots” meaning sex scenes (Bergman 1999, 36–37). These guidelines allowed the author little leeway to develop characters or create an interesting plot and also meant that frequent sex scenes were obligatory even if they made no sense in terms of the characters or plot. To offset their low fees, sometimes $250 or less per book (Bronski 2003, 224) many writers churned out multiple books each year under a variety of pseudonyms. Given this context it’s not surprising that many pulps seem formulaic: a writer working quickly is motivated to rely on frameworks which have been successful in the past. Consider the prolific Victor J. Banis who published over 140 books, including nine Man from C.A.M.P. novels in just three years, under various pseudonyms including Don Holliday, Victor Jay, and J. X. Williams. Banis has stated that he wrote most of his novels in a week or less and that what he submitted to the publisher was essentially a first draft (Banis n.d.). Another example of amazing productivity is the author and illustrator Carl Corley who wrote at least 21 gay pulp novels in the years 1966–1971 while also holding down a day job as an illustrator for the Louisiana Highway Department (Bronski 2003, 224). Some writers achieved the ultimate in recycling by reusing not just plots and characters but the exact same prose in multiple novels. Given the low fees authors were paid for writing pulps and the speed at which they completed manuscripts it’s not surprising that they sometimes tried to sell the same material more than once. Because publishers often did very little in terms of copy editing due to the

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low-budget nature of the pulp enterprise it’s equally unsurprising that sometimes the authors got away with it. For instance in Banis’s Man from C.A.M.P. series the second novel includes a verbatim quote of about 20 pages from the first, and the final novel of the series includes a section of 40 pages copied from the first with only the name of one character changed (and that change not carried out consistently) (Bergman 1999, 33). Besides the magazine distribution channels noted above, mail order book clubs and mailing services played a key role in distributing gay books to interested readers before the establishment of gay book stores in the late 1960s. The owners of these services risked prosecution in the 1950s and early 1960s on charges of distributing obscene materials through the mail but still managed to provide an important means of distributing gay books. One of the earliest gay book clubs was the Cory Book Service, a subscription service founded in 1952 by Edward Sagarin (using the pseudonym Donald Webster Cory) and Brandt Aymar. Their initial mailing list was the addresses of people who corresponded with Sagarin concerning his book The Homosexual in America (1951). Each month the Cory Book Service offered a gay-themed book, generally a high-quality literary work, to its subscribers (Summers 2006). The service was successful, attracting between 2,000 and 3,000 subscribers, but ceased to operate within a year as it could not overcome two difficulties. One was the small number of quality gay books available while the other was the difficulty of advertising available titles when major papers such as the New York Times refused to carry advertisements for gay books and the publisher and distributor might face prosecution for dealing in obscene materials (Jones 2000, 46). The Guild Press Book Service, founded in 1962 in Washington, D.C. by H. Lynn Womack, distributed titles of a less refined nature including physique magazines and the erotic series “Classics of the Gay Underground.” The most notable fact about the Guild Press Book Service may have been the size of its mailing list, reportedly including over 40,000 addresses in the early 1960s. This far outnumbers the membership of any contemporary U.S. gay or homophile organization (Bronski 2003, 199; Bergman 1999, 38). Although both gay and lesbian pulps fit in the category of novels featuring “forbidden” or nonconforming sexual behavior (along with incest, adultery, promiscuity, and so on) a distinction must be made between lesbian pulps and gay pulps in terms of authorship and audience. Gay pulps are generally believed to have been written primarily

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by and for gay men. Of course there are exceptions (some gay pulps were written by women, for instance) but straight men and women have never been considered to offer much of a market for gay pulps, in contrast to the large number of straight men who purchased lesbian pulps. While this limited market resulted in the publication of fewer gay male pulps it also meant that those which did get published were more likely to reflect the experience of the men who wrote them rather than a fantasy world created for the arousal of outsiders. This limited market combined with the availability of literary novels with gay characters also explains why fewer paperback originals about gay men were published relative to the number of lesbian paperback originals (Stryker 2001, 104–105). CENSORSHIP AND GAY LITERATURE Censorship was a serious issue for writers, publishers, and distributors in the 1950s and early 1960s: people could be prosecuted for publishing or distributing obscene literature and almost anything involving gay sexuality could be interpreted by the courts as obscene. The penalties could be quite severe, as demonstrated by the case of Sanford E. Aday and Wallace de Ortega Maxey. Aday and Maxey, both members of the Mattachine Society (an early gay rights group) published dozens of gay books under various imprints in the 1950s and early 1960s and were regularly in trouble with the law. But they continued to operate until 1963 when both were convicted on federal charges of distributing pornography through the mail (for shipping a book titled Sex Life of a Cop to a customer in Grand Rapids, MI) and were sentenced to 25 years in jail and fines of $25,000 (Stryker 2001, 19–20) Jay Greenberg published many gay books from the 1930s onward, including Twilight Men, The Better Angel, Quatrefoil, and The Homosexual in America, and cooperated with Brandt Aymar and Edward Sagarin (Donald Webster Cory) in establishing the Cory Book Service. Despite the fact that Greenberg made money on almost all the gay titles he carried, he stopped carrying gay books after 1953 when he was charged with publishing and distributing obscene materials. The court ruled that every gay fiction titled published by Greenberg was obscene and he was fined $5,000 and ordered not to re-issue those titles (Jones 2000, 47). The censorship trial of Victor J. Banis had a happier ending. Banis was indicted in 1964 on federal charges of conspiracy to distribute obscene materials: the material in question was his first novel The Affairs of Gloria. Banis was acquitted on a technicality but was subject

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to harassment for years thereafter. However rather than discourage him from writing gay fiction this experience motivated Banis to take his writing more seriously and he made a career out of writing positive gay novels including the Man from C.A.M.P. series (Banis, n.d.). Fortunately a series of court cases changed the standard required to declare a work obscene and by the mid-1960s publishers and distributors had much less fear of prosecution. Authors could also suffer from an informal type of censorship in which attaching their name to a gay novel, however respectable and literary, could have negative consequences for their career. A case in point is Gore Vidal, now recognized as one of the finest stylists in twentieth-century American literature. However his career got off to a rough start as his first novel The City and the Pillar (E. P. Dutton 1946) had the effrontery to include a gay character who was both masculine and well-adjusted. The New York Times refused to advertise The City and the Pillar and for the next several years Vidal could not get his books reviewed in major publications. He supported himself during those years by writing popular fiction under several pseudonyms including “Edgar Box” and “Katherine Everard,” the latter alluding to the Everard, a gay bathhouse in New York City (Kloman 2005). A FEW REPRESENTATIVE GAY PULP NOVELS So many gay pulps were published that it would be impossible to summarize them all here. Instead, this section will focus on describing a few novels which represent something of the variety of publications offered in this format. Because of the distinctive cover art and blurb conventions developed to market these books, which often misrepresented the material inside, we will also look at how these novels were presented to the public in their pulp editions. James Baldwin’s novel Giovanni’s Room (1956) is a good example of a book first published in hardcover which found a second life as a pulp paperback. A legitimate literary novel by a distinguished African-American writer, it was chosen #2 among the top 100 gay novels by The Publishing Triangle, an association of gay men and lesbians working in publishing (Publishing Triangle 2009). Giovanni’s Room tells the story of a young American man who is engaged to be married although he has had relationships with men in the past. While on vacation in Italy the American begins an affair with an Italian man whom he met in a gay bar and is thus forced to confront his continuing homosexual desires. Susan Stryker notes that social alienation is a

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major theme of the novel and that Baldwin used his experience of prejudice as an African-American as well as a gay man to inform his writing (2001, 104). Despite the undeniable literary quality of the novel you might mistake the Signet edition for just another pulp (involving either gay or straight sex): the cover features a swarthy young man with his shirt half open with a bed and a bottle of wine half-seen through an open door. Lonnie Coleman, best known for writing the New York Times bestseller Beulah Land (1974) and its sequels Look Away Beulah Land (1977) and Legacy of Beulah Land (1981) also wrote the remarkably forward-looking gay novel Sam (paperback edition 1961 by Pyramid Books). As noted above, in the 1940s and 1950s there were more than a few American novels which included gay characters: what makes Sam different is that these men are portrayed as part of a varied community within which they may find fulfilling lives. The cover art for the paperback edition is guilty of false advertising as it promises “A frank novel of life and loves in a strange twilight world” and features a manicured male hand flamboyantly gesturing with a cigarette holder against a violet background (Stryker 2001, 105). But the novel itself is not at all sensationalistic: it tells the story of middle-aged New York publisher Sam Kendrick who lives in a great house in Greenwich Village, loves his work, and enjoys a wide circle of gay male friends and acquaintances. Coleman’s characters speak remarkably directly about their sexual lives: when Walter, a selfish young actor living with Sam, informs him that “I’d screw chickens at a carnival if it got me what I wanted” Sam replies “You know as well as I do New York is white with the bones of actors who thought they could rise to the top by dropping their pants” (quoted in Bronski 2003, 63). After ending his unsatisfactory relationship with Walter Sam meets the love of his life in a gay bathhouse and Coleman provides the reader with a guided tour of the premises in the process. The prolific Marijane Meaker wrote under several pseudonyms including Vin Packer, Ann Aldrich, and M. E. Kerr: her books include lesbian pulps, mysteries and young adult novels as well as gay pulps. Meaker, writing as Vin Packer, based the 1954 Fawcett pulp Whisper His Sin on the real-life Fraden-Wepman murder case in which a young man poisoned his parents by putting cyanide in their champagne cocktails. The Fawcett front cover blurb reads “How a strange and twilight love lighted the way to frenzied murder” (Stryker 2001, 106) while the back copy is remarkable for its blend of titillation and condemnation:

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This is one of the most shocking novels we have ever published. It deals with a strange way of life that has become all too prevalent, and is still spreading. The book begins in the tormented mind of a boy and ends in the tormented murder of his parents. Between this beginning and this end, there is a frightening picture of how the blight of sexual distortion spreads, corrupts, and finally destroys those around it. We also believe that this is one of the most morally enlightening books you will ever read. (quoted in Bronski 2003, 142) Readers who got past the cover would be surprised to find a novel which is fairly sympathetic to its gay characters. The story involves a wealthy college freshman who is manipulated by a psychotic older classmate: playing on the young man’s insecurities, the older man eventually induces him to murder his parents. Despite the sensationalistic nature of the story Packer creates sympathy for both students by portraying the homophobic society in which they must exist and the pressures they feel to conform to a way of life which will never be satisfactory for them. Gay detective novels in the U.S. date back to the 1961 pulp original The Gay Detective by Lou Rand and remain popular today: Drewey Wayne Gunn’s 2005 bibliography lists over 600 works of literature featuring gay male detectives (Gunn 2005). The genre enjoyed a boom in the late 1960s and among the most popular were the Man from C.A.M.P. novels by Victor J. Banis writing under the pseudonym Don Holliday. The series features detective Jackie Holmes and his white poodle Sophie and use a formula in which Jackie is assigned to work with a homophobic government agent, they solve the case, and then the agent hops into bed with Jackie. The novels contain many descriptions of contemporary gay life and Banis provided the series with a serious undertone by giving Jackie a backstory: he became a detective for C.A.M.P., “an international, underground organization dedicated to the advancement and the protection of homosexuals” (quoted in Gunn 2005, 33–34) after one of his friends was blackmailed by a policeman and committed suicide (Gunn 2005, 18–19). But the C.A.M.P. novels are also satirical and fun. Jackie is extraordinarily sex-positive (he keeps track of his conquests by cutting notches in a giant wooden phallus) and the novels are full of humorous acronyms which parody the contemporary television series The Man from U.N.C.L.E. For instance C.A.M.P.’s main antagonist is B.U.T.C.H.

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(Brothers United to Crush Homosexuality) and in one novel Jackie’s female relatives unite to form W.A.T.E.R.C.R.E.S.S. (Women Acting Together, Enlightened, Righteous, Courageous, Responsible, Enterprising, Strong and Sensible). Characters are often given humorous or punning names: in The Man from C.A.M.P. Jackie must track down a ring of diamond forgers led by a lesbian named Big Daddy, in The Gay Dogs he infiltrates a dog-napping ring run by Anna Lingus, and in Color Him Gay the rock star Dingo Stark (referencing Ringo Starr of the Beatles) is blackmailed over a gay relationship. The covers reflected this sense of fun: for instance the Corinth edition of The Man from C.A.M.P. features a dapper Jackie, complete with cigarette holder and poodle, in from of an op-art background along with the words “Yoo hoo! Lover boy!” Richard Amory’s (pseudonym of Richard Love) Song of the Loon (Greenleaf Classics 1966) is reputed to be the single most widely read American gay novel (Stryker 2001, 116): Tom Norman estimates that 30 percent of gay men in the United States purchased a copy (Bronski 2003, 212). Song of the Loon and its sequels Song of Aaron and Listen, the Loon Sings are pastoral romances set in an imaginary American Wild West which certainly connected with readers although they will not win any awards for literary merit. Bronski describes Amory’s style as “a heady cross between a lush poetic epic verging on parody, a boys’ adventure story, and Victorian porn . . . ” but also notes that he draws on several traditions in American literature including a flight from the constraints of civilization into the wilderness and a homoerotic relationship between a white man and a man of color. The latter pattern was first suggested by the critic Leslie Fiedler who noted the recurrence of such pairs in classic American literature, including Huck and Tom in Huck Finn, Ishmael and Queequeg in Moby Dick and Natty Bumppo and Chingachgook in The Leatherstocking Tales. The cover emphasizes the pastoral aspect of the novel, featuring a buckskin-clad European admiring an almost-naked Native American flute player in a lush meadow with mountains in the background. The story of Song of the Loon involves the encounters of European settler Ephraim MacIver with a tribe of Native Americans, the Loon Society, who accept homoerotic behavior as natural and do not suffer from the internalized homophobia which afflicted many contemporary American gay men. Through contact with the Loon Society MacIver becomes a well-adjusted gay man and the novel can be interpreted as a call to gay men to accept themselves, take pride in their sexuality, and form a community of mutual support without copying the heterosexual model of monogamous marriages (Bergman 1999, 29–33).

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Then there were pulps which were about sex and not much else. One of the most important publishers and distributors of gay porn was the Guild Press which offered about 80 titles including the series Classics of the Gay Underground which claimed to offer reprints of novels which in earlier years circulated through informal or underground networks. These “classics” tended to have titles which signaled their content— San Diego Sailor, Gang Bang, Seven in a Barn—and writing which was generally “crude, explicit, and very active” (Bronski 2003, 199). The Guild Press title The Boys of Muscle Beach (1969; reprinted from the 1950s) tells a cautionary tale of a beautiful young man who hopes to become a movie star but falls victim to a director who keeps a stable of similarly beautiful young men and exploits them for his own pleasures. Although the novel is almost non-stop sexual action (much too explicit to quote here) the story of the young hero does have a happy ending. NON-FICTION PULPS Non-fiction books were also issued as pulps. Publication of Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953), often referred to as the Kinsey Reports, alerted Americans to the fact that homosexual behavior was far more common than they thought. While few may have read the original works (each over 800 pages long) more probably read some of the many derivative books which capitalized on the publicity garnered by the Kinsey Reports and public interest in the questions they raised. For instance Signet issued About the Kinsey Report: Observations by 11 Experts on “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male” in 1948. The cover promises “New light on sexual knowledge” and emphasizes the serious nature of the subject with an illustration of an abstract male figure superimposed over a line graph. The volume is a legitimate effort to address questions raised by the Kinsey Report and contains essays by experts in a variety of fields, including anthropology, religion, law and psychology. While Kinsey may have opened Americans’ eyes to the variety of sexual behavior engaged in by ordinary human beings, the first major nonfiction book to discuss gay life from inside was The Homosexual in America (1951) by Edward Sagarin, writing as Donald Webster Cory. He was the first to identify gay people as an oppressed minority and called for gay people to identify their communalities and work together to improve their lot. Publication of The Homosexual in America made Sagarin a hero to many gay people and was a commercial success as well: it was reprinted several times and translated into French and Spanish.

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Sagarin’s later books took a less positive view of gay life: for instance in 1965 he co-authored (with Barry Sheer, who used the pseudonym John LeRoy) The Homosexual and His Society which claimed that there was no such thing as a well-adjusted homosexual (Summers 2006). Christine Jorgensen’s much-publicized sex-reassignment surgery in Denmark in 1952 created a mini-boom in both factual and fictional books about transgender people. A good example of a contemporary factual book is Man Into Woman by Niels Hoyer, published as a paperback in English in 1953. It is a reprint of a 1933 hardcover detailing the history of the Danish painter Einar Wegener who died shortly after undergoing sex reassignment surgery in Germany in 1931. Jorgensen delayed publishing her own autobiography for 15 years but it proved to be a best-seller when issued as a Bantam paperback in 1967, selling over 1.5 million copies (Stryker 2001, 73–74). The contrast between the covers of the two volumes is striking. The 1953 Popular Library edition of Hoyer’s book is positively sober, presenting small pictures (ostensibly) of the subject as a man and a woman against a white background with the blurbs “An Authentic Record of A Change in Sex” and “This almost unbelievable book deals with the outstanding biological phenomenon of a man who changed his sex.” In contrast, the Bantam edition of Jorgensen’s biography features an “after” color glamour shot of Jorgensen as a woman with a small black and white “before” inset of him as a male soldier, and promises the contents will be “Candid! Intimate! The true story of her astonish sexual change” (Stryker 2001, 73). The differences may be attributed both to changes in attitudes regarding sexuality between 1953 and 1967 and also to the fact that Jorgensen was a celebrity who made frequent public appearances capitalizing on the publicity generated by her story. The pulp press also produced a steady number of volumes which claimed to offer authoritative journalistic, sociological, medical or psychological views on the gay community or on sexuality in general while in fact emphasizing the most sensational aspects of the subject. This ploy allowed publishers to sell books to “respectable” people (those who did not take part in the activities described, or at least who did not publicly admit to doing so) in the guise of educating them while in fact offering mostly titillation. But such books could be useful to gay people for the descriptions they offered of gay life and they were often quite specific regarding the locations of gay neighborhoods in different cities. Washington Confidential (1951) by journalists Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer does everything but draw a map for you. In a chapter entitled “Garden of Pansies” we are told that the “fairies” like to meet in “leafy

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Lafayette Square, across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House. . . . They also gather in Franklin Park, a few blocks away, in the center of the business district” (quoted in Bronski 2003, 194). Lait and Mortimer affect a hard-boiled style, perhaps as a means of distancing themselves from the subject lest the reader wonder if they visited these locales purely for research purposes. They also pointedly refer to gay people in the third-person plural to further stave off any notion that they are part of this subculture. For example, “they recognize each other with a fifth sense immediately, and they are intensely gregarious. . . . they all know one another and have a grapevine of intercommunication as swift and sure as that in a girls’ boarding school. They have their own hangouts, visit one another, and cling together in a tight union of interests and behaviors” (quoted in Bronski 2003, 194). A less informative and more hateful example of this type of book is furnished by The Velvet Underground by Michael Leigh, published by McFadden in 1963. The cover gets right down to business by featuring three fetish objects—a whip, a high-heeled black leather boot, and a mask—along with a cover blurb promising that The Velvet Underground is “an incredible book. It will shock and amaze you. But as a documentary on the sexual corruption of our age, it is a must for every thinking adult.” The cover also promises an introduction by “Louis Berg, M.D.” using a typical pulp ploy of naming a credentialed author on the cover in order to give the contents credibility. Not surprisingly, Leigh also relies heavily on the third person plural while having little good to say about contemporary gay life: In America, as in Europe, they have their own bars and clubs, their restaurants, their magazines and newsletters. They even have certain areas of the city where they can flaunt themselves without interference. Their ilk is never content to remain prisoners of their own abnormality. It would seem to be a condition of their aberrant drives that, as some light-skinned Negroes, they should “Pass.” (quoted in Stryker 2001, 46) PULP COVER ART Paperback publishers developed a distinctive and sensational style of cover art for pulp novels using bright colors, lurid pictures, and catchy blurbs to attract the attention of potential purchasers and signal the type of book contained within the covers. This style of art has taken on a life of its own and reproductions of the covers of long out of print

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pulp novels are featured on consumer products such as postcards, t-shirts, and refrigerator magnets. Modern artists have also created new works in the style of pulp cover art: the poster art for Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 film Pulp Fiction (note that the film also draws on some of the literary conventions of pulp novels) is a good example. Pulp covers often teased the reader by promising a glimpse into a forbidden world: perhaps that of motorcycle gangs, drug addicts or criminals, but very often including sexual behavior outside the social norms of 1950s America. This strategy must have led to disappointment when the volume in question turned out to be a genuine work of literature. For instance Signet gave The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles the lurid treatment with covers which suggest one-handed reading rather than what the volume really contains: a literary novel by one of the most distinguished American writers of the twentieth century (Stryker 2001, 16). Gay, lesbian and bisexual content was often alluded to on the covers of pulps with code words such as “forbidden,” “shadow,” and “twilight.” It was necessary to understand these codes because the art often misled the potential purchaser by featuring heterosexual characters on the covers of books whose content was primarily gay. For example the Signet edition of Finiste`re by Fritz Peters (a pseudonym of Arthur A. Peters) promises “A Powerful Novel of Tragic Love” but features an illustration of an adult man and women engaging in intimate behavior, with a young man in the foreground looking off a balcony—nothing but the code word “tragic” indicates that the young man will have a gay relationship in the course of the novel. Whether this tactic was adopted to evade censorship, as an attempt to attract straight readers, or as a means to allow gay purchasers to hide their sexual preference while making the purchase is unclear. Another tactic used by publishers was to include cover illustrations suggesting lurid gay sex scenes lay within while at the same time including cover blurbs which strongly condemned such behavior. Again the reason for the contradictory marketing is unclear: perhaps it was meant to allow the purchaser to put on the breastplate of righteousness until he got safely to the privacy of his home where he could enjoy the sexy content of his new purchase. CONCLUSION So what was good about gay pulps? They provided several things for their readership, including validation, titillation, and information. Validation because pulps let gay men know that someone else felt like

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them and that it was possible to live a successful life outside the heterosexual norms. Gay pulps also offered an alternative to the “sad young men” theme common in literary novels about gay characters and supported the notion that gay men should accept their sexual preference and seek relationships with other gay men. Titillation because many of the pulps included gay-positive sexual content not available in the general culture and there’s no reason gay people should be deprived of such harmless pleasures which are commonly available to heterosexuals. And information because many of the novels included fairly specific information about where gay people lived and socialized as well as a sort of road map to adult life which straight people acquire from their parents and teachers as well as from mainstream popular culture such as the movies (Bronski 2003, 8–9). Gay pulps provided clues for outsiders to find their way in an unfriendly world (today we might call this “finding your tribe”) while remaining true to themselves and dealing with unfriendly authoritarian institutions such as the law, psychiatry, and the workplace. Finally, gay pulps paved the way for the thriving gay literary scene of today.

REFERENCES Banis, V. J. n.d. Introduction by Victor J. Banis. http://www.victorjbanis.com/ banintro.html. Bergman, D. “The Cultural Work of Sixties Gay Pulp Fiction.” In The Queer Sixties, edited by Patricia Juliana Smith, 26–41. New York: Routledge, 1999. Bronski, M., ed. Pulp Friction: Uncovering the Golden Age of Gay Male Pulps. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2003. Brown University Library. 2000. Gay Pulp Fiction. http://128.148.7.229:591/ gaypulp/. Gunn, D. W. The Gay Male Sleuth in Print and Film: A History and Annotated Bibliography. Latham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2005. Jones, S. L., ed. A Sea of Stories: The Shaping Power of Narrative in Gay and Lesbian Culture. New York: Routledge, 2000. Kloman, H. 2005. The Pseudonyms of Gore Vidal: 1950–1954. http:// www.pitt.edu/~kloman/pseudo.html. The Publishing Triangle. 2009. The 100 Best Gay and Lesbian Novels. http:// www.publishingtriangle.org/100best.asp. Server, L. Encyclopedia of Pulp Fiction Writers: The Essential Guide to More than 200 Pulp Pioneers and Mass-Market Masters. New York: Facts on File, 2002. Seubert, A. n.d. Adult Novels of Men in the Womanless World—Gay Pulp Fiction of the 1950s and 1960s. http://www.babaluma.net/pulps/ pulps.html.

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Slide, Anthony. Lost Gay Novels: A Reference Guide to Fifty Works from the First Half of the Twentieth Century. New York: Harrington Park Press, 2003. Stryker, Susan. Queer Pulp: Perverted Passions from the Golden Age of the Paperback. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2001. Summers, Claude J. 2006. Sagarin, Edward (Donald Webster Cory). GLBTQ: An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, & Queer Culture. http://www.glbtq.com/social-sciences/sagarin_e.html.

Chapter 7

Evolving Depictions of “Coming Out” in Young Adult Literature: A Range of Possibilities in 12 Lambda Literary Award Winners (1992–2006) Katherine Mason

When I was 15 years old, one of my best friends came out to me. We sat at my kitchen table that afternoon, eating our favorite after-school snack, Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, while the local classic rock station played on the living room stereo. “Katie,” she said to me. “I’ve got something to tell you.” I waited expectantly, as she took a deep breath. “I’m gay.” Pause. “Really?” “Yes.” “Wow. Okay. Thanks for telling me.” As we continued our meal, my friend explained how nervous she had been to reveal herself to me. And I, curious, asked a lot of questions. How did she first know? When did she first know? Did she have a girlfriend? How did her family react when she told them? Was it hard? At 15, I did not understand the magnitude of her decision to come out in small town, Kansas. In fact, it took me 12 years to

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seriously reflect on her comment that coming out to me was harder than coming out to some of her other friends and family. (“You’re one of my best friends, Katie, so I was most nervous to tell you.”) Now I wonder what I had done to make her so nervous to come out to me. How had I failed to act or live in such a way that she knew it would be safe to tell me and that she could be herself around me? I still do not have the answers to these questions because in the time it took me to come up with them, my childhood friend and I have lost touch. One thing that stands out in my mind about that afternoon is the sense of relief and liberation felt by my friend and by me. Her honesty and courage allowed us to discuss topics that (unbeknownst to me) had previously been off limits. Our afternoon conversation provided her with a sense of hope and security, knowing that I accepted her completely and without reservation, and it gave me the sense that I was growing closer to my good friend because she trusted me enough to reveal a truth about herself that she found difficult to share. I do not know the challenges my friend faced as she acknowledged and affirmed her identity both privately and publicly almost 15 years ago, but I do know that it took courage for her to do so. In the United States, two-thirds of teens who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) experience verbal and physical harassment from peers and adults at school (Kosciw and Diaz, xiii). Therefore, it is not surprising that many young adult (YA) texts with LGBTQ content continue to focus on the process of coming out as a challenge that the protagonist must overcome—either coming out about his/her own sexual or gender identity or coming out about a family member’s identity. Coming out can mean a variety of things. It might mean acknowledging one’s own sexual identity to oneself without sharing it with others. It might mean revealing one’s sexual identity—verbally or physically—to family, friends, co-workers, and acquaintances. It might mean acknowledging a friend or family member ’s sexual identity without shame, fear, or deception. It basically means being comfortable telling or embodying the truth about one’s own or someone else’s sexual identity. One of the defining qualities of young adult literature (YAL) is its sense of optimism “with characters making worthy accomplishments” that “earn the reader’s respect” (Donelson and Nilsen, 34). In my analysis of 12 award-winning YA novels with LGBTQ content, I found that this sense of optimism and hope is closely tied to the process of coming out, a process that most heterosexual people take for granted, having no

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need to worry—or even think—about how they reveal or affirm their sexual orientation or gender identity in our heterosexist society. The 12 YA novels that are the focus of my survey are winners of the Lambda Literary Award in the LGBT Children’s/Young Adult category from 1992 to 2006. Recipients of this award are judged “principally on the quality of the writing and the LGBT content of the work” (“Lambda”).* According to Michael Cart, the first YA novel with LGBTQ content was John Donovan’s 1969 I’ll Get There, It Better Be Worth the Trip, but as Cart notes, “Donovan established a less than salutary model for the homosexual novel that would be faithfully replicated for the next dozen years” (par. 20). In this model, sexual orientation is depicted as a choice and equated with death. Even in 1992—23 years later—the first young adult novel to receive a Lambda Literary Award, When Heroes Die by Penny Raife Durant, does not stray far from this paradigm, as the protagonist’s gay uncle dies from AIDS-related complications. Yet all of the Lambda award-winning YA novels that followed have complicated and even shattered this paradigm of shame and death. For Lambda Literary Award winners in the children’s/young adult category, depictions of the coming out process have evolved since 1992. Early winners of the award depicted the protagonists’ decisions to come out to others regarding their own or their family member’s sexual identity. After 1996, winners of this award revealed greater sophistication in their depictions of the coming out process as protagonists (and readers) experience a range of possibilities: the protagonist choosing to come out only to him or herself, rather than embodying his/her sexual identity for others to acknowledge; the protagonist exhibiting empathy for antagonists and others in his/her coming out process; and the protagonist experiencing challenges that exceed those of coming out about his/her sexual identity. COMING OUT TO OTHERS Two of the early winners of the Lambda Literary Award in the LGBT Children’s/Young Adult category, When Heroes Die by Penny Raife Durant (1992) and From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun by Jacqueline * It is important to note that I am only focusing on young adult novels. Between 1992 and 2006, there have been 16 winners of the award in this category, but one was a collection of short stories (Am I Blue? by Marion Dane Bauer), and three were collections of essays written by members and allies of the LGBTQ community. In addition, two children’s books won the award in 1989 (the first year the award was given) and 1991. No award in this category was given in 1990.

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Woodson (1995), depict the challenges of coming out about a family member’s sexual orientation. When Heroes Die features a 12-year-old protagonist, Gary Boyden, whose uncle Rob is dying of AIDS. Not only must Gary deal with the ensuing loss of the only father figure in his life, he must also learn acknowledge and accept Rob’s sexual orientation. Gary wonders what his friend Sam will think, particularly after Sam teases him about being gay, and he wonders if he might also be gay—that is, whether or not sexual orientation is hereditary. Though it poses and answers important questions about sexual orientation and AIDS, this text also appears to perpetuate—though not intentionally—some stereotypes about the gay community and AIDS. While the cause of Rob’s infection is never overtly stated, his sexual orientation is blamed when Gary’s mom says, “I wish he weren’t gay because he probably wouldn’t be sick now” (70). Disappointingly, Durant fails to clarify this statement, allowing the young adult reader to presume that sexual orientation is a cause of HIV infection, when in reality AIDS does not discriminate based on age, gender, race, sexual orientation, or any other human characteristic. Even though Heroes conforms to the shame and death paradigm that Cart critiques, it also depicts Gary’s choice to acknowledge and affirm his uncle’s sexual orientation, first to a family friend and later to his own friend Sam, both of whom accept Gary and Uncle Rob unconditionally. From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun also features a male protagonist who has never known his father and who must acknowledge and accept a family member’s sexual orientation. Melanin Sun is 13 years old and lives with his mother, Encanta Cedar or EC, in Brooklyn. When EC tells him she is in love with a white woman named Kristen, Melanin reacts in anger and denial, calling his mother a dyke and worrying about what his friends will think when they find out. Like Woodson’s If You Come Softly, this novel also focuses on interracial relationships. When Mel reflects on his past experiences with white people, he determines that most of them have been negative. Since this novel is told from Mel’s perspective, the reader is permitted/forced to look at prejudice in its many forms through the eyes of a teenager. Ultimately, Melanin examines his own ideas about love and race and chooses to give Kristen a chance, knowing that “all the hate and gossip and fights and maybes” (140) would not just disappear and that it probably would not ever “stop mattering what other people thought” (141). Two other Lambda Literary Award winners depict the process of coming out about oneself. Both The Cat Came Back by Hillary Mullins

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(1993) and Good Moon Rising by Nancy Garden (1996) feature female protagonists who first question, then affirm, their sexual orientations. The Cat Came Back introduces us to Stephanie (Stevie) Roughgarden, who is in her fifth year at Bristol School during spring semester 1980. She anticipates graduation, plays women’s ice hockey, and writes in a journal, a Christmas gift from her mom. From her journal entries, we learn that Stevie has some secrets: she was sexually abused by her uncle Philip; she has had a relationship with her female hockey coach Granite, and in her early journal entries—having “made the switch over (like you’re supposed to)” (38)—she’s in a sexual relationship with one of the male teachers, Rik. She is not entirely comfortable in this relationship, however, which we later learn began when she was 14 years old. She is isolated from any potential friends, unable to reveal her secrets. Then she meets Andrea Snyder, who also plays ice hockey. Stevie notices something special about Andrea—the way she moves, the way she listens intently. Stevie’s journal entries reveal her thought process as she questions, denies, and questions some more her own sexual identity (“Girls are not supposed to feel this way about girls!!!” [95]). Eventually, through her writing, Stevie admits her attraction to Andrea (“Jesus, what could be freaky about the way this feels?” [121]), and Andrea’s feelings are mutual. Stevie also begins to discover that honesty can liberate her as she begins to truthfully examine her past relationship with Rik, which she comes to describe as a “shameful horror” (164). While she acknowledges her sexual orientation—first to Andrea, then to her teacher Mic, and then to her friends—Stevie also reveals the sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of Rik—first to Andrea, then to Mic, then to the school administration, and then to her friends. In Good Moon Rising we meet Janna (Jan) Montcrief, who, at the start of her senior year of high school, is beginning work as stage manager on the junior-senior play, Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. Although she had hoped to play the part of Elizabeth Proctor who was falsely accused of witchcraft, a new student, Kerry Ann Socrides, lands the part instead. Jan and Kerry develop a friendship first as Jan helps Kerry learn how to move on stage. Soon both girls admit to each other that they feel more than just friendship, and they begin to spend more time together. Jan must constantly rebuff her friend Ted, who is a bit too persistent in his flirtations with Jan at first, but ultimately learns to respect and defend Jan and Kerry’s relationship. Garden effectively depicts several heterosexist assumptions as family members encourage the girls to get boyfriends and periodically mention the importance of having

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children—presumably the “traditional” way. Soon, Jan and Kerry’s relationship (which they have tried to keep hidden from friends and family) becomes a target for the play’s other lead, Kent, who plays John Proctor opposite Kerry’s Elizabeth. He openly defies Jan when she takes over directing, and he harasses Kerry: “I’ve decided not to shave off my beard. As I’ve said before, Proctor’s no fag, and I just thought I’d let you know in advance that you’re going to have to get used to kissing a real man. . . . ” (125). The harassment climaxes when Kent and his friends post signs all over the school before a performance, outing Kerry and Jan, who eventually decide to come out together at the cast party in defiance of Kent and his cronies. Most of the cast is supportive. Naturally, Kerry and Jan wonder how the rest of the school will react (not to mention their families), but they feel secure enough in each other and themselves to take that step forward: “What do we care what people think of us? Some of them will probably never understand. But maybe we can try to show them the truth. Maybe we’ve already started” (230). Garden skillfully weaves into her telling of this story the plot of The Crucible, which also depicts the consequences of rumors, hysteria, ignorance, and assumptions. COMING OUT TO ONESELF Beginning in 1997 with Jacqueline Woodson’s The House You Pass on the Way, three of the 12 award-winning texts depict expanding notions of what it means to come out, as the questioning protagonists begin to acknowledge their sexual identities but purposefully refrain from revealing their sexuality to family and friends. The protagonists in Woodson’s House, Bonnie Shimko’s Letters in the Attic (2002), and Shyam Selvadurai’s Swimming in the Monsoon Sea (2005) make conscious decisions to keep their sexual identities hidden from friends and family, while going through their own processes of questioning, confirming, and affirming their own identities. In The House You Pass on the Way, 14-year-old Evangeline Ian Canan (Staggerlee) keeps to herself. Perhaps it is because her classmates taunt her for having a white mother and black father. Perhaps it is because her grandparents were famous musicians, who died during the Civil Rights Movement. Or perhaps it is because she knows she is different in some other, less tangible way. When her adopted cousin Trout comes to visit, Staggerlee finally has someone to confide in—someone who understands and who has experienced the feelings she has experienced. Staggerlee admits that no one ever told her she had to hide her

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sexuality; she just figured it out. Trout, on the other hand, made the mistake of confiding in her adoptive mom, Staggerlee’s aunt Ida Mae, who then sent her to stay with Staggerlee’s family so that Trout might “spend time with some ladies and gentlemen” (57). Trout later reveals that Ida Mae sent her “because she didn’t like the person [Trout was] growing up to be” (71). When Staggerlee and Trout talk by the river, Staggerlee is not ready to define herself as “gay.” “It sounds so final. I mean—we’re only fourteen” (95). Although she is still questioning her sexuality after Trout returns to Baltimore, her friendship with Trout has given her confidence, helping her to remain open to possibilities: “Who would they become? she wondered” (114). Letters in the Attic is set in the early 1960s in Ridgewood, New York, where 12-year-old Lizzy McMann and her mother Veronica have moved in with Veronica’s parents. On her way home from school one afternoon, Lizzy meets Eva Singer, a 13-year-old Jewish girl who looks like Natalie Wood. Through Eva, Lizzy learns about bras and boys. She also develops a crush on Eva from the moment Eva helps her light a cigarette (her first and last): “I will never be the same again . . . because when my hand touches hers, the deepest most private part of my body becomes the Fourth of July full of sparklers and firecrackers and I want this feeling, whatever it is, to go on forever” (54). Yet along with this feeling of exhilaration is the feeling of shame: “I know too that how I feel about this girl is a sin, but I don’t know how to stop it” (55). Throughout the story, Lizzy tries to conceal her true feelings, not realizing how perceptive some friends can be. When Lizzy secretly reads Eva’s journal, she learns that Eva does sense her attraction but is not bothered by it: “ . . . I think how Eva knows about me—that I love her in a way she could never love me back. I think how she knows, and she still wants to be my friend, and that makes her even more special in my heart—my heart is so light and so full of happiness that I’m surprised I don’t float straight up into the air” (176). Though unintentionally revealed, Lizzy’s sexual identity remains unspoken with Eva and with her mother, but Lizzy feels confident that one day she’ll be able to share her secret. Set in August 1980 in Sri Lanka, Swimming in the Monsoon Sea is a coming-of-age story in which 14-year-old Amrith must acknowledge both his mother’s death, which occurred seven years ago, and his own sexual identity. He lives a life of leisure with family friends Aunt Bundle and Uncle Lucky and their two daughters, 16-year-old Selvi and 14-year-old Mala. Although they treat Amrith as if he were family, he is resentful that he does not have a family of his own. When

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Amrith’s estranged uncle (also an alcoholic) comes from Canada for a visit and brings his 16-year-old son Niresh. Amrith is hesitant but excited to meet and spend time with his “foreign” and glamorous cousin, who has a Hollywood accent and who has seen the latest movies and music groups. Interestingly, Niresh also feels like an outsider both in Sri Lanka where he has an “accent” and in Canada where he is called a “Paki.” While visiting, he learns everything he can about Sri Lankan culture. Niresh is popular with Selvi, Mala, and their friends, and this makes Amrith jealous, particularly as Amrith grows increasingly attracted to his cousin. This attraction does not go unnoticed by his drama teacher, Mrs. Algama, who, upon meeting Niresh, says with amusement, “Ah, De Alwis, is this the relative from abroad who’s keeping you from learning your lines?” (191). Later, the older and popular Suraj, who is playing Othello in the play, says to Amrith as he waits for Niresh after play practice, “Ah, Michael Cassio, waiting for your darling Iago to pick you up?” (223). Amrith does not understand (yet) that Suraj is referring to act three, scene three in which Iago claims to have slept alongside Cassio, who began kissing him while he dreamt of Desdemona. When Mrs. Algama hears Suraj’s comments, she stands up for Amrith and stands against homophobic comments, calling Suraj a “dolt” and saying, “I have friends in the theater world who are that way inclined, and it’s no laughing matter in this country. I don’t like such things being ridiculed. Don’t ever do that again” (224). When Amrith thinks back on Mrs. Algama’s comment later, he assumes that she knows about him. Maybe she does, but it seems more likely that she was defending gays and lesbians in general, not Amrith in particular. In his confusion and anger, Amrith takes out his aggression on his family, most notably Mala, whom he nearly drowns in the ocean before a monsoon. As he sits in a kiosk on the beach while the storm rages outside, Amrith, feels remorse for his actions and shame for who he is with his “unnatural defect” (234). Amrith decides to close the gap between himself and Niresh by revealing what he knows about the last day he spoke to and saw his mother, and in speaking about that day he begins to rid himself of the “heavy burden of silence” (254). His burden is not lifted completely, however. Amrith has mixed feelings about Aunty Bundle’s partner, the architect Lucien Lindamulage, who is rumored to be a “ponnaya”—a word that Amrith believes “disparaged the masculinity of another man, reducing him to the level of a woman” (75). Lucien is one of the few men around whom Amrith feels like he can be himself, but as he begins to question his sexual identity, he grows increasingly

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disdainful of Lucien, whose professional endeavors are marred by rumors of scandal involving “his constant round of young male secretaries” (73). Finally, Amrith visits his mother’s grave (for the first time of his own volition) and admits to her, in the silence of the cemetery, that he is “different” (267). He hopes “that, one day, there would be somebody else he could share his secret with. But for now he must remain silent” (267). That evening when Lucien stops by again, Amrith does not shrink away from him, signifying his growing acceptance of himself. SHOWING EMPATHY FOR OTHERS IN THE COMING OUT PROCESS Both Julia Watts’ Finding H. F. (2001) and Alex Sanchez’s So Hard to Say (2004) depict protagonists who identify as LGBTQ and who are able and willing to empathize with people who do not (or likely would not) accept them for who they are. Rather than dismissing homophobic comments and attitudes of friends and family as ignorant or hateful, these insightful protagonists attempt to make sense of the lack understanding and support from important people in their lives. Set in rural Kentucky, Finding H. F. is narrated by H. F. (Heavenly Faith) Simms, a 16-year-old closeted lesbian living with her grandmother, Memaw. H. F.’s best friend, Bo, is also closeted, but as H. F. tells it, “The sissy boys always have it harder than the tomboys” in a town like Morgan, Kentucky (8). Bo suffers regular beatings by the football players, even though (we later learn) he has been intimate with the quarterback, who also participates in the abuse. A road trip that takes them through Atlanta allows Bo and H. F. to see that acceptance for differences in sexual orientation varies from place to place. In the city, they meet three homeless girls who were forced out of their homes when they came out to their parents. They also meet Preacher Dave and his partner, who give Bo a glimpse of a completely different life from what he has experienced in Kentucky. Basically, these serendipitous encounters give them hope, particularly when they attend a “church for gay people” (118) and discover from Dave that Jesus never spoke about homosexuality in the Bible and, though it is prohibited in the Old Testament, as Dave says, “so is wearing mixed-knit fabric and eating shellfish. And I don’t know about you, but I’ve seen plenty of supposedly devout straight Christians wearing polyester and chowing down at the Red Lobster” (122). Upon her return to Kentucky, feeling both enlightened and empowered, H. F. chooses not to come out to

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her grandmother, hoping to protect her “from what she can’t understand,” in that “the only person Memaw loves more that me is God, and since she don’t go to the Metropolitan Community Church, the God she worships says all gay people are going to hell” (162). In this deceptively simple decision, H. F. shows that she is able to empathize with someone whom she knows is wrong. Narrated by both Frederick and Xio, So Hard to Say is the story of an eighth-grade boy who is questioning his sexual identity and the eighthgrade girl who is attracted to him. Xio is one of the popular girls at her middle school in California; she and her friends have a clique called Las Sexy Seis (the Sexy Six). When Frederick moves from Wisconsin, Xio attempts to win him over with her charms, even managing to kiss him on two occasions, much to Frederick’s discomfort. He knows he is different, and he wishes he could feel the same way for Xio that she feels for him. Instead, he is attracted to Victor, the unofficial captain of the after-school soccer team, even though Victor and his friends make fun of Iggy Garcia, whom they assume is gay. Frederick avoids associating with Iggy for fear of being targeted himself. When Frederick comes out to Xio, she is initially upset, particularly with herself for not knowing Frederick is gay, but also with her estranged father— another man who has left her. At the story’s end, Frederick has come out to Xio and Iggy (whom he has kissed), and he has managed to stand up for Iggy when the soccer players make fun of him. The teasing still continues, but Victor refrains from participating in it, and Frederick seems to understand that it can take some time for people to come around: “If it had taken me this long to accept myself, then I had to give my friends time too” (223). COMING OUT IS NOT THE PROBLEM When Ellen Wittlinger’s Hard Love won the 1999 Lambda Literary Award, it represented a shift away from the protagonist’s coming out being a central conflict in the novel. David Levithan’s Boy Meets Boy (2003) and Julie Anne Peters’ Between Mom and Jo (2006) also depict protagonists who embody their own or their family members’ sexual identities and are, for the most part, accepted by those around them. A multi-genre novel, Hard Love is narrated by John Galardi Jr., who claims to be “immune to emotion” after his parents’ divorce (1). He creates a zine called Bananafish, and the novel itself uses excerpts from his and other characters’ zines to tell the story, including the zine of Marisol Guzman, who calls herself a “Puerto Rican Cuban Yankee

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Cambridge, Massachusetts, rich spoiled lesbian” (9). The problem is not that Marisol is a lesbian or that John is initially questioning his own sexuality; it is that eventually John falls in love with Marisol as they learn to trust one another through their shared love of writing. Their friendship is tested when John tries to kiss her at his prom. The other problem is John’s anger toward his emotionally distant parents. With Marisol’s encouragement John writes letters to both of them— hurtful letters that he does not intend to send initially—and sends them both before he and Marisol secretly attend a zine conference. At the conference, John finally begins to accept that Marisol can not ever love him back the way that he loves her. And when his mother admits that “sometimes you just fall in love with the wrong person” (216), as she herself has done, he begins to understand that her love for his father must have also been a hard love. In Boy Meets Boy, Paul lives in a town where differences are accepted and appreciated: Paul’s sexual identity was confirmed by his kindergarten teacher, who wrote, “Paul is definitely gay and has a very good sense of himself” on his report card (8). Throughout his elementary school years, Paul came out to his friends, served as the “first openly gay president in the history of Ms. Farquar’s third-grade class” (11), and formed the school’s first gay-straight alliance; and the high school quarterback, Inifinite Darlene, is a male-to-female transgender person. Paul describes his life as “ordinary. The usual series of crushes, confusions, and intensities” (13). That is, until he meets Noah, a senior in high school, an artist, and a photographer. As Noah and Paul begin to spend time together, Kyle—Paul’s ex-boyfriend who thinks he is bisexual— comes back into Paul’s life, asking for forgiveness. When Paul kisses Kyle—in a moment of compassion, rather than passion—and loses Noah, he finds courage in his other best friend, Tony, who lives in a nearby town and whose parents believe that being gay is a sin. He puts things in perspective and realizes that he is lucky to be able to express himself and have others see him as he wants to be seen. Not everyone (even in Paul’s town) is able to do that. When Tony decides to quit deceiving his parents, when he is honest with them about his friendship with Paul, and requests permission to do homework with Paul, Paul gets a sense of what true courage is. He is inspired to show Noah how he feels, through poetry, handmade flowers, music, and film. Boy meets boy. Boy likes boy. Boy loses boy. Boy gets boy back. When Paul and his friends convince Tony’s parents to let him go to a school dance, the group heads to a clearing in the woods (a clearing Tony lived in for a week when his parents found out he is gay) for their own celebration,

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and Paul reflects, “In this space, in this moment, we are who we want to be. I am lucky, because for me that doesn’t take much courage. But for others, it takes a world of bravery to make it to the clearing” (184). In Between Mom and Jo, 14-year-old Nick’s mothers are the most important people in his life. Erin is the dependable, organized one. Jo is the free-spirited one, and she is an alcoholic. Erin and Jo fight a lot, in Nick’s eyes. They fight over Jo’s drinking; they fight over Jo’s unemployment and Erin’s desire to go back to school; they fight about Erin’s homophobic parents and Nick’s homophobic third grade teacher, who does not display Nick’s drawing of his family for parents’ night. Then, when Nick is in seventh grade, Erin is diagnosed with breast cancer. She survives, but Erin and Jo’s marriage does not. When their marriage fails, and Nick must stay with Erin (his biological mother), he is devastated. He feels a closer connection with Jo, and he acts out in a variety of ways, particularly when Erin becomes involved with another woman, Kerri. Ultimately, Kerri helps to convince Erin that Nick should be able to live with Jo, the person he thinks of as his “real mom” (204). While Nick faces some harassment from classmates because he has two mothers, the main conflict in this story has less to do with Nick’s ability and willingness to affirm his mothers’ sexual orientation and more to do with the pain of alcoholism, illness, and divorce. A RANGE OF POSSIBILITIES These 12 award-winning YA novels encompass a range of possibilities in terms of coming out processes, as protagonists acknowledge or embody their own sexual identities; affirm a family member’s sexual identity; show empathy for people who do not/will not accept them for who they are; and overcome other challenges besides coming out. In each novel, the protagonist does, in fact, accomplish worthy goals and earn our respect, contributing to the sense of hope and optimism that is a trademark of YAL (Donelson and Nilsen, 34). In the opening pages of The Full Spectrum, Billy Merrell writes, “ . . . a big part of my being comfortable with my sexuality so early on was due to my having understood this to be a possibility” (in “Notes to the Reader”). Imagine if my childhood friend and I had been aware of the possibilities for coming out. Perhaps she would not have been so nervous about embodying her sexual identity and coming out to me. Imagine if teachers and students were more tolerant and appreciative of different possibilities in terms of sexual orientation and gender identity/expression. Perhaps

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our schools could become safer places for students and faculty who identify as LGBTQ. In acknowledging and appreciating our differences, we would do well to consider the perspective of H. F. as she and Bo encounter racial, religious, and economic differences during their road trip through the Southeast: “I don’t reckon there’s nothin’ wrong with noticin’ people bein’ different than you, as long as you don’t think less of ‘em for it” ( Watts 135). Whether they are part of our personal libraries or our curriculums, these YA novels can help both teachers and students acknowledge and appreciate—rather than ignore and disparage— differences in sexual orientation and gender expression. REFERENCES Cart, M. “What a Wonderful World: Notes on the Evolution of GLBTQ Literature for Young Adults.” The ALAN Review. 31 No. 2 (2004). Available: http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/ALAN/v31n2/cart.html. Donelson, K. L., and Alleen Pace Nilsen. Literature for Today’s Young Adults. Seventh Edition. Boston: Pearson, 2005. Durant, P. R. When Heroes Die. New York: Macmillan, 1992. Garden, N. Good Moon Rising. United States: iUniverse, 2005. “Lambda Literary Awards Guidelines.” Lambda Literary Foundation. March 7, 2008. http://www.lambdaliterary.org/awards/guidelines.html. Levithan, D. Boy Meets Boy. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003. Levithan, D., and Billy Merrell, eds. The Full Spectrum: A New Generation of Writing about Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning, and Other Identities. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 2006. Mullins, H. The Cat Came Back. United States: Naiad Press, 1993. “New and Announcements.” Lambda Literary Foundation. March 7, 2008. http://www.lambdaliterary.org/index.html. Peters, J. A. Between Mom and Jo. New York: Little, Brown, and Co., 2006. Sanchez, A. So Hard to Say. New York: Simon Pulse, 2004. Selvadurai, Shyam. Swimming in the Monsoon Sea. Plattsburgh, NY: Tundra Books, 2005. Shimko, B. Letters in the Attic. Chicago: Academy Chicago, 2007. Watts, J. Finding H. F. New York: Alyson Books, 2001. Wittlinger, E. Hard Love. New York: Simon Pulse, 1999. Woodson, J. From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun. New York: Scholastic, 1995. Woodson, J. The House You Pass on the Way. United States: Penguin Group, 1997.

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Chapter 8

Discophobia: Antigay Prejudice and the 1979 Backlash against Disco Gillian Frank

On Thursday, July 12, 1979, over seventy thousand people converged at Comiskey Park in Chicago for a doubleheader between the Chicago White Sox and the Detroit Tigers. The stadium was filled beyond its capacity, marking the highest attendance of any White Sox home date in over a decade. Many of these spectators, however, were not there to watch the baseball games. Instead, they were gathered to witness the planned destruction of thousands of disco records during the intermission between the games. The evening was billed as Disco Demolition Night and was organized by a Chicago radio disc jockey named Steve Dahl in collaboration with Mike Veeck, the promotions manager for the White Sox. In the weeks prior to the game, Dahl invited his listeners to bring to the stadium the disco records that they would like to see destroyed. To encourage attendance, those who brought disco records were charged 98 cents admission, which was about a quarter of the regular ticket price. The price of tickets corresponded to the call numbers of the FM radio station where Dahl worked, WLUP-FM 98. The event was also billed as Teen Night, so many who did not bring disco records were still admitted at a discount. Of those who attended the game, over ten thousand deposited disco records at the turnstiles. Because so many people showed up with records, regular ticket holders were denied admission, and thousands of people were turned away

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from the gates but waited outside of the stadium to be near the event inside. Many spectators even climbed the gates to get in before the game started. In total, an estimated fifty-five thousand people filled the stadium, while another fifteen thousand gathered around Comiskey Park. Another ten thousand attempting to get to the stadium were stuck in traffic on the Dan Ryan Expressway.1 Inside the stadium the scene was unrestrained. Dozens of homemade banners emblazoned with slogans like “disco sucks” hung from the upper and lower balconies and were described by some observers as “obscene.” As the first game progressed, groups of fans shouted various antidisco chants. By the fifth inning hundreds of disco records had been tossed down onto the field along with fireworks and trash. The field was covered with litter well before the break between the games. When the intermission began at 8:16 P.M., the crowd became increasingly rowdy. Many of the records being thrown were aimed at the players. Things became so disorderly that the White Sox players were locked in their clubhouse between games for their own protection. Tension reached its peak at 8:40 P.M., when Dahl, dressed in military fatigues and an army helmet, drove onto the field in a military-style jeep. He was accompanied by a blonde model named Lorelei who was known for her sexually provocative poses in WLUP’s advertisements. The crowd then began to chant “disco sucks!” so loudly that they were clearly audible outside of the stadium. Those who had gathered around the stadium joined in the chant. Meanwhile, a giant crate filled with over fifty thousand disco records was placed in deep center field. The climax of the ceremony occurred when Dahl set off a row of large fireworks in front of the crate, which was followed by the detonation of a fireworks bomb that exploded the records and sent fragments flying.2 But the Disco Demolition wasn’t quite finished. When the disco records exploded, the crowd erupted, rushing the field and rioting. An estimated seven thousand fans ran wild, lighting bonfires, tossing firecrackers in the audience, tearing up turf, and destroying the records themselves.3 Many of those who had been unable to get into the stadium crashed the gates, while others milled around outside. The rioters destroyed the batting cage and the pitcher’s mound and set several small fires. Other fans in the middle of the field set a large bonfire fueled by disco records and danced around the fire. At 9:08 P.M. the police department’s tactical force rushed onto the field. Most of the rioters ran back to the stands as soon as they saw the police, who were equipped with riot helmets and nightsticks. Within five minutes the

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police had the situation under control and had cleared the area. Shortly afterward, the umpire declared the field unplayable and called off the second game between the Sox and the Tigers. The riot led to thirty-nine arrests for disorderly conduct and over half a dozen reported injuries. Even more significantly, the Disco Demolition, which lasted less than half an hour, “was the explosion heard round the record industry” and around the nation.4 The Disco Demolition was not an isolated incident or an aberration; it was the climax of an antidisco backlash that spread across the United States in 1979. The antidisco backlash involved acts of intimidation and violence against disco fans and the destruction of disco records.5 That year in Seattle hundreds of rock fans gathered at fairs and attacked a mobile dance floor. In Portland, Oregon, thousands cheered as a radio disc jockey cut through a stack of disco records with a chainsaw. In Detroit and Chicago antidisco clubs attracted thousands of members. T-shirts that bore the phrases “Disco Sucks” or “Death to the Bee Gees” were worn across the United States.6 In Los Angeles a radio station released a promotional antidisco record with songs such as “Disco’s What I Hate,” “Disco Defecation,” and “Death to Disco.”7 In New York radio listeners protested a rock radio deejay because he played disco singer Donna Summer’s so-called sex anthem, “Hot Stuff.”8 The violent backlash against disco in 1979 transformed disco from a socially acceptable form of music and culture to one that was highly stigmatized. However, the backlash was directed not simply at a musical genre but at the identities linked to disco culture. The attack on disco was informed by the general perception that disco was gay and elitist, and the discourse surrounding disco was highly sexualized and framed by “homo/heterosexual definitions.”9 Jeffery Weeks has argued that associating negative qualities with homosexuality has two effects: “It helps to provide a clear-cut threshold between permissible and impermissible behavior; and second, it helps to segregate those labeled as deviant, and thus contains and limits their behavior patterns.”10 At the same time, popular music is an aural space of representation through which identities are constituted, organized, and reified within a wide range of interpretive practices and contexts. Consequently, genres of music are often claimed by particular constituencies as cultural forms that provide meaning and structure to their identity politics. Indeed, musical affiliation is frequently treated as a marker of social affiliation in U.S. culture, linking music to powerful territorial claims and sometimes giving rise to significant conflicts over the

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boundaries between perceived identity territories. The events leading up to the Disco Demolition saw the assignment of homosexual definitions to disco and heterosexual definitions to rock music. The attack against disco enabled the broad demarcation of heterosexual and homosexual cultures and gendered behaviors through popular music. A close analysis of the Disco Demolition reveals how an acute antigay prejudice was used to stigmatize disco and in turn instigated the genre’s rapid decline even as discophobia reflected and furthered antigay prejudice. The implications of the Disco Demolition and the backlash against disco, as historians of music such as Walter Hughes, Judith Peraino, Tim Lawrence, Peter Shapiro, Bill Brewster, and Frank Broughton have noted, far exceeded the destruction of several thousand disco records in Chicago.11 The attack on this musical genre had implications for gay men whose identities were associated with disco. This chapter analyzes in detail a process that these historians of music have only briefly noted: the ways in which the backlash against disco was motivated by antigay prejudice. Through a close reading of antidisco discourses, which framed disco as queer, gender transgressive, elitist, and socially threatening, it is clear that disco music declined because of antigay prejudice and because of the opportunism of radio promoters. Furthermore, the events of July 12, 1979 are easily connected to broader cultural anxieties about sexuality and gender that emerged in the 1970s. Coming on the heels of a widespread legislative and electoral backlash against gay civil rights across the United States, the backlash against a form of musical and sexual expression signified the conscious evacuation of gays from popular culture.12 While historian Susan Jeffords has identified the 1970s as witnessing the remasculinization of America, a process that she describes as depending upon “the exclusion of women and the feminine” and the creation of “a world in which men are not significantly different from each other,” the sexual and gender politics of the antidisco backlash marked a moment in which a primarily white male and middle-class audience sought to assert their masculinity within heterosocial spaces. Put differently, the backlash against disco saw heterosexual men attack disco music because they believed that disco culture limited their ability to interact with women, excluded them from heterosocial spaces, imperiled their heterosexuality, and privileged an inauthentic form of masculinity.13 The Disco Demolition offers a lens with which to view the complex ways in which antigay prejudice, fears of shifting gender roles, and

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concerns over heterosocial spaces came to be articulated nationally through popular culture even as parallel struggles over sexual identity were taking place within organized politics. Exploring the connections between the backlash against disco and antigay prejudice allows us to understand how the consumption and production of popular culture informed, organized, and articulated heterosexual politics and identities and how multiple forms of media are used to construct and police the expression of normative sexuality. In order to understand the Disco Demolition, it is necessary to first understand the connections between the histories of sexuality and music in the 1970s. Two trends led to the association of music with identity politics and to later conflicts between disco fans and rock fans: the emergence of the youth movement in the 1960s with rock as its music and the emergence of the gay liberation movement in the same period with disco as its music. By the mid-1960s rock was synonymous with the youth movement, which in turn was linked with the civil rights, antiwar, antipoverty, women’s, and countercultural movements of the period. Unlike 1950s classic rock songs, whose lyrics were characterized by emotional, sexual, or romantic themes, rock lyrics increasingly conveyed political messages.14 Rock was still viewed as youth music, but now rock became politically confrontational in ways that surpassed the sexual message of earlier 1950s rock. For many youth, rock music provided a sense of identity and coherence and created overarching narratives for the struggles and protests of the 1960s. In the 1960s a new criterion was increasingly used for evaluating music, and it was one that referred to literary rather than emotional effects. Rock began to carry with it intimations of sincerity, authenticity, and art.15 By the 1970s there was a general stress in rock on individualized skills rather than on collective participation in music. Consequently, audiences were no longer encouraged to dance and to enjoy the beat of the music but were supposed to be appreciative listeners who could recognize the virtuosity and depth of the musicians’ performance. By 1970, however, the youth movement had increasingly fragmented into conflicting factions, many of which divided along lines of race, gender, and sexuality.16 The implosion of the New Left and an increasingly articulate and powerful New Right heralded a growing skepticism about the accomplishments of the previous decade.17 Along with these changes, the rock genre expanded into a number of subgenres by the 1960s, including art rock, jazz rock, country rock, and soft rock.18

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Moreover, rock had become entrenched as a mainstream music. It was marked by a demographic shift and encompassed much of the American “under thirty” population; its audience had broadened, moreover, and was less defined by political ideologies and age—it was no longer only the music of adolescents and the disenchanted. Still, rock audiences and performers continued to be overwhelmingly white, heterosexual, male, and suburban. Accordingly, rock music in the 1970s became implicitly defined by a new set of identity politics of gender, sexuality, and race.19 Music historian Keir Keightley has aptly noted that “it is more useful to approach [rock] as a larger musical culture” as opposed to a coherent musical genre, for what “is truly at stake in rock culture is the differentiation of taste, not an affiliation with forms of cultural action.”20 Indeed, by the 1970s the politics of rock were divergent, and it no longer offered the political coherence that had been associated with 1960s social movements. In the decade before the Disco Demolition, many commentators, fans, and musicians bemoaned the fact that rock music in the 1970s was apolitical, in decline, out of touch, or dead. Such sentiments were articulated in many places and appeared in an article that ran in the New York Times two days before the Disco Demolition. The article was titled “Discophobia,” and its author, Robert Vare, wrote: The Disco Decade is one of glitter and gloss, without substance, subtlety or more than surface sexuality. The Disco Decade is the era when intimacy and close personal connections are to be avoided even with the self. In the 1960s, of course, Americans would have given anything for something as mindless and impersonal as disco, an escape hatch from the social responsibilities, from the shouting and shoving in the streets. Now we have found the answer. All we have to do is blow dry our protein-enriched hair, anoint ourselves with musk oil, snort another line of cocaine and turn up the volume. . . . After the lofty expectations, passions and disappointments of the 1960s, we have the passive resignation and glitzy paroxysms of the Disco 1970s. After the poetry of the Beatles comes the monotonous bass-pedal bombardment of Donna Summer.21 For those who bemoaned the state of popular music, rock, as it had crystallized in the second half of the 1960s, was privileged as a golden age.22 Indeed, the New York Times article reflects how the political and aesthetic dominance that rock held in the 1960s had eroded.23

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Yet the memory of rock as a seriously political art form continued to inform the aesthetics of music audiences, as did the implicit demographic politics of race and age. These factors in turn combined to set the stage for a rejection of disco music that was as much aesthetic as it was based on the politics of identity—but it was not confined to the critique of disco alone. The rise of disco music directly related to the transformations that took place in rock music and the more general cultural upheavals of the 1960s and set the stage for conflicts over gender and sexuality in the late 1970s. Scholars Gregory Bredbeck, Tim Lawrence, and Judith Peraino have shown how discotheques and dancing became increasingly important to many members of a newly liberated gay community who, following events like the New Year’s Ball organized by a group that called itself the Council on Religion and Homosexuality in San Francisco in 1965, were in effect dancing together publicly for the first time.24 The gay liberation movement emerged just as the 1960s youth movements and rock music were becoming increasingly fragmented. Following watershed events like the Stonewall Riots in New York City in 1969, which brought together an older homophile movement with radical currents from the social movements of the 1960s, there was an immediate proliferation of gay organizations that fought for the recognition of gays as citizens with equal rights. Gay liberation rendered sexuality and gender as primary sites of cultural and political conflict, and one of these highly charged sites was popular music.25 The gay liberation movement drastically transformed gay nightlife and, by implication, the spaces and places where music was consumed by gay men, for, prior to the late 1960s, it was difficult for gays to congregate publicly without fear of police harassment. In addition, many gay clubs were still controlled by organized crime, which severely limited the extent to which gays could control and socialize in their own spaces. Consequently, gay men often congregated at private parties, where records were often the main source of musical.26 After Stonewall, urban gays increasingly claimed the right to dance openly and associate with each other and quickly began to open up their own clubs and create places for themselves across the United States.27 These developments led to an increased sense of freedom among gay men and allowed for public affirmations of their identities, albeit still limited, since gay men still could not participate fully in mainstream culture and remained segregated from straight society. From its origins, disco music was associated with cultural difference. At the beginning of the 1970s many disco artists were Latinos or

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African Americans, and many were African American women. The audiences for this first wave of disco were predominantly urban straight and gay African Americans, straight and gay Latinos, and white gay men dancing in African American and gay night clubs in major urban centers like New York and Chicago. Many white gay men saw disco as a music that spoke to and represented their experiences of oppression and coming out. Gay men interpreted popular songs such as Wilson Pickett’s “Don’t Knock My Love,” the Pointer Sisters’ “Yes We Can,” Aretha Franklin’s “Respect,” MFSB’s “Love Is the Message,” and Gloria Gaynor’s “Never Can Say Goodbye” as reinforcing gay pride and affirming gay identity, romance, and sexuality.28 When gay men danced to these songs and sang along with them, they viewed disco as their own music. According to Nat Freedland of Fantasy Records, disco music was “a symbolic call for gays to come out of the closet and dance with each other.” 29 Moreover, disco allowed gay men who owned discotheques and who served as disc jockeys and producers to become highly visible and respected within the music scene.30 If rock music popularly was understood as the music of rebellion and liberation in the 1960s for the youth movement, disco was framed similarly as the music of liberation for gay white men in the early 1970s, for it coincided with—and provided a focal point for—the process of becoming politically visible and winning civil rights within American culture. The 1970s witnessed a flourishing of gay political activism and culture and the building of gay commercial and social institutions. Not simply apolitical or commercial, discos were an important part of these transformations, for they served as sites of political organizing, fund-raising, and celebration. Disco clubs and music made the growth of gay liberation concrete, as queer theorist Gregory Bredbeck has noted aptly, for these clubs helped gays to imagine a sexual community and coordinate their gay identity.31 This process was demonstrated in novelist Edmund White’s description of disco music in his 1973 Joy of Gay Sex: There is no better proof than such discos of the emergence of gays from their closets. Gone are the days of sleazy hideaway bars buried in basements. . . . Now hundreds of gays troop into big, spacious, luxurious discos where the dancing, the sounds, the lights and the company are great. In fact, the main problem the gay discos face is how to keep straights from moving in and elbowing out the original gay clientele.32

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Indeed, disco music rose to cultural prominence within the gay community at the moment of their political and cultural ascendance. However, disco began “crossing over” to the straight community at the moment of a virulent antigay political backlash.33 Although gays were making significant political and cultural advances, with disco as their anthem, their achievements were widely resisted by those who maintained that homosexuality threatened society and ought to remain invisible and illegal. In 1977 an antigay campaign in Florida called “Save Our Children, Inc.” (SOC) triggered a nationwide backlash against gay rights. The most visible leader of the group was Anita Bryant, a fundamentalist Baptist best known as a popular singer and spokesperson for the Florida Citrus Commission. SOC sought to overturn a Dade County human rights ordinance that prohibited discrimination on the basis of “sexual or affectional preference” the areas of housing, employment, and public accommodations. At the heart of SOC’s campaign was the belief that homosexuality was contagious and that exposure to it might turn anyone gay, especially male children. Their homophobic belief that the “recruitment of our children is absolutely necessary for the survival and growth of homosexuality” helped to convey a belief that homosexuals ought “to go into their closets, in their bedrooms, in their privacy and take care of themselves there.” 34 In short, SOC’s campaign attacked the core position of post-Stonewall gay politics, coming out of the closet and becoming visible.35 In the years immediately preceding the Disco Demolition, opposing interests fought for the right to define and organize sexuality and gender. Within six months of its founding, SOC put the Dade County gay rights law to a referendum and successfully defeated it. Dade County’s 1977 vote on gay rights marked the second time in American history such a referendum was held; however, it was the first vote of national significance.36 SOC’s activism also helped to defeat the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment in Florida because anti-ERA activists claimed that the ERA would invalidate “laws outlawing wedlock between members of the same sex” just as civil rights laws had invalidated “laws forbidding miscegenation.”37 Within a year, SOC had helped to organize anti–gay rights campaigns across the United States and successfully overturned three municipal gay civil rights ordinances while informing the rhetoric of countless other attacks on gay rights. SOC also provided the rhetorical framework for newly forming and powerful right-wing coalitions such

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as the Moral Majority and Christian Cause that placed antigay activism at the center of a conservative political and religious agenda, following SOC’s lead. By 1979 these New Right groups were advancing a legislative and cultural agenda based on what historian Jeffery Weeks describes as “a referential system in which ‘sexual anarchy’ became the explanation of social ill.”38 Among their concerns were the suppression of “sex education, abortion, the ERA, pornography and gay rights.”39 Nevertheless, SOC’s activism galvanized gays and lesbians to become politically active and come out of the closet in unprecedented numbers.40 The years immediately following the Dade County referendum witnessed unparalleled organization building, activism, and cooperation among gays and lesbians across the United States. Disco clubs were important to gay rights campaigns and organizations, that used these spaces to raise funds and awareness when seeking to combat the New Right. The backlash against gay rights that sought to push gays back into the closet, while not directly causal of the backlash against disco music, formed the larger context in which those advocating disco’s destruction espoused antigay rhetoric. Indeed, disco’s timeline ran parallel to the rise of and backlash against gay rights. By 1974 the first wave of New York gay clubs devoted strictly to dancing were firmly established, and discos began to attract white straight baby boomers. Between the summer of 1975 and the summer of 1977 over twelve thousand discos opened across the United States as disco broadened its audience.41 In 1976 Rolling Stone published an anthology called Dancing Madness. One essay, titled “No Sober Person Dances,” explained to its heterosexual readers that “the first test for the hetero male who wishes to be in tune with at least the basic of bisexual chic is not to feel threatened when addressed as ‘baby’ rather than ‘sir.’”42 Dancing Madness understood that many straight men would react poorly to being in the same space as gay men and also indicated that the two groups increasingly were coming into contact with one another within gay discos. Two phenomena in 1977 helped the disco genre to attract a straight white middle-class audience and to become a billion-dollar business: Saturday Night Fever and WKTU-FM.43 The 1977 movie Saturday Night Fever and its best-selling soundtrack album introduced and popularized disco among straight white middle-class Americans.44 The film starred John Travolta and featured songs written and performed by the Bee Gees. Because they were white and presented an image of heterosexuality, the Bee Gees and Travolta made disco safe for white, straight, male, young, and middle-class

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Americans and were crucial to disco successfully crossing over to this new audience. Al Coury, the president of the RSO record label (which released the two-record soundtrack for the film), even declared in 1979 that Saturday Night Fever “kind of took disco out of the closet.”45 Coury’s statement suggests that disco was understood as a gay medium that had crossed over into mainstream popular culture. By 1978 the movie’s soundtrack had sold more than thirty million copies worldwide, making it the highest-selling soundtrack ever. Meanwhile, with the astonishing rise of WKTU, New York’s first all-disco radio station, mainstream record companies became aware that popular dance songs in discotheques could also cross over to key radio stations and produce hit albums. WKTU had been a low-rated rock station until 1978, when it switched to an all-disco format. By 1979 it was the most popular radio station in the country, and its success caused many other radio stations to alter their formats in hopes of cashing in on the burgeoning disco market. WKTU and Saturday Night Fever made disco into a highly profitable commercial industry and enabled disco to spread quickly to white and straight communities across the United States with unprecedented force. At the beginning of 1979 disco was a four-billion-dollar-a-year industry.46 The commercial success of disco music triggered a fearful and homophobic reaction from rock fans because it was considered to be a quintessentially gay genre of music. During 1978 and 1979 disco reached its apex in the United States. Major American magazines were covering extensively what they called the “disco phenomenon” or the “disco crossover.” Explaining disco to a presumably straight and white audience that had had no previous exposure to disco culture, these magazine articles all traced a similar genealogy for disco, locating its origin among urban gay male and African American communities. For example, the Washington Post Magazine reported that disco “began among the bayous and backfields of the cultural landscape, the gay clubs and black clubs.”47 A Village Voice cover story used the headline “The Dialectics of Disco: Gay Music Goes Straight.” Newsweek’s article, “The Disco Take-Over,” noted that “what started a few years ago as all-night dance music in African-American and gay clubs has moved into the American heartland and is fast taking over the pop-music business.”48 Such rhetoric echoed antigay political discourses, which represented homosexuality as menacing and spreading clandestinely throughout the nation. These articles and statements, which are representative of hundreds of similar articles published in 1978 and 1979, all concurred on three

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points: disco was originally and primarily a marginal gay and African American musical form that had crossed over to mainstream culture; disco was antithetical to mainstream music and culture; and disco was taking over mainstream white culture. Musicologist David Brackett points out that “crossover implies that there must be discrete boundaries, for a recording can only ‘cross over’ when one field is clearly demarcated from another.”49 The demarcated fields are usually those of audience as well as of genre. Because the media coverage represented disco not only as a “crossing over” but, as Newsweek stated, as a “taking over,” popular discourses positioned disco as both transgressive and threatening to rock music and heterosexuality. Despite the linked claims in the press that both African Americans and gays had shaped disco culture and the assertion by some historians of the disco genre that the Disco Demolition was overtly racist, racist comments rarely surfaced in written antidisco discourse, and the African American influence on disco was not an explicit issue for rock fans. Instead, rock fans primarily focused on the gay roots of disco culture. The fact that African Americans were not seen as problematic, while Latinos and other ethnic groups largely were erased from the written discourse on disco, suggests that commentators and rock audiences in this instance did not openly or consciously perceive these groups as sources of anxiety, perhaps because of their long-standing influence on American popular music. Conversely, the relatively new and unprecedented influence of gay subcultures may have led the overwhelming majority of commentators to emphasize the gay presence in disco. It is equally possible that the focus on sexuality and the omission of race and ethnicity coincided with the color blindness that marked reactionary discourses on racial and sexual issues such as busing and school integration. Nationally, conservatives overtly disavowed public expressions of racism even as public expressions of homophobia remained acceptable. The politics of race were doubtlessly connected to some antidisco sentiments, given the overwhelmingly white rock audience and the multiracial disco audience. However, the emphasis on sexual identity in the media created a historical and a cultural framework for rock fans to describe the disco threat within a predominantly sexualized framework that was never explicitly or consistently connected to race. By the time of the Disco Demolition in Comiskey Park, the media commonly emphasized that disco was gay and cultivated a widespread perception that disco was taking over.50 In the months leading up to the 1979 riot, rock music was in visible crisis. Disco had unprecedented and unparalleled commercial radio

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play, media coverage, and popularity. Disco also dominated fashion styles, nightlife, and sales in record stores and saturated the market. The media reported “disco proms, disco cruises, and . . . wedding service[s] complete with smoke machine and light effects.”51 Meanwhile, visibly queer performers such as the Village People and Sylvester solidified the association of disco music and homosexuality in the popular mind. In April 1979 a Rolling Stone article described the Village People as “the face of disco” and described their songs as recalling “the gay roots of Seventies disco” and straddling “both gay and straight disco cultures.”52 Rock fans were not only threatened by the domination of the Bee Gees, the Village People, Sylvester, and Donna Summer but were also threatened because established rock acts like Rod Stewart, the Rolling Stones, and the Beach Boys were releasing disco singles in order to stay competitive in the marketplace.53 Disco had even taken over what Newsweek described as “TV’s last two strongholds of rock—’Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert’ and ‘Midnight Special.’ “54 “Can Rock and Disco Music Coexist?” asked the headline of an article appearing in the New York Times in January 1979, noting that this was a burning question for many music fans.55 At the 21st Grammy Awards in February 1979, rock and disco albums directly competed against each other, and disco emerged the winner, producing a headline in Variety that read: “Another Grammy Failure by Rock Produces Cries for Disco Category.”56 After the Grammys there were calls by rock musicians and record companies to segregate disco from rock. Disco because of its overwhelming commercial popularity appeared to be taking over and threatening rock’s existence. The crisis of rock was thus framed as economic, aesthetic, and territorial. Part of the negative response to disco occurred because disco marked a radical departure from the organization, artistry, and sexuality of rock music. While rock music was a live medium with an emphasis on the relationship between performers and fans, disco was organized in terms of dancers and recorded music. In rock concerts the primary bodies that were on display were those of the performers. Conversely, disco placed the bodies of its audience on display and displaced the performers and the idea of congregating around a live act.57 According to music journalist Peter Braunstein, “rock’s dynamic was reversed by the democratic principle within disco that relegated many performers to a state of near-anonymity and made the dancers the stars.”58 Musicians had little place in disco culture once the record had been produced. Moreover, the qualities of individuality and technical virtuosity that were privileged in rock music were replaced by the

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anonymous production of sound and the physical coordination and rhythm that disco dancing required. As well, the musical sign of rock music par excellence, the guitar, was no longer predominant or even present. The lyrics of disco songs often depended upon repetition rather than narrative storytelling and often did not carry a political message that was readily legible to heterosexual audiences. Therefore, the paradigm of artistic and political lyrics could not be applied to disco, and there was no readily available framework within rock discourse with which to analyze disco. The popularity of novelty songs such as “Disco Duck” and a disco version of the theme to the movie Star Wars further frustrated many rock fans, who decried the inauthenticity and commercialism of disco music while claiming that rock music was more authentic and less commercial. Authenticity, as music historian Keir Keightley has argued, was a core ideology for fans of rock, who believed that “rock somehow emerges prior to the involvement of the record industry, mass media, or large audiences.”59 These differences between the two genres came to play an important role in the backlash against disco, for they helped to set disco as antithetical to rock music. Even as the media framed disco as gay, they also represented disco clubs as elitist and exclusive. Some disco owners had strict admission policies and sought to cultivate a clientele of “beautiful people” who dressed fashionably. Other discos had steep membership costs that were prohibitive to working- and middle-class clientele.60 Not surprisingly, these discos gained notoriety and bred resentment.61 While different disco clubs had radically different identities, admission prices, and policies, the more famous and exclusive discos, like Studio 54 in New York City, came to represent the entire culture. As resentment toward disco music grew among rock fans, they charged disco with cultural elitism and as being out of touch with mainstream American values.62 As disco increased in popularity, many rock radio deejays across the United States had to incorporate disco into their song rotations or face economic consequences. By April 1979 over 250 American radio stations had switched formats to include disco, and about 75 of these adopted all-disco formats. Deejays who did not adapt to the changing market frequently lost their jobs, and there were firings across the music industry. Among those who lost their jobs was a twenty-fouryear-old Chicago deejay named Steve Dahl. Dahl had been working for WDAI Chicago, an album-oriented rock station that decided to switch to an all-disco format in December 1978. Dahl was fired around Christmas of that year, a fact that reportedly contributed to his

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embitterment toward disco. In March 1979 Dahl was hired as the morning host on a rival Chicago rock station, WLUP-FM, nicknamed “The Loop,” for a reportedly lower income. It was on WLUP that Dahl immediately began his crusade against disco and against his former employer.63 On his new morning show at WLUP Dahl began verbally attacking disco in a series of on-air rants and disco jokes. He stated that disco was “fun to dance to but ridiculous to take it that seriously.”64 Many other commentators did the same by calling disco a “contrived, formulaic, repetitive music.”65 By refusing to take disco seriously, Dahl and other cultural commentators undermined it as a valid musical or cultural form. As his rhetoric intensified, Dahl went on to state that “we were not only replaced by [disco] but we think it does nothing but create a cultural void in this country.”66 Dahl described his discourse at WLUP as “making fun of disco,” and many of his jokes about disco depended upon negative stereotypes of homosexuality. These jokes reduced disco to a form of sexual deviance while assigning homosexual meanings to objects, situations, events, and sequences of actions associated with disco. 67 For example, Dahl would lisp the word disco and thus implicitly signal the genre’s gay associations. A similar representation appeared in 1979 in a Punk Magazine cartoon that portrayed a gay man lisping in a disco even as it implied that discos were inhabited by lisping gay men.68 Folklorist Alan Dundes argues that jokes are “a barometer of the attitudes of a group.”69 Therefore, Dahl was not merely “making fun” of disco. He was verbally attacking disco by drawing upon a shared vocabulary of derision and insult that revealed widely held antigay attitudes. With crude humor that amused and incited his audience, Dahl made disco both laughable and threatening by deploying a sexualized language that ultimately coded disco as gay and As Dahl’s campaign against disco escalated, his rhetoric and jokes intensified, which represented disco as antithetical not only to rock music but also to heterosexuality. Dahl’s song, “Do You Think I’m Disco,” which he wrote for a promotional album, clearly illustrated this notion. The song parodied Rod Stewart’s disco song “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy” and articulated three main ideas: heterosexuality and masculinity could not operate within discos; men in discos were gay and effeminate; and disco culture threatened masculinity and heterosexuality.70 The main theme in “Do You Think I’m Disco” is that heterosexuality had failed within disco culture, and its failure was linked putatively to the failure of rock music and was attributed to two factors: sexually

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unavailable women and effeminate men. The narrator of Dahl’s song, Tony, shared his name with Travolta’s character in Saturday Night Fever. Indeed, Dahl’s song parodied John Travolta’s status as a sex symbol in Saturday Night Fever and by implication insinuated Travolta’s homosexuality. In the course of the song’s narrative, Tony attempts to dance with and sexually attract a woman. However, Tony fails to attract this woman because, according to the song, women at discos are “cold as cucumbers” and therefore sexually unavailable. The cartoon from Punk Magazine similarly illustrated that women were only interested in dancing with “faggots.” Moreover, the Washington Post reported that some discos would only admit women “if they were accompanied by a gay man.”71 The same idea also appeared in the 1976 anthology by Rolling Stone entitled Dancing Madness. It quotes a woman named Hollywood, who stated: I had already made up my mind to become a fag hag, but as you can imagine, honey, Texas wasn’t exactly what you would call a hotbed of flaming faggotry. I managed to sniff out the one or two gay bars in Dallas where you could go dance and . . . well, the very first time I just looked down at my feet and said, “Honey, this is for you! This is it! This is even better than sex!”72 Even the Jacksons’ 1978 disco song “Blame It on the Boogie” lamented about disco that “My baby’s always dancing and it wouldn’t be a bad thing but I don’t get no loving and that’s no lie. We spent the night in Frisco at every kind of disco from that night I kissed our love goodbye.” 73 These texts all stated that straight men were being displaced within discos because women found discos to be “better than sex” and no longer desired heterosexual interaction or intercourse. Thus, a number of popular texts portrayed disco as both excluding straight men and challenging heterosexuality. Even as the media represented heterosexuality as being displaced within the sexually charged atmospheres of discos, they likewise represented the men who went to discos as unmanly and gay, often portraying them as perpetually grooming their own hair. In 1976 Maureen North of Newsweek reported from the men’s and women’s bathrooms of a discotheque in Chicago, where she described the grooming rituals of teen disco-goers: In the ladies’ room, 21-year-old Yolanda Cimino, a book-keeper, and her girlfriend, a typist, are using one of the seven blow dryers

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and hairbrushes thoughtfully provided by the management. . . . In the men’s room, Johnny Boy Musto, 18, an attendant at Shea Stadium, and his buddy, Ray Muccio, a packer for a hamburger franchise, are blow-drying their hair after spending an hour and a half on their toilette at home. Johnny Boy is wearing a black body shirt, half-unbuttoned, several gold chains around his neck and tight-fitting beige pants. “It’s very important you don’t wear the same thing for at least four weeks,” he says, earnestly checking himself in the mirror one last time. . . . Discos are often curiously asexual. There is no stigma attached to girls dancing with girls or boys with boys—and no compulsion to find a mate.74 In her article North emphasized that men’s grooming rituals paralleled those of women. Indeed, the article’s parallel structure between masculine and feminine grooming and same-sex dancing did not differentiate between male and female gender roles but instead accented the gender transitive, “asexual” nature of disco culture. That North emphasized gender transgression from the location of bathrooms was not insignificant. Bathrooms not only were associated with excretory functions and illicit sex between men but were, as queer theorist Lee Edelman notes, “a site at which the zones of the public and the private overlap with a distinctive psychic charge.”75 Indeed, messages that linked gender disruption, unisex bathrooms, homosexual marriages, and the end of American civilization were widely disseminated through the rhetoric of anti-ERA activists.76 Similarly, North’s article raised the specter of sexual chaos within disco culture by collapsing the space between actions in men’s and women’s bathrooms, thereby conflating the symbolic space of difference between sexuality and gender. By following the lengthy section on grooming that turned male bodies into gender-transgressive spectacles with same-sex interaction on the dance floor, she reinforced the association between males who participated in disco culture and gayness. A 1978 Washington Post article by Henry Allen brought what North had only implied into the open. He explained that the association between males grooming their hair and disco culture had been popularized by John Travolta’s image-conscious character in Saturday Night Fever. Allen wrote: Women seem to be particularly astonished or delighted or intrigued by a scene in Saturday Night Fever in which John Travolta gets dressed to go out dancing. It took me a while to figure

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out why. . . . What was being titillated is a prudish sense of masculinity. . . . Men aren’t supposed to dwell on their appearance, but even more important, they aren’t supposed to admit that they all do. And there was John Travolta, with the sweet, simple dignity of a 20-year-old, preening with absolutely no sense of sin, with no fears of being feminine, and none of the buffoonery that tends to accompany portrayals of the working class in American movies or TV shows. In other words, Travolta was being sinful, feminine, working class, and unashamed.77 The media thus represented disco culture as sexually liminal and threatening because it undermined gender differences and, by implication, heterosexuality. Dahl’s jokes and utterances, then, which operated in tandem with a more general commentary about disco taking over the music business, formed part of a larger network of negative connections between disco, masculinity, and homosexuality. The extent to which a widespread media commentary fixated on the sartorial and physical qualities of disco-goers revealed acute anxieties about the displacement of masculine and heterosexual identity in disco culture and a homophobic fantasy that by merely participating in disco culture men would become effeminate and gay and women would no longer desire heterosexual men. Disco thus became a particularly gay threat that endangered heterosexual desire and gender identity. Indeed, the phrase “disco sucks,” the rallying cry of the antidisco campaign, communicated this very idea, for as journalist Frank Rose commented in 1979, “it is a little too coincidental that the music that’s popular with gay people should have the epithet ‘sucks’ attached to it.”78 In other words, a man who listened to disco was by implication thought to be symbolically, if not literally, engaging in oral sex with another man.79 Indeed, some television viewers criticized the media for broadcasting signs that bore the phrase “disco sucks” because they considered it too obscene to be aired in coverage of the Disco Demolition.80 In these ways, the discursive connections made by the media between disco, homosexuality, and femininity all multiplied the ways in which men who participated in disco culture could be accused of being gay. However, even as Dahl participated in a widely shared discourse that stigmatized male participants in disco culture as effeminate and gay, he believed that gender and sexual status could be recovered alongside the restoration of heterosocial spaces. Dahl’s song “Do You Think I’m Disco” stated that men could be remasculinized by listening

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to rock music. The final verse of Dahl’s song allows Tony to return to the proverbial fold by selling his “white three piece suit in a garage sale,” melting “down all [his] gold jewelry into a Led Zeppelin belt buckle,” and proclaiming “long live rock and roll.”81 However, it was not enough for Dahl and others to passively wait for men like Tony to realize disco’s apparent superficiality and return to “authentic” music and sexual practices. Dahl perceived the threat of disco as too great and one that required direct action. In May 1979 Dahl founded a loosely organized group called the Insane Coho Lips Antidisco Army to respond to the threat of disco culture and to promote his antidisco cause and his radio show.82 More than a fan club, the Antidisco Army became central to the backlash against disco in Chicago because it focused Dahl’s rhetoric and provided an organized way for his fans to attack disco. Dahl stated that his army was engaged in a war “dedicated to the eradication of disco dystrophy in our lifetime” and “dedicated to the eradication of the dreaded musical disease known as DISCO.”83 From its inception until the July 12 riot, the Antidisco Army gained ten thousand card-carrying members and became the center of a number of violent activities staged against disco. Dahl’s violence began with a daily feature on his morning show where he simulated blowing up disco records on the air.84 His dislike of disco was so strong that he even destroyed a copy of Van McCoy’s song “The Hustle” to celebrate the disco star’s sudden death. In early June, when a disco in Linwood, a suburb of Chicago, switched to rock music, Dahl showed up to celebrate. Nearly five thousand members of his army joined him, and police from Indiana were called to control the situation. Later that month Dahl was the host of a rally at a suburban nightclub, and several thousand rock fans came out to support him and to “occupy” a teen disco. Dahl encouraged his army on this occasion to “feed the animals”—disco fans—by pelting them with marshmallows and peanuts. At the end of June Dahl again urged listeners to throw marshmallows at a WDAI promotional van at a shopping mall where a teen disco had been set up. The fans ended up chasing the van and cornering it at a nearby park, where, according to the Village Voice, “the driver had to talk his way out of the first potential disco hostage situation.” 85 Similarly, when the Village People performed in Chicago, Dahl encouraged one hundred contest winners going to their show to “write disco sucks on marshmallows and . . . to throw [them] at the group.”86 On July 1, less than two weeks before the Disco Demolition, a crowd of seven hundred Dahl fans descended upon the Hollywood Disco in

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suburban Hanover Park to see Dahl at a promotional event. When only three hundred fans could enter the disco, hundreds of rowdy fans remained in the parking lot. Fights ensued, and some fans tossed firecrackers into the air, resulting in fifty police officers from eleven different communities being called in to control the boisterous crowd.87 Clearly, Dahl’s fans were willing recruits in the war against disco. Revealingly, by calling his movement the Antidisco Army, Dahl constructed the relationship between rock and disco not only as antagonistic but also as cultural warfare. Because Dahl’s events were becoming increasingly violent and reckless, Les Elias, the station manager at WLUP, warned Dahl to contain his demonstrations. Effectively barred from holding any more violent activities, Dahl searched for another way to promote his antidisco cause. During his short time at WLUP Dahl had become friends with Mike Veeck, who was the sports broadcaster for the station and shared Dahl’s intense dislike of disco. Veeck was also the son of White Sox owner and promotion manager Bill Veeck. Dahl and Veeck came up with the idea of holding the Disco Demolition Night; Dahl, Veeck, and Elias represented the event as a harmless promotional tool that would raise attendance at the White Sox game and give the radio station added publicity. However, what was labeled as a promotional tool was advertised and received as an emotional crusade against disco. In the weeks prior to the Disco Demolition, Dahl incited his fans with antidisco rhetoric and heavily promoted the event. On July 12, 1979, then, almost ten years to the day after the Stonewall Riots, over seventy thousand people converged on Comiskey Park to participate in the Disco Demolition. At 8:40 P. M ., with the chants of “disco sucks” and “death to disco” resounding throughout the stadium, Steve Dahl drove onto the field of Comiskey Park as the leader of the Antidisco Army in a war where the sexuality and musical taste of a culture was at stake. When Dahl, accompanied by WLUP sex-symbol Lorelei, detonated the explosives and sent shards from thousands of disco records flying through the air, the crowd also exploded. Their anger at disco manifested itself on the field of Comiskey Park and then spread across the United States. Immediately following the Disco Demolition, a series of competing narratives emerged that attempted to explain the event yet presented only a limited understanding of the event as antigay. Journalist Dave Marsh interpreted the Disco Demolition as antigay, racist, and sexist in an article for Rolling Stone:

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White males, eighteen to thirty-four are the most likely to see disco as the product of homosexuals, blacks and Latins [sic], and therefore they’re most likely to respond to appeals to wipe out such threats to their security. It goes almost without saying that such appeals are racist and sexist, but broadcasting has never been an especially civil-libertarian medium.88 Despite Marsh’s claim, analyses of Dahl’s antidisco position and its appeal largely went “without saying” in the national and international media coverage that followed the Disco Demolition, and his article stood in contrast to most other cultural commentators. Curiously, the baseball establishment attempted to disavow the Disco Demolition as part of baseball culture and distanced itself from the event. Indeed, there was widespread agreement in newspapers and entertainment journals that those who participated in the Disco Demolition were not, in the words of team owner Bill Veeck, “real baseball fans” but adolescents who came to the game solely to destroy disco records.89 The media noted that the crowd was mostly between fifteen and twenty-five years of age, overwhelmingly white, male, and from the suburbs of Chicago.90 The media continually emphasized that the crowd was youthful and smoking marijuana in order to convey that those who attended the Disco Demolition represented the typical rock audience and not a baseball audience.91 Two days after the Disco Demolition this idea was forcefully conveyed in a letter to the editor of the Chicago Tribune: Disco Demolition Night turned out to be an outrageous example of irresponsible hucksterism that disgraced the sport of baseball, endangered the White Sox and Detroit Tigers players and cheated and insulted the genuine fans who came to see the game. . . . Thursday had little to do with why baseball fans come to Comiskey or any other park and even less to do with the game of baseball.92 Therefore, while the events of July 12 marked an intersection between rock culture and baseball culture, it was an intersection that was resented by baseball fans, who viewed their space as being “invaded” and “taken over” by young rock fans.93 Meanwhile, WLUP and Steve Dahl explained the Disco Demolition as a fun event that had gone violently awry. The day after the Disco Demolition Les Elias, the station manager for WLUP, explained that the Disco Demolition “all began as good, clean fun. We had problems

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in small places so we thought, ‘Why don’t we move to a huge outdoor area where we wouldn’t have a problem.’ Much to our amazement, we drew too many people.”94 When interviewed immediately after the Disco demolition, Dahl also told reporters that “we were trying to downplay the violent aspect” and insisted: “We just wanted people to have fun.”95 Similarly, the Chicago Tribune sports journalist David Israel argued that the riot “would have happened any place 50,000 teenagers got together on a sultry summer night with beer and reefer.”96 The repeated insistence by popular commentators that the violence of the Disco Demolition was mere happenstance has effectively obscured Dahl’s violent rhetoric, military themes, antigay sentiments, and the physical destruction of over fifty-five thousand disco records. The backlash against disco in Chicago was fueled by the perception among many of Dahl’s listeners that disco was threatening to rock music and to heterosexuality. Moreover, the Disco Demolition provided an opportunity for Dahl’s listeners to respond in a concrete way to the threat of disco. It also allowed a socially sanctioned way for youths to express their collective dislike toward disco and to act out their fantasies of disco destruction. For many participants the Disco Demolition was fun precisely because it was so clearly violent. Many who attended the Disco Demolition had a genuine dislike for disco. They also attended for the sheer excitement of taking part in a mass demonstration and seeing something blown up, especially for the cheap admission price of 98 cents.97 Notably, the violence against disco was not contained in Comiskey Park. The Daily Herald of Chicago described a number of physical altercations between disco and rock fans that resulted in police intervention following the Comiskey Park riot and even claimed that “the Chicago area is fast becoming a battleground for disco and rock fans.” Another Daily Herald article quoted the owner of a teen disco and his seventeenand eighteen-year-old patrons who claimed that since Dahl launched his antidisco campaign during his morning show “they have been abused verbally, threatened with physical violence and seen the brick walls of their establishment spray painted with anti-disco slogans.” This violence among youth was just one indicator that the Disco Demolition was not simple fun. Rather, antidisco sentiments profoundly spoke to cultural and sexual identities of music fans in complex ways.98 The sexual dynamics of the antidisco backlash were signaled the day after the Disco Demolition when a large headline in the Chicago Tribune proclaimed: “Discophobia out of Control.” This was not the first time the word “discophobia,” imitating in its construction the word

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“homophobia,” had appeared in print, but it took on added resonance after the riot. In August 1979 an article in the Village Voice by Frank Rose explained that discophobia was a backlash against “the whole disco phenomenon, especially the disco lifestyle.”99 Both discophobia and homophobia emphasized fears of a lifestyle and a reaction to those fears, and the Chicago Tribune headline stated prominently that these fears were unrestrained. That same month, Steve Dahl gave a television interview with Tom Snyder on a popular television talk show called Tomorrow. Dahl appeared dressed in military fatigues and an army helmet and proceeded to break disco records on his head and make fun of disco. When asked by Snyder why he hated disco music, Dahl replied with surprising candor: “I have a problem with the culture, not the music.” Dahl then reiterated several times during the interview that he found “disco culture intimidating.”100 Although Dahl didn’t state then which aspects of disco culture he found to be intimidating, his attacks on the sexualized and gendered nature of disco as well as its elitism suggest that these were primary sources of anxiety for him. There is little record of an immediate response from the gay community about the Disco Demolition. There was no mention of the event in any of the local Chicago gay papers or in newsletters such as the Chicago Gay Alliance Newsletter or the Chicago Gay Crusader. There was no coverage of the Disco Demolition in national gay papers like the Advocate or Gay Community News or even in gay entertainment journals such as After Dark.101 One disco promoter, Mel Cheren, believes that gay men understood that the backlash was antigay but did not anticipate the effect of the Disco Demolition. Cheren writes in his autobiography: “At the time, we did not realize that a revolution was taking place. Nobody, especially those of us riding the wave could conceive disco could fade from mass popularity so fast. As far as we were concerned, the Comiskey Park incident was a nasty homophobic blip.”102 Cheren’s perspective and the overall absence of commentary in the gay press suggest that gay men did not view the Disco Demolition as newsworthy or as a serious threat. For Cheren and many others involved in the disco scene, a few young malcontents could not affect a multibillion-dollar industry that was dominating the record charts, no matter how vocal they were in their opposition to disco. However, to their surprise, the Disco Demolition triggered a nationwide expression of anger against disco that caused disco to recede quickly from the American cultural landscape. At the beginning of 1979 there were over twenty-five thousand discotheques in the United States generating six billion dollars a year in

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revenue. There were over two hundred all-disco radio stations and eight thousand professional deejays. The disco record industry was grossing over four billion dollars a year and accounted for nearly 30 percent of the entire music business and almost 40 percent of the top one hundred hits.103 Immediately after the July 1979 riot, rock radio deejays across the United States began attacking disco and imitating Dahl’s rhetoric and antics. Rock radio stations also began staging antidisco promotions similar to those in Chicago. Many commentators have agreed that the entertainment market was oversaturated with disco and that audiences simply grew weary of the fad and expressed their discontent. While this was partly true, most fads do not result in violent backlashes, and the rejection of disco music was not a simple grassroots expression of discontent. The widespread abandonment of disco by radio stations and the adoption of antidisco promotions across the United States were not spontaneous but instead were largely determined by financial interests of music promoters, among them, Kent Burkhart, Lee Abrams, and John Parikhal. Burkhart and Abrams of Burkhart-Abrams Associates were radio consultants who directed over fifty album-oriented rock radio stations, including WLUP in Chicago. Burkhart and Abrams also directed over forty country, Top 40, and disco radio stations. Their decision to drop disco was based upon the market research of John Parikhal, who, working for a media consulting firm called Joint Communications, conducted attitudinal and market research on disco for Abrams and Burkhart. Parikhal’s research included three focus groups and several thousand surveys about disco. Through these surveys Parikhal and Abrams became aware of a rising backlash against disco in the summer of 1979. They also saw the tremendous promotional power of Dahl’s stunts and decided to capitalize on the antidisco backlash with other rock stations. In an interview with Rolling Stone Dahl claimed he spoke with Abrams about “doing a national hookup . . . to blow up disco records all over the country” and expressed hope that an all-rock radio format would spread to stations whose playlists were determined by Abrams.104 After consulting with Parikhal, Abrams galvanized sixty radio stations across the country within seven days.105 Parikhal says that “by then, everyone had seen Chicago so they wanted to follow disco destruction.”106 When Village Voice journalist Frank Rose interviewed Parikhal in 1979, Parikhal stated that “homophobia cropped up repeatedly with rock fans” and was a motivating factor in the popular backlash.107 Antigay prejudice may have had little to do with Parikhal’s and

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Abrams’s own decisions to abandon disco or Abrams’s decision to use disco destruction as a marketing tool. Nevertheless, an antigay message was spread by radio programmers who saw the commercial appeal of disco destruction and were not concerned with the ideological content of their actions. Abrams’s own influence led to the broadcast of antigay statements similar to Dahl’s on radio stations across the United States. Disco promoter Mel Cheren’s autobiography attests to the importance of Abrams, Burkhart, and Parikhal: Overnight, the “disco sucks” campaign grew into a huge juggernaut, and everybody who ever had any misgivings about disco jumped on. Radio deejays began denouncing the music openly; disgruntled writers at music publications went on the attack; people began making fun of anything associated with disco, and it quickly had an effect. Programmers and market researchers began to encounter visceral hatred for anything connected with the word disco, gay people included. Within months of the Comiskey Park rally, dozens of all-disco radio stations were abandoning what they now believed was a sinking ship, adopting instead a blend of rock, pop and only the most popular disco hits, a format they labeled urban-contemporary.108 The changes outlined by Cheren led to the rapid decline of disco and the reemergence of rock as the dominant musical genre. Concurrently, there was a groundswell of complaints against disco’s sexual nature, which resulted in ABC Radio’s vice president reassuring “a group of advertisers that ‘contemporary’ rock stations deliver wholesome ‘family buying power’” in contrast to disco. This assurance took place in the context of the New Right’s pro-family struggle and an increasing opposition to sexual representations in popular culture. Indeed, in one of the many disco postmortems that appeared in the media in the months that followed the Disco Demolition, one journalist noted in November 1979 that “one of the biggest complaints of the rockers is that disco is ‘oversexed.’ ”109 By January 1980, according to Mel Cheren, “disco was so officially over that the word itself ceased being used by the mainstream media except as a pejorative.”110 By then, disco rarely was heard on the radio and no longer had the unprecedented and unparalleled media coverage and popularity that it had enjoyed just a year earlier. In February 1980 Billboard noted “the decline of disco on radio in the U.S., indeed its virtual ban as a format,” and stated that disco’s flagship, WKTU-FM,

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“no longer promotes itself as ‘Disco 92’” and had broadened its playlist to “include a wider range of black artists.”111 Later in February, Billboard observed that “rock dance music continues to enter the playlists of established discos . . . and out in middle America the disco operators are getting worried because the crowds are not coming any more.”112 The shifts in the popular music scene were also visible at the 22nd Grammy Awards. Complaints from the previous year about disco’s dominance meant that rock albums and disco albums no longer competed against each other. Consequently, traditional rock performers like Bob Dylan were recipients of major awards. The Washington Post stated in its coverage of these Grammys: No funeral marches were played, but the death of disco was solemnly commemorated—not a minute too soon—last night in the recording industry’s twenty-second annual orgy of self-congratulations, the Grammy Awards. It was not that disco records didn’t win any prizes— just that no fuss was made about them. This was the year that disco joined gospel music, jazz fusion and folk, among others, as a special award category—in a sense, a protected musical species where awards can be won without going platinum.113 The placement of disco into a separate Grammy category was one of the many ways that disco was segregated from other forms of music and gradually removed from the popular music scene. So stigmatized was disco that by March 1980 the Chicago radio station, WDAI-FM, that had fired Dahl two years earlier when switching to disco abandoned the disco format in favor of an adult rock program style and announced that it would even adopt new call letters in order to dissociate itself from its previous identity.114 Meanwhile, rock’s resurgence under other rubrics such as punk and New Wave was so great that even famous disco establishments like Paradise Garage and Studio 54 integrated it into their clubs.115 White straight men and women continued to dance after the Disco Demolition, but what they danced to was no longer called disco. Likewise, disco did not disappear in gay and African American communities, where it had originated and flourished. The music, however, increasingly was marketed under the name of “dance music,” which was not substantially different from disco but did not carry the same gay connotations. As disco receded from the mainstream, it became evident that the widespread backlash against disco had enabled Dahl and other rock fans to reclaim symbolic ownership of the radio airwaves and heterosocial spaces. Rooted in antigay prejudice, the systematic collection and destruction of records at the Disco Demolition on July 12, 1979 sent a message

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to the American public that listening to a genre of music that was openly identified as gay was unacceptable and that an overt gay influence would not be tolerated. The antidisco actions by radio programmers further expelled an audibly and visibly gay genre from the American mainstream. Following the Disco Demolition, gay men were no longer collectively visible in popular music and nightlife, and by April 1980 popular music had been reclaimed, at least momentarily, by straight white and male rock fans. The attacks on disco took place within a larger backlash against gay visibility in American politics and culture. Although the Disco Demolition was not a right-wing movement, its reactionary and populist nature was articulated alongside a rising right-wing antigay, antielitist, and antisexual politics that also expressed antidisco sentiments.116 Both movements sought to limit the cultural and political visibility of gay men. Despite political and cultural backlashes that sought to desexualize mainstream culture and despite the terrible toll of AIDS in the 1980s, struggles for gay civil rights and dignity continued unabated. Gays and lesbians continued to fight for visibility and struggle over questions of social equality and sexual difference. Moreover, musicians who presented themselves queerly or sung queer lyrics such as Boy George and Culture Club, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, and the Cure continued to find commercial acclaim. However, no mainstream and commercial musical genre matched disco’s success at making gay men collectively visible or at advancing a participatory queer cultural aesthetic that offered a possibility of bridging racial, gender, and sexual divides. When disco reemerged in the late 1990s in movies such as Last Days of Disco and Studio 54, in stage musicals such as Mama Mia and Saturday Night Fever, in radio programming and in dance clubs, its explosive history and subversive sexual possibilities were largely muted. Instead, disco music and its accompanying fashion styles were reintroduced without difficulty as kitsch. The reappropriation of disco was dramatically illustrated on the twenty-second anniversary of the Disco Demolition in 2001. The Disco Demolition was commemorated at a Salute to Disco Night at a Florida Marlins baseball game. Like the original Disco Demolition Night, the event was organized by Mike Veeck, who was now a marketing consultant for the Marlins. This time, however, disco records were not exploded or burned. Instead, fans were asked to dress up in disco attire, and Harry Wayne Casey of the 1970s disco group KC and the Sunshine Band sang “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.” In a ceremony before the game, Veeck asked Casey to

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accept his apology for the damage that the Disco Demolition had caused to disco performers’ careers. Veeck told Casey, “I want to make it right, I want to tell you right from the bottom of my leisure suit that I’m sorry.” Casey accepted Veeck’s apology and told the media, “I’m happy he’s finally apologizing for it, I feel redeemed. It gives closure to the whole thing.”117 Disco has now safely reentered American mainstream cultural memory—with few gay connotations—as nostalgia for a time of platform shoes, bell-bottoms, and white polyester suits. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank Marc Stein and Arthur Haberman for their advice and guidance during the research and writing of this chapter and Paul Buhle, Robert Lee, and Liz Scheps for their thoughtful feedback on various drafts. I am also grateful to Mathew Kuefler and the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable suggestions. Any errors herein are my own. NOTES First published as the article “Discophobia: Antigay Prejudices and the 1979 Backlash against Disco,” by Gillian Frank, in Journal of the History of Sexuality, Volume 16, Issue 2, 276–306. Copyright © 2007 by the University of Texas Press. All rights reserved. 1. Abe Peck, “Hangover at Dahl’s House,” Chicago Sun-Times, July 14, 1979, 42; Brian Hewitt, “White Sox Fans Demolish Doubleheader,” Chicago Sun-Times, July 13, 1979, 104; Allan Jones, “U.S. Disco Wars: Carter to Resign?” Melody Maker, August 4, 1979, 10; Roger Noll, “Weighted Average Ticket Prices,” available online at http://users.pullman.com/rodfort/SportsBusiness/ MLB/MLBFrame.htm, April 27, 2001; Joseph Sjostrom and Lynn Emmerman, “ ‘These weren’t real baseball fans’—Veeck,” Chicago Tribune, July 13, 1979, 1. 2. See Brian Hewitt, “Tigers Want Sox to Forfeit,” Chicago Sun-Times, July 13, 1979, 98; Don McLeese, “Anatomy of an Anti-Disco Riot,” In These Times, August 29–September 4, 1979, 23; Bill Gleason, “The Horror at Comiskey,” Chicago Sun-Times, July 13, 1979, 104; Phil Hersh, “Ch[annel] 44: We Didn’t Broadcast Obscenity,” Chicago Sun-Times, July 14, 1979, 85. 3. “Anti-Disco Rally Halts White Sox,” New York Times, July 13, 1979, A16; “For Those Who Hate Disco,” Briarpatch, August 1979, 4; Don Merry, “White Sox Fans Smash Records,” Los Angeles Times, sec. 3, July 13, 1979, 3; “Rowdy Fans Cost Chicago a Game,” Boston Globe, July 14, 1979, 22. 4. Mel Cheren, Keep On Dancin’: My Life and the Paradise Garage (New York: 24 Hours for Life, 2000), 257–58; see also “Disco-Haters to the Barricades,”

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Newsweek, July 1979, 90; Richard Dozer, “Sox Promotion Ends in a Mob Scene: Tigers Ask for Forfeit of 2nd Game,” Chicago Tribune, sec. 5, July 13, 1979, 1. 5. “Chicago’s WLUP Cools Attack on Rival Station,” Billboard, July 28, 1979, 16. 6. Frank Rose, “Rock & Roll Fights Back: Discophobia,” Village Voice, November 12, 1979, 35; Alan Penchansky, “Chicago Spot Unfurls Banner; Rock Acts Yes, Disco Sound No,” Billboard, March 3, 1979, 104. 7. “Disco-Haters to the Barricades,” Newsweek, July 1979, 90; No Disco (BOMP Records LP, 1979). 8. Lindsy Van Gelder, “Disco Usurps Rock’s Reputation,” Syracuse HeraldJournal, November 26, 1979, 20. 9. Queer theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick defines “homo/heterosexual” as “the world-mapping by which every given person [is] considered necessarily assignable to a homo- or hetero-sexuality.” According to Sedgwick, these terms have not been restricted to identities but are “full of implications for the least sexual aspect of personal existence” and are regularly used to describe a range of acts, practices, situations, and behaviors that are not necessarily sexual but occur between and in relation to men. See Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 2–3. 10. Jeffery Weeks, Sexuality and Its Discontents: Meanings, Myths and Modern Sexualities (Boston: Routledge, 1985), 75. 11. Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton, Last Night a DJ Saved My Life (New York: Grove Press, 2000), 168, 200, 268–70; Walter Hughes, “In the Empire of the Beat: Discipline and Disco,” in Microphone Fiends: Youth Music & Youth Culture, ed. Andrew Ross and Tricia Rose (Routledge: New York, 1994), 147–57; Tim Lawrence, Love Saves the Day: A History of American Dance Music Culture, 1970–1979 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), 373–95; Judith A. Peraino, Listening to the Sirens: Musical Technologies of Queer Identity from Homer to Hedwig (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005), 176–80; Peter Shapiro, Turn the Beat Around: The Secret History of Disco (New York: Faber & Faber, 2005), 240–57. 12. For an extensive discussion on how music is employed and used to situate bodies within social contexts and accentuate how bodies are articulated, see Peter G. Christenson and Donald F. Roberts, It’s Not Only Rock & Roll: Popular Music in the Lives of Adolescents (Creskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 1998). 13. Susan Jeffords, The Remasculinization of America: Gender and the Vietnam War (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989), 168. 14. See Paul Friedlander, Rock and Roll: A Social History (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996). 15. For essays on the discourse of authenticity in rock music, see Simon Frith, Sound Effects: Youth, Leisure and the Politics of Rock (London: Constable, 1983), 11; Richard Dyer, “In Defence of Disco,” in On Record: Rock, Pop & the Written Word, ed. Simon Frith and Andrew Goodwin (London: Routledge,

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1990), 41; and Norma Coates, “(R)evolution Now?” in Sexing the Groove: Popular Music and Gender, ed. Shelia Whitely (New York: Routledge, 1997), 52–53. 16. See Brett Beemyn, “The Silence Is Broken: A History of the First Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual College Student Groups,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 12, no. 2 (2003): 205–23; Alice Echols, Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967–1975 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989); Sara Evans, Personal Politics: The Roots of Women’s Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left (New York: Random House, 1979); Maurice Isserman and Michael Kazin, America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004); Terrence Kissack, “Freaking Fag Revolutionaries: New York’s Gay Liberation Front, 1969–1971,” Radical History Review 62 (1995): 104–34; and Benita Roth, Separate Roads to Feminism: Black, Chicana, and White Feminist Movements in America’s Second Wave (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 17. See Dan Carter, The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Origins of the New Conservatism, and the Transformation of American Politics (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995); and Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001). 18. For a comprehensive discussion of the subgenres of rock, see Joe Stueesy and Scott Lipscomb, Rock and Roll: Its History and Stylistic Development, 4th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 2003). 19. Aaron Fuchs, “The Disco Round as Rock and Roll Reality,” Village Voice, February 5, 1979, 4; Friedlander, Rock and Roll, 173–88. For a discussion of the increasing segregation of popular music between 1965 and 1970, see Nelson George, Where Did Our Love Go? The Rise and Fall of the Motown Sound (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985). 20. Keir Keightley, “Reconsidering Rock,” in The Cambridge Companion to Pop and Rock, ed. Simon Frith, Will Straw, and John Street (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 110, 129. 21. Robert Vare, “Discophobia,” New York Times, July 10, 1979, A15. 22. For a theoretical discussion on the ongoing discourse about the decline of rock music from the 1950s to the present, see Kevin Dettmar, Is Rock Dead? (New York: Routledge, 2006). Dettmar argues that “popular writers who declare rock to be dead [seem] to do so from a selfish, if predictable, motivation: the writers are partisans of an earlier genre of popular music” (78). 23. Frith, Sound Effects, 33; Archie Loss, Pop Dreams: Music Movies, and the Media in the 1960s (Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace, 1999), 149. 24. For a comprehensive discussion of the emergence of disco music as a genre, see Tim Lawrence, Love Saves the Day: A History of American Dance Music Culture, 1970–1979 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003); Stephen Holden, “The Evolution of a Dance Craze,” Rolling Stone, April 19, 1979, 29; Maureen North et al., “Get up and Boogie!” Newsweek, November 8, 1976, 96; and Cheren, Paradise Garage.

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25. For the links between gay liberation, the meanings of gay identity, and gay social spaces, see Beemyn, “The Silence Is Broken”; John D’Emilio, “Cycles of Change, Questions of Strategy: The Gay and Lesbian Movement after Fifty Years,” in The Politics of Gay Rights, ed. Craig A. Rimmerman et al. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 31–53; John D’Emilio, Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States, 1940–1970, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998); Kissack, “Freaking Fag Revolutionaries”; Ian Lekus, “Losing Our Kids: Queer Perspectives on the Chicago Seven Conspiracy Trial,” in The New Left Revisited, ed. John McMillan and Paul Buhle (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2003), 199–213; Toby Marotta, The Politics of Homosexuality (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981); Marc Stein, City of Sisterly and Brotherly Loves: Lesbian and Gay Philadelphia, 1945–1972 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 304–5, 324–40; Justin David Suran, “Coming out against the War: Antimilitarism and the Politicization of Homosexuality in the Era of Vietnam,” American Quarterly 53 (2001): 452–88; and Kenneth Wald, “The Context of Gay Politics,” in Rimmerman, The Politics of Gay Rights, 1–30. 26. Stephen Holden notes that disco was originally known as “party music” in the gay community (“The Evolution of a Dance Craze,” 30). 27. Peter Braunstein, “Disco,” American Heritage, November 1999, 43. 28. For a comprehensive discussion of popular disco hits in gay clubs, see Lawrence, Love Saves the Day. 29. Barbara Graustark, “The Disco Takeover,” Newsweek, April 2, 1979, 56. 30. Jack Egan, “Cashing in on the Boogie to a Tune of $5 Billion,” Washington Post, June 26, 1978, B1. 31. Gregory Bredbeck, “Troping the Light Fantastic: Representing Disco Then and Now,” GLQ 3 (1996): 81. 32. Quoted in Ibid. 33. During the controversy surrounding the gay rights referendum in Dade County in 1977, discos across the United States boycotted Florida orange juice to protest Anita Bryant’s antigay crusade, and they were used to raise funds for gay rights organizations in Florida as well as national organizations. One local gay rights group, the Miami Victory Campaign, even released a disco song entitled “Hurricane Anita” that was used as a fundraising tool. After Dade County, discos continued to be centers of political and cultural activity aiding in organizing and fund-raising, both for local political organizations and for events of national urgency such as the Brigg’s Initiative in California. See, for example, Free Press (Charlotte, NC), April 4, 1977, 17; Paul Nash, “Is the Squeeze Working?” Out! July 29, 1977, 13; Our Own Community Press, July 1977, 2; Ron Anderson, “Orange Ball Brings Community Together,” Gay Life (Chicago), May 20, 1977, 2; Lesbian News, December 1977, 10; Dade County Coalition for Human Rights 1 (March 1978); Carla Hall, “The Big Event: Disco Benefit for the Gay Community at the Sheraton Park,” Washington Post, October 24, 1978, C9.

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34. Quoted in David Goodstein, “Opening Space,” Advocate, April 20, 1977, 5; Theodore Stanger, “Dade Approves Ordinance Banning Bias against Gays,” Miami Herald, 19 January 1977, 18A. 35. See D’Emilio, Sexual Politics, 35. 36. The first referendum took place in Colorado in 1974 and resulted in the repeal of a gay civil rights ordinance. The referendum was largely ignored by the mainstream media. It also seems to have been ignored by gay and lesbian periodicals that covered the struggle in Dade three years later. 37. Phyllis Schlafly, “ERA and Homosexual ‘Marriages,’ ” Phyllis Schlafly Report 8, no. 2 (September 1974). 38. Weeks, Sexuality and Its Discontents, 34. 39. Ibid., 39. 40. Numerous articles in gay and lesbian periodicals and movement newsletters credited Bryant with reinvigorating gay liberation. See, for example, Drummond Ayres, Jr., “Miami Vote Increases Activism on Homosexual Rights,” New York Times, June 9, 1977, 1; Randy Shilts and Robert McQueen, “The Movement’s ‘Born Again’ from Apathy to Action,” Advocate, July 27, 1977, 7; Randy Shilts, “The New Improved Gay Movement: Will It Work?” Advocate, October 19, 1977, 7; Dade County Coalition for Human Rights, “Just Begun,” Weekly News Bulletin, September 6, 1977; National Gay Task Force Action Report, April–May 1977. 41. Constance Rosenblum, “Discomania,” Human Behavior, November 1978, 27. 42. Ed McCormack, “ ‘No Sober Person Dances’: In Which a Suburban Prole Decadent Visits a Hot Manhattan Disco and Learns that Cicero Was Right,” in Dancing Madness, ed. Abe Peck (New York: Rolling Stone Press/Anchor Press, 1976), 13. McCormack’s observations about bisexual chic were bracketed by his interview with a disco-goer named Tony Pagano, who stated: “ ‘What my old man doesn’t understand is that you don’t have to be a fag to be into this scene,’ Tony says as he sips a tequila sunrise. . . . ‘My old man doesn’t understand that dancing is not a tight-assed, uptight sex role scene. It’s just a way of communicating with people you might not have anything to say to if you sat down to talk. It doesn’t mean you want to fuck a broad or a guy if you dance with them. You’re just doing what comes natural.’ ” These sentiments were hardly unique to Dancing Madness and appear to have been widespread. See, for example, Art Carey, “Gays, Straights Dance It Up at New Prelude,” Bucks County (Pa.) Courier Times, September 5, 1976, A5. 43. Holden, “The Evolution of a Dance Craze,” 29. 44. Egan, “Cashing in on the Boogie,” B1; Lynn Darling, “The Prince of Disco,” Washington Post, August 5, 1979, H1. 45. James Henke, “Record Companies Dancing to a Billion-Dollar Tune,” Rolling Stone, April 19, 1979, 47. 46. See Cheren, Paradise Garage, 241; Kopkind, “The Dialectics of Disco,” 1; Egan, “Cashing in on the Boogie,” B2; “How a Station Becomes a Money

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Machine,” Business Week, February 5, 1979, 60; “Disco: The Sound of Money,” Economist, July 1, 1978, 36. 47. Darling, “The Prince of Disco,” H1. 48. Graustark, “The Disco Takeover,” 56. 49. David Brackett, “The Politics and Musical Practice of ‘Crossover’ in American Popular Music, 1963 to 1965,” American Quarterly 78, no. 4 (1994): 777. 50. At the same time, the relationship between “black music” and disco was conflicted. Several white and African-American commentators believed that disco, despite its origins in gay African-American clubs, hurt black music and black male musicians. Because black women dominated disco culture and it was black male musicians who complained the most about disco, gender may have been a determining factor in these statements. These articles also stated that disco was one of many forms of “black music.” Consequently, African-American culture was not reducible or reduced to disco in the same way that gay culture was. See Fred Murphy, “No Agreement at BMA Meet on Disco Music’s Pros & Cons,” Variety, June 13, 1979, 67; Radcliffe Joe, “Assn. Fearful Disco Hurting Black Music,” Billboard, April 7, 1979, 18; “Disco Not Proving Panacea for Black Artists,” Billboard, July 14, 1979, 59. 51. Irv Lichtman, “They All Jump on Bandwagon,” Billboard, July 14, 1979, 64; Geoffrey Himes, “The Big Disco Debate,” Washington Post, May 16, 1979, B16; Doug Hall, “No Surprise: Disco Hogging N.Y. Arbitron,” Billboard, July 14, 1979, 15. 52. Abe Peck, “The Face of Disco: Macho Men with Their Tongues in Their Cheek,” Rolling Stone, April 19, 1979, 13. Disco historian Tim Lawrence has noted that the lyrics of the Village People’s tracks “were cleverly titled after gay urban centers and referenced hot spots such as Folsom Street, Polk Street, Studio One, the Ice Palace, and the Sandpiper along the way” (Love Saves the Day, 256). 53. Henke, “Record Companies Dancing,” 46; Graustark, “The Disco Takeover,” 56. 54. Graustark, “The Disco Takeover,” 56. 55. John Rockwell, “Can Rock and Disco Music Coexist?” New York Times, January 21, 1979, D22. Although the article answered in the affirmative, it nevertheless noted growing rage among rock fans against disco. 56. Frank Meyer, “Another Grammy Failure by Rock Produces Cries for Disco Category though MOR’s Really Big Winner,” Variety, February 21, 1979, 97–100. 57. Jim Curtis, Rock Eras: Interpretations of Music and Society, 1954–1984 (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1987), 300; “Hot Acts Work Few Club Dates, Many Disco Operators Are Swearing off Live Talent,” Billboard, 3 March 1979, 44. 58. Braunstein, “Disco,” 43. 59. Keightley, “Reconsidering Rock,” 127. 60. “Disco: The Sound of Money,” 36.

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61. See, for example, Brian Sherrat and Nalani Leong, Disco Chic: All the Styles, Steps, and Places to Go (New York: Harmony Books, 1979). The authors of this book told their readers that the best way to get into a popular disco was to be born beautiful, dress in disco fashion, and buy expensive memberships to disco clubs. See also Darling, “The Prince of Disco,” H1. 62. Toni Ginnetti, “Outburst Spotlights DJ’s Cause,” Daily Herald (Chicago), sec. 1, 14 July 1979, 3. Ginnetti quoted Dahl’s interview from the July 1979 issue of the Illinois Entertainer, where he stated that “the disco culture represents the surreal, insidious, weird oppression because you have to look good, you know, tuck your shirt in, perfect this, perfect that.” 63. Steve Dahl, “Corporate Airwaves, Radio Daze,” Chicago Tribune, March 17, 1996, 1. See also “Disco Grows in Chicago as MOR Declines,” Billboard, July 21, 1979, 16; Mary Tuthill, “Disco Dancing to the Tune of Billions,” Nation’s Business, April 1979, 58–60; Doug Hall, “Heads Roll as Disco Sound Dominates N.Y.,” Billboard, July 7, 1979, 4; Peck, “Hangover at Dahl’s House,” 42; Rose, “Rock & Roll Fights Back,” 36. 64. Steve Dahl, “WLUP Freak Out: Blowed up [1979],” in 20 Years in the Can (Chicago: Lake Effect, 1998), track 17. 65. Rose, “Rock & Roll Fights Back,” 36. 66. Richard Goldstein, “Disco Sucks Up,” Village Voice, May 7, 1979, 47. 67. Dahl, “Corporate Airwaves, Radio Daze,” 1. 68. Cartoon from Goldstein, “Disco Sucks Up,” 47. 69. Alan Dundes, Cracking Jokes: Studies of Sick Humor Cycles and Stereotypes (Berkeley: Ten Speed Press, 1987), 20. 70. Dahl, “Do You Think I’m Disco?/Do Ya Think I’m Sexy,” in 20 Years in the Can, track 20. 71. Nina S. Hyde, “Fashion Notes,” Washington Post, October 14, 1979, M3. 72. Ed McCormack, “No Sober Person Dances,” in Peck, Dancing Madness, 14. 73. The Jacksons, “Blame It on the Boogie,” Destiny (Sony, 1978). 74. North et al., “Get Up and Boogie!” 96. 75. Lee Edelman, “Tearooms and Sympathy, or, The Epistemology of the Water Closet,” in The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader, ed. Henry Abelove, Michele Barales, and Dave Halperin (New York: Routledge, 1993), 560. 76. Phyllis Schlafly’s “Stop ERA” movement continually iterated that the ERA would require “sex-integrated bathrooms” and stated that the ERA would legalize homosexual marriages and adoptions. See Schlafly, “ERA and Homosexual ‘Marriages,’ ” and “ERA Means Unisex Society,” Conservative Digest 4 (July 1978): 14–16. 77. Henry Allen, “The New Narcissism; ‘The Male Narcissist: He Walks in Beauty . . . and His Face Is His Fortune,’ ” Washington Post, June 10, 1978, 21. 78. Rose, “Rock & Roll Fights Back,” 37. 79. Hersh, “Ch[annel] 44.” 80. Ibid. This article reported that viewers complained that the phrase “disco sucks” was obscene. However, the article never spelled out the

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“obscene” meaning. Ed Morris, general manager of channel 44, denied the obscenity of the word “sucks.” Morris was quoted in the article and offered a contradictory statement about the phrase: “I have a 29-year-old son who uses the expression, ‘This sucks and that sucks.’ I’ve asked him not to use it and he said all it means is that something stinks. If my son doesn’t think it’s obscene, I don’t think it’s obscene.” 81. Dahl, “Do You Think I’m Disco?” 82. Coho were a type of salmon introduced into Lake Michigan to devour parasitic eels called lampreys that were wiping out the lake’s natural fish population. Dahl’s radio audience was encouraged to view disco fans and disco music as parasitic and a violent threat to the natural order. 83. Rose, “Rock & Roll Fights Back,” 36. 84. Dahl, “WLUP Freak Out”; Steve Dahl, “WLUP Sister Sledge: Blowed up Real Good! [1979],” in 20 Years in the Can, track 21; see also “For Those Who Hate Disco,” Briarpatch, August 1979, 4. 85. “Chicago’s WLUP Cools Attack on Rival Station,” Billboard, July 28, 1979, 16. 86. Kurt Loder, “Rolling Stone Random Notes,” Daily Intelligencer (PA), August 3, 1979, 43. 87. Sandy Riemer, “DJ’s Anti-Disco Fever Cooled by Melee in Hanover Park,” Daily Herald (Chicago), sec. 1, July 3, 1979, 4. 88. Dave Marsh, “The Flip Sides of ‘79,” Rolling Stone, December 22, 1979, 28. Similar comments appeared in a column in the Syracuse Herald by journalist Lindsy Van Gelder, who claimed that “the anti-disco clamor has often smacked of intolerance toward two oppressed groups—blacks and gays— who comprise a large chunk of disco’s audience as well as its producers” (“Disco Usurps Rock’s Reputation,” 20). 89. Sjostrom and Emmerman, “These Weren’t Real Baseball Fans,” 3. 90. Phil Hersh, “This Time, Veeck Is Forced to Swallow His Pride,” Chicago Sun-Times, July 14, 1979, 85. This article sought to show that those who attended the Disco Demolition were not real baseball fans by noting that the “gate-crashers Thursday had little or no desire to see a baseball game. Many had called to ask directions to the park.” 91. Ibid. 92. “Veeck Asked for It,” Chicago Tribune, July 14, 1979, 8. 93. Richard Dozer, “Sox Promotion Ends in a Mob Scene: Tigers Ask for Forfeit of 2nd Game,” Chicago Tribune, sec. 5, July 13, 1979, 1; Richard Dozer, “Sox Forced to Forfeit to Tigers,” Chicago Tribune, sec. 2, July 14, 1979, 1. 94. Peck, “Hangover at Dahl’s House,” 42. 95. Sjostrom and Emmerman, “These Weren’t Real Baseball Fans.” 96. Israel, “When the Fans Wanted to Rock.” 97. Alan Penchansky, “Chicago Anti-Disco Deejay Signs Ovation Record Pact,” Billboard, August 11, 1979, 33; Paul Sullivan, “Looking Back on a Record-Breaking Night at Comiskey,” Chicago Tribune, July 12, 1989, Sports 1.

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98. Debbe Jonak, “Decked for Disco, Fan Vows New Battles,” Daily Herald (Chicago), sec. 1, July 17, 1979, 1; “Big Kumquat Vandalized,” Ibid., sec. 1, July 19, 1979, 2; Paul Gores, “Cops Avert Repeat Battle over Music,” Ibid., sec. 1, July 23, 1979, 4; Tim Moran, “Brother, Sister Swing into Fame with Disco,” Ibid., sec. 1, January 3, 1980, 6. 99. Rose, “Rock & Roll Fights Back,” 36. 100. NBC Network, Tomorrow with Tom Snyder, August 13, 1979. 101. I examined issues of over 30 regional and local gay and lesbian journals at collections in the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives in Toronto, Canada, and the Stonewall Archive in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. In my survey of gay and lesbian periodicals published between 1978 and 1980 I found no articles about the backlash against disco. 102. Cheren, Paradise Garage, 261. 103. Darling, “The Prince of Disco,” H1; Graustark, “The Disco Takeover,” 56. 104. Loder, “Rolling Stone Random Notes,” 43. 105. Rose, “Rock & Roll Fights Back,” 37. 106. From a telephone interview conducted between John Parikhal and myself, November 30, 2000. 107. Rose, “Rock & Roll Fights Back,” 36. 108. Cheren, Paradise Garage, 258. 109. Van Gelder, “Disco Usurps Rock’s Reputation.” 110. Cheren, Paradise Garage, 259. 111. Doug Hall, “Disco Decline Spurs R & B,” Billboard, February 9, 1980, 1, 20. 112. Roman Kozak, “From Trickle to Torrent: Rock Overwhelming the Clubs’ Playlists,” Billboard, February 23, 1980, 36. The same issue of Billboard had a contradictory article that described “Billboard’s Seventh Disco Forum,” where the keynote speaker, Radcliffe Joe, set “the tone for the air of optimism which pervaded all aspects of the convention.” The article reported that in “his opening remarks, Joe assured his audience that the discotheque industry was as viable and full of energy today as it was during the pinnacle of its popularity in the late 1970s” and “lambasted those who ‘would conspire to foster the demise of the industry.’ ” The article thus acknowledged that disco was under attack, and Joe’s reassurances themselves seemed defensive. See “Forum Attendees Unite, Vow to Aid Disco,” Billboard, February 23, 1980, 3, 53. An editorial in the same issue also defensively affirmed disco’s strength and urged its readers not to interpret changes in radio’s programming format as “the fading of a given music category.” See “Disco: What’s It All About?” Billboard, February 23, 1980, 16. See also Maurie Orondecker, “New Philadelphia WCAU Sound ‘Fascinatin’ Rhythm’ Mood Continues sans Disco Beat,” Billboard, March 1, 1980, 17. 113. Joseph McLellan, “The Grammys: Nostalgia & Disco’s Demise,” Washington Post, February 28, 1980, D3.

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114. Alan Penchansky, “New Call Letters Coming: Chicago WDAI-FM Abandons Disco,” Billboard, March 1, 1980, 17. 115. Jay Merritt, “Rock Strikes Back!” Rolling Stone, March 20, 1980, 19. 116. See, for example, Anita Bryant Ministries News 2 (June 1979). In it an article warned that homosexuals were “producing [disco] records with double meanings . . . then having ‘straight’ children buy them.” See also Stephanie Mansfield, “‘Clean up America’ Rally at the Capitol,” Washington Post, April 28, 1979, C1. The article reported how “television preacher Jerry Falwell came to the Capitol steps yesterday to attack President Carter, homosexuality, pornography, television comedies, abortion, discos, divorce and sex education before 8,000 flag-waving supporters.” 117. Mark Long, “Disco Demolition Night Promoter Apologizes for 1979 Event,” Associated Press news item, July 12, 2001, available online at www.foxsports.com. See also Sarah Talalay, “Florida Sports Hall of Fame Is on Endangered List,” Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, July 13, 2001, 18C; and “A Vow to Vinyl,” St. Petersburg Times, July 13, 2001, C1.

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Chapter 9

When a Door Is a Jar, or Out in the Theater: Tennessee Williams and Queer Space Anne Fleche

Part of what constitutes sexuality is precisely that which does not appear and that which, to some degree, can never appear. This is perhaps the most fundamental reason why sexuality is to some degree always closeted, especially to the one who would express it through acts of self-disclosure.1 Tennessee Williams represents a test case of the way the closet has been treated in gay theater criticism, a criticism that has tended to replicate the very closet structure it deplores. In a way, the theater has always been complicitous with the closet, as a privileged, protected space where gay culture traditionally has been very much at home. Gay criticism on Williams, emerging over the last ten years or so, has described his work variously as homophobic and closeted, subversive and even radical.2 Yet all of these criticisms hinge on the inside/outside distinction, perhaps the overriding trope in gay and lesbian criticism and theory.3 For example, most of Williams’s gay critics consider his fiction and poetry to be more “out” than his drama, although they suggest that fiction and poetry are more private, closeted genres than drama. This puts pressure on Williams to come out in the theater—presumably conceived as a more open, more public writerly space—and suggests that the theater itself is already “out” of the closet. To be out as a writer is thus to be precisely there, in that public space. Of course the

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logic of inside/outside has already, at this stage, moved somewhat, Theatresomewhere, but it is still stuck within its own inside/outside dilemma: can a space be considered “out” if it is not also already in? Can a writer be out in the theater? And in what sense? The question is a critical one, because this spatial question spatializes the critic. Where does the critic stand in order to locate the precise limits and dimensions of Williams’s closet? To pronounce him in or out requires a theoretical vantage point. In her introduction to the collection of essays, inside/out, Diana Fuss considers that the question of homosexual identity is itself folded inside a structure: The homo in relation to the hetero, much like the feminine in relation to the masculine, operates as an indispensable interior exclusion-an outside which is inside interiority making the articulation of the latter possible, a transgression of the border which is necessary to constitute the border as such.4 As Fuss’s intricated sentence shows, the opposition inside/outside represents not a choice, or even a distinction, but an epistemology of the border-a spatial notion of identity and difference which can never get outside itself, but only move a boundary line or permeate it, reproducing the interior/exterior law. Consequently, gay readings of closeted writers (like Williams) have their limits: they can only “out” someone by putting that someone “in,” repeating, all too often, the implicit condemnation of insiderness, while using its codes to legitimate an outside reading (and thereby, of course, implicitly legitimizing the in/out border once again). As Jacques Derrida has said of the discourses on painting, “[T]here is for them an inside and an outside of the work as soon as there is a work.”5 Is the gay critic, then, at liberty to be less closeted than the closeted writer? Fuss questions whether “inhabiting the outside” “guarantee[s] radicality.” “[F]or in order to idealize the outside we must already be, to some degree, comfortably entrenched on the inside.”6 The question of whether discourse can escape these inside/out distinctions is a reminder that space is always a matter of limits-even when it’s described as “unlimited.” It has to be bounded, modified, organized, relativized, quoted. Space is necessary to structure; it is structure’s raw material. Space requires a frame, a garment, a proscenium, a limit. Space exists, indeed, as a limit, by virtue of a limit, within and, certainly, without a limit. As a universal term, space has to be able to accommodate structures of varying shapes and sizes; it

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swallows up everything in an unchanging term of limitation. And so discursive “space” requires that space be differentiated as spaceempty, acoustic, inner, outer-from that other space that it is not; space is never without that other space. And yet the limit of space, which represents it as space, recedes, and recedes ominously, into its universal term. The frame or perergon, Derrida notes, “disappears . . . at the moment it deploys its greatest energy.”7 The spatial structure of the closet, then, as an inside/outside structure in which spatial limits nonetheless appear to disappear (in both senses of that phrase) suits the traditional notion of the theater very well. In the theatre, space is often invoked as the essential element, the place in which theatre distinguishes itself from the purely “literary.” Even the word “theater” means both the performance and the structure that contains it. “Theater” is a space for visibility, even if that space is “empty”; etymologically, the word theatre is related to sight, manifestation, miracle, as well as to theory, which suggests the complicated relation between theory and visibility—sight and site—in theatrical language. In her essay “Geographies of Learning: Theatre Studies, Performance, and the ‘Performative,‘ ” Jill Dolan argues for theatre studies as a distinct field that needs to pull itself together against the encroachment of other fields’ “metaphorical” use of the terms “performance” and “the performative.” Spatial metaphors, in fact, proliferate in her essay, as she argues that “theatrical performance offers a special site . . . at which to think through questions of the signifying body, of embodiment, of the undecidability of the visual, and of the materiality of the corporeal.”8 Dolan equates space (here, the space of theatre studies) with practice as opposed to theory, action and body as opposed to language. In her reading of Judith Butler’s essay, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution,”9 for example, Dolan suggests that Butler’s “metaphor” of performance might be tested in the theater, (“to enact Butler’s theories in performance”), even to re-creating “the cultural danger of an illegitimate gender performance,” such as Butler’s example of the transvestite on the bus: “The theatrical frame doesn’t have to render transgression safe.” 10 Dolan quibbles with Butler by remetaphorizing theatre as space, as a site or laboratory in which bodies act out their cultural scripts in a critical way. In Butler’s example, by contrast, context and frame—that which produces an attitude toward gesture, in Brechtian terms—is implicit, ideological. And thus the transvestite is necessarily endangered, since the space in which s/he performs gender is not the theatrical but the dominant cultural,

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bounded by a line s/he crosses-and produces-simply by appearing. (Indeed it is this cultural border that makes him/her apparent.) Butler’s point about the theater is that its appearances are already enclosed, theorized as appearance. For Butler, theater is theory, as its etymology partly suggests, whereas gender performance is the performance of your life, the one you live across borders of self and community. The framed site of theater as Butler describes it thus is not, as Dolan seems to imagine it, a literal site with theoretical limits that can be extended at will, but rather a semiotic field, self-defined, self-referential, chosen. (Dolan herself calls it “unique.”) Dolan’s laboratory metaphor, then, is apt: if theatre replicates a cultural scene of control/deviance, it does so in a theoretically controlled space. It becomes exemplary, not unlike Butler’s exemplary use of the transvestite on the bus. If space always has to be in space, conceptually bounded, theatrical space re-bounds, takes off from, this spatial perception (which is the perception of space), in order to produce theoretical or, in Susanne Langer’s term, virtual space, a semiosis of the outside on the inside, where all the specular/aural effects produce, and are produced by, the very notion of the boundary.11 In this sense then, and not because theater somehow reproduces the same cultural boundaries as streets and city busses, is theatre a “unique” space, a modified field. It is the very notion of that reproduction; it belies uniqueness. This notion of theater, as the space that is continually rebounding, where limits are always redrawn, is sometimes taken to be too limited. Realists might prefer standardized bounds of the visible, while performance theorists might prefer to blur or to exclude boundaries to performance. But this is a shell game. Boundaries can move, but they can’t be gotten rid of. Perception is only virtually unbounded; at the limit of space-the infinitely large or the infinitely small-there’s still a space beyond “space.” Spatial knowledge is necessarily relative, as all theatre practitioners as well as theorists know, whatever their spatial preference; it always excludes the space you don’t see, can’t measure, haven’t imagined yet. And that’s because theatrical space already includes the offstage, the outside, the invisible. And in this it resembles the closet: “[T]he first coming out was also simultaneously a closeting; . . . the homosexual’s debut onto the stage of historical identities was as much an egress as an entry.”12 What is demonstrated in the theatre, over and over, is that space, like all material consciousness, is not neutral, or primary, that space and limitation are mutually constituted.13 That the public sphere of spectacle is also the closeted circle of scrutiny and control was pointed out by Foucault in his analysis of visibility

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and the prison: the Panopticon is like “so many small theatres.”14 And more recently Peggy Phelan has argued forcefully that “visibility” cuts both ways. In her shrewd analysis of performance and visibility politics, Phelan notes that “the relations between visibility and power are never only representational,” and warns against “staking too much on visibility as a means of achieving representational power. Visible to whom? Who is looking and who is seen?”15 Performance pieces that point to the invisible and then disappear, never to be seen again, might alter conditions of visibility-or they might not. Phelan hopes to encourage the valuation of these apparently value-less, “negative” options. And I am with her there. Of course all signification points beyond itself, and representation always includes its own difference from itself: this is how it maintains itself as representation. But this knowledge is not itself the subversion of structures of representation: that remains to be seen/done.16 “Perhaps what we need most urgently in gay and lesbian theory right now is a theory of marginality, subversion, dissidence, and othering,” Fuss writes. “What we need is a theory of sexual borders . . . ”17 So, in short, if theater space is already closeted, how can it be “queer?” Is spectacle (ever) outside the closet? Can the theatre come out? Where is “out?” Several of Tennessee Williams’s critics consider “out” to be the David Frost Show, where, in 1970, he “finally came out publicly,” according to David Savran, when he said, “I think that everybody has some elements of homosexuality in him,” and “I don’t want to be involved in some sort of a scandal, but I’ve covered the waterfront.”18 John M. Clum describes Williams’s response to gay criticism as “a series of candid personal disclosures culminating in the unfortunate volume of memoirs.”19 All his critics know that Williams’s homosexuality was known to his friends, his co-workers in the theatre and film industries, and, indeed, to anyone who cared to notice him at public gatherings with his partner, Frank Merlo, who lived with him for fourteen years.20 Savran refers to Williams’s homosexuality as a “more or less open secret.”21 Yet it’s unclear to me where or when Williams became “candid” about being gay, or what might constitute an “open” or “closed” secret. (How many people have to know a secret to make it a secret, let alone an open one, since a secret bears a necessary relation to knowledge and confession, as Foucault has shown.) My purpose here is not to question the frustration of Williams’s critics, since I too am feeling some frustration. But I wonder whether Williams’s in or outness lies precisely in the problem of locating in or out, when what one is discussing is hetero/homo identification, which

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is so persistently a question of boundary-formation. There has been throughout the twentieth century, as Eve Sedgwick writes in Epistemology of the Closet, “a chronic, now endemic crisis of homo/heterosexual definition, indicatively male. . . . [I]n the vicinity of the closet, even what counts as a speech act is problematized on a perfectly routine basis.”22 Sedgwick’s point about speech acts is instructive: What it takes for Williams—or for anyone—to perform his sexuality, to come out (in so many words), depends in some measure on who is listening, or looking or reading. “Visible to whom?” Here the insider position of the gay critic who wants nevertheless to be out(side) can be seen as a practical matter of discourse. If space is always already defined, bounded, and capable of rebounding, moving the edge, how does the critic, the gay critic, the critic who wants to be, to be seen as, gay, measure the distance between in and out? Is that critic forced into some sort of complicity with measurement, with borders and codes? Can the critic in fact do anything beside replicating the closet, and the theater-as-closet, whatever the new dimensions of these structures? Fuss suggests that the potential for questioning borders comes with the danger of redrawing them. “In its own precarious position at/as the border, homosexuality seems capable of both subtending the dominance of the hetero and structurally subverting it.”23 Increasingly, and from its beginnings, lesbian and gay theory has been concerned with notions of space. Yet it has returned persistently to the closet for its formulation of space as enclosure, containment, and even exclusivity. In his foreword to an issue of South Atlantic Quarterly devoted to “Displacing Homophobia,” Ronald R. Butters notes that the emphasis is not on space or place so much as on replacing, or putting something in its place: “This is certainly not to say that ‘the excommunication [literally, former, without, out of communion] of homosexual literary history’ has now ended in every nook and cranny of the Modem Language Association. . . . ”24 Butters’s language seems to suggest communion as a spatial reclamation. And the articles in this issue, which includes John M. Clum’s essay on Williams, are mainly concerned with such restorative projects as rewriting dictionaries and researching language use. Here, as in many other places (I’m thinking for example of Ed Cohen’s essay on “emotion” in the Fuss anthology), gay and lesbian criticism seems interested not so much in questioning the limit as in redrawing it someplace else, in a project of inclusion that is all too familiarly exclusive. (As Butters himself points out, the special gay issue of South Atlantic Quarterly is mostly gay male.) While there is, then, a persistent recourse to notions of space in gay and

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lesbian theory, as well as in theatre studies, both seem to suffer from a kind of claustrophobia or agoraphobia: a fear of (open or closed) spaces, (open or closed) structures. Each is concerned, often, to stay within its own field, to identify with a certain identity-lest the contamination of inner or outer blur the line of its discourse.25 Williams’s gay critics seem caught in this circular homophobiaphobia, in which the closet is obsessively opened and closed, its limits marked and remarked, its positive and negative charged and recharged. One index of this inside/outside tension is the comparative pattern that emerges repeatedly from its structure, dividing Williams’s works into categories: pre-/post-Stonewall, drama/fiction, in/out. And the continual need to reformulate these exclusionary principles of identity, doomed as it is, does not (it comes as no surprise) produce an air of homosociability or fellow-feeling. There is little good will toward Williams in his gay criticism; in fact his critics seem as anxious to disavow him as to claim him. Often, they seem to claim him only to disavow him. “There are two ‘beings’ in a door,” Bachelard points out, in The Poetics of Space: the one who opens, and the one who closes.26 On one end of the “gay positive” spectrum, Clum, for example, describes Williams’s “post-Stonewall” play, Small Craft Warnings (1972) as a vision of homosexuality that “Jerry Falwell would cheerfully endorse.”27 Unlike other gay critics of Williams, Clum argues that Williams’s treatment of homosexuality is consistent-consistently dualistic, that is-while suggesting that increasing public tolerance of homosexuality deprived Williams of his metier. Such public tolerance, “alas, was also a function of his decreased ability to convert memory or self-judgment into a controlled work of art” (162). Williams’s closeted homosexuality is here associated, and not for the only time, with his potency as a writer; gay lib robs him of his concealment and of his talent at one stroke. The realist assumptions behind this criticism are not insignificant. Combined with a familiar nostalgia for the closet, they make it impossible for Williams to produce a viable-a readable-gay text. When he represents the closet, he is a successful writer, but he has no talent for representing what is outside it. His real gay plays are his closeted plays, and they are not really gay. Clum’s reading of the short story “Hard Candy” (1954), a text commonly visited by gay critics, points more forcefully to his own implication in the inside/out debate. At times Clum appears to be writing from the outside, even while he reads Williams’s story with the eye of an insider, one who knows how to read the queer signs in the mysterious death of Mr. Krupper, a man who succumbs suddenly in a movie

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theater and is found in a kneeling position on the sticky floor of a dark upstairs box. In the story, this death is interpreted in different ways by his family and the obituary writer at the newspaper; but Clum reads “Hard Candy” as another evidence of Williams’s public/private split, identifying Williams with the narrator’s voice, a voice in which Clum hears surprisingly little irony. In the narrator’s “authorial judgment” and “collu[sion] with his ‘straight’ reader,” Clum sees a lack of gay positive alternatives (168).28 Williams arguably confronts the reader’s homophobia by anticipating it in his narrator’s coolly detached, mockmythic voice, but Clum reads this as a sign that Williams won’t make up his mind—in or out. Yet when Williams writes less mediated versions of gay experience—as in his plays Vieux Carre or Small Craft Warnings, where gay characters describe their own experience—Clum accuses him of homophobia and a lack of artistic control. Clum’s gay reading remains inside a mimetic economy of life and art, from which he excludes Williams, at different times, as either politically naive or artistically inadequate, borrowing Williams’s own image of his eye trouble as a representation of his “split” inner/outer vision (164–65). Clum notes with some acidity the economic basis of homosexuality in Williams’s work, equating it with Williams’s personal behavior (“even his beloved Frank Merlo was on the payroll” [176]). But Steven Bruhm sees Clum’s argument as perhaps too far inside the personal, as lacking in context, insufficiently grounded in the social/economic system of capitalism, which regulates homosexuality as a threat to the economy of reproduction as well as to national security.29 As long as “homosexual behavior” can be kept within the codes of exchange and secrecy, it is tolerated; Williams, Bruhm argues, “implicates his audience in an economic complicity,” exposing “the homosexual” as the social construction of an Other that assures social stability. Bruhm underscores the interiority of the homosexual to the dominant social order, and praises Williams’s breakdown of the inside/outside distinction in Suddenly Last Summer (1958). When Sebastian Venable, a wealthy aesthete, becomes frightened by the violent demand for money he has created among the starving boys in Cabeza de Lobo, he refuses to pay them, and they eat him alive. “By charting the dissolution of these [economic] boundaries,” Bruhm writes, “Williams writes a play that is much more disconcerting and subversive than its critics have allowed” (535). But Bruhm’s move beyond boundaries seems premature. Sebastian Venable’s choice not to pay the hungry boys of Cabeza de Lobo may demonstrate, in its class and racial as well as its sexual dimensions, the necessary rule of exchange Bruhm describes; and yet this

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choice seems less transgressive of this rule than, as his cousin Catherine suggests, a “fatal error,” a miscalculation. It’s perhaps just another expression of Sebastian’s class privilege, his desire to hoard, like his mother: he doesn’t know he can’t choose not to pay. Sebastian “erodes” “the original boundary between eroticism and commercial- ism,” according to Bruhm’s reading—but doesn’t he also confirm it? The “boundaries” Bruhm speaks of would hardly be “dissolved,” in any case, it seems, for that would suppose an economic criticism extrinsic to economy, as if by contextualizing Williams, Bruhm had gotten outside the “social discourse” of homophobia from which Williams’s characters are, nevertheless, “powerless to escape” (537, n.13). Mark Lilly’s somewhat corrective reading of Williams in Lesbian and Gay Writing leaves him in a similarly inside/out situation: arguing that Williams’s “obliqueness” is actually hinting at “alternative realities,” Lilly nevertheless concludes that Williams’s plays dramatize the closet, presenting “a bleak verdict on the chances of alternative sexuality” from which we “must determinedly turn away.”30 David Savran’s work on Williams seems to find a middle ground. For Savran, Williams is neither a revolutionary nor a homophobe, nor is he someone who simply dramatizes the negativity implied by Lilly’s “closet.” Savran reads Williams as a sophisticated gay writer who makes a choice about how far out he wants to be on the front lines of the gay liberation movement. In his later works, Williams is not interested in “radical structural change,” Savran writes, but in “consciousness” and a “‘homosexual’ mode of address,” implied by an “unfulfilled desire that begs for the turn from expression to action.”31 Savran’s analysis thus finds a queer (political) value in the language of Williams’s later works, a revaluation, if not a revolution. Though he yearns for a more activist, direct Williams, he is sympathetic to the playwright’s personal difficulty with openness: “Finally empowered to speak directly after so many years of (self-)censorship, he could only stutter, only hammer out a broken and lacerated speech” (137). Williams’s minimalist language in a play like In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel (1969) is thus for Savran a new version of his old closeted language of obscurity, in an era when Williams was “outflanked” by a new openness in U.S. theatre to the discourse of homosexuality. Williams, Savran suggests, was dissatisfied with direct speech, confounded by it. He had consequently “to invent a new language of ‘obscurity or indirection”‘ that could convey something of “the difficulty of articulating the most revolutionary of desires,” even in the late sixties (137).

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The obsessive return to the closet by critics of Tennessee Williams seems, on the face of things, peculiarly apt. The theatre of Tennessee Williams is certainly identifiable, typified, by claustrophobia and escape. Right from the beginning of his career, Williams was trying to get out of tight places. In The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire, two of his earliest plays, Williams was experimenting with permeable fourth walls, translucent scenery, and the theatre’s obsessive need to establish and to transgress borders. Themes of sexuality, madness and memory interweave in his oeuvre, questioning, over and over, how to get out of the inside, when outside and inside are mutually constituted borderlands. In his later plays of the fifties and early sixties, spatial borders are often territorial, political, even national, as in the dangerous “Three River County” of Orpheus Descending, the Central American or Mediterranean countries of The Night of the Iguana or Suddenly Last Summer. In 1970, he published a series of one-acts under the title Dragon Country, a title which invokes, perhaps, the early history of map-making, in which the world was divided up among the inhabited human spaces and the uncharted habitations of monsters. As it’s described by “One,” the female figure in one of these plays, I Can’t Imagine Tomorrow (1966), “Dragon Country” is a conceptual space, “the country of pain,”32 where everyone is crossing through alone, separated not by space but by blindness, deafness, and self-absorp- tion-separated, that is, by the same “pain,” the same alienation that is “Dragon Country’s” identifying quality. Individuated by the sameness of their agony, then, the travelers across “Dragon Country,” whose progress is uphill all the way, are in a country with no outside, a country “where there’s no choice anymore,” where you can neither be in it nor not in it—”an uninhabitable country which is inhabited” (138). Is there a space beyond borders, a way to be decisively outside in space? “One” seems to think so; she can simply stay “at the border”: I won’t cross into that country where there’s no choice anymore. I’ll stop at the border of the Sierras, refuse to go any further.—Once I read of an old Eskimo woman who knew that her time was finished and asked to be carried out of the family home, the igloo, and be deposited alone on a block of ice that was breaking away from the rest of the ice floe, so she could drift away, separated— from—all. . . . [138] But this decisive breaking away on a mobile border-space seems impossible for “One” and “Two,” the only inhabitants of I Can’t

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Imagine Tomorrow, whose relationship is constituted by their dependent, mutual alienation. The play has to do with illness and death,33 and with “One’s” attempt to sever the tie with “Two” so that “Two” (the male figure of this couple) can form other relationships while “One” crawls off to die in peace. But the poignancy of this break, which produces the pain and suffering, the pathos, of this play, has nowhere to go, finally: there is no break, no separation—because of course the “characters” are already separated. All that is left is a kind of ritual of breaking and separating, a permanent threshold experience. A boundary crisis. All of what we are watching has seemingly happened before, and the scene intended to build to crisis and rupture resolves itself in a quietude, a pause that can’t think past this scene, can’t imagine tomorrow.34 Both I Can’t Imagine Tomorrow and In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel, the first one-act in the collection, are structured around a couple, a man and a woman who are bound to each other and trying to separate. Or rather, the woman wants to break away from the man, whose tortured selfexpression seems to represent an opacity, or interiority, which the man (like the play) relies on the woman to externalize. The binary relationship keeps these couples simultaneously separate and together, in a split that the woman attempts to rectify through a further splitting. The couple thus, as in Genet’s plays, demonstrates the performative or theatrical nature of identity, which it is therefore redundant to dramatize.35 In Tokyo Hotel, Williams makes this point explicitly: The man is an artist named Mark, whose paintings we never see but whose clothing is stained with paint; while his wife, Miriam, carries with her a mirror in which she repeatedly checks on her own appearance. In I Can’t Imagine Tomorrow, the man is dressed in a white suit, (an “icecream suit”) and the woman in a white satin robe marked with a wine stain. In each play, then, the couple bears the marked/unmarked signs of binary (in)distinctness. It’s as if, alienated as they are, we, like them, couldn’t keep them separate. It’s possible to wonder why these plays are not considered plays about gay experience, or in what sense they are in the closet. While Tokyo Hotel, in particular, spreads the spectrum of the limit to include racial, cultural, and artistic representation, 36 both plays contain a figuration of identity well known to gender theorists, especially in literature of the modern period: the figure of the double, the ghost self, the specter of abjection. “Are we two people, Mark,” Miriam says, not asking a question (30). To tell “one” and “two,” in these couples, requires a marking of difference. In each case the abject, the ghostly

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or dying one (or mark) turns out to be, precisely, the condition of identity within the binary of sameness/difference: Miriam: The program for today should not be changed except for the . . . [sic] Leonard: Absence of Mark. [53] When Mark dies, Miriam, who has been dying to escape from him, finds she too cannot imagine a beyond: “I have no plans. I have nowhere to go.” “With abrupt violence,” Williams writes, “she wrenches the bracelets from her arms and flings them to her feet. The stage darkens” (53). This sudden, wrenching divestiture, or breaking free of bonds, signals the end of the play by an act, a choice that is no choice, a gesture of a freedom that has no escape. Mark’s “mistake,” or misprision, which Miriam seems grudgingly to admire, as his mirror, is that “He thought that he could create his own circle of light” (53). “There’s an edge, a limit to the circle of light. The circle is narrow. And protective. We have to stay inside. It’s our existence and our protection. The protection of our existence. It’s our home if we have one” (51). Leonard, Mark’s agent, is left to wonder at the circularity or perhaps the circuitousness of Miriam’s statement about the circle. “Not to be trusted always,” he comments. “You know and I know,” Miriam responds, “it’s dangerous not to stay in it” (51). Of this remarkable exchange, Savran writes, “According to Miriam, Mark was destroyed because of his (imperialist) expedition outside the circle, across its border, into the dark ‘jungle country’ in which he perished.”37 Savran’s point about Mark’s imperialist incursion might suggest that these characters act willfully, and that Williams is critical of their actions. Yet Miriam describes Mark’s “crossing,” as she calls it, in the language of life and death: “a crossing that neither of us but each of us. [sic]” (53). Closer to home, then, under Savran’s eye, in fact, there is another question of border relations, a duplicity which Clum reads as a sign of Williams’s closeted dramatic writing, in which he “expose[d] himself to his audience while anticipating and affirming their homophobic reaction.”38 Whereas I think it’s certainly possible to hear, in Miriam’s language, which associates the spotlight with the safety of enclosure, an equation of the spectacle with the closet, with an interalization of the outside, an outer edge that defines identity and “home.” Of course this circle establishes the darkness as its negative space; it defines a mutual or shared boundary necessary to the definition of space itself. And this negativity is often described—and decried—by lesbian and gay critics as the closet. But the closet in this

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sense manifests itself via the anti-homophobe’s desire to get beyond punitive and negative space, beyond boundaries, rather than as, itself, a notion of the boundary, the very space of differentiation. The question what is homophobia might just as well be asked where is it?—where is it not—since negation must affirm and then deny, shaping the affirmative in a circle of negativity, and vice-versa. “Those inhabiting the inside,” Fuss writes, “ . . . can only comprehend the outside through the incorporation of the negative image. This process of negative interiorization involves turning homosexuality inside out, exposing not the homosexual’s abjected insides but the homosexual as the abject, as the contaminated and expurgated insides of the heterosexual subject.”39 The force of negativity shapes gay identity in our culture, even shapes a positive embrace of it. Homosexuality finds itself (identifies itself) by interiorizing an exterior boundary, by recognizing itself in its own exclusion and eccentricity; without this exclusion, where would it be? (And of course, eccentricity is a space, not an identity: there are many ways to be—seen aseccentric.) To be out is to be in, as Teresa de Lauretis might say, “with a vengeance.”40 If the circle of light, the space of theatrical representation, blacks out the space it excludes, how are we to take (in) the measure of this space, which is already produced in and as space by virtue of its limit? In reference to the “spectacle of the closet,” Eve Sedgwick warns against “glamorizing” the closet without a “vision . . . of its apocalyptic rupture.” But “I scarcely know at this stage,” she writes, “a consistent alternative proceeding,” though we might, meanwhile, “At least . . . enlarge the circumference of scrutiny.”41 Williams too, I think, wonders how to move outside the circle of theatrical representation, where the spectacle is (in) the closet. He was ambivalent, apparently, about what that might mean, about where the risks were. In a hopeful moment early in his Memoirs, he looks forward to a time when “ ‘gays’ of both sexes” attain “a free position in society which will permit them to respect them-selves”42—a formulation that sees this “freedom” as positioned, this respect as “permitted”—not so much by the society at large as by the gays, themselves, to themselves. And while it seems likely, given anecdotal evidence, that Williams himself dressed in drag from time to time, in general he disapproves, in the Memoirs, of what he calls “ ‘swish’ and ‘camp‘ ” (63), because he suspects that they are an expression of internalized homophobia, “products of self-mockery, imposed on homosexuals by our society” (63). If it occurs to him that this “mockery” could be seen as subversive, or that it is not simply a “travesty of the other sex” (63), as he puts it, Williams doesn’t subscribe to

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the notion here, apparently because he sees “swish and camp” as mimetic markers, caught within “straight” gendered identities, and therefore inherently self-implicating. “Out” behavior, among his gay friends in New Orleans, seemed, in Sedgwick’s terms, to glamorize the closet. And Williams, interestingly, doesn’t see “camp” as somehow theatrically liberating, any more than he seems to see the theatre as the space of liberation. Williams’s suspicion that the theater was a closet, and his concern with its continual rebounding, or drawing of limits, has remained unquestioned by his critics, who have tended to accept the traditional notion of the closet, and thus to retain the theatre’s complicity with it. By suggesting that Williams recognized this complicity of closet and theatre, I am attempting to make room for another spatial reading of the closet, one which might account for its persistent return in gay criticism, and indeed, in all “acts of [sexual] self-disclosure,” as Butler points out, in the quotation that opens this article. Having recast the theatre as a function of spatial relations, rather than a space, I want now to recast the closet as something relative to identity and recognition, something that accompanies, or perhaps better, accessorizes, the acknowledgment of sexual identity: namely, the fetish. If the closet is a fetish, it is hiding something, qua closet, something that’s not there. It’s a reassuring presence masking a fear of absence; the fetish is both a displacement and an association. Linguistically, the fetish works metonymically. And as Laura Mulvey argues in her article on Pandora’s Box, metonymy operates in this way: two things come to be identified with one another, creating both association and substitution, by virtue of a displacement. That is, metonymy is above all a spatial relation, carrying with it, she says, quoting Bachelard, the “dialectics of inside and outside.”43 Identification is produced through the association of a person with a place, and its metonymic equivalent is produced as that which occupies a distinct, and also relative, space. Unlike the Lacanian production of the ego in the mirror stage, this spatial sense is not, strictly speaking, specular but in effect a figuration in which, as the word “metonymy” suggests, verbal and visual relationships, name and image, coalesce to produce mutually identificatory results. Thus, “Pandora” is not a box but a name, and the box is not a person but her identifying characteristic. We know she is Pandora by her box, and we know what the box means—that it is, in fact, a box, though not what’s inside it-because it refers to Pandora. Mulvey explains a historical process through which the image was trans- formed from a jar to a box: when is a jar not a jar? It’s significant, of course, in Pandora’s

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case, that her box conceals her mysterious femininity, even as it reveals, on its surface, her identity, in a “dialectics of inside and outside.” Saint Catherine’s wheel may not seem, by contrast, like a casket image, but in fact all metonymic relations function via this same dialectics of the box; namely, as a spatially distinct entity in which I-dentity, in some sense, resides. Similarly, we might consider that homosexual identity is conferred spatially by its proximity to the closet rather than its within or withoutness; it is relative to this image, rather than dependent on its placement inside or outside. In this sense, the homosexual can never be defined as such in or out of a closet, but only within the dialectics of inside-or-outside-the-closet. The homosexual is identified, that is, relationally, metonymically (the image and the word connected precisely through their displacement), by the closet she or he carries. There is nothing—there is no one—then, in the closet. Where the homosexual is, spatially, is on the side of the closet, relative to the structural principles of containment, secrecy, and mystery. And so the homosexual identifies by/as the displacement of this structure. This, to me, is what “queer” means: not the outside of this closet structure but its displacement—or perhaps it’s my displacement, it’s difficult to say. It’s the undecidability of where one’s identity lies, relative to the structuring principle of identity.44 Mulvey argues that feminist criticism undoes the logic of fetishism, the refusal of knowledge—even, to extend her argument a bit, the refusal of curiosity. Fetishism, she points out, conceals nothing, but it’s precisely nothingness that is feared, covered over by the fetish.45 By fetishizing the closet, and so refusing the possibility that it conceals nothing, gay critics reduce the fear that there is nothing, no one, behind the door. Rejecting the closet, disavowing it or distancing it, does not undo its metonymic structuring effect for/as gay identity. If the closet both represents and conceals anxiety—the anxiety, the one about identity and self and meaning in the world, call it castration or what you will—then its representation (qua representation, for what else “is” “it”?) is necessary, inseparable from what it does as well as from what may be said to undo it. The role of the fetish in structures of identification is not new to theatre, anymore than to psychoanalytic theory. The fetish is the “Not-But” (Brecht), the “I know, but all the same” (Freud). For Brecht, the job of the theatre is to show, to demonstrate how this “Not-But” works, to take theatrical metonymic displacement seriously. Similarly, in place of the easy reduction of space images, Bachelard urges their exaggeration.46 The fetish can thus provide an alternative reading of a writer like

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Tennessee Williams without replicating the inside/outside, gay positive/gay negative structure, with its disavowal of identity as displacement. Since the actor is never who s/he says s/he is, identity may be said to be represented as the approximation, the closeness or the distance, between the actor and the role, the spatial and the psychic. As my example from Williams’s Memoirs suggests, drag may be the most forceful instance of gay criticism’s struggle with the relation of theatre to identity. To take a classic example from Williams’s oeuvre, then, if Streetcar is a closeted play, and Blanche DuBois is really a drag role, as has sometimes been suggested, what does this mean? That Williams meant her to be read as a man who wanted to be a woman; or as a gay man; or as a transvestite; or even as someone who is, as Stanley suggests, simply putting someone (or something) on?47 Is her claustrophobia a code for its opposite? When she says in, should we read out? It’s a substitution game, infinitely regressive, like telling a woman to hear feminine pronouns in a male-universal text. If this is all Williams can be said to be “showing” in his theatre there’s indeed not much to it.48 But Blanche can also be seen, I think, as a role in which the performative, constrained enactment of gender is dramatized, along with its prohibitions, its failures, and its punishments. Blanche can be seen as the representation of a woman who finally doesn’t pass as a subject, because she does her gender incorrectly, and because her hyperbolic theatricality challenges the masculine/feminine heterosexual codes that enable and constrain gender performativity. And if this is drag, it’s closer to Marjorie Garber’s “category crisis” than to the kind of role-playing some gay critics seem to have in mind.49 After all, Blanche spends her life atoning for her one act of deliberate cruelty—a homophobic act, one with murderous performative consequences—by seducing young boys. Her raging heterosexuality is thus represented as a response to her deeply rooted homophobia, in a formulation familiar to psychoanalytic critics. To call her sexual encounters with boys “closeted” substitutes a homophilic reading for the homophobic one, in yet a further displacement of her motives that to me is not queer in any sense of the word. This is the way to fetishize the closet: to let it stand for (vor) the very sexuality it displaces, to substitute an affirmation for a denial, a gay man for a gender performance. If, as Butler suggests, all sexuality is closeted, defined in some way by its negative space, Blanche is not in drag, any more than anyone else is. Any more than her critics are. But she can show something about how the closet works, how identity—and specifically sexual identity—requires

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displacement, and is required as a displacement, and a disavowal, and then as an avowal of that displacement as a place, and of the place as an identity. Uninhabitable, yet inhabited, separate yet inseparable, the closet is not an interior from which a lesbian or gay person emerges, a door she or he closes on a hidden or divided identity. The closet is a metonymic structure, a fetish object, a displacement. It’s the limit of what can appear, it’s what marks the appearance of sexuality and identity—I would argue, for any person. We carry our closet with us. And it’s critical, perhaps especially for critics of theater, to remember the closet’s exclusionary law, the law by which identity is secured through disavowal and displacement, tight border controls. The theater lives to rebound those borders. NOTES Fleche, Anne F. “When a Door Is a Jar, Or Out in the Theatre.” Theatre Journal 47:2 (1995), 253–267. © 1995 The Johns Hopkins University Press. Reprinted with permission of The Johns Hopkins University Press. 1. Judith Butler, “Imitation and Gender Insubordination,” in Inside/Out: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories, ed. Diana Fuss (New York: Routledge, 1991), 25. 2. See, for example, besides the writings quoted here, Thomas P. Adler, “When Ghosts Supplant Memories: Tennessee Williams’ Clothes for a Summer Hotel,” Southern Literary Journal 19 (1987): 5–19; John M. Clum, Acting Gay: Male Homosexuality in Modern Drama (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992); William J. Free, “Camp Elements in the Plays of Tennessee Williams,” The Southern Quarterly 21:2 (Winter, 1983): 16–23; and Nicholas O. Pagan, “Tennessee Williams’s Theatre as Body,” Philological Quarterly 72 (1993): 97–115. For an early, and influential, reading of Williams as a gay writer, see Edward A. Sklepowich, “In Pursuit of the Lyric Quarry: The Image of the Homosexual in Tennessee Williams’ Prose Fiction,” in Tennessee Williams: A Tribute, ed. Jac Tharpe (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1977), 525–544. 3. See, for example, Inside/Out: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories; Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1990); and South Atlantic Quarterly 88:1 (Winter 1989), special issue on “Displacing Homophobia,” ed. Ronald R. Butters, John M. Clum, and Michael Moon. 4. Diana Fuss, “Inside/Out,” in Inside/Out, 3. 5. Jacques Derrida, The Truth in Painting, trans. Geoff Bennington and Ian McLeod (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 11. 6. Fuss, 5. 7. Derrida, 61. 8. Jill Dolan, “Geographies of Learning: Theatre Studies, Performance, and the ‘Performative,’ ” Theatre Journal 45 (1993): 426.

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9. Judith Butler, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory,” Theatre Journal 40 (1988): 519–531. 10. Dolan, 434. 11. For Langer’s concept of “virtual space,” see Feeling and Form: A Theory of Art Developed from Philosophy in a New Key (New York: Scribner’s, 1953), 72. Interestingly, in Lacan’s theory of the “mirror stage,” the rebounding of the spatialized image in a playful relation to the child is a distinguishing characteristic of human development. Unlike the chimpanzee, the child makes something of its recognition in the mirror stage; the image “immediately rebounds in the case of the child in a series of gestures in which he experiences in play the relation between the movements assumed in the image and the reflected environment, and between this virtual complex and the reality it reduplicates—the child’s own body, and the persons and things, around him.” See Jacques Lacan, “The mirror stage,” in Ecrits: A Selection, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Norton, 1977), 1. Similarly, the significance of the spatial in ideas of the theatre would seem to lie not so much in its physically limited sphere of play as in the rebounding action of its image, which produces spatial distinctions and establishes a relation between the “virtual” and the “real.” The theatre, then, is not so much the mirror held up to nature as the holding up of the mirror, the active principle of spatial relations that produces the arena of play, of gesture, setting the stage for other, potential, plays and gestures. In other words, the theatre is not the opposite of the real, but operates on the principle that precipitates it, namely, spatial rebound. 12. Fuss, 4. 13. Cf. Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter (New York: Routledge, 1993), 11, where, speaking of the construction of “sex,” she writes that, “insofar as the extra-discursive is delimited, it is formed by the very discourse from which it seeks to free itself.” 14. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage, 1979), 200. 15. Peggy Phelan, Unmarked: The Politics of Performance (New York: Routledge, 1993), 140. 16. See Sedgwick, 1011. 17. Fuss, 5. 18. David Savran, Communists, Cowboys, and Queers: The Politics of Masculinity in the Work of Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992), 81–82. Savran quotes Williams here. 19. John M. Clum, “ ‘Something Cloudy, Something Clear’: Homophobic Discourse in Tennessee Williams,” South Atlantic Quarterly 88 (1989): 161. 20. Asked by a stranger at a party what he did for a living, Merlo is reported to have replied, “I sleep with Mr. Williams.” 21. Savran, 81. 22. Sedgwick, 1; 3. 23. Fuss, 6.

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24. Ronald R. Butters, “Foreword” to “Displacing Homophobia,” 1. 25. See Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space (New York: Orion, 1964) on the possibility of juxtaposing agoraphobia and claustrophobia, by “aggravat[ing] the line of demarcation between inside and outside” (220). 26. Bachelard, 224. 27. Clum, “Something Cloudy, Something Clear,” 176. 28. Elsewhere in Williams’s writings, Clum finds too little “positive language” (172), and too great an emphasis on the unspoken (173). 29. Steven Bruhm, “Blackmailed by Sex: Tennessee Williams and the Economics of Desire,” Modern Drama 34 (1991): 528–37. 30. Mark Lilly, “Tennessee Williams: The Glass Menagerie and a Streetcar Named Desire,” in Lesbian and Gay Writing, ed. Lilly (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990), 154; 163. 31. Savran, 168–169. 32. Tennessee Williams, Dragon Country, in the Theatre of Tennessee Williams, Vol. VII (New York: New Directions, 1981), 138. Further references to this collection will be included in the text. 33. Jerrold A. Phillips says the play is about depression and suicide; “Imagining I Can’t Imagine Tomorrow,” The Tennessee Williams Review 3.2 (Spring/Fall, 1982): 27–29. I have been rather more reticent about reading a pathology into its impasse. 34. Most critics see this frequent doubling or binary effect in Williams’s male and female characters as metaphors for the writer and his art. And I think they’re right: the relationship between gendered identity and representation in Williams’s plays is very marked, as we shall see. 35. In other words, the play dramatizes the performativity of gendered identity, rather than being itself “performative.” Judith Butler elaborates on the distinction between “performativity” and acting in Gender Trouble (New York: Routledge, 1990), and Bodies That Matter, as well as in her earlier essay, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution.” 36. The framing encounters of the play are between Miriam and the Japanese barman, who is trying politely to reject her advances. And the play makes constant references to the differences between U.S. and Japanese culture, especially sexual customs. 37. Savran, 142. 38. Clum, “Something Cloudy, Something Clear,” 177. 39. Fuss, 3. Cf. Butler, in Bodies, who argues that the homosexual (essentialist) who sees homosexuality as the opposite of heterosexuality has identified with the latter: “[I]n the production of coherent lesbian identity, coherent gay identity, and within those worlds, . . . if identity is constructed through opposition, it is also constructed through rejection” (115). 40. Teresa de Lauretis, Alice Doesn’t: Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), 157. 41. Sedgwick, 68; 69.

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42. Tennessee Williams, Memoirs (New York: Bantam, 1975), 63. 43. Laura Mulvey, “Pandora: Topographies of the Mask and Curiosity,” in Sexuality and Space, ed. Beatriz Colomina (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1992), 52–71. 44. Bachelard illustrates the way prepositions become highly charged in spatial writing: “As soon as the word in appears in an expression, people are inclined not to take literally the reality of the expression, and they translate what they believe to be figurative language into reasonable language” (225). 45. Mulvey, 68. 46. Bachelard, 219. 47. For an example of the application to Williams’s work of the “transvestite” or “Albertine” theory, see Robert Emmet Jones, “Sexual Roles in the Works of Tennessee Williams,” in Tharpe, ed., 545–557. Jones provides a summary of the way Streetcar’s plot might develop if Blanche were a gay man, which reads, in part: “[Blanche], because of the conventions of society, had married a heterosexual girl in an attempt to achieve ‘normalcy,’ and . . . then discovered his true sexual bent. Love gone, he flaunts his sexual proclivities and eventually is asked to leave town . . . Driven to desperation by the enticements of [Blanche], the husband (Stanley) attacks him while his own wife is giving birth to their first child and, to prove his own masculinity, rapes his sensitive, if neurasthenic, brother-in-law” (554). In Williams’s fiction, as Sklepowich notes, the Albertine theory was applied as early as 1958 by Stanley Edgar Hyman, in “Some Trends in the Novel,” College English 20 (October 1958): 2–3. For Sklepowich, too, the homosexual character in Williams’s prose fiction is sometimes “a homosexual in the guise of a woman” (542). 48. This reading has lately been revised, but also, in a way, revived. See for example Clum, Acting Gay, who argues (149 ff.) that “Throughout A Streetcar Named Desire, a homosexual code is operative” (151). While Clum does not want to reduce the play to its “homosexual subtext,” he does see Williams’s strategy of the “theatricalization of experience” as complicitous with the closet: “Such theatricalization does not destroy the closet but makes the closet bearable” (152). In Clum’s reading, then, Blanche’s behavior is a closeted code, yet it is also distanced from the closet, as something her behavior could affect. Savran discusses the problems for “transvestite criticism,” arguing that Williams in fact “deconstructs the sex-gender system” (115–120). He concludes, however, that “a ‘transvestite reading’ of . . . Streetcar is not by definition regressive and homophobic” (119). I, obviously, am not so sure. 49. Marjorie Garber, Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety (New York: Routledge, 1992).

Chapter 10

“Artfully Dressed in Women’s Clothing”: Drag Queens on Chicago’s Burlesque Stage; An Account from the Summer of 1909 Jim Elledge

“Ladies and gentlemen, before I start . . . I want to say a few words regarding this show. This is an oriental dancing show to the limit. This is not a bible class. We don’t have them here. The management of the park does not pay for the privilege of holding bible classes and Sunday school. I have never heard of a bible class being held in Riverview. “If you are looking for such things you are in the wrong place. You ought to be at a Salvation army hall or at a church. An amusement park is no place for you.” —Barker’s spiel, the Duncan Clark concession, Riverview Amusement Park, 5 August 19091 Midway through the summer of 1909, Chicago was abuzz with the news of the first arrests in the Windy City’s opening volley of crackdowns on various forms of “vice”—a slippery term that then referred to everything from school truancies to opium use. Since May, several citizens’ groups dedicated to cleaning up the moral filth that, in their

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minds, littered Chicago’s neighborhoods had been investigating various resorts within the city limits. Resort was another catch-all that included such sites of entertainment as saloons, theaters, dance halls, dime museums, and amusement parks. Investigators assigned to specific establishments by the leaders of the citizens’ groups wrote reports on any performances or activities they deemed objectionable. Three resorts, all amusement parks, became the focus of the groups’ attention that summer: White City, San Souci, and Riverview Exposition. By the beginning of July, one citizens’ group in particular, the Chicago Law and Order League, was ready to move against the parks, and its recently-elected president, A. B. Farwell (1852–1936), was perched to lead his minions to victory.2 “The indecent show at the amusement parks,” one newspaper report claimed, “is doomed.”3 Farwell was just beginning to make a name for himself in Chicago as a self-proclaimed champion of virtue and leader of the local “purity movement.” First, he became secretary of the highly-visible Hyde Park Protective Association that had sought to rid Hyde Park on Chicago’s south side of all liquor establishments. As it turned out, he and the association had little luck in turning that neighborhood “dry.” Nevertheless, his failure did not harm his political ambitions. In 1904, when he was elected to the presidency of the powerful, citywide Chicago Law and Order League, his visibility was guaranteed. At the same time, he inherited the League’s substantial political power, which he boosted by lecturing and giving sermons throughout the city, attacking everything from prostitution to ballot fraud to the drinking of alcoholic beverages with equal vehemence. He became so popular with a number of well-placed Chicagoans that he quickly became a force to be reckoned with. Since June, Farwell and his followers had been bombarding acting chief of police Herman F. Schuettler (1861–1918) with a barrage of reports about the “most licentious and disgusting exhibitions” ever seen in the amusement parks.4 Then on July 7, 1909, Farwell and members of the League stormed Schuettler’s office. They were adamant about getting his help to curb objectionable performances in the resorts, particularly amusement parks. In the late 1800s through the early 1900s, amusement parks weren’t simply a few acres of topsyturvy rides, a tunnel of love, and a haunted house. They also offered performances of various types, from concerts by marching bands to wild west shows and even burlesque acts that could include anything from risque´ comedy routines to whistlers who imitated birdcalls. Farwell and the League specifically objected to the various dances

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(many notably risque´) then in vogue on the burlesque stage. One act in particular had caught Farwell’s eye. Two performers in Duncan Clark’s troupe of dancers, which he called the Female Minstrels, had been presenting “indecent” dances to their large audiences. 5 While the obscene dances were bad enough, the fact that some of the performers were men who were presenting themselves as women sent Farwell into a rage. However, it wouldn’t be until late in the summer that Farwell even mentioned the drag queens in his rampages against “indecent” acts, preferring to keep his rants general rather than specific. There were literally hundreds of women performing in similar, sexually-explicit acts, but Farwell decided to move against the drag performers before addressing the issue of women’s risque´ performances, putting the spotlight on the drag queens because he was sure that convicting the female impersonators would be a cinch, allowing for easier convictions of women afterward. The drag queens became his test case. However, Farwell hadn’t anticipated Schuettler’s reaction to him and his strategy. When he began his crusade against the drag queens, Farwell didn’t know that they were also about to become the center of a battle between Schuettler and him. It would be a controversy that would go public and that would be played out before the citizens of Chicago in the Windy City’s various newspapers. To appease Farwell and, he hoped, to stop the avalanche of mail that his office was receiving from the League’s members, Schuettler planned to force amusement parks “to eliminate all ‘features’ which would not be tolerated at a reputable theater in the loop district.”6 This meant that any act with risque´ elements or sexual innuendo would be prohibited. To that end, Schuettler scheduled a meeting to take place later that day, July 7, with Farwell and “ ‘the heads of the amusement parks.’ ”7 At that meeting, he planned to “define” for them “the limits of decency” that he would institute and that, in turn, would guide them in their selection of performers and performances to present on the amusement parks’ stages. He warned them that “Those who go beyond [those limits] will be subject to prosecution.”8 Despite his apparent no-nonsense stance on the matter, Schuettler wisely gave himself an out just in case he was unable to stop the “indecent” performances as he hoped to do. “I do not know that I can suppress certain dances which are held to be objectionable by the league,” he admitted to reporters. “We have tried in the past to get convictions in the case of one muscle dancer without success, but we will not tolerate anything that the law can touch. . . . ” (Italics added for emphasis.) 9

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“Muscle dancer” was another term for a woman who presented sexually-explicit dances: “Usually set to music and . . . frankly sexual, the repertoire included flexing the abdominal muscles and gyrating the hips . . . making the entire body quiver (called the freeze).”10 A realist, Schuettler knew how difficult prosecuting “certain dances”—i.e., sexually-nuanced dances—successfully would be. More often than not, the law had failed in curtailing them in the past, and he saw no reason to believe that conviction would be any easier to achieve now. He also knew the managers were as powerful as Farwell, although in entirely different ways. They brought much-needed revenue into the city’s coffers through their purchases of licenses that allowed them to present performances on public stages, but they also attracted a huge, paying audience that helped the local economy, too. Besides, he also knew the managers were a world-wise lot who used certain words in their acts’ advertisements to camouflage the acts’ sexual content. Nevertheless, Farwell and the Chicago Law and Order League, thinking their work was done, that their efforts had finally paid off, that objectionable performances would be quashed, and that those who performed in the lewd features would be quickly put behind bars where they belonged “were gratified” by Schuettler’s directives.11 This was the first time Schuettler had actually promised publicly “to take action suppressing vile exhibitions.”12 The stage was set, as it were. The next day, an article in the Chicago Record-Herald traced the lineage of the numerous “vile shows” then plaguing Chicago back to the Columbian Exposition of 1893.13 Attended by tens of thousands, acts such as “Little Egypt,” who is credited with introducing the hoochie-coochie and the belly dance to the crowds along the Midway Plaisance and with being the “putative grandmother of modern striptease” (Shteir 43), as well as another belly dancer on the Midway, “Fatima,” were hugely popular with audiences. Fatima performed in the “Street in Cairo” exhibit, was “ ’the wildest of them all,’ ” and rumor had it, was a “female impersonator.”14 One fair-goer wrote that “she” danced the “ ‘Serpentine Dance of the Veil’ . . . the transparency of the veils aided by electric backlights” with “a wild abandon that called for repression by the authorities.”15 The article also reported that, as promised, Schuettler had indeed met with the heads of White City and the Riverview Exposition, but the manager of Sans Souci Park had thumbed his nose at the acting chief of police. He ignored Schuettler’s summons, not bothering to show up. Schuettler told the reporter that specific dances were to be outlawed—the “Salome dance,” the “snake dance,” and the “hoochee

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koochee”—along with a number of tableaux vivant performances.16 In response to Schuettler’s list of no-no’s, managers of both White City and the Riverview Exposition pretended to be “ ‘shocked’ and ‘astounded’ ” by the Chicago Law and Order League’s reports on the performances at their establishments, and with their tongues buried deeply in their cheeks, they “pleaded” that they didn’t have a clue that such performances had been given under their very noses and promised that they would do all that was necessary to help him remove the “indecent and immoral attractions” from their stages.17 A few days passed. Despite the managers’ promises to stop the “indecent and immoral attractions,” none of the acts at White City or at Riverview Exposition had changed an iota.18 Then on Sunday July 11, after watching what they considered to be an especially besotted performance by two female impersonators at Riverview Exposition, several of Schuettler’s men swung into action. The authorities burst into their dressing room, handcuffed 21-year-old Quincy deLang and 20-year-old George Quinn, and hauled them into the headquarters of the Harrison Street Precinct moments after they had left the stage. They also confiscated the drag queens’ costumes as evidence against them, and they charged them with “impersonating a female.”19 deLang and Quinn, who were member of Duncan Clark’s Female Minstrels, had been performing what today could only be called a strip tease, undoubtedly a raunchy one at that, and they must have been very accomplished at it, given the uproar their act had created among Farwell’s and Scheuttler’s investigators. Not only were deLang and Quinn “artfully dressed in women’s clothing” during that Sunday evening’s performance, but the detectives, who had been keeping an eye on them for at least a month, reported that “the dancing of the team was to them of a vulgar character,” was an “immoral and lewd exhibition,” and was “a menace to the morals of young men and women.”20 Clark couldn’t have paid for better publicity for his troupe. Clarke’s Female Minstrels had been an important presence on the burlesque circuit since at least the 1880s, and its booking at the Riverview Exposition for an extensive run of four months reveals that the troupe was very popular in the Windy City. The troupe’s popularity gave Farwell another reason to believe that successfully convicting Clark’s drag queens would give him a great deal of prestige and power and would make the convictions of other acts that much easier to achieve. Farwell and his group were certain of their victory over the perverts.

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Key to Farwell’s strategy in convicting deLang and Quinn was the word artfully—“artfully dressed in women’s clothing.” It reveals that the men were excellent impersonators and probably able to pass as women, if they chose to do so. This raised Farwell’s hackles probably more than anything else. He believed that the two young men were dancing as women not for the “art” of it, although perhaps deLang and Quinn thought of themselves as artists of some sort, but to excite men in the audience. How easily, he must have thought, for “artfully dressed” deLang and Quinn to hoodwink an unsuspecting man or two (or worse yet: several boys), sneak off after a performance with them in tow, and engage them in God knows what vile acts before the men (or boys) realized they’ve been turned into perverts, no better than those who had duped then seduced them in the first place. In fact, Farwell’s fear was somewhat justified. Drag performances had become a mainstay on many burlesque stages across the United States, including Chicago, long before Farwell began his crusade in the summer of 1909, and they used their performances to bait male audience members. In 1936, an historian wrote that, in the days surrounding the turn of the nineteenth century into the twentieth, “the most reprehensible phase of burlesque developed,” one in which “the girls, or female impersonators, left the stage to go to the saloon in back of the theater to drum up trade in drinks, or to pick up a customer for sexual relations,” and nearly seventy years later, another historian declared that, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, “female impersonators stripped and teased on the burlesque and vaudeville stages” and “titillated and outraged in equal doses.” 21 Even contemporaries of Farwell and Schuettler reported their observations of such activities. In 1911, for example, the Vice Commission of Chicago, which had been established in March of the previous year, published a report outlining the results of its investigation into vice—again that catch-all—in the Windy City. In several paragraphs that discuss its findings on “sex perversion,” the commission stated that: Some of these men [i.e., “sexual perverts”] impersonate women on the cheap vaudeville stage, in connection with disorderly saloons. Their disguise is so perfect, they are enabled to sit at tables with men between the acts and solicit for drinks the same as prostitutes. Two of these “female impersonators” were recently seen in one of the most notorious saloons on . . . street. These “supposed” women solicited for drinks, and afterwards invited the men to rooms over the saloon for pervert practices.22

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However, the “pervert practices” weren’t at all restricted to dancers seducing audience members. It was well-known at the time that men seeking same-sex encounters often cruised risque´ burlesque performances, hoping to hook up with someone also in the audience and then to find a more private site where they could engage in sex. In an autobiographical narrative that he wrote in the early 1920s while living in Chicago, Alexander Stahl openly discussed the fact that, a few years earlier, he had been one of the many men who, sexually turned on by a strip act in a burlesque house, allowed himself to be picked up by another man in the audience. In his narrative, Stahl gives an eye-opening account of this important cruising site available to gay men in early, twentieth-century Chicago. Stahl was seventeen or eighteen when he attended the burlesque performance located south of the Loop. A man seated next to Stahl began a conversation with the teenager. One thing led to another, and the man invited Stahl to another burlesque performance, this one in the Loop. At some point during the performances, the man asked Stahl if he needed lodgings for the night, and when the boy said he had no where to go that night and that he was headed out of town the next day, the man invited him to his place in Towertown, the bohemian section of Chicago in what is now called the Gold Coast and the headquarters for the many queer men who lived there then. After fixing the teenager dinner, the man advanced on Stahl sexually, but the boy left in disgust. Although Stahl ended up not having sex with the stranger, he later became a male prostitute.23 As late as the mid-1920s, reports reveal that burlesque had continued to be a site for male-male sexual titillation that would lead to sexual contact. One investigator, Paul Cressey, submitted a report about acts at the Haymarket Theater, a burlesque venue located on the Near West Side of Chicago. He considered them lewd and offensive, and in fact noted that it was not only women dancers who were coming on to the audience, but male dancers as well. Their—the women’s and the men’s—obvious goal was to excite the audience sexually, something that was so well-known at the time that the investigator did not have to be explicit about it in his report.24 His observation of their dancing on stage is very important. The audience would, typically, be virtually all male, something the “men performers” would not only know ahead of time but would be counting on, hoping for a stage-door Johnny for their evening’s pleasure and perhaps even for their financial benefit. It is in such a world—where “the girls, or female impersonators,” solicited for sex and the “men performers” (probably drag queens, too,

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but Cressey never states that) offered their “sensuous movement” to the enjoyment of the male audience’s titillation—that deLang and Quinn performed and were the first drag queens arrested for it. The day after deLang’s and Quinn’s arrests, the Chicago Record Herald also gave the details of the drag queen’s seizure, and almost as an after thought, the reporter mentioned that “The arrests followed a formal demand on Acting Chief Schuettler by A. B. Farwell that the license of the large amusement parks be revoked if they continue to present vile shows.”25 Then the reporter also included Schuetter’s response to Farwell’s demand: “he referred to Mr. Farwell as a ‘dictator,’ and said that henceforth he would pay no more attention to communications from the league’s agents.”26 A good politician and, to a larger extent, someone who was just as opposed to the types of acts that Farwell and the League were, Schuettler had initially done what Farwell had wanted, and thinking he had Schuettler in his pocket (and in the heat of victory over getting deLang and Quinn arrested), Farwell couldn’t resist pushing the envelope a little. Consequently, on the day on which deLang and Quinn were locked up, Farwell began haranguing Schuettler again, insisting that the acting chief of police “revoke the licenses of the large amusement parks and close them up because of the indecent shows which the Chicago Law and Order League has been fighting.” 27 Farwell was flexing his political muscle. Schuettler knew it, and he did not like it. Schuettler was outraged when Farwell stepped over the line and began ranting about legal matters and telling him what to do. A member of the Chicago police force since 1882, Schuettler had been appointed acting chief of police only a few months before Farwell became interested in the amusement parks.28 As an acting chief of police, Schuettler undoubtedly wanted to assert his own leadership ability to prove himself, and beginning to feel overshadowed by a month’s worth of demands by the purity boss (as well as all of the publicity Farwell was gaining through articles about his and the League’s crusade in Chicago’s newspapers), Schuettler put his foot down and flexed his own political muscles. Calling Farwell a “ ‘dictator’ ” put the moralist in his place; saying that, from that moment on, he would pay no attention to communications from the league’s agents made Farwell impotent. He would, instead, send his own men into the field to spy on performances, take notes, and submit reports. In terms of the legal process, Shuettler shut Farewell out and, in fact, hijacked Farwell’s strategy for his own purposes.

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Aware of the huge mistake he had made, Farwell quickly backpedaled. Not wanting to dig himself any deeper into the hole that his demand had already created (nor widen the gap between Schuettler and him any farther than it already was), his only response was louder outrage over the moral decay—especially among young people—that the so-called lewd performances caused. He turned his, and the Chicago Law and Order League’s, attention back to the acts he’d considered vulgar, left Schuettler alone, and made no more demands. *** The arrest of deLang and Quinn was not the first time that Duncan Clark had found himself and his company in hot water because of the mores of the times. Twenty-two years earlier, in the fall of 1887, The National Police Gazette, a prototype of our National Inquirer or Weekly World Report, described a scandal involving Clark, and its readers ate it up. Clark had been “arrested in Utica, New York for conducting an immoral show” and locked out of the theater in which his troupe was performing.29 Then when “members of his company” caught him trying to skip town without paying them their salaries, they “severely pounded” him—not once but twice.30 One woman of his company was so incensed that she slashed Clark with a sword, and he was close to death. Everyone associated with the troupe, including Clark, was arrested. Three years later, the New York Times reported that Clark and his “ ‘Lady Minstrel Company’ ” ran afoul of Steubenville, Ohio’s “ ‘Social Purity’ Society” lead by “Mrs. Dora Webb and Mrs. R. L. Brownlee.”31 They had seen the troupe’s New Year’s Day performance the night before and “objected to the character” of the acts.32 The next morning, they complained to authorities about the performances, and the “entire company, male and female, was before the Mayor” by noon.33 He “imposed a fine of $40” on the troupe.34 In 1896, Duncan Clark found himself in conflict with the city mothers of another small, mid-western town, Chicora, Pennsylvania. His troupe of female minstrels were scheduled to appear at the local opera house, but once the townswomen saw the newspaper ads and fliers advertising the troupe with pictures that bore the caption “Raciest Show on Earth,” a large number of them marched in protest “two abreast” down Main Street to the opera house.35 E. F. Hays, the opera house’s owner, met them, but he refused to cancel the troupe’s engagement because he’d signed a contract with Clark. They turned heel and marched to the town sheriff’s office, but he, too, refused to move against Clark’s Female Minstrels.

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Not to be outdone, the women took matters into their own hands. They split into several groups to find and destroy all of the objectionable fliers that had been posted in public spaces. They also complained to the authorities about the “indecent pictures” Clark had included on the fliers and “had him arrested.”36 While his trial was underway, the Female Minstrels took the age-old adage, the show must go on, to heart and performed for an “audience composed entirely of men.”37 Clark was fined and released after promising to cancel the troupe’s performance, but by the time he was released and got to the opera house, the troupe’s performance was nearly over. It was too late for him to cancel it, and so he allowed it to continue to its end. Ironically, despite the hubbub over the “raceist show on earth” [sic] and the “offensive pictures,” the New York Times reported that “a great many fine gentlemen of the town were disappointed” because the “show was not so racey as was expected” [sic].38 Tragedy struck Duncan Clark’s Female Minstrels while they were touring through southern Illinois during the early fall of 1900. Because the troupe was so well-known in the Midwest burlesque circuit, especially in Chicago, the editor of the venerable Chicago Daily Tribune saw fit to run a page-one exclusive on the disaster: The breaking of a car wheel resulted in almost obliterating Duncan Clark’s troupe of female minstrels this afternoon. Their special car was wrecked, nine of the company were killed, and six were injured, four so seriously that their recovery is a matter of doubt.39 The night before, the Female Minstrels had given a performance at Chester, Illinois, a river town on the Mississippi, and were scheduled to appear the next evening at Mound City, until the wreck cut short their tour. All who died were women, and everyone else in the troupe, except for “Kid” Barry, was injured. The accident occurred because the car in which the troupe was riding struck another one: “As the car wheel broke the car veered around to the right and the rear end struck . . . No. 126 on a parallel track. This demolished the end of the car and the wreckage was strewn along the track for 100 feet.”40 The medical community in southern Illinois was quick to respond to the accident: As soon as the news of the accident reached this city a special train was sent out with the railroad company’s physician,

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Dr. W. F. Grinstead, and a corps of nurses. This train reached the scene of the wreck at 2 o’clock, and the physicians and nurses immediately set to work. Duncan Clarke, the manager, will probably recover, as his injuries are slight. A man named Kildo, the contortionist of the troupe, stopped off at Carbondale and escaped injury. . . . A large crowd went to the scene of the wreck and rendered what little aid was possible. The dead were taken in charge by the Coroner of Pulaski.41 Clark did recover, and a year later, he added the Fannie Hill Vaudeville Company to his proprietorships, its name, which he borrowed from one of history’s first and most infamous pornographic novels, Fanny Hill, advertises the troupe’s talents more than anything else could have. In 1907, the Chicago Daily Tribune ran yet another story outlining a scandal involving Clark. Three members of the Female Minstrels— Birdie Gordon, Margaret Ireland, and Hazel Cooper—“applied to the [Oshkosh, WI] chief of police for protection. They stated that they desired to leave the company, but the manager would not permit them.”42 The women, the youngest of whom was 19, told the authorities “that they joined the company at Milwaukee upon representation that they would get $10 a week, but received only $2 a week.” 43 Almost as an afterthought, the reporter also mentioned that the show was so obscene that its “latter part was stopped by the police.”44 Such newspaper accounts of the troupe and its ups-and-downs, its brushes with the law, and its struggles with both internal and external forces give a great deal of credence to what an historian of early U.S. theater has been able to piece together about the group: Although some of [the] female minstrel troupes performed ordinary minstrel fare with the added appeal to Victorian audiences of women’s bodies outlined and accentuated in tight-fitting men’s clothing; others were little more than “skin shows,” as an interview with a member of Duncan Clark’s Female Minstrels revealed. “It’s tough all around,” one of the female minstrels explained of her life in the troupe. “Most of the girls are tough, we give a tough show, draw tough houses and have a tough time generally.” . . . Most of the other women in the minstrel troupe had not been professional entertainers, she explained. “The rest are women that had a crazy idea that they could sing or dance or had a fine shape. The manager picks them up here and there.”

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As long as they looked good, they did not have to know much about show business. “The main thing, you see, is shape,” she continued. “All they have to do is to put on their costumes and let the jays look at them . . . All they need is a pair of tights.”45 Interestingly, just before Farwell began his purity crusade, the New York Clipper, little more than a gossip rag, reported that, after decades of touring throughout the East and Midwest, Clark had put down roots in the Windy City, “running vaudeville and moving picture theatres and his Female Minstrels and Plantation shows at Riverview Exposition.”46 *** Close on the heels of its first article about Duncan Clark’s drag queens, the Chicago Daily Tribune ran a second story about them on Wednesday, July 14, revealing that deLang and Quinn had been arrested “on the charge of conducting an objectionable performance” and “indecencies.”47 The Tribune’s reporter noted, “Quincy De Lang and George Quinn, the ‘female minstrels’ of the Duncan-Clark theater at Riverview will be arraigned on the charge of conducting an objectionable performance.” 48 Sergeant Charles E. O’Donnell, one of Schuettler’s men, was selected to “conduct the prosecution.”49 Interestingly, the men were being tried for an “objectionable performance,” and no longer because they were “impersonating a female” as had been reported two days earlier.50 In fact, it suggests the authorities were wavering in their resolve and confidence and were clutching at straws. Despite the omission of any reference to cross-dressing men, the reporter drew attention to their drag routine by calling the men “the ‘female minstrels.’ ”51(Italics added for emphasis.) Arraigned before Municipal Judge Newcomer on Saturday, July 17, deLang and Quinn “demanded a jury trial,” sure that their peers could be swayed in their favor.52 Then the very next day, seeing the writing on the wall, Schuettler explained the situation he faced in trying to get rid of objectionable acts, something he’d hinted about several days earlier: Personally, I believe these shows are a menace and such that they should be entirely suppressed. But we cannot suppress them. We arrest a “hoochie-koochie” dancer and her manager will appear in court and convince a jury that the dance was an exposition of art. We arrest men who impersonate females and perform dances. If the contention that the dance is art fails to free them from their

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entanglement with the leashes of the law, then the law itself is shown to read that impersonations of the opposite sex are not violations unless made in public. Such impersonations are made every day on stage. We want to suppress the shows, but we have had experience and know how well fortified the managers are. Mr. Farwell should learn this point, too.53 Explaining about the difficulties he faced in convicting both women and drag queens for their “skin shows” before the jury’s deliberation was a smart move on Schuettler’s part. The next day, an editorial in the Chicago Record-Held complained, “Despite the notoriety given them, and despite the direct order of the acting chief of police, two out of the three amusement parks which have been named as offenders have failed to oppress the indecent shows.”54 Despite Schuttler’s attempt to curb Farwell, as well as calling him a “dictator,” Farwell continued to send his investigators to various resorts, looking for whatever “indecencies and indelicacies” they might be able to uncover. Two days after the drag queens’ arrest, two other situations were unfolding, the effects of which were already beginning to be apparent to all of those involved in the prosecution of deLang and Quinn. The first, an announcement by Sgt. Charles E. O’Donnell, one of Schuettler’s men, explained “that the police would make no more raids until it should appear whether it is possible to convict persons arrested for the alleged indecencies.” 55 In words only slightly different than Schuettler’s (and may even have been penned by the acting chief of police), O’Donnell was helping his chief hedge his bets while, simultaneously, helping him to pry himself and the police department even farther away from Farwell and the Chicago League of Law and Order. The second was a report that the “case against Bertha Faulke, the ‘bare bronze beauty,’ a dancer from White City” who had been arrested by Sgt. O’Donnell, was scheduled for trial on Wednesday July 14. 56 However, the next day, the lawyers of both acts got their clients a continuance until Monday, July 19. Then the courts dropped a bombshell. On Tuesday, July 20, the Chicago Record-Herald announced that, although deLang and Quinn had been the initial targets of Farwell, Bertha Faulk had taken center stage in the drama that he and his Chicago Law and Order League had created, edging deLang and Quinn out of the public’s eye. News of her case was highlighted in the city’s newspapers far more strikingly than deLang and Quinn’s had ever been, and in fact, moments

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after her trial began, the courtroom was “stormed” by men who had heard a rumor that Faulk would “give an exhibition of her dance for the benefit of the court.” 57 When Faulk’s fans learned that she wouldn’t, they left the courthouse in a huff. Despite Farwell’s efforts, the “bare bronze beauty” won out in the end, and the news of her victory traveled fast. Although she had admitted on the stand “without hesitation that her ‘scant’ costume comprised only such materials as ‘could be sent to Canada for a 2-cent stamp,’ ” that in act she wore only “a waistband, one or two yards of veiling, and a small string of beads” during her act, the jury took only 19 minutes to give the court its verdict.58 It decided “that the performance of Miss Bertha Falk . . . was nothing if not morally elevating and decent in every sense of the word.”59 She was, the jury asserted, an “‘art’ dancer and poser,” with nothing lewd or immoral in her act.60 Like the drag queens, she too had elected a jury trial, an advantage that had not eluded the reporter’s notice. She had “foreseen,” he reported, “that her charms would stand her in stead more effectively . . . with twelve jurors than with one Municipal Court judge.”61 That the jury was all-male didn’t hurt the chances of the “bare bronze beauty” in the least. Both the prosecution and the defense were shocked by the verdict. In fact, the “bare bronze beauty,” who was ecstatic over the acquittal, said “that the state had made out more of a case against her than she expected” and that she had anticipated her conviction, not her release.62 Then flaunting her victory in Farwell’s and Schuettler ’s faces, she declared, “ ‘I am an art model,” and looking around at the reporters with a sly grin, she added, “ ‘[M]y act, wholly moral and descent, has never before been interrupted by the authorities.’ ”63 In sharp contrast to Bertha Faulk’s exuberance, the prosecution’s pessimism over future convictions for similar offenses was palatable. “ ‘It seems now almost useless to arrest any more of these summer park offenders,’ ” Sgt. O’Donnell said, adding, “We had a better case against her than we can make against any of the others. She undoubtedly was the most vulgar of any of the performer ’s we have taken steps to suppress. The charges we made against her with evidence were nothing short of shocking.”64 As it turned out, O’Donnell was prophetic. deLang and Quinn, who had been arrested first in the citywide crackdown, were second to be tried. Their trial resulted in an acquittal, too, but by the time their verdict was announced, interest in them was, to a large extent, negligible. The first mention of the drag queens’ victory against Farwell and his League was only an offhand comment made weeks after the fact. On August 5,

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the Chicago Record-Herald declared, “Twice beaten in jury trials, [Schuettler’s] officers have apparently become discouraged, even if they ever meant business, and the degeneracy has been permitted to become more than ever degenerate.”65 (Italics added for emphasis.) Neither the drag queens nor the reason for the “jury trials” were identified and only someone who’d been following Farwell’s crusade closely would have caught the vague reference to deLang and Quinn. On the same day that the Chicago Daily Tribune bemoaned the fact that, despite the so-called police crack-down on shows that were characterized by “immoral and lewd” movements, such as deLang and Quinn’s dance or Faulk’s act, such “objectionable performances” had not disappeared at all. In fact, the article revealed, “At the Duncan Clarke show . . . the female impersonator who was arrested by the police but found not guilty was again doing his sensational dance.”66 There had been no formal announcement of the drag queens’ acquittal. They had become non-news as far as most of Chicago was concerned. However, the fledgling gay community centered in Tower Town on the city’s Gold Coast would’ve seen the acquittal as a victory for them. Despite his time in jail and his notoriety, the experience had not quashed at least one of the young men’s exuberance for the spotlight. One of the two had left the troupe, or at least had abandoned female impersonation, leaving the other to carry on with his “sensational dance.” Which one, deLang or Quinn, remains a mystery. Duncan Clark wasn’t the only proprietor of a burlesque troupe who hired female impersonators to appear on the stage in the late 1880s and early 1900s and to perform provocatively for the audiences, and it’s extremely doubtful that deLang and Quinn were the only drag queens Clark hired throughout the long existence of his Female Minstrels. Clark simply became, suddenly, one who, for a few months during the dawn of the twentieth century, achieved some notoriety— and a great deal of free publicity—because of it. And just as suddenly, his drag queens, who are little more than a footnote to the long, hot summer of 1909, were aglitter in the spotlight that one of Chicago’s best-known moral crusaders had suddenly turned on them.

NOTES 1. This quote is from “2 Park Arrests Made” (Davison Papers. Clippings on Vice in Chicago [Crerar Ms. 234]: Vol. 4, Special Collections, Regenstein Library, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL), and the epigraph is from “Park Reform Is Only a Spasm” (Chicago Daily Tribune, August 5, 1909: 38).

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2. Angela J. Latham, Posing a Threat: Flappers, Chorus Girls, and Other Brazen Performers of the American 1920s (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 2000), 145. 3. “Bad Park Show to Go,” Chicago Record-Herald, July 7, 1909: 10. 4. Ibid. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid. 9. Ibid. 10. Frank Cullen, et al., “Muscle Dance,” Vaudeville, Old and New, Vol. 1 (New York: Routledge, 2006), 808. 11. “Bad Park Show to Go.” 12. Ibid. 13. “Vile Shows Must Go,” Chicago Record-Herald, July 8, 1909: 10. 14. Rachel Shteir, Striptease: The Untold History of the Girlie Show (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 43; and Joe Nickell, Secrets of the Sideshow (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 2005), 49; and www .absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Little_Egypt_(dancer). Interestingly, in the early 1930s, Chicago sociologist Nels Anderson described a gay hobo who went by the name of “Fatima.” See Nels Anderson, “An Evening Spent on the Benches of Grant Park,” Burgess Papers, Unpublished manuscript, Box 127, Folder 4, Special Collections, Regenstein Library (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago). 15. www.bikiniscience.com/chronology/1700-1900_SS/1700-1900.html; and Walter Roth, “Jews on the Midway,” Chicago Jewish History, 25.1 (Spring 2001): 7. 16. Ibid., “Vile Shows.” Also called “living models” or “living statues,” tableaux vivants were poses that women (occasionally with men and occasionally men alone) struck and kept for several moments, statue-like, in imitation of well-known scenes from popular culture. They were objectionable to some because the posers wore tights that left little or nothing to the imagination. For photographs of a performance of the very popular Salome dance at the Riverview Exposition as early as 1893, see Dolores Haugh’s Riverview Amusement Park (Chicago: Arcadia, 2004), 49–50. 17. Ibid., “Vile Shows.” 18. “The most famous [amusement] parks . . . were Riverview, White City, and Forest Park. . . . The oldest, Riverview at Western and Belmont, evolved out of Sharpshooter’s Park. By the turn of the century, the owners had added roller-skating and a growing list of mechanical rides, including a roller coaster and chutes. There was a dancing pavilion and a stage for vaudeville acts. Political groups rented the place, and such luminaries as William McKinley, William Jennings Bryan, and Theodore Roosevelt addressed rallies

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there” (Duis, Perry R. Challenging Chicago: Coping with Everyday Life, 1837–1920. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1998, 216). 19. Ibid., “2 Park Arrests.” 20. Ibid., “2 Park Arrests.” 21. David Dressler, “Burlesque as a Cultural Phenomenon” (PhD dissertation, School of Education, New York University, 1937, 54) and Rachel Shteir (Striptease: The Untold History of the Girlie Show. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004, 94), respectively. 22. Vice Commission of Chicago, Social Evil in Chicago (Chicago: 1911), 297. 23. “Alexander Stahl,” 30–31. Burgess Papers, Unpublished manuscript, Box 98, Folder 5, Special Collections, Regenstein Library, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL. 24. Paul G. Cressey, “Report on Summer’s Work with the Juvenile Protective Association of Chicago,” October 26, 1925, 14. Burgess Papers, Unpublished manuscript, Box 130, Folder 5, Special Collections, Regenstein Library, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL. 25. Ibid., “2 Park Arrests.” 26. Ibid., “2 Park Arrests.” 27. “Close Parks, Demand,” Chicago Record Herald, July 12, 1909, 2. 28. Robert Loerzel, “Herman F. Schuettler,” Alchemy of Bones, www.alchemyofbones.com (accessed July 22, 2009). 29. “Done Up by Dizzy Blondes,” National Police Gazette, October 15, 1887, 5. 30. Ibid. 31. “Female Minstrels Fined,” New York Times, January 3, 1890, 1. 32. Ibid. 33. Ibid. 34. Ibid. 35. “Masks and Faces,” National Police Gazette, January 11, 1896, 2. 36. Ibid. 37. Ibid. 38. Ibid. 39. “Girl Minstrels Killed in Wreck,” Chicago Daily Tribune, September 13, 1900, 1. 40. Ibid. 41. Ibid. 42. “Show Girls Appeal to Police,” Chicago Daily Tribune, March 28, 1907, 9. 43. Ibid. 44. Ibid. 45. Robert Toll, On with the Show: The First Century of Show Business in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), 221–222. 46. The New York Clipper, May 1, 1909, 297. 47. “ ‘Attractions’ Go Into Court Today,” Chicago Daily Tribune, June 14, 1909, 3.

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48. Ibid. 49. Ibid. 50. Ibid., “ ‘Attractions’ Go” and Ibid., “2 Park Arrests.” 51. Ibid., “ ‘Attractions’ Go.” 52. “Says Bad Shows Gain by Public Exposure,” Chicago Record Herald, July 18, 1909, 9. 53. Ibid. 54. “Will Indecency Win?” Chicago Record-Herald, July 19, 1909, 6. 55. Ibid., “ ‘Attractions’ Go.” 56. Ibid., “ ‘Attractions’ Go.” 57. “Acquit Bronze Beauty,” Chicago Record-Herald, July 20, 1909, 4. 58. Ibid. 59. Ibid. 60. Ibid. 61. Ibid. 62. Ibid. 63. Ibid. 64. Ibid. 65. “Boys, Girls, Vice, Police, Sloth and Hypocrisy,” Chicago Record-Herald, August 5, 1909, 8. 66. “Reform of Parks Is Only a Spasm,” Chicago Daily Tribune, August 5, 1909, 38.

Chapter 11

A Transgressing Identity: Buck Angel—“The Man with a Pussy” Carlnita P. Greene

Because I know how people are, and if it’s not black and white, it’s freaky. I don’t fit in any particular man or woman situation, though I consider myself 110 percent man. I think it’s fascinating that people are taught that you’re basically who you are because of your genitals. That is ridiculous! So you are a woman because you have a vagina and I’m a woman because I have a vagina? Genitals do not make the gender. —Buck Angel, Time Out New York In the article “ ‘A Van with a Bar and a Bed’: Ritualized Gender Norms in the John/Joan Case,” rhetorical scholar John Sloop argues that our notions of gender and sexuality are constrained by the “binaristic system” of cultural discourses that surround us.1 While agreeing with Sloop’s argument, I nevertheless maintain that there is the potential to move beyond these rigid “binary norms.” Paralleling Barry Brummett’s work, A Rhetoric of Style, I propose that our creations of identity today largely are managed through the use of style and that it is within style that we can further understand how these constructions of identity often are strategic, yet more fluid than in the past. Utilizing the transgender text “Buck Angel” as an example, I claim that in creating his style and identity, Buck Angel draws upon the “hyper-masculine” persona of a biker outlaw, yet he disrupts rigid binary cultural norms

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surrounding sexuality and gender by unsettling notions of masculinity, femininity, sexual orientation, and desire. Yet before exploring Buck Angel as a text, I begin with an overview of the politics of transgender identities and how they have been discussed within popular media and scholarly research. Next, I outline a theoretical and methodological framework from which to understand how contemporary identities are created through the use of styles. Then, I provide a short biography of Buck Angel and an analysis of his social style. Moving from his performance of social style to a rhetorical homology of persona, I will argue that Buck’s rhetorical performance of self creates a “biker outlaw” or “rebel” persona that transgresses essentialist notions of identity. Finally, I analyze the overall rhetorical, social, and political implications of Buck Angel as a text by providing audience responses and discussing how this particular example calls into question rhetorical performances of self in various identity constructions. GOING BEYOND HE OR SHE: THE POLITICS OF TRANSGENDER IDENTITIES As Leslie Feinberg argues in Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman, although historically transgendered people have always existed, because they blur the distinctions between sex and gender and/or the male/female dichotomy, many transgender people have been victims of persecution and murder, ostracized, arrested, and unaccepted.2 Recently, the subject of transgender identity has become a mainstay of popular media. It is a focus in films such as The Crying Game (1992), Boys Don’t Cry (1999), and TransAmerica (2005).3 It is in the news such as a New York Times article, “About a Boy Who Isn’t,” that details the life of a seventh-grade girl interacting with her classmates and living as a boy and another article, “An Employee, Hired as a Man, Becomes a Woman. Now What?” that features transgender issues within the workplace.4 It also is the subject of television talk shows such as The Jerry Springer Show and Maury. Yet, when transgendered individuals are featured in popular media, such as talk shows, often it is for “shockvalue” where they are represented as confused about their “true” identities, deceiving others about their “true” genders, and/or as “freaks” because they do not fit into rigid categories of man or woman. The right to decide one’s gender has become a political issue and many scholars discuss the impact that transgendered identities have had on how we view sex, sexuality, gender, masculinity and femininity, and a host of other public and private arenas. As Katrina Roen argues in

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“ ‘Either/Or’ and ‘Both/Neither’: Discursive Tensions in Transgender Politics.” “Contemporary transgender politics are informed by postmodern conceptions of subjectivity, queer understandings of sexuality and gender, radical politics of transgression, and the poststructuralist deconstruction of binaries (such as man/woman and mind/body).”5 She claims that there are two kinds of arguments made within transgender politics. The first group sees “passing” as another gender as the ultimate goal which she labels as the “either/or” argument whereas the second group argues that individuals should claim their transgender status in order to challenge the dominate mode of an “either/or” position and instead adopt a “both/neither” stance.6 Roen recommends: “Both/ neither refers to a transgender position of refusing to fit within the categories of woman and man” believing that there needs to be a move away from this kind of dichotomy.7 Even with identities that are not transgender, the “either/or” and “both/neither” approaches are relevant because they question the very foundations of meaning about definitions of man and woman. In other words, many people who identify as a “man” or “woman” question the rigid definitions by which these categories are classified. As Richard Levine avows in “Crossing the Line”: “The havoc that a strictly bipolar system wreaks most directly on transgender people, but also on the rest of us . . . ” is repeatedly a focus in discussions about transgender and gender itself.8 In fact, one of the most consistent political and personal issues that arise for transgender individuals is the process of naming and all the implications that this entails. Claudine Griggs, in S/He: Changing Sex and Changing Clothes, makes this point evident saying that the way in which people attribute a person’s gender will determine their interactions with the individual especially through the use of pronouns such as “he” or “she.”9 She further explains that people feel frustrated when they are not sure if a person easily can be categorized as “man” or “woman” and this tension can create hostility which can sometimes lead to violence and/or death as in the case of Brandon Teena and others.10 Similarly, these same issues with labeling apply to people who are not transgender in the sense that if a person is labeled as a man or woman, then that person’s behaviors are supposed to reflect his or her attributed gender category and if he or she does not exhibit those behaviors, then many people find this problematic. For example, Claudine Griggs states: “ . . . One may see an ‘effeminate man,’ ‘faggot,’ ‘he-man,’ ‘mannish woman,’ ‘dyke,’ or ‘Stepford-wife,’ but the person

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will be perceived as male or female and from that underlying premise will rise options about the displayed qualities of masculinity or femininity.”11 Similarly, in “ ‘A Van with a Bar and a Bed’: Ritualized Gender Norms in the John/Joan Case,” John Sloop argues many people often assume that gender is directly linked to sexual orientation in which people prefer the “opposite” gender demonstrating that these assumptions about male/female and masculinity/femininity are also steeped in heteronormativity.12 The issue of “passing” and/or transitioning to a new gender also has several political and social implications. Some transgender individuals impart that even if they do take on a new attributed gender, people who knew them before the change will refer to them by the previously attributed gender. For example, Claudine Griggs states even though she is a male-to-female (MTF) she also had difficulty in recognizing a female-to-male, (FTM), she was interviewing as a female child instead of the grown man sitting in front of her.13 Again, we find a replication of the binaristic system, which seems like people cannot escape it because as John Sloop argues, “ . . . in terms of the ‘dominant’ discussions that surround such cases, [like Brandon Teena] critics would be well served by thinking through the ways that the ‘loosening of gender binarisms’ is a potential that often goes unrealized for many audiences.”14 In other words, because we are shaped by and products of the discourses that surround us, people sometimes rely on binaries to discuss gender.15 In Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and the Rest of Us, Kate Bornstein takes this argument even further by claiming: “The possibility missed . . . is this: the culture may not simply be creating roles for naturally-gendered people, the culture may in fact be creating gendered people.”16 Following Bornstein’s logic, if culture creates gendered people, then there must be a way that people within a culture present their genders to others. This method of presentation is often managed through the use of performances and behaviors. As such, it is through the lens of performance that we can view how gendered identities are created. In Gender Trouble, Judith Butler argues that gender is largely performative by suggesting: “ . . . gender is always a doing, though not a doing by a subject who might be said to preexist the deed.”17 Instead of viewing gender as biological or completely cultural, she asserts that we should label gender as a strategy because there is no inherent gender.18 She believes that this creation of gender is one that is done through both practice and the repetition of performances.19

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Therefore, Butler calls for a complex understanding of performativity explaining: “These oppositions [between biologically-determinant and culturally-determinant views of gender and sexuality] do not describe the complexity of what is at stake in any effort to take account of the conditions under which sex and sexuality are assumed. The ‘perfomative’ dimension of construction is precisely the forced reiteration of norms.”20 Even parodies of gender, according to Butler, simply demonstrate the fact that gender is performative or practiced in the first place which also helps to disrupt that “privileged and naturalized gender configuration” that dominates scholarship.21 As John Sloop, also proposes: “ . . . to posit gender and gender behaviors as performative is to see it as ‘a ritualized production, a ritual reiterated under and through constraint under and through the force of prohibition and taboo, with the threat of ostracism . . . ’ ” which also is sometimes reified through cultural discourses (“A Van” 131). While agreeing with Sloop that we are often rhetorically and culturally constrained in our identity creations, we possess more fluidity in our presentations of self than in the past due to the use of performances coupled with the use of styles. RHETORICAL PERSONAE: A METHOD FOR UNDERSTANDING OUR STYLIZED SELVES Stuart Ewen, in All-Consuming Images: The Politics of Style in Contemporary Culture, explains style is “a way that the human values, structures, and assumptions in a given society are aesthetically expressed and received,” that is “ . . . something intangible yet important, everywhere and nowhere, inchoate.”22 Yet, as “style ultimately is a significant dimension of every human experience” the use of various styles also has become more prevalent as Daniel Miller in Material Culture and Mass Consumption declares: “ . . . style has achieved a certain autonomy in contemporary society going beyond its capacity for ordering to become itself the focus of concern.”23 That is to say, our use of style is a key hallmark of contemporary, postmodern society. Providing further support for the prevalence and relevance of style, Barry Brummett argues that because style “ . . . is central to everyday life, identity, social organization, and the politics of the 21st century” there is a need to further understand how style operates as a “system of communication with rhetorical influence on others.”24 Paralleling Brummett, I argue that because style is multifaceted, and especially since the way that people use it today is a complex

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combination of factors, such as dress, commodities, performances, language, and aesthetics, we need to look closer at how these aspects intertwine and how they aid us in the creation of identities. Simultaneously, there also is a need to further understand how style operates within a social context. As such, I use the term social style25 to encompass not only style but also how this employment of style operates within the social settings in which we find ourselves. Social style is a system of signs in which we employ four dimensions—performance, use of language, commodities, and aesthetics—when we communicate our identities, when people identify us, when we identify them, or when social style is used within media representations. Each of these aspects intertwines and overlaps within a given text. The use of social styles to create our identities is inherently rhetorical and political. In other words, we employ our social styles strategically to align ourselves with or against other people because as Brummett states: “Style is a complex system of actions, objects, and behaviors, that is used to form messages that announce who we are, who we want to be, and who we want to be considered akin to. . . . And as such, style is a means by which power and advantage are negotiated, distributed, and struggled over in society.”26 Today people can choose the social styles they wish to utilize in the creation of their identities by adapting their uses of language and employing various aesthetics, behaviors, practices, performances, and commodities in these creations of self. These stylized identities, I maintain, also are both socially influenced and may vary according to the social situations in which we find ourselves. In this sense, I propose that we are not only capable of using an assortment of styles, we also have the potential to produce a plurality of identities through our rhetorical performances of self because as Stuart Ewen explains: “Modern style speaks to a world where change is the rule of the day, when one’s place in the social order is a matter of perception, the product of diligently assembled illusions.” 27 Our contemporary view of style, as such, is that it is flexible, playful, and transient. Therefore, this potential for multiplicity in identity construction means that we can go beyond limiting our identities to a single social category. We not only draw upon social styles in performing our identities, but also fuse social styles with other larger cultural phenomena like media representations and everyday life. In this sense, I believe that when we employ larger cultural phenomena along with social style, we are engaging in the creation of rhetorical personae. At first glance,

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these disparate elements of social style in the creation of identities may seem far-flung or unrelated. However, I propose that fusing Barry Brummett’s theory on rhetorical homology with social style can help us to understand how rhetorical personae operate. According to Brummett, a homology “is a formal linkage among two or more kinds of experiences. It is a situation in which two or more kinds of experiences appear or can be shown to be structured according to the same pattern in some important particulars of their material manifestations.”28 A homology, in other words, means a similarity underlying objects, actions, and/or experiences. That is to say, although those experiences, actions and/or objects may appear to be different or unrelated, they match on a formal level such that there are “formal parallels among seemingly disparate things or experiences.” 29 For example, a person whose company is downsizing may feel like she is on the reality TV show Survivor because she is waiting to see if she will be the next one fired. In our creation of identities, it may sometimes appear as if the dimensions, or content, comprising our social styles (performance, language, commodities, and aesthetics) are disjointed, random, and/ or have no relationship to each other. However, it may be that these dimensions are homologous on a formal level that is not so readily apparent on strictly a level of content. Brummett further explains this idea in A Rhetoric of Style, by claiming: “A style may be thought of as a formal system of signification . . . held together by formal properties.”30 In this sense, he argues that one can further understand how the rhetoric of style operates by analyzing “stylistic homologies.”31 As stated earlier, our creations of identities through the use of social styles often are based popular representations, which are sometimes recurring types of “stock characters” that exist within society such as saints, outlaws, and cowboys.32 Further, as other scholars such as Raymond Gozzi and Neal Gabler assert because mass mediated images are so prevalent, in contemporary society, we have begun to view our lives in more dramatic terms such that we view ourselves as characters within our own life dramas.33 Therefore, to understand how contemporary identities are created through the use of social style the method of rhetorical personae fuses the theoretical framework of rhetorical homology as proposed by Barry Brummett with my method of social style. In other words, the methods used to analyze identity, as a complex phenomenon, need to account for the intertextual nature of how it functions as a system of signs dispersed throughout a variety of texts and discourses.

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Furthermore, while previous research on transgender has discussed the idea of performativity, the theoretical and methodological framework of rhetorical personae will augment this research because it may reveal how the area of performance rhetorically combines with other dimensions of social style to create identities that people may employ strategically based on socially dependent situations. This perspective, with its grounding in rhetoric and communication, may help us to see how we create, manage, and communicate meanings about our identities that are also sometimes constrained by cultural discourses at our disposal. As I will demonstrate, each of the debates surrounding gender, transgenderism, sexuality, desire, performativity, identity construction, and dominant cultural discourses, are widespread and come to a head in the case of Buck Angel and it is for these reasons that I will explore him as a text by beginning with a brief biography. UNCOVERING AN ANGEL: A BRIEF BIOGRAPHY OF BUCK If someone saw Buck Angel on the street, he or she would most likely assume that Buck belongs to that famous group of angels— Hell’s Angels—the notorious motorcycle gang.34 Buck is a burly man with a shaved head, thick Fu Manchu, and numerous tattoos all over his body and occasionally has a cigar dangling from his mouth. Yet, Buck Angel is no Hell’s Angel. He is a porn star who, due to genetics, some would label a woman. According to “Mind Over Matter,” Beth Greenfield states that Buck Angel is a “female-to-male trans guy.”35 Noticing that there were not many “mainstream” FTM movies or performers, he decided to enter the business and launched his own career with the Web site transsexual-man.com in February of 2003.36 He maintains that since that time his career has taken off because he was “the first FTM to be signed with a major studio,” has made “porn history” by being in one of the first female-to-male and male-tofemale sex scenes, and indicates that one of his first releases, Buck’s Beaver was nominated for an AVN award in 2006.37 Since that time, Buck Angel has had numerous successes such as winning the 2007 AVN Transsexual Performer of the Year and being nominated for the same award in 2008 and 2009. His most recent film BuckBack Mountain (2007) was voted one of the “Top 10 Gay Movies of the Decade” and he has appeared on numerous television shows ranging from Howard Stern to Secret Lives of Women: Porn Stars (2008). 38 Recently, the famous British sculptor, Marc Quinn even created a marble statue of Buck.39

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Some may wonder whether porn was the only option that he had as a FTM, however, Buck argues: “No way. A lot of transsexuals do get into porn because they think they don’t have any other options. But transsexual women are exploited and treated as freaks and a lot of the titles of the videos are Freak of Nature, Freaky Deaky, whatever. You will never see that in any of my work. I took control of the situation from the get-go. I’m not being exploited at all.”40 While some may argue that he exploits himself for financial gain, I argue that because Buck maintains control over his image this act also could be seen as him having a degree of agency despite other social and cultural constraints surrounding his gender identity. Secondly, because there is a lack of representation of transgendered individuals, he decides to fill a void in mainstream films wanting the films to appeal to more general audiences and not just people who want to watch him because he is different. In other words, Buck could be seen as both “being out” as transgendered and simultaneously trying to present transgenderism as normal by stripping away its taboo as “freaky” or “weird.” He does not allow others to dictate sexual situations in which he is included, exploit his transgender status, or label his films in any way to position them and/or him as “abnormal.” Therefore, he puts his transgender body on display as a representation with several social and political implications. Since I have discussed some biographical information about Buck Angel, now I turn to an analysis of his social style and identity. BUCK ANGEL’S SOCIAL STYLE To analyze, his use of social style to create identity, I will look at a number of still images from his Web site, BuckAngel.com as well as images from various interviews with the Village Voice, Bizarre magazine, and Eros Zine: New York Erotica magazine to name a few. Therefore, one limitation of this study is the fact that I am solely relying on the use of still images, which may be limited in capturing some aspects of his presentation of self such as voice, mannerisms, and/or gestures, for example. Here, I will discuss these dimensions of social style separately so it is easier to see how they function as well as pointing out how they overlap in the text. Performance The first thing that is noticeable about pictures of Buck Angel is his stance, which is usually in a commanding position. For example in a series of pictures from a July 13, 2004 issue of Eros Zine: New York

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Erotica magazine, Buck stands with his arms sometimes crossed in front of him. Similarly, in a July 2005 issue of Bizarre magazine, although his back is to the camera, Buck stands up with his head slightly turned looking over his shoulder. In other words, part of Buck’s performance is created through the use of his posture, which seems to signal confidence, authority, and control. Another aspect of his performance is his participation in various tasks. In several images, Buck is shown weight lifting (in an image from Buck Angel.com), smoking a cigar (as shown in Bizarre magazine July 2005 and Eros Zine), or giving someone a tattoo (as shown in Eros Zine). This activity on the part of Buck Angel may be a way to suggest his authority since he is “doing something” in each photo. It is possible that through this performance, he is demonstrating that he does activities that are commonly associated with men. Buck creates a performance of masculinity through his stance, which suggests authority, and his activities (i.e., weightlifting, smoking, etc.). In other words, he is “active” instead of “passive” which commonly is associated with masculinity versus femininity. Therefore, he may be showing that because he lifts weights, smokes, and gives tattoos, he is just a “regular guy.” However, Buck transgresses and complicates this notion of masculinity by drawing attention to the fact that he is transgendered. In several photos, Buck is either covering up, calling attention to, and/or exposing his vagina. For example, in the Village Voice article “La Dolce Musto,” Buck is completely nude aside from a leather jacket, which hangs down off his shoulders with the corner of the jacket covering his vagina.41 On his Web site, BuckAngel.com, one of the first images before entering the site is a picture of Buck lying on his side facing the camera with his underwear pulled down past his knees. Over his private region is a symbol that incorporates both the sign for men and women. In another picture on the site, Buck is outdoors in front of a barn and truck leaning on the back seat of what appears to be a motorcycle. He is fully nude aside from leather gloves and the picture cuts off just above his private area. Finally, in another picture from his Web site, he stands against a wall with his shirt open and pants partially open with his hands down his crotch. To some extent, these pictures seem to be drawing attention to his vagina by either covering it up with a symbol, his hands, or clothing, and/or by exposing it through his posture or stance which seems to trouble or queer his being a “regular” guy. Here what we have is an attempt by Buck Angel to move beyond strict definitions of man and

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masculinity. He claims and displays his transgender status in order to disrupt, analyze, and play with these rigid binaries. Politically, here he parallels Katrina Roen’s argument of “both/neither” because from the waist up, he “looks like a man” or taps into “masculine” aesthetics, but from the waist down some would label him a “woman” because he has a vagina. Rhetorically, this aspect also calls into question issues of naming based solely on binaristic assumptions of “man/woman” and “masculine/feminine” when we try to attribute gender to others and ourselves. Many of Buck’s facial expressions throughout the images seem to be challenging, quizzical, and somewhat “tongue-in-cheek” as he often wrinkles his forehead and raises an eyebrow to the camera. For example, in the weightlifting picture on his Web site, Buck’s expression seems to parallel the famous scene and line from the 1976 film Taxi Driver in which actor Robert De Niro looks into the mirror and asks: “Are you talkin’ to me?!” In other words, Buck seems to challenge his audience by directly staring at the camera and wrinkling his forehead. Similarly, in an Eros Zine image he wears army pants and a tank-top holding a riding crop and stares directly into the camera demonstrating authority.42 Finally, even when he has his back turned to the camera and is looking over his shoulder, in a Bizarre magazine spread; he raises an eyebrow as if to suggest a challenge. Buck’s facial expressions could be seen as another attempt to stress his dominance, but at the same time, there is a hint of whimsy and curiosity in his face as if he is asking his audience to consider this dominance in terms of play or camp in which he . . . “points out the silliness, exaggerates the roles, shines big spotlights on the gender dynamic.”43 Another layer of his performances, although they are beyond the scope of the essay, is the fact that he performs in adult videos. These performances in pornography may align with and/or contrast with the photographs of Buck. However, one aspect of these performances in adult videos that can be ascertained through interviews is that he problematizes both gender and sexuality because within these movies, Buck performs in a variety of sexual scenarios, with male and female partners, and his role ranges from “top” to “bottom.”44 Thus, through these performances in adult films he creates fluidity and play across categories of gender and sexuality. In turn, he also plays with, disrupts, and queers heteronormativity and homosexuality by challenging the meanings of these labels about sexual orientation.

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Use of Language Buck Angel’s use of language may be characterized as direct and open. He often is very forthcoming with his views and/or in discussing his life as a FTM. For example, in an Adult F.Y.I.com interview in 2004, he states: There are she-males in the business, tranny girls and they used to be males. . . . They just kept their cocks. I’m basically the complete opposite. . . . I was born a female and I had a sex change to a male. And I opted to keep my pussy. The surgery is horrifying. The cocks that they try to put on you are nonfunctioning. They don’t work. They have to do all these crazy skin grafts. You have basically a 50-50 chance of losing your orgasm. And you know what? I like my orgasm. I like having sex. So that was not an option . . . 45 Aside from having a direct, open style of speaking, Buck often uses words that some would label as “vulgar” or “coarse” such as “pussy,” “cock,” and “fuck” to name a few. For example, his trademark is “a man with a pussy.”46 By saying he is a man and then “queering” or “troubling” this notion with “pussy,” which sometimes is slang for vagina and therefore associated with woman, Buck creates another category that is “both/neither.” He states that he is proud of whom he is saying: “ . . . but you don’t need a cock to be a man. I think it’s sad when guys like me don’t feel like they are 100 percent male because they don’t have the penis surgery. I want other guys to be able to feel as comfortable as I do in my skin.”47 This suggests that Buck also raises the inquiry of what it means to be a man seeming to posit whether the only requisite for being a man is having a penis. Or, as Buck suggests does the definition of man go beyond genetics or social constructions and mean something more? I argue that Buck Angel’s very presence indicates that the term “man” is more complex than previously considered. Although he uses these kinds of “vulgar” words, Buck Angel does not sound uneducated. His language seems to parallel a workingclass form of speaking in which he is educated, uses slang or “vulgar” words, but does not sound highly-educated. Here, Buck draws upon a third social category, class, to help construct his social style and identity. This “working-class” speech, politically and rhetorically, can be seen as a form of rebelling against upper-class notions of etiquette that would probably label this kind of speech discussing sexuality and the subject of sexual acts as taboo.

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Even the name itself, “Buck Angel,” conjures up various images with the way that he is utilizing language in claiming his identity. The name Buck Angel seems oxymoronic or “tongue-in-cheek” because he contrasts two very different types of behavior meaning on the one hand he is indicating that he is uninhibited, but at the same time he is a good person. Again, this use of naming might also be seen as a form of camp in which he wants to queer notions of masculinity and femininity. Rhetorically, we also can see that this “tongue-in-cheek” use of language parallels his performances. That is to say, he causes his audiences to question his identity meaning is he a buck, an angel, or both? If he is both, which he seems to suggest, then perhaps there is a place for transgendered identities after all in which one does not have to choose an “either/or” status. Therefore, rhetorically the name is ironic painting a grey picture of Buck about his identity instead of an “either/or” black versus white approach. Thus, it seems likely that by invoking his name Buck wants to dismantle or complicate our notions of sexuality and gender. Buck tries to further obscure this notion of gender by saying that even though he considers himself a man, he would rather be labeled as a third gender that goes beyond the dichotomy of man and woman.48 Finally, Buck is open and direct about his sexual orientation stating that he is bisexual.49 In this sense, we have a person who claims and embodies his status as transgender as well as viewing sexuality and desire in ways do not privilege heterosexuality or homosexuality thus allowing for fluidity and play within the realm of desire. Politically, he is one voice for transgender individuals through his frankness about his identity and does not simply try to “pass” as a man. Use of Commodities Physically, Buck Angel has a burly, stocky physique. He often shows off his muscular chest and arms in various shots. He has a shaved head with a thick Fu Manchu and has one of his nipples pierced.50 He has tattoos all over his body, such as on his arms, legs, chest, back of the neck, back, lower back, and most recently, his lower abdomen. For example, across his chest he has Chinese dragons while covering his arms down to his wrists he has a combination of tribal art and Celtic knots, anchors, writing, and an old-fashioned pin up girl.51 Across his upper back, he has the word “pervert” written in cursive and he has “Irish boy” across his lower back. 52 One of his newest

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tattoos is of a winged stag emerging from a crown that he has on his lower abdomen.53 He also has a tattoo of a dagger pointing down on the inner bottom portion of his right leg.54 Therefore, he physically resembles what people would traditionally consider as the looks of a biker and/or construction worker due to his physique, muscles, and body art. By using his body as a commodity, Buck draws upon social categories of gender and class to create his social style. Some would argue that since Buck gets paid for his performances in adult videos, his body is literally a commodity, which is true. However, I argue that to some extent all of our bodies are commodities in this sense because we use them physically, socially, rhetorically, politically, and economically. Buck’s use of tattoos suggests that he claims his ethnicity as an “Irish boy” as another social category. Here we have three different social categories operating conjointly (class, gender, and ethnicity), yet they are unified in Buck’s creation of social style and identity. Usually, Buck is not shown with any other material goods aside from a cigar dangling from his mouth. As such, his use of commodities seems limited to dress and the body. He often is shown with little or no clothing such as wearing a pair of jeans with no shirt.55 When he does wear clothing often it is traditionally that which could be labeled as “casual” or associated with the working-class such as jeans, T-shirts, cotton underwear, tank-tops, leather jackets, large sunglasses, and little or no jewelry. In one photo shoot, he dons a cowboy hat, which traditionally suggests another form of working-class dress.56 However, he also has been shown wearing black leather pants and gloves with a black T-shirt that has “police” written on it in capital, white letters while holding a baton.57 In another photo, he wears army fatigues and black leather gloves with a riding crop.58 It is interesting to note that many of the forms of dress, and/or nudity itself, which Buck displays could be considered in light of creating sexual fantasies and/or fetishes that involve authority, control, submission, and play. That is to say, in dressing like an army soldier, a cop, a cowboy, and/or by being naked Buck taps into sexual fantasies and the idea of role-playing in which some people are engaged. Buck’s nudity also could be seen politically as another attempt for him to “be out” about being transgendered. By embracing himself through a willingness to create and fulfill his desires and the desires of others, he opens up meanings surrounding sexuality and desire by claiming, displaying, and utilizing his body for pleasure.

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Aesthetics Buck often wears colors such as black and dark blue and never wears light or bright colors. Combined with his performances, use of language, and commodities, this use of aesthetics seems to suggest a “working-class style” or a “biker look” that some would associate with a certain performance and/or embodiment of masculinity. Especially when comparing the images of Buck Angel now to that of his former self “Susan,” with her cropped blond hair and white scarf around her neck wearing a black leather jacket in one image or a photo of her in a white tank top with green khaki shorts, the contrast is striking.59 Yet, Susan and Buck are one-and-the-same, which likewise plays with and troubles strict binaries about attributed gender based upon appearance. That is to say as Griggs argues, we attribute gender to a person based on looks and act from there, however, Buck causes these assumptions to fall apart.60 Further, paralleling his performances, his aesthetic is homological and lacks any contrast. In other words, he does not wear dress pants with a cowboy hat or dark and pastel colors. This use of aesthetic also is repeated throughout various photos (i.e., dressed in black “cop” gear, dressed in army fatigues, and/or dressed in a cowboy hat and jeans). Again, one could say that this use of aesthetics is directly related to the use of the erotic to create pleasure and/or desire for the audience that is steeped in hyper-masculinity. However, I believe we can more fully understand Buck Angel’s creation of social style and identity if we view it through the lens of rhetorical personae. That is to say, Buck Angel in creating his social style and identity seems to be drawing upon the persona, or rhetorical homology, of a “biker outlaw” or “rebel.” WRANGLING IN A “BIKER OUTLAW” OR “REBEL” AS A RHETORICAL PERSONA In popular culture, the rebel or outlaw often is depicted as a person, or stock character, who is on the fringes of society such as a “biker,” “criminal” and/or “lone rider” (e.g., the outlaw Josey Wales). In “Sleazy Riders: Exploitation, Otherness,” and “Transgression in the 1960s Biker Movie,” Bill Osgerby explains that the “biker outlaw” became a facet of popular culture in the 1960s with the rise of films such as The Wild Angels (1966), Devils’ Angels (1967), Born Loser (1967), The Wild Rebels, (1967), Hell’s Chosen Few (1968), and a host of others.61 It is this cultural persona that I believe Buck Angel draws upon in the creation of his social style, and, in turn, his identity. Specifically, Buck’s

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social style closely resembles that of a biker outlaw and all around looks like he would be in a dive bar surrounded by his motorcycle gang. As Osgerby indicates one of the most famous biker gangs, Hell’s Angels, had: “A style of biker brotherhood that made [Marlon] Brando’s leather-jacketed hoodlums [in The Wild One (1953)] look almost quaint by comparison, the Hell’s Angels took the aesthetics of liminal dissent to new extremes—with long hair, Nazi motifs, greasy Levis, and customized motorcycles (‘chopped hogs’) whose low-slung frames, cattle-horn handlebars, and raked front forks were a symbolic expression of defiant non-conformity.”62 While Buck Angel’s aesthetic is not extreme in this sense (i.e., he does not wear Nazi insignia or have long hair), he does seem to be tapping into this “motorcycle” aesthetic of leather, tattoos, muscles, and toughness which Osgerby suggests signify “ . . . a fascination with polished chrome, black leather, and other markers of menacing machismo . . . ” and is reflected in “ . . . the brooding introspection of the bike gang leader.”63 Rhetorically, this use of a hyper-masculine persona calls attention to and disrupts the notion of masculinity itself because Buck Angel is transgender. Some also would consider Buck’s behavior to be “deviant,” which is another characteristic of a biker outlaw or rebel. While he is not a criminal, some would label his place or status in society as “deviant” behavior, not only because he is transgender, but also especially because he works in the adult entertainment industry as a porn star. He is a sexual rebel in some senses because he performs sex scenes with both men and women transgressing heterosexuality. He also participated in the first sex scene in porn history of a FTM with a MTF porn star, Allanah Star. In fact, his fan base is mostly gay men, thereby; as mentioned earlier he rebels against rigid definitions of sexuality and gender.64 In other words, some would consider his occupation a taboo or shocking paralleling representations of bikers in which they engage in taboos such as drunkenness, “mayhem,” “wild parties,” promiscuity, “sexual violence,” and an “invasion of small-town America . . . ”65 His performances in adult videos, in this sense, also parallel an outlaw because he exposes himself both literally and metaphorically to others by rebelling against the status quo and its binary norms of labeling or as a transgression of these boundaries. Rather than creating his social style and drawing upon the cultural persona strictly based on masculinity, Buck disturbs and plays with this notion by claiming and putting forth his transgender status such that while he draws upon the biker outlaw, he redefines its meaning

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by encompassing a broader definition of masculinity beyond a strictly dual nature. In other words, he causes us to rethink the biker outlaw in terms of masculinity as well as masculinity itself. While some may argue that Buck Angel only demonstrates masculinity, this is not the case in the sense that he chooses to be out and up front about the fact that he has a vagina and seems to claim it as a point of pride even referring to it as a “male pussy.”66 I assert that this claiming of his “male pussy” disrupts the notions of gender and meanings of masculinity versus femininity, which may be one of the reasons that he is popular with his fans and criticized by others. A MIXED BAG: AUDIENCE RESPONSES TO BUCK ANGEL As stated before, Buck Angel’s main audience is mostly gay men, yet he is popular in other media venues and is gaining popularity. He was on The Maury Povich Show in 2005, Howard Stern in 2006, and featured in the Secret Lives of Women: Porn Stars in 2008. He also has been on the cover of Bizarre magazine several times with editor Alex Godfrey commenting: Buck Angel, Buck Angel, Buck Angel. Enough with the Buck Angel already. Big deal, the man has a vagina. This is what, the third time in a year we’ve done a feature on him? Trouble is, the guy keeps breaking new ground. What can we do? You’d think being the only female-to-male transsexual in the adult entertainment industry would be enough, but no. Now he’s gone and had sex with a male-to-female transsexual, which throws all sort of genderbending mind-fucks into the ring. The great thing about Buck Angel—and the reason he’s such an enduring Bizarre icon is that he makes us think. His mere existence confuses people. Reminds us there’s more to life than man and woman, gay and straight . . . 67 As the above quotation suggests, one reason that Buck Angel might be popular with fans is because he draws upon multiple social categories to create his identity, and allows for a rethinking of the binaristic system of cultural norms by serving as a direct challenge to this way of thinking. Another reason for his popularity might be that politically he seems to offer a space outside of and/or an alternative to the dominant discourses of gender by disrupting, complicating, and playing with notions of gender and sexuality. Buck declares that he has mostly received positive feedback from people on his Web site and through e-mails stating: “People in the

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Web world are very good, very generous. It’s more customerbased. . . . They are very supportive of my porn career!”68 He says that he receives letters from other FTMs stating: “A lot e-mail me and thank me for my work and what I am doing because it has opened them up to having sex with their partners. . . . Wow! I actually changed someone’s life. I am getting more and more e-mails saying I’m doing an amazing job.”69 While I will not cite all of the fan mail here, I do want to provide a few samples of the responses on the site, Buck Angel.com. For example, one fan writes: “Was surfing the Web and came across your site. Totally Impressed!!! I’m FTM too, and your site confirms that we have bodies and sexualities that are worth knowing (intimately) and viewing.”70 Another fan states: “Just came [across your] site and just had to tell you that I think it is great. I am a gay man and I find you a very hot man even with that great pussy of yours. I am very interested in one of your videos. Can you email me the info?” Finally, a third fan writes, “just a straight married female who finds you extremely sexy . . . ”71 As the e-mails attest, Buck seems to have a mixed audience of female-to-males, gay men, and straight women which calls into question the nature of sexual desire. Buck claims that he is popular with his fans because: “I know there’s people like me who think guys like me are hot!”72 Therefore, another reason that he may be so popular with his fans is because for some transgender individuals he may serve as a role model meaning one representation or voice within society. In this sense, his fans also may feel that he provides visibility in the political realm where historically transgender voices have been silenced or it could be that they are people, across a spectrum of genders and sexual orientations, who simply are attracted to him or the erotic fantasies he offers them in his performances. However, he has received some negative feedback perhaps because he cannot easily be categorized nor does he seem to want to be labeled in this manner. As John Sloop argues scholars have to consider which audiences cannot get beyond an essentialist, binaristic notion of gender and I argue that these criticisms could be categorized in this light.73 Buck reiterates this point explaining: “I get some bad e-mails from guys who say what I am doing is wrong and disrespectful.”74 Buck also discloses that some FTMs are not happy with him stating: “But I’ve also seen disapproval from them with postings about how disgusting what I’m doing is and I’ve received some hate mail from FTMs. On the whole, they don’t tend to be my biggest buyers of memberships or videos, which is fine. Definitely a mixed bag [of audience

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responses].”75 Yet, I believe that one of the reasons he is popular, and perhaps unpopular with some, is because of the social, rhetorical, and political implications of Buck Angel as text. THE MAN WITH A VAGINA AND NOTIONS OF CONTEMPORARY IDENTITIES As mentioned earlier, Buck Angel complicates and queers the notions of sex, gender, and sexuality by going beyond the rigid binary norms. He was born a woman, but through surgery, drawing upon a cultural persona, and using social style to create his identity; he now lives as a man with a vagina. Although Buck would label himself as a “manly man,” he unsettles the notion of sexuality; by claiming bisexuality as his sexual orientation, he further complicates and plays with notions of sexuality and desire. In other words, would people consider him “straight” when he has sex with women, due to his appearance, and “gay” when he has sex with men even though he has a vagina? Another problem that this raises is would his fans, of mostly gay men, that are attracted to Buck—who looks “manly” but has a vagina—be labeled as “straight?” In other words, a dualistic approach might consider gay men as straight because in watching Buck have sex with other men, his “equipment” would be labeled as belonging to a woman and he would be defined genetically as such by some people because of his vagina. Yet, even though he has a vagina, this has not turned his gay audience away from him, which disrupts and allows for fluidity in sexuality and desire. This is not to say that Buck, or his audiences, for that matter is completely able to escape the system of binary norms or binaries of language that are rooted in our cultural discourses.76 One could argue that he draws upon the cultural persona of a biker outlaw that some would label as “hyper-masculine” because there are not many alternative representations of masculinity and/or transgender. Therefore, I argue that what the case of Buck Angel points to is a “loosening” of a rigid binary system which also causes us to reexamine the meanings of these cultural terms (i.e., masculinity, femininity, etc.) and raises questions related to notions of sexuality and taboo.77 That is to say, through the use of styles and performances we can transgress these binaries because: “ . . . there are rules to gender, but rules can be broken. . . . There are many ways to transgress a prescribed gender code. . . . Gender fluidity recognizes no border or rules of gender.”78

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Some would argue that Buck’s appeal as a porn star is because he is “different” and therefore people are drawn to him because of his transgender status. While this may be a part of his appeal for some, I think it is remiss to label his fans’ attraction to him just based on mere curiosity alone. It seems that a part of the appeal that Buck Angel has for fans comes from him tapping into the persona of being an outlaw or rebel (i.e., dangerous) and this may heighten the sense of interest in and desire for Buck Angel. In other words, he challenges notions of sexuality and taboos about sex through his transgender identity. Rhetorically and politically, he causes us to further consider what Katrina Roen offered as the two camps of transgender arguments (i.e., “either/or” versus “both/neither”). 79 Although Buck Angel is “manly,” he does not simply “pass” as a man and instead claims his transgender status. Social style coupled with rhetorical homologies of personae in the creation and maintenance of identity in this sense functions as a means for someone who was labeled as a “woman” based on genetics to physically, stylistically, and performatively “become” the man he has always wanted to be and at the same time allows him to claim his “pussy.” Yet, Buck Angel’s identity construction has several rhetorical, political, and social implications about identities in general. First, it answers the question of whether or not we can ever really escape cultural discourses that surrounds us as rhetorical scholar John Sloop posits. Although it seems that we are products of language (i.e., cultural discourses), we can disrupt, trouble, transform, transgress, and play with meanings of language such that it does not have to be steeped in rigidity or as Kate Bornstein argues, “Given any binary, it’s fun to look for some hidden third . . . ”80 Thus, as an example Buck Angel reminds us that these “norms,” as Judith Butler argues, have to be continually repeated and ritualized within society and culture.81 His rhetorical performance of social style to create identity, therefore, can be seen as an attempt to erode, trouble, or queer the rigidity of these norms. In turn, he offers us an alternative view of identity construction by broadening the possibility for polystylistic identities spanning multiple social categories, subject to fluidity and play, yet continually receptive to reconsideration. NOTES 1. John M. Sloop, “A Van with a Bar and a Bed’: Ritualized Gender Norms in the John/Joan Case,” Text and Performance Quarterly 20, issue 2 (2000): 131.

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2. Leslie Feinberg, Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1996), 21–29; 1–9. See also Claudine Griggs, S/he: Changing Sex and Changing Clothes (Oxford: Berg, 1999), 1–23. 3. Internet Movie Database, http://www.imdb.com (accessed June 15, 2009). 4. Benoit Denizet-Lewis, “About a Boy Who Isn’t,” New York Times Magazine, May 25, 2002, 31. See also Kelly Pate Dwyer, “An Employee, Hired as a Man, Becomes a Woman. Now What?” New York Times, July 31, 2005, 1. 5. Katrina Roen, “ ‘Either/Or’ and ‘Both/Neither’: Discursive Tensions in Transgender Politics,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 27, issue 2 (2001): 502. 6. Roen, 502–505. 7. Roen, 505. 8. Richard Levine, “Crossing the Line,” Mother Jones 19, issue 3 (1994): 43. 9. Griggs, 1–3, 64–69. 10. Griggs, 1–3, 64–69. 11. Griggs, 1. 12. Sloop, “A Van,” 138. 13. Griggs, 67. 14. Sloop, “A Van,” 131; John M. Sloop, “Disciplining the Transgendered: Brandon Teena, Public Representation, and Normativitity,” Western Journal of Communication 64, issue 2 (2000): 168. 15. Sloop, “Disciplining,” 170. 16. Bornstein, Gender Outlaw, 12. 17. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990), 25. 18. Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex (New York: Routledge, 1993), emphasis added, 139–140. 19. Butler, Gender Trouble, 31–32. 20. Butler, Bodies, 94–95. 21. Butler, Bodies, 146–147. 22. Stuart Ewen, All Consuming Images: The Politics of Style in Contemporary Culture (New York: Basic Books, 1988), 3. 23. Daniel Miller, Material Culture and Mass Consumption (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, Ltd., 1987), 129. 24. Barry Brummett, A Rhetoric of Style (Carbondale, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2008), xi, original emphasis. 25. See Carlnita Peterson Greene, “Beyond the Binaries to Self-Fashioning: Identity as the Rhetoric of Social Style,” PhD dissertation, University of Texas at Austin, 2006. Because this previous study provides an extensive account of the theoretical and methodological framework of rhetorical personae, here I offer a summary of its central tenets. 26. Brummett, A Rhetoric, xi, original emphasis. 27. Ewen, 23.

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28. Barry Brummett, Rhetorical Homologies: Form, Culture, Experience (Tuscaloosa, AL: The University of Alabama Press, 2004), 39–40. 29. Barry Brummett, “The Homology Hypothesis: Pornography on the VCR,” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 5 (1988): 203. 30. Brummett, A Rhetoric, 131. 31. Brummett, A Rhetoric, 130. 32. Brummett, Rhetorical, 161. 33. Raymond Gozzi, The Power of Metaphor in the Age of Electronic Media (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press Inc., 1999), 4, 77. See also Neal Gabler, Life the Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality (New York: Vintage Books, 2000), 192–205. 34. James Doorne, “Mangina Man: ‘I Was Born a Woman,’ ” Bizarre Magazine, July 2005, http://www.bizarremag.com/buck2.php (accessed July 30, 2006). 35. Beth Greenfield, “Mind Over Matter,” Time Out New York, 2006. http:// www.timeout.com/newyork/Details.do?page=1&xyurl=xy1://TONYWeb Articles 1/547/gay lesbian/mind over matter.xml (accessed July 30, 2006). 36. Buck Angel.com, http://www.buckangel.com (accessed June 1, 2009). 37. BuckAngel.com. See also “Buck-A-Roo!” Bizarre Magazine, April 22, 2006. 38. BuckAngel.com. See also Internet Movie Database. 39. Joanne Cachapero, “TS Performer Buck Angel Sculpted by British Artist,” Xbiz News Report, September 23, 2008, http://www.xbiz.com/news/ 99503 (accessed June 23, 2009). 40. Doorne, “Mangina,” 60. 41. Michael Musto, “NY Mirror: La Dolce Musto,” Village Voice, February 15, 2006, 10. 42. Sez G. “Buck Angel,” Eros Zine: New York Erotica Magazine, July 13, 2004, http://www.eros-ny.com/articles/2004-07-13/buckangel/ (accessed July 30, 2006). 43. Bornstein, 136. 44. Sez G. See also Tristan Taramino, “Pucker Up: Buck Naked: Transexual-man.com-Not Your Father’s Porn,” Village Voice, April 17, 2003, http://www.villagevoice.com/people/0536,taormino,67482,24.html (accessed July 30, 2006). 45. Gene Ross, “Conversations with Buck Angel,” AdultFYI.com, December 9, 2004. http://www.adultfyi.com/read.aspx?ID=7304 (accessed July 30, 2006). 46. BuckAngel.com. 47. Doorne, “Mangina,” 60. 48. Doorne, “Mangina,” 58. 49. Ross. For more on Buck Angel’s use of language see Gregory T. Angelo, “Man Enough,” Next Magazine, 2003, http://www.nextmagazine.net/ features/manenough.shtml (accessed July 30, 2006) and William Dean,

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“The Transitive Verb: An Interview with Buck Angel, FTM,” Clean Sheets Erotica Magazine, January 25, 2006, http://www.cleansheets.com/coverstories/ dean_01.25.06.shtml (accessed June 15, 2009). 50. BuckAngel.com. See also Doorne, “Buck Angel” and Sez G. 51. Buck Angel.com. See also Doorne, “Mangina” and “Buck.” 52. Buck Angel.com. See also Doorne, “Mangina” and “Buck.” 53. BuckAngel.com. 54. BuckAngel.com. 55. BuckAngel.com. 56. BuckAngel.com. See also Ross. 57. Ross. 58. Ross. 59. Ross. See also James Doorne, “Buck Angel,” Bizarre Magazine, January 2005, http://www.bizarremag.com/buck2.php (accessed July 30, 2006). 60. Griggs, 1. 61. Bill, Osgerby, “Sleazy Riders: Exploitation, ‘Otherness,’ and Transgression in the 1960s Biker Movie,” Journal of Popular Film and Television 31, issue 3 (2003): 98. 62. Osgerby, 101. 63. Osgerby, 99. 64. Greenfield. 65. Osgerby, 102. 66. Doorne, “Mangina,” 62. 67. Alex Godfrey, “Editor’s Letter,” Bizarre Magazine, April 2006, 4. 68. Dan Miller, “Transsexual Man Buck Angel Becomes Exclusive with Robert Hill Releasing,” AVN.com, http://www.avn.com (accessed July 30, 2006). 69. Doorne, “Mangina,” 61. 70. BuckAngel.com. 71. BuckAngel.com. 72. Miller. 73. Sloop, “Disciplining,” 168. 74. Doorne, “Mangina,” 61. 75. Ross. 76. Sloop, “A Van,” 138. 77. Sloop, “Disciplining,” 168. 78. Bornstein, 51–52. 79. Roen, 502–505. 80. Bornstein, 101. 81. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990), 25, 31–32.

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Chapter 12

Like a Man: Signs and Symbols of Masculinity in Gay Pornography Jeffrey Escoffier

The American ideal of sexuality appears to be rooted in the American ideal of masculinity. . . . This ideal has created cowboys and Indians, good guys and bad guys, punks and studs, tough guys and softies, butch and faggot, black and white. —James Baldwin What these signs and symbols of masculinity are for is not to go back to something that would be on the order . . . of machismo, but rather to invent oneself, to make oneself into the site of production of extraordinarily polymorphous pleasures. —Michel Foucault Conceptions of gender are fundamental to all kinds of pornography— heterosexual, bisexual, lesbian, she/male, or gay. As a form of popular culture, pornography draws on the central myths of our culture—the role of the sexes, the meaning of pleasure, the play of gender, and the power of sex. Gay male pornography is pre-occupied by the meaning and playing out of masculine codes of behavior. Since the emergence of commercial gay pornography in the late 1960s and early 1970s, it has reflected the development of new styles of masculinity among

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gay men. These new styles have reflected both the generational background of its producers as well as the historical patterns of sexual conduct such as the promiscuous era of the 1970s and the impact of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s (Escoffier 2009). GAY MACHO Over the course of the 1970s a new masculine style evolved among gay men. Rejecting the traditional idea that male homosexual desire implied a desire to be female, gay men turned to a traditionally masculine or working-class style of acting out sexually. Camp as an effeminized gay sensibility was out. The new style of gay men was almost macho—but macho with a twist. Macho and sexually provocative, the new style included denim pants, black combat boots, a tight t-shirt (if it was warm), covered by a plaid flannel shirt (if it was not), pierced ears or nipples, tattoos, and a beard or moustache. The men who dressed this way were known as clones or, especially in San Francisco, as “Castro clones.” The Marlboro man, a cowboy, was the iconic masculine model for the clone look. Ironically, the man who popularized the masculine style for Marlboro cigarettes was gay. The clone look was a sexually coded style. “[C]lothes emphasize, eroticize, fetishize the vague animal reality underneath and mold our way of seeing it,” wrote Edmund White in States of Desire, “the V-shaped torso by metonymy from the open V of the half-unbuttoned shirt above the sweaty chest; the rounded buttocks squeezed in jeans, swelling out from the cinched-in waist, further emphasized by the erotic insignia of colored handkerchiefs and keys; a crotched instantly accessible through the buttons (bottom one already undone) and enlarged by being pressed, along with the scrotum, to one side; legs molded in perfect, powerful detail; the feet simplified, brutalized and magnified by the boots” (White 1980, 45–46). Moreover, the clone style codified, very precisely, the new sexual norms of gay male life. “For gay men,” White explained, “there are three erotic zones—mouth, penis and anus—and all three are vividly dramatized by this costume, the ass the most insistently so, since its status as an object of desire is historically the newest and therefore the most in need of re-definition” (White 1980, 46). The clones, both sartorially and sexually, thrived most fully in San Francisco and New York. Castro Street in San Francisco and Christopher Street in New York were the pylons that anchored the gay male sexual culture of the 1970s—which as many people have

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claimed, far exceeded in intensity and excitement anything portrayed in gay porn films. Cruising for sex and “tricking” was the mainstay of the clone’s erotic style. Their code stressed the pursuit of sexual gratification over the achievement of emotional intimacy; and it assumed a detached and impersonal objectification of their sexual partners. For many gay men, porn star Al Parker epitomized the new style of masculinity. Born Andrew Okun in 1952, Parker seemed destined for porn since the day when, as a 15 year old, he stumbled across a tattered magazine that included beefcake photos from the legendary Colt Studios. Around the same time, Parker attended the famous concert at Woodstock, where he spent practically the entire weekend in the back of a hearse having sex with a hairy biker in the Hell’s Angels—though barely in attendance at the concert itself, he managed to show up on the poster for the movie. He moved to California, where he worked as a butler at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles and was eventually introduced to the photographer Rip Colt. The standard Colt model was very muscular, with well-defined features. The photographer actually hesitated to shoot Parker and even published his pictures with a disclaimer because Parker was not as muscular or well defined as the typical Colt model. But Parker’s slender hirsute masculinity became almost instantaneously popular and he went on to be one of gay porn’s most enduring icons. His “look” soon came to epitomize the new gay masculine style—the man with a beard wearing a work shirt. Soon after posing for Colt’s nude stills, he made his first sexuallyexplicit movie for Brentwood Studios, directed by Matt Sterling (though he had not yet begun to use that name). Parker’s performances and style conveyed a fantasy of unrestrained availability, but he also created a persona that represented something new: a gay man with a traditional masculine, almost macho, style—taut, muscular, sexually aggressive, hard-living “Marlboro” man—one that included both the active and the passive roles in anal intercourse. Though Parker was primarily a top, he was a versatile top and was comfortable as a butch bottom. His persona made him one of the most popular stars ever among gay men—certainly, the photographic representation of his flesh and skin tones, also his portrayal of masculine homosexuality, but above all, the sheer energy and demonstrable pleasure of his sexual performances cemented his popularity and status (Edmonson 2000). There are many representations of masculinity in the history of gay male porn movies. Among them are three highly significant codifications of hyper-masculine gay sexuality: Joe Gage’s portrait of the

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ordinary working male who engages in sex with other men, the emergence of the gay macho (or clone) style in the late 1970s, and the “gay-for-pay” style of Jeff Stryker in the early period of AIDS. ROAD MOVIES The late 1970s, as Edmund White observed, was “a moment of virilization” for homosexual men. “[T]hey embraced a new vision of themselves as hyper-masculine—the famous ‘clone’ look. Soldier, cop, construction worker—these were the new gay images, rather than dancer, decorator or ribbon clerk” (White 2004, 299). The rise of the clone look, and leather bars like the Mineshaft in New York and the Slot in San Francisco, helped to shape the new gay masculinity, but porn took it to the rest of the country—and the man who bridged the old world of the closeted straight man and the new gay masculine sexuality was filmmaker Joe Gage. The world that Joe Gage created in his films was a twilight zone between the closet and being open about one’s homosexual desire. The ambivalence and the reticence about sexual identity resonated with a great many men in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Gage himself inhabited that twilight zone. He had never identified as a gay man. In the 1980s he married and had raised two sons with his wife. Unlike some of the characters in his films, Gage abstained from having sex with men after he married. “I was 100 percent faithful to my wife,” he explained, “during my years as a full-time husband” (Rodriguez 2007, 18–19). Gage has never portrayed or identified anyone as gay in his films—“they’re never ‘straight’ though,” he told Butt magazine, “that’s the point. People constantly say, ‘Oh here’s another Joe Gage movie, he’s going to have straight guys going gay or straight guys having sex.’ But no, that’s not it at all. My stuff is always about guys who get up in the morning, go to work, do their job and then see what happens . . . ” (Rodriguez 2007, 19). It was 1975 when Gage first shopped around a script for a gay hardcore road picture called Highway Fantasies. Eventually Gage and a friend (under the names Joe and Sam Gage) raised the money to produce it themselves—that movie became Kansas City Trucking Co. “I started off making it a journey,” Gage recalled. “It was supposed to go from one place to another, and as I was writing, creating events that would illuminate character and would also be ‘money events’—sexual episodes—I discovered that it was not only a journey, it was a journey of self-discovery” (Gage, June 1992, 13).

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Gage loved B-movies, Roger Corman horror movies, and biker movies like The Wild Angels (1950, starring Marlon Brando). “At the time, Wakefield [Poole] was bringing a very artistic, cultural sensibility” to the making of the gay hardcore movie, Gage recalled, “and I thought it would be great to have a sort of B-movie-Tom of Finland-Li’l Abnerballs-out-cartoon kind of moviemaking” (Gage, June 1992, 13). Once the script was final and the money raised, the first person Gage cast in the film was Richard Locke. Gage had seen a poster for a hardcore feature called Pool Party at the Adonis Theater, one of New York’s most prominent gay porn theaters. At the time, Locke had moved to the desert to escape from the cities, which he believed had become centers of disease due to overpopulation. He was living in a shack in the desert, with no running water and a generator for electricity, where he was building a geodesic dome (Koymasky, ret. July 19, 2006). Kansas City Trucking Co. follows a trucker named Hank (played by Richard Locke) on a long haul to Los Angeles with a newly hired young man played by Steve Boyd who rides shotgun. Early porn star Jack Wrangler plays the dispatcher—he and Locke have a quicky before Locke goes on the road. Then Boyd, who at the beginning is dropped off by his girlfriend, has sexual fantasies about Wrangler as they drive to Los Angeles. Hank (Richard Locke) and his new sidekick jerk off together while on the road. Along the way, Locke and Boyd fantasize, experience flashbacks, or pass by a number of sexual encounters. At the end of the journey they both join an orgy at the truckers’ bunkhouse in Los Angeles. Since Kansas City Trucking Co. did well with audiences and was so financially successful, Joe and Sam Gage decided to make a sequel, El Paso Wrecking Corp., which launched almost exactly a year later— the day after Christmas 1977. Again, it starred Richard Locke. Fred Halsted, the acclaimed director of L.A. Plays Itself, Sex Garage and Sex Tool, shared equal billing with Locke. Even more than Kansas City Trucking Co., El Paso Wrecking Corp. was the classic road movie/buddy film. When Locke and Halsted are fired from Kansas City Trucking, they get into a pick-up truck and head to El Paso. Along the way, they stop at busy bars, public restrooms, and just on the side of the road to watch sex or to have it themselves. Like all of the men in Gage’s movies, they are not gay or straight, but up for any sexual adventure. After Halsted has sex with a guy in the backroom of a bar while the guy’s girlfriend watches, a homophobic patron starts a fight with them. Locke cautions Halsted, “You’ve got to learn to keep your hands to yourself.”

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“Awh, shit I couldn’t help it. Those two [the man and his girlfriend] were too much. Listen, Hank, no more guys. This time I mean it.” “Yeah, I’ve heard that before.” Locke replies, “Your dick gets you into more trouble than anyone I ever met.” The third picture, L.A. Tool and Die, was released a year after El Paso Wrecking Corp. Locke stars with Will Seagers, who plays Locke’s love interest. Casey Donovan also appears in the movie—in a scene where he is fucked in the woods by Terri Hannon and Derek Stanton. Seagers is reluctant to commit himself to Locke, and has a vivid memory of the death of the buddy he loved in Vietnam. But before he and Lock can get together, he must travel to Los Angeles for a job at L.A. Tool and Die. Locke goes to Los Angeles and meets Seagers there. Locke almost misses his fateful get together with Seagers when he gets caught up in an orgy in a restroom near where they are supposed to meet—but true to the spirit of the 1970s, Seagers checks out the men’s room and joins in himself. Locke invites Seagers to live with him on the desert plot that he bought with his life savings. Unfortunately the plot of land Locke bought is a big disappointment. They have decided to leave when they accidentally discover water on the land—a figurative “money shot,” it gushes like an ejaculating penis. The film ends with Locke and Seagers making love in the candle light. The last scene was uncharacteristic for Gage. Unlike so many other gay hardcore filmmakers, he had no interest in the gay identity or in gay relationships. “I never made relationship pictures,” Gage told Jerry Douglas, “except in the widest definition of the term. Even so I wanted to create this thing at the end of L.A. where Hank finds this guy who is grieving, and the two of them make a life together” (Gage, June 1992, 13). Gage’s three films—sometimes referred to as “the Kansas City trilogy”—had an enormous impact on the gay men who saw them. “Joe Gage’s first three films,” wrote Jerry Douglas in his assessment, “introduced a new sort of hero to the gay film, and celebrated the freedom of the sexual revolution that had spread across America during the years that they were being made. Today, in retrospect, the trio stand together as the definitive cinematic statement on the emergence of the macho homosexual whose sexual transiency and voracity influenced larger and larger numbers of gay—until the advent of AIDS” (Stallion 1985, 49). In 2006, Unzipped magazine listed Gage’s three movies—Kansas City Trucking Co., El Paso Wrecking Corp., and L.A. Tool and Die—among the 100 greatest gay porn films made since 1968 (Unzipped 2006, 45, 68–70). Gage made a number of films after the trilogy—Closet Set (1980) and Heatstroke (1982) were among the most notable. Heatstroke almost

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seemed an extension of the trilogy. Richard Locke was again the star. Shot on location in Montana, it is set among a group of cowboys who head into town to raise hell over the weekend. “The results are primal America,” writes Jerry Douglas, “a homoerotic wedding of Zane Grey and Tom of Finland” (Stallion 1985, 22). “The films were completely scripted,” Gage told the Bright Lights Film Journal, “down to the last detail, including all sexual situations and dialogue.” In the sexual scenes, Gage told the actors, “This is what I’m going to want from you. . . . I’m going to want you here. . . . I’m going to want you there. . . . We’ll shoot four or five minutes on this, four or five minutes on that, and then I want you to come. . . . And I want you to come this way or that way or whatever. And how do you feel about it? . . . Which way is most comfortable for you?” (Morris n.d.). Gage’s films portray, as Jerry Douglas points out, “men’s initiation into pansexuality. These films are rife with women, sexual women whose men (while not explicitly bisexual) are or become, firm believers in the Sixties adage: ‘If it feels good, do it’ ” (Stallion, 49). But for Gage, sex was always more significant than identity. “I think it’s so confining,” he recently told Frank Rodriguez, “so diminishing to say, ‘I am a gay man.’ ” Gage never built sex scenes around specific sex acts, but around the confrontation of two personalities. Masturbation is the most common sex act in Gage’s films and anal sex the least common. “Anal sex is not very cinematic,” he explained to Jerry Douglas, “and that’s the whole idea of making homosexual pornography. If you strip it down to its absolute basics, it’s the worship of the phallus, the worship of the penis. If you’re going to make homosexual pornography, you’d better light the dick. So masturbation and oral sex are . . . the best way to photograph. You’re highlighting the penis—that’s what it’s about” (Gage, June 1992, 17). The world that Gage created resembled closely the one drawn by Tom of Finland. It was “a fantasy-world of uncomplicated and exaggerated male sexuality . . . ” Alan Hollinghurst notes, “[he] created a whole type of men, square-jawed, thick-lipped, with powerful muscular bodies, packed jutting asses and huge cocks . . . [he] was always rendering explicit the sexuality of certain male stereotypes—lumberjacks, cowboys, hitch-hikers” (Hollinghurst 1983, 11). In Gage’s world, much like that of Tom of Finland, “The best homosexual sex is anonymous, impersonal, promiscuous and public.” In 1977, Scott Masters (who at that time used the name Robert Walters) sought to translate the new gay masculinity into commercial porn when launched Nova Studios.

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Most Nova releases had a story to tell with clear transitions and showed dramatic conflict. “I had become very adept at telling a story visually,” he told writer/director Jerry Douglas in 1997, “and furthermore,” he continued, “using sex to tell the story. . . . In those days, it was a little trick to set up a story situation whereby sex told the story. It’s like a good song in a musical forwards the plot” (Masters 1997, 12). The typical Nova film, Rolf Hardesty observed, showed men having sex with other men in settings not typically considered “gay” locations: a factory, garage, football locker room, or stable. The fantasy created was that “jocks, hardhats, wranglers all segued into sex right there in the workplace. But by his accurate settings, props, and garb, Walters helped his viewers ‘suspend belief.’ The point was above all to show ‘hot guys having gay sex,’ not ‘gay guys having hot sex’ ” (Hardesty 1997, 12). MASCULINITY VERSUS MORTALITY In the early years of the AIDS epidemic, many gay men turned to porn as a substitute for the casual sex of the previous decade. Yet the incredibly influential fantasy of complete sexual availability that porn promoted made some gay men uneasy. As the stark facts of viral transmission emerged, it became evident that the sexually versatile man (i.e., active and passive in anal intercourse) was both more at risk for HIV and more likely to serve as a conduit for the virus. In the mid-1980s, with the prospect of AIDS in so many gay men’s mind, a new kind of gay porn superstar emerged in the person of Jeff Stryker. Identified as straight, he performed exclusively as a top (the active partner in anal sex), was almost exclusively passive in oral sex, and did not engage in kissing. Unlike earlier popular porn stars Casey Donovan or Al Parker, Stryker was not sexually available, he was not sexually versatile, and he was not even necessarily gay. He appeared to be what many previous generations of gay men had called “trade.” The sexual appeal of straight men, and all the stereotypes of masculinity, has a long history among gay men. “Trade” as a slang term was used to describe the young heterosexual men who engaged in prostitution and who typically refused to engage in any kind of homosexual activity that might deviate from “masculine” roles in sex—thus allowing themselves only to be serviced in oral sex and to penetrate others in anal sex. In earlier decades young men used these social and psychological evasions to neutralize the potential significance of their sexual behavior—thus giving rise to the cynical proverb frequently

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used by homosexual men in the 1940s and 1950s: “Today’s trade is tomorrow’s competition.” In the mid-1980s, the appeal of the straight top was thus an obvious response to AIDS. Since the egalitarian ethos of the 1970s prescribed an exchange between top and bottom roles, the risk of infection was significantly greater for the person taking the passive role in anal sex. Hence, an exclusive top would be much less likely to be infected than someone who had engaged in both roles. Stryker was fortunate to have two veterans of the earliest days of gay commercial porn, John Travis and Matt Sterling, as his mentors. In fact, they were among the most influential directors of gay pornographic films in the early 1980s. A successful director for Falcon Studios in its early years, Sterling is one of gay adult movies’ legendary directors. One of the earliest directors to use video and sound, his films were also among the first to use bodybuilders and sexually ambivalent or straight performers. Sterling saw Stryker as “a young Marlon Brando,” or “a young Elvis Presley.” He believed that Stryker closely resembled them in spirit as well, “his passion for motorcycles . . . was the real thing, not a packaged thing. I just wanted to bring out as much as I could of the real, and it worked—he became a hero of sorts in the gay community” (Sterling, 1988). Together Travis and Sterling developed a very specific persona, one that brought together an almost “classic” gay man’s fantasy of a “real man,” presumably heterosexual, but one that also engaged in homosexual sex, with a fantasy that distanced itself from the versatile sexuality that so dramatically marked the 1970s, that era of gay promiscuity in which the fluency between top and bottom had apparently contributed to the AIDS epidemic. Their image of “Jeff Stryker” portrayed him as strong and impassive, guarded and inaccessible: he did not kiss, he did not suck cock—he only fucked. In a deep growl, he produced a torrent of dirty talk as he got sucked or as he fucked. The Stryker persona was central to their strategy, and he was carefully cast only in roles that emphasized his impassivity, his masculinity, and that excluded the sexual reciprocity and the sexual excess that characterized gay sex in the 1970s. This sort of persona, both more ambiguous and more deliberate than the “straightness” of early gay porn stars (who were straight) had ever been, was something totally new. Stryker became not just a star—in porn everyone is a “star”—but really a superstar because he set out to embody certain gay male values and to project himself as “bigger than life” with an intensity that went

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beyond the standard performer. In porn films in particular, porn stars make themselves into objects of desire; they set up a complicated circuit of desire in which they are present (on the screen) and absent (in the fan’s presence); fans both desire and strive to identify with them. But the Stryker persona also limited him to certain genres or settings within gay porn, and it is no accident that a number of his gay films have jailhouse or military settings—Powertool (1986), Powertool 2: Breaking Out (1991), Jeff Stryker Does Hard Time (2001), Stryker Force (1987)—or rough blue collar roles. His persona as a sexual performer is most credible in those settings. It is only in the straight or bisexual films—when he performs with women—that his persona is softer. Stryker’s first three films solidly established the Stryker persona, and though he has attempted to modify it in later years, public perceptions have remained unchanged ever since. Three months after Stryker arrived in Los Angeles, Travis put him in a scene for a film he had already mostly completed, In Hot Pursuit. He appeared in a scene with Mike Henson, another newcomer. Directed by Travis and put out by Catalina, where he was the director of production, the film was originally supposed to be set at a costume party where each scene was built around the participants’ sexual fantasies of one another. However, budget cuts after four scenes had already been shot forced Travis to tie the scenes together by having Stryker play an artist sketching the men in different uniforms or costumes and entertaining sexual fantasies about them—adding the scene with Stryker and Henson as well. In the film, the Stryker mystique appears to be fully developed. Powertool was designed specifically as a vehicle for Stryker. It also happened to be Catalina’s first movie shot on video. Directed again by John Travis, it was set in a jail, a place where straight men will often opportunistically engage in sex with other men. As the film opens Stryker is sitting in a jail cell; he overhears two prisoners in another cell having sex and gets up to watch. Towards the end of this first scene, he takes out his eight and a half inch penis to masturbate as he looks on. One of the men, played by John Davenport, like Stryker, only plays top; he does not suck dick or get fucked. And in fact, Davenport was another one of Travis’s recent recruits who was primarily “straight.” In the second scene, Stryker has sex with another inmate, similarly playing the top role; in the next scene three prisoners have sex in a shower, then Stryker has sex with a corrections officer—again topping. In all four of these scenes, there are very rigid roles of top and bottom. The film presumes to show “straight” men having sex with gay men who suck cock and get fucked. There is no reciprocity. The sex

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portrayed in Powertool is exclusively the sort of sex that reputedly takes places in jails. It is very limited. The bottoms are rarely erect while getting fucked, and there is no reciprocity. Most of the sexual roles are exclusively top or bottom. Despite the fact that these films were made after the advent of AIDS, no condoms were used. TAKING IT LIKE A MAN For many men, homosexual sex represents a fundamental challenge to traditional ideals of masculinity—which for the most part are constituted within the matrix of heterosexuality (Butler, 1990). The common definition of gender implies who does what and with whom. The homosexual desire for the male body represents a sexual attraction to both the physical characteristics of the male body as well as the symbolic signs of masculinity—to the penis as the symbol of power and as the instrument of sexual penetration; to the anus as a site of submission and surrender. One sign of the preoccupations of gay pornographers with certain popular beliefs is the recurrence of certain film titles: Size Matters and A Matter of Size. Take It Like a Man is a common title of both gay and straight “strap-on” videos—referring to “getting fucked in the ass” as a masculine sexual act that must at least be endured (stoically “like a man”) and ultimately to the tabooed pleasure of a man enjoying it. It underscores the literal and symbolic centrality of anal sex among gay men and in gay pornography. But the title has also surfaced in certain fetish genres of heterosexually-oriented porn: female-to-male strap-on videos (in a role reversal the female performer wears a dildo) as well as in she-male (transsexual) videos during which transsexual performers top (straight-identified) male performers. The famous feminist “sex education” video Bend over Boyfriend (directed by Shar Rednour, Fatale Productions, 1998) is an early example. Anal sex violates deep long-lived taboos—about the anus, about gender roles, and about masculinity. Sexual excitement is often the result of transgression, of violating a taboo, and surrendering to it. If the Marines represent the apex of masculinity in popular culture, it is especially ironic that they also support the popular belief among gay men and military personnel that when Marines engage in homosexual sex they prefer to take the bottom role in anal sex. “Getting fucked,” writes Brian Pronger, “is the deepest violation of masculinity in our culture. Enjoying getting fucked is the acceptance of that violation, it is the ecstatic sexual experience in which the violation

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of masculinity becomes incarnate . . . masculinity is not destroyed; it is violated and revered, brought to the paradoxical edge of its own dissolution” (Pronger 1990, 139–140). Some Marines do not view getting fucked as the less manly position in anal intercourse, but as a masculine test of endurance. “It takes a lot more masculinity,” a Marine Captain told Steven Zeeland, “to be a bottom than to be a top” (Zeeland 1996, 3–10). Despite the taboos associated with anal penetration, many men have discovered that the pleasure of being fucked is incredibly intense. Gary Dowsett concluded in his book on homosexual sex in the era of AIDS that “men’s desiring anuses know something remarkable about pleasure. Any man who has taken another man’s cock up his arse knows only too well that sex will never be the same again” (Dowsett 1996, 213). But porn is about fantasy—and in porn men will spark some excitement when top becomes bottom, or bottom tops top. When sexual partners reciprocate, with both taking turns fucking one another, equality is implied. Historically, versatility in fucking is a relatively new phenomenon. In most periods and in most cultures, the top is active, masculine, and powerful, and the bottom is passive, feminine, and weak. The masculine bottom is an American invention. While some men have found it difficult to shed the belief that bottoming is demeaning—many others have found the experience of getting fucked has produced an extremely intense physical pleasure. “Human sexuality is constituted as a kind of psychic shattering,” writes Leo Bersani, “as a threat to the stability and integrity of the self—a threat which perhaps only the masochistic nature of sexual pleasure allows us to survive” (Bersani 1986, 60). Taking the bottom role—“taking it like a man”—has given unique access to that intense self-shattering pleasure. REFERENCES Bersani, L. The Freudian Body: Psychoanalysis and Art (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986). Butler, J. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990). Dowsett, G. W. Practicing Desire: Homosexual Sex in the Era of AIDS (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996). Edmonson, R. Clone: The Life and Legacy of Al Parker, Gay Superstar (Los Angeles: Alyson, 2000).

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Escoffier, J. Bigger Than Life: The History of Gay Porn Cinema from Beefcake to Hardcore (Philadelphia: Running Press, 2009). Escoffier, J. Ed. Sexual Revolution (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2003). Gage, J. “Interview with a Legend,” by Jerry Douglas, Manshots, Part I, June 1992; Part II, August 1992. Hardesty, R. “Gay Film Heritage: Nova Studio,” Part I: The Pre-Sound Years, Manshots, July 1997; Manshots, Part II: The Final Years, August 1997. Hollinghurst, A. “Robert Mapplethorpe,” in Robert Mapplethorpe, 1970–1983 (London: Institute of Contemporary Art, 1983). Masters, S. “Behind the Camera,” Interview by Jerry Douglas, Manshots, November 1997. Morris, G. “Keep on Truckin’: An Interview with Joe Gage,” Bright Lights Film Journal. www.brightlightsfilm/42/gage.htm (accessed July 19, 2008). Pronger, B. The Arena of Masculinity: Sports, Homosexuality and the Meaning of Sex (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990). Richards, R. W. “Al Parker: Still Here!” Manshots, November 1988. Richards, R. W. “Jeff Stryker: The Man and the Mystique.” Manshots, June 1989. Rodriguez, F. “Joe Gage.” Butt: A Quarterly Magazine, Spring 2007. Spencer, W. “Jeff Stryker.” Manshots, September 1998. Stallion Editors, “Stallion 50 Best: All-Time Best Male Films and Videos 1970– 1985.” Stallion, Special Issue #4, 1985. Sterling, M. “Behind the Camera,” Interview by Jerry Douglas. Manshots, September 1988. Unzipped, “The Unzipped 100 Greatest Gay Porn Films.” Unzipped Magazine, Special Collector’s Edition, Winter/Spring 2006. White, E. States of Desire: Travels in Gay America (New York: Penguin Books, 1980). White, E. “Robert Mapplethorpe.” Arts and Letters (San Francisco: Cleis Press, 2004). Zeeland, S. The Masculine Marine: Homoeroticism in the U.S. Marine Corps (New York: Harrington Park Press, 1996).

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Chapter 13

Queer Vampires in Literature and Film Rita Antoni

The vampire is an exceptional and ambiguous figure because the emotions it evokes—which, at least initially, may include fear and disgust—are inextricably linked with attraction and desire, which, as we proceed forward in the history of vampire texts, become more and more dominant. In fact, although the vampire figure enables a rich set of possible metaphorical meanings and may stand for psychological, economic, historical, colonial, racial, class-based, and so on, anxieties, it has always primarily stood for unleashed sexuality, ever since it first appeared in literature in the eighteenth century. As Nina Auerbach points out, the vampire should not be read either as a mere sensational, or as an ahistorical, creature. On the contrary, “each [vampire] feeds on his age distinctively because he embodies that age.”1 The idea of vampirism, in the first place, represents the fear—and desire—of sexuality breaking loose of the confinement of the regulations and limitations constructed by society at the actual place and time. When hearing the word vampire, an average consumer of popular culture might think of a hideously attractive, fanged male figure in black cape, about to suck blood from the white neck of a fainting young lady held in his arms. Power relations are unambiguously gendered in this iconic representation, but vampire fiction, in fact, questions and subverts mainstream notions of gender and sexuality.

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Sue Ellen Case points out several similarities between the figure of the vampire and the queer, among them the “pain of exclusion” and “the identification with the insult, the taking on the transgressive, and the consequent flight into invisibility.”2 Just like the vampire who is unable to fit into the world of human beings, “the queer has been historically constituted as unnatural.” 3 Case claims that homophobic labels can be subverted and reinterpreted for empowering purposes through the vampire metaphor: “employing the subversive power of the unnatural . . . the queer . . . revels in the discourse of the loathsome, the outcast, the idiomatically proscribed position of same-sex desire. . . . The queer is the taboo-breaker, the monstrous, the uncanny,”4 as is the vampire. Richard Dyer also shows several common points of vampirism and homosexuality. Both are (or, rather, since neither is a deliberate choice, both have to be) hidden, which often involving a kind of double life, but they are gradually discovered, sometimes on the basis of “tell-tale signs” attributed to them.5 The vampire might also have been viewed as a symbol of queer desire because of its extraordinary power of seduction, which in turn empowered queer readers. Even in non-vampiric texts, queers have been described using words also used to describe vampires: “the languid, worn, sad, refined paleness of the vampire imagery” which “derives in part from the idea of decadence” often suggests “the idea that lesbians and gay men are not ‘real’ women and ‘real’ men” because they don’t have “the blood . . . of normal human beings.” Furthermore, vampirism, just like homosexuality, “is beyond the individual’s will and control” Dyer continues, “there is . . . an active and a passive form to this lack of control, but from this it does not follow that to be active is correlated with being male or being passive with female.” Vampiric representations, which treat gender and sexual orientation as something flexible, are also always inextricably linked with shifting power relations as well. EARLY VAMPIRES, HOMOSOCIALITY, AND THE PARANOID GOTHIC In literary history, the Gothic novel preceded horror. Gothic is imbued with, if not centered on, the theme of power relations. Even the very first English Gothic novel, Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1764) shows the volatile and interchangeable character of the dominant and subordinate positions. Manfred, the usurper of the castle in the title, oppresses others in order to carry on his grandfather’s

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sins and to escape its consequences. However as Richard DavenportHines points out, Manfred’s power and dominance is no more than illusory: “Manfred is magnificent and autocratic so long as he is not opposed, but blundering and blockheaded when everyone does not immediately submit. He is as helpless as a person without hands: his existence depends upon the devotion, assent and support of his castle servants . . . ”6 A few decades later, in 1807 Hegel will point out the mutual interdependence of lord and bondsman and renders the seemingly subordinate servant even superior to the master. Like many of the early Gothic writers, Horace Walpole was an eccentric figure. He built himself a “Gothic” castle called Strawberry Hill, where he retired and found consolation in objects and imagination of the past—objects cannot disappoint, and the past cannot deceive you, as he argued.7 As Davenport-Hines suggests, Walpole’s misanthropy was partly due to the failure of his relationship with a young nobleman called Lord Lincoln.8 However, his sexual orientation is debated just like Matthew Lewis’s, the author of another wellknown Gothic novel, The Monk. According to George E. Haggerty, The Monk is “one of the great works in the gay and lesbian literary tradition”9 because of the affection the title character develops for the young novice who passes at first as a man. In 1816, Matthew “Monk” Lewis visited his friend’s, Byron’s, house at Lake Geneva and wrote five ghost stories there that Percy Shelley recorded. Later the company, consisting of Lord Byron, Percy and Mary Shelley, Mary’s sister Claire Clairmont, and Byron’s private physician Dr. John Polidori who decided to write their own ghost stories. In such a way, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was born. A tale of paranoid Gothic, Frankenstein focuses on an obsessive, undecidedly murderous and/or amorous relationship between two men who end up “chasing one another across a landscape.”10 Polidori felt a similar love imbued with hatred for Byron, his employer, and he ended up writing a story, “The Vampyre,” that vampirized the poet and that became the first prosaic vampire text in English (1819). Previous vampire texts had been poems, the first “Der Vampir” by Heinrich August Ossenfelder (1748), followed by Goethe’s quite popular “The Bride of Corinth” (1799). English poems in which vampires play a substantial role include John Stagg’s “The Vampyre” (1810), and Byron even briefly includes a vampire in “The Giaour” (1813). Although not a vampire in the strict sense, Coleridge’s “Christabel” (1799) is often mentioned in this context because, as Nina Auerbach explains, early vampires do not feed primarily on blood but

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on “their intimate intercourse with mortals, to whom they were dangerously close,”11 as happens in Polidori’s text as well. Women are excluded for the sake of homosociality can be observed in Polidori’s story and in other early vampire prose in general. Women exist only to feed upon; the male vampire chooses another male as companion. As Auerbach observes: “Ruthven, Varney and the rest are blasphemous by definition, but their emotional life is as compartmentalized as that of any Victorian patriarch: women fill their biological needs, but men kindle emotional complexity.”12 The mysterious villain, the irresistible Lord Ruthven preys upon women of London aristocracy, but chooses the weak Aubrey as his travelling companion. Discovering Ruthven’s filthy nature, by which he corrupts those around him, Aubrey breaks up with him, but first Aubrey baffles Ruthven’s plan to entice and deplete another young lady. Ruthven takes his revenge: he follows Aubrey to Greece, and kills Aubrey’s lover, the young woman Ianthe. He manages to confuse Aubrey’s mind and makes him promise never to reveal anything strange he might have seen while he was with Ruthven, and a short time later, Ruthven is shot dead. Due to his precautions, however, he is revived by the moon and appears in London aristocracy again. Aubrey falls ill and goes mad, and “remembering” his oath, he cannot reveal anything he knows to his sister, the vampire’s next victim. Although theoretically dependent on his subordinates, Ruthven manages to maintain his dominant position throughout the story. He is a more potent master than Manfred was. Aubrey is weak, confused, and bound to Ruthven. Theoretically dependent on others, Ruthven spellbound and dominated another man, overwhelming him. The vampire’s companion is also destroyed through the depletion of his beloved women, but more gradually and elaborately than the quick deaths of the women who exist in the story only “to be married or depleted or rescued.”13 By destroying his companion’s female lover, the vampire not only achieves revenge, but more important, strengthens his same-sex companion’s bond to him. With his tale, Polidori established the tradition of the Byronic vampire, and throughout the nineteenth century, figures modelled after his main character appeared in “penny dreadfuls,” extremely long novels sold for a penny chapter by chapter, as well as in stage adaptations. Although this era was dominated by the image of the male vampire, Keats published a narrative poem called “Lamia” (1820), the title character of which is often discussed as a vampiric figure whose “vampiric attribute is not interpenetration, but transformation.” 14 Like her

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predecessor, Christabel, she is not a bloodsucking vampire although she is a monstrous presence, a deceiving, illusionary character based in the concept of the femme fatale. Contrasted against her is the man who represents reason, the tool that slices through deception and illusion. It is no wonder then that the man oppresses the woman. A similar body vs. spirit/mind dialectic can be perceived in Theophile Gautier’s “Clarimonde” (or, alternatively, “La Morte Amoureuse”), in which an enticing, female vampire is the lover of a priest and is destroyed by his male companion. Clarimonde represents secular temptation which takes Romouald’s mind off his ecclesiastic ambitions and duties, making the gendered binary of spirituality and corporeality unambiguous, and leads the young novice to an illusionary nocturnal world, which, at the end, becomes indistinguishable from reality. The woman begins to deplete Romouald gradually, but it is not clear whether she intends to kill him. Still, Romauald’s friend Serapion takes notice of Romouald’s waning and destroys the monstrous woman. Thus, from the lush, hedonistic world of the senses, Serapion directs Romauald back to the world of religious meekness and self-denial— and the homosociality of a world from which women are excluded. THE FIRST OPENLY GAY AND LESBIAN VAMPIRES AND THE DECADENT TRADITION Sheridan LeFanu’s “Carmilla” (1872) not only alludes to Coleridge’s “Christabel” but is the story of “one of the few self-accepting homosexuals in Victorian or any literature.”15 This text is mostly interpreted as a narrative of sexual enticement, but Nina Auerbach’s claim that the historical context should not be neglected is especially valid here. As Davenport-Hines points out, it is a political parable as well, describing the situation of the defeated Anglo-Irish gentry at the time of the publication.16 The prosaic text deals with the same theme as Coleridge’s “Christabel:” a mysterious lady invades the home and, befriending the daughter, deceives even the patriarch, the head of the household, who is “strangely blind to the women’s plot.”17 Instead of gendered division of prey and companion here is one of classist base: Carmilla feeds on peasant women, but plans to drain Laura, with whom she establishes an emotional and erotic bond, in a more elaborate manner. The reaction Laura gives to Carmilla’s ambiguously enticing words (“I live in your warm life, and you shall die––die, sweetly die––into mine.”18), in which affection is inextricably linked with murderous intention, is also ambiguous, constantly shifting between attraction

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and repulsion: “I used to wish to extricate myself; but my energies seemed to fail me. . . . I experienced a strange tumultuous excitement that was pleasurable, ever and anon, mingled with a vague sense of fear and disgust. . . . I was conscious of a love growing into adoration, and also of abhorrence.”19 The ambiguity can be understood as the awareness of a clash between desires and social expectations. As Maria Janion points out, Carmilla’s character is doubly incompatible with the sexual behaviour attributed to women. First, she breaks the taboo of sexual activity, which is, within Victorian ideology, restricted to men only. Second, she subverts the norm of heterosexuality.20 Janion talks about mutual childhood dreams, but there is a clearly perceptible, dominance-subordination pattern. Carmilla has prepared a thorough plan to entice and deplete the motherless, and thus vulnerable Laura. Carmilla haunts Laura as a child, and when Laura is an adolescent girl, she merely claims to have had the same dreams only in order to confuse her mind, just as Ruthven confused Aubrey. The vampire is clearly the antagonist of the mother, who tries to warn her child even from beyond the grave, but without success. According to Auerbach, Carmilla is “weaving herself so tightly into Laura’s perceptions that without a cumbersome parade of male authorities to stop her narrative, her story would never end.”21 Twelve years later after the first “self-accepting” Lesbian vampire, a similar gay vampire appeared in literature. As Richard Dyer notes, this was one of the first gay texts in the general sense, as well.22 Its author, the German Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, was one of the first gay rights activists. His virtually unknown and rarely anthologized tale, “Manor” (1884), is a unique piece because he describes same-sex love as something natural, without any doubt or internal conflict in the gay characters involved, and he portrays the willing victim’s response without the slightest hint of ambiguous tension. Manor is, in fact, one of the most welcome vampires in literature. As sometimes in early Gothic, the setting of “Manor” is an exotic one, the Faroah Islands. A sailman’s son, Har, falls into the billows and is saved by a somewhat older, but still adolescent, boy with whom he develops a deep attachment. Accepting one’s sexual orientation and coming out is not an issue here. Their idyll is described as untainted happiness that is undisturbed for a while: The sailor’s name was Manor. He was an orphan four years older than Har. Manor grew fond of him. He longed to see him again. Now and then he would row across to Stroemoe, or, on summer

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evenings after work, he would swim across in the warm water. Har would wait for him at the shore, climb over the reef and wave his kerchief when he would see Manor’s skiff approaching from afar. They would spend an hour or two together on the boat singing sailors’ songs, then row out into the calm sea. Or, they would undress, dive into the waves and swim to the nearest sandy beach to watch the seals. Sometimes they would go into the dark, green forest of tall pine trees, whose rustling tops heralded Thor’s voice, they say. Other times they would find a rock beneath some beech tree, where they would chat and make plans. For instance, whenever a whaleboat sailed through the strait, they would plan to join together, and Manor would put his arm around Har ’s shoulders and call him "My Boy." And the boy was never more pleased than when Manor embraced him so. And if ever Manor arrived late, he would go to the shade of the lilac bush and knock on Har’s window pane. Har would wake up and steal out of the house to meet him. In fact, only in Manor’s presence was he happy.23 The idyll is suddenly interrupted when Manor dies of an accident at sea, and his dead body is washed onto the shore. Har is devastated, but soon he starts receiving nocturnal visits, which are described in a highly erotic language: Toward midnight he was falling into a slumber but was suddenly awakened by a noise. He looked up. It came from outside of his window. The branches of the lilac bush cracked, and its dry leaves began to rustle. The window was opened, and someone climbed in. Har was shaken out of his wits. He recognized the build. In spite of the darkness, he knew who it was. The form approached him slowly, then got into bed beside him. The boy trembled but did not dare to move. His cheek was stroked by a cold hand. Oh, so cold, so cold. Shivers raced down his back. His warm quivering lips were kissed by ones that were icy. The youth could feel the wet clothing of his beloved, and he could see his hair hanging over his forehead. Fear seized him, but it was mingled with joy. The form sighed as if to say, “A yearning drove me here to you. I have found no peace in my grave.”24 After his initial fear, Har receives the more and more demanding Manor’s visits with pleasure; however, his mother notices that Har is

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getting paler and paler. With the help of the local wise woman, she figures out what’s going on, exhume Manor’s corpse, which “almost looks better”25 than the day of the burial, and, despite Har’s oppositions, they drive a stake through his heart. The villagers are satisfied because they saved the boy, or so they think. The only problem is that Har does not want to be saved. His affection, unlike that of others seduced by a vampire, is not mingled with loathe. In this text, as Dyer argues, “vampirism represents the promise of death as a release from the confines of normal society and the very form of the consummation of gay love.”26 He misses his beloved, who, empowered by desire, frees himself from the stake, and with a wound on his chest, appears again. He is fixed with a stronger stake, but Har is inconsolable. “He didn’t torment me,” he insists. “I have nothing to live for.”27 Manor establishes a telepathic relationship with him and promises to come for him. The dying Har asks to be buried next to him, with the stake removed from Manor’s chest, and “they did as he requested.”28 Before this moment the inhabitants of the village were unable to see Har and Manor’s relationship in any way but victimization. They disregarded Har’s responsiveness and his pleasure in being seduced. However according to Dyer’s interpretation, “Har’s death in ‘Manor’ provides a happy ending to the story, becoming ‘un-dead’ is to become one’s true sexual nature.”29 In LeFanu’s “Carmilla,” the possibility of being dragged to the grave by the vampire is left open. In Ulrichs’ text, however, Har wants to go. It is his deliberate choice. The vampiric “attack” takes place only so that the two men’s affectionate bond may be fulfilled. Ulrich’s story can be read as a highly empowering text because it portrays same-sex love as something that can conquer everything, even death. However, for almost a hundred years, Ulrich’s “Manor” was the only vampire story that presented a positive portrayal of homosexuality. Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) is rarely classified as a vampire novel, although James B. Twitchell describes it as a “sophisticated adaptation of the folkloric demon.”30 According to this argument, vampirism here is used for satirizing realism: “For just as the vampire enervates his victims, so too does representational art, art that attempts literally ‘to hold a mirror up to nature,’ drain metaphorical energy or attention from the artistic experience. This kind of art is reckless for Wilde in that it attempts to link the eternal opposites of art and life.”31 Richard Dyer also argues that “Dorian Gray, the archetype of gay male existence, is a fundamentally vampiric creation.”32 With new aestheticism and soulless hedonism, the text creates a

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tradition, influencing writers like George Sylvester Viereck, H. P. Lovecraft, and Poppy Z. Brite. This novel can be regarded as a forerunner of psychic vampiric texts, and at the same time, might provide an inspiration to gay vampire works as well. The Picture of Dorian Gray itself might have been inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s tale of “aesthetic vampirism,”33 “The Oval Portrait,” in which the painting robs a woman of her vital power. The phenomenon is reversed in Wilde’s novel. The Picture of Dorian Gray takes place in a man-centered setting. Women are secondary characters as they are in Poe’s tale, in the wife is an object, ignored as a person, and sacrificed on the altar of Art by her inattentive husband. Thus, the woman becomes an antithesis, an enemy, to Art, the proponent of which, as the story suggests, can only be a man. In fact, women are creatures who are moved mostly by their emotions, are rendered unsuitable as intellectual companions, and are thus excluded from the realm of hedonism and “superior” morality with which the male characters are experimenting. Wilde’s novel presents same-sex desire in its unrequited form. Dorian Gray, a beautiful young man, merely tolerates the painter’s (Basil’s) obsessive adoration and remains self-absorbed and uninterested. However, under the spell of Lord Henry’s venomous “wisdom,” Dorian realizes the ultimate value of youth and beauty, as well as the transience of these qualities. Lord Henry presents time as a vampirelike phenomenon, which threatens Dorian at every second: “Every month as it wanes brings you nearer to something dreadful. Time is jealous of you, and wars against your lilies and roses.” 34 Dorian becomes the willing victim of Lord Henry’s corruptive sarcasm and desperately declares that he would sell his soul if the picture would grow old instead of him and if he would remain young forever. After the “pact with the Devil” scene (although the Devil is not explicitly present), Dorian soon realizes that his wish had come true. He manages to defy nature, thus transgresses the limits of human existence by basically “robbing” the picture of its immaculate immutability. All his sins and corruption are marked on the portrait, leaving his body, his delicate features, untouched. Carolyn Brown reads this as a “displacement, allowing the body to exist as its ideal self-image, and undoing the practices of science and of realism.”35 Instead of art as a depredator here, art is being depredated in The Picture of Dorian Gray, not only in the mutating form of the portrait, but in the story of Dorian’s first victim, a young actress. In his search for new stimuli, Dorian imagines falling in love with her, but he

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immediately becomes disappointed by her when, in the exaltation of the new sentiment, she seems to lose her talent. It seeps away, as if a vampire were draining it from her. The idea of love as a vampire is emphasized by Dorian’s subsequent cruelty to her, which leads to the woman’s suicide. She not only loses her acting talent, but her life as well. Dorian gets over the incident quickly and easily and throws himself into the “new hedonism” that Lord Henry had spoken about. He carries out a kind of mental experiment, its focusing it on sensuality as well as suppresses feelings like remorse. Taking the anti-didactic and amoral principle of l’art pour l’art as a norm, Dorian makes everything the object of mere aesthetical inquiry, excluding the possibility that something might affect him. He indulges himself in sensual enjoyments and manages to drown all his remorse in them. For eighteen years, Dorian commits all kinds of sins, corrupts young women and men as Polidori’s Ruthven did, even murders Basil who tries to awaken Dorian’s remorse and persuade him to exert penitence. Yet, Wilde suggests that beauty rises above everything and masks sins: “Certainly no one looking at Dorian Gray that night could have believed that he had passed through a tragedy as horrible as any tragedy of our age. Those finely-shaped fingers could never have clutched a knife for sin, nor those smiling lips have cried out on God and goodness.”36 His aristocratic origin also protects him. The vampire also uses his/her beauty and aristocratism to divert suspicion. However, in vampire texts, their aim is not to divert suspicion, but to endow everything which we find revolting or disgusting in the human world with an aesthetic veneer. The figure of the vampire is a disturbing reminder of the deceptive power of beauty. Dorian is finally exposed by his first victim’s brother and a prostitute, but is lucky because the brother dies in an accident. Dorian is overwhelmed by the catharsis of his narrow escape, and he decides, for the first time in his life, to do something good by not doing anything bad. Specifically, he decides not to corrupt a young girl he recently met, but from the features of the portrait, he realizes that “Through vanity he had spared her. In hypocrisy he had worn the mask of goodness. For curiosity’s sake he had tried the denial of the self.”37 However, when Dorian destroys the portrait on which he “fed” his youthful appearance all those years, he suddenly dies. His corpse reveals his true self, a corrupt old man. In 1894 another openly gay man, Eric, Count Stenbock published “The True Story of a Vampire.” The victimization in this tale is more

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straightforward. The homoerotic affection lacks the idyll of “Manor.” The text can even be seen as a gender-inverted rewriting of LeFanu’s “Carmilla.” The setting is the same, Styria, although Stenbock describes it as much less romantic than in LeFanu does. The narrator, the victim’s sister is called “Carmela,” echoing the name of LeFanu’s character. The mother is missing in this family as well, having died of childbirth, and the father is a loving but strange man involved in occult studies. The father, who is very easy to deceive, invites a stranger, Count Vardalek, into his house. Like Carmilla, Vardalek needs a place to spend the night because he has missed his train. At dinner that evening, the father asks Vardalek to stay longer than that evening because he is in desperate need of a companion to help him in his studies of the occult. Oddly, the father doesn’t grow at all suspicious when Count Vardalek develops an affectionate relationship with his beloved son, Gabriel, involving tender kisses on the mouth. During the period in which the Count is present in the father’s home, Gabriel declines in health, but when Vardalek is temporarily away from the home, Gabriel seems to “regain his old vitality and spirits.” 38 One night, the sister Carmela watches Gabriel with the Count, and she overhears Vardalek telling the mesmerized Gabriel, who is wearing his nightgown: “My darling, I fain would spare thee, but thy life is my life, and I must live, I who would rather die. Will God not have any mercy on me? Oh! Oh! life, oh, the torture of life!” Here he struck one agonized and strange chord, then continued playing softly, “O Gabriel, my beloved! My life, yes life—oh, why life? I am sure this is but a little that I demand of thee. Surely thy superabundance of life can spare a little to one who is already dead. No, stay,” he said now almost harshly, “what must be, must be!’39 The vampire’s torment over his victim is similar to Clarimonde’s tearful lamentations, but Vardalek’s remarks to Gabriel also bear the traits of Carmilla’s lethally enticing words. According to Dyer, Stenbock’s text expresses “a sorrowful sympathy for the ‘curse’ of being a vampire/ queer.”40 Gabriel, nursed tenderly by Vardalek, as Aubrey was nursed by Ruthven only to be destroyed later in a more horrific way, dies in a pathetic and affectionate scene: “Gabriel stretched out his arms spasmodically, and put them round Vardalek’s neck. This was the only movement he had made, for some time. Vardalek bent down and

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kissed him on the lips.”41 After the boy’s death, Vardalek disappears from the house just as openly gay vampires disappear from literary history for a while, a reaction to Oscar Wilde’s trial and subsequent incarceration. DRACULA IN NOVEL AND FILM Nineteenth-century vampire fiction culminated in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which, since its publication of 1897, has seen many, many different readings and interpretations. As Salli Kline relates, initially it was seen as a mere sensational piece without much literary merit, then beginning in the 1950s, it was examined psychoanalytically, and beginning in the 1990s, it was investigated through a social-culturalhistorical perspective.42 According to Kline’s argument, Dracula is a conscious moral lesson, an “ultra-conservative reaction to modernism,”43 an allegory that warns against the worrisome phenomena of Fin-de-Sie´cle. On the other hand, Maria Janion suggests that repressed desires are encoded in the novel.44 Many interpretations focus on the novel’s homoerotic suggestions. The first chapters of Dracula, which tell about Jonathan Harker’s visit to Dracula’s castle in Transylvania, offer many homosexual references. According to Christopher Craft, “the novel’s opening anxiety, its first articulation of the vampiric threat, derives from Dracula’s hovering interest in Jonathan Harker; the sexual threat that this novel first evokes, manipulates, sustains, but never finally represents is that Dracula will seduce, penetrate, drain another male.”45 Craft continues, “Dracula’s desire to fuse with a male, most explicitly evoked when Harker cuts himself shaving, subtly and dangerously suffuses this text. Always postponed and never directly enacted, this desire finds evasive fulfilment in an important series of heterosexual displacements.”46 Craft also calls attention to the victimized Lucy and the almost-vampirized Mina who merely “mediate and displace a more direct communion among males,”47 as Ruthven had victimized and bound Aubrey to himself by destroying Aubrey’s beloved Ianthe. Lucy also becomes a mediator when Dracula attacks her after she was given the male characters’ blood. After the scene with the three women vampires, when Dracula declares he wants Jonathan, the novel does not represent male homosexual desire directly, only diffuses and displaces it.48 Davenport-Hines attributes the relative temperance of the novel at this point to the fact that Oscar Wilde’s trial took place in 1895, two years before the novel’s publication, and this

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“made an instantaneously repressive impact on literature.”49 This is also shown in the moderate way Dracula is murdered in comparison to the way Lucy is killed. According to Davenport-Hines, “as two men are involved, and Wilde had recently been imprisoned, Stoker cannot repeat Godalming’s poundingly penetrative destruction of Lucy.”50 In spite of its moderation of homoerotic themes, Dracula is also imbued with the theme of dominance and subordination, and not only in the way the vampire fights with the group of vampire hunters for power over women. We can find a paranoid Gothic element in Harker’s and the Count’s relationship. Dracula is dependent on him because he desperately needs Hacker’s information about London as well as someone to run his business errands, but the Count has placed Harker in an inferior, feminized position. In fact, Harker’s position parallels the position of most heroines in early gothic novels. They are imprisoned in a castle and are desperately trying to break free of the villain. However, unlike the courageous heroine, but just like Aubrey, the imprisoned Jonathan gradually looses his mind, and this weakness prevents him from warning others of the vampire’s approach. The Fin-de-Sie´ cle and the first decades of the twentieth century focused on monstrous femme fatale figures in visual arts as well as in literature. Those who threatened males reveal the anxieties that existed in a primarily heterosexual context. George Sylvester Viereck’s The House of the Vampire (1907) presents a psychological vampirism in a context that is gay. Reginald Clarke is a kind of mental leech, who robs artistic talent and genial ideas from strangers as well as from his companions. After depleting them, they are useless to Clarke, and thus he abandons them. One of his victims is Ernest. During his Ernst’s nocturnal visits to Clarke’s house, Clarke absorbs Ernest’s ideas about a play he is writing and writes them down as if they were their own. Under attack in such a way, Ernest . . . felt the presence of the hand of Reginald Clarke––unmistakably groping in his brain as if searching for something that had still escaped him. He tried to move, to cry out, but his limbs were paralysed. When, by a superhuman effort, he at last succeeded in shaking off the numbness that held him enchained, he awoke just in time to see a figure, that of a man, disappearing in the wall that separated Reginald’s apartments from his room . . . 51 Ernest meets Reginald’s former wife, the down-and-out painter, Ethel, who spots Reginald’s vampiric nature and decides to save

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Ernest. However, she fails. Despite her anxieties, Ernest stays one more night in the vampire’s house to retrieve the manuscript of his new novel, and when he is confronted by Reginald, Reginald absorbs everything from his brain: his childhood memories, his recent past, everything. The next morning Ernest leaves Clarke’s house with an emptied mind, a brainwashed zombie-like creature. Reginald has an excuse for his deeds. He argues that the act of creating is the act of absorbing other, minor people’s ideas. Ernest does not share Reginald’s belief, and yet he cannot detach himself from ¨ bermensch and tries to Reginald who imagines himself as a kind of U mask his cruelty with a veneer of divinity: “I am a light-bearer, I tread the high hills of mankind. . . . I point the way to the future.” Instead of emphasizing Ernest’s attraction to and desire for Reginald, Viereck focuses on Ernest’s weakness and his inability to resist Reginald. In the process, Viereck describes a weird relationship in which the loss of talent is not a casual consequence, but the result of intentional depredation. The theme of the vampire robbing memories is portrayed again in Fritz Leiber’s “The Girl with the Hungry Eyes” (1949) and in C. M. Kornbluth’s “The Mindworm” (1950). Chet Williamson recycles the idea of a vampire robbing acting talent in “ . . . To Feel Another’s Woe.” Hints of homoeroticism can also be found depicted in the same hierarchic, depredatory way in the earliest vampire films. The title character in Nosferatu (1922) is in no way attractive. The ugly, rat-like creature was played by Max Schreck who represented the film’s director who was haunted by his struggles with his own homosexuality. The relationship between Renfield and Nosferatu, as well as the one between Jonathan and Nosferatu, has queer undertones52 that underscore the director’s inner conflicts. Because of the Production Code in Hollywood, the representation of queer desire was very limited; however, directors could still find ways around the restrictions to express it. Dracula in Tod Browning’s film (1931), who was played by the Hungarian Be´la Lugosi, dominates another male in a “sadomasochistic relationship. Renfield’s perpetually apologizing, groveling posture is contrasted throughout the film with Dracula’s rigid uprightness as Dracula commands, degrades, and ultimately enslaves Renfield, forcing him into all manner of depravities.”53 Dracula’s threatening polymorphous sexuality is also emphasized in the film, since he “soon tires of the fun” in his castle, which is designed to resemble an “s/m dungeon” and “wants to move on to women and children.”54 He is defeated, but his craving lives on

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in his daughter, who appears in the sequel and begins the forthcoming popularity of the lesbian vampire in film. LESBIAN VAMPIRES IN FILM In Lambert Hillyer’s Dracula’s Daughter (1936), which presented lesbian desire in a suggestive way, Gloria Holden played the title role, presenting irresistible and detestable craving. Countess Zaleska yearns to be human (i.e., to be normal, to be accepted by mainstream society), but cannot suppress her inborn urge to drink blood. The film reaches its climax when the Countess’ servant, Sa´ndor entices a young girl to the apartment to be hired as an artist’s model. The girl undresses, and the Countess attacks her. After struggling with the Countess, the girl finally manages to escape, but she dies of shock later. According to Bonnie Zimmerman, the class dynamic is very important here: “When the seducer is another woman, she must derive her power from her class position rather than her sex.”55 So the seducer’s superior class denies the women an authentic positive response for lesbian initiation. The victim must be influenced by a factor other than desire. Thus, vampirism may stand for homosexual urge, one that is a detestable otherness, that results in self-loathing but that cannot be suppressed. What is more, it is dangerous and destructive. Countess Zaleska is a tragic character. She cannot change her otherness, which is connected to deviance as well. She is in search of psychiatric help for her condition, but fails. The monstrous plan that she makes up after she has been reconciled to her nature is baffled, but this does not change the attitude that the film projects, that lesbianism/queerness is a sad and threatening kind of otherness. The film portrays the tendency of previous works, especially “Carmilla” and The House of the Vampire, of identifying queer desire: “modern audiences will respond to Holden’s striking, mask-like face and haunting, luminous eyes as the intoxicating essence of transgressive lesbian power.”56 The 1960s focused on the lesbian theme centering mostly on adaptations of LeFanu’s “Carmilla.” With restrictions on films loosening up considerably, lesbian desire could be much more explicit. However, despite the potential for an ideological freedom, films did not break out of patriarchal frames, and they therefore conveyed the same message as the original texts. In 1970, the first installment of the Karnstein Trilogy was produced, The Vampire Lovers. The plot follows LeFanu’s story, with some significant

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changes. One of these crucial modifications is Carmilla’s subordination of the governess through the pleasure she offers by lesbian eroticism. Lesbianism is reduced to domination by an aggressive femme fatale who does not refrain from killing her servant when she does not need her anymore. The one Carmilla really wants is, of course, the daughter, Emma. The idea that lesbianism “spreads” through more or less violent seduction is reinforced by the fact that, during Carmilla’s caresses, Emma lies in a mesmerised state. The small marks left by Carmilla’s teeth are discovered, and finally the girl is saved, and thus retrieved to “normality,” by a heroic young man. The blindness of the father and the strong female plot is further balanced by a mysterious “Man in Black,” who observes the events from the background and laughs in a satisfied manner from time to time, suggesting that the female antagonists are dominated by a male character. In the next two installments of the trilogy, the lesbian element is pushed into the background. In Lust for a Vampire, the vampire Mircalla, disguised as a student at a girls school, takes for her victims peasant girls and her fellow students. Again, lesbian seduction is depicted only as a means for victimization. To push things even more into a “straight” direction, the person with whom the female vampire falls in love is not a woman, but a man, one who is eventually saved from her by a heroic and much devoted woman. The powerful woman character could even be evaluated as positive from a feminist perspective, if her antagonist were not another woman, and the reason for rivalry was not a man. Instead of the focusing on different sexual orientations, the film concentrates on the good girl-bad girl dichotomy. The lesbian acts are only partial manifestations of Mircalla’s degenerate character. Thus, lesbianism is portrayed negatively attitude in the trilogy and is associated with evil, while lesbian characters are either “saved” (i.e., reverted to heterosexuality) or, more often, murdered. But that is only one side of the coin. In spite of the message they try to convey, one must not neglect the pleasure potential of these movies, enjoyed since the 1970s by women of different sexual orientations. It is true that the lesbian vampire is associated with evil and is defeated at the end, but her attractiveness and spectacularity, as well as her power, cannot be denied. She is not easy to destroy, and even if she is defeated, she might return. In her essay entitled “La Belle Dame Sans Merci?,” Tanya Krzywinska addresses the issue of women’s appreciation of texts with such an explicit patriarchal closure. According to her, readings that focus on the negative use of lesbian sexuality to establish heteronormativity propose “a simplistic polarity which disallows other

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readings of the text, and neglects the possibility that the spectator can celebrate the brief freedom of the vampire which . . . ironises the use of female same sex desire as a signifier of ‘unnaturalness.’ ”57 Krzywinska emphasizes the importance of the fact that spectators bring nonhomogenous fantasies and desires with themselves, thus “it is too easy to see the pleasure of these films as merely an explication and reinforcement of male, heterosexual fantasies.”58 On a Lacanian base, she argues that the conscious desire for unity brings about unconscious fantasies of disunity, and the vampire, who represents the “nightside” of the ego, presents, with its polymorphous sexuality, “the fragmented body of the ‘other’ which lies outside the gendered heterosexual identity of the fictive complete ego.”59 She also claims that the vampire figure is a means to deal with the threats to the unity of the ego, and, enlightening the liberating potentials of a movie that is often read as misogynist and homophobic, “a love affair with the vampire can be seen as a desire to make whole and complete a sexuality that is constructed as a signifier for fragmentation and which is disavowed by patriarchal and heterosexual discourses.”60 It is also an important factor that the trilogy of films articulate the presence of—i.e., break the silence about—same-sex desire. Although they present it with many stereotypes, including the idea of classbased victimisation, as well as narcissism, the films suggest the widespread belief that “lesbians and homosexuals are narcissists capable of making love only to images of themselves. Hammer ’s vampires seduce young women strikingly similar to themselves.”61 Krzywinska, however, attributes a further aspect to the appearance of the women involved. She appreciates “the dissonance and tension between patriarchal ‘feminine’ signifiers––cleavages, red lips, velvety skin, etc. and the subversion of patriarchal and heterosexist norms.”62 It is true that the women involved strictly meet mainstream beauty standards, but they do not constitute a mere spectacularity for male viewers. There is much more at stake in this case. Namely, the fulfilment of love between women is a major threat to men because it implies their exclusion and the idea that they are unnecessary. That factor is pushed even more to the front by the fact that the women have nothing to do with the stereotypical “mannish” lesbian but are plausible to men. The films even apply the means of exaggeration at several points: in Vampire Lovers there is a scene when Carmilla persuades Emma to dress in a more daring way. On the one hand, this functions as an encouragement to give up the demeanour of the “good girl,” but on the other, it is a means to entice and confuse the men who

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are present. The dress with cleavage and the embarrassed reaction of the men to it, presents the male hypocrisy of favoring the “good girl” overtly, but secretly desiring the “bad” one while ignoring women as persons in either case. In Daughters of Darkness (1971), Countess Ba´thory, played by the lesbian actor Delphine Seyrig, is a sensually attractive woman. Her gorgeous scarlet clothes, strong make-up, red lipstick, and blonde hair alludes to the diva Marlene Dietrich. She embodies a sexually threatening type of femininity. The film details her “ancestor’s” cruelties with pleasure. Similarly, Alejandra Pizarnik’s frequently anthologized story about Countess Ba´ thory (1986), included in a collection of lesbian vampire tales called Dark Angels, also revels in the cruel deeds of the legendary Countess. Erzse´bet Ba´thory, in fact, has become a cult figure in popular culture, more specifically in underground music, with many extreme lyrics addressing her, one even bearing her name. However, it is important to know that, according to recent research, the legend does not reflect historical facts. Ba´thory Erzse´bet did not commit the horrid deeds attributed to her; she was convicted at a show trial, and her legend grew out of misogynist fantasies that rippled from her time into to further historical ages.63 Seyrig’s Ba´ thory is heavily contrasted to the simpler, low-key, angelic beauty of the passive Valerie, who is threatened by a sadistic husband who was the lover of an aging transvestite. As in Lust for a Vampire, a binary of women, the angel-whore dichotomy, exists, but this time women are not competing for a man. Valerie’s aggressive husband is competing with the alluring, violently dominant Countess for the possession of Valerie. Driven by the desire for Valerie, the Countess does not refrain from making use of her secretary, Ilona, a subordinate character, who is desperate to leave her, but cannot. Her subordination becomes clear in the scene in which the Countess orders her to get closer to her, and she puts her head on the Countess’ lap. The Countess strokes Valerie’s head, as if she were a child, or a pet, but in the next scene, Ilona appears with wounds on her neck that she’s covered with a scarf. She becomes a helpless means of diverting the husband’s, Stephen’s, attention from Valerie, who is even more disgusted by him because of his sexual relations with Ilona. Ilona dies accidentally, and the easy and indifferent way Ba´thory disposes of the corpse disgusts and alienates Valerie. Nevertheless, Valerie becomes vampirized herself when Stephen furiously beats her, claiming his dominance over her. Together with the Countess, they kill Stephen with a bowl, and afterwards, they suck his blood from his wrists.

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According to Zimmermann’s interpretation, Daughters of Darkness explores the “male fear of heterosexual inadequacy.”64 As she points out, we are not facing the case of a love triangle in porn, in which the male assumes his superiority by intruding in the playful, sexual encounters of two women. Instead, a lesbian woman intrudes into a heterosexual marriage and poses a threat to male power. Male power proves to be ineffectual here, both that of the aggressive husband as well as that of the retired detective, whose efforts prove to be fruitless. Although he recognizes Ba´thory, who has not changed in the past 35 years, the male concierge can also do nothing. Valerie is not intimidated into slave-like subordination by the beatings and rape. She intends to leave Stephen and is halted only by the Countess, whose willing victim she becomes. However, she finally breaks out of both subordinate bonds and assumes Ba´ thory’s dominantly-powerful identity. The power relations are kept quite strictly unambiguous throughout the films, and the dominant and subordinate positions are never shifted nor questioned. Neither the heterosexual nor the lesbian relationship ever becomes an equal one, and the latter one has a special function: “by showing the lesbian as a vampire-rapist who violates and destroys her victim, men alleviate their fears that lesbian love could create an alternate model, that two women without coercion or morbidity might prefer one another to a man.” 65 In Vampire Lovers the destructive dominance of the female vampire is replaced by the beneficial male dominance, but Lust for a Vampire is less conventional because it involves a weakened male supported by a strong(er) woman. As in Dracula, two female types confront one another. The question that arises is: Which of them is worthy of the male’s attention? Lesbianism becomes not only deviant, but insignificant as well. The stereotypical order is set up in which heterosexuality is valorised. The violent character of lesbian initiation is not changed in either of the films either. In order to further reduce the threat of an alternative model of sexuality that excludes men, lesbianism is portrayed not only as deviant, but also as unreal, which is why is it put into a vampire context: The lesbian vampire, besides being a gothic fantasy archetype, can be used to express a fundamental male fear that woman-bonding will exclude men and threaten male supremacy. Lesbianism—love between women—must be vampirism; elements of violence, compulsion, hypnosis, paralysis, and the supernatural must be present.

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One woman must be a vampire, draining the life of the other woman, yet holding her in a bond stronger than the grave.66 EXPLORING NEW PATTERNS OF DOMINANCE AND SUBORDINATION SINCE THE 1970s Beginning in the 1970s, representations start to break up the petrified power relationships, which have, so far, shown little reciprocity. Bonding is going to be the central issue in Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire (1976), which offers major innovations in the portrayal of vampires as well as in the construction of a vampire text, while it recycles the theme of paranoid Gothic. Due to his seductive character, Rice’s Lestat is similar to Lord Ruthven, but according to Auerbach, he is also different from that ghost-like character because of his all-toohuman problems. He needs Louis not only as a companion, but also rather because of his plantation. He also has a blind father to take care of. The gendered distinction of “food” can also be seen in Interview with the Vampire: “The better the human, as he would say in his vulgar way, the more he liked it. A fresh young girl that was his favourite for the first of the evening; but the triumphant kill for Lestat was a young man. . . . You see, they represented the greatest loss to Lestat, because they stood on the threshold of the maximum possibility of life.”67 And at the top stands Louis whom he drains, materially, emotionally, and binds him to himself by using a monstrous means: the vampirized little girl Claudia. At the same time, she constantly reminds Louis of his weakness, his inability to resist. Their relationship is graphically described by Claudia. In their queer family, they are “locked together in hatred.”68 When Louis and Claudia have enough of Lestat’s dominance, they try to do away with him. He survives, but from this point on, power relations become ever-shifting. In fact Lestat and Louis never really get detached from one another. They love, despise, and occasionally torment each other in the subsequent volumes of Rice’s vampire series. Rice’s characters are widely interpreted as queer, although some theorists argue that they are not gay in the strict sense, but are elevated above human categories of gender. For example, Martin J. Wood celebrates Rice for portraying gender as irrelevant and for proposing a non-penetrative understanding of sexuality.69 It is somewhat problematic, though, that the alleged “irrelevance” of gender is shown almost exclusively by male characters. Women characters do not get involved with the similar spiritual and erotic bonds that male characters do.

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For Rice, gay men seem to be free to express their desires for other men. Regardless, Interview with the Vampire is a significant novel in terms of its revolutionary narrative technique. Like queers from the 1970s, the vampire speaks for himself instead of being spoken about.70 Whitley Strieber’s The Hunger (1981) is a male-produced novel of lesbian interest, several themes from Daughters of Darkness recur in its film version. The central vampire character, Miriam, takes humans as companions. However, she cannot make them immortal but can only endow them with longevity, a life span of a few centuries, after which aging and deterioration takes place at an increased speed. In spite of their terrible suffering, which is not ended by death since these halfvampires are unable to die, Miriam always creates a new companion after she disposes of the previous one in a cruel way. She puts him or her in a coffin alive. In the film, the act of disposal is presented very sentimentally, but in the book, it seems highly cynical: “She was lonely and human beings gave her the love that pets give. She sought companionship, some warmth, the appearance of home. She rejected her tears, her shame at what she had done to him [her partner John]. After all, did she not also deserve some love?”71 This resembles the way the Countess depredates Ilona, with a bond masked as occasional tenderness. Miriam is in search of a similar subordinate. Since the one she picked out as her next partner, the young girl Alice, is killed by John out of revenge, she has to find another person. She selects Dr. Sarah Roberts, one of the first female mad scientists in the history of horror. Sarah embodies the classical overreacher in a modern setting. She wants to exceed the limits of human existence, and as a doctor and researcher, she is on the eternal quest to find the secret of life and death. Thus, Miriam hopes that Sarah can make the transformation permanent.72 She wants to break the rules of nature as the Countess, who sought to remain young forever, did. Miriam seeks to stop the aging process of her transformed ones. Their relationship is established by the so-called touch, which refers to the emotional bond between predator and prey. Miriam risks her dominant position when, regarding the possible gains of this relationship, she lets Sarah examine her, although she is terrified at the thought of detainment. During the examination, Miriam approaches Sarah in an erotic manner, and Sarah seems to be quite responsive, although “women held no sexual attraction for her.”73 Miriam feels that Sarah’s heterosexual relationship with Tom is dissatisfying emotionally, although sexually enjoyable. Just as Countess Erzse´bet Ba´thory was aware of the insufficiency of

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Stephan’s and Valerie’s marriage, Miriam claims to have a right to intervene, as Viereck’s Reginald did. She justifies her depredations by assuming a superior position, declaring “her role in this age [of lies]: the bringer of truth.”74 Vampirizing Sarah becomes a highly aesthetic lesbian sex scene in the film, performed behind veils by Catherine Deneuve and Susan Sarandon to the lush tones and sensual aria Lakme´ by Delibes. However, in the book, lesbian eroticism takes up an uncanny attribute due to the cold, medical setting, and although Miriam carries Sarah up the stairs in her arms, the blood transfusion is quite down-to-earth, carried out on the unconscious Sara with needles and plastic tubes. When the researchers discover Miriam’s unusual setup, they label her a “freak,”75 a nonhuman, thus forming a right to detain her, and she is disempowered by the role she imposed upon human beings: an animal and, what is more, “history’s most important experimental animal.”76 This also reflects Sarah’s point of view. Despite Miriam’s hypnotic power, Sarah takes up the dominant position for a short while. Miriam manages to break out of her temporary subordinate position because she manages to make Sarah set her free. Due to the transfused vampiric blood, the doctor is in a miserable condition, and needs help which only Miriam can provide. Sarah’s dependence and helplessness, just like that of early Gothic heroines, is a result of her ignorance, ignorance about herself, about her situation, and about who she is. Miriam’s domination lies in the possession of that knowledge. She makes Sarah drink blood, and then reveals herself to her as a nonhuman, superior being: This was the Goddess Athena, Isis––Sarah could not find a word, a name. . . . [T]he face was so noble, so much at peace that just seeing it made Sarah want to sob out the petty passions of her own humanity and have done with them forever. . . . The majestic being that had called itself “Miriam” now spoke. “You shall learn secrets,” it said in a new tone, the voice of authority absolute. Sarah had to suppress an impulse to shout with delight.77 The power relations, which have been relatively flexible, become more defined at this moment, but the extent of Sarah’s willingness to be a victim is not satisfactory to Miriam: “Sarah’s hunger would eventually break her will, but until it did Miriam would have to endure this annoying independence.”78 Miriam’s intentions to oppress Sarah are unambiguous, and the more she clings to her, the more she tries to resist.

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In fact unlike Valerie, Sarah wants Tom until the last minute, when Miriam brings a scalpel to the hungry Sarah and makes her kill her own boyfriend. However, drinking her former male partner’s blood is not an act of sisterhood and liberation in The Hunger as it is in Daughters of Darkness because, unlike Stephen, Tom is not a detestable, aggressive, villainous character. Sarah turns away from Miriam and sheds her own blood, choosing eternal death over being Miriam’s companion. At the end of The Hunger, Miriam is punished because all her lovers are “resurrected.” Just like Dorian when he destroyed the substance he fed upon, she suddenly grows very old and weak. She had taken unchanging youth and power from her loved ones, but once they rose, she could not take anything else from them. Old age and weakness is thrust on her, the usual punishment that the ones who try to deceive nature and waylay aging face from Poe’s “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar” (1845) on. She ends up in a coffin, screaming her lover’s name who, like Valerie, assumed her oppressor’s powerful position. In the final shot, she is in the company of a man and a woman who are her intended partners, victims, or maybe both. At the beginning of the film The Hunger, a man with kohl-lined eyes makes a short appearance, singing about the (un)dead Be´la Lugosi. Staged behind a set bars, his figure alternates with that of a caged monkey who is tearing his companion apart. The man is Peter Murphy, singer of the Goth band Bauhaus. The brutality, however, will not restricted to the animal. Attending the Bauhaus’ concert, vampires Miriam and John are out to find victims in this decadent and, at the same time, gender-bending, sexually-liberated neo-gothic milieu, one that is going to be used as a setting by many horror writers shortly thereafter. Although the Goth subculture—initially called “post punk” or “batcave”—was born at the end of the 1970s, gothic/horror writers began to explore it in great numbers only beginning in the 19. A major proponent of this trend is Poppy Z. Brite, a former Goth herself, who refers to the scene in many of her works. Brite’s Lost Souls (1992) demonstrates a range of perversions, but at the core of the novel, there is the unusual concept of family and power relations, a kind of striving for dominance. One of the central characters is an adolescent boy called Nothing, who is estranged from his middle class bourgeois family and its values and who finds shelter, if not true community, with a weird group of Goth teenagers. They reflect, on a micro level, the nihilism of the age. Adjusting to this aimlessness, Brite, unlike Stoker, makes no value judgments in her novel

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about the Fin-de-Sie´cle. These kids have no ambitions, no plans for the future. They simply kill time drinking, taking drugs, listening to forerunners of Goth music, such as The Cure or Siouxsie and the Banshees, and indulge in experimental erotic acts with each other. Here, at least, Nothing is left alone and is sometimes loved, especially by a young boy called Laine, who is attracted to him and is not ashamed of showing it. When Nothing finds out that his feelings of estrangement are authentic because he was adopted, he leaves home and plans to find his favourite musicians, Steve and Ghost, who constitute the band Lost Souls? After a few nasty experiences, he is given a ride in a black van with three hedonistic vampires inside. They follow Fin-de-Sie´ cle decadent aestheticism and the only moral rule they declare and follow is, “Boredom is a sin. Boredom is unholy.”79 Molochai, Twig, and their leader Zillah decide not to kill Nothing because he is able to drink blood. The act of cutting off ties from his previous life through the murder of a loved one is repeated in this text as well, but the context this time is not heterosexual: the vampires make Nothing kill Laine, who had also left home in order to find him. Nothing passes this test as well, and he is taken in as a full member of the community. Lost Souls has an all-male plot and, what is more, an all-gay one. It also includes the classical triangle as well. The sensitive, visionary man Ghost competes with the bestial, but sensually alluring and beautiful Zillah, and what’s at stake is a man, Nothing. Women are only subsidiary, minor characters, abused by vampiric and human characters alike. They all end up dying when giving birth to a lethal vampiric baby who chews itself out of its mother’s body. Since in a contemporary text gay desire and its fulfilment can be expressed in a direct way, women are not necessary anymore as the mediating tools of homosexual desire. Because there are no similar female communities or attachments shown in the novel, as in Rice’s novel, Lost Souls could be easily labelled as antifeminist, but Carol Siegel is of a different opinion. She points out that presenting reproduction as something threatening signs the consideration of a female audience, and the portrayal of sensitive, delicate, vulnerable, even masochistic boys contributes to undermining traditional binary gender identification80—just as the Goth scene itself does. Another important point she makes is that the male characters “are the most effective when they gain the courage to distinguish between, and call by their right names, desired and undesired pains, despite their entrapment within a culture that, as Brite repeatedly shows us, fails to distinguish between consensual

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S/M and abuse.” 81 Through identifying with the gay characters, female readers may also feel empowered. This argument shows why a gay vampire text, written by a self-identified, non-operative FTM transsexual,82 might be of interest to a female reader. As in Daughters of Darkness or The Hunger, the one who was the object of rivalry is empowered by the death of his lover-and-oppressor and, without showing any significant grief, assumes his dominant position as the leader of the twin vampires who happily remain in their immature child role in need of control. TWO KINDS OF HOMOEROTIC BOND IN CONTEMPORARY REPRESENTATIONS Since the mid-nineties when distinct collections of queer vampire stories were published, representations of queer vampiric love show two main tendencies. One returns to the old codes, portraying queer desire as an unnatural and deviant and valorising heterosexuality as a norm. The other, often literalizes and, at the same time, reinterprets bondage and power relations in a (seemingly) paradoxical manner that shifts into an empowering and liberating direction. Harvey Jacobs’ “L’Chaim!,” included in a collection of psychic vampire stories, further explores the relationship between art, hedonism, and vampirism and reaches back to the tradition to the Fin-de-Sie´cle and Wilde’s work. It presents a depredatory form of homoeroticism, based on dominance and victimization. The Tentacle Club consists of “Yuppie” vampires83 who identify talented young people, kidnap them, and then wait for a special occasion to consume them. One victim, the once hard-up painter James Guard, who was raised by his “benefactor,” is referred to as a “bottle of wine,” a metaphor that reveals that the vampires’ human victims are kept available until the vampires are ready to drink their blood. In James’ case, that’s when he is embraced by Delmore: “They had never touched like that. Delmore felt a delicious warmth that reminded him of other embraces. He began to weep even as he cut the young man’s throat with a quick sash of his pocket knife. Blood erupted from the violated neck.”84 Delmore is the seemingly reluctant vampire, whose weeping is, however, not very convincing, especially given the way vampires revel in the excellent “wine” that was mellowed by 10 years of joy and success under its “benefactor’s” care. Ron Oliver ’s “Bela Lugosi Is Dead” elaborates on some themes from Stoker ’s Dracula in a contemporary setting. The title of the

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much-quoted Bauhaus opus hints at the two Goth boys who, as outsiders, find a community with each other, watch vampire films together, and driven by their spiritual kinship as well as curiosity, indulge in homosexual experimentation in a special manner. It involves self-mutilation. The narrator experiences it in the following way: “I can see my reflection in the blade and suddenly I’m not sixteen, I’m sixteen hundred and my name is Vlad and my skin is the colour of a statue in a museum and its name is David and he is spread out beneath me . . . ”85 He distances himself from a gay label by saying “we’re not faggots”86 then explains the act of oral sex between men as vampiric, not homosexual. The woman character of “Bela Lugosi Is Dead” becomes the tool for one man’s revenge on another, as happened in “The Vampyre” and Dracula. After a short time, David’s interest turns toward Sarah, thus he neglects his friend. There is a clear-cut, binary symbolism in the story, because after meeting Sarah, David begins to wear light, colorful clothes, much to his friend’s disgust. Abandoning all-black outfits, he also abandons the Goth scene, represented by his refusing to go to a concert by the post punk band Echo and the Bunnymen, and everything that is opposed to mainstream norms, including homoeroticism. He also gets a job. The world of Goths represents isolation, darkness, nihilism (in the sense of lacking an ambition and idea of one’s future in the practical sense), obsession (with vampires and with each other), as well as transgressive sexuality. The mainstream world is represented by community, light, “normalcy” and heterosexuality. However, the narrator cannot resign himself to David’s change, and he decides to take revenge. He lures Sarah to him with the pretence of giving her private geometry lessons, but he kills her instead, and then he invites David to the spot where she died. When he appears, David sees Sarah’s naked corpse that has been drained of her blood and surrounded by 66, six-inch candles. His friend stands near Sarah’s body also naked, with an erect penis. Driven by his obsession of vampires, the murderer tries to transform Sarah, but of course, he does not succeed. Recent films also return to the old code of depredatory homosexuality. Another one of Poppy Z. Brite’s stories applies the Goth scene as a setting and offers its readers an interesting perspective. “His Mouth Will Taste of Wormwood,” in fact, is reminiscent of H. P. Lovecraft’s story “The Hound” (1924). In it, two men, isolated from society and bored with life, give the same response to their feeling of emptiness, the same one that Wilde’s characters experienced. They are constantly in search of new stimuli, which they perceive as if from a distance,

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which they never associate with any morals or emotions: “St John and I had followed enthusiastically every aesthetic and intellectual movement which promised respite from out devastating ennui. . . . Only the sombre philosophy of the decadents could help us . . . ”87 After a while, they take to grave robbing and accumulate a horrid collection of relics from nocturnal visits to cemeteries. In a Holland graveyard, they hear the howl of a gigantic dog, but cannot actually see the animal. From the grave of a man who had “centuries before been found in this self-same spot, torn and mangled by the claws and teeth of some unspeakable beast” 88 they take an amulet in the shape of a winged hound. (The amulet refers to Lovecraft’s fictional occult book the Necronomicon.) The owner of the amulet punishes the two grave robbers. St John is torn apart “by some frightful carnivorous thing.”89 The narrator tries to take the amulet back to its place, but he is robbed of it. He also learns that the family of a thief was also torn apart. When he opens the grave, he finds the remains of the dead one “covered with caked blood and shreds of alien flesh and hair . . . with phosphorescent sockets and sharp ensanguined fangs . . . ”90 emitting the voice of the hound. On the verge of madness, the narrator declares his intention to commit suicide. “The Hound” is frequently anthologized and referred to as a vampiric text, although Lovecraft’s beast is somewhat different, more animalistic, than the usual representation of the vampire figure. It has no hint of any attractive power, although it evokes unambiguous fear and disgust. In Brite’s story, as in Wilde’s and Lovecraft’s, two men are unresponsive to every stimuli life can offer. Neither books, nor drugs, nor music can satisfy them, and one admits that “for all the impression the world made upon us, our eyes might have been dead black holes in our heads.”91 Brite goes even farther than Wilde in showing how they tried to find new stimuli. She describes sexual acts in the most literal way and tells how the two characters get bored of the most unusual and perverted acts with women, boys and finally of each other, as well. Having broken most taboos, they turn to the one left intact, to death: “At last I came to agree with Louis that only the plundering of graves might cure us of the most stifling ennui we had yet suffered.”92 They also begin to collect parts of corpses and everything connected to death rituals, and like Lovecraft’s characters, they also visit an unusual graveyard, where they rob the ill-famed grave of an African-American sorcerer. All that they know about the sorcerer is that he—or she—was unearthly beautiful. In a Goth bar, they meet a boy whose beauty is tainted only by a missing upper tooth. They take

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him home, and by morning, the narrator finds his friend’s corpse sucked dry. The narrator also plans to visit the grave again, but instead of the cold fright and madness Lovecraft’s solitary characters experience, his fear is transformed into desire and his final death fantasy is highly imbued with eroticism: Dying: the final shock of pain or nothingness that is the price we pay for everything. Could it not be the sweetest thrill . . . the only true moment of self-knowledge? The dark pools of his eyes will open, still and deep enough to drown in. He will hold out his arms to me, inviting me to lie down in his rich wormly bed. With the first kiss his mouth will taste of wormwood. After that it will taste only of me––of my blood, my life, siphoning out of my body into his.93 Although this tale is also a destructive one, it does not associate gay sexuality with deviance. Its vampiric character stands for an overwhelming desire. The theme of being a willing victim, with a similar symbolism of vampirism, also comes up in Shawn Dell’s “Daria Dangerous”: I was bound to her magical bed. I surrendered to her completely without an ounce of resistance. She read my body like a dirty novel, skipping the plot, heading right to the sex scenes. She had a pipeline into my soul. We had no use for words; our bodies talked desire using a vocabulary of lustful sighs.94 The bond becomes literal in this case. The narrator is roped by her wrists and ankles and shows no resistance. Being a victim is completely voluntary and pleasurable. Being incorporated, the self being engulfed by another’s, is portrayed as an erotic act, exaggerating the unconsciousness of orgasm. With blood, Daria also consumes her victim’s self: “All that was me was now inside Daria: my memories, my desires, my souls, my essence mingled with hers.”95 As in Brite’s story, the master-servant relationship is put into a new perspective: the victim is happy to get rid of the burden of her self, her consciousness, her life and to give it over to a figure dominating her. However, beside depredatory vampires—draining one of blood or more—a new, non-oppressive understanding of vampirism appears, which breaks the tradition’s inevitability of dominant and subordinate positions. Although a playful S/M may exist in, for example, the castle

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setting, and may sometimes even be pushed to the front disregarding subtly, hierarchy seems to disappear for the sake of equality and recognizing mutual dependence. Jewelle Gomez came up with an absolutely innovative concept of vampirism in 1991. Her novel The Gilda Stories features lesbian vampires who drink a victim’s blood, but only a small amount, so that the victim does not die. What is more, they give something in exchange for the blood they take, defying the very definition of vampirism. Even the vampire’s ability of reading minds is made mutual: “The woman, Gilda, could see into her mind. That was clear. The Girl was not frightened though, because it seemed she could see into Gilda’s as well. That made them even.”96 The Girl is originally an escaped slave who is taken in by Gilda, but with a beneficial intention, without any oppression. Gilda feels she has lived too much, and wants to die. She has the immortality of ultimate freedom: she can finish it when she decides to. The Girl is going to take her place as well as her name. In Cecilia Tan’s “The Tale of Christina,” the lesbian vampire appears again in the protective role: she saves her beloved one, Christina, the Goth girl dressed as a funeral bride who is enticed by a man to his flat and is almost assaulted by him. “Take me,”97 Christina says after making love to a vampire woman, referring to her desire to be transformed into a vampire. Unfortunately, that is impossible because the essence of being a vampire means something else here: . . . it is not blood that makes a vampire. No. It is the wanting. Vampires are forged in the heat of desperate desire; vampires are birthed in the waters of a need so intense that their very souls do drown. . . . When the wanting becomes of fever pitch, the magic ignites and transforms one from mortal being into the pure embodiment of hunger, of need, of desire. . . . Of course, the wanting hurts. It hurts more than ever. And the blood . . . The blood is one way to quench the fire.98 In this case, the “wanting” that made her a vampire was that she, a cross-dresser passing as a man, wanted to become male. In despair, she attempts suicide, but instead of dying, she became a vampire. Now her desires are directed at Christina, not at becoming somebody else, in a somewhat empowering way. She explains the essence of vampirism to Christina, and a strange kind of sisterhood is revealed between them because they share the knowledge of what it means “to live unrequited forever”99 and “the pain of living”100

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The mutual interdependence of “predator” and “prey” is pointed out in the catchiest way in Amelia G’s text entitled “Wanting,” which again presents a non-murderous vampire. The narrator, Rachel, meets Danielle, whom she used to know in the Goth scene. Danielle, “a Gothic wet dream,”101 was always known for her winged “costume.” They go to Rachel’s flat, where Danielle binds the consenting Rachel up and gives her pleasure. Despite being bound up, Rachel can fell her power over Danielle. Finally, Danielle reveals that her wings are real: “She enfolded us both in her dark wings and the leather was soft and smooth and supple and alive.”102 Danielle is a vampire, and she also has fangs, but what she feeds on is not blood but, again, wanting. However in this story, it is not what she wants that torments her and then transforms her into a vampire, but what others want. She feeds on being desired. The ending is quite unusual for a vampire story: “My orgasm broke through me. The release was incredible, but the wanting didn’t go away. And neither did Danielle.”103 In contemporary texts, sexuality comes to the front and not as something merely alluded to by narrator or author. As a consequence, drinking blood loses its metaphoric importance and can be substituted by other substances the vampire may take. Initially, authors applied the vampire figure to homosexuals because it enabled them to demonize homosexual desire, and in this framework, an individual’s positive response to homosexual initiation could be portrayed as mesmeric helplessness and victimization. Contemporary authors are also able to express queer desire in a way that is not violent victimization, while still preserving the idea of the vampire. They reinterpreted it in order to express the overwhelming character of desire that conquers everything, even social norms. NOTES 1. Nina Auerbach, Our Vampires, Ourselves (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1995). 1. 2. Sue Ellen Case, “Tracking the Vampire,” in Writing on the Body. Female Embodiment and Feminist Theory, ed. Katie Conboy, et al. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 381. 3. Case, op. cit., 383. 4. Ibid. 5. Richard Dyer, “Children of the Night: Vampirism as Homosexuality, Homosexuality as Vampirism,” in Sweet Dreams. Sexuality, Gender and Popular Fiction, ed. Susannah Radstone (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1988), 58–60. 6. Davenport-Hines, op. cit., 139.

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7. Davenport-Hines, op. cit., 127. 8. Davenport-Hines, op. cit., 119–124. 9. George E. Haggerty, “Matthew Lewis,” in An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Culture, available at http://www .glbtq.com/literature/lewis_mg.html (accessed July 1, 2009). 10. Eve Sedgwick, The Coherence of Gothic Conventions (Routledge Kegan & Paul, 1986), ix. 11. Auerbach op. cit., 13. 12. Auerbach, op. cit., 39. 13. Auerbach, op. cit., 39. 14. Auerbach, op. cit., 65. 15. Auerbach, op. cit., 41. 16. Davenport-Hines, op. cit., 254–255. 17. Auerbach, op. cit., 40. 18. Sheridan LeFanu, “Carmilla” in Alan Ryan, ed., The Penguin Book of Vampire Stories (London: Bloomsbury Books, 1991), 89. 19. LeFanu, op. cit., 90. 20. Maria Janion, A va´ mpı´r. Szimbolikus biogra´ fia (Budapest: Euro´ pa Ko¨nyvkiado´, 2006), 175. 21. Auerbach, op. cit., 45. 22. Dyer, op. cit., 47. 23. Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, “Manor” in Sailor Stories; trans. Michael Lombardi-Nash, 1980; Second Edition (Jacksonville, Florida: Urania Manuscripts), 37–38. Available at http://www.angelfire.com/fl3/uraniamanuscripts/ manor1.html (accessed February 23, 2006). 24. Ulrichs, op. cit., 39. 25. Ulrichs, op. cit., 41. 26. Dyer, op. cit., 67. 27. Ulrichs, op. cit., 42. 28. Ulrichs, op. cit., 43. 29. Dyer, op. cit., 67. 30. James B. Twitchell, The Living Dead. A Study of the Vampire in Romantic Literature (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997), 172. 31. Ibid. 32. Dyer, op. cit., 61. 33. Davenport-Hines, op. cit., 250. 34. Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (London: Penguin Books, 1969), 30. 35. Carolyn Brown,“Figuring the Vampire: Death, Desire and the Image.” In The Eight Technologies of Otherness, edited by Sue Golding (London and New York: Routledge, 1997), 128. 36. Wilde, op. cit., 194. 37. Wilde, op. cit., 246. 38. Eric, Count Stenbock, “The True Story of a Vampire,” in The Undead. Vampire Masterpieces, edited by James Dickie (London: Pan Books Ltd., 1971), 168.

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39. Stenbock, op. cit., 169. 40. Dyer, op. cit., 66. 41. Stenbock, op. cit., 170. 42. Salli J. Kline, The Degeneration of Women: Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” as Allegorical Criticism of the “Fin de Sie´cle” (Rheinbach-Merzbach: CMZ-Verlag Winrich C.-W. Clasen, 1992), 3–8. 43. Kline, op. cit., 15. 44. Janion, op. cit., 179. 45. Christopher Craft, “ ‘Kiss Me With Those Red Lips’: Gender and Inversion in Bram Stoker’s Dracula,” in Speaking of Gender, edited by Elaine Showalter (New York and London: Routledge, 1989), 218. 46. Craft, op. cit., 219. 47. Craft, op. cit., 220. 48. Ibid. 49. Davenport-Hines, op. cit., 260. 50. Davenport-Hines, op. cit., 264. 51. George Sylvester Viereck, The House of the Vampire (Maryland: Wildside Press, 2009), 65. 52. See, e.g., Thomas Elsaesser, Weimar Cinema and After: Germany’s Historical Imaginary (New York, Routledge: 2000), 247. 53. Gary Morris, “Horror Films,” in An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Culture, available at http://www.glbtq.com/arts/horror _films.html (accessed July 3, 2008). 54. Gary Morris, “Queer Horror: Decoding Universal’s Monsters,” in Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 23, December 1998, available at http:// www.brightlightsfilm.com/23/universalhorror.html (accessed July 1, 2008). 55. Bonnie Zimmermann, “Daughters of Darkness: Lesbian Vampires,” in Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media, no. 24–25, March 1981, 23–24, available at http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC24-25folder/ LesbianVampires.html (accessed July 1, 2008). 56. Morris, “Queer Horror.” 57. Tanya Krzywinska, “La Belle Dame Sans Merci?” in A Queer Romance: Lesbians, Gay Men and Popular Culture, edited by Paul Burston and Colin Richardson (New York: Routledge: 1995), 109. 58. Ibid. 59. Krzywinska, op. cit., 113. 60. Krzywinska, op. cit., 115. 61. Zimmermann, op. cit. 62. Krzywinska, op. cit., 110. 63. Sza´ deckzy Kardoss Irma, Ba´ thory Erzse´ bet igazsa´ ga (The Truth of Ba´thory Erzse´bet) (Budapest: Nesztor, 1993). 64. Zimmermann, op. cit. 65. Ibid. 66. Ibid.

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67. Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire (London: Warner Books, 2001), 47. 68. Rice, op. cit., 129. 69. Martin J. Wood, “New Life for an Old Tradition: Anne Rice and Vampire Literature,” in The Blood Is the Life: Vampires in Literature, edited by Leonard G. Heldreth and Mary Pharr (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1999), 76–77. 70. Dyer, op. cit., 65. 71. Whitley Strieber, The Hunger (1981), (New York: Pocket Books, 2001), 94. 72. Strieber, op. cit., 131. 73. Strieber, op. cit. 158. 74. Strieber, op. cit., 163. 75. Strieber, op. cit., 182. 76. Strieber, op. cit., 276. 77. Strieber, op. cit., 309, my emphasis. 78. Strieber, op. cit., 330, my emphasis. 79. Poppy Z. Brite, Lost Souls (New York: Dell Publishing, 1993), 36. 80. Carol Siegel, Goth’s Dark Empire (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005), 72–84. 81. Siegel, op. cit., 87. 82. Although from Brite’s autobiographic text “Enough Rope” it turns out that this identification is much more complicated matter, available at http:// www.poppyzbrite.com/rope.html (accessed October 10, 2008). 83. Harvey Jacobs, Author’s note to “L’Chaim!” in Blood Is Not Enough. 17 Stories of Vampirism, edited by Ellen Datlow (New York: William Morrow and Company Inc., 1989), 153. 84. Harvey Jacobs, “L’Chaim!” in Blood Is Not Enough. 17 Stories of Vampirism, edited by Ellen Datlow (New York: William Morrow and Company Inc., 1989), 152. 85. Ron Oliver, “Bela Lugosi Is Dead,” in Sons of Darkness: Tales of Men, Blood and Immortality, edited by Michael Rowe and Thomas S. Roche (Pittsburgh: Cleis Press, 1996), 128. 86. Oliver, op. cit., 129. 87. Howard Phillips Lovecraft, “The Hound,” in The Undead. Vampire Masterpieces, edited by James Dickie (London: Pan Books, 1971), 171. 88. Lovecraft, op. cit., 174. 89. Lovecraft, op. cit., 177. 90. Lovecraft, op. cit., 179. 91. Poppy Z. Brite, “His Mouth Will Taste of Wormwood,” in Sons of Darkness: Tales of Men, Blood and Immortality, edited by Michael Rowe and Thomas S. Roche (Pittsburgh: Cleis Press, 1996), 135. 92. Brite, op. cit., 137. 93. Brite, op. cit., 145. 94. Shawn Dell, “Daria Dangerous.” In Dark Angels. Lesbian Vampire Stories, edited by Pam Keesey (Pittsburgh: Cleis Press, 1995), 137.

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95. Dell, op. cit., 139. 96. Jewelle Gomez, The Gilda Stories, in The Gilda Stories. Bones & Ash (New York: Quality Paperback Book Club), 17. 97. Cecilia Tan, “The Tale of Christina,” in Dark Angels. Lesbian Vampire Stories, edited by Pam Keesey (Pittsburgh: Cleis Press, 1995), 85. 98. Tan, op. cit., 77. 99. Tan, op. cit., 87. 100. Ibid. 101. Amelia G., “Wanting,” in Dark Angels. Lesbian Vampire Stories, edited by Pam Keesey (Pittsburgh: Cleis Press, 1995), 26. 102. G, op. cit., 31. 103. G, op. cit., 132.

REFERENCES Auerbach, N. 1995. Our Vampires, Ourselves. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Baker, R. W. dir. 1970. Vampire Lovers. Brite, P. Z. Lost Souls. 1993. New York: Dell Publishing. . 1996. “His Mouth Will Taste of Wormwood.” In Sons of Darkness: Tales of Men, Blood and Immortality, edited by Michael Rowe and Thomas S. Roche. Pittsburgh: Cleis Press, 135–45. Brown, C. 1997. “Figuring the Vampire: Death, Desire and the Image.” In The Eight Technologies of Otherness, edited by Sue Golding, London and New York: Routledge. 117–33. Carroll, N. 1990. The Philosophy of Horror, Or, Paradoxes of the Heart. New York: Routledge. Case, S.-E. 1997. “Tracking the Vampire.” In Writing on the Body. Female Embodiment and Feminist Theory, edited by Katie Conboy, et al. New York: Columbia University Press, 380–400. Coleridge, S. T. (1978.) 2009. “Christabel.” In The Major Works. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 68–86. Craft, C. 1989. “ ‘Kiss Me with Those Red Lips’: Gender and Inversion in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.” In Speaking of Gender, edited by Elaine Showalter. New York & London: Routledge. Davenport-Hines, R. 2000. Gothic. Four Hundred Years of Excess, Horror, Evil and Ruin. New York: North Point Press. Dell, S. 1995. “Daria Dangerous.” In Dark Angels. Lesbian Vampire Stories, edited by Pam Keesey. Pittsburgh: Cleis Press, 131–39. Dijkstra, B. Evil Sisters. The Threat of Female Sexuality and the Cult of Manhood. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996. Dyer, R. “Vampirism as Homosexuality, Homosexuality as Vampirism.” In Sweet Dreams. Sexuality, Gender and Popular Fiction, edited by Susannah Radstone. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1988, 47–72.

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Elsaesser, T. 2000. Weimar Cinema and After: Germany’s Historical Imaginary. New York, Routledge. G, Amelia. 1995. “Wanting.” In Dark Angels. Lesbian Vampire Stories, edited by Pam Keesey. Pittsburgh: Cleis Press, 23–32. Gautier, T. (1832.) 2006. “Sı´ron tu´li szerelem.” (“La Morte Amoureuse” known as well as “Clarimonde.”) Trans. Szoboszlai Margit. In Maria Janion. A va´mpı´r. Szimbolikus biogra´fia. Budapest: Euro´pa Ko¨nyvkiado´, 282–303. Gomez, J. (1991.) 2001. The Gilda Stories. Bones & Ash. New York: Quality Paperback Book Club. Haggerty, G. E. “Matthew Lewis,” in An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Culture, available at http://www.glbtq.com/ literature/lewis_mg.html (accessed July 1, 2009). Hegel, G. W. F. (1807.) 1977. Phenomenology of Spirit. Trans. A. V. Miller. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jacobs, H. 1989. “L’Chaim!” In Ellen Datlow ed. Blood Is Not Enough. 17 Stories of Vampirism. New York: William Morrow and Company Inc., 148–53. James, M., and Phil O’Sea dirs. 2007. Vampire Diary. Janion, M. 2006. A va´mpı´r. Szimbolikus biogra´fia. Budapest: Euro´pa Ko¨nyvkiado´. Keats, J. (1820.) “Lamia.” In H. W. Garrod, ed. Keats. Poetical Works. London, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1970, 161–78. Kline, S. J. 1992. The Degeneration of Women: Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” as Allegorical Criticism of the “Fin de Sie´ cle.” Rheinbach-Merzbach: CMZ-Verlag Winrich C.-W. Clasen. Krzywinska, T. 1995. “La Belle Dame Sans Merci?” In A Queer Romance: Lesbians, Gay Men and Popular Culture, edited by Paul Burston and Colin Richardson. New York: Routledge. Ku¨mel, H. dir. 1971. Daughters of Darkness. LeFanu, S. 1991. “Carmilla.” In The Penguin Book of Vampire Stories, edited by Alan Ryan. London: Bloomsbury Books, 71–137. Lewis, M. (1796.) 1995. The Monk. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lovecraft, H. P. (1924.) 1973. “The Hound.” In The Undead. Vampire Masterpieces, edited by James Dickie. London: Pan Books Ltd., 171–79. Morris, G. “Horror Films.” In An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Culture. Available at http://www.glbtq.com/arts/ horror_films.html (accessed July 3, 2008). . December 1998. “Queer Horror: Decoding Universal’s Monsters.” In Bright Lights Film Journal Issue 23. Available at http://www.brightlights film.com/23/universalhorror.html (accessed July 1, 2008). Oliver, R. 1996. “Bela Lugosi Is Dead.” In Sons of Darkness: Tales of Men, Blood and Immortality, edited by Michael Rowe and Thomas S. Roche. Pittsburgh: Cleis Press, 125–34. Pizarnik, A. “The Bloody Countess.” In Dark Angels. Lesbian Vampire Stories, edited by Pam Keesey. Pittsburgh: Cleis Press, 113–30. Rice, A. (1976.) 2001. Interview with the Vampire. London: Warner Books.

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Russell, K. dir. 1986. Gothic. Sangster, J. dir. 1971. Lust for a Vampire. Sedgwick, E. 1986. The Coherence of Gothic Conventions. New York: Routledge. Scott, T. dir. 1983. The Hunger. Shelley, M. (1818.) 1982. Frankenstein, or, the Modern Prometheus. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Siegel, C. 2005. Goth’s Dark Empire. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Stenbock, E. (1894.) 1973. “The True Story of a Vampire.” In The Undead. Vampire Masterpieces, edited by James Dickie. London: Pan Books Ltd., 162–70. Stoker, B. Dracula. (1897.) 1979. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Strieber, W. (1981.) 2001. The Hunger. New York: Pocket Books. Sza´deckzy K, Irma. 1993. Ba´ thory Erzse´bet igazsa´ga. (The Truth of Ba´thory Erzse´bet) Budapest: Nesztor. Tan, C. 1995. “The Tale of Christina.” In Dark Angels. Lesbian Vampire Stories, edited by Pam Keesey. Pittsburgh: Cleis Press, 77–87. Twitchell, J. B. 1997. The Living Dead. A Study of the Vampire in Romantic Literature. Durham: Duke University Press. Ulrichs, K. H. (1885.) 1990. “Manor.” In Sailor Stories; trans. Michael LombardiNash, 1980; Second Edition. Jacksonville, Florida: Urania Manuscripts, 37–43. Available at http://www.angelfire.com/fl3/uraniamanuscripts/ manor1.html (accessed February 23, 2006). Viereck, G. S. (1907.) 2009. The House of the Vampire. Maryland: Wildside Press. Walpole, H. (1764.) 2001. The Castle of Otranto. London: Penguin Books. Wilde, O. (1890.) 1969. The Picture of Dorian Gray. London: Penguin Books. Wood, M. J. 1999. “New Life for an Old Tradition: Anne Rice and Vampire Literature.” In The Blood Is the Life: Vampires in Literature, edited by Leonard G. Heldreth and Mary Pharr. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 59–78. Zimmermann, B. March 1981. “Daughters of Darkness: Lesbian Vampires.” In Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media, no. 24–25, 23–24. Available at http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC24-25folder/ LesbianVampires.html (accessed July 1, 2008).

Index

Abalos, David T., 61, 65, 71, 78 abortion rights, 84 Abrams, Lee, 176, 177 Abramson, Daniel, 3 Addams, Calpurnia, 50–51 adult videos. See Pornography, gay male African Americans, 83, 93, 98; disco and, 160, 164, 178, 185 n.50; gay fiction, 129–30 AIDS (acquired immune deficiency), 84, 179; pornography and, 256, 260, 261; in young adult novels, 141, 142 AIDS Memorial Quilt, 1–4, 17, 23; authorship of, 9–10; democratic representation in, 5–7; funding for, 8; public vs. private spheres, 12–16; Vietnam Memorial compared, 2–4. See also NAMES Project All-Consuming Images: Politics of Style in Contemporary Culture (Ewen), 233 Allen, Henry, 169–70 Amazon Bookstore Cooperative, 93 American Primitive (Oliver), 118

Amory, Richard, 132 anal sex, in pornography, 259, 260–61, 263–64 Anaya, Rudolfo, 63, 64–65, 68 Anderson, Margaret, 109, 111 Angel, Buck, 236–48; aesthetics of, 243, 244; audience response to, 245–47; “biker outlaw” persona of, 229–30, 236, 243–45, 247; body as commodity and, 241–42; brief biography of, 236–37; contemporary identities and, 247–48; language use by, 240–41; performance, 237–39; social style of, 237–45 Antidisco Army, 171–73. See also discophobia Anzaldu´a, Gloria E., 45–49, 55, 61, 67, 71, 72 “Are Lesbians Women?” (Hale), 40 Aristotle, 106 Auerbach, Nina, 267, 269–70, 271, 272, 286 Austen, Jane, 85 Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (Stein), 110 Aymar, Brandt, 127, 128

304

Index

Bachelard, Gaston, 197, 204, 205 Baldwin, James, 129–30, 253 Banis, Victor J., 126, 127, 128–29, 129, 131–32 Bannon, Ann, 113 Bantam Press, 134 Barale, Aina, 66 Barnes, Djuna, 111 Barney, Natalie Clifford, 107, 110, 117 Basic Instinct (film), 87 Ba´thory, Erzse´bet, 284–85, 287–88 Beach, Sylvia, 109, 110 Bechdel, Alison, 118; Fun Home, 103–4, 105. See also Dykes to Watch Out For (Bechdel) “Bela Lugosi Is Dead” (Oliver), 291–92 “La Belle Dame Sans Merci?” (Krzywinska), 282–83 Bersani, Leo, 264 Best of the Web (BOTW), 39 Between Mom and Me (Peters), 148, 150 “biker outlaw” persona, 229–30, 236, 243–45, 247 Bilger, Audrey, 85, 86 bilingualism, 66–67 Billboard magazine, 177–78, 188 n.112 Billington, James, 118 bisexuality, 247 Bishop, Elizabeth, 118 Bizarre magazine, 238, 245 Blackwood, Evelyn, 56–57, 58 n.2 “Blame It on the Boogie” (song), 168 blogosphere. See transgender women, Internet and body, as commodity, 241–42. See also pornography, gay male Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (Anzaldu´a), 46 Bornstein, Kate, 232 Bowles, Paul, 136

Boy Meets Boy (Levithan), 148, 149–50 Boys Don’t Cry (film), 55–56 The Boys of Muscle Beach, 133 Brackett, David, 164 Bradley, Katherine, 107 Braunstein, Peter, 165 Bredbeck, Gregory, 159, 160 Brentwood Studios, 255 Brite, Poppy Z., 289–90, 292–93 Brokeback Mountain (film), 95 Bronski, Michael, 126 Brown, Carolyn, 275 Brown, Rita Mae, 114 Brown University, 125 Bruhm, Steven, 198, 199 Brummett, Barry, 229, 233, 234–35 Bryant, Anita, 161, 183 n.33 Burkhart, Kent, 176, 177 Bussey, Dorothy Strachey, 112 Butchness, 70, 91. See also masculinity Butler, Judith, 193–94, 204, 206, 248; Gender Trouble, 232–33 Butters, Ronald R., 196 Byron, Lord, 269, 270 Cadden, Wendy, 115 camp, 204 Capozzola, Christopher, 15 Caramba! (Martı´nez), 71–79; princess myth in, 77–78; transvestism in, 71–77 “Carmilla” (LeFanu), 271–72, 274, 277, 281–82 Cart, Michael, 141 Casey, Harry Wayne, 179–80 Castillo, Ana, 70 Castle, Terry, 106 The Castle of Otranto (Walpole), 268–69 Castro clones, 254–56 The Cat Came Back (Mullins), 142–43

Index

censorship, 125, 128–29 Les Chansons de Bilitis (Louy¨s), 108–9 Chase, Sue Ellen, 268 Cheren, Mel, 175, 177 Chicago, Disco Demolition in (1979), 153–56, 171–75, 178. See also discophobia Chicago burlesque. See drag queens, in Chicago burlesque Chicago Daily Herald, 174 Chicago Daily Tribune, 221, 222, 225 Chicago Law and Order League, 212, 213, 214, 215, 218–19, 223 Chicago Record-Herald, 214, 218, 223, 225 Chicago Tribune, 173, 174 “Christabel” (Coleridge), 269, 271 Cisneros, Sandra, 62–65 The City and the Pillar (Vidal), 129 civil rights, gay, 156, 161–62, 179, 272 civil rights movements, 57 “Clarimonde” (Gautier), 271 Clark’s Female Minstrels, 211, 213, 215, 219–22, 225 Classics of the Gay Underground (series), 133 Clinton, impeachment of, 88–89 Closet, Williams and, 191–92, 193, 197, 202–3; fetishism and, 204, 205–7. See also coming out; Williams, Tennessee, queer space and Clum, John M., 195, 196, 197–98 Cohen, Ed, 196 Coleman, Lonnie, 130 Colt Studios, 255 comic strip, lesbian. See Dykes to Watch Out For (Bechdel) coming out, 162; empathy for others in, 147–48; in lesbian literature, 116; to oneself, 144–47; online sources and, 31–32, 35; to others, 141–44; range of possibilities in, 150–51; in Williams’ writing,

305

191–92, 195; in young adult novels, 139–51 Comiskey Park riot (Chicago, 1979), 153–55, 172–74, 175 commemoration. See public commemoration community, in Dykes to Watch Out For, 83–84, 85, 92, 105 consumer culture, 95 Cooper, Edith, 107 Corley, Carl, 126 Cortez, Beatriz, 76 Cory, Donald Webster. See Sagarin, Edward Cory Book Service, 127, 128 Coury, Al, 163 Craft, Christopher, 278 Cressey, Paul, 217–18 Crimp, Douglas, 15 Cromwell, Jason, 34 cross dressing. See drag; transvestism “Crossing the Line” (Levine), 231 The Crucible (Miller), 143, 144 Dade County (Florida) antigay campaign in, 161–62, 183 n.33 Dahl, Steve, 153, 154, 166–68, 170–75, 176, 178; Antidisco Army and, 171–72; “Do You Think I’m Disco,” 167–68, 170–71. See also discophobia Dancing Madness (Peck, ed.), 162, 168, 184n42 “Daria Dangerous” (Dell), 294 Daughters Inc., 114, 115 Daughters of Bilitis (DOB), 108, 112, 115 Daughters of Darkness (film), 284–85, 287, 289 Davenport, John, 262 Davenport-Hines, Richard, 269, 271, 278–79 Davis, Erin Calhoun, 46–47, 57

306

Index

Deitch, Donna, 114 DeLang, Quincy, 215, 216, 218, 219, 222, 223; trial of, 224–25 Dell, Shawn, 294 Deporting the Divas (Reyes), 76 D’Erasmo, Stacey, 117 Derrida, Jacques, 192, 193 Desert Hearts (film), 114 Desert of the Heart (Rule), 113–14 Dever, Carolyn, 69 Diana Press, 113, 115 The Dirty Girls Social Club (Valdes-Rodriguez), 65–71 discophobia, 153–80; Dahl and, 153, 154, 166–68, 170–75, 176, 178; Disco Demolition (Chicago, 1979), 153–57, 170–75, 178; homophobia and, 161, 163, 175, 176–77; rock music and, 157–59, 160, 163, 164–65; Salute to Disco commemoration (2001), 179–80; Saturday Night Fever and, 162–63, 168, 169–70 “Discophobia” (Vare), 158 “Disco sucks,” 155, 170, 172, 186 n.80 discrimination, 45. See also civil rights Dolan, Jill, 193, 194 Donovan, Casey, 258, 260 Donovan, John, 141 Douglas, Jerry, 258, 259, 260 Downs, Charlotte, 47 Dowsett, Gary, 264 “Do You Think I’m Disco” (parody), 167–68, 170–71 Dracula, in novel and film, 278–81 Dracula’s Daughter (film), 281 drag king, 94 Dragon Country (Williams), 200–202 drag queens, 69, 206 drag queens, in Chicago burlesque, 211–25; Law and Order League and, 212, 213, 214, 215, 218–19,

223; Schuettler and, 212, 213–15, 218–19, 222–23 DTWOF. See Dykes to Watch Out For (Bechdel) Duffy, Carol Ann, 118 Dundes, Alan, 167 Durant, Penny Raife, 141 Dyer, Richard, 268, 272, 274, 277 Dykes to Watch Out For (Bechdel), 81–99, 103; cartoonist in, 88, 89; Clinton impeachment and, 88–89; community in, 83–84, 85, 92, 105; conservative lesbians in, 91; consumerism and, 95; corporate culture and, 92–93; family values and, 89–90; “Gift of the Magi,” 95–97; popular culture in, 86–87, 88, 93, 96, 105; stereotypes in, 85 Edelman, Lee, 169 effeminate men, 168, 170. See also femininity Elias, Les, 172, 173–74 El Paso Wrecking Corp. (film), 257 “Epistemology of the Closet” (Sedgwick), 196 erotic language, 273 The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For (Bechdel), 81, 82, 98–99, 104–5. See also Dykes to Watch Out For ethnicity, 98. See also Latinas Ewen, Stuart, 233, 234 faggots, 168 Falcon Studios, 261 family, public memorials and, 21–23 Family Circus (cartoon), 87, 89–90 family values, 89–90, 177 Farwell, A. B., 212–13, 215–16, 218–19, 223, 224 Faulk, Bertha, 223–24, 225 Fawcett Publications, 125, 130 female impersonators. See drag queens

Index

female-to-male (FTM) transgender, 232, 236, 240, 246, 291. See also Angel, Buck femininity: lesbian, 66, 95, 284; performance of, 72–77 (see also transvestism); princess myth and, 77–78 feminist bookstore, 92–94 feminist movement, 56, 57, 113, 116, 282 feminist politics, 82 feminist press, 113, 114–15, 116 femme fatale, vampires and, 271, 279, 282 fetish, closet as, 204, 205–7 Fiedler, Leslie, 132 Field, Michael, 107 film, lesbian vampires in, 281–86. See also pornography, gay may Finding H. F. (Watts), 147–48, 151 Finiste`re (Peters), 136 Firebrand Books, 104 Florida, anti-gay campaign in, 161–62, 183 n.33 Forrest, Katherine, 116 Foster, Jeanette Howard, 112–13, 117 Foucault, Michel, 194–95, 253 Frankenstein (Shelly), 269 Freedland, Nat, 160 From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun (Woodson), 141–42 The Full Spectrum (Merrell), 150–51 Fun Home (Bechdel), 103–4, 105 Fuss, Diana, 192, 195, 203 G., Amelia, 296 Gabler, Neal, 235 Gage, Joe, 255–56, 256–59 Gajjala, Radhika, 32, 33, 36 Garber, Marjorie, 206 Garden, Nancy, 143–44 Gautier, Theophile, 271 gay civil rights, 156, 161–62, 179, 272

307

The Gay Detective (Rand), 131 gay liberation movement, 159, 160 gay pornography. See pornography, gay male Gay Pulp Fiction collection, 125. See also pulp novels, gay gender: dysphoria, 94; fluidity of, 91, 247; roles, 62–65; transgression of, 169. See also femininity; masculinity Gendercator (film), 56 Gender Outlaw (Bornstein), 232 gender performance, 193–94, 232–33, 236; Buck Angel and, 237–39. See also drag queens; transvestism Gender Trouble (Butler), 232–33 “Geographies of Learning” (Dolan), 193 “Gift of the Magi” (Bechdel), 95–97 Gilbert, Sandra, 93 “The Gilda Stories” (Gomez), 295 Gillis, John R., 4 Giovanni’s Room (Baldwin), 129–30 The Glass Menagerie (Williams), 200 Godfrey, Alex, 245 Goldberger, Paul, 22 Gomez, Jewelle, 295 good girl-bad girl dichotomy, 67–68, 282, 283–84 Good Moon Rising (Garden), 143–44 “The Gossip” (Rockwell), 98–99 Gothic novels, 268–69, 272, 279 Goth subculture, vampires and, 289, 290, 292, 293, 296 Gozzi, Raymond, 235 Grahn, Judy, 115 Grammy Awards, 165, 178 Greenberg, Jay, 128 Greenfield, Beth, 236 Griggs, Claudine, 231–32, 243 Grimke, Angelina Weld, 113 Griswold, Charles L., 14 Gross, Larry, 35–36

308

Index

Gubar, Susan, 93 Guild Press, 127, 133 Gunn, Drewey Wayne, 131 H. D. (Hilda Doolittle), 115 Hacker, Marilyn, 116 Haggerty, George E., 269 Halberstram, Judith, 36, 55–56 Hale, C. Jacob, 40–45, 48 Hall, Radcliffe, 111 Halsted, Fred, 257 Hansberry, Lorraine, 112 “Hard Candy” (Williams), 197–98 Hardesty, Rolf, 260 Hard Love (Wittlinger), 148–49 Hart, Frederick, 3, 8 Hawkins, Peter S., 9–10 healing process, in commemoration, 21–22 Heap, Jane, 109 Heatstroke (film), 258–59 Hell’s Angels. See “biker outlaw”persona Henry, O.: “Gift of the Magi,” 97 HERmione (H. D.), 115 heteronormativity, 72, 74, 272; antidisco backlash and, 156, 167, 168, 170, 174 Highsmith, Patricia, 113 Hillyer, Lambert, 281 “His Mouth Will Taste of Wormwood” (Brite), 292–93 HIV/AIDS, 1, 23, 142. See also AIDS Hoang, Tan, 33, 36 Hollinghurst, Alan, 259 homology, 235 homophobia, 69, 131, 132, 147; discophobia and, 161, 163, 175, 176–77; vampire metaphor and, 268, 283; in William’s writing, 197–98, 203, 206 The Homosexual and His Society (Sagarin & Sheer), 134

The Homosexual in America (Sagarin), 133–34 Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 98, 104 “The Hound” (Brite), 293 The House of the Vampire (Viereck), 279–80, 281 The House You Pass On the Way (Woodson), 144–45 Hoyer, Niels, 134 Hudson, Rock, 12 The Hunger (film), 287–89 I Can’t Imagine Tomorrow (Williams), 200–201 identity, 34–37, 242; gender, 91, 247 If You Come Softly (Woodson), 142 I’ll Get There, It Better Be Worth the Trip (Donovan), 141 Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (Pratt), 52 In Hot Pursuit (film), 262 Internet. See transgender women, Internet and Interview with a Vampire (Rice), 286–87 In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel (Williams), 199, 201 Israel, David, 174 I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing (film), 114 Jacobs, Harvey, 291 Janion, Maria, 272, 278 Jeffords, Susan, 156 Jones, Cleve, 3, 8, 16, 23, 28 n.44. See also NAMES Project Jorgensen, Christine, 134 Joyce, James, 109–10 Joy of Gay Sex (White), 160–61 Kammen, Michael, 4 Kansas City Trucking Co. (film), 256, 257 Keats, John, 270–71

Index

Keightly, Keir, 158, 166 Kemble, Fanny, 119 Kinsey Reports, 133 Kline, Salli, 278 Krzywinska, Tanya, 282–83 L.A. Tool and Die (film), 258 The Ladder (publication), 112, 115 Lady of the Serpent Skirt, 49 Lait, Jack, 134–35 Lamas, Colleen, 72–73 Lambda Literary Award Winners. See coming out, in young adult novels “Lamia” (Keats), 270–71 Langer, Susan, 194 Larsen, Nella, 110–11 Latinas, 41, 51, 52; Anzaldu´a, 45–49, 55, 61, 67, 71, 72; Cisneros, 62–65; gender role revision and, 62–65; lesbian sexuality and, 65–71; Martı´nez, 71–79; in popular fiction, 61–79; princess myth and, 77–78; transvestism and, 71–77; Valdes-Rodriguez, 65–71 The Latino Male: A Radical Redefinition (Abalos), 61 Latinos, disco and, 159–60, 164 Lawrence, Tim, 159 “L’Chaim!” (Jacobs), 291 LeFanu, Sheridan, 271–72, 274, 281–82 Legosi, Be´la, 280, 289 Leigh, Michael, 135 lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, and queer (LGBTQ), 57, 140–41, 151 Lesbian and Gay Writing (Lilly), 199 lesbian comic strip. See Dykes to Watch Out For (Bechdel) lesbian literature, 103–19; coming out theme in, 116; feminist press and, 113, 114–15, 116; poetry, 115–16, 118–19; pulp novels, 111,

309

113; Sappho and, 106–9, 111, 112, 119; women’s liberation movement and, 114–15 lesbian sexuality, in Latina fiction, 65–71 lesbian vampires, in film and novels, 281–86, 295; good girl-bad girl dichotomy, 282, 283–84; The Hunger, 287–89 Letters in the Attic (Shimko), 144, 145 Levine, Richard, 231 Levithan, David, 148, 149–50 Lewis, Matthew, 269 LGBTQ. See lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, and queer Liberace, 12 Lilly, Mark, 199 Linenthal, Edward T., 21 literature. See coming out, in young adult novels; lesbian literature; pulp novels, gay The Little Review, 109, 111 Llorona (weeping woman) myth, 62–63, 64–65 Locke, Richard, 257–59 London, Lisa, 86 Long Ago (Field), 107 Lorde, Audre, 115 Lost Souls (film), 289–90 Louy¨s, Pierre, 108–9 Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons (Hacker), 116 Lovecraft, H. P., 293, 294 Lowenthal, David, 2 Lust for a Vampire (film), 282, 284, 285 MacDonald, Eleanor, 36, 46, 58 n.3 macha, 63, 64–65 machismo, 67–69 macho style, for gay men, 254–56 Maddison, Stephen, 74–75 The Madwoman in the Attic (Gilbert & Gubar), 93 male gaze, 54, 81

310

Index

male-to-female (MTF) transgender, 232, 244 Malinowitz, Harriet, 86 Man from C.A.M.P. novels (Banis), 126, 127, 129, 131–32 Man Into Woman (Hoyer), 134 “Manor” (Ulrichs), 272–74 “The Man with a Pussy.” See Angel, Buck marriage, 63 Marsh, Dave, 172–73 Martı´nez, Nina Marie: Caramba!, 71–77; princess myth and, 77–78; transvestism and, 71–77 masculinity, 63, 70; anal sex and, 259, 260–61, 263–64; antidisco backlash and, 156, 167, 170; “biker outlaw” persona, 229–30, 243–45, 247; gay macho, 254–56; in gay pornography, 253–64; mortality and, 260–63; performance of, 238–39; traditional, 68 Massad, Joseph, 57 Masters, Scott, 259 masturbation, 259 Material Culture and Mass Consumption (Miller), 233 Maxey, Wallace de Ortega, 128 Meaker, Marijane, 130–31 Memoirs (Williams), 206 Merlo, Frank, 195, 198 Merrell, Billy, 150–51 Metonymy, 204 Miller, Daniel, 233 Miller, Isabel, 114 misogyny, 284 Mitra, Rahul, 32, 33, 36 Mohr, Richard D., 7 The Monk (Lewis), 269 Monnier, Adrienne, 109, 110 Moral Majority, 162 Morse, Selina, 53–54 Mortimer, Lee, 134–35

Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing (Sarton), 113, 114 Mullins, Hillary, 142–43 Mulvey, Laura, 204–5 My Thirty Years’ War (Anderson), 111 Naiad Press, 113, 116, 117 NAMES Project, 10, 20–21, 22, 24 n.1, 29 n.50; democratization of, 5, 6–7; ownership issues, 16; public vs. private, 14, 15. See also AIDS Memorial Quilt New Right groups, 162, 177 Newsweek magazine, 163, 164, 165, 168–69 New York Times, 127, 129, 158, 165, 230; Clark’s Female Minstrels and, 219, 220 Nicomachean Ethics (Aristotle), 106 Nightwood (Barnes), 111 North, Maureen, 168–69 Northrup, Christiane, 96 Nosferatu (film), 280 Nova Studios, 259–60 O’Donnell, Charles F., 222, 223, 224 Oklahoma City National Memorial, 19, 20, 21, 23 Oliver, Mary, 118–19 Oliver, Ron, 291–92 Olivia (Bussey), 112 Orlando (Woolf), 110, 111 Osgerby, Bill, 243–44 Ossenfelder, Heinrich August, 269 outing: media response to, 69; stigma of, 5–6. See also coming out; Williams, Tennessee “The Oval Portrait” (Poe), 275 Ovid, 112 Packer, Vin, 130–31 pansexuality, in pornography, 259 paperback books, 124. See also pulp novels, gay

Index

Parikhal, John, 176, 177 Parker, Al, 255, 260 passing, 232 Passing (Larsen), 110–11 Patience and Sarah (Miller), 114 Peirce, Kimberly, 55–56 Peraino, Judith, 159 performance, 236. See also gender performance “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution” (Butler), 193–94 Peters, Arthur A. (Fritz), 136 Peters, Julie Anne, 148, 150 Phelan, Peggy, 195 The Picture of Dorian Gray (Wilde), 274–76 Pizarnik, Alejandra, 284 A Place for Us (Miller), 114 Pocket Books, 124, 125 Poe, Edgar Allan, 275, 289 The Poetics of Space (Bachelard), 197 poetry, lesbian: contemporary, 118–19; of 1970s, 115–16; Sappho and, 106–9, 110, 111 Polidori, John, 269, 270, 276 political culture: advertising and, 94–95; commemoration and, 16–23; 9/11 memorial and, 19, 20–21; Oklahoma City memorial and, 19, 20, 21, 23; survivors/ family and, 21–23; transgender, 230–33; Vietnam Memorial and, 16–17 Poma de Ayala, Felipe Guaman, 52 popular fiction. See Latinas, in popular fiction; pulp novels, gay Popular Library, 134 pornography, gay male, 253–64; anal sex in, 259, 260–61, 263–64; macho style, 254–56; masculinity vs. mortality in, 260–63; performance in, 239; road movies, 256–60; “straight”

311

men in, 260, 262; transsexuals in, 236–37, 244, 263 power relations, vampires and, 267–68, 286–91 Powertool (film), 262–63 Pratt, Mary Louise, 47–48, 52–53 The Price of Salt (Morgan), 113 Prins, Yopi, 106 Production Code, 280 Pronger, Brian, 263–64 public commemoration, 1–24; democratic representation in, 4–7; healing process in, 21–22; invention and reception of, 7–11; new politics of, 16–23; public vs. private spheres, 11–16, 22–23; survivors/family and, 21–23. See also AIDS memorial quilt; Vietnam Veterans Memorial Publishing Triangle, 129 pulp novels, gay, 111, 113, 123–37; brief history of, 123–25; censorship and, 125, 128–29; cover art, 135–36; Man from C.A.M.P. novels, 126, 127, 129, 131–32; nonfiction, 133–35; writing and distribution of, 125–28 queer vampires. See lesbian vampires; vampires, in novels and films Quinn, George, 215, 216, 218, 219, 222, 223; trial of, 224–25 Rachel (Grinke), 113 racism, 164. See also African Americans A Raisin in the Sun (Hansberry), 112 Rand, Lou, 131 “Rebel” persona, 229–30, 243–45 Reyes, Guillermo, 76 rhetorical personae, 233–36 Rhetoric of Style (Brummett), 229, 235 Robbins, Trina, 86

312

Index

Rock music culture, discophobia and, 157–59, 160, 163, 164–65, 171, 172 Rockwell, Norman, 98–99 Rodriguez, Frank, 259 Roen, Katrina, 230–31, 239, 248 Rolling Stone magazine, 165, 168, 172–73, 176 Rosales, Cecilia, 73, 75 Rose, Frank, 170, 175, 176 Roseneil, Sasha, 61–62, 71, 75 Rubyfruit Jungle (Brown), 114 Rule, Jane, 113–14 RuPaul, 52–53 Ryan, Kay, 118 Sagarin, Edward, 127, 128, 133–34 Sam (Coleman), 130 Sanchez, Alex, 147, 148 Sappho, 106–9, 111, 112, 119 Sarton, May, 113, 114 Saturday Night Fever (film), 162–63, 168, 169–70 Save Our Children (SOC), 161–62 Savran, David, 195, 199, 202 Schaeffer-Grabiel, Felicity, 34–35, 41, 42, 51, 52, 55 Schlichter, Annette, 58 Schreck, Max, 280 Schuettler, Herman F., 212, 213–15, 218–19, 222–23 Schulman, Sarah, 116; Ties That Bind, 117–18 Scruggs, Jan, 8 Seagers, Will, 258 Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky, 181 n.9, 196, 203, 204 self-actualization, 42, 51 Selvadurai, Shyam, 144, 145–47 September 11 (2001) memorials, 19, 20–21

sex reassignment surgery (SRS), 31, 35, 37, 40, 42, 134. See also transgender sexuality, 247 “Sexuality versus Gender” (Lamas), 72–73 Sex-Variant Women in Literature (Foster), 112–13 Seyrig, Delphine, 284 S/He: Changing Sex and Changing Clothes (Griggs), 231–32 Shelley, Mary, 269 Shelley, Percy, 269 Sheltering Sky (Bowles), 136 Sherman, Cindy, 54 Shimko, Bonnie, 144, 145 Siegel, Carol, 290 Signet, 136 Skujins, Ruta, 93 Sloop, John, 229, 232, 246, 248 Small Craft Warnings (Williams), 197, 198 Smith, Amber, 38, 51 Snyder, Tom, 175 social style, 248; Buck Angel, 237–45; rhetorical personae and, 233–36; working-class, 240, 243 So Hard to Say (Sanchez), 147, 148 Sollberger, Eva, 83 Song of the Loon (Amory), 132 Sontag, Susan, 37 South Atlantic Quarterly, 196 SRS. See sex reassignment surgery Stahl, Alexander, 217 States of Desire (White), 254 Stein, Gertrude, 110 Sterling, Matt, 255, 261 Stern, Nikki, 22 Stoker, Bram, 278, 291 Stone, Allucque´re, 35 Stonewall Riots (New York, 1969), 159 A Streetcar Named Desire (Williams), 200, 206, 210 nn.47–48

Index

Strieber, Whitley, 287 Stryker, Jeff, 256, 260–62 Stryker, Susan, 129–30 Sturken, Marita, 24 Suddenly Last Summer (Williams), 198–99 suicide, 112 Swimming in the Monsoon Sea (Selvadurai), 144, 145–47 “The Tale of Christina” (Tan), 295 Tan, Cecilia, 295 Tarn, Pauline, 107 Taylor, Valerie, 113 Tea, Michelle, 117 Tea (D’Erasmo), 117 Thelma and Louise (film), 87 Three Guineas (publication), 110 Ties That Bind (Schulman), 117–18 Time Out New York, 229 Toklas, Alice B., 110 tolerance, 150, 197 Tom of Finland, 259 transgender identity, 134, 244; female-to-male, 232, 236, 240, 246, 291; politics of, 230–33. See also Angel, Buck Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman (Feinberg), 230 transgender women, Internet and, 31–58; Anzaldu´a and, 45–49, 55; fluid identity and, 34–37; Hale and, 40–45; methods, 39–40; Pratt and, 47–48, 52–53; sex reassignment surgery, 31, 35, 37, 40, 42; standpoint and objectives, 38–39; study overview, 37–38; transculturation and, 52–55 transsexuals, in porn industry, 236–37, 244, 263 transvestism, 193–94; True-Dee in Caramba!, 71–77. See also drag queens

313

Travis, John, 261, 262 Travolta, John, 162, 168, 169–70 “The True Story of a Vampire” (Stenbock), 276–78 Twitchell, James B., 274 Ulrichs, Karl Heinrich: “Manor,” 272–74 Ulysses (Joyce), 109–10 Untermeyer, Louis, 107 U.S. Marine Corps Memorial, 5 Valdes-Rodriguez, Alisa, 65–71 Vampire Lovers (film), 283, 285 The Vampire Lovers (film), 281–82 vampires, in novels and films, 257–96; “Carmilla,“ 271–72, 274, 277, 281–82; Dracula, 278–81; femme fatale, 271, 279, 282; Gothic novels, 268–69, 272, 279; Goth subculture and, 289, 290, 292, 293, 296; homoerotic bonds in, 291–96; lesbian, in films, 281–86, 287–89, 295; The Picture of Dorian Gray, 274–76; power relations in, since 1970s, 286–91; “The True Story of a Vampire,” 276–78; victimization in, 274, 276–77, 278, 282, 288, 291 “The Vampyre” (Polidori), 269, 270 Vare, Robert, 158 Veeck, Mike, 153, 172, 173, 179–80 The Velvet Underground (Leigh), 135 victimization, in vampire stories, 274, 276–77, 278, 282, 288, 291 Victorian Sappho (Prins), 106 Vidal, Gore, 129 Viereck, George Sylvester, 279–80, 287 Vietnam Veterans Memorial (VVM), 2–4, 5, 23; democratic representation in, 5, 7; “offerings” added to, 10; politics of commemoration and, 16–17; public vs. private spheres,

314

Index

11–12, 14; sculptures added to, 3, 8–9 Vietnam Women’s Memorial, 8 Village People (disco group), 165, 171 Village Voice (weekly), 171, 175, 176, 238 virgin/whore dichotomy, 67–68. See also good girl/bad girl dichotomy Vivien, Rene´e, 107, 108, 117 vulgar language, 241 VVM. See Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall, Jac, 13, 14 Walpole, Horace, 268–69 “Wanting” (G), 296 Washington Confidential (Lait & Mortimer), 134–35 Washington Post, 168, 169–70, 178 Water, Sarah, 116 Watts, Julie, 147–48, 151 We Are All Lesbians (anthology), 115 Web sites, 238. See also transgender women, Internet and Weeks, Jeffery, 155, 162 The Well of Loneliness (Hall), 111 We Too Are Drifting (Wilhelm), 111 When Heroes Die (Durant), 141, 142 Whisper His Sin (Packer), 130–31 White, Edmund, 160–61, 254, 256 Wilde, Oscar, 278, 291, 292; The Picture of Dorian Gray, 274–76 Wilhelm, Gale, 111 Williams, Tennessee, queer space and, 191–207; closet as fetish, 204,

205–7; Dragon Country, 200–202; “Hard Candy,” 197–98; inside/ outside debate, 191–205; A Streetcar Named Desire, 206, 210 nn.47–48; Suddenly Last Summer, 198–99 Winant, Fran, 115 The Wisdom of Menopause (Northrup), 96 Wittinger, Ellen, 148–49 WKTU (disco radio station), 163, 177–78 WLUP-FM (Chicago), 153, 154, 167, 172, 173–74, 176. See also Discophobia Womack, H. Lynn, 127 “Woman Hollering Creek” (Cisneros), 62–65, 71 women’s liberation movement, 114–15. See also feminism; feminist Wood, Martin J., 286 Woodland, Randal, 31–33, 46, 48 Woodson, Jacqueline, 141–42, 144–45 Woolf, Virginia, 110, 111 Woolfe, Kate, 86 Wrangler, Jack, 257 young adult literature (YAL). See coming out, in young adult novels Zarembo, Alan, 15–16, 29 n.50 Zimmerman, Bonnie, 281, 285

About the Editor and Contributors

EDITOR Jim Elledge’s most recent book, A History of My Tattoo (Stonewall, 2006), won the Lambda Award for poetry and was a finalist for the Thom Gunn Award. His collection of prose poems, H, an impressionistic biography of Henry Darger, is due from Busman’s Holiday Press in 2011. His poems have appeared in Barrow Street, Denver Quarterly, Five Fingers Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Indiana Review, North American Review, Paris Review, and others. His essay on Tina Turner, “Tina and I,” appears in My Diva: 65 Gay Men on the Women Who Inspire Them (ed. Michael Montlack, 2009), and his “Dunstan Thompson’s ‘beautiful and butcher beast’ Unleashed and on the Prowl” is forthcoming in Dunstan Thompson: On the Life and Work of a Lost American Master (eds. D. A. Powell and Kevin Prufer, 2010). He directs the MA in Professional Writing Program at Kennesaw State University, just outside of Atlanta, and the Writers Workshop of Puerto Rico, a summer study program in San Juan, Puerto Rico. CONTRIBUTORS Rita Antoni is a doctoral candidate and member of the Gender Studies Research Group at the Institute of English and American Studies, University of Szeged, Hungary. She also has an MA in philosophy. Her field of research includes the intersection of Gothic Studies and Gender Studies (the femme fatale figure in literature; female vampires and gender; the monstrous-feminine); philosophy and Gothic/horror

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(ontological, epistemological, moral implications, alternative history/ anthropology); the Gothic/horror as social criticism; the vampire figure in literature and film; and philosophical reflections on the subject and intersubjectivity in terms of power relations. Recently she has extended her research on Goth subculture. Carole Blair (BA, MA Iowa; PhD, Penn State) is Professor of Communication Studies, Adjunct Professor of American Studies, and Fellow of the Institute for the Arts and Humanities at the University of North Carolina. She studies U.S. national commemorative places and practices, focusing especially on their advocacy of different versions of nation and citizenship. Her interests are in how national commemorative art and building changed over the course of the twentieth century, in terms of: content (who or what was commemorated), form (by what design formulae, cultural resources, and institutional supports), and context (political, geographic, and cultural). She is co-editor, with Greg Dickinson and Brian Ott, of Places of Public Memory: The Rhetoric of Museums and Memorials (Alabama, 2010) and is working on a project with Neil Michel and Bill Balthrop on U.S. First World War commemoration in Europe. Her research has been recognized with a number of national awards. Sarah Boslaugh, PhD, MPH, is an instructor at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri, and a freelance writer, editor, and statistical consultant. Her most recent books include Statistics in a Nutshell (O’Reilly, 2008) and The Encyclopedia of Epidemiology (Sage, 2007) for which she served as editor-in-chief. She also writes for several popular culture Web sites, including talkinbroadway.com, popmatters.com, and playbackstl.com. Julie R. Enszer completed her undergraduate degree in English and Women’s Studies at the University of Michigan in 1990 and received an MFA in poetry from the University of Maryland in 2008. She is working on her PhD in Women’s Studies at the University of Maryland, where she is the recipient of a Flagship Fellowship. She has published poems in Room of One’s Own, Long Shot, Feminist Studies, Bridges, So to Speak, and many other journals. Handmade Love, her first collection of poems, was published by A Midsummer Night’s Press in 2010. Her essays and columns have been featured in The Washington Blade, Alternet, off our backs, and the anthology Second Person Queer. She worked for many years in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender movement

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in the United States, including as the director of the gay and lesbian community center in metropolitan Detroit. Jeffrey Escoffier writes on sexuality, gay history, and politics. He is the author of Bigger Than Life: The History of Gay Porn Cinema from Beefcake to Hardcore (Running Press/Perseus Book Group, 2009) and American Homo: Community and Perversity (University of California Press, 1998). He also edited Sexual Revolution (Thunder’s Mouth, 2003), a compilation of the most important writing on sex published in the 1960s and 1970s. He has taught economics, LGBT studies, and sexuality at San Francisco State University, the University of California at Berkeley and at Davis, Rutgers University, and the New School University. For the last decade, he has worked in health media and communications in New York City. From 2007 to 2009 he was a Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality of New York University. Anne Fleche is Assistant Professor of English at Boston College, where she teaches modern drama, film, and critical theory. She has completed a book on Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams, and mimetic theory, and is now writing a book on gender theory and theatricality in drama, film, fiction, and autobiography. Gillian Frank is a PhD candidate in the Department of American Civilization at Brown University. He researches the histories of sexuality, popular culture, women’s activism, and childhood in the twentiethcentury United States. He is currently completing a dissertation titled “Save Our Children: The Sexual Politics of Child Protection in the United States, 1965–1990.” Judith Kegan Gardiner is Professor of English and of Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She wrote Craftsmanship in Context: The Development of Ben Jonson’s Poetry and Rhys, Stead, Lessing, and the Politics of Empathy. She is the editor of Provoking Agents: Gender and Agency in Theory and Practice (1995) and Masculinity Studies and Feminist Theory (2002) and is the co-editor of The International Encyclopedia of Men and Masculinities (2007). She is a member of the editorial collective of the interdisciplinary journal Feminist Studies and co-editor with Michael Kimmel of the Palgrave book series on Global Masculinities. Among her articles, “ ‘South Park,’ Blue Men, Anality, and Market Masculinity” appeared in Men and

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Masculinities in 2000. Forthcoming essays include “Phallic Migrations: From Female Masculinity to Chicks with Dicks,” in Transgender Migrations, ed. Trystan Cotton, and “Men, Transmen and Feminist Theories,” in Troublemakers: First Issues. Carlnita P. Greene is an Assistant Professor of Communication & Rhetoric at Nazareth College of Rochester. In 2006, Dr. Greene obtained her PhD in Communication Studies from the University of Texas at Austin, where she also earned a Doctoral Portfolio from the Ame`rcio Paredes Center for Cultural Studies. Her research can be broadly defined as the intersection of rhetorical theory and popular culture. She has previously published on subjects as diverse as food culture and the media, identity and social style, rhetorical theory in the twenty-first century, and popular culture and pedagogy. R. J. Lambert is an Assistant Instructor of English at the University of Texas at El Paso, where he is a doctoral student in Rhetoric and Writing Studies. He has contributed to Borderlands (2006; 2009), Copper Nickel (2007), Rio Grande Review (2009), and Harpur Palate (2010), and co-founded and edited Bat City Review (2005). He would like to acknowledge the National Association for Ethnic Studies (NAES) Annual Conference, where he presented an earlier version of his essay in March 2005. Katherine Mason joined the English Education faculty at Kennesaw State University in 2006 after teaching middle school English and reading in Kansas City, Kansas. She seeks out opportunities to connect her teaching, scholarly work, and service and has published her research on second language acquisition, cooperative learning, writing instruction, and young adult literature with LGBTQ content. Neil Michel is a partner at Axiom, a commercial art studio in Davis, California. He is also Vice President of Prosper Media, where he directs the design and development of projects in Web, video, and Web-based software. He received his M.A. from the University of California, Davis in 1993. As a commercial and editorial photographer, Michel’s work has appeared nationwide in books, brochures, newspapers, and magazines, including The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Washington Post, San Jose Mercury News, Sacramento Bee, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Science Magazine, The Journal of the American Medical Association, Landscape Architecture Magazine, Triathlete

About the Editor and Contributors

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Magazine, and Running Times. Michel’s academic work blends rhetoric, cultural studies, and photography. His research on the history and evolution of American memorials with Carole Blair appears in numerous academic journals and anthologies. Anne R. Richards is an assistant professor of English at Kennesaw State University, where she teaches visual rhetoric and technical writing in light of culture and gender studies. Richards has recently edited, with Carol David, Writing the Visual: A Practical Guide for Teachers of Composition and Communication (Parlor Press, 2008) and is about to publish Complex Worlds: Digital Culture, Rhetoric, and Professional Communication (Baywood) with co-editor Adrienne Lamberti. Richards was a Fulbright Fellow in Tunisia in AY from 2007 to 2008.

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Queers in American Popular Culture

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Queers in American Popular Culture Volume 3 Sports, Leisure, and Lifestyle

JIM ELLEDGE, EDITOR

Praeger Perspectives

Copyright 2010 by Jim Elledge All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Queers in American popular culture / Jim Elledge, editor. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–313–35457–1 (set. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978–0–313–35458–8 (set : ebook) 1. Gays in popular culture—United States. I. Elledge, Jim, 1950– HQ76.3.U5Q447 2010 2010023183 306.760 60973—dc22 ISBN: 978–0–313–35457–1 EISBN: 978–0–313–35458–8 14 13 12 11 10

1 2 3 4 5

This book is also available on the World Wide Web as an eBook. Visit www.abc-clio.com for details. Praeger An Imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC ABC-CLIO, LLC 130 Cremona Drive, P.O. Box 1911 Santa Barbara, California 93116-1911 This book is printed on acid-free paper Manufactured in the United States of America

For David

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Contents

Set Introduction Jim Elledge Chapter 1: Marry, Mary!(Quite Contrary): Homosexual Marriage in ONE Magazine, 1953–1959 C. Todd White

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Chapter 2: Queer Appetites, Butch Cooking: Recipes for Lesbian Subjectivities Katharina Vester

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Chapter 3: Advertising: Gays Conquer Another Media Venue Rodger Streitmatter

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Chapter 4: “We’re Paying Customers Too”: Gay Viewers Call for the Conspicuous Representation of Gay Characters Lyn J. Freymiller

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Chapter 5: Dropkicks, Body Slams, and Glitter: The Queer Image in North American Pro-Wrestling Bryan Luis Pacheco

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Chapter 6: Babylon Baseball: When the Pitcher Catches Mark John Isola

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Chapter 7: Communitarian Considerations for the Coverage of “Outed” Athletes Richard Kenney

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Chapter 8: “It Is Just Something Greek; That’s All”: Eugen Sandow—Queer Father of Modern Body Building” Jim Elledge

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Chapter 9: RuPaul: Fashioning Queer Alison Bancroft

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Chapter 10: Boi’s Story Barclay Barrios

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Chapter 11: He’s My Gay Mother: Ballroom Houses, Housework, and Parenting Marlon M. Bailey

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Chapter 12: From the Margins to the Mainstream: Communication about Travel and Tourism in the Gay Community, 1960–2000 David R. Coon

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Chapter 13: Pride Translated: The Gay Carnival, San Francisco 2008 Christal Seahorn

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Chapter 14: A Thin Line Between Being Straight or Gay: Portrayal of Lesbian Women in Advertising Malgorzata Skorek

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Chapter 15: “Seeing Is the Tithe, Not the Prize”: Queer Femme Gender Expression in the 1990s and Current Decade Anika Stafford

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Chapter 16: Celebrating Ostara: A Ritual Performance by Gay Male Contemporary Pagans John S. Gentile

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Chapter 17: Matthew Shepard: Giving a Human Face to Anti-Gay Violence Rodger Streitmatter

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Index

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About the Editor and Contributors

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Set Introduction Jim Elledge

Queers in American Popular Culture attempts to cover, in a comprehensive way, the presence of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and the transgendered persons in popular culture venues of the United States. Although largely post-Stonewall in scope, this three-volume set also, at times, investigates queers and their representation in periods as early as the late 1880s. The topics covered may be new to a non-queer readership (and even to some queer readers), perhaps even strange to them, but they are always eye opening and thought provoking. While most readers will have seen episodes of Will & Grace or may even be diehard fans of the popular television sitcom, for example, only a handful will have heard of—much less seen—the post-op, female-to-male-with-a-vagina porn star, Buck Angel. Fewer yet will have been enthralled by his body, his rugged sexuality, and his sexual appetite(s). Transforming from man to woman to pop icon, RuPaul has “sashayed shante” very visibly across Billboard’s charts, becoming the best-known drag queen entertainer in the United States and across the globe since Boy George. Yet while RuPaul is taking her turn on the catwalk, “boi”—a personality as important to contemporary queer culture as the fairy was to our grandfathers and grandmothers a century ago—scoots along the streets, hangs out, and clubs hard virtually unknown and unnoticed by all but those in the know. Queers in American Popular Culture gives notice to, and provides a forum for discussion about, both “boi” and Buck Angel, along with the much more visible RuPaul and Will.

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Queers in American Popular Culture attempts to be comprehensive and strives diligently to obtain that goal. The number of possible topics to cover is so immense that it would be impossible to produce a work that truly covered, even only minimally, every queer topic and every queer personality in American popular culture. Queers have been associated with U.S. popular culture for so long now that many of those involved with it, their representations in it, and what they produced have simply faded away—“like sand through the hour glass”—from current, cultural awareness. Those of us of a certain age will remember when the country’s attention was focused on Glenn Burke and Colonel Martgarethe Cammermeyer or when Torch Song Trilogy and Go Fish caused a stir, although not one of them is mentioned in these pages. The truth is that what was once so important to gay men, for example, has now all but vanished from the scene. Beginning with the riots at the Stonewall Inn in New York’s Greenwich Village during the last weekend of July 1969 and for the next two or three decades thereafter, personalities like Paul Lynde, who was a regular “center square”—an oxymoronic handle if there ever was one—on the TV game show Hollywood Squares, was perhaps the most recognizable queer funny man to most Americans. During the approximate same period of time in which Lynde was delivering belly laughs, many of the diehard fans who watched the wigged-out, dark comedy Soap became fascinated by the quirky boy-next-door Jodie Dallas, played by Billy Crystal, a less bitchy and bitter, and a more bittersweet, character than Lynde’s persona. Jodie, who did not elicit the guffaws that Lynde did, tempered the image most Americans had when they thought of queer men. A third personality appeared during the same period, one that would further complicate the image. Hunky, handsome, blonde Steven Carrington of the nighttime soap opera Dynasty, a number-one hit within a few seasons, got no laughs, only ooohs and ahhhs. He quickly won the hearts of gay men and imaginative straight women alike. Played first by Al Corey, then by Jack Coleman, Steven seemed, at the time and to many gay men, to be the first “realistic” depiction of a gay character, one who struggled with his sexual identity and took missteps, but eventually “got it together.” He was vastly different from both Lynde and Jodie. As important as these three television personalities were in queer male popular culture in the 1970s and 1980s, few remember them now and, perhaps, even fewer care. There were many others, including lesbians and bisexuals, who like Paul Lynde, Jodie Dallas, and Steven Carrington would become

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well-known, even liked, admired, and emulated, gathering a large fan base and accruing large revenues—and a great deal of right-wing, fundamentalist hatred—but each has now been edged out by the new. Typically, what any book like Queers in American Popular Culture covers depends, to a large extent, on what is currently hot, what is currently the buzz, what is currently aflutter in our—queers’ and non-queers’—collective consciousnesses: gay marriage, Ennis and Jack (or is it Heath and Jake?), Ellen, and so on. In short, currency is all too often the capital for critical or scholarly interest in popular culture whether we want it to be or not. Nevertheless, Queers in American Popular Culture purposefully includes a number of chapters that cover topics that are not currently hot, not the buzz, nor even vaguely on our minds as we drive or walk or take the subway to and from work, but which have a timeless value. Certainly, we do not typically mull over the place of lesbian and gay pulp fiction in the larger, non-queer culture during coffee breaks, nor do most of us ponder lesbian cookbooks (of which there are a surprising number) while eating a Big Mac at lunch. Yet in these volumes, some little-thought-of subjects as well as some forgotten personalities point out the fact to us over and over again that popular culture, and the queer’s place in it, is remarkably vast and varied, flexible, and timeless. Even some topics covered in Queers in American Popular Culture that are current have had lives in previous eras. Some were extant and even recorded decades before the dawn of the twentieth century, helping in their own way to give birth to the Pansy Craze, approximately a decade and a half or so (from the 1920s through the mid-1930s) in which gay men were quite visible, particularly on stage and screen but also in restaurants, department stores, on the streets, and elsewhere. By 1935 or so, the pansy began to fade from popular culture. Through the 1940s and 1950s, and almost to the close of the 1960s—decades that are often dubbed the Lavender Scare—queers, so visible during the Pansy Craze, were forced into invisibility, finding refuge in the closet. Police raided their meeting places time after time and closed them. They were arrested, tried, jailed—then fired from their jobs, expelled from their families, and rejected by their friends. During the Lavender Scare, if popular culture represented queers at all, they were targets of ridicule, paranoia, even outright hatred. As one might expect, the majority of the chapters in a set of books like Queers in American Popular Culture will focus on television and film, not because those two media are more important in queer

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popular culture than others are, but because they are the most accessible of all popular culture venues and so are the most “popular” of all, what most people think of when they think about popular culture. Whether developed by heterosexuals or queers, the popular culture scene in which queers find their most immediate and overt representation these days is in TV Land. The vast majority of U.S. citizens have television sets, often very large ones and often more than one per household, and the producers of television programs have found that some series with substantial queer representation have been a lucrative business proposition. (Advertisers, too, have come to realize that such programs bring in the loot.) Queers in American Popular Culture does not ignore television and film. It acknowledges both, and it puts them on equal par with other popular culture venues. Said in a different way, “popular culture” is far larger than sitcoms on the boob tube or flicks on the silver screen. In fact, television and the cinema, as popular as each is in our culture, are only two facets of a multifaceted phenomenon that includes sports, fashion, literature, art, music, performances of various sorts, advertising (in popular magazines and even on television: between individual programs and within the programs themselves), and the Internet that, as many believe, is giving both television and the film industry a run for their money. The chapters in Queers in American Popular Culture are divided into large categories that highlight the range of popular culture venues. Volume 1 is devoted to television and film; Volume 2 contains chapters on many different topics, among them, popular art, the Internet, popular literature, performance, and youth-related subjects; and Volume 3 covers advertising, fashion, leisure, lifestyle, and sports. These categories are decidedly subjective, and a different editor might have arranged the volumes quite differently. All but four of the chapters have never appeared elsewhere in print before, giving this three-volume set a fresh approach that is rare in other popular culture anthologies. As readers of these pages will quickly discover, each of the authors is an acute observer of U.S. popular culture and the queer’s place in it. In fact, contributors to Queers in American Popular Culture include a number of scholars from countries other than the United States. Also unlike other anthologies on similar topics, “popular culture” is broadly defined by the authors whose chapters fill the three volumes’ pages to cover what many might not think of as “popular culture” in its narrowest definition. In short, while the expected is certainly represented in Queers in American Popular Culture, the unexpected has also

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found its way into the collections. Readers will expect chapters on Brokeback Mountain, The L Word, and Queer as Folk in Volume 1, for example, but they will also be delighted to discover chapters on Noah’s Arc, a series on Logo about a group of African-American gay men in Los Angeles, and on queers in 1970s blaxploitation films, and on gay themes/representations in animation. Students who open Volume 2 will probably anticipate finding a chapter on gay pulps and Dykes to Watch Out For, but they will be surprised by chapters on lesbianism in Latina popular literature, on queer vampires, on the blogs of transwomen, or on pornography. Also, readers of Volume 3 might be amazed to read that the concept of gay marriage has been discussed since the 1950s, that there are cookbooks aimed at lesbians, that the father of modern bodybuilding was queer, and that not all queers worship within any mainstream faith system. While the authors of the chapters in all three volumes are to be thanked for their devotion, intelligence, and savvy, Queers in American Popular Culture could not have been produced without the help and diligence of my graduate research assistant, Sara Meyer, or Lindsay Claire, my second set of eyes at Praeger. I owe both more gratitude for their help than I could ever express.

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Chapter 1

Marry, Mary! (Quite Contrary): Homosexual Marriage in ONE Magazine, 1953–1959 C. Todd White

SEX BEFORE MARRIAGE? When the first issue of ONE magazine was launched in January of 1953 and distributed hand-to-hand through the dark streets and shady bars of downtown Los Angeles, there was no mention of homosexual marriage in this premier issue. But there was much talk of love. A poem attributed to “Helen Ito” proclaimed the purpose of this new magazine: “ . . . To bring our love out into the sunshine/And proclaim to the world, “We love! We love.” With a nod to the German magazine Die Insel, the editors of ONE promised that this new magazine would engage in thoughtful and lively discussion regarding the rights of the “homophile,” a word they used to signify men who love men and women who love women. It was thus inevitable that an issue of ONE produced eight months later, in August of 1953, should pose the question, “Homosexual Marriage?” When the contemporary gay or lesbian person reads this plug, they are probably as intrigued by the first word as the second. Homosexual? Why not gay? The short answer to that is that the West Coast homophile movement did not start to use the word gay in modern parlance until the late 1960s. So why not homophile? Probably because, though attributed to “E. B. Saunders,” I suspect the article was written by

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ONE’s editor-in-chief, Dale Jennings, who did not like that term— simple as that (see White 2002). To many in Los Angeles at this time, the term “gay” signified an effeminate male homosexual, one to be shunned and avoided. The second word, though, “marriage,” might also cause us to anticipate several things: a demand for civil recognition on par with legally recognized heterosexual partnerships. We might expect to find within a discussion of whether “homosexual marriage” should be a civil or a religious issue or perhaps find a diatribe on the unfair tax burden levied on single, often childless adults. But what we find in this eighth issue of ONE magazine is contrary to what most of us would expect. The article is titled “Reformer’s Choice: Marriage License or Just License?” Its teaser forewarns the reader of the magnitude of the topic: “The following paper is, in the opinion of the editorial board, one of the most important which ONE has published. Its implications are staggering. The author(ess?) was little short of staggering, too, in the mild letter which accompanied this historic essay: ‘I hope the enclosed will not seem an impertinence.’ But on second thought, Writer Saunders, It is impertinent and exactly the type of impertinence all thinking persons and this magazine vitally need!” So the reader is thus enticed to engage the topic in a most serious light. The prose of the essay is sober and pedantic. The article posits that the editors of ONE, like their progenitors in the Mattachine Society, aspire to fight for the social acceptance of the sexual deviate. But what then? Could there be unanticipated repercussions? Saunders transports us to the year 2053, “when homosexuality has been accepted to the point of being of no importance.” Saunders asks, “Now, is the deviate allowed to continue his pursuit of physical happiness without restraint as he attempts to do today? Or is he, in this Utopia, subject to marriage laws?” At this point, the alert reader might begin to suspect that this is a Swiftian satire, for things are already the opposite of what we would expect. Few after all, in this era of the Ricardos and Kramdens, would equate marriage with utopia. In Saunders’s brave new world, promiscuity must be guarded against at all costs lest it “loosen heterosexual marriage ties, too, and make even shallower the meaning of marriage as we know it.” Wanton homosexuality would thus be an attack on heterosexual marriage— an assault that would not be tolerated by the heterosexual majority. “For why should [the homophile] be permitted promiscuity when the heterosexuals who people the earth must be married to enjoy sexual intercourse?”

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Would homosexual men desire such a burden? No way. “Available statistics do not indicate that most or even a large percentage of deviates want a binding and legal marriage,” states Saunders, though “undoubtedly if it were possible there would be more who attempted it and many who might make it work.” And anyway, who would wear the pants in the marriage? Would the “Mr.” and “Mrs.” idea be retained? If so, “what legal developments would come of the objection by the ‘Mr.’ that the ‘Mrs.’ doesn’t contribute equally?” What of adoptions? Would a Lesbian retain her rights as a mother after divorcing her husband? How will this affect the “masses of children” who lived in such a futuristic household? What of adultery? Surely this would not be tolerated, for “equal rights mean equal responsibilities: equal freedoms mean equal limitations.” Saunders’s article indeed makes many astute and prescient observations by asking several of the questions that haunt us today. Here we have the true heart of the matter. ONE was dedicated to the cause of equality, of living up to the ideals set forth in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. But if these rights were to truly be secured, perhaps homosexuals and homophiles (men in particular, reflecting the biases of ONE’s editorship) would lose out in some surprising and undesirable ways. Compulsory marriage for homosexuals? What kind of freedom would that be? Could it be that homosexuals sub rosa have more freedoms than they would should they be accepted? “Are we willing to make that trade?” Saunders asks. And here is the crux of the irony: in their quest for equality, homosexual men may get more than they bargained for. Saunders advised the activists within ONE and Mattachine to choose their battles—and their path—wisely. “When one digs, it must be to make a ditch, a well, a trench: something! Otherwise all this energetic work merely produces a hole. Any bomb can do that.” There is one further observation that compounds the irony of this essay: Is it not a bit crazy to talk of homosexual marriage when homosexual sex is still forbidden? The key is in understanding that this article is itself a teaser, a simple ploy to get the attention of an audience, to challenge it to think in new and different ways—and to subscribe. THE LEGAL RAMIFICATIONS OF HOMOPHILIA And the ploy worked—in fact, perhaps too well. We must remember that at the time of this publication, homosexual sex was illegal in every state. “ONE by its very nature often discusses illegal sexual

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practices as well as the legal rights of those who commit them,” warned an editor’s blurb printed at the close of the marriage article. “Yet, until the nature of a sex crime is so defined as to most benefit society, ONE wishes to clearly state that its aims do not include converting any man, woman, or child to ways alien to their natures nor does is [sic] condone any behavior which is actually ‘against nature’ and not to the best interests of society.” Much time could be spent unpacking the innuendo and double entendre of this disclaimer. But clever as it may be, it did not at all impress the authorities. This August 1953 issue of ONE magazine was confiscated the day it was dropped off at the Los Angeles post office, and the postal authorities in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. withheld it for 16 days. There was a two-month lag in ONE magazine between the time an issue was published and the time the commentary on that issue would run in a subsequent issue. Therefore, the topic of homosexual marriage was dropped in the September issue of ONE, which turned its attention instead to Communists, effeminate men, and even, believe it or not, effeminate gay Communists. This brings me to the other “Mary” of my title, for, though I do not have the time to address it in depth here, the trouble of effeminacy was often discussed in the pages of ONE in its early years. This was suggested in the Saunders article: If two men get married, which of them was the woman? If two women got married, which was to be the man? Though this might seem like an absurd thing to ponder in our enlightened eyes, to the homophile of the 1950s, these were serious matters to be returned to presently. The October 1953 issue of ONE magazine was seething: “ONE is not grateful,” the editors proclaimed across the cover; there was absolutely no gratitude to the authorities for having ultimately declared ONE “suitable for mailing.” To fight back, readers were encouraged to spread the word and subscribe to the magazine. To stand up against the oppressive postmaster and the federal government, “deviants”: needed a voice. They needed to be reminded of their constitutional rights especially as set forth under the Fifth Amendment which provided that “No person . . . shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.” To subscribe to ONE was to defend American civil liberties. ONE’s editors were dedicated only to truth, to “bring about a better understanding of sexual deviation by both heterosexuals and homosexuals.” They were willing to risk their own reputations, careers, and lives for this sake; they were “willing to stand up and stick out their necks for all deviates because they believe someone has to sometime” (emphasis in the original). For those readers in

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remote locations such as “Paducah,” who were loath to have their name on ONE’s mailing list, the editors swore that they would “rot in join before handing over one single name of a subscriber.” All the reader needed to do to help was to subscribe. “ONE is yours. Keep it yours. Isn’t it worth a buck to know you’re not alone?” The ploy was working. ONE was being distributed in newsstands from coast to coast. Readership had quadrupled, from 500 issues in January to over 2,000 by the fall of 1953. To grow further, ONE’s editors knew that they would have to establish a core group of subscribers— a fact certainly not lost on the Los Angeles postmaster, Otto K. Olesen. As for the topic that likely triggered the postmaster ’s scrutiny, there was no further discussion of homosexual marriage in this October issue outside of the Letters column. And here, the question was tossed aside as absurd. A writer from Berkeley, California stated that “marriage was a heterosexual concept buttressed and blessed by the Church and State since man emerged out of the miasma of pre-history.” Another wrote that marriage existed solely for the sake of children, so why should we “try to legislate lasting mutual love on the part of any tow homosexuals?” This writer believed that the Saunders article posited that “legalized marriage should be one of our primary issues as a group seeking acceptance,” and to that he said: “Balderdash!” He continued: “ ‘Marriage’ between two men is, in the eyes of society, the ultimate manifestation of what it considers the ‘mental illness’ in homosexuality. Indeed, when it is called ‘marriage,’ I agree with them.” It is striking to me the vitriolic revulsion these writers had for the idea of homosexual marriage. This hardly anticipates the current battle for same-sex marriage rights currently debated daily, in newspapers from all across the United States and the world. But this second writer got one thing profoundly correct: the thought of same-sex sex perturbed heterosexuals because it somehow fed into their notions of homosexuals as psychological maladjusted deviates. The thought of same-sex marriage, the idea that two men or two women could enter into a loving and enduring, mutually-supportive relationship on par with a heterosexual union—that idea terrified them. It was a truly subversive idea, one that must be guarded against. It was therefore the talk of love, not the talk of sex, that made ONE lewd, lascivious, and very, very dangerous. To clarify this point, I draw attention to the famous October 1954 issue of ONE that was also withheld by the Postmaster, Otto Olesen, for being, in his words, “obscene, lewd, lascivious, and filthy.” Since Postmaster Olesen was not required to specify exactly what content it was that he deemed offensive, it was left to ONE’s senior editor, Don Slater, and

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ONE’s white-knight attorney, Eric Julber, to figure it out.1 They determined that the most likely candidate was a short story attributed to Jane Dahr titled, “Sappho Remembered,” in which two women were seen to fall in love—and display their affection for one another: Pavia closed the door of their suite behind them, tossed her coat on the chair and gently drew the girl to her. “Forgiven?” she asked at last. She touched the delicate pulse beat beneath the light golden hair on the child-like temple. “Will their ever be a day when you don’t blush when I do that,” she murmured. This passage is certainly suggestive, and it probably depicts a love relationship. But by what standard is it lewd, lascivious, and filthy? Federal law at the time specified that to be lewd, there must be a “likelihood that the work will so much arouse the salacity of the reader to whom it is sent as to outweigh any literary, scientific, or other merits it may have in [the average] reader’s hands.” Julber, in his Appellants’ Opening Brief2 filed in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on January 16, 1956, argued that this standard did not hold to any of the contraband ONE’s content. And he lost that argument. On March 2, 1956, Judge Thurmond Clark entered a judgment in favor of Postmaster Olesen. However, while totally ignoring the many good arguments Julber had made in his 55-page brief, Judge Clark added a surprising remark: “The suggestion that homosexuals should be recognized as a segment of our people and be accorded special privilege as a class is rejected.” This is puzzling, as nowhere in his brief did Julber suggest that homosexuals were a distinct class of people deserving special protection. Nevertheless, Julber and Slater were defeated—for the time being, at least. ONE’s case continued up the appeals process until it reached the Supreme Court. Julber filed a petition for a rehearing on March 14, 1957, that was denied a month later, on April 12, by judges Barnes, Hamley, and Ross (see Eskridge 1997, 804). Next, Julber wrote a Petition for Writ of Certiorari to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and filed it with the Supreme Court on June 13, 1957. In the short nine-page writ, Julber asked the Court to rule that the Court of Appeals had erred in finding the magazine obscene. It had misrepresented and incorrectly gauged “the moral tone of the community” and failed to take into consideration the bibliographic appendix. Finally, on January 13, 1958, the Supreme Court reversed the Ninth Circuit Court’s rulings in ONE v. Olesen. Joyce Murdoch and Deb

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Price, in their comprehensive study of the history of lesbians and gays in the Supreme Court, conclude: The significance of ONE’s three-year, largely forgotten legal battle is almost impossible to overstate. The written word has been the first path that countless gay men and lesbians have found out of isolation. The 1958 ONE ruling flung open the door for gay publications, which began to proliferate. Gay magazines and newspapers became a cornerstone for building gay communities and by encouraging people to come out, to connect with one another and to share a sense of identity and injustice. Millions of American gay men and lesbians have learned to hold their heads up high in part because an obscure little magazine successfully stood up for itself long before many of them were born. (2001, 50) Though the subject of same-sex sex was incendiary and controversial, it was not a discussion of sex that caused the Los Angeles postmaster to twice withhold ONE Magazine. It was, instead, the frank discussion of same-sex marriage—and the thought of enduring romantic same-sex partnerships—that was found to be truly “lewd, lascivious, and filthy.”As I am not a psychologist, I have no idea why the thought of same-sex love should so affront the heterosexual majority, but it clearly it does. For this reason, as I have argued elsewhere, perhaps LGBT lovers are the ideal LGBT activists (White 2009, 225)? In any event, we can learn from our pre-Stonewall forbears to discern and devise strategies by which we can secure a social and legal space for LGBT people whereby they can form and foster same-sex relationships. In following in the tradition of Eric Julber and Don Slater, we just might find that we do not need identity politics order to do this. Recall that Julber never grounded his argument on the rights for homophile people to be recognized as a class. Like Slater, Julber realized that if you secured the right of the individual, the right of the group would follow. It was Judge Clark who brought up the “class” argument. To my mind, it is almost as if he was trying to bait Julber and Slater, to get them to engage him in an argument that he knew they could not win. THE TROUBLE WITH MARY . . . Earlier, I noted that how the article attributed to Saunders in ONE’s August issue of 1953 was haunted by the specter of two men living together and asking which would be expected to be the woman.

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Would a law need to be enacted in this futuristic utopia that would “prohibit one person to be ‘kept’ by another then?” In a recent publication, I have argued that this fear and intolerance of the effeminate or “gay” man is one of the fundamental characteristics between the early homophile movement as manifest in southern California and the later postStonewall gay or LGBT movement (White 2009, 55–56). While I do not want to suggest that Sunder’s article was driven or motivated by a fear of effeminacy, it does point toward what were perceived as the two greatest threats to social acceptance of the male homosexual deviant: promiscuity and effeminacy, as a very astute writer from Quebec observed in the October 1953 issues (17–19). Caught between a monster and a maelstrom, ONE’s editors were trying to navigate between the Skylla of unbridled promiscuity and the swishy effeminacy of Kharbybis. The prescient Canadian advised ONE’s writers that “effeminacy as such maligns no one except females” and yet “they, the genuine article, take no umbrage; homosexuals who are still farther removed from the copy might show some common sense.” The writer continues: “If we can face the promiscuity and the effeminacy of our group we can face this as well: that we are a true living group; one that exist because of its inner coherence, not fortuitously through pressure from outside. . . . All repressed groups faced with the first step toward emancipation face this too: that the group must free itself also from within.” CONCLUSION While researching some of the first public discourse on homosexual marriage, I found that many of the arguments were contrary to what I had expected them to be. In short, rather than truly propose that homosexuals be given the right to marry, the dialogue in the early issues of ONE served two purposes. First, the editors of ONE were fighting the two most prominent and enduring stereotypes of the male homosexual. Evidence of the enduring nature of these stereotypes is given in a 1970 article by Julian Stanley who finds that “core vocabulary” words signifying effeminate homosexuals, such as “queen,” “camp,” “drag,” and “Mary!”—and terms of gay promiscuity including “trade,” “trick,” “basket,” and “one-night stand”—had percolated into popular culture enough that these could not be considered a “sign of group solidarity as slang of some other subcultures” (Stanley 1970, 50; see also Kulick 2000, 251). Second, while the stated purpose of the magazine was to hold a frank and honest discussion of homosexuality, it was also engaging a broad audience on the rights for homophiles to establish

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long-term relationships that were grounded on love and had the potential to be just as enduring as heterosexual marriages. As I have shown, it is this latter purpose that seems to have most stoked the ire of heterosexual moralist such as Postmaster Oleson and Judge Clark. In 1953, the thought of compulsory marriage for homosexuals was indeed absurd enough to index the high irony of Saunders’s satiric essay. But this paper suggests that Saunders (or more likely Dale Jennings) was as right as he was wrong. Perhaps, indeed, we should be careful lest we achieve that for which we strive. But more so, history indicates that the battle for lesbian and/or gay marriage is not the same as the battle for same-sex marriage. Perhaps the reason for the initial success of the marriage battle in California was due to Gavin Newsom’s approach is treating marriage as a fundamental right to all, and that to deny a person from wedding another of the same sex was a simple matter of gender discrimination. Perhaps this strategy will work in other states as well. Perhaps, in some states, the rhetoric surrounding gay marriage is holding back the legalization of same-sex marriage and domestic partnerships? In short, the lessons of the past have taught us that while it is important to stand up and be recognized as gay, perhaps it is also important to know when to put the labels aside. To paraphrase Hillary Clinton, perhaps we need to learn when to stop fighting for gay rights, and start fighting for human rights. Though the words might be different, the objectives are the same. The lessons that we have to learn from the pre-Stonewall activists are many. But in order for us to learn, those primary source materials must continue to be available to us. For this reason, sources like the new www.outhistory.org Web site of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies are crucial for the ongoing success and progress of our movement. Here, historic materials, such as the entire text of Julber’s opening brief in the case of ONE, Incorporated versus Otto K. Oleson, can be accessed by anyone in the world with unfettered access to the Internet. Also, while it is important for today’s queer scholars to mine, interpret, and present this historic information, I hope that we will all stop to remember that history and these resources need our continued help. Our queer history will not endure on its own. NOTES This paper was originally presented for the Sixteenth Annual American University Conference on Lavender Languages and Linguistics, February 14, 2009. I am grateful to William L. Leap for coordinating this conference and to

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Robert Hill for organizing the panel on Recovering Lavender History. I would also like to thank Brett Abrams and Michael Ryall for their comments on the presented draft of this paper. 1. According to William Eskridge, this issue was found by Postmaster Oleson to be lewd based on three items printed therein: the short story “Sappho Remembered,” a poem titled “Lord Samuel and Lord Montagu” that warns of the perils of T-room cruising, and a printed advertisement for a Swiss magazine, Der Kreis (1997, 58, 102). 2. The complete text of this brief has been posted online at http:// www.outhistory.org/wiki/JulberAppeal.

REFERENCES Eskridge, W. N., Jr. “Privacy Jurisprudence and the Apartheid of the Closet, 1946–1961.” Florida State University Law Review 24 (4) (1997): 703–840. Kulick, D. “Gay and Lesbian Language.” Annual Review of Anthropology 29 (2000): 243–85. Murdoch, Deb, and Deb Price. Courting Justice: Gay Men and Lesbians v. the Supreme Court. New York: Basic Books, 2001. Stanley, J. P. “Homosexual Slang.” American Speech 45 (1/2) (1970): 45–59. White, C. T. Pre-Gay L.A.: A Social History of the Movement for Homosexual Rights. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2009. . “Dale Jennings: ONE’s Outspoken Advocate.” In Before Stonewall: Activist for Gay and Lesbian Rights in Historic Contexts, edited by Vern L. Bullough et al., 83–93. Binghamton: Harrington Park Press, 2002.

Chapter 2

Queer Appetites, Butch Cooking: Recipes for Lesbian Subjectivities Katharina Vester

In 1998, Ffiona Morgan published The Lesbian Erotic Cookbook: Cuisine Extraordinaire to Caress and Fondle the Palate.1 The cookbook features recipes such as “Raging Hormone Rice,” “Get Down Crepes,” “Road to Ecstasy Applesauce Bread,” and “Peel My Clothes Off Fried Rice,” and these are only some of the tamer recipe titles. Beyond the racy titles, however, the recipes themselves are not different from those in other cookbooks; they feature lists of commonly available ingredients and detailed instructions, and the dishes they produce are similar to the dishes that are produced by recipes in mainstream cookbooks. What makes this text explicitly queer and erotic is the narrative context in which the recipes are embedded: suggestive short stories and photos that present as erotic a diversity of female bodies in various states of dress or undress, displaying voluptuous, slender, aging, muscular, sagging, pierced, soft, or flabby bodies with firm, spotless, or wrinkled skin. The text thus defies with each page the main-streamlined version of female nakedness. Clearly in love with female muscle and body fat, the cookbook defines the lesbian body as less regulated by hegemonic beauty standards and erotic in and because of its individuality. The cookbook, fully functional as a manual, becomes a tool of resistance against the embodiment of normative gender performances and the incorporation of heteronormative narratives. Cooking and eating

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are identity-producing acts. The Lesbian Erotic Cookbook, with its title, narratives and images makes this visible. It is central to the cookbook genre that recipes come in specific narrative contexts. These narratives recommend the recipes, and promise that they will be worth the work we are about to put into them. They also locate the recipes for us culturally and attach identity categories to them. Recipes in the late Gourmet magazine, in soul food cookbooks or Martha Stewart’s Living promise that if you cook these specific dishes you will be more sophisticated, more cosmopolitan, more authentically ethnic, more motherly or more whatever flavor you want to be. As self-regulatory somatic selves—subjects that are always already embodied when they come into existence—we discipline our bodies in many ways into the subjectivities we believe to be desired by our cultural surrounding, so we often eat what we aspire to be. Culinary discourses provide us with the appropriate recipes. Since Alice Toklas published her cookbook in 1954, a very small corpus of texts has come onto on the American market reflecting on or addressing homosexual cooks.2 However, the even smaller corpus of cookbooks explicitly targeting a lesbian audience, such as The Lesbian Erotic Cookbook, goes beyond merely providing a culinary identity for self-identifying dykes. These texts make it evident that traditionally the identity-constructing narratives that accompany recipes are heteronormative.3 For almost 200 years American cookbooks addressed women who were imagined to prepare the food men eat. In the process of increasing urbanization and the atomization of families, the emancipation of slaves and dwindling numbers of servants, the naturalization of the separation of spheres and the fear that household work may be unaccounted for with the growing numbers of women in the labor force, cooking became firmly associated with a woman’s love and her performance of femininity. This connection is a cultural strategy that ensures that the cooking gets done even when women find employment and/or fulfillment outside of the domestic sphere. Since the late nineteenth century, women’s journals, food advertisement, and household manuals have claimed that food preparation was a central part of what it meant to be a woman. They also constructed cooking as satisfying and fulfilling (The Joy of Cooking), as a means to gain recognition, and as an appropriate outlet for a woman’s creativity and emotional caring.4 Cookbooks addressing a lesbian audience make these claims visible and dispute them. Three cookbooks analyzed here use strategies to resist hegemonic notions of femininity, but by no means are these texts

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only liberating. Since they explicitly address a lesbian readership, all three texts struggle to define the lesbian body and self. In the process of voicing a culinary identity, they produce new normative imperatives and complex exclusionary mechanisms that demand further scrutiny. The Lesbian Erotic Cookbook, for instance, queers ideas of the female nude and the erotic, but it presents as erotic only able bodies and almost exclusively white ones. (The few black bodies, though, are presented prominently, such as on the cover page.) While variety and individuality are important in the depictions of queer female bodies in this text, they are not free of normative assumptions. Most of the depicted women wear their hair short and no make-up, but compromise with hegemonic beauty ideals in displaying their bodies (and faces) hairless. The text stretches and bends ideas of ideal femininity but it also uses familiar images from a culturally sanctioned reservoir of depictions of women’s sexuality, such as voluptuous flowers and luscious fruits and curvy statues of fertility goddesses. The cookbook thus reiterates well-worn notions of women as soft, swollen, delicious, and sweet-smelling, showing how impossible it is to escape from cultural stereotypes entirely. The staging of the erotic, too, utilizes conventional imagery, such as the display of fragmented naked bodies emphasizing similar body parts that would be presented in the context of the heterosexual erotic, most prominently breasts. But the text does not only offer conventional productions of the erotic; it also gives space to alternatives. Biceps, for instance, are staged as sexually attractive female body parts. Juxtaposed to breasts they mediate between hardness and softness, concepts that have traditionally been misused to distinguish between the sexes. Hidden between the depictions of breasts, bellies, and bottoms is also a photo of hands, body parts commonly neglected in heterosexual porn. Showing hands in this context sexualizes them and acknowledges their importance for the erotic experience. Perhaps most notable are the many depictions of women eating and feeding each other. As Susan Bordo has argued, representations of eating women have almost entirely vanished from public discourse as a radical consequence of the cultural dictum of “women cook, men eat.”5 In these images of women feeding each other, the symbolic connection between feeding and loving is left intact, but re-appropriated to define the female body as a non-heterosexual body. There is a long tradition in U.S. culture that values a woman’s restraint of her appetite as a positively connoted sign of control over her sexual desires and other ambitions and thereby her acceptance of male privilege. The Lesbian

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Erotic Cookbook presents women’s lustful eating as desirable and the lesbian subject as guiltlessly giving into all her cravings. This, of course, is a highly romanticized notion of queer subjectivity. The Lesbian Erotic Cookbook queers the rules of the cookbook genre. It unmasks the underlying sexual assumptions and silently implied heteronormativity, renegotiates the representation of gender and the erotic, and presents a number of decent recipes. Red Beans and Rice: Recipes for Lesbian Health & Wisdom by Bode Noonan is even more radical when it comes to undermining the parameters of cookbook writing.6 Her cookbook bears only faint resemblance to what we have learned to recognize as elemental to the genre: There are no lists of ingredients, no imperatives, no instructions, no claim to authority. Each of the mere five recipes in the book is presented as its own chapter written in essayistic prose. Only by reading the entire chapter can the dish be assembled. The instructions given are vague enough to ensure that the cook will produce her own dish rather than simply clone the author’s dish. Creative experimentation is explicitly encouraged. The recipes blend into what Noonan has to say about life. Meandering between unconventional wisdoms, general advice, her own biography, and food memories, she tells us how to make egg salad, red beans and rice, bread and spinach casserole, potato salad and fruit juice—all comfort foods for the bruised and battered soul. The text was written in the 1980s, and it is conscious of the problems that come with identity politics. It tries to emphasize diversity and individuality while simultaneously imagining an identity-based community for political and emotional support. This does not have to be a contradiction, as the author explains in her chapter on potato salad: Potatoes, I thought. Potatoes are a lot like Lesbians. They’re all the same and they’re all different. You have New potatoes, Russett potatoes. Red potatoes, brown potatoes, peeled potatoes. But all potatoes are composed of carbohydrates and water. . . . Some of us play softball. . . . Some of us wear three piece suits and do our daily work in courtrooms where we defend against what we see as unjust. Some of us don’t do a damn thing at all. Some of us aren’t even gay. Some of us are men. Men? What am I saying? (46–47) While Noonan obviously tries to avoid an essentialist definition of what constitutes the lesbian subject, she still grasps for a way to define what it means to be a lesbian, what constitutes the community’s water

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and carbohydrates. In this process, she severs lesbian identity entirely from sexual acts and rearranges it around the experience of exclusion and marginalization. However, she specifies this experience as different from the experience of racism and sexism insofar as it has at its core the pain of being rejected and disowned not only by society but even worse: also being rejected by your own family and childhood friends—an experience, she argues, that is central to lesbian identity. Hence the emphasis on comfort food in the text: it is the familiar childhood food that in a Proustian manner brings back with its flavors the memory of unconditional love and acceptance. Giving you the knowledge to prepare these dishes gives you the possibility to care for yourself and to be your own family, the author argues. In Red Beans and Rice Noonan also discusses lesbian identity in terms of gender. She describes how her mother labored unenthusiastically over her much acknowledged signature potato salad, despising the process of preparing it but doing it anyway. Cooking disciplined her mother’s body into gender-appropriate behavior. She contrasts this description with one of her former lovers, who made her less-thanperfect potato salad with gusto and intensively enjoyed every minute of the process. The difference, Noonan suggests, is that cooking can be a liberating and creative act for women who are aware of the gender traps that come with it and are successful in avoiding them. The mother is expected to cook and cannot escape from these expectations because her self-esteem depends on the acknowledgment she gains for her flawless performance of hegemonic femininity. The lesbian lover, in contrast, makes up her own gender performance. Lesbian identity in Red Beans and Rice is therefore not only centered around the experience of rejection but is also described as an alternative, more liberated and maybe more enlightened form of feminine gender performance. The lesbian subjectivities Noonan constructs in the text thus waver between victimization and empowerment, defying easy assignments. The Butch Cook Book redefines and negotiates gender identities, too. Published in 2008 by Lee Lynch, Nel Ward, and Sue Hardesty, it is a compilation of recipes sent in by cooks who self-identify as butch.7 Compiled cookbooks have traditionally been used to create a sense of community. Simultaneously, they defy the notion of a central, authoritative voice, as all contributors share in defining the community they belong to. The Butch Cook Book utilizes both of these aspects to deal with the problems that come with the term butch (a term that has been called “overtheorized,” “underdetermined,” and “infinitely elastic”).8 The cookbook struggles hard for a complex and inclusive

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description of butch identity. It also shamelessly exploits every known stereotype. It often but not always does so playfully, with great humor, and lots of self-deprecation. The illustrations in the book feature— quite out of context—trucks and motor bikes. One of the contributors advises: “Use a food processor—what’s a butch without power tools?” To no surprise many illustrations present real power tools in the kitchen. Some recipes call for beer, either as an ingredient or as “emotional” support for the butch who has to face the dangers of the kitchen (102, 115). Between the recipes one can find tips for “how to buff up your abs with potato sacks.” Or for how to cook for a new girlfriend: Tips for First Dinner Cooked by Butch for New Girlfriend

Take a deep breath and remember this is the only meal you’ll have to cook. Go to deli and pick up something green, something red or orange, and something pre-cooked. Check to make sure she doesn’t buy at the same deli. Check to see if the microwave is working. Serve deli stuff in dishes borrowed from gay guys next door. If you’re lucky, the guys will jump at the chance to cater the meal for you. Take their offer without question. They’ll disappear at the last moment and give you all the credit. Hide all the deli cartons before she arrives. (87) The cookbook also provides (jokingly) a test to distinguish a butch from a femme. It asks you to look at your nails. If you curl your fingers inward you are butch, while the femme looks at the back of her hand (as if in the act of checking her nail polish). The test shows that butchness is not only about attitude, it is also queer embodiment, a form of resistance against the hegemonic production of the female body. The text claims that butchness undermines the disciplinary mechanisms that render the female body as dainty, incapacitated, fragile, and decorative. The butch body needs specific nourishment and this, not surprisingly, excludes some of the items that are connoted as feminine in society. For instance, the text claims, a butch only eats vegetables if her femme makes her. The hyper-butchness that is displayed throughout the text is, of course, constantly undermined by the fact that the text is a cookbook. The editors jokingly admit that when they started to collect recipes they expected “30 recipes for boxed mac and cheese,” but learned to

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their surprise “that butches can cook.” Because cookbooks have a long tradition of being associated with hegemonic feminine gender performance, therefore the cookbook context implicitly subverts the performance of butchness as renegade gender identity. Again the text and its authors deal with the dilemma playfully. To neutralize the cookbook’s gender norm-affirming potential, the contributors and editors use three strategies. First, the butch cooks for sexual gratification. Recipes feature titles such as “Green Beans for Butches Hoping for Sex on the First Date” (55). The drink section of the cookbook is called “Love Potions,” and the breakfast section “The Morning After” (163). Wowing women is a sufficiently butch endeavor to limit the damage cooking may be doing to the cook’s renegade gender identity. Second, many of the contributors explain in detail why they took up cooking in the first place: a partner got sick and the butch took over the household chores; it serves as a creative outlet to balance a more menial day job; or, in a more unusual explanation, she was in a Zen cloister and was ordered to cook to further her spiritual enlightenment. All these explanations make it obvious that the butch does not cook because it came naturally to her (as is implied for women within the heterosexual economy) but because of very specific circumstances that make the act an individual choice or the result of necessity. The third strategy is the contribution of specifically butch recipes. These are recipes that are centered on the idea of speed, simplicity, and convenience. For instance, the recipe for “Mostly Peas” asks for only three ingredients: 1 can of V8 juice, half cup of frozen peas, and Tabasco sauce to taste. No fussing around in the kitchen is required here, only a microwave and a spoon. Only a few of the recipes produce food from scratch. Recipes for pancakes, pies, and cakes usually start with boxed mixes. One recipe suggests bagged salad as a side dish and advises the reader to take the salad out of the bag before serving it (184). The butch recipe stages a lack of competence and unfamiliarity with the kitchen, rejecting the expertise and authority culture has traditionally assigned to women in the kitchen and thus disassociating itself from hegemonic ideas of what constitutes an ideal woman. But these simple definitions and descriptions of butchness are complicated on every page of the text. Contradictions are invited and not silenced in the attempt to homogenize butch identity. The cookbook, for example, features very complex and sophisticated recipes too, as well as not-so-butch recipes for Lemon Chiffon Pie, Mushroom Risotto, and Mango Compote.

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All the recipes are accompanied by short texts in which the contributors explain what the recipes and butchness mean to them. Under the title “Butch Bio” we find blacksmiths, community organizers, and writers, but also stay-at-home-butches like Barb Bayenhof, who chose to devote her life to feeding her partner for the better of 11 years. Truck driver Bevin Allison calls herself a “domestic butch” (159); Melissa Freet describes herself as a cross of Martha Stewart and Mac Gyver; and Marythegood writes, “Can handle sheetrock and split wood, but my pie crust will melt in your mouth” (99). These bios show how butches cross the gender dichotomy back and forth in their daily lives. In the end, the cookbook seems to argue that butch is an umbrella term for a great variety of gender performances that do not—or not entirely—conform to ideas of hegemonic femininity and that are directed at an audience of women. (About half of the contributors take pride in cooking for another woman and make this known to the readers.) The definition of butchness oscillates in the text between gender and sexual identities and produces an infinite number of potentialities. All three cookbooks struggle to define the queer self and body in non-normative and non-exclusionary ways. Of course, they eventually all have to fail. Lee Lynch acknowledges this humorously when she writes in the introduction of The Butch Cook Book, “Finally we can tell you: this is what lesbians do, we cook.” The alleged difference between “you” and “we” implodes in the quotidian act of cooking. But the texts are successful in queering the cookbook genre, making its heteronormative strategies and identity-producing narratives visible, and utilizing them for their own political agendas and playfully delicious pleasures. NOTES 1. Ffiona Morgan, The Lesbian Erotic Cookbook: Cuisine Extraordinaire to Caress and Fondle the Palate (Novato: Daughters of the Moon, 1998). 2. Alice B. Toklas, The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book (New York: Harper and Row, 1984 [1954]). Examples of queer cookbooks and literary culinary texts, (besides those discussed in this paper) include Lou Rand Hogan, The Gay Cookbook (New York: Bell Publishing Company, Inc., 1965); Amy Scholder, ed. Cooking with Honey: What Literary Lesbians Eat (Ithaca: Firebrand Books, 1996); and some of the short stories in Arlene Voski Avakian, Through the Kitchen Window: Women Explore the Intimate Meanings of Food and Cooking (Boston: Beacon Press, 1997). 3. Katharina Vester, “Tender Mutton: Recipes, Sexual Identity and Spinster Resistance in Gertrude Stein,” in Another Language: Poetic Experiment in Britain

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and North America, edited by Kornelia Freitag and Katharina Vester (Berlin: Lit Verlag, 2008), 289–300. 4. For further discussion, see: Sherrie A. Inness, Dinner Roles: American Women and Culinary Culture (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2001). 5. Susan Bordo, Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture and the Body (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993), 99–138. 6. Bode Noonan, Red Beans and Rice: Recipes for Lesbian Health and Wisdom (Trumansburg: Crossing Press, 1986). 7. Sue Hardesty, Lee Lynch, and Nel Ward, eds. The Butch Cookbook (Newport: Teal Ribbon Publications, 2008). 8. Sherrie A. Inness, The Lesbian Menace: Ideology, Identity, and the Representation of Lesbian Life (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1997), 81.

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Chapter 3

Advertising: Gays Conquer Another Media Venue Rodger Streitmatter

In some ways, the content of the 2003 advertisement was downright mundane. The image showed the top tier of a wedding cake, covered with creamy white frosting and accented with fresh flowers and a miniature couple all gussied up in their matrimonial finery. The copy for the ad, centered underneath the image, seemed conventional as well: “Help them stay on top of the world. It’s an ideal way to give two people a bright—and inspired—future. Save 50 percent for a limited time when you give the New York Times as a gift. There’s no present like the Times. Call 1-800-251-4853.” In short, the country’s preeminent journalistic voice was making a pitch for people to forego a toaster or a place setting of china and, instead, give their newly married friends and relatives a newspaper subscription.1 But for anyone familiar with those days in 1950 when the New York Times had published headlines such as “Perverts Called Government Peril,” the ad was extraordinary. For neither member of the wedding couple pictured in the ad wore the lace veil or the billowing white dress that would have identified her as the blushing bride, as both plastic figures wore black tuxedos and tiny bowties—they were two grooms. And so, America’s most respected news organization, the one that half a century earlier had consistently vilified homosexuals, was now using same-sex couples to try to sell newspapers to its liberal

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readers while, at the same time, not-so-subtly supporting one of the most hotly debated initiatives of the day: allowing gay couples to marry. Although the advertisement was remarkable in the context of the Times earlier treatment of homosexuals and in the paper ’s bold endorsement of such a culturally and politically divisive issue, it was merely one among a legion of print ads and television commercials featuring gay men that proliferated in the American media by the early 2000s. Indeed, gay-themed ads were appearing so frequently that newspapers all across the country reported on the phenomenon. “Advertisers are feeling much more comfortable using gay content,” wrote the San Francisco Chronicle;2 “People with something to sell are increasingly dropping their inhibitions about the homosexual community,” agreed the Washington Post.3 The New York Times was another journalistic voice that took notice of the development that its own wedding-cake ad contributed to, saying, “Same-sex images are showing up more and more in national advertising, in consumer categories from automobiles and beer to soft drinks and home furnishings.” The Times supported its point by quoting the editor of an advertising publication as saying, “A trend is underway, and companies are jumping on the bandwagon.”4 While the trend was widespread both geographically and with regard to the kinds of items being hawked, most of the companies did not cross the gender line. “Lesbians have generally not received equal treatment in the ads,” the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported. “They appear only rarely either in print ads or on television commercials.”5 As for exactly why so many companies were now eager to include gay men—and an occasional lesbian—in their ads, the news organizations gave other media products some of the credit, with the New York Times stating, “Will & Grace on NBC and Queer as Folk on Showtime have brought a major shift in attitudes about gay subjects.”6 But the various journalistic voices reported that the primary factor fueling the trend was the growing body of market research that had identified the impressive size of gay buying power. “The average income for gay and lesbian households is estimated at more than $55,000 a year, compared with about $40,000 a year for households in the general population,” according to the Washington Post. “The aggregate buying power of the gay-lesbian market is estimated at more than $500 billion annually.”7 The Fox News Channel cited similar statistics and then stated pointblank, “Gays are essentially an untapped consumer market that corporate America can no longer ignore.”8

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Like the various television shows, motion pictures, and news stories from the previous fifty years that contained gay content, the plethora of print and television ads sent several messages about their subjects. At the top of the list was a statement that the various other media venues had been obsessing about for half a century: Gay men are highly sexual beings. But, in contrast to many of the products of early eras, the ads generally did not suggest that gay men were so sexual that they were promiscuous but that they, in fact, place enormous value on committed relationships. Additional messages that the abundance of ads communicated—all familiar to anyone who had examined how gays had been depicted in the past—included that gay people deserve equal rights, that they are fun-loving, and that they have large expendable incomes. GAY MEN ARE HIGHLY SEXUAL The single gay-themed advertising campaign that attracted the most newspaper ink, with such major dailies as the Washington Post9 and New York Times10 writing stories about it, was for Abercrombie & Fitch clothing store. “The company has been successful in creating a buzz,” the Post reported.11 And, indeed, anyone seeing the highly sexual ads instantly knew what all the buzzing was about. One eye-popping image showed several handsome young men— all of them having removed their shirts to expose their well-defined chests—in a communal shower where they are smiling and laughing as they playfully tug and pull in an effort to remove the boxer shorts from another young man who is bent over with his butt partially exposed—and who clearly does not mind the attention he’s getting.12 Another ad featured a cluster of pretty boys who apparently have just finished showering, as they are naked except for the strategically draped bath towels that just barely cover their genitals, with the very center of the image showing the bare buttocks of one of the lads.13 An Abercrombie & Fitch spokesman denied that the examples of male eye candy in the ads were gay men, saying, “People are reading into the images and projecting their own sexuality on them.”14 Journalists who wrote about the ads, however, did not buy that denial, with a Washington Post reporter saying of the ads, “They are obviously homoerotic.”15 Abercrombie & Fitch was by no means the only company to use references to gay sex to sell its products. Two popular brands of beer produced so many ads of this ilk that news organizations reported

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they were engaged in a duel to see which of them could come up with the cleverest concept. The Wall Street Journal handed the trophy to Bud Light for the double-entendre that was central to a print ad showing a man carrying a six-pack and with two words printed across the bulge in the front of his jeans just below the waist: “Nice Package.”16 The Miami Herald disagreed, arguing that Miller Lite deserved to win the competition for a television commercial featuring two women beer drinkers flirting with a good-looking man across the bar—until a second guy arrives and holds his boyfriend’s hand; that development prompts one of the disappointed women to say, “Well, at least he’s not married.”17 Benetton approached the subject of sex from a dramatically different perspective, using the content of its clothing ads to remind media consumers about HIV/AIDS and to promote safe sex. One memorable ad featured an image of a huge hot pink condom covering all 74 feet of the obelisk at the center of the Place de la Concorde in Paris,18 while three others showed the words “HIV POSITIVE” tattooed on various body parts of muscular male models—one ad focused on the biceps, the second on the buttocks, the third on the groin area.19 Still another eye-catching ad featured the buff torsos of two men, one black and one white, wearing nothing but boxer-briefs; instead of being stark white, the underwear was adorned with a bright red AIDS ribbon positioned squarely in the center of each man’s crotch.20 The most controversial of the Benetton ads was titled “Pieta” and showed an emaciated David Kirby on his deathbed, his father cradling the AIDS activist in his arms as the young man took his final breath.21 GAY MEN VALUE COMMITTED RELATIONSHIPS Only a few of the milestones in the decades-long evolution of gays in the media had included committed couples—the Robin Williams and Nathan Lane characters in The Birdcage come to mind, as do the HIV-positive and HIV-negative partners on Queer as Folk. But with the explosion of gay-themed advertisements, such pairings became the rule rather than the exception. The phenomenon began in 1992 when Vanity Fair became the first major American magazine to publish an unambiguously gay ad. The two-page image featured two slender young men standing on a rooftop with several tall buildings behind them. The background is noticeably tilted, while the men and the words “Banana Republic,” in the lower right hand corner, and “free souls,” in the upper right, are level.

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The most important element of the ad, though, is not the background or the camera angle or the text—but the hand. For one member of the couple has the fingers of his right hand resting, gently and tenderly, on the other man’s chest.22 Two years later when American television aired its first gay-themed commercial, the coupling phenomenon continued. This pioneering advertisement by Ikea, the Swedish furniture company, showed two men shopping for a new dining room table. Television viewers had no trouble identifying the men as a gay couple, as the dialogue had them finishing each other’s sentences and one of them looking solemnly at the other and saying, “a leaf means commitment.”23 After Banana Republic and Ikea broke the gay advertising ice, companies selling a broad range of products followed suit by depicting gay men in a plethora of one-on-one relationships. Bridgestone/Firestone became the first tire manufacturer to enter the gay market with a magazine ad showing two attractive guys leaning against a stack of tires; it was clear that the men were intimately acquainted, as one of them had his arm around the other. 24 Philadelphia was the first American city to create ads aimed specifically at gay travelers; one spotlighted two men, one white and one black, holding hands in front of the Liberty Bell.25 Diesel jeans aired a television commercial showing a dark-haired Boy Scout teaching a blond boy how to give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation by having the novice practice on him; at the end of the ad, the two young men are shown galloping off together on horseback—the recently resuscitated member of the pair winking triumphantly at the camera.26 While all of these companies sent the message that gay men value committed relationships, some went further than others to make their point. A 2003 Avis rental car ad featured an image of two handsome young hotties smiling happily as they sit inside a car. The headline read “Share the Experience,” and the copy stated: “At Avis, we know the value of great relationships. That’s why domestic partners are automatically included as additional drivers. No extra fees. No questions asked.”27 GAY PEOPLE DESERVE EQUAL RIGHTS The New York Times wedding-cake ad was remarkable partly because placing two grooms on top of a sea of white icing meant that the nation’s most influential news organization was unabashedly endorsing the proposal to legalize same-sex marriage. But that ad was by no means the

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only one through which an American business enterprise stated, during the early 2000s, that gay people deserve equal rights. Snapple was among the advertisers that joined the Times in supporting same-sex marriage. The company’s off-beat television commercial, inspired by a scene from the film The Graduate, began with one bottle of the soft drink, wearing a lacy veil, walking down the aisle of a church. But when the bride reaches the altar and her bottle/ groom, who’s wearing a bowtie, the ceremony is disrupted by a third bottle, this one sporting a long necktie, making a ruckus in the balcony and prompting the guests to gasp. By the final scene, the two men— the bottle/groom and the bottle/disrupter—are shown leaving the church hand in hand as “The Wedding March” is being played.28 Another issue that gay-themed ads spoke to was domestic partner policies, by which employers extend the same benefits offered to the spouses of straight workers, such as health insurance, to the committed partners of gay workers. In 2000, Coors beer endorsed the policy by running a print ad that showed two bottles of its beer—one light, the other original—positioned so they were touching, similar to how two members of a gay couple might stand, below the headline “Domestic Partners!” The ad’s copy made it clear that the company didn’t merely talk the talk but also walked the walk, stating, “We were the first brewery to offer same-sex, domestic-partner benefits.” Coors’s corporate relations manager for gays and lesbians, Mary Cheney—who would leave that job when her father Dick Cheney was elected the country’s vice president—boasted to reporters that her company had adopted the policy in 1995.29 Whether or not gay people choose their sexuality was another issue that made its way into ads, as well as the news coverage of them. Subaru began targeting gays as potential buyers in 1997 by picturing cars in its ads that sported “P-TOWN” on their license plates, a reference to the nickname of the popular gay vacation destination of Provincetown, Massachusetts. Many Subaru ads also featured the tagline “Get out. And stay out,” a double-entendre that could be read either as a statement encouraging outdoors-oriented people to buy Subarus or as a statement urging closeted gay people to acknowledge their sexuality— and also buy Subarus. Then, in 2000, the company released an ad showing one of its cars under the headline “It’s Not a Choice. It’s the Way We’re Built.” The Washington Post promptly reported that Subaru had become one of the first companies to aim its ads specifically at lesbians and that the strategy had led to so many sales that gay women were now referring to the brand of cars as “Lesbarus.”30

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Some companies that sailed into the uncharted sea of gay rights, however, encountered troubled waters. In early 2000, John Hancock Financial Services aired a commercial on network television that featured two women standing in line at an immigration office, holding an infant girl. “Hi, baby, this is your new home,” one of the women whispers to the child, who has Asian facial features. The other woman then smiles and tells her partner, “You’re going to make a great mom,” prompting the first woman to respond, “So are you.” The tagline that then appeared on the screen stated: “Insurance for the unexpected. Investments for the opportunities. John Hancock.”31 But anti-gay activists protested the commercial so vehemently, the San Francisco Chronicle reported, that when the company re-aired it later in the year, the dialogue about being “a great mom” had been deleted, allowing viewers to think that the two women might merely be sisters or close friends.32 GAY PEOPLE ARE FUN-LOVING My Best Friend’s Wedding and Will & Grace were among the media products that had, during the 1990s, used witty repartee to portray gay men as fun fellows to be around. Many of the advertisements that exploded onto the American cultural scene a decade later sent a similar message, although they generally did so through images rather than dialogue. The boys of Abercrombie & Fitch did their part. Those images of bare-chested young men fooling around in the shower were definitely sexual, but they also were lighthearted and playful. The Washington Post described the winsome lads as “frolicking” and as “being happy and open.”33 Numerous other ads distributed by Abercrombie & Fitch communicated that anyone wearing its brand of clothing was virtually guaranteed of engaging in fun activities. One had a buff boy entertaining a crowd of inebriated onlookers by stripping down to his boxerbriefs as he danced on a bar;34 another had a line-up of four carefree young hunks—three white, one black—as they roller skated near a beach while wearing nothing but boxers;35 and an ad that consisted of several images showed a middle-aged man paired with a much younger one as they somehow managed to pilot their small sailboat while also hugging, kissing, and otherwise cavorting.36 Gay men being depicted as fun to be around jumped to a whole new level in 2003 when the Chili’s restaurant chain selected Esera Tuaolo to appear in a TV commercial. The ad showed the former professional football player, who retired from the Minnesota Vikings in 1999 and

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came out as a gay man three years later, with a huge smile stretched across his face as he strummed a ukulele and sang about the “awesome taste” of a Chili’s sizzling steak.37 “The statement we are making is that we’re a fun, casual restaurant,” a spokesman for the company told USA Today. 38 Indeed, the six-foot-three-inch, 270-pound defensive tackle, wearing a tight black T-shirt and with a tattoo visible on his bulging right bicep, clearly was a guy who enjoyed chowing down on a hunk of beef. When the Atlanta Journal reported on the Samoa-born Tuaolo appearing in the ad, the paper talked about his “infectious smile” and his “hearty laugh,” described him as “biggie-size joy,” and brought home its point about the gay man being fun to be around by saying, “If you’re not smiling when Esera Tuaolo is in the room, then you’re either a running back with a grudge or you’re dead.”39 Subaru crossed another threshold by communicating that being fun-loving is not a trait exclusive to gay men but one that characterizes many gay women as well. In 2000, the car company began airing a television commercial featuring openly lesbian tennis star Martina Navratilova, who had won some 170 tournaments. “She personifies the attributes of our brand as a go-anywhere, do-anything type of individual,” a Subaru spokesman told the New York Times. “We view her as an active lifestyle woman.” The message that lesbians were fun-loving was sent by the fact that the commercial, as the Times pointed out, had “a humorous tone.”40 The ad consisted of images of Navratilova, a female golfer, and a female skier playing their respective sports while they made verbal comments about grip, control, and performance—meant to refer to attributes shared by the women athletes and by Subarus. At the end of the commercial, Navratilova smiles directly into the camera and delivers the tongue-in-cheek punch line: “But what do we know? We’re just girls.”41 GAY PEOPLE HAVE LARGE EXPENDABLE INCOMES The abundance of ads sent messages both about gay men and about lesbians, but anyone looking closely at the phenomenon had to acknowledge that the primary motivation of the companies either publishing the ads in print or airing them on TV was not to advance the cause of a stigmatized minority group, but to sell their products. Likewise, there was no question that part of the appeal of gay Americans was that they were perceived to be affluent. From the moment the first gay-themed ads began appearing in the early 1990s, news organizations started reporting on the large

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expendable incomes among gay men. “There’s no dispute that gays control many billions of dollars of disposable income,” according to a 1993 story on the front page of the Washington Post financial section. “Most also are considered robust and young consumers with high incomes, high education and upscale tastes.” The article also pointed out that the majority of gay men do not have children and, therefore, do not have to spend their hefty incomes on braces or tuition to private school. “Because gay men have fewer dependents than the general public and therefore more disposable income, they are more likely to spend that money on clothes, eating out, furniture, cars and travel.”42 By the early 2000s when news organizations across the country were reporting on the mushrooming number of gay-themed ads, the myriad news stories reiterated that many gay people have much more money to spend than their straight counterparts do. “Gay men especially are now seen as more wealthy with more disposable income than consumers at large,” the St. Louis Post-Dispatch wrote.43 “This is a market segment that is very affluent with a good disposable income, and in many cases you have dual-income households without kids,” the Cleveland Plain Dealer wrote.44 Television newscasts made the same point, with the Fox News Channel stating: “Marketing experts say when it comes to selling their goods, companies go where the dollars are, and base their marketing decisions on pure economics. They will create products and advertising campaigns to appeal to a certain group if that group is ready to buy.”45 To support their assertions that gays have large disposable incomes, several of the news outlets listed some of the luxury items that companies were pitching toward them, along with descriptions of the relevant ads. The Wall Street Journal, the country’s leading business-oriented daily, took the lead on this particular topic by publishing several such articles. In 1999, a Journal story highlighted some of the clever puns that abounded in gay-themed ads, including “It’s time your crystal came out of the closet as well” (Waterford crystal) and “Every twelve years, thousands of us come out” (Chivas Regal aged scotch).46 Two years later, another Journal story applauded a pair of ads that focused specifically on gay couples. The first one showed two men laughing and hugging while standing in front of their grand piano; the ad was for Moet et Chandon champagne and carried the tagline “When you know in your heart that your future is with him.” The second featured a close-up photo of lesbian singer Melissa Etheridge and her partner

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Tammy Lynn Michaels wearing elegant white gold bracelets; the ad was for Cartier jewelers and read “Cartier’s Menotte handcuff bracelets symbolize everlasting love”—the ad did not include the fact that each item of jewelry carried a $4,000 price tag.47 “TARGETING GAY POCKETBOOKS” If a single gay-themed advertisement were to be spotlighted as the most significant one of the early 2000s, it would be tempting to select the one featuring the two grooms standing on top of a wedding cake. The justification for that choice would be that the ad not only illustrated how major companies such as the New York Times were incorporating gay content into their ad campaigns but also that the image showed that the country’s most influential news organization unequivocally supported same-sex marriage. Another candidate for that solo spotlight, however, would be an ad that showed a balding, average-looking man in front of a shiny green automobile next to the words “Rob has changed our policies, our politics, our culture, and our future.” The ad, which appeared in 2000, was remarkable not because of its image or its tagline, but because of the company whose products it was promoting. For in 1997, the Ford Motor Company had been among the first advertisers to announce that it was canceling its commercials that had been appearing on the Ellen television show because the star was coming out of the closet.48 What a difference three years make! According to the copy for the 2000 Ford ad, the man in the photo deserved a portion of the credit for the company’s 180-degree turn vis-a`-vis gay people because he had persuaded executives to change the policy on employee benefits, including extending health care coverage to the domestic partners of gay and lesbian employees. “Today, thanks to Rob’s efforts and those of numerous other Ford employees, we’re creating a truly diverse and harmonious workplace for every member of the Ford family—whatever their sexual orientation.”49 Those laudatory words notwithstanding, an objective observer who analyzed the forces behind the explosion of gay-themed ads might suggest that the turnaround had come about primarily because of the realization by Ford and other members of the American business community, thanks to market research data, that gay consumers simply had too much disposable income to ignore. Indeed, that conclusion is supported by considering some of the headlines that the country’s newspapers had crafted to run above their stories reporting the glut

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of gay-themed ads in the initial years of the new millennium— “Targeting Gay Pocketbooks” in the San Francisco Examiner,50 “More Advertisers Pursue Gay and Lesbian Consumers” in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 51 and “A Welcome Mat for Gay Customers” in the Chicago Tribune.52 While the media venue of advertising was a new one for gay content, most of the broader messages that the print ads and TV commercials sent were generally familiar to anyone who had tracked the evolving depiction of gay men and lesbians during the previous halfcentury. All those buff boys in boxers who populated the Abercrombie & Fitch ads—including several of them tugging at another lad’s underwear—communicated that gay men are highly sexual beings. Likewise, the dozens of loving gay couples who proliferated in ads for products ranging from tires to dining room tables also brought home the point that gay people place enormous value on committed relationships. Other themes that had been portrayed in previous media products and that were reiterated by the advertisements included gay people deserving equal rights, being fun-loving, and having hefty expendable incomes. The parade of advertisements that marched through the nation’s mainstream newspapers, magazines, and television programs also deserve praise for having reflected two realities that many of the milestones that preceded them had not. First, the men and women in the ads were not lily white but included at least a smattering of persons of color who communicated that Gay and Lesbian America is a racially diverse community. Second, the series of eye-catching ads from Benetton served to remind the media-consuming public that HIV and AIDS continued to play a major role in the lives of men who had sexual desires for other men. Perhaps the most intriguing observation vis-a` -vis the media’s depictions of gay people in advertisements is one that had been hinted at when looking at other milestones from earlier eras but that came into sharp focus with the mushrooming number of gay-themed ads in the new millennium. Specifically, race and sexual orientation both had traditionally been recognized as factors that propelled individuals into minority status. Just as persons of color had historically been marginalized and underserved by the nation’s political elite, so had gay men and lesbians. However, market research data that surfaced in the 1990s and early 2000s suggested that persons of color and persons with same-sex desires differed dramatically when it came to economics.

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More specifically still, while a huge percentage of racial minorities such as African Americans and Latinos suffered from severe economic deprivation, many gay Americans—particularly gay men—were securely positioned in either the middle class or the upper class. This distinction between the two minority groups surfaced with regard to advertising because promoting products to would-be buyers understandably involves the purchasing power of the target audience of the ads. It would seem downright foolish for Cartier to aim its ads for a $4,000 bracelet to a segment of the population that struggles to pay the electric bill. More complicated, however, is to speculate about how the relative wealth enjoyed by many gay people, particularly compared to the poverty endured by many persons of color, might influence the other media venues, as the cultural stigma attached to being gay was fading. Does it not make sense—from a business perspective—for a major motion picture studio to crank out films depicting positive gay characters when the executives know that a critical mass of gay men can afford to pay $9 for a movie ticket to see people like themselves portrayed on the big screen? (Not to mention $3 more for a soda and $5 on top of that for a bag of popcorn.) Likewise, does it not make sense for a cable channel such as Showtime or Bravo to develop programming that depicts gay characters and explores gay issues when The Powers That Be who are making decisions at those business enterprises are fully aware that well-heeled gay men—and an ever-growing number of well-heeled lesbians—are willing and able to pay a monthly fee to watch shows that focus on topics the major networks have largely ignored? More difficult is the dilemma facing the country’s journalistic organizations. Like their media counterparts in the fields of advertising, film, and entertainment television, the decision-makers in the world of newspapers and television news also are eager—particularly during an era when the Internet and any number of wireless products are exploding onto the media landscape—to expand their audiences. But news organizations have commitments not only to their stockholders but also to the public that depends on them for information as well as a spectrum of views on controversial issues. A motion picture studio or cable channel has every right to increase its gay and lesbian entertainment content in hopes of attracting more theatergoers or subscribers, but a newspaper also must consider if expanding its coverage of gay topics ultimately distorts the perception of its readers with regard to the size and importance of the local community compared to, for example, the size and importance of the local

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African-American community. The wedding-cake ad in the New York Times suggested that, at least on some occasions, the country’s leading news outlets were willing to take sides on hot-button debates regarding gay and lesbian rights. NOTES 1. For discussion of and an image of the New York Times ad, see http:// www.commercialcloset.org/cgi-bin/iowa/portrayals.html?record=1418. 2. Carrie Kirby, “Hyundai ‘Boy Toy’ Ad Tops PlanetOut Poll,” San Francisco Chronicle, June 6, 2001, B2. 3. Kara Swisher, “Targeting the Gay Market,” Washington Post, April 25, 1993, H1. 4. William L. Hamilton, “When Intentions Fall Between the Lines,” New York Times, July 20, 2000, F1. The editor was Rogier van Bakel of Ad Age’s Creativity. 5. Greg Jonsson, “More Advertisers Pursue Gay and Lesbian Consumers,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 22, 2001, A1. 6. Bernard Weinraub and Jim Rutenberg, “Gay-Themed TV Gaining a Wider Audience,” New York Times, July 29, 2003, A1. 7. Richard Harwood, “Gay Chic,” Washington Post, November 22, 1997, A19. 8. Robin Wallace, “Does Spending Power Buy Cultural Acceptance?,” Fox News Channel, September 16, 2003. 9. Robin Givhan, “The Fetching Men of Abercrombie & Fitch,” Washington Post, August 7, 1998, D1, D5. 10. Stuart Elliott, “Advertising: Abercrombie & Fitch Extends a Print Campaign to TV,” New York Times, August 6, 1999, C5. 11. Robin Givhan, “The Fetching Men of Abercrombie & Fitch,” Washington Post, August 7, 1998, D1, D5. 12. For discussion of and an image of the Abercrombie & Fitch ad, see http://www.commercialcloset.org/cgi-bin/iowa/portrayals.html ?record=350. 13. For discussion of and an image of the Abercrombie & Fitch ad, see http://www.commercialcloset.org/cgi-bin/iowa/portrayals.html ?record=1037. 14. Robin Givhan, “The Fetching Men of Abercrombie & Fitch,” Washington Post, August 7, 1998, D1. The Abercrombie & Fitch spokesman was Lonnie Fogel. 15. Robin Givhan, “The Fetching Men of Abercrombie & Fitch,” Washington Post, August 7, 1998, D1. 16. Ronald Alsop, “Cracking the Gay Market Code,” Wall Street Journal, June 29, 1999, B1. 17. Steve Rothaus, “TV Ads Kick Down Closet Door,” Miami Herald, March 16, 2002, C1.

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18. For discussion of and an image of the Benetton ad, see http://www .commercialcloset.org/cgi-bin/iowa/portrayals.html?record=239. 19. For discussion of and images of the three versions of the Benetton ad, see http://www.commercialcloset.org/cgi-bin/iowa/portrayals.html ?record=560, http://www.commercialcloset.org/cgi-bin/iowa/portrayals .html?record=562, and http://www.commercialcloset.org/cgi-bin/iowa/ portrayals.html?record=561. 20. For discussion of and an image of the Benetton ad, see http://www .commercialcloset.org/cgi-bin/iowa/portrayals.html?record=1116. 21. For discussion of and an image of the Benetton ad, see http://www .commercialcloset.org/cgi-bin/iowa/portrayals.html?record=559. 22. Vanity Fair, September 1992, 262–263. For discussion of and an image of the Banana Republic ad, see http://www.commercialcloset.org/cgi-bin/ iowa/portrayals.html?record=516. On the ad being the first gay-themed ad to appear in a major American magazine, see Larry Gross, Up from Invisibility: Lesbians, Gay Men, and the Media in America (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 238. 23. For discussion of and images from the Ikea commercial, see http:// www.commercialcloset.org/cgi-bin/iowa/portrayals.html?record=76. On the commercial being the first gay-themed one on American television, see Carrie Kirby, “Hyundai ‘Boy Toy’ Ad Tops PlanetOut Poll,” San Francisco Chronicle, June 6, 2001, B2; Bruce Mirken, “Targeting Gay Pocketbooks,” San Francisco Examiner, January 10, 1999, B4. 24. Steve Rothaus, “Big Business Looks to the Rainbow,” Miami Herald, August 26, 2002, Business Monday 22, 25. 25. Deborah Sharp, “Cities Come Out About Wooing Gays—and Their Dollars,” USA Today, December 8, 2003, A3. 26. Stuart Elliott, “Advertising: Homosexual Imagery Is Spreading from Print Campaigns to General-Interest TV Programming,” New York Times, June 30, 1997, D12. 27. For discussion of and an image of the Avis ad, see http://www .commercialcloset.org/cgi-bin/iowa/portrayals.html?record=1325. 28. For discussion of and images from the Snapple commercial, see http:// www.commercialcloset.org/cgi-bin/iowa/portrayals.html?record=1253. 29. For discussion of and an image of the Coors ad, see http://www .commercialcloset.org/cgi-bin/iowa/portrayals.html?record=929. 30. Kimberly Shearer Palmer, “Gay Consumers in the Driver ’s Seat,” Washington Post, July 4, 2000, C1, C7. 31. For discussion of and images from the John Hancock commercial, see http://www.commercialcloset.org/cgi-bin/iowa/portrayals.html?record=216. 32. Carrie Kirby, “Hyundai ‘Boy Toy’ Ad Tops PlanetOut Poll,” San Francisco Chronicle, June 6, 2001, B1, B2. 33. Robin Givhan, “The Fetching Men of Abercrombie & Fitch,” Washington Post, August 7, 1998, D5.

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34. For discussion of and an image of the Abercrombie & Fitch ad, see http://www.commercialcloset.org/cgi-bin/iowa/portrayals.html?record =1036. 35. For discussion of and an image of the Abercrombie & Fitch ad, see http://www.commercialcloset.org/cgi-bin/iowa/portrayals.html?record =348. 36. For discussion of and images from the Abercrombie & Fitch series of ads, see http://www.commercialcloset.org/cgi-bin/iowa/portrayals.html ?record=413. 37. For discussion of and images from the Chili’s commercial, see http://www.commercialcloset.org/cgi-bin/iowa/portrayals.html?record =1284. 38. Michael Hiestand, “Gay Former NFL Player Lands Role in Restaurant Ads,” USA Today, July 10, 2003, C2. The spokesman was Louis Adams. 39. L. Z. Granderson, “Tuaolo Tackles NFL Homophobia,” Atlanta Journal, June 26, 2003, P27. 40. Stuart Elliott, “Advertising: Martina Navratilova Enters the National Mainstream Market in a Campaign for Subaru,” New York Times, March 13, 2000, C14. 41. For discussion of and images from the Subaru commercial, see http:// www.commercialcloset.org/cgi-bin/iowa/portrayals.html?record=159. 42. Kara Swisher, “Targeting the Gay Market,” Washington Post, April 25, 1993, H1. 43. Greg Jonsson, “More Advertisers Pursue Gay and Lesbian Consumers,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 22, 2001, A13. 44. Mya Frazier, “Ads Increasingly Target Gay Market,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, May 15, 2001, C2. 45. Robin Wallace, “Does Spending Power Buy Cultural Acceptance?,” Fox News Channel, September 16, 2003. 46. Ronald Alsop, “Cracking the Gay Market Code,” Wall Street Journal, June 29, 1999, B1. For discussion of and an image of the Waterford ad, see http://www.commercialcloset.org/cgi-bin/iowa/portrayals.html?record =299; for discussion of and an image of the Chivas Regal ad, see http:// www.commercialcloset.org/cgi-bin/iowa/portrayals.html?record=360. 47. Ronald Alsop, “As Same-Sex Households Grow More Mainstream, Businesses Take Note,” Wall Street Journal, August 8, 2001, B4. For discussion of and an image of the Chandon ad, see http://www.commercialcloset.org/ cgi-bin/iowa/portrayals.html?record=688; for discussion of and an image of the Cartier ad, see http://www.commercialcloset.org/cgi-bin/iowa/ portrayals.html?record=1455. 48. For discussion of and an image of the Ford ad, see http://www .commercialcloset.org/cgi-bin/iowa/portrayals.html?record=841. 49. For discussion of and an image of the Ford ad, see http://www .commercialcloset.org/cgi-bin/iowa/portrayals.html?record=841.

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50. Bruce Mirken, “Targeting Gay Pocketbooks,” San Francisco Examiner, January 10, 1999, B1, B4. 51. Greg Jonsson, “More Advertisers Pursue Gay and Lesbian Consumers,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 22, 2001, A1, A13. 52. Cliff Rothman, “A Welcome Mat for Gay Customers,” Chicago Tribune, September 16, 2001, L1.

Chapter 4

“We’re Paying Customers Too”: Gay Viewers Call for the Conspicuous Representation of Gay Characters Lyn J. Freymiller

The social significance of gay1 representations in American media, particularly the highly accessible portrayals on television, is muchdebated in modern society (Svetsky 2000). Some speculate that media visibility helps to facilitate heterosexual acceptance of gay and lesbians in society (Weinraub and Rutenberg 2003). The effect of media portrayals of gay people on heterosexual viewers remains in question, but the potential implications are significant. As Rich posits about the media’s potential impact, “entertainment has often been the vanguard of familiarizing America with gay people, much as it was in spreading homophobia before that” (2003, 7). Even the battle for gay marriage or other gay rights issues might be influenced by gay visibility from television shows such as Will & Grace and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, if indeed such programs contribute to the sensitization of the heterosexual population to gay people (Streitmatter 2009). In the general focus on heterosexual media consumers of gay portrayals, however, another audience has seldom been asked about how they are impacted by gay representation in the media: gay audiences.

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The present study seeks to bring in the most important voices related to the matter of representation of gay people in the media, voices that remains almost completely unheard: the voices of gay audience members themselves. If conceptions of identity are socially constructed through an individual’s engagement with the world (Berger and Luckmann 1966), it is worth exploring how gay people respond to media portrayals of gay identity. It is also worth exploring what gay viewers perceive to be the obligations of the media in regard to depiction of gay characters. As gay men and women gain a degree of representation in the media, do gay audiences think that media programmers have some responsibility to offer gay portrayals? Gay representation in the American media notably increased in the late 1990s and in the first decade of the new century (Capsuto 2000; Gross and Woods 1999; Keller 2002; Svetsky 2000; Streitmatter 2009; Tropiano 2002). A number of studies uncover some disturbing implications of the portrayals of gay people in the media (Battle and Hilton-Morrow 2002; Dow 2001; Fejes and Petrich 1993; Lacroix and Westerfelhaus 2005; Shugart 2003; Streitmatter 2009). As these authors suggest, more notable media portrayals does not necessarily mean that portrayals are positive or serve to challenge societal stereotypes about the gay community. Walters suggests that while media depictions present representations of gay identity to large audiences, such visibility has made it take on “the dubious distinction of public spectacle” (2001, 10). Some scholars speculate that television portrayals could be of great practical value to gay people. Significantly, Fejes states that “[m]edia images are very powerful in helping one develop a sense of identity” (2000, 115). Meanwhile, Gross (1998) also indicates that gay people may reap benefits from positive portrayals of gays on television. Notably, Kama (2002) studied the response of gay Jewish-Israeli men to media portrayals of gays and found that the men desired more inclusive representations. However, the question of what American gay audiences feel they should be able to expect from American media programmers is not yet answered. This chapter draws from the transcripts of in-depth interviews with 22 self-identifying lesbian, gay, and bisexual people. The present study is part of a larger project that seeks to understand how notable television programs depict gay identity on the different dimensions suggested by the communication theory of identity (Hecht, 1993), and also assess the responses of gay viewers to representations of

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gay identity on television. Specifically, this study explores a cohesive theme that emerged when interviewees were asked if they thought that media outlets had any obligation to portray gay and lesbian characters. A significant number of interviewees responded to the question by offering some variation on the notion that media outlets would profit from cultivating gay audiences, and thus it would be in their business interests to offer programming that appeals to gay audiences. In other words, various interviewees endorsed or at least recognized a notion that will be described as “conspicuous representation,” or a portrayal of diverse gay characters in the media as a conduit to financial gain for media outlets. I first offer context by discussing the gay population as a consumer culture that is increasingly courted by advertisers. In the next section, I discuss the methods used in the interview project that generated the comments discussed here. Then, I explore the theme that emerged in the interviews related to the concept of conspicuous representation and illustrate it through various interview excerpts. GAY CONSUMER CULTURE A growing body of literature recognizes the existence of the consumer culture of gay America. Indeed, the gay population of the United States is gaining recognition as a consumer culture to be reckoned with. As noted by Sender (2004), “(s)ince the early 1990s, the United States has seen a rapid increase in the visibility of a new consumer niche: the gay market” (1). More specifically, Iwata (2006) states, “(t)he 16 million gay consumers age 18 and older in the USA boast $641 billion in buying power,” or cash to spend after taxes. Considering the disposable income the population has, maybe it was only a matter of time before the buying power of the gay community came to the attention of advertisers. Streitmatter (2009) draws a parallel between the expansion of positive portrayals of gay characters on television and film with the increase of awareness of the buying power of the gay population. In response to this growing awareness, Witeck and Combs (2006) provide a full-fledged manual for appealing to gay consumers. They note that the emergence of media (particularly print media) directed toward a gay readership over the last several decades gave rise to a concurrent advertising niche. The niche is still developing and maturing and offers ample opportunity for companies to establish brand loyalty in the gay

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community. In another volume directed at businesses for marketing to gay consumers, Lukenbill (1999) suggests that mainstream advertising has always included images that appealed to gay consumers. However, these historical images were coded in such a way that non-gay audiences would not necessarily note the gay-inclusive cues. Now that appeals to gay consumers are much more overt, companies have ample opportunity to exploit the demographic. There is additional evidence that the gay community has shown a measure of muscle in the marketplace in recent years. Logo, a cable television channel centered on programming that appeals to gay audiences, debuted in 2005 (Hernandez 2006). Major companies like travel Web site Orbitz specifically seek to cultivate gay customers. More major corporations than ever are sponsoring gay pride parades and events (Leff 2005). Whether it represents a trend or a permanent commitment to gay customers remains to be seen, but at present numerous companies are jumping on the court-the-gay-customer bandwagon. However, it is important to note that the increase in companies seeking gay patrons is rarely connected in any significant way to the fight to live free of discrimination and be accorded equal rights in society. The very title of Sender’s (2004) volume, Business, Not Politics, clearly implies that advertisers may be advertising to gay consumers for purely business purposes. The political agenda of the gay community is not the focus for many advertisers, and the impetus for seeking gay consumers is strictly something that makes sense in economic terms. Chasin (2000) considers the implications of how gay political priorities are generally not recognizably advanced by advertisers seeking gay consumers. Additionally, the author questions the lack of diversity in the gay-directed advertisements that do exist. Such advertisements largely depict and/or are largely directed toward financially well-off gay white males. While this segment of the gay population indeed has formidable market clout, the images do not begin to reflect the diversity of the gay community. At least one study has explored the nexus between gay identity and gay consumer culture. Kates (1998) conducted interviews and participant observation to assess the consumer habits of gay men. He found that the buying habits varied, and much of the time matched individual preferences more than buying in to perceived trends. The study suggests that gay male culture is very diverse, and that a sense of personal identity is exemplified through buying patterns. However, to date there have been no notable studies that investigate recognition

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of, and responses to, gay consumer culture for gay media audiences. This theme, an unanticipated finding within a larger investigation, is the focus of this study. PROCEDURE I conducted a single, sit-down interview with 22 individuals who self-identified as gay, lesbian, or bisexual. After I received the necessary approval to involve human participants in the project from a large public university in the eastern United States, I sent an informational e-mail about the study to several contacts that then sent the message out on various e-mail lists at the university. A print version of the informational e-mail was also left in the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender (LGBT) student center on campus. The flier and the informational e-mail noted that the study sought “members of the LGBT community” for an interview project “investigating LGBT responses to LGBT depictions on television.” Three criteria were noted as qualifications for the study. The first criterion was that the individual selfidentified “as having a sexual orientation other than heterosexual.” I chose this phrasing in order to be sensitive to individuals who might resist “labeling” their sexual orientation in any way, or may see such labels as fluid and changeable. I determined that the most crucial idea was that a participant did not identify with heterosexual orientation, not that a participant did identify with a specific designation such as “gay” or “lesbian.” The second criterion was that the individual has “seen any television programs with fictional LGBT characters.” Mainly, the interview assessed responses to gay characters on television. For the question under investigation in this essay, however, the focus of the interview question broadened somewhat to allow for responses relating to any type of media outlet. The third criterion was that the individual was 18 to 65 years of age. A volunteer sample contacted me via phone or e-mail to express interest in participating, and interviews were generally scheduled through e-mail. The interviews were conducted in private spaces. Before commencing the interview, participants were briefed on the project, their rights as participants, and the trajectory of the interview questions, and signed an informed consent form. Participants were not paid for their participation. Prior to the interview each participant filled out a short demographic profile providing information on gender, age, and sexual orientation. Code names were assigned to all interviewees, and 22 interviews were

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completed. There was reasonable diversity in the age range of participants, and at least five interviewees identified with each of the three sexual orientations included in the study. All interviewees selfidentified themselves as gay, lesbian, or bisexual; none preferred a different term, and none preferred not to label their orientation. The 22 interviewees include 12 women, 7 of whom identified as lesbian and 5 of whom identified as bisexual. All 10 male participants self-identified as gay. Participants ranged in age from 18 to 54. Median age was 23 years, while mean age was just under 28.4 years. All participants identified as white or Caucasian except for one African-American woman and one man who self-identified as Hawaiian-American. Interviews lasted from approximately 40 minutes to about 85 minutes. The first set of interview questions addressed the codification of the interviewee’s sense of his or her gay identity. The second phase of the interview addressed the interviewee’s responses to portrayals of gay characters on television, and how the interviewee saw the characters constructed in terms of personal characteristics, relationships, and sense of community. In the third and last phase of the interview, interviewees were asked if they felt that media depictions had influenced their own identities. Interviews were audio taped and transcribed verbatim. Only code names appeared on demographic profiles, the cassette tapes of recorded interviews, and the written transcripts. A coding process was used to analyze the interview data related to specific questions that were asked of all interviewees, and thematic analysis ensued. The results of the present study are drawn from a question that was posed in the third phase of the interviews, the question of whether or not the interviewee thought media outlets had any obligation to portray gay characters. The coding procedure and the determination of notable themes across interviews were guided by the recommendations of Strauss and Corbin (1990). The present study was initially conceived as an investigation of the different significant themes offered in response to the question posed to interviewees about whether or not media programmers held any obligation to portray gay characters. However, during analysis one theme emerged in such a notable fashion, with multiple interviewees offering remarkably similar ideas completely independent of one another, that I determined that the theme merited in-depth exploration as a self-contained study. In the next section, I exemplify and amplify the theme of gay viewers suggesting that media portrayals of gays make good business sense for media outlets by coining the

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term “conspicuous representation” to represent the theme. (Note: Interviewees are identified by age and the sexual orientation designation they used to identify themselves in the interview questionnaire; this data is provided for informational purposes and is not intended to reduce any of these complex individuals to such a limited definition of their personhood. Also, in some instances I have elected to offer what some might consider to be “extended” snippets to allow the voices of the interviewees to be recognized in more than sound bytes.)

THE CALLS FOR CONSPICUOUS REPRESENTATION It’s—they’re in it for money. —Julie, 19-year-old lesbian

A significant portion of interviewees suggest that media programmers generally, and television programmers specifically, should indeed feel some sense of obligation to include representations of gay and lesbian characters. In some cases, the interviewee responses explored moral, ethical, and/or altruistic reasons why media should offer such portrayals. But many interviewees immediately framed the obligation as being in the best interests of media outlets not because of their duty to show as much of the human experience as possible, but rather to enhance their bottom lines. Like Julie, many interviewees quickly assumed that media outlets are likely to be driven by dollar signs rather than any form of deep-seated commitment to diversity in media portrayals. This theme is coined here as a recommendation for “conspicuous representation.” Conspicuous representation, quite obviously, is an adaptation of the concept of conspicuous consumption, or the notion of making statussymbol purchases to flaunt one’s wealth and/or appear to be among the trend-setting portion of society (“What is conspicuous consumption?,” 2009). The term was defined by Thortstein Veblen in his 1899 tome The Theory of the Leisure Class as a proclivity of the wealthy class to spend money on items that would enhance their notoriety and position in society (1994). Mason (1998) suggests that conspicuous consumption began with the advent of consumer cultures as early as the seventeenth century; the author also notes that in the modern era all strata of society are affected (or afflicted) by the tendencies to some degree, not just the upper class. Conspicuous representation refers not to consumer behavior but rather the notion that media programmers would benefit, in a

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business/marketing sense, from diverse portrayals of gay characters due to the expectation that such portrayals would win over the loyalties—and dollars—of members of the gay community. Many interviewees express significant awareness of the consumer cachet that they hold as members of the gay community. The endorsement of diverse media depictions due to the accompanying profit incentive is exemplified by Doug (21-year-old gay man). When queried about media obligations to portray gays, he states: I mean when I think of programmers or anyone running a business, I took business classes in high school, it’s always about the money. So I mean you have a ten percent base that of-, often has been shown to have more money when you compare them to the other percentages so I mean, in theory they should have an obligation [to portray gay characters] because they want more money and their advertisers are going to realize they’re opening up to new markets so I think they have, I don’t know if it’s an obligation of the social or even of their conscience but more along the lines of their greed. I mean, money should obligate them to it. Doug assesses the gay population of the United States to be somewhere in the vicinity of 10 percent. As such a figure would translate to 25 to 30 million gay consumers in the country, it obviously does not match Iwata’s (2006) estimate of 16 million adult gay would-be consumers. The specifics of the estimates are beside the point, however. They buying power is unquestionably significant, and Doug also invokes the notion that gay consumers putatively have more disposable income than other social groups. While this notion is based on the assumption that gay consumers are not likely to have children and are more trendconscious, the idea of gay Americans as a wealthier class may be based on a well-off, white segment of the population that is not of the whole non-heterosexual population. In any event, Doug suggests that media programmers need only follow business instincts to feel a sense of duty to offer gay portrayals, or what could be described as conspicuous representation. He does not particularly place faith in the social conscience of media outlets, but still sees gay media portrayals as a situation in which the media outlets would benefit. Interviewees differ on the implications of the profit-driven motive for media programmers. Does profiting from media portrayals of gays reflect a win-win situation for the media outlets and the gay community? After all, the media outlets get the bucks and the gay audiences

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get media representation that may be very valuable to them, as well as valuable in acclimating heterosexual audiences to them. Conversely, is the profit motive a sad comment on the American media, which should be aspiring to a higher calling in relation to representing a wider spectrum of American experience? In the same sense that conspicuous consumption may easily be viewed as a woeful misdirection of resources to unnecessary ends, conspicuous representation may be a cynical move on the part of media programmers that deserves more scorn than praise. Debbie (42-year-old lesbian), like Doug, immediately invokes a business model in relation to greater gay visibility in the media. But while she notes that indeed media might be driven to provide such portrayals, she sees great limitations to their potential effect: Well, in the United States we put television in the category of business and therefore one’s only responsibility basically is to make money um and then we sort of kind of layer on a little bit of other stuff, and we put a few lines, but not very many, particularly around issues like, issues of class. Um, so even asking that question puts you in the position of saying, okay, what superficial veneer are we willing to ask them to take a crack at, knowing full well that what really matters to them is what Wall Street thinks and the bottom line. And can you ever expect that process of applying a veneer to ever really help anybody? It’s kind of like asking, you know, should there be token hiring of gays and lesbians? No, there shouldn’t be token hiring of anybody, you know, tokenism is the problem. So I, kind of feel that isn’t a very—that’s kind of a battle we’re never gonna win as long as the only function of television is to make money, that’s why the non-commercial sector is so vitally important, and that’s why I think it’d be most beneficial to all of who are excluded from the people that TV programmers want to sell to, to build up alternative non, non-private sources of media. Debbie holds out little hope that corporate-driven media representations of gay people, and other socially disenfranchised groups, will do any more than scratch the surface of the real experience of the group. Representation of such groups is destined to be token representation, undertaken for spurious reasons and of extremely limited value to audiences. We should be suspicious of conspicuous representation and the motives of companies that indeed seem to court the gay

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audience, as the resulting content is likely to be compromised by the corporate machine. Another interviewee, Marta (22-year-old lesbian), is somewhat more sanguine about the matter. She believes that the buying power, and concurrent boycott power, of the gay consumer culture is significant indeed. If gay-friendly is trendy, she’s ready to embrace that. She states: I don’t know if I would call it an obligation [for the media to portray gay characters]. I think it’s more of a—they know if they don’t, they’re not gonna get good media, they’re not gonna get good ratings, someone’s going to come along and say oh well this channel or whatever is homophobic. And then they’re afraid that something’s gonna happen like with the whole—what was it, Coors Light or something, one beer a long time ago, it came out that they were homophobic and then, all of the gay and lesbian people stopped drinking their beer. So I think that they’re afraid that something like that will happen it’s like they want to be seen as being forward-thinking and progressive and open-minded and so I think that everyone is trying to you know have that token gay person and show that you know they’re with it that, they are trying to be . . . open and to show everyone that they’re trying to you know at least acknowledge their presence and not try to hide it or anything. I think it’s great but I don’t think their intentions are completely altruistic . . . In contrast to Debbie, Marta welcomes a token gay character as a well-intentioned representation of social diversity. She expresses some suspicion of the true motives of media programmers—they might be doing it just for show, a clear recognition that conspicuous representation takes place for profit-driven reasons. However, regardless of motive, the increase in diversified portrayals occurs. Also, Marta does not hesitate to indicate that gay consumers can send a significant statement to companies. Specific companies need to decide whether or not to seek the gay consumer, and will profit or be punished accordingly by gay consumers. Ultimately, Marta implies, the gay consumers wield no small measure of control over media outlets. She does not reference the other side of the coin: the possibility of groups/organizations that are not friendly to the LGBT community may stage a boycott of their own against companies that have chosen to court the gay community. In Marta’s view, the presumed mindset of advertisers is a liberal one.

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Meanwhile, Alan (21-year-old gay man) returns us to a rather dispirited notion of how consumer culture may guide but ultimately may overshadow any potential societal gains of more varied media portrayals. His view comports with Debbie’s; he clearly believes that motive greatly matters when assessing or endorsing gay depictions. Alan says: [programmers] have no obligation whatsoever [to portray gay characters in the media]. And the reason why I say that is because—they do whatever they can to get the money. And if this was an ideal society, I would say yes, they deserve to show us because we’re here just like anyone else. But because mass media is controlled by patriarchy, they have a very clear set agenda. If they know they can get money from us, or make money off of us, they’re gonna do it. And it makes me sick to my stomach, and I actually am upset with myself that I had to say they had no obligation to show us. . . . They’re choosing to . . . I feel that because the people in charge know that they can get money from the culture, they’re gonna do it, and then the other part of me that says yes, they—they should show us because we are here, we are essentially consumers of their products, we do give them money in return, essentially we hold more money than most heterosexual persons, therefore, they should show us because if they show us, we’ll reward them with our money, and that unfortunately is not how the business of our society works, our business in society is more like, hey, we found a new trend. And—that hurts me. Alan’s view is that money won by programmers through their portrayal of gay characters comes at a price; conspicuous representation is ultimately a zero-sum game for the gay community. The gay audience as profitable audience niche diminishes the value of whatever portrayals are on offer. Conspicuous representation is a response to a trend and not an integration of gay portrayals into the fabric of media representation and such exposure may be as short-lived as the trend itself. Alan, like Doug, invokes the familiar if dubious notion that gay consumers have more to spend than others. In Alan’s view, no significant social ground is really gained through the media’s carpet-bagging tactics. In comparison with Alan, Greg (23-year-old gay man) offers a more upbeat assessment of the buying power of the gay community serving to provide incentive to media programmers. He notes a figure related

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to gay buying power that is $128 billion less than the figure stated by Iwata (2006), but again the specific numbers are of little concern. Greg states: I think they should [depict gay characters in the media] because it would be smart business move um, it would be smart for so many reasons, I mean, there’s the gay and lesbian chamber of commerce now, five—what is it, 513 billion dollars was it— something—they gave me some really large number that, that gay people spend a year and it’s just smart business not to, to try to just I guess not to a . . . I’m trying to think of a nice word and I can’t really come up with the word I’m looking for but, it would be smart business for them to, to appeal to us, to uh, to have a gay character and then hey, look, well now our advertisers realize that we have gay characters and gay people are watching and guess what, now we can target them, something to buy, it’s smart business. Like Marta, Greg does not begrudge programmers from recognizing a “smart business” move that leads to greater gay social visibility. Even if done mainly for appearances—Greg implies that such depictions would be illuminating to advertisers, not specifically that they would be illuminating to audiences—it is a foolproof move. More diverse programming content, even if created for/as conspicuous representation, serves as a conduit to well-remunerated advertisers and represents an acceptable blend of cultural and business interests. Brenda (23-year-old lesbian) agrees that media outlets would be amply rewarded if they were to increase the portrayal of gay characters. The specific reasons she offers resonate with those stated by others discussed here. Brenda states: The business end, yeah [television does need to portray gay characters], because we’re paying customers too. We buy the shit that—that the advertisers put on television. You know, we, we’re just like everyone else and then at the same time we’re not, um . . . so it’s, it’s like yeah, they have a responsibility, anybody who they want to watch television you know or, you know, we’re—we’re out there. We have televisions and stuff like that, so yeah. In very simple terms, Brenda invokes the most basic elements of participation in television culture—gay people own televisions and

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buy the advertised products. In this sense, they are exactly like all other viewers. Her statements position conspicuous representation as a self-serving ploy to court gay audiences on the part of programmers. Even so, appealing specifically to them will curry favor and, presumably, loyalty. The responsibility to offer representation applies to any other group programmers would like to have as part of their audience, though; the portrayal of gay characters is one of any number of responsibilities the media has. Television ratings are broken down into demographic categories, but rarely, if ever, is there any assessment of top shows among gay audiences or estimates of how many gay viewers are watching a particular program. While the Logo channel has gain significant carriage on various cable systems around the country and it available to 35 million viewers, the channel is still not ranked by the Nielsen rating service (Hampp 2009). Nonetheless, Derek (21-year-old gay man) sees gay viewers as a demographic that should be coveted. In fact, he believes the gay demographic is capable of enhancing or diminishing overall ratings levels for specific programs. In speaking about television ratings, Derek approaches from a different angle than other interviewees, but still strikes some of the same chords in his ideas. Derek offers this: Um, well I think it’s in their [media outlets] best interests to [portray gay characters] because uh we are out there, we are consumers uh we are viewers of their shows and without us their ratings would suffer, so I think it’s in their best interest to and as for an obligation um . . . I think so yeah, because I feel they have an obligation to provide um entertainment that can appeal to anybody whether it’s a common theme or um whether it’s specific character selection. Um, they cater to other minorities, why not to us? Derek opines that gay viewer defection from programs would be substantial enough to dent ratings. As a societal minority group, the gay audience has clout. He indicates how media can “cater to minorities” while, apparently, at the same time, provide entertainment “that can appeal to anybody.” This represents another instance of a viewpoint noted by other participants: that everyone, gay and non-gay audience segments, programmers, and advertisers, win when gay portrayals are present. He echoes other interviewees quoted earlier in regard to how gay viewers are consumers too and how it’s in the “best interest”— presumably business interest—of programmers to offer varied depictions. Derek indicates an expectation of both a universal and more

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personal appeal from entertainment programming. He implies that perhaps conspicuous representation is already available for other societal groups. Paige (37-year-old lesbian) also positions money-making as the top priority of media outlets. Paige immediately moves, as did others, to a business paradigm for entertainment media. However, in her view the realm of profit and the consumer commitment to be won from the gay community extends well beyond entertainment-oriented media outlets. Paige comments: I would like to see it [more media portrayals of gay characters]. Um, I think they’re probably obligated to make money. Y’know, it’s a business, that’s what TV is about. Um, if they want to make money certainly the gay and lesbian um community is a place where they can, they can look for some substantial a-, assets and certainly the city of Philadelphia has recently figured that out . . . Um, but, so if, if their obligation is to make money, then they would be foolish to turn their backs on the gay and lesbian contingent. You know, we have a lot of money to spend you know most of us don’t have children, some of us, but most of us don’t have children, oftentimes we’re talking about dualincome households. Um, we, and we spend money in a, um, in a very—I, I deal with travel a lot, as a leisure activity. And um P-town [Provincetown, MA] as a travel destination is based upon the gay—is based upon a gay economy and there are hundreds of thousands of dollars that tri- that are um available for discretionary income. That um, so if the goal of TV is to make money they would be foolish to not pay attention to the gay and lesbian community, from, to—if they want to be more altruistic and they want to look at y’know humanity as a whole I think it would certainly be nice and certainly if promoting humanity is, is, is their goal then to ignore this lar-, this you know demographic which is, permeates every county, every state, every nook and cranny of this country as well as throughout the rest of the world, to ignore us would be to ignore part of what it is to be human. So um, y’know, it depends on what the TV producers think their goal in life is about. Extending her comments beyond media portrayals, Paige invokes the recent efforts of various cities to specifically advertise themselves as gay-friendly destinations, and also reiterates the notion that the gay

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population has a larger-than-average amount of discretionary income. It would be foolhardy of companies to miss the boat on such a lucrative potential audience. Ultimately, though, Paige gestures to much broader potential motives for media outlets. Media programmers should carefully ponder what their “goal in life” is, presumably as far as entertainment programming is concerned. Like other interviewees, she is not convinced that the media actually has her best interests at heart. However, an increase in diversified media depictions can’t be all bad. Presumably even dubiously-intentioned portrayals that might be a profit-driven calculation to appeal to gay consumers are preferable to the alternative: conspicuous representation is more attractive than the invisibility of gay identities in the media. DISCUSSION As exemplified by the excerpts in this study, many interviewees drew a direct line between the availability of more diversified media portrayals of gays and profit potential on the part of programmers and advertisers. The theme of conspicuous representation discussed here reflects a clear recognition on the part of interviewees of several major trends in the present-day consumer market. What is untapped in their comments, and should be explored by further research, is whether any correlation exists between gay visibility in the media and the real-life experience of gay Americans in regard to anti-gay discrimination, violence, or sentiments. Naturally, the consumer culture discussed here is part of a larger movement with different political ends besides the exertion of marketing clout. Links between media visibility, flexing of consumer muscle, and real political gains toward equal rights and the ability to live a life free of discrimination need to be explored. There is further evidence that gay consumers potentially do indeed wield the type of clout in the marketplace suggested by many interviewees. Complaints from organizations like the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) in response to dubious media portrayals of gay themes have had significant impact, such as a bizarre 2007 Super Bowl ad (Horovitz 2007). In 2009, Absolut Vodka placed a lot of marketing muscle behind the Logo television show “Rupaul’s Drag Race,” and even used the show as a launching pad for a new flavor, Absolut Mango (Hampp 2009). It should be noted that the number of specifically-identified gay and lesbian characters on network television scripted series declined

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in the last several years (Where we are on TV, 2007), but then had an upswing in the 2008 to 2009 television season, according to statistics compiled by GLAAD (Where we are on TV, 2008). So while the gay consumer culture is supposedly continuing to mature and solidify in American society, the prevalence of non-heterosexual characters on scripted programs is still very limited. For the 2008 to 2009 television, a small 2.6 percent of characters on American network television series identified as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender (Where we are on TV, 2008). While GLAAD’s assessment is somewhat discouraging, it should be recognized that the study does not include “reality” television shows, a genre which is recognized as perhaps more inclusive of gay or lesbian participants than scripted programming. To be sure, LGBT characters on network television are more prevalent currently than in the 1980s or 1990s (Streitmatter 2009). Still, the wishes of interview participants to see more and more diverse portrayals of the gay community are not realized in trend lines for American television shows. An additional notable factor for this study is that no interviewee voiced the idea that media outlets courting gay viewers or customers could, at least theoretically, raise the ire of conservatives that might have substantial buying power of their own to bargain with. Publicly associating one’s company as gay-friendly may carry as much risk in the general realm as it does cachet in the gay community. A gayfriendly company may experience both an organized “buy-cott” from gays and an organized boycott from a conservative organization. Nothing can be assumed regarding what interviewees might have said in relation to this. However, it can be reasonably assumed that certain companies would see more benefit in courting rather than ignoring gay customers (or the opposite) due to the nature of their products or services. Many companies with broad-based customers would not find it in their best interests to court either gays or conservatives. Just like estimates of gay buying power are dubious at best, conservative buying power is an indefinable commodity, so no definitive conclusions are possible. Of course, interviewees struck the theme of conspicuous representation completely independently of each other; the interviews were conducted separately and one-on-one, and no suggestion of entertainment as business was suggested by the interviewer when posing the question about the media’s responsibility to provide gay portrayals. I do not believe that the theme bespeaks so much a sense of personal entitlement on the part of the individual gay viewers as much as it

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represents the rather well-informed observation that media outlets that do not provide content that will appeal to gay audiences are missing opportunities that would simultaneously further increase the visibility of gays in the media and enhance their bottom line as a business entity. By and large, interviewees said that media programmers do not have to represent gay characters, but they would be somewhat crazy not to. CONCLUSION As these interview excerpts suggest, gay media audiences assume that business and financial interests are likely to be paramount in the process of generating entertainment programming. Time and again, participants implied that it would be in the best financial interests of entertainment media to recognize the buying power of the gay community and tailor entertainment options that will appeal to them. This idea of conspicuous representation was sometimes questioned and sometimes viewed as cynical, but was recognized and endorsed by many participants. The statements resonate with a suggestion by Bob Witeck, who heads a marketing firm that directs its efforts to gay and lesbian households, that when gay viewers seek “truthful stories about our lives” and when such stories are found, “we give a higher degree of confidence and support to a program that reflects us” (quoted in Bernhard 2009, C5). But again, we must ask if any real political gains are to be found in celebrating gay consumer culture. While it may represent a notable measure of mainstream acceptance for the gay community to be sought out as a market niche, any real benefits to their lives and experiences in society may be negligible. Conspicuous representation may ultimately be as vacuous as the concept its name was adapted from. Concurrent with—or perhaps as an undercurrent to—their suggestion of the profitability of gay media portrayals, interviewees directly or indirectly endorsed the notion of an increase in television and media portrayals of gay experience. While they differed in the amount of cynicism they showed for the motivations of media outlets, interviewees indeed desired to see the landscape of media portrayals grow and expand. Regardless of the motives of programmers, there is reason to hope that if more and more varied portrayal of non-heterosexual characters appears in the media in the future, there is potential for programmers to profit financially. Should the media landscape further and better recognize the existence of gay, lesbian, and other

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non-heterosexual people? Many interviewees say yes. Just maybe there are non-financial profits to be gained as well. NOTE Matters of nomenclature are challenging for researchers studying people who are members of the non-heterosexual population of society. Because of its simplicity, the term “gay” is used in this paper as a generic term that refers to all male and female homosexuals, unless otherwise noted. For the sake of variety, “gay” and “non-heterosexual” are generally used interchangeably. While the term “queer” has become more accepted in recent years, the term is not frequently used by gay, lesbian, or bisexual people or television characters to selfidentify. However, references including “gay” such as “gay identity” resonated with all gay male, lesbian, and bisexual interview participants in this project.

REFERENCES Battles, K., and W. Hilton-Morrow. “Gay Characters in Conventional Spaces: Will and Grace and the Situation Comedy Genre.” Critical Studies in Media Communication, 19 (2002) 87–105. Berger, P., and T. Luckmann. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. New York: Doubleday and Co., 1966. Bernhard, L. “Love That Dares to Tweet Its Name Sparks New Web Series.” New York Times, August 25, 2009, C1, C5. Capsuto, S. Alternate Channels: The Uncensored Story of Gay and Lesbian Images on Radio and Television. New York: Ballantine Books, 2000. Chasin, A. Selling Out: The Gay and Lesbian Movement Goes to Market. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000. Dow, B. J. “Ellen, Television, and the Politics of Gay and Lesbian Visibility.” Critical Studies in Media Communication, 18 (2001): 123–140. Fejes, F. “Making a Gay Masculinity.” Critical Studies in Media Communication, 17 (2000): 113–116. Fejes, F., and K. Petrich. “Invisibility and Heterosexism: Lesbians, Gays, and the Media.” Critical Studies in Media Communication, 10 (1993): 396–422. Gross, L. “Minorities, Majorities and the Media.” In Media, Ritual and Identity, edited by T. Liebes and J. Curran (1998): 87–102. London: Routledge. Gross, L., and J. D. Woods. “Up from Invisibility: Film and Television.” In The Columbia Reader on Lesbians and Gay Men in Media, Society, and Politics, 291–296. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. Hampp, A. Absolut Pours Good Chunk of Marketing Dollars into “Drag Race.” (accessed January 28, 2009), http://adage.com/madisonandvine/article ?article_id=134902.

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Hecht, M. L. “2002—A Research Odyssey: Toward the Development of a communication Theory of Identity.” Communication Monographs, 60 (1993): 76–82. Hernandez, G. “Logo Turns 1.” The Advocate, July 4, 2006, 50–51. Horovitz, B. “Snickers Maker Drops Super Bowl Ad.” USA Today, February 7, 2007, p. 1B. Iwata, E. “More Marketing Aimed at Gay Consumers.” USA Today, November 2, 2006, B3 (accessed February 1, 2007, from Proquest database). Kama, A. “The Quest for Inclusion: Jewish-Israeli Gay Men’s Perceptions of Gays in the Media.” Feminist Media Studies, 2 (2002), 195–202. Kates, S. M. Twenty Million New Customers!: Understanding Gay Men’s Consumer Behavior. New York: The Haworth Press, 1998. Keller, J. R. Queer(Un) friendly Film and Television. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2002. Lacroix, C., and R. Westerfelhaus. “From the Closet to the Loft: Liminal License and Socio-Sexual Expression in Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.” Qualitative Research Reports in Communication, 6 (2005): 11–20. Leff, L. “Firms No Longer in Closet during Gay Pride Parades.” Houston Chronicle, June 26, 2005 (accessed February 1, 2007, from Proquest database). Lukenbill, G. Untold Millions: Secret Truths about Marketing to Gay and Lesbian Consumers. New York: Harrington Park Press, 1999. Mason, R. The Economics of Conspicuous Consumption: Theory and Thought since 1700. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing, 1998. Rich, F. “Gay Kiss: Business as Usual.” New York Times, June 20, 2003, section 2, 1, 7. Sender, K. Business, Not Politics: The Making of the Gay Market. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. Shugart, H. A. “Reinventing Privilege: The New (Gay) Man in Contemporary Popular Media.” Critical Studies in Media Communication, 20 (2003), 67–91. Strauss, A., and J. Corbin. Basics of Qualitative Research: Grounded Theory Procedures and Techniques. Newbury Park: Sage, 1990. Streitmatter, R. From “Perverts” to “Fab Five”: The Media’s Changing Depiction of Gay Men and Lesbians. New York: Routledge, 2009. Svetsky, B. “Is Your TV Set Gay?” Entertainment Weekly, October 6, 2000, 24–28. Tropiano, S. The Prime Time Closet: A History of Gays and Lesbians on TV. New York: Applause Theatre & Cinema Books, 2002. Veblen, T. The Theory of the Leisure Class. New York: Penguin Books, 1994. Walters, S. D. All the Rage: The Story of Gay Visibility in America. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2001. Weinraub, B., and J. Rutenberg. “Gay-Themed TV Gains a Wider Audience.” New York Times, July 29, 2003, A1, C5.

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What Is Conspicuous Consumption? (accessed February 8, 2009, on Wisegeek Web site at http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-conspicuous -consumption.htm). Where We Are on TV: GLAAD’s 12th Annual Study Examines Diversity of the 2007–2008 Primetime Scripted Television Season (September 24, 2007). Press release accessed September 25, 2007 on the GLAAD Web site at http://www.glaad.org/media/release_detail.php?id=4054. Where We Are on TV: 2008–2009 season. The overview and analysis was accessed August 25, 2009 on the GLAAD Web site at http://www.glaad .org/Page.aspx?pid=333. Witeck, R., and W. Combs. Business Inside Out: Capturing Millions of Brand Loyal Gay Consumers. Chicago: Kaplan Publishing, 2006.

Chapter 5

Dropkicks, Body Slams, and Glitter: The Queer Image in North American Pro-Wrestling Bryan Luis Pacheco

Pro-wrestling’s lustful appetite for men in tights, obsessed lesbians, and tantalizing gyrations of anything queer has been a manipulation in invoking the darkest of homophobia, sexism, and unease. Prowrestling was gay before it intended to be: men in costume fondling in a ballet of grunts, women in intimate choke holds. It evokes the gayest of provocation. When discovered and uncovered that something queer could incite a crowd to a vocal frenzy, it cemented its place in pro-wrestling hysteria. PRO-WRESTLING: AN OVERVIEW Knocking out the competition, World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) has been the most successful pro-wrestling company for at least the last 30 years. They have produced the biggest stars and have arguably garnered the most main stream attention for their antics. They have been around longer than both Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW) and World Championship Wrestling (WCW), two companies that submitted to defeat and closed their doors in 2001. The WWE bought out WCW, and ECW declared bankruptcy.1, 2 Underground, there is a

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slew of independent promotions where pro-wrestlers hone their skills, hoping to one day make it to the major leagues. Popular culture is pro-wrestling’s inspiration. In 2008, Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama were battling it out in the primaries to see who would secure the nomination for the Democratic Party for president of the United States. In an attempt to appear politically conscious, the WWE capitalized on the media scrutiny and featured pre-taped segments from the two candidates. Reminding fans they were watching a wrestling program, they showcased independent wrestlers portraying both Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama in a furry of takedowns and slams.3 Pro-wrestling does not mistakenly cause controversy. They play on sexism, racism, homophobia and any “ism” or phobia to elicit a reaction from their fans, provoke media attention and increase TV ratings. Negative or good press, pro-wrestling aims for it all. In the process, their characters have undoubtedly stereotyped and offended every group (marginalized or not) of people. In the WWE, a fierce duo of pissed off, irate Pretty Mean Sisters (P.M.S.) burned the hearts and heels of male wrestlers.4 Based on the Mavericks of conservative thinking, a Right to Censor (RTC) stable was created to mock the multiple censorship groups that had focused in on the WWE’s controversies.5 Even individual wrestlers/characters are exaggerated stereotypes. One of the biggest draws ever, Stone Cold Steve Austin, would stick his middle fingers up, humiliate and beat up on Vince McMahon (his boss and WWE Chairman) with defiant suplexes and clotheslines. Victorious, he would celebrate with a good ole’ refreshing beer as an ode to all the true American men who wish they could do the same. He was a take on the trailer trash stereotype.6 Or enter Eddie Guerrero, who was Mexican, and had the catch line of “I lie, I cheat, I steal.”7 A wrestler’s character is the foundation of his or her success. No subject matter is off limits and no stereotype left untouched. A good wrestler/performer uses every aspect of his/her gimmick to influence the character’s performance; from the wrestling gear (or costume) to the wrestling moves and entrance. Never would one witness The Undertaker—a wrestling character, true to his name, based on the culture of death—have a high tempo entrance song, but you could expect to see a gay wrestler prance around in pretty pink to It’s Raining Men. Pro-wrestling exposes and exploits gender, race, and all categories that box people in. It is wise to never take pro-wrestling too seriously, or you would exhaust yourself being offended. A good story needs an antagonist and a protagonist. In prowrestling there is a heel (the villain) and the face (the hero). They feud

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against one another, either for a championship belt or bragging rights. As we move forward to discussing queer images in pro-wrestling, it is interesting to note that most queer characters have been heels or have at least started that way. They were the bad guys . . . or girls. The actual matches at an event occur for different reasons. Often the matches reflect the current feuds, but sometimes a match could take place for other reasons and may serve no other purpose than being a combustible element. To win a match, typically one wrestler has to pin another, shoulders down, as the referee’s hand hits the mat 1 . . . 2 . . . 3 . . . A wrestler can also win by locking in a submission while making his/her opponent scream in agony and tap. There are other more unique ways of winning, and specialty matches may have their own rules, but these two outcomes are the most common. Pro-wrestling is a non-accidental circus hoopla of freaks, Adonises, side-show acts, and beauty queens. The fans, promoters, and all the wrestlers and crew are passionate about the product. They live for the adrenaline, the pulse of the cheer. A match or wrestler is only worth the reaction it receives. Everyone involved in the show works for that high, those moments when the audience is hypnotized by the dance raging inside the squared circle: We make our living on the vigorish. Most people have to cheer for either the [heel] or the [face]—it always comes down to that. Eventually, you have to be on one side or the other. As wrestlers, we want our [heels] to be reviled and hated as much as the [faces] are loved and revered. The real, true-blooded, honest-to-God people in our business, the best of us? We don’t care who wins or loses or even how the game is played. We want a pulse—that’s our vig. We want life . . . 8 Pro-wrestling will do anything for that pulse; to get the crowd, the fans, you . . . to react. THE INFLUENTIAL CHARACTERS Gorgeous George The affair between pro-wrestling and homosexuality, a team that would controversially entertain for years to come, began with the obnoxious and prissy Gorgeous George. Stirring insinuations, he would bestow himself with outlandish robes, prissy hand gestures and hold his head upright appalled by the lunacy of the world. The

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man with the golden curls would instruct a butler to disinfect the odors of the ring with a luscious perfume.9 Before the Gorgeous one, “Villains were necessary as plot devices but essentially existed to be conquered.”10 George reinvented that role, using homosexual references that “redefined the role of the bad guy . . . the villain grew to hero’s size.”11 He was larger than wrestling life, and fans loved to hate him. He had become the biggest draw of his time: “In Buffalo, 11,845 fans had just jammed the Memorial Auditorium to see the outrageous performer in person. He drew 20,000 in Cleveland and 18,000 in Toronto, attendance figures unheard of for wrestling.”12 The portrayal of a male not conforming to gender had proved a success for fans to come out and display their disapproval. During the time of George, promoters had used tools like television to draw fans, but the name Gorgeous George had garnered the same urgency and advertisements now read “GORGEOUS GEORGE, TELEVISION, HERE TONIGHT.” 13 George was a one-man main attraction. With fame, George had to protect his character, which had become his meal ticket. The wife of Gorgeous George would tell “the press she was his personal hairdresser, Miss Betty. . . . ”14 In the ring, the Gorgeous George character embodied the stereotypes of a “sissy.” He would attack and hide, “he was a sniveling coward who ran away from conflict.”15 He used homophobia to evoke and force jeers from the fans. Despite the overt parallels to gay stereotyping, George denied it, “ ‘I am not a you-know-what,’ he told an interviewer in 1951.”16 At the time, the 50s, maybe it was going too far to say “gay” and admitting to a gay character may have been too taboo, too scandalous. In pro-wrestling history, the fame, success and notoriety achieved by Gorgeous George has inspired future generations of wrestlers, of all gimmicks. “I’ve been told by many people I was the next Gorgeous George, I take that to heart and every time someone says that or any other compliment. . . . It adds more desire for me to get more recognition.”17 One openly gay independent wrestler, Rick Cataldo, admits. The Gorgeous one influenced future wrestlers to do absolutely whatever it takes, to pull at the emotions of everyone watching in order to launch themselves into the spotlight. Chyna A young valet stands ringside supporting her client. She is Marlena, a conventionally beautiful, blonde hair, petite woman. She wears a tight fitting dress to accentuate her womanhood. Her role is to be T&A

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(a wrestling term for tits and ass,) and give the male fans something to look at, drool over. She is smoking her cigar, the phallic symbol that is all too intentional. An unknown woman (man?) violently stalks in from behind, takes her well developed forearm and forces Marlena (by the hair nonetheless) into an embrace, a choke hold. Marlena, unsuspecting, is gasping for air, in desperate need of being rescued. “ . . . Who is that?” ask the commentators. “Is that a woman?” they hope to clarify. Security rushes in and releases Marlena from Chyna’s grip.18 Chyna’s assault on Marlena was offensive, abusive. They were not on equal playing fields; Marlena was the helpless female victim to this Amazon Chyna, who had strong physical parallels to men. Not conforming to gender stereotypes, Chyna weighed in at 201 pounds and could bench press up to 365 pounds.19 She was bigger than most male wrestlers. The fact that she was a woman was the only reason male wrestlers would challenge her; to protect their manhood. Physically she was intimidating and her appearance drew criticism and ridicule from fans and wrestlers alike. As a woman, she was not supposed to look how she did: huge defined muscles, tall (a threat). The other women in the WWE, at the time, were a direct contrast to Chyna: athletically thin, blonde hair, Playboy pin-ups. Chyna was “much more a part of the men’s group, than the women’s.” 20 She began her career, usually interfering on behalf of Triple H and Shawn Michaels, two male wrestlers, who along with Chyna formed the team Degeneration X (DX). She was a force to be reckoned with, physically abusing any man that foolishly doubted her ability and power. In retaliation to being different, Chyna got backlash: “They [the fans] threw batteries at me, spit in my face, power-flung beer into my chest, called me a cunt, chick-with-dick, dyke . . . ”21 She was labeled a lesbian, a dyke, because the perception is that no self-respecting straight woman would look or act like that. “You try to get beyond the girlie thing,” Chyna said, adding, “you show ‘em you’re into the moves and counter-moves and that you can take a dive off the top rope as good as any of them, they start calling you a man, a dyke, a ‘roid junkie, a muffin diver, all that crap.”22 Behind the scenes, Chyna (Joanie Laurer) was in fact straight. She had a well-documented personal relationship with teammate Triple H. As time went on, the Chyna character changed. In pro-wrestling, wrestlers are constantly going through gimmick changes to reflect popular culture in their attempt to stay relevant. One could assume the pressure of the limelight and the unwritten rule of “sex sells” in wrestling and entertainment influenced the metamorphosis of Chyna. As

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Chyna became more popular, she became more stereotypically feminine, altering the controversial aspects of herself that led to her popularity and the perception of her being a lesbian. In her words “The thing I did feel I could use was a little femininity.”23 Chyna had work done. Over time, noticeably, her jaw looked less defined, she discovered hair extensions, and make-up secrets. Completing the transformation, she had two breast augmentations.24 Capitalizing on her new look and catapulting her into super stardom, “Chyna made history . . . by being the most muscular woman [to pose for] Playboy.” (Today Chyna’s first Playboy ranks in the top 10 of the bestsellers.)25 The success of Chyna’s Playboy issue had to do with the fact that no former playmate had looked like her before. There was an interest to see how she looked with her clothes off and would certainly help to dispel rumors that she was a man. Chyna was never meant to be a lesbian nor was her character created from those stereotypes. Looking into Chyna shows the bias of the mainstream society (the fans) and how they turn queer words into oppressive language. Chyna, the character and person (Joanie Laurer), was boxed in and labeled for not conforming to gender stereotypes. Deviating from her assigned gendered role harbored consequences. She was met with hostility and reservation for being different. In an effort to insult, embarrass, and repress Chyna’s independence and strength as a muscular woman, she was called gay (a dyke). She started her pro-wrestling career as a heel, and her transformation into a more feminine body narrated her role into a face. In this transition, the lesbian comments lost visibility, as she was celebrated for becoming more like the norm. However, it cannot be denied that Chyna helped to reinvent the role of women in pro-wrestling, to foster a new generation of women that dared to be strong. Goldust I called for you in the night, yes I did, but you didn’t want to come out and play anymore, did you? Are you sure you’re up to it? Have you gotten your charge back? Or are you going to just lie there like a corpse again? C’mon dead man, let me light up the dark side with a magnificent golden shower . . . of sun light.26 Halloween, 1995, Monday Night RAW is on and millions of WWE fans are tuned in. “From Hollywood, California, weighing 260 pounds, Goldust!” Cue gold lights, gold glitter falling from the ceilings, gold stars on the entrance ramp. Cue outrageous wrestling character with

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gold face paint, long, gold wig, and a gold robe. Cue controversial gay character. Cue Goldust! “ . . . If you are watching this bizarre entrance, what’s going on in your mind. . . . You got to be intimidated, you got to be a little scared, you gotta’ be a little bit spooked, don’t you think?” The commentators discuss.27 The Goldust character began more as a campy mysterious Batman villain, but he quickly turned into an obsessive and manipulative flamboyant main attraction once the WWE saw how his over-the-top gay antics were getting over with the live crowd. Behind the scenes, “[They] would tell [Goldust] to rub against [the opponent] and do things to [the opponent] to incite the crowd.”28 Those creating and influencing the Goldust character were not thinking about being offensive or creating a positive figure for the queer community. They wanted to hear the crowd, provoke, excite, and enrage them so that they would remember the name Goldust. Goldust never stated he was gay, and whether his character was intended to be or not, he used homosexuality and preyed on and pulled at the fan’s homophobia to create a successful heel character. Dustin Runnels, the man who played Goldust, “was very proud of the fact that he was able to bring to life a character that was ahead of its time and accomplish something new and groundbreaking with Goldust. [He was] voted the #1 heel in wrestling that year.”29 Not everyone held hands in unity over the Goldust character. The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force rose to action and stamped Goldust “a horrible example of homophobia.” The backlash fell onto the WWE, and seeing the light Goldust transitioned to a man “with a wife and a daughter, which bored fans as if taking them in a somnolent sleeper hold.”30 OPPOSITES ATTRACT In pro-wrestling, in a feud, or a storyline, opposites attract. This aims to release fans from the sleeper hold and invest them in the characters. You need the hero (or face) to go against the anti-hero (or heel). If you have a blonde, you need a brunette. If you have the American hero, Hulk Hogan, you need the anti-American, Iron Sheik. When it comes to gay—or presumably gay—or queer characters, how would his/her opponent look? Bout 1: Goldust Versus Razor Ramon The sound of a car crash over the audio systems cues the entrance of Razor Ramon, a tall, good-looking, man’s man. He struts into the arena, fans going crazy. Goldust is sitting on the sidelines, legs

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crossed, giving a polite seductive clap, admiring Razor’s walk. They recap the night before: Razor receives a letter. Razor begins to read whatever the content of that letter was . . . you can see the look of the face of Razon Ramon, a look of revolution . . . disgust. [He] was appalled You have to wonder what Goldust wrote . . . 31 —Vince McMahon commentates

The Razor Ramon/Goldust feud was the first big feud that Dustin Runnels had in his career as this flamboyant character. Pro-wrestling uses feuds and storylines to gain interest in their wrestlers, to get fans to have an emotional investment in what they are watching. Goldust was beginning to get over as a heel; his outrageous homoerotic character had stirred much controversy and had certainly sparked interest, the WWE’s goal. His opposition, Razor Ramon, was an already established fan favorite. He was a Latino stud who played into the machismo attitude; a great contrast to the gay-tinted Goldust and a stereotype on Latino men: Backstage Interviewer: How are you taking the way Goldust is somewhat interested in you? Razor: You know doc. Goldust sent me a letter. He tells me I’m so hot, I so handsome. Hey Chico, you’re right, but I don’t play that. Razor he only likes women. Goldust you can do your thing meng, just not with me.32 This promo illustrates many points behind the WWE’s thought process. First, it is important to note that, like a movie, Razor Ramon and Goldust are characters. They do not reflect the individuals playing them; rather they more accurately represent the WWE writers and the WWE franchise. Razor’s usage of “meng,” meaning man, was to hint toward his Latino identity. Razor letting Goldust know that “you can do your thing . . . ” was the WWE’s way of avoiding liability and protecting the company and Razor’s character. They can always point back to this promo and claim Razor was never anti-gay, he just was not gay himself. The opposition saw it differently though, stating “the whole Goldust character was ritualized fag bashing.”33 Goldust began to become more controversial with his promos, insinuating gay sexual references and scenes: I just can’t describe it, I just can’t describe it in words . . . the real heat will intensify at the Royal Rumble. You and I, body to body,

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hmmmm sweat to sweat . . . the thought alone sends . . . shivers up my spine. In one short week, that thought, that fantasy becomes a reality, oh yes. My hands on your body, I’m oozing already, are you? You remember the name and there is no way you’ll forget . . . Goldust.34 The promo was an obvious conscious effort to illicit heel heat for the Goldust Character by using gay subtext to force out fan’s homophobia. This would get the (mostly straight male) fans to be disgusted by Goldust and to want to see Razor Ramon beat him up, to silence him. Goldust continued to do outrageous things: sending suggestive pictures to Razor, seductively unzipping his suit to reveal a red heart with Razor’s name. Razor would watch this behavior backstage and mutter “freak” under his breathe.35 The feud cumulated with an Intercontinental Title match at the Pay Per View “Royal Rumble.” The feud had been based on Goldust using a gay and obsessive persona to get the fans (those intolerant) to hate him, to upset Razor Ramon, and to justify any violence Razor would inflict on Goldust. Now, fans could not look at Razor as a straight male attacking a gay character; rather they may view it as Goldust going too far and getting what he deserved. That night, Goldust confused the audience by introducing a female valet, Marlena.36 Was Goldust not supposed to be gay? She was introduced as his director, allowing Goldust to keep his ambiguous sexual identity. The match incorporated Goldust’s flamboyant character into the spots and moves. The premise was that Goldust would have to resort to running around and using gay spots to demand jeers from the audience and frustrate Razor into retaliation. At one point in the match, Goldust licks his lips at Razor, gets on his knees, and assumes the position on all fours. The commentators would ask, “What kind of mind games is Goldust playing with Razor Ramon?”37 The crowd ate it up, gasping and booing. The WWE was successful in its goal: Goldust was getting over, becoming a successful character (awakening homophobia). Goldust “salutes” the crowd by caressing his body. The crowd boos heavily. Ramon throws his toothpick at him and the crowd cheers as if to say, Get the gay boy! Goldust taunts him the whole match, feeding into notion that gays harass the straight boys they like. Razor is forced to start the match and hit him. Continuing to use homosexuality as a novelty, Razor smacks Goldust in the face and, in an attempt to embarrass him, on his backside. Goldust is not embarrassed however; he begins to gyrate and smile; he likes it! Goldust hides behind Marlena

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and keeps running and hiding. He begins to annoy the crowd by continuing this cowardly behavior, enforcing the stereotype of gay men as cowards. This is unimportant to the WWE, as the fans are heavily engaged and that is the goal. Another male wrestler interferes, allowing Goldust to pin Razor in a compromising position, for the win.38 This victory tells the viewing audience that gay men have to resort to soliciting help to be victorious in a fight. Bout 2: Trish Stratus Versus Mickie James Trish Stratus: Mickie James:

How do I know that name, Mickie James? Yea, I’m like your biggest fan!39

Trish Stratus was a Canadian, blonde hair, Greek goddess who is arguably the most influential WWE female wrestler in the history of American pro-wrestling. Trish Stratus was one of the first divas (WWE’s term for female personalities) to stir together a successful mix of sexuality and athletic ability. Women in wrestling are usually a side act, but Trish was a star. Trish was a huge draw for the company and was much beyond a novelty act; she was a headliner. —WWE Women’s Championship Match: Victoria vs. Trish Stratus ©— Trish and Victoria had a storied past, full of chair shots, hair pulling, and hard slaps across the face. On November 10, 2005, their history was coming to a head and it was for the prized possession of the Women’s division, the WWE Women’s Championship. Holding that belt meant you were the absolute best among the divas. Sending a clear message to the power lifter Victoria, Trish started off strong with a stiff elbow to the face. Trish was in control, victory in her sight. A hard kick to the face of Victoria, and Trish was now ready to end the match. She flies through the air, clutching Victoria’s neck in a headlock. Using her brute strength, Victoria reveres the momentum and slams Trish onto her knee. Crack! Victoria is toying with Trish now, lifting Trish over her head. The crowd is for Trish, hoping to motivate her to a victory. The end is near; Victoria has Trish set up for her finisher “The Widows Peak,” a move that will guarantee victory. Trish flips Victoria over and bridges backwards into a pin. Trish wins. She’s absolutely exhausted as an irate Victoria extracts revenge. Ashley, Trish’s friend, comes to the rescue and gets slammed on her back by Victoria for interfering. It

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looks bleak for Trish. An unidentified woman rushes to the ring jolting across the ring to attack Victoria and save Trish.40 The Mickie/Trish love affair, like all love stories, started innocently enough, as Mickie revealed: These last few months hanging out with you have been amazing, I grew up watching wrestling with my grand papi. But then shortly after that, Grand papi passed way. He’s looking down on us and he is smiling, because I get to hang out with you, my idol, my hero. After this match with Victoria, if I win . . . I could be in the ring with you!41 Mickie had identified herself as Trish’s biggest fan. She would accompany Trish to the ring and cheer her to victories. They were tag team partners, best friends. Mickie James always seemed a bit off, and any devoted wrestling fan knew what would transpire eventually. Mickie James enters the arena for # 1 contender’s match against Victoria. Trish Stratus accompanies Mickie, but sits at the announcers table to watch. “Wow, she’s got spunk,” says Trish. “Is that what you call it?” one of the commentators prods. Trish responds, “That’s what I’m gonna call it . . . she [Mickie] likes to tell everyone we’re best friends, well I’ll say we’re not best friends . . . we’re acquaintances.” Mickie James steals the victory, earning her chance for the Women’s Championship and Trish Stratus.42 Building up to the match, and in an attempt to gain fan’s interest, the WWE began to introduce lesbian undertones to the feud. A week before the match, Mickie James cleverly cornered Trish into a room and hung mistletoe above them. The fans encouraged the WWE’s vision by cheering uncontrollably. Mickie stole a kiss from Trish, as Trish frustratingly pushed Mickie off. New Years Revolution would be the next time they saw each other.43 —New Years Revolution, WWE Women’s Championship Match: Trish Stratus © vs. Mickie James— “Ya’ know Stylez, Trish Stratus and I came into the WWE 2 weeks apart, so I’ve been there since day one and I’ve never ever seen Trish Stratus as uncomfortable as she has been the last few weeks.”44 —Jonathan Coachmen

Mickie James extended her hand as a peace offering, and Trish pulled Mickie in closely and stared; she meant business. Homosexuality made

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a guest appearance when Trish had Mickie in a headlock and Mickie’s hand purposely grabs Trish’s chest. That was enough for Trish to push Mickie away and for the fans to then cheer at any intentional, or nonintentional, female-to-female contact that would follow. Mickie jumps on the turnbuckle and locks her legs around Trish’s neck; the fans are absolutely insane as the WWE has stimulated their girl-on-girl fantasy. Trish ultimately leaves victorious.45 The storyline takes a turn for insanity. After weeks of repairing her relationship with Trish, Mickie decides to throw Trish a celebration, full of balloons and confetti littering the arena. A group of male cheerleaders cheer for Trish “ . . . and now it’s time to say I love you too.” Trish is visibly overwhelmed, not knowing how to stop Mickie. Ashley comes to her rescue. “If you’re not gonna put this girl in her place, then I’m gonna do it for you. Mickie, Trish . . . she does not love you. You got that? And you know what? She thinks exactly what everyone here thinks: Mickie James is a Psycho.” The crowd begins the chant “She’s a Psycho.” Mickie James, distraught, starts crying and exits. She abrasively changes her mind and rushes back to assault Ashley. Trish gets involved to stop the brawl. This allows Mickie to take out Ashley. Mickie misinterprets: “I knew it! I knew it. I knew you cared about me Trish. You’re the greatest ever!”46 Trish Stratus is now desperate. She introduces Mickie James to a new boyfriend, hoping an indirect sign would resonate loud and clear.47 Retaliating, Mickie James plots a successful plan to get Trish’s boyfriend arrested for sexual harassment.48 Only a direct intervention will work and Trish builds up the courage. “You’re just too much . . . ,” she confesses. Mickie tries to interrupt, but Trish is empowered: “No, no! Everywhere I turn, you’re there. I don’t want any more of it, I think, you and I, we just need some time apart.” Mickie pleads, “Trish, don’t say that.” But Trish is gone.49 After a victorious last tag match together, Mickie only wants to “say goodbye the right way.” She extends her hand. Trish is hesitant. Mickie goes in for a kiss, and Trish pulls away, upset that she even considered Mickie could change, but not surprised. Mickie sets up her heel turn (turning into the villain) by slowing moving away and jolting back to kick Trish Stratus hard in her jaw.50 This sets up their big match or, in wrestling terms, the blow off match. —Wrestlemania 22, WWE Women’s Championship: Mickie James vs. Trish Stratus ©—

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Trish aggressively takes the fight to Mickie. Mickie has embarrassed, harassed, and manipulated Trish into a woman with revenge on her mind. The divas are putting on an athletically sound match, showing that women can wrestle too. The crowd is entertained and it appears both women only want to destroy one another; their friendship is gone. Mickie James is the heel, the bad girl, but something unique is transpiring: Mickie James is getting cheered:51 She was meant to be bad, a “heel” . . . she had an obsession with Trish Stratus, the uber diva, and the crowd ate her up and quickly took the side of the ‘gay’ and I think that is because, among other reasons, it was something they [the fans] could relate too, and that is to be loved especially by the person you want to love you.52 The positive reaction to Mickie James is astounding. She is injuring the baby-face diva Trish, and they are cheering for it. Never without controversy, Mickie James grabs the crotch of Trish Stratus, distracting her. Facing the crowd, she makes an obscene gesture; she forms one hand into a V and licks up the middle, insinuating female-to-female oral sex. This match/feud is a success to the WWE; the crowd is absolutely enthralled. Lesbian undertones and a “Psycho” persona have proven a successful concoction for the WWE. Mickie James is the new Champion. One commentator is shocked, “I think there are some fans here that got a hall pass from the home. They are actually cheering this psychotic woman. Mickie James used some very unique feminine strategy to take Trish Stratus mentally out of the game . . .”53 Goldust and the psychotic Mickie James stalked their ways into the hearts of pro-wrestling fans. Using homosexual subtext, both created characters that exploited the fans’ craving forentertainment and stimulation. They, Goldust and Mickie, had an insatiable, uncontrollable sexual appetite for Razor Ramon and Trish Stratus, feeding on villainous gay stereotypes. Their lunatic obsessions crafted queers as people with no control, fixated on sex for gratification. Both played gay mind games, attempting to reveal the inner homophobia of their victims and their fans. For the storylines to work, the new heel queer characters needed a popular baby face to feed off of. If Goldust was the crazed gay stalker, he needed the machismo Razor Ramon to become the object of his desire. If Mickie James was the brunette love-stricken psycho lesbian, she needed to occupy herself with the blonde, bubbly model Trish Stratus. Societal views revealed its bias

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as Mickie James was cheered but Goldust was despised by the audiences, perhaps showing that it is more acceptable to be a sexualized lesbian than an obsessed gay man. GAY SATIS(FACTION) The West Hollywood Blondes The feud between the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) and pro-wrestling began to heat up when GLAAD could no longer stand back and witness pro-wrestling’s tyranny on gay stereotypes. World Championship Wrestling (WCW) was the first challenger to GLAAD when it introduced pink tights and pig tails in the form of Lenny Lane and Lodi, under the umbrella tag team name, The West Hollywood Blondes. They joined both Goldust and Gorgeous George in originating from Hollywood. Kevin Nash, one of the creators and writers for Lenny and Lodi, claimed that they were supposed to be revealed as brothers, explaining “the closeness that they felt.”54 He continues, “‘Who said they were gay? We aren’t depicting these guys as gay. We’re depicting different scenarios; you’re the ones who said they were gay.”55 Nash closes in on the victory, but we flashback to a scene where the camera pans away from Lenny and Lodi to reveal the word “closet,”56 which makes WCW’s true intention clear. GLAAD went on the attack, aiming where it would hurt WCW the most, with its advertisers. “It’s hard enough to get advertising on wrestling,”57 and so WCW eventually found themselves at the side of defeat, with GLAAD victorious. Lenny and Lodi “were faggots, playing up to every gay stereotype,”58 and that was the problem. Their antics would prompt fans to scream profanities and promote homophobia, a phobia that could transcend beyond the arena: “If there is a 10-year old boy, whose classmates perceive him to be overly feminine, he has a good chance of being called ‘Lenny’ and being beat up. . . .”59 Billy & Chuck: The Gay Wedding GLAAD took on their next opponents, a much bigger company, the WWE. This battle was more intense, as the WWE had played mind games, even getting GLAAD to believe the Billy/Chuck storyline would be positive. Before the commitment ceremony would be aired on national television, “Scott Seomin, an official with [GLAAD], went so far as to get Billy & Chuck a gravy boat from the Pottery farm.”60 They

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furthered embarrassed themselves, claiming the storyline “reaches a lot of potential bullies and gay bashers . . . what Billy and Chuck are saying is not only ‘we’re here,’ but they also say ‘Don’t mess with us.’” 61 Billy and Chuck were two bleach blonde, fake tanned, gay wrestling characters. They were managed by an even more stereotypical character, Rico, who was a spunky hyperactive gay male stylist. Channeling a rivalry with straight women, Billy and Chuck displayed their obnoxious antics, challenging WWE divas Stacy Kiebler and Torrie Wilson to a “Pose off.” Torrie and Stacy used their feminine wiles to seduce cheers from the audience and displayed lesbian undertones by posing suggestively together. Billy and Chuck did the same, but sent the fans into an uproar of homophobic jeers.62 After proposing to Billy, Chuck would become excited for the commitment ceremony that would be engrained in pro-wrestling’s history. Behind the scenes, the writers thought “a stunt like a gay wedding would somehow draw positive press and increase ratings because it was edgy.”63 Putting GLAAD onto a torture rack, The Godfather came out with “hos” to try and persuade Billy and Chuck away from their gay preference, insinuating it is a choice. Finally, Billy and Chuck succumbed and revealed it was just a “publicity stunt” and they were not gay.64 GLAAD was furious. “The WWE lied to us two months ago when they promised that Billy and Chuck would come out and wed on the air. . . . In fact, I was told (lied to) the day after the show was taped in Minneapolis that the wedding took place and all was well.”65 Like Lenny and Lodi, GLAAD was on the losing end, as the WWE had gone through with their storyline from start to finish, promoting negativity around gay marriage. The unfortunate tune here is that not only did they lie to GLAAD, but WWE officials themselves had ignorantly believed that somehow this would draw positive press for the company. The commitment ceremony between Billy and Chuck: did nothing to decrease the negativity surrounding gay marriage or gays in general. I think it increased it. Just listen to the amount of booing in the [live] crowd. And when Billy and Chuck profess their heterosexuality, the crowd cheers more loudly than they did for the last two hours of the show. The whole thing was absolutely stupid.66 Christopher Street Connection Independent wrestling decided to get involved in the mayhem. Ring of Honor (ROH) introduced the Christopher Street Connection,

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an obvious play on the infamous Christopher St. (of Stone Wall Riots) in New York City. The faction’s antics and glittered clothing and neon colored boas were staples of their gimmick. One unique element to the group was Allison Danger, the storyline lesbian/fag-hag of the faction. “I remember doing the one kiss with [another female wrestler] . . . that got such a pop . . . ,” Allison gloats. Hinting at the desire for female wrestlers to fit in (backstage) with the frat party known as pro-wrestling, she recalls “I remember walking in the locker room . . . strutting in. I was like ‘I made out with her, it was nice.’ There was a little jealousy factor going on there too [from the male wrestlers].” Displaying her intentions and vision for her character motivated by lesbian stereotyping, she notes “It [the kiss] played really good into I’m the lesbian, I’m gonna’ stalk you ha-ha.”67 The male wrestlers of Christopher Street Connection “were openly gay wrestlers who would kiss at live events and come on to the other performers.”68 The group, including Allison, furthered the mindset that gay people have an uncontrollable sexual appetite and are crazed, except unlike most other gay characters fans were allowed and encouraged to cheer Christopher Street Connection. Unfortunately, the man who owned ROH, Rob Feinstein, was a closeted gay male himself and would later feed into that myth due to a well-publicized scandal where Feinstein was “caught by NBC 10 . . . attempting to solicit sex from what he thought was a 14-year-old boy.”69 Christopher Street Connection stopped appearing on ROH shows so as not to attract attention to the shameful event. THE KISS OF DEATH Two voluptuous blonde women are walking down the hallway; a sign on a dressing room door alerts their attention: “Lesbians.” Hot Lesbian Action (HLA) is going to occur and the straight male fans are wild for it. “Don’t you know who we are?” one of the lesbians asks a male wrestler, “We’re the Lesbians!” In this bizarre storyline, WWE RAW General manager Eric Bishoff had hired the services of two women to perform HLA (WWE’s way of causing controversy to get exposure from the mainstream media). In the ring, the Lesbians are eager to display their affection. “What about you? Do you want Jenny?” Bishoff teases the crowd. “My body aches all over for Jenny,” she confirms. “Do you want to touch Tanya?” Bishoff asks the other lesbian. “Oh yea!” she replies, “I want to touch Tanya.” After exciting the male crowd (mission accomplished) by slobbering all over each

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other, they are violently beaten down by two big Samoan wrestlers. One woman was kicked stiff right in her chest and the other pulled by her hair, thrown six feet up in the air onto the shoulders of one of the Samoan wrestlers and dropped down.70 Pro-wrestling and the WWE are intentionally ridiculous, but this was one of those examples where it is taken too far: What goes through the minds of those in the creative department when they think up something like this—Is there a set checklist? Degrading to women? Check. Degradingly Sexual? Check. Featuring a pervy, middle-aged madman brand owner? Check. Okay, cool, it qualifies—let’s make it happen!71 The images of the Lesbians in their underwear, making out and caressing one another was more fitting of a porno flick than a family show. Then, having the women beat down uncomfortably simulates violence against women and queer people. The beat down was for pure shock value, and some fans were in complete shock, not believing what they just witnessed. Other fans were cheering and enjoying the display, demonstrating why scenes like these are potentially harmful. Furthermore, it showcased Samoan men as women beaters and gay bashers. Being politically correct is never the WWE’s goal, and it got the outcome it desired: everyone was talking, it left an impression, and it further got the Samoan wrestlers over as bad guys. HLA also hints at society’s obsession with lesbians in a sexualized role. Many television shows have inserted lesbian love storylines to increase ratings and create buzz. Pro-wrestling follows the trend, as seen with the Mickie James/Trish Stratus storyline. The sexualizing of women in pro-wrestling is not uncommon: “We all have to look enticing while getting the cellulite beaten out of us. You’re expected to grimace and look gorgeous, you’re supposed to pass out, land awkwardly but suggestively . . . ”72 The sexualizing of lesbians is just as common, most notably for the pleasure of straight men, further crippling the long battle to legitimize the love between two women. Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW) was notorious for using their women as T&A. ECW had one of the most memorable WTF moments, enticing straight men everywhere with a little three-way tonsil hockey. In television land, male wrestler Tommy Dreamer had suspicions that his on-screen (and real life wife) Beulah had been cheating on him. It reached its climax when Tommy forced Beulah into

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confrontation and asked, “Who is he?” Interrupting, another male wrestler gloated, “Oh it’s not a he, Tommy Dreamer, it’s not a he.” Kimona, a female, rips the microphone from his hands and yells, “It’s me!” to a rounding ovation from the male audience. The two women roll around the ring in a deep kiss. Tommy pulls them by their hair and with a mean glare becomes the envy of straight men everyone: “I’ll take ‘em both, I’m hardcore.”73 Not only does this put the man, Tommy, in control of the situation and the women’s sexuality, it dehumanizes the women into pure sexual gratification. WHAT A DRAG! The art of drag has often been an avenue for comedic endeavors. Tyler Perry (of Madea fame) introduced himself into a very lucrative career impersonating women. Pro-wrestling has not been the exception. They have used drag to garner a cheap laugh or to get the male wrestlers involved with the women. Often, the male in drag has had his (her?) ability stripped and a wig, make-up, and gender performance has replaced their strength. One of the more recent performances was by Santino Marella, under his stage name Santina. Santino pushed his way into superstardom by being a comedic Italian character who would romanticize English with an Italian twist. Santina, played by the same man, was the on-screen “sister” of Santino. Santina, like Santino, was a fan favorite, using comedy for approval. In one memorable segment, general manager Vickie Guerrero wanted to prove that Santina was in fact her brother Santino. She elicited the help of WWE diva Rosa Mendes to seduce Santina. “I want you to give Santina a good luck kiss before his match against Beth.” Vickie demanded. Rosa reluctantly went for a kiss on the cheek and Santina forced Rosa into a full on lip lock. Vickie’s assistant Chavo screamed, “I knew it! We all knew you couldn’t resist a kiss from Rosa. Admit it, admit it . . . you’re busted.” Santina interrupted, “OK . . . fine! Fine! I admit it. OK. I am, how you say? . . . A lesbiana. It’s true. I prefer the company of the womens. I always have.”74 Are lesbians big burly men with chest hair? Is this to be accepted at face value and appreciated as only a joke? Harvina was a male in drag that claimed no woman could beat him. He stripped the petite Kat of the WWE Women’s Championship, pinning her in a degrading “snow bunny match” for the title.75 The Kat was a female personality who emphasized the T&A part of wrestling and was not a skilled wrestler. At the next show, Jacqueline challenged

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Harvina for the title. This time, Harvina came out as his male self, Harvey. Jacqueline, who is a skilled wrestler, embarrassed him and won the WWE Women’s Championship in under one minute. 76 Harvina, the character, was created by the WWE as a way for Jacqueline to win the title without pinning The Kat. The WWE wanted to get a struggling Jacqueline over as a face, and pinning the popular Kat would not aid in that direction. The WWE writers could have chosen another storyline to take the title off of the Kat, but “maybe the product of their shows get dull and slow, so they might add a form of homosexuality to see how crowds respond to it.”77 In her autobiography If They Only Knew, Chyna recounts a time when she wrestled a man in drag in the independent leagues: “What the hell, Walter—I thought I was gonna wrestler a chick?” “You are,” Walter insists, stuffing fake breast inside this poor guy’s leotard. “A real chick. You said a real chick.” “Never used the word real. I couldn’t book anybody this late.” “But he has stubble Walter—” Before I could finish Walter shoves this bizarre-looking latex mask in my face. It’s for the guy to wear.78 Chyna made it acceptable for women to fight men, but early in her career, before the WWE, she had to work under the same oppressive system of wrestling: “ . . . the only place people wanted to see a woman compete against a man was in a chili cook-off . . . ”79 Introduce drag and it becomes all right for a woman to beat a man. This not only says that a muscular woman cannot beat a non-drag man, but that an effeminate man cannot beat a muscular woman. This thinking places importance on size and gender performing, saying that he/she who is more masculine acting, is the one who is stronger. Of course, “his name was Raindrops. Don’t ask.”80 BACKSTAGE Raindrop was not the only wrestler simulating homoeroticism. “And if you’re not down with that, we’ve got two words for ya,” and the crowd yells, “Suck it!”81 Not a late night gay cable program, but a famous catch phrase from degenerates, and WWE tag team, Degeneration X. Pro-wrestlers have long found themselves throbbing against gay innuendoes encouraged by the irony of two straight men

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in short tights. The set-up has led to sticky situations, with male wrestlers finding themselves in a rather homoerotic locale: Randy Orton:

John Cena: Orton: Cena: Orton: Cena: Orton:

We got a lot in common . . . we’re young . . . we’re incredibly handsome. . . . You and I, guys like us, get treated like dirt and I won’t take that lying down. Here is what I propose: tonight, you and I get together. We take out HBK, we take out Edge, and it leaves you and I standing alone in that ring. And then we see who the better man is. What do you say? See who the better man is? You really feel this way? Yes I do. So you really think I am handsome? Wait a minute, that’s not exactly what I meant. You also said, that later on tonight you want to get together. (backtracking) But I said that . . . like in the ring.

Cena:

You said that you’re not gonna’ take this lying down, but your eyes tell a different story. Wait! Wait! Don’t get mad. It’s 2007, I’m not judging anybody . . . but that’s just not my thing

Orton:

(he is livid) You think you’re funny Cena huh? The only pose you’re gonna’ be doing tonight is lying on your back, in that ring, with me on top!82

Randy Orton and John Cena are main attractions, role models. Impressionable fans watch as the WWE stomps on and body-slams homosexuality into a mud-hole. Rejecting homophobia, Cena does not mind if Orton is gay, just not with him, “I’m not judging anybody . . . but that’s just not my thing.” He clarifies. Contradicting his statement, Cena intentionally ignites the homophobic in Randy Orton, sending him into a fury. Orton is offended and irate that Cena is insinuating he is gay; it is the ultimate offense to this machismo inspired wrestler. Now, ample oppressive opportunity is handed over to the fans to use homosexuality (slurs) to laugh at and direct derogatory comments at Orton. Orton being the heel, the villain, it also becomes acceptable. That was not the first time a top star experimented with homosexuality. Announcer Michael Cole and pro-wrestling superstar The Rock had a turbulent relationship full of gay one liners.

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Michael Cole: (knocking on The Rock’s dressing room for an interview). Rock, excuse me, Rock Rock . . . (He walks in on the Rock nude) oh sorry Rock! Well we hope to find that information as soon . . . The Rock: What in the blue hell is wrong with you Michael Cole? The Rock just got out of the shower; you want to barge in on the Rock? What’s the matter with you? [Cole looks down.] The Rock: You looking at the people’s strudel? Cole: No no! The Rock: To each his own Michael Cole, to each his own. Why don’t you give The Rock one minute? The Rock just needs one minute. . . . Go frost your hair, do something like that . . .83 The challenge here is that homophobia is dressed comfortably in a non-confrontational way. This segment is entertaining. The Rock was very charismatic, a beloved fan favorite. The Rock comically imposes a gay identity onto Michael Cole, making him feel that being gay carries shame, “What’s the matter with you?” The Rock asks. Cole stumbles to claim his heterosexual identity, losing the fight. The Rock mocks and pokes fun at Cole, locking him down into submission. Silenced, Cole is projected to the crowd as a homosexual. Presented as a joke, the crowd can view male homosexuality the same way. Additionally, do all gay men frost their hair? Pro-wrestling has perpetuated all types of homophobia. In one segment, Charlie Hass tells his (tag team) partner Shelton Benjamin he needs to kiss his hand. Shelton refuses as Charlie reveals it was only a joke. They hug as Shelton laughs off the tension. The image of a shirtless Shelton and spandex-wearing Charlie ignites the very gay overtones of this segment. Farooq walks in and yells “Damn!” Both men push each other away, denying the insinuation. Cleansing himself, Shelton feverously dusts himself off.84 Dramatizing the straight man’s reaction to a gay accusation only says being gay is repugnant, straight men are insulated at such an accusation, and male-to-male intimacy can only be gay. Can straight guys not share a hug? Deconstruct the meaning behind a body slam or the psychology of a suplex; is there such a way? Can The Rock telling Michael Cole to “frost his hair” or the portrayal of Santina truly be seen as offensive, or is it over-analytical to do so? Wrestlers and fans have long defended

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and protected the industry. “It’s such a tongue-in-cheek industry as it is,” states Kevin Nash, writer of Lenny and Lodi and a pro-wrestler himself. Continuing, he emphasizes “it would be one thing if it were a docudrama, and we were trying to depict something that was real life.” 85 Wrestling is not real life, but homophobia is real and their depiction of Queers (intentionally or unintentionally) further promotes gay stereotyping, marginalization of Queers and gay-bashing. THE CROWD SPEAKS The GLAAD squared off in a rematch against the WWE CEO Vince McMahon when he said the masks of special guest Cirque du Soleil were “really gay.”86 GLAAD released a statement: McMahon wasn’t implying the performers were gay, however, he used the term in a derogatory manner. It’s just another example of how people throw around the word “gay” derisively. This came from the leader of a $500 million-plus organization who holds a lot of power in what he says and what he does. WWE programming reaches 16 million viewers each week. McMahon needs to understand that the words he uses and how he uses them can greatly affect people’s lives.87 Fans were quick to react, claiming their love for Vince or telling GLAAD to “lighten up.” Some poked fun at wrestling “cause oiled up musclemen grabbing each other’s sack for ten minutes at a time isn’t gay at all.” The discussion allowed readers to access an unfiltered discourse, which presented all sides of the issue. One reader adamantly claimed “shut up with this oversensitivity and political bullshit. Unless they can establish that Vince McMahon made comments intended to provoke some kind of backlash against the gay community, their over analysis is full of shit.” One fan outed himself, standing tall and saying “I’m gay and GLAAD needs to lighten the hell up. They find something wrong in everything and they’re making me homophobic.”88 Wrestling fans called GLAAD “gay” or agreed that the Cirque du Soleil was in fact “pretty gay.” Other wrestling fans stood in the corner of GLAAD by saying “No . . . they don’t need to lighten up” others elaborated, “ . . . GLAAD is in the right here. Many people use the word ‘gay’ to mean ‘stupid’ or ‘dumb.’ It is really offensive to gay men and women around the country.”89

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The open forum, allowing fans to post their thoughts and views, illustrated that gay, straight, or non-identifying, wrestling fans, like everyone, are on all sides of the issue. McMahon, himself, stood in the corner of GLAAD and apologized, “My comment was not meant to be used in a derisive manner. [GLAAD’s] point is well taken and I agree that people should be more cognizant about their usage of the word ‘gay’ ”90 THE CLIMAX The real tug-of-war begins as pro-wrestling aims to defend itself. “Stereotypes help us bring the characters into different storylines,” explains [WWE] spokesperson Jayson Bernstein. “I don’t think we’re exploiting any individual group of people. It’s just a matter of entertainment.” 91 Entertainment at what cost? Does entertaining remove the responsibility of an organization to be conscious of what it perpetuates? There has to be a “balance between entertaining your audience and not inflaming stereotypes that are harmful to any particular group.”92 Pro-wrestling is about response. If the fans do not react (negatively or positively), the WWE and other promotions would not follow through on an angle. Success is measured by the excitement of the audience. The WWE is not “afraid of provoking [the] fans. [Their] goal is to get reactions from them.”93 For the fans, pro-wrestling is “escapism”94 where their thoughts are uncensored. They can boo the gay guy or, conversely, lust over the sweaty action in the ring. It’s a safe haven where the ridiculous, or unspoken, becomes acceptable and unfiltered. It is without question that pro-wrestling has bred, maintained, and fed off of homophobia, has sexualized the lesbian identity, and used gay identities to marginalize and shock those whose only interaction with queers may be the stereotypical images they see on a pro-wrestling show. They also started off most queer characters as heels, villains, showing the inflexibility to portray these characters non-stereotypically. Pro-wrestling serves as a barometer of where society stands on issues of homophobia. (Remember the reaction to Chyna?) It would be interesting to see a gay wrestling character that begins as a face, is good looking and empowered, and the only knowledge of his/her sexual identity is his/her admittance and not subtle hints based on harmful gay stereotypes. However, it is only when that character is prominently embodied in mainstream society that pro-wrestling would introduce the proverbial said character into its programming. If Vince McMahon and the WWE feel they could make money off of it, they will try.

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Pro-wrestling is a spectacle that can often, and usually does, offend. It invokes a reaction so strong that it pulls at your heart strings, your fears, your biases; it pulls at who you are. It upsets you, infuriates you, makes you cry, makes you proud. It makes you feel. Their influence on society is undeniably irrefutable, but pro-wrestling does not aim to be (or claim to have) a moral compass: Gays in wrestling, midgets in wrestling, women in wrestling, wrestling in general . . . is a fun strange and frustrating thing to try and make sense out of, and you probably won’t. It will only mean something to you or it simply won’t mean anything at all.95 NOTES 1. Tim Baines, “WCW Sale Has Plenty of Flair,” SLAM! Sports, 25 March 2001, http://slam.canoe.ca/SlamWrestlingWCWSale/flair-sun.html. 2. “ECW’s Stunning Money Woes Made Public,” Gerweck.net. http:// www.gerweck.net/ecwbankruptcy.htm. 3. WWE Superstars, WWE. Barack Obama vs. Hilary Clinton Full video wwe, 10:57; YouTube, MP4, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2wiU-BNqYo (September 2009). 4. Jacqueline and Terri Runnels, WWE. Terri Runnels & Jacqueline join forces [PMS], 3:10; YouTube, MP4, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v =yAfHfpfzo5k (October 2009). 5. WWE Superstars, WWE. Ivory Joins Right to Censor Group on RAW, 2:44; YouTube, MP4, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01X6HZWtb_8 (November 2009). 6. Steve Austin and Vince McMahon, WWE. Stone Cold vs. Vince Volume 2, 10:01; YouTube, MP4, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pn82WUIC7sU (October 2009). 7. Jim Johnston, Eddie Guerrero: “I Lie, I Cheat, I Steal” [Full], 3:31; YouTube, MP4, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTgqotrwewg (November 2009). 8. Joanie Laurer, Chyna, The 9th Wonder of The World: If They Only Knew (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 187. 9. John Capouya, Gorgeous George: The Outrageous Bad-Boy Wrestler Who Created American Pop Culture (New York: HarperCollins, 2008), photo captions. 10. Ibid., 74. 11. Ibid., 75. 12. Ibid., 136. 13. Ibid. 14. Ibid., 106. 15. Ibid., 226. 16. Ibid., 227.

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17. Rick Cataldo, interviewed by Brian Pacheco, November 17, 2009, Queers in American Popular Culture interview, transcript. 18. WWE Superstars, WWE. Chyna’s Debut (In Your House: Final Four), 1:13; YouTube, MP4, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfVmCY9_1ww (October 2009). 19. Joel Stein, “Chyna,” Time Magazine, September 27, 1999, http://www .time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,992091,00.html. 20. Sable Accuses Chyna of Steroid Use, 2:59; YouTube, MP4, http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xcih1NRCtnk&feature=related (October 2009). 21. Laurer, Ibid., 230. 22. Ibid., 177. 23. Ibid., 75. 24. Ibid., 79–84. 25. “Marketing Chyna,” alivingwonder.blogspot.com, 9 July 2009, http:// alivingwonder.blogspot.com/2009/07/marketing-chyna.html. 26. Dustin Runnels, WWE. WWF/WWE—Goldust Promo, 1:00; YouTube, MP4, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBF2lYhDSiU (October 2009). 27. WWE Superstars, WWE. Goldust Debut in WWF, 8:58; YouTube, MP4, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbdHRe9eo_k&feature=related (October 2009). 28. Larry Csonka, “Dustin Rhodes Discusses Being Tully Blanchard’s Last Opponent, Goldust, Cody, Dusty, TNA, His New Direction and More!” 411 mania.com, 30 July 2007, http://www.411mania.com/wrestling/news/ 57777/Dustin-Rhodes-discusses-being-Tully-Blanchards-last-opponent, Goldust,-Cody,-Dusty,-TNA,-his-new-direction-and-More!.htm. 29. Ibid. 30. Vadim, “Grappling with Homosexuality, Professional Wrestling: Simultaneously Homoerotic and Homophobic,” Village Voice, May 2, 2000, http:// www.villagevoice.com/2000-05-02/news/grappling-with-homosexuality/. 31. WWE Superstars, WWE. Legacy of the Intercontinental Championship— Part XXVI, 43:00; WWE.com. MPEG. http://www.wwe.com/subscriptions/ wweclassics/originals/intercontinental/ (November 2009). 32. Ibid. 33. Vadim, Ibid. 34. WWE Superstars, WWE. Legacy, Ibid. 35. Ibid. 36. Ibid. 37. Ibid. 38. Ibid. 39. WWE Divas, WWE. Trish & Ashley Meet Mickie Backstage, 0:46; YouTube, MP4, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rfg0W8xY20A&feature=related (October 2009). 40. WWE Divas, WWE. Trish vs. Victoria—Mickie James Debuts, 6:33; YouTube, MP4, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efe4PdBb9xs (October 2009).

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41. WWE Divas, Mickie James vs. Trish Stratus Feud Music Video “Love Me,” 4:51; YouTube. MP4, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5MC0FqWFgo (October 2009). 42. WWE Divas, WWE. Mickie vs. Victoria (# 1 Contender’s match), 4:47; YouTube, MP4, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPvUDjiPJo8 (November 2009). 43. Mickie James, Trish Stratus, WWE. Trish & Mickie Kiss Backstage, 1:15; YouTube, MP4, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hX3bF1hh2A&feature =related (November 2009). 44. Mickie James, Trish Stratus, WWE. Trish Stratus vs. Mickie James—NYR 2006 (Women’s C. match), 10:16; YouTube, MP4, http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=D9dUK6uYzQ8 (November 2009). 45. Ibid. 46. WWE Superstars, WWE. Mickie & Trish- Mickie Present the Trish’s Celebration, 8:30; YouTube, MP4, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7WRNXuUtjw (October 2009). 47. WWE Superstars, WWE. Trish Introduces Her Date to Mickie, 1:00; YouTube, MP4, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzSDPkYK7vI&feature=related (November 2009). 48. WWE Superstars, WWE. Mickie and Trish Segment, 3:10; YouTube, MP4, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRP6lzCOcq8 (November 2009). 49. Mickie James and Trish Stratus, WWE. Mickie & Trish Time Apart, 1:21; YouTube, MP4, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxKwJmSwqVE (November 2009). 50. WWE Divas, WWE. WWE Divas Trish & Mickie vs Candice & Victoria, 7:49; YouTube, MP4, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3exchzKQTcc (November 2009). 51. Mickie James, Trish Stratus, WWE. Mickie vs. Trish Wrestlemania 22 UNCUT; 5:43. YouTube. MP4. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obEVQJj -_IQ&feature=related (October 2009). 52. Cataldo, Ibid. 53. Mickie, Wrestlemania, Ibid. 54. Cyd Zeigler. Jr., “Kevin Nash: ‘Wrestling’s Gay Friendly Champion,’ ” Outsport.com, http://www.outsports.com/moresports/20061205nash.htm. 55. Ibid. 56. Leni and Lodi, WCW. Lenny and Lodi Are in the Closet, 0:43; Youtube, MP4, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aom5t9XkWS8 (October 2009). 57. Zeigler, Ibid. 58. Vadim, Ibid. 59. Ibid. 60. John McClellend, “Billy and Chuck’s Big Fat Wrestling Gay NonWedding,” Outspotr.com, http://www.outsports.com/columns/20020913 mcclellandwedding.htm. 61. Ibid.

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62. WWE Superstars, WWE. Billy and Chuck vs. Torrie and Stacy in a Posedown, 7:15; YouTube, MP4, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhOtwA6fR9M (October 2009). 63. Scott Keith, Wrestling’s One Ring Circus: The Death of the World Wrestling Federation (New York: Citadel, 2004), 93. 64. WWE Superstars, WWE. Billy & Chuck Wedding, 7:06. YouTube, MP4, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0P5EFCuyyUc (October 2009). 65. Ashish, “GLAAD Upset over Billy & Chuck Smackdown Ceremony,” 411mania.com, September 12, 2002, http://www.411mania.com/ movies/film_reviews/17072/GLAAD-Upset-Over-Billy-&-Chuck-Smackdown -Ceremony.htm. 66. McClellend, Ibid. 67. Allison Danger, RFvideo. Allison Danger Made Out with Mickie James!, 1:44; YouTube, MP4, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzBVL8oGDpE (October 2009). 68. Matt Barnes, “Not That There’s Anything Wrong with That!,” Fighting Spirit Magazine, http://www.fightingspiritmagazine.co.uk/article.asp ?IntID=41. 69. Matthew Tremley, “Rob Feinstein of ROH Caught Attempting to Solicit Sex from a 14 Year Old Boy,” UGO, March 4, 2004, http://www .lordsofpain.net/news/2004/articles/1078401154.php. 70. WWE Superstars, WWE. Eric Bischoff Presents HLA, 10:04; YouTube, MP4, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmoEIGp0VKo (October 2009). 71. Barnes, Ibid. 72. Laurer, Ibid. 73. ECW superstars, ECW. Beulah and Kimona Affair Exposed, 5:45; YouTube, MP4, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLb7v8A1lVQ (October 2009). 74. WWE Superstars, WWE. Santina Marella Is a Lesbian, 2:13; YouTube, MP4, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFKryOthiS8 (November 2009). 75. WWE Superstars, WWE. The Kat vs. Harvina (Snow Bunny Match), 5:39; YouTube, MP4, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uT2mzCWZ2jg (October 2009). 76. WWE Superstars, WWE. Jacqueline Battles the Women’s Champion Harvina, 3:01; YouTube, MP4, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYEGw-rNEXg (October 2009). 77. Cataldo, Ibid. 78. Laurer, Ibid. 79. Ibid, 158 80. Ibid., 159 81. Paul Lavesque and Shawn Michaels, WWE. DX Suck It!!!, 0:40, YouTube, MP4, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfI5ddqyYsI (November 2009). 82. Randy Orton and John Cena, WWE. John Cena Calls Randy Orton Gay, 2:47; YouTube, MP4, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pvu72p6g2Q (October 2009).

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83. Dwayne Johnson and Michael Cole, WWE. The Rock and Michael Cole Funny Segment, 0:59; YouTube, MP4, http://www.youtube.com/watch ?v=Z_3oAa5kBoY (November 2009). 84. Shelton Benjamin, Ron Simmons and Charlie Hass, WWE. Ron Simmons DAMN Shelton & Hass, 1:14; YouTube, MP4, http://www.youtube.com/watch ?v=R8IROOxPhUk (November 2009). 85. Zeigler, Ibid. 86. Larry Csonka, “GLAAD Angry at Vince McMahon Over ‘Gay’ Comment on RAW,” 411mania.com, August 26, 2009, http://www.411mania.com/ wrestling/news/114546/GLAAD-Angry-At-Vince-McMahon-Over-%27Gay -Comment-On-Raw.htm. 87. Ibid. 88. Ibid. 89. Ibid. 90. “WWE Chairman Apologizes for Inappropriate ‘Gay’ Comments After GLAAD Outreach,” glaad.org, August 31, 2009, http://www.glaad.org/ Page.aspx?pid=929. 91. Vadim, Ibid. 92. Ibid. 93. Ibid. 94. Zeigler, Ibid. 95. Cataldo, ibid.

Chapter 6

Babylon Baseball: When the Pitcher Catches Mark John Isola

In 2007, Outsports.com, which was created by Jim Buzinski and Cyd Zeigler Jr., celebrated its eighth anniversary with the release of a book titled The Outsports Revolution: Truth and Myth in the World of Gay Sports.1 Michael O’Keeffe offers a descriptive overview of the site in the book’s foreword: “Outsports is truly a community, with readers contributing story ideas and photos and making our discussion board the go-to destination for gay sports fans.”2 This description captures what is unique about the site, as it exists as a digital community that is by, for, and about the gay sportsman. Gays and sports are not readily compatible in the mind of many, but as Patricia Nell Warren’s book The Lavender Locker Room reminds us, there has been something of a queer streak in sports since at least the funeral games Achilles ordered to honor the death of his beloved Patroclus.3 Indeed, Warren’s print collection of gay athlete profiles, which were originally featured on Outsports.com, aptly points out how much there is to say about the gay sportsman, and Outsports.com has become a successful highprofile site for such discussions. In fact, Outsports.com published the first full story about John Amaechi, the former NBA player whose 2007 coming out prompted Tim Hardaway to out his inner homophobe.4 The publication of The Outsports Revolution is a celebration of a valuable and viable digital community that has provided a muchneeded platform for a proscribed subject position—the gay athlete.

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The productivity of Outsports.com culminates with a zeitgeist that is perhaps best summarized in the book’s foreword, which was written by New York Daily News sports reporter Michael O’Keeffe, who writes: Jackie Robinson changed American history when he broke baseball’s color line in 1947, but my guess is that things will be different for the big league’s first openly gay athlete. He won’t be an established player who rocks the world with an “I am gay” press conference. He’ll be a gifted athlete who realizes he’s gay at an early age. He’ll be emotionally tough; he won’t hide who he is as he climbs through the minor league ranks.5 Although O’Keeffe’s sentiment is admirable, it is problematic on two levels, as it risks performing what could be considered a digital dissociation. O’Keeffe blurs virtual reality with actual—if not at least potential— reality, and by doing so he presumes an absence where there may well already be a silenced or coded presence, thereby unwittingly perpetuating the strictures surrounding gays in professional sports. By positing a world where a major league gay player will not have to rock the world with an “I am gay” press conference, O’Keeffe overlooks several events in recent history, where major league baseball players have had to reinforce the hegemony of heterosexuality with an “I am NOT gay” press conference. On May 20, 2002, the New York Post’s Neal Travis’s “Page Six” gossip column ran an item that suggested a New York major league baseball player was gay.6 The rumors stuck to New York Mets player Mike Piazza, and Piazza established the defensive rhetorical strategy for a major league baseball player being identified as a homosexual. Piazza held a press conference to assert his heterosexual identity, and he set the record straight—this easy pun being wholly intended—by claiming, “I’m not gay. I’m heterosexual.”7 Piazza tempered his need to declare his heterosexuality by steeping it within a rhetorical position that refused the charge of homophobia by speculating about how the majors would respond to a gay player: “In this day and age, it [being homosexual] would be irrelevant. If the guy is doing his job on the field . . . I don’t think there would be any problem at all.”8 Here, Piazza agreed with Mets former manager Bobby Valentine’s comments in that summer’s issue of Details magazine, where Valentine stated baseball is “probably ready for an openly gay player.” 9 After Travis’s gossip-driven interpretation of Valentine’s comments, Valentine defended his original assertion by saying: “It’s what I believe. I think

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we are all big boys, and I think the world has progressed enough to handle many different situations.”10 Apparently, the big boys of baseball can handle it—with denials gilded with liberalism. Piazza’s response can be interpreted as meeting the bar of parrhesia, the tactical use of speech that Michelle Foucault, author of Fearless Speech, contends strategically negotiates the potential for punishment—by comparing it to WNBA player Sue Wicks, who outed herself in an interview later the same month.11 In response to a Time Out New York interviewer, who asked Wicks if she was a lesbian, Wick’s responded: I am. Usually, I don’t like to answer those kinds of questions because you worry the issue might become so much bigger than the sport. As an athlete, it’s a little annoying when that becomes the point of interest. But I would never avoid that question, especially in New York. I think it’s important that if you are gay, you should not be afraid to say who you are.12 So, the freeing air of New York City provides something of a cultural privilege and/or subcultural responsibility for Wicks; whereas, it translates into Piazza’s queer performative heteroglossia of denial, declaration, and liberalism. The cultural fulcrum that sourced Piazza’s triangulated performative rhetoric can be detected behind sports and mainstream media’s differing responses to Piazza’s denial and Wick’s admission. This difference is suggested by the media’s fast and furious coverage of Piazza’s denial. Outsports.com gave two dozen interviews and appeared on seven sports talk shows nationwide to discuss Piazza; whereas, they were not contacted about Wicks. Moreover, after searching the Dow Jones Interactive, Buzinski and Zeigler were only able to locate one media reference to Wicks’s outing interview. Buzinski aptly explores this double standard in his article posted on Outsports.com.13 This difference is further delineated by the media response to a second “Page Six” blind item published later in the same year, which again suggested a major league baseball player was gay: “Which Hall of Fame baseball hero cooperated with a best-selling biography only because the author promised to keep it secret that he is gay? The author kept her word, but big mouths at the publishing house can’t keep from flapping.”14 This time the gossip stuck to Sandy Koufax. Just like the Piazza rumor and very unlike the Wick’s admission, the suggestion of a gay major league baseball player provoked a media response that ran through several of the nation’s major media

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outlets, including Keith Olberman’s cable news show Countdown, and the popular news Web site Salon.com. This wide-ranging media coverage stands in even greater contrast to Wicks’s lesbian admission, which relative to the Piazza and Koufax rumors was barely covered or commented upon. In addition to revealing the tendency toward sensationalistic news in the tabloidization of America’s news media, if not also something of modern Western civilization’s fetish for secrets, the differing media responses to the rumor of gay baseball players and the admission of a lesbian basketball player reveals something of the enduring double standard surrounding sex and sexuality in sports. Scratch the surface and you find the old familiar discourses: lesbians are athletic and gays are too prissy to play sports. For the purposes of this chapter, it will suffice to note the differing responses to Piazza’s denial and Wicks’s admission is also informed by the fact that major league baseball receives much more media exposure than professional women’s basketball. Therefore, Piazza is a famous professional sports figure, whereas Wicks is at best a sports figure of some renown. However, such formations are themselves crafted from the construction of difference and not from some anterior essential difference. Mike Piazza is a media celebrated sports personality precisely because he conforms to the central discourses and statistical configurations of professional sports, which prefigures and subjectifies males like Piazza as athletes for performing acts that are already socially, materially, and ideologically constructed as acts of athleticism, specifically male athleticism.15 Therefore, Piazza needs to conform to heteronormativity, if not perform his heterosexuality—at least publically, but there is no denying the double play inherent in his public positioning as it also forces an awareness of private secrets. The potential for gender, sex, and sexual non-conformity functions here as a fulcrum that explains the media’s concern with Piazza’s press conference in opposition to Wicks’s admission, as cultural institutions and media mechanisms strive to restore or otherwise react to disruptions in the hegemony of heterosexuality in major league baseball and mainstream consciousness. A constitutive component of O’Keeffe’s digital dissociation occurs when he asserts that when the gay Jackie Robinson emerges he will “be judged like every other ballplayer—by his ability to hit, field, or pitch.”16 This may well be a premature impulse, however, for whether the gay Jackie Robinson pitches or catches, the social, material, and ideological forces that construct major league baseball will likely only permit the public record to reflect a heterosexual status—at least until the

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player’s retirement, as has been the case with other professional sports figures like Dave Kopay, Glenn Burke, John Amaechi, Esera Tuaolo, and Billy Bean. The echo of Hardaway’s homophobic rant goes a long way toward explaining why the legacy of the sports closet will continue for some time despite the productivity of Web sites like Outsports.com, and as Foucault suggests, this very same fact may incite sites like it into existence. Yet, for all we know, the New York Post’s “Page Six” gossip column was correct both times, and the gay Jackie Robinson may well be warming up at next year’s spring training. This possibility figures the anxiety behind Piazza and Koufax’s sexual status, and in the era of the digital age, this anxiety appears to be growing, not diminishing. Shannon Ragland’s 2007 book The Thin Thirty reveals the secrets behind the 1962 Kentucky football team’s role in a gay sex and gamefixing scandal with Rock Hudson nearly half a century after its occurrence.17 The contemporaneous secrecy surrounding this scandalous story, despite how it trucks with the tabloid media demand for sensationalism, as well as the several decades long open secrecy surrounding Hudson’s sexuality, was completely dependent upon the containment culture of mid-twentieth century America—the genesis of which was a function of this culture’s technological and metanarrative limits. However, such secrets are becoming increasingly difficult to keep in the digital age. Between the surveillance of the digital panopticon and the metanarrative ruptures of the postmodern era, there is something of an increasingly fragile nature to the homosexual closet. Therefore, unless sexual secrets, especially homosexual secrets, are completely evacuated of their potential for scandal, new tactics will have to emerge to prevent the evidence of the digitized sexual scandal from morphing into a permanent stigma. Mike Piazza’s “I am NOT gay press conference” can be interpreted as one of these developments, for even if the pitcher is caught “catching” on videotape, the stigma of homosexuality can be negotiated by the public performance of testifying, “I am now and have always been heterosexual.”18 This, of course, refers to the Cleveland Indians player, who asserted just as much in a 2004 press conference.19 With a very fast fastball and three quality secondary pitches, including the changeup Eepehus pitch, Kazuhito Tadano was expected to draft early in the first round of Japan’s 2002 amateur draft. However, he was not drafted. This was surprising since an American major league scout, who commented on the condition of anonymity, asserted: “He should have been a top five pick over there [Japan]. He gets it up to 93-94 (mph), and he throws four different pitches

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for strikes.”20 Tadano was promising enough to make him a top draft pick contender in Japan and to receive attention from the Twins, the Padres, and the Braves in America, so the barriers to his success had nothing to do with his pitching; instead, it had everything to with his “catching.” Kaz Tadano was not drafted or readily signed because of his involvement in a porn video that involved his playing the passive role during anal sex in the Japanese gay adult video series “Babylon.” “Babylon 34” was released shortly before the Japanese baseball draft in 2002. The video, which trades on the familiar gay porn narrative of coerced sex, features Tadano and three of his teammates literally rear-ending a Japanese gang member ’s car. In retaliation, the gang member forces Tadano and his teammates to have sex with one another at gunpoint. The scene includes elements of bondage and S&M when Tadano wears a leash and dog collar while playing the passive role in anal sex. This video was so problematic that when the Japanese news media began speculating about a top player, whose draft status was diminishing secondary to his appearance in a porn video, Tadano was forced to seek baseball employment outside Japan. Following his failure to draft with a Japanese team, Tadano tried to sign with an American major league organization. However, despite his considerable pitching talent, he had difficulty finding a team to sign him. Eventually, the Cleveland Indians signed Tadano cheaply, and he began playing on their farm and minor league teams. Tadano had finally secured a position with a professional baseball franchise, yet his position was far from secure, and its tenuous nature required a series of rhetorical and public relation negotiations. Evidence suggesting this motivation can be found in Chris Kline’s ESPN interview with Cleveland Indians General Manager Mark Shapiro, where Shapiro acknowledged the care Tadano’s situation and signing would require: Signing him was not like the traditional minor league signing. The circumstances warranted support and management. As soon as we went forward with an attempt to sign him, we knew there were certain elements that differed from a typical signing. We knew we needed to support him not only culturally, but at some point we anticipated supporting him through all the extra focus, attention, and potential distractions that could come along because he was young and made this one-time mistake.21

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In the same interview, Shapiro acknowledged that the Cleveland Indians management team had made certain Tadano’s involvement with gay porn was indeed a “one-time mistake” before signing him: After we had chance to talk to him and watch his interaction with other players, we made the decision to sign him. It was our assessment that the event in the past was an isolated incident. It was not a pattern of current or future behavior. He was young and made a one-time mistake.22 Shapiro’s admission that the team’s management had observed Tadano interacting with other players before signing him evidences a concern beyond worrying over Tadano repeating his pornographic participation, and it suggests something of a surveillance of his sexuality. In other words, they made certain Tadano was a one-time switch hitter and not a gay player. Signing Tadano to their farm league, the Cleveland Indians were buying Tadano cheaply and slowly investing in him before the possibility of his making a major league appearance. This awareness was clearly expressed by the Indians farm team director John Farrell when he stated: We have always anticipated there to be a media blitz at some point and the closer he gets to the major leagues, [the news] was bound to come out. We were more than willing to take that challenge on.23 Farrell was correct. The closer Tadano got to the majors the more he had to negotiate the scandal. This resulted in his making two separate apologies to his Kinston teammates in 2003 and to his Akron teammates later in the same year. Then, in January 2004, before he made his major league debut with the Indians, Tadano held a press conference to apologize for his participation in the video. Tadano, who does not speak English, nevertheless managed a clearly and cleverly worded apology. He stated: I did participate in a video and I regret it very much. It was a onetime incident that showed bad judgment and will never be repeated. I was young, playing baseball, and going to college and my teammates and I needed money. Frankly, if I were more mature and had really thought about the implications of what I did, it never would have happened.24

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Tadano concluded by taking a page from Mike Piazza’s playbook by asserting: “I’m not gay. I’d like to clear that fact up right now.”25 Tadano’s short statement belies the complexity of his defensive rhetoric. Tadano’s explanation includes the usual fast pitch in response to the evidence of pornographic photographs: “I was young and needed the money.” This discursive defense invokes the cliche´d rationale of naı¨vete´ and economic need. Given the potential stigma surrounding the nature of his particular pornographic pictures, however, Tadano threw a discursive eephus pitch by simultaneously subordinating his involvement in a gay porn video to the ideological pillars of professional sports. By claiming the impulse behind his participation in the video as an act of teamsmanship—”my teammates and I needed the money”—Tadano invoked a foundational discourse of team sports that managed to subordinate the motivations of sexual preference to fraternal practice. Moreover, by claiming heterosexuality, Tadano performed an identity that removed the implications of homosexuality from the homosexual act. The result was a change up discourse that provided all the familiar moves of homosociality and heterosexuality and left critics unexpectedly swinging at the air. NOTES 1. Jim Buzinski and Cyd Zeigler, Jr., The Outsports Revolution: Truth and Myth in the World of Gay Sports (Boston: Alyson, 2007). 2. Ibid., v. 3. Patricia Nell Warren, The Lavender Locker Room: 3000 Years of Great Athletes Whose Sexual Orientation was Different (Beverly Hills: Wildcat Press, 2006). 4. Barry Jackson and Steve Rothaus, “Hardaway’s Apology Fails to win over Critic: I Hate Gay People,” The National Post, February 16, 2007, sec. Sports. 5. Buzinski and Zeigler, The Outsports Revolution, vi. 6. Neal Travis, “In and Out with the Mets,” New York Post, May 20, 2002, Sec. Page Six. 7. Rafael Hermoso, “Baseball, Piazza Responds to Gossip Column,” The New York Times, May 22, 2002, sec. D. 8. Dave Goldiner and Adam Rubin, “Mets Star: I’m STRAIGHT, Relaxed Piazza Quashes Rumors that he’s Coming Out,” Daily News, May 22, 2002, sec. News. 9. Mark Starr, “Starr Gazing: Is Baseball a Homophobic Bastion?,” Newsweek, May 23, 2002, sec. Society. 10. John Smallwood, “Baseball Isn’t Ready for Gay Player,” Philadelphia Daily News, May 23, 2002, sec. D1.

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11. Michelle Foucault, Fearless Speech, ed. Joseph Pearson (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2001). 12. Jim Buzinski, “Double Standard Still Rules: Why Mike Piazza Got all the Attention While Sue Wicks Was Ignored,” Outsports Columns. http:// www.outsports.com/columns/suewicksmikepiazza.htm. 13. Ibid. 14. “Just Asking,” New York Post, December 19, 2006, sec. Page Six. 15. Michael Butterworth, “Mike Piazza and the Discourse of Gay Identity in the National Pastime,” Journal of Sport and Social Issues 30, no. 2 (2006): 138157. 16. Michael O’Keeffe, foreword to The Outsports Revolution: Truth and Myth in the World of Gay Sports, by Jim Buzinski and Cyd Zeigler, Jr. (Boston: Alyson, 2007), xii. 17. Shannon Ragland. The Thin Thirty (Louisville: Set Shot Press, 2007). 18. Buzinski offers a wider discussion of this trend as it involves pro athletes from other sports, who are also publicly declaring their heterosexuality, see Jim Buzinski, “Jeff Garcia: I’m Not Gay,” Outsports NFL. http://www .outsports.com/nfl/2004/0204garcia.htm. 19. Ira Berkow, “Player’s Tainted Past Stirs Little Commotion,” The New York Times, June 17, 2004, sec. D. 20. Chris Kline, “Tribe Ignores Past, Reaps Reward,” Baseball America. http://www.baseballamerica.com/today/news/030904tadano.html. 21. Ibid. 22. Ibid. 23. Ibid. 24. Berkow, “Player’s Tainted Past.” 25. Ibid.

REFERENCES Berkow, I. “Player’s Tainted Past Stirs Little Commotion.” New York Times, June 17, 2004, sec. D. Butterworth, M. “Mike Piazza and the Discourse of Gay Identity in the National Pastime.” Journal of Sport and Social Issues 30, no. 2 (2006): 138–157. Buzinski, J. “Double Standard Still Rules: Why Mike Piazza Got all the Attention While Sue Wicks Was Ignored.” Outsports Columns. http://www .outsports.com/columns/ suewicksmikepiazza.htm . “Jeff Garcia: I’m Not Gay.” Outsports NFL. http://www.outsports .com/ nfl/2004/0204garcia.htm. Buzinski, J., and Cyd Zeigler, Jr. The Outsports Revolution: Truth and Myth in the World of Gay Sports. Boston: Alyson, 2007. Foucault, M. Fearless Speech. Edited by Joseph Pearson. Los Angeles, Semiotext(e), 2001.

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Goldiner, D., and A. Rubin. “Mets Star: “I’m STRAIGHT, Relaxed Piazza Quashes Rumors that He’s Coming Out,” Daily News, May 22, 2002, sec. News. Hermoso, R. “Baseball, Piazza Responds to Gossip Column.” The New York Times, May 22, 2002, sec. D. Jackson, B., and S. Rothaus. “Hardaway’s Apology Fails to win over Critic: I Hate Gay People.” The National Post, February 16, 2007, sec. Sports. “Just Asking.” New York Post. December 19, 2006, sec. Page Six. Kline, C. “Tribe Ignores Past, Reaps Reward,” Baseball America. http:// www.baseballamerica.com/today/news/030904tadano.html. O’Keeffe, M. Foreword to The Outsports Revolution: Truth and Myth in the World of Gay Sports, by Jim Buzinski and Cyd Zeigler, Jr. Boston: Alyson, 2007. Ragland, R. The Thin Thirty. Louisville: Set Shot Press, 2007. Smallwood, J. “Baseball isn’t Ready for Gay Player.” Philadelphia Daily News, May 23, 2002, sec. D1. Starr, M. “Starr Gazing: Is Baseball a Homophobic Bastion?” Newsweek, May 23, 2002, sec. Society. Travis, N. “In and Out with the Mets.” New York Post, May 20, 2002, Sec. Page Six. Warren, P. N. The Lavender Locker Room: 3000 Years of Great Athletes Whose Sexual Orientation was Different. Beverly Hills: Wildcat Press, 2006.

Chapter 7

Communitarian Considerations for the Coverage of “Outed” Athletes Richard Kenney

The way we construct and communicate our lived experiences has become intertwined with the lives, loves, and liaisons of celebrity entertainers and athletes. They lead the evening news and dominate the daily discourse of the papers, the Internet, the water-cooler talk. Audiences wait anxiously to hear word of O. J. Simpson’s or Scott Petersen’s guilt or innocence and agonize over the breakups of Brad and Jennifer, of Ben and Jennifer, of Kobe and Shaq. When Princess Diana died, many among the millions who mourned said they had felt a close “personal relationship” with her, just as President Bush and other modern evangelicals describe their religious devotions. Celebrity worshippers pilgrimage to Althorp Park to pay honor to Diana, just as others go to Graceland to visit the shrine to Elvis Presley. Despite all this implied reverence, however, the culture of celebrity neither guarantees not promotes ethicalor even equaltreatment for all who enter the media spotlight. Paparazzi hound the photogenic incessantly, even to death, as in the case of Diana; private investigators in the employ of tabloid publishers snoop through the garbage of even pseudo-celebrities, such as Henry Kissinger; and Web site operators post the latest private pornographic video of inge´ nues like Paris Hilton. Neimark (1995) argues that as fame grows, celebrities and their

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fans are diminished: “a certain cynicism has set in among us all, and a rabid fascination not only with the false beauty of the glorified, sterilized celebrity, but also with the dark and seamy underside” (57). We “both elevate and destroy our celebrities,” who “are worthy of our slavish devotion, attention, and respect” yet “are just like us . . . people with problems [who] drink too much or hit their wives or have bad relationships.” Today we shuttle routinely between Ivory-soap versions of celebrities—their perfect marriages, perfect children, and perfect careers—and genuine slander. Cindy Crawford and Richard Gere become the golden couple when they first marry, only a few years later having to take out full-page newspaper ads to protest that they are not homosexual and that their marriage is real. Soon after, they divorce. ( 57) This wicked dichotomy applies not only to Hollywood celebrities, but also to those who play professional sports. Athletic Arthurian archetypes who enjoy the hero worship of millions and reap financial windfalls in the hundreds of millions are hardly immune to speculation about their vices as well as their virtues. From Paul Hornung to Jose Canseco to Kobe Bryant, players are placed upon a pedestal by fans and sports media willing to temporarily turn a blind eye to their heroes’ hubris, only watch them fall from grace at the whim of gossipers and the whiff of a scandal. Whether exposed honestly in possibly legitimate news stories about gambling, substance abuse, or sex crimes, or whether inaccurately wronged by news accounts grown from gossip, athletes—like other entertainers—often endure invasions of their private lives that sometimes leave them subject to harm greater than just to their reputation. In recent years, two superstars, one a major-league baseball slugger and the other a Pro Bowl quarterback, suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous publicity—not to mention the taunts and threats of teammates and opponents—after mistakenly being “outed” as gay. Although neither New York Mets catcher Mike Piazza nor then-San Francisco 49ers quarterback Jeff Garcia was outed initially by credible mainstream media, and the utilitarian paradigm of traditional, objective news media practice ensured that these disclosures—despite the principals’ vehement denials—would receive wider circulation and gain in currency. Although the U.S. courts have decided that calling someone “gay” isn’t ipso facto defamatory, society’s ingrained cultural

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animosity toward gays suggests that athletes who risk full contact on the playing field are particularly jeopardized when outed by the media. Their health and well-being are threatened when the scarlet G becomes a bull’s-eye on their uniform. True, gay athletes have endured social inequalities and public prejudices since long before the current outing trend; those problems are not produced by media discourse alone. But longstanding media practices contribute to such hegemonies through the traditional reproduction of ideas and construction of social realities. Some journalists and gay activists have argued that disclosure and debate about outings serve a greater social good. For example, post-hoc attempts at justifying the publication of information about Arthur Ashe’s AIDS infection framed it as a vital discussion of public health policies and attitudes—all at the expense of his and his family’s privacy (Black, Barney, and Steele 1999). But when it comes to the reporting of gossip, rumors (whether founded or unfounded), or any legally private facts about celebrity athletes as news, traditional values of media practices are inadequate. The utilitarian dependence on amoral craft values—among them: timeliness, prominence, conflict, and controversy—simply does not meet fundamental ethical obligations of truth, justice, and equality. Outing gay athletes singles them out in ways that violate Aristotelian concepts of virtue, Kantian ideals of dignity, and Rawlsian notions of social justice and thus represents a callous and amoral disregard for the potential harmfulness of unwanted publicity. I suggest in this essay that when it comes to the reporting of gossip and unfounded rumors about celebrity athletes as news, traditional values of media practices are inadequate. They are amoral in the sense that they do not protect human dignity and well-being: the mutual interests of every member in a society. In contrast with popular ethical foundations that underlie traditional news media practice, however, communitarianism offers a distinctive and normative approach to coverage of gay/lesbian/transgender issues in general and to the outing of gay athletes in particular. Using communitarianism as the ethical framework for critique, my study of the outing of gay athletes in contact sports examines serious issues of privacy and harm. In this essay, I focus on two particular cases—Piazza’s and Garcia’s— thatare illustrative because of the way falsehoods about each became “known” truths, first through entertain or alternative media and then through mainstream media.

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OUT IN SPORTS The Origins of Outing Athletes Among the earliest athletes in modern U.S. sport known to be gay was Bill Tilden, the tennis great who, in the 1920s won seven U.S. Open titles, three Wimbledon championships, seven U.S. clay court titles, and six U.S. doubles championships (Deford 1975). Tilden’s homosexuality became generally known in the 1930s, when, as his skills faded, he was eventually ostracized and banned from major tournaments. He was arrested in 1946 and 1949 and jailed on charges involving teenage boys; he died broke and alone in Hollywood a few years later. But for all the damage to reputation and livelihood done to Tilden by the gossiping about his sexual orientation, his physical presence and performance as an athlete was never in danger because tennis is not a contact sport. For the purposes of this study then, in which I examine the implications of potential physical harm to outed athletes, I consider athletes in only two major contact sports in America: football and baseball. Football: Down and Out The first such professional athlete from a contact sport to come out as homosexual was David Kopay, a running back for the Washington Redskins in the 1960s and 1970s who came out in 1975 after he had retired from playing (Kopay and Young 1977). His disclosure was triggered by the anonymous outing by the Washington Star of three of his teammates. Although Kopay did not identify him in his book, Redskins tight end Jerry Smith was Kopay’s first lover (Buzinski 2002). Kopay now says that Smith was one of the anonymous sources in the Star article (Provenzano 2003). Kopay also says that teammates may have known Smith was gay and that some tried to bully Smith, who was known as one of the NFL’s toughest players, while others defended him. Kopay also says Smith had lovers among other NFL players. Smith died from AIDS-related causes in 1986, shortly after disclosing he had contracted the disease, but Smith never disclosed that he was gay. Since then, two other NFL players have come out, both in retirement: Roy Simmons, a New York Giants and Washington Redskins offensive lineman from 1979 to 1983 who came out as a bisexual on a 1992 episode of The Phil Donahue Show and who disclosed he was HIV-positive in a New York Times article (Orth 2003), and Esera

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Tualo, an offensive lineman for several NFL teams in the 1990s who came out on the October 29, 2002, episode of HBO’s Real Sports (Provenzano 2002). Simmons would never have dreamed of declaring himself gay during the four seasons he played for the New York Giants and the Redskins, for fear of destroying his career. “The N.F.L. has a reputation,” he said, “and it’s not even a verbal thing; it’s just known. You are gladiators; you are male; you kick butt.” (sect. 9, 1) Tualo (2002) came out on a broadcast episode of HBO’s Real Sports in October 2002 and in an ESPN The Magazine essay that same month. He wrote that he could never talk about it for fear of being released by his team or injured intentionally by another player. “I was sure that if a GM didn’t get rid of me for the sake of team chemistry, another player would intentionally hurt me, to keep up the image. Because the NFL is a supermacho culture. It’s a place for gladiators. And gladiators aren’t supposed to be gay.” In response to Tualo’s disclosure, Garrison Hearst, a San Francisco 49ers running back, told a reporter: “Aww, hell no! I don’t want any faggots on my team. I know this might not be what people want to hear, but that’s a punk. I don’t want any faggots in this locker room” (Bryant 2002). Hearst was forced to apologize, and the 49ers issued statements deploring what he said. Hearst’s remark struck more deeply within the 49ers organization that either he or most of his employers first realized. The team’s trainer, Lindsy McLean, came out publicly two years later, after nearly a quarter-century of working in fear of “being terrorized by players he’d kept on the field and in the money” (Bull 2004, 90). McLean’s sexual orientation was at best an open secret; he had taken his partner to a team Christmas party in 1982. For more than two decades he endured verbal putdowns. McLean described how he kept his head down or stared at walls around naked players and kept them covered in the training room. Still, he recalled a player grumbling within earshot, “That faggot trainer’s not taking care of me” (93). The 49ers won a record five Super Bowls with McLean as their trainer. After Hearst was injured in 1999, fracturing his fibula, McLean spent part of the next two years helping him heal and rehabilitate his leg for a successful comeback. A year later, he read the “faggots” quote from Hearst. The team’s owner, John York, spoke with Hearst, and the

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team induced Hearst to apologize publicly. McLean says he was never angry with Hearst, who says he learned McLean was gay when he joined the team in 1997 and didn’t have a problem with it. Still, Hearst “can’t bring himself to say the word gay” (95). The two have never broached the subject but maintain a cordial relationship. Other NFL players have endured publicized rumors about their sexuality and have felt compelled to deny they were gay as a way to defend themselves and pre-empt backlash, including being abandoned by their front office, abused by fans, ostracized by teammates, and injured by opponents. Kordell Stewart announced publicly that he had met with his Pittsburgh Steelers teammates the previous season to assure them that rumors stemming from a Sports Illustrated story that referred to fan speculation about his sexual preference had not affected his play (Harlan, 2004). Sports Illustrated and Stewart addressed the sexuality issue: some Steelers admit they were fazed by rumors that Stewart was gay, until he called a meeting before the 1999 season and issued a denial that included graphic descriptions of heterosexual acts he enjoys. “I could see the humor in the situation,” Stewart says, “so I decided to have some fun with it. At one point I said, ‘You’d better not leave your girlfriends around me, because I’m out to prove a point.’ A couple of guys said, ‘F— you, Kordell,’ and we all cracked up.” (Silver 2002, 40) More recently, Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick went on local radio to defend himself against a bizarre and intentionally spurious rumor that he was gay (Buzinski 2004). A news-hoax Web site, Global Associated News, had briefly allowed the posting of a fake story that began, “He’s here, he’s queer, and his name is Michael Vick. Shocking sports fans around the globe, NFL representatives for Michael Vick issued a public statement today confirming rumors that began circulating earlier this week about his sexual preferences and homosexual lifestyle.” A Web site disclaimer read: “If you are reading this page, it’s likely that you read a ‘fake’ story from the ‘global associated news’’ – a totally bogus news source. This news story was dynamically generated by someone who visited the site. It was created by dynamically inserting a name into a template on this Web site.” Still, Vick addressed the issue with Atlanta radio station V-103 and issued a non-denial denial: “I won’t even feed into that . . . Everybody who knows me, knows how I get down. It’s not even an issue.”

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Potential for Harm Hearst and his 49ers teammates were not the only ones who have helped create an unsafe environment for gays in football. At times, the climate has been made uncomfortable by epithets used as insults. In December 2003, Detroit Lions president Matt Millen, a former 49er played while McLean was the team’s trainer, called the Kansas City Chiefs’ wide receiver Johnnie Morton a “faggot” during a post-game rant (Sylvester 2003). Morton apologized for his own remark, which prompted Millen’s outburst, but added: “What he said is demeaning and bigoted. Jeremy Shockey got in trouble for saying it about a coach, and now we have a president of a team making statements like that. It’s totally unacceptable” (C1). He was referring to an incident in 2004, when New York Giants tight end Jeremy Shockey made headlines by calling former head coach Bill Parcells a “homo” (“Shockey,” 2004). Both Millen and Shockey apologized for their remarks without admitting wrong. Other reactions to players’ homosexuality have been regarded as more ominous. In 1998, former Buffalo Bills and Green Bay Packers player Reggie White, a fierce defensive end and pass rusher who was elected to the NFL Hall of Fame, declared the nation has retreated from God by allowing homosexuality to “run rampant.” Other statements attributed White, who died in late 2004: “Let me explain something when I’m talking about sin, and I’m talking about all sin. One of the biggest ones that has been talked about that has really become a debate in America is homosexuality;” “I’m offended that homosexuals will say that homosexuals deserve rights;” “Homosexuality is a decision, it’s not a race. . . . ” (Zeigler 2004). Tualo’s former Green Bay Packers teammate, Shannon Sharpe, typified what many felt was the view among NFL players. “Had [Esera] come out on a Monday, with Wednesday, Thursday, Friday practices, he’d have never gotten to the other team. He would have never gotten to the game on Sunday” (Zeigler 2004). And Simmons’ former teammate, Butch Woolfolk, who played for the Giants and also with the Houston Oilers and Detroit Lions, acknowledged that if Simmons had disclosed his sexual orientation earlier, it would have wrecked his career: “You can be a wife-beater, do drugs, get in a car wreck and the team will take care of you. But if you’re gay, it’s like the military: don’t ask, don’t tell” (Orth 2003, sect. 9, 1). Former 49ers trainer McLean can testify to the potential for physical abuse and harm generated by homophobic attitudes in the NFL. The

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verbal putdowns he endured eventually turned to physical abuse. In the early 1990s: a 350-pound lineman would chase him around, grab him from behind, push him against a locker and simulate rape. Get over here, bitch. I know what you want. The lineman . . . reprised his act whenever he could, even after he was traded to another team, he’d sneak up on McLean in the locker room or alongside the team bus. (Bull 2004, 93) McLean’s coming out in the magazine had a ripple effect that turned the private life of 49ers quarterback Jeff Garcia public and led to media prying into his sexuality. Asked by a reporter for a small California newspaper for his reaction to the McLean story, Garcia replied that he himself had been “the subject of inaccurate speculation for years. ‘I’ve heard the rumor myself that I’m gay’ ” (Maiocco 2004, C3). The rumors to which Garcia alluded had previously circulated about two married NFL quarterbacks who had won Super Bowls. Garcia maintained that such gossip came with the territory. “Part of it is the label,” Garcia said, “being successful, being single, being the quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers, speaking properly, having a sense of style. A combination of those things gets you categorized as being gay. Just because an individual in his 30s hasn’t found true love . . . ” Garcia . . . said he has learned of the rumors from friends who have been approached by others who do not know him. (Maiocco 2003, C3) A combination of the endless rumors and Garcia’s own admission that “I’ve heard the rumor myself that I’m gay” may have fueled the firestorm of controversy that flashed in summer 2004 when a former teammate hinted that the rumor about Garcia, who was subsequently traded to the Cleveland Browns, was true. The Garcia Case The first media reports about Garcia in Cleveland supported the idea he was demonstratively heterosexual. New Browns quarterback Jeff Garcia has yet to throw one touchdown pass for Cleveland, but the former San Francisco 49er is

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certainly scoring well in making new (and interesting) friends here. Word is Garcia is dating Avon Lake native Carmella DeCesare, Playboy Magazine’s current Playmate of the Year and tongues are wagging that the Browns QB has ALREADY become a major, popular celebrity on the local social scene. (Brown 2004a) Later, a reporter for Playboy magazine asked another former 49ers player whether he thought Garcia was gay. The player, Terrell Owens of the Philadelphia Eagles, who had feuded publicly with Garcia when the two were teammates, replied: “Like my boy tells me: If it looks like a rat and smells like a rat, by golly, it is a rat” (“Twenty,” 2004), implying that Garcia was gay. Given the opportunity to clarify, Owens did not disavow his statement. “It was just some loose conversation and they asked me about it,” Owens said. “I just told them that my boy always told me that if it looks like a rat and smells like a rat, obviously, by golly, it must be a rat. “I didn’t say he was gay. Like I said, the conversation and interview was loose. And from my knowledge, I’m not sure if Jeff is gay or not. He had a girlfriend when we were in San Francisco, and there have been recent reports that he has a girlfriend now. “Everyone is going to make a big deal about it,” Owens said, “but like I said, it’s not like I came out and said Jeff is gay. People asked me similar questions about Steve Young, so everybody is going to have their rumors.” (O’Rourke 2004, C1) In Cleveland, Garcia was quick to dismiss Owens’ comments as “ridiculous”: “It is really a waste of my time to sit here and to have to answer to such ridiculous, untrue comments that are made out there in the world today” (Windhorst 2004, C1) Ridiculous or not, the story would not go away. Although Owens’s initial remark appeared in an issue of Playboy that had not even reached newsstands yet, sports-talk radio and the Internet took up the topic; the mainstream media then pounced on it and made it front-page news in some sports sections. ESPN devoted coverage to the story, including it in a story about homosexuals in the NFL. A Google search revealed that more than 150 media reports repeated the remark, amplifying it and framing it to assert that Owens was, indeed, outing Garcia. As the regular season of play began, Garcia remained an easy target for cheap shots even in mainstream media.

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During a recent conference call featuring Fox network football commentators, we asked pregame studio analyst Terry Bradshaw (and others) for comments on Garcia. With a laugh, Bradshaw responded, “If it looks like a rat . . . ” before letting his voice trail off and leaving the sentence unfinished. Asked to explain what he meant, Bradshaw would only add, “Ah, I don’t know about Garcia”—but made no other comment on the Browns QB. (Brown 2004, C2) Two months later, when Owens and his new team, the Philadelphia Eagles, traveled to Cleveland to play Garcia’s Browns, the conflict resurfaced, manufactured for news by mainstream media in coverage during the week preceding the game. Owens sought to evade reporters’ questions, at one point insisting that they, and not he, were guilty of bringing it up again and again. Still, Garcia felt compelled to defend himself against Owens. “I don’t know why he can’t let it go,” Garcia said. “I mean, it’s unfortunate because I’ve never looked at T.O. as being an enemy of mine. I don’t know where the anger or the negativity or the criticism comes from, and why certain comments have been made, because he’s known my situation in the past.“He’s always known my girlfriends, things like that, and to have the things said that have been said, I just don’t know where it comes from.” (Withers 2004) The story followed Garcia into the locker room for the post-game interviews. The questions about Terrell Owens weren’t going anywhere on Sunday, not after a long day in which Owens and the Eagles had the last—albeit delayed—laugh against the Cleveland Browns, a 34-31 win in overtime. Not after a long week in which Owens continued to slyly rip his former teammate. The questions weren’t going anywhere and neither was Jeff Garcia until he addressed them. “I really wasn’t paying attention,” Garcia said when someone asked how he thought the Cleveland defense handled itself against Owens. “I was thinking about what I had to do.” . . . Somewhere in the back of his mind, whether he admitted it or not, there was the distraction of knowing his personal tormentor also was on the opposite sideline. (Ford 2004) Even after that game was played out, the Garcia-is-gay story played on.

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Baseball: Out at Home Major-league umpire Dave Pallone, who was fired in 1988 after rumors began to circulate about his sexual orientation, says you could field an all-star team with the gay players in baseball (Pallone and Steinberg 1990). In reality, only two gay baseball players have come out, both in retirement. Glenn Burke, who played outfield for the Los Angeles Dodgers and Oakland Athletics, came out in 1982 and maintained for years that he was blackballed from baseball (Burke and Sherman 1995). Burke died from AIDS-related complications in 1995. Outfielder Billy Bean played for the Detroit Tigers, Los Angeles Dodgers, and San Diego Padres from 1987 to 1995 and came out in 1999. Bean, whom Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda described as “the boy of every girl’s dream,” lost his partner to an AIDS-related death—an incident he kept secret from his team—the same day the Padres sent him down to the minor leagues for the last time. Bean has become a successful restaurateur in retirement and is an active speaker about gay causes who says he hopes someday a gay will pioneer acceptance in baseball but thinks the challenge is daunting and one he was unwilling to accept himself. “After my incidental outing, fans and sportswriters rushed to anoint me the gay Jackie Robinson. Let me make one thing perfectly clear: I’m no Jackie Robinson” (Bean and Bull 2003, 233). A gay Jackie Robinson seemed to be just what New York Mets manager Bobby Valentine was calling for when, near the end of a long article in the June/July 2003 issue of the men’s magazine Details, he said baseball was “probably ready for an openly gay player,” adding, “the players are diverse enough now that I think they could handle it” (Litke 2003). New York Post gossip columnist Neal Travis (2003) called Valentine’s comments a “preemptory strike” designed to more easily allow one of his known gay players to come out: “There is a persistent rumor around town that one Mets star who spends a lot of time with pretty models in clubs is actually gay and has started to think about declaring his sexual orientation” (6). The Piazza Case By noon the next day, sports-fan radio talk shows were abuzz with gossip and guessing about the player ’s identity (Acee and Finley 2003). The speculation calculus added up to the name of Mets star catcher Mike Piazza. Some stations aired a rumor that Piazza was involved with a local male TV personality. Factoring into the equation

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was a previous anonymous outing of a major-league baseball star by the editor-in-chief of Out, who reported that he was having an affair with a major-league baseball player from “an East Coast franchise . . . not his team’s biggest star but a very recognizable media figure all the same” (Lemon 2001). The journalistic irony was that the editor of the nation’s largest-circulation gay magazine devoted to outing chose not to identify the player but let the broad brush of gossip paint many indiscriminately. Piazza’s name had been bandied about only by alternative media of sports-talk radio and blogging. He had not yet been outed in mainstream media, but newspaper and broadcast reporters also were beginning to listen to the pervasive messages that were outing Piazza in alternative media. Piazza called a press conference, and a crowd of mainstream media representatives was waiting for him at the batting cage before the Mets’ next game at Shea Stadium in New York. “So Mike,” a reporter asked as journalists jockeyed for position, “are you gay?” He replied, “I’m not gay. I’m heterosexual. That’s pretty much it. That’s pretty much all I can say” (Acee and Finley, D1). “I can’t control what people think. That’s obvious. And I can’t convince people what to think. I can only say what I know and what the truth is and that’s I’m heterosexual and I date women. That’s it. End of story” (Litke 2003). One journalist in particular, however, New York Post sports columnist Wallace Matthews, did not think it the end of the story. Matthews wrote a column critical of his own newspaper for reporting the rumor in the first place. Valentine’s comments to Details sparked an irresponsible ‘blind’ item in Monday’s Post, in which a gossip columnist reprinted a scurrilous rumor concerning an unnamed Met. The gossip columnist then acknowledged he was unable to substantiate any part of the rumor. He printed it anyway. The Mets’ reaction, and Piazza’s statements avowing his heterosexuality, were in direct response to that item. But in truth, there was no reason to respond to the item and even less reason to print it. (Matthews 2003) The Post spiked Matthews’ column, but Matthews posted it on the Internet the next morning. Fired that same day, Matthews later told ESPN Radio that the initial rumor—the blind item on the tabloid’s gossip page—couldn’t have run in the sports section of the newspaper because the ethical standard was too high.

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Piazza was not the first athlete anonymously and indirectly outed by the Post who felt compelled to defend himself. In February 2003, Page Six: suggested that a former baseball player who was the subject of a recent biography was gay. Sandy Koufax, who was the topic of a book released in 2002, thought the Post implied he was gay. The Hall of Famer broke ties with the Dodgers, the only team he played for, because team owner Rupert Murdoch also owned the Post. (Buzinski 2003) Potential for Harm That both players responded in such a way to rumors about their sexuality “speaks to the media’s power and the sensitive nature of such allegations” (Buzinski 2003). Both took drastic actions to quell rumors that never named them specifically. Consider the following quotes from major-league baseball players reacting to questions about gays in general, hypothetical teammates in particular: John Smoltz, Atlanta Braves pitcher, 2004, to the Associated Press when asked about gay marriage: “What’s next? Marrying animals?” (Cosgrove-Mather, 2004). Smoltz claimed the quote doesn’t accurately reflect his views (Anti-gay, 2007). He also said he wouldn’t have a problem having a gay teammate “unless it compromised the team.” Eddie Perez, Atlanta Braves catcher, 2004: “If I knew a guy was gay, then I could work it out. I could be prepared. I could hide when I’m getting disrobed. It would be hard to play with someone all year and then find out they’re gay.” (Cosgrove-Mather, 2004) Perez claimed he was misquoted by an AP reporter (Anti-gay, 2007). Todd Jones, Colorado Rockies pitcher, 2002: “I wouldn’t want a gay guy being around me. It’s got nothing to do with me being scared. That’s the problem: All these people say he’s got all these rights. Yeah, he’s got rights or whatever, but he shouldn’t walk around proud. It’s like he’s rubbing it in our face. ‘See me, hear me roar.’ We’re not trying to be close-minded, but then again, why be confrontational when you don’t really have to be?” (Anti-gay, 2007) It cannot be lost on any prospective gay Jackie Robinson contemplating his future or fate that all three players quoted are directly involved in the calling of pitches directed toward batters at varying velocities, angles, and trajectories.

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WHAT THE MEDIA ETHICISTS HAVE TO SAY Media ethics codes provide little guidance for journalists trying to decide how to handle gossip about an athlete’s sexual orientation. In addressing privacy issues, ethicists and practitioners tend toward utilitarian justifications in the abstract. The Associated Press Managing Editors Statement of Ethical Principles (2005) is touted as “a model against which news and editorial staff members can measure their performance.” Yet its prescriptions are broad and either ill-defined or undefined. For example, it describes a “good newspaper” as one that “avoids practices that would conflict with the ability to report and present news in a fair, accurate and unbiased manner,” but it doesn’t define, for instance, fairness. APME adds that a good newspaper “should respect the individual’s right to privacy,” but the ethics statement does not define that ambiguity either. In his semantic analysis of the wording of a draft of that code, Merrill (1997) characterized the principle of guarding against invading a person’s privacy as “part of a basic respect for others” (186). Acknowledging privacy’s complexity, he advised journalists to “take care not to intrude into the lives of private individuals.” Merrill does not, however, differentiate for public figures or public officials, a step that one must assume leaves them not a target for fairness, but rather, fair game. Englehardt and Barney (2002) did not directly address outing or coverage of a person’s sexual orientation, but they do seek to answer a question they pose themselves from a clearly teleological perspective: “Does invasion of privacy serve the public?” (179). Weighing competing interests—the individual versus society—the authors tipped the scale in favor of “more public information rather than less” on the “assumption that ‘to publish is good’ and the equally troubling assumption that “secrecy (withholding information from audiences) is inevitably more damaging than disclosure.” The utilitarian face of this prescription is hardly hidden behind a thin veil of deontology. Black, Barney, and Steele’s (1999) Doing Ethics in Journalism handbook, which grew out of the Society of Professional Journalists’ ongoing discussion of ethics, followed this same utilitarian curve. Most of the book’s prescriptions center on the SPJ Code of Ethics, which comprises four major principles and their underlying guidelines. Although several principles and guidelines could be construed to relate to outing, the second principle, “Minimize Harm,” addresses privacy—and, thereby, outing—most clearly:

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Recognize that private people have a greater right to control information about themselves than do public officials and others who seek power, influence or attention. Only an overriding public need can justify intrusion into anyone’s privacy. Show good taste. Avoid pandering to lurid curiosity. (7) The phrase “overriding public need,” however, opens the door to the utilitarian rationale that somehow the greater good may be served by disclosing private and potentially embarrassing and damaging facts about a person—a clear violation of the harm principle. One of the book’s case studies, “ ‘Outing’ Arthur Ashe?” includes a thoughtful discussion of the competing interests in the “precarious balance between the principles of maximizing truthtelling and minimizing harm” (243). The outcome of this debate over deontological principles still hinges on the utilitarian calculus of “whether the benefits outweigh the anguish” (244). To this, however, the authors added at least an element of moral reasoning beyond mere cost-benefit analysis: justification by publicity, which one might perceive as a nod to communitarian conversation. Under the subheading “Homosexuality” (2003, 139), Day treated the ethics of news coverage of sexual orientation as largely descriptive. He refers to news organizations’ unease in reporting, first, on the incident in 1975, in which a secretly gay ex-Marine named Oliver W. Sipple foiled an attempt to assassinate President Gerald Ford; and then, on a 1977 fire at a homosexual club in Washington, D.C. in which eight men died. Day notes that “until the 1980s, references to homosexuality were virtually taboo.” Here, though, Day also attempted to articulate a normative ethic for outing: At times, the labeling of someone as gay or lesbian can still be harmful. In terms of news coverage, the key test for the moral agent is whether a person’s sexual orientation is relevant [original italics retained] to the story, such as when a police officer is fired for being homosexual or a service member is discharged from the military because of his or her sexual orientation. (139–140) Day identifies “relevance” [original italics retained] as alternately a key “ingredient” or “requirement” of “newsworthiness”—thus mistaking an amoral traditional news value for an ethical value.

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Smith (2003) covered the same ground but more extensively, adding historical perspectives on the Sipple and fatal fire stories as outings and including a 2002 case. Additionally, Smith examined the opposite of outing: “inning” (221) —a term he applied to news organizations that “purposefully” hide the fact that people are homosexual. It is just this sort of descriptive ethics to which gay activists in general and Queer Nation in particular object. Patterson and Wilkins (2008) forwent descriptions of how news media have handled outing. Instead, they offer in a framework that may be applicable to outing a theoretical discussion of normative “distinctions between secrecy and privacy” (124) and the concept of “discretion” (125). In the former section, the authors describe philosopher Louis W. Hodges’s explanatory concept of “circles of intimacy” (124) and include a diagram (125). The diagram, as the authors interpret it, illustrates that as an individual’s intimacy—her willingness to disclose—spreads, so does she progressively lose control over information; invasion of privacy occurs when people or institutions wrestle control over circles of intimacy from individuals and invade those circles. Here, Patterson and Wilkins offer normative advice that acknowledges the reality of traditional news values: Awareness of the concept will allow you to consider the rights of others as well as balance the needs of society in critical ways, particularly when the issue is newsworthy. Under at least some circumstances, invasion can be justified, but under other circumstances invading privacy constitutes usurping an individual’s control and stripping him or her of individuality and human dignity. (124–125) Clearly, this is a Kantian norm. Immediately following in the discussion of discretion, however, the authors abandoned the importance of individual human dignity in favor of a balance between “private information . . . and a public that might need the information or merely want the information” (125). The resolution to this apparent conflict of theories and its possible utilitarian leaning, the authors suggest, is “to rely on moral reasoning to decide if he is feeding the voyeur or the citizen in each of us” (126). The discursive strategy that comes next, though, speaks most loudly about the competing ideals: Kantian theory [italics added for emphasis] would suggest that the journalist treat even the indiscreet source as the journalist

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would wish to be treated, making publication of the indiscretion less likely. Yet many journalists claim that, in practice [italics added for emphasis], everything is “on-the-record” unless otherwise specified. (126) This clearer delineation between the normativity of Kantian ethics and the descriptive prevailing journalistic ethic as utilitarian stresses the gap between theory and practice. Still, Patterson, and Wilkins (2008) offered moral guidance here, too, suggesting a return to Ross’s list of prima facie duties. The result of this moral reasoning: “Which duties emerge as foremost to the journalist should make such decisions more consistent” (126). Patterson and Wilkins (2008) turned to an idea suggested by media ethicist Deni Elliott, that one mass media function was “to provide information to citizens that will allow them to go about their daily lives in society, regardless of political outlook” (127). Following this notion, Patterson and Wilkins bolstered the overarching idea of the public need to know: Need to know is the most ethically compelling argument of the three. Need to know demands that an ethical case be constructed for making known information that others wish to keep private. Need to know also demands that journalists present the information in a manner that will make its important evident to a sometimes lazy citizenry. (127) Embedded in this paragraph is a key to an emerging and potentially superior ethical construct: the triumph of pure moral reasoning over the presumption of traditional news practice based on a vague public right to know. The very phrases “most ethically compelling” and “demands that an ethical case be constructed” leave no doubt that the normativity of “ought” must prevail. Moreover, this normative argument advances the ethic by demanding Aristotelian excellence: to present the information in a way that makes its importance evident. Patterson and Wilkins (2008) overlaid John Rawls’s theory of social justice and the concept of the veil of ignorance against the privacy issue. The value of the “veil” here is that “how one retains both becomes a debate to be argued from all points of view without the bias of status” (128). Where the argument in favor of this rationale weakens, however, is when it is acknowledged that consensus need not exist behind the veil. This explanation of reflective equilibrium falters

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temporarily into a utilitarian imbalance of the needs (here, characterized as “betterment”) of “most individuals in the social situation” outweighing either the individual or a minority number of individuals. Yet, Patterson and Wilkins acknowledged utilitarianism’s failure by hastily adding: Reflective equilibrium summons what Rawls calls our “considered moral judgment.” Decisions would be based on the principles we would be most unwilling to give up because we believe doing so would result in a grave wrongdoing for all. (129) This consideration finally begins to hint at the communitarian ideal that will be the centerpiece of an alternative ethical construct toward which I am moving in this essay. AN ALTERNATIVE ETHICS Communitarianism, a radical social ethic based on notions of justice, covenant, and empowerment, presents a morally useful alternative to traditional libertarian and utilitarian press practice. In Good News: Social Ethics and the Press Christians, Ferre, and Fackler (1993) argued that neither persons nor their communities are paramount, but that their relationship to one another is (49). Communitarian ethics requires more of journalists than merely being fair in covering newsworthy events. “Under the notion that justice itself—and not merely haphazard public enlightenment—is a telos of the press, the newsmedia system stands under obligation to tell the stories that justice requires” (93). This prescription has special relevance in the case of athletes who in contact sports face the threat of real physical danger when singled out for their sexual orientation. The communitarian perspective also demands that journalists acknowledge that reporting on whole communities, including otherwise marginalized groups, is not only a professional duty but also an ethical value. Not engaging the whole story of gay athletes—instead ignoring or avoiding telling stories about any particular person or group in a community—is journalism devoid of ethics. By not covering the oppression of gay athletes as fully as possible but instead choosing to ignore their plight, journalists are at least tacitly supporting a xenophobic ideology. The choice to concentrate coverage on constituents who “matter” socially represents a simplistic—but typically journalistic—utilitarian choice: favoring the greatest good for the

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greatest number. Choosing to ignore any segment of the community is a form of tacitly supporting an ideology of dangerous and harmful “-isms:” racism, sexism, or ageism, for example. Conversely, a thorough and ongoing discussion of such issues—or rather, the public conversation about them on the conversational commons that journalism could represent—is a way of challenging the dominant social ideology. Hence, communitarian journalism confronts morality and centralizes it in an alternative exercise of craft skills. Communitarianism identifies an act as morally right when it is intended to “maintain the community” (Christians et al. 1993, 73). The focus is not on individual right, but the well-being of all humans. The primary duty, for journalists and others, is to treat others with dignity and care; the secondary duty is to readers (81). This last statement is significant in that it places care, or minimizing harm, ahead of truthtelling in the case of competing interests. That is a radical departure from other contemporary arguments for normative ethics, most of which maintain that, all things considered, the primary duty of journalism is truth/information. The authors argued for the Kantian principle of “the sacredness of human dignity” (178). Journalists driven by a utilitarian ethics of traditional amoral news values are prone to leaving out those people who face obstacles: economic, racial, gender, physical, or emotional. Such obstacles leave them marginalized, powerless, and largely invisible— except in conflict. CONCLUSION Richard Greenberg’s Take Me Out, which won the Tony for Best Broadway Play in 2003, dramatized a New York City baseball hero who announces that he is gay. That in itself represents a hopeful fiction, but the plot reveals—spoiler alert! —a revenge tragedy. The symbolism should not be lost on us. Outing itself is a revenge tragedy. Those who, like Signorile (1993), practice it, and those who, like the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, tacitly condone it in the case of public officials and public figures, because “you can’t be publicly attacking and hurting gay people and privately courting them” (Marech 2004) are Hobbesian characters acting in a war drama of all against all. Outing “uses sexual orientation as a weapon, which is everything we try to fight against,” says Mark Shields, spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign. Assemblyman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, however:

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views loss of privacy simply as the price of becoming a public figure—like it or not. “If you don’t want (a secret) to come out and think it’s no one’s business, then don’t enter into public life,” said Leno, who is gay. “The public believes that everything is fair game. That’s a fact of life.” And the public has the Internet— enemy of secrets—at its disposal. (Marech 2004, A1) Those who encourage outing in the name of political warfare, or journalistic objectivity, or competition for the scoop simply cannot justify their own amoral practices as moral. So what are the ethical rules of engagement for journalists in the practice of outing? Communitarian reporting on gay issues must include context and background that explains the harm of oppressive practices and policies. Communitarian journalists must do this prominently in the same story in which any episodic news is reported, rather than relegate the background to the “bottom” of the story as the traditional craft value of writing in inverted pyramid style demands. Communitarian journalists must provide stakeholders who are most affected the opportunity to make their claims and counterclaims in those episodic news accounts. Rather than follow journalism’s craft value of objective, “on-theother-hand” reporting, communitarianism demands that journalists actively counter false claims or inflammatory statements with actual fact. In the episodic nature of gossip narratives, this would require a cultural sea change. Communitarian journalists would demand that those who make claims produce evidence and be accountable. Each statement would be contextualized and countered if necessary, regardless of market-driven considerations about timely publication. By communitarian standards, the traditional craft value of timeliness, which may further individual interests in the marketplace where media businesses compete for news, carries less weight when measured against a community value of, say, completeness or compassion. By communitarian standards, business competition—the game of “scoop”—is not an ethic, neither moral nor immoral. Unable to produce evidence, specious claims as well as potentially harmful invasive claims offer nothing substantial to offer in the community debate of issues. They bring nothing to the conversational commons—in this case, the metaphorical press box. Sports journalists in all media must elevate the ethics of their game. Until such time, in a “bewildering panorama spread out upon the green plain below” (Rice 1925), gay athletes in contact sports may continue to be caught in the crossfire of the chattering classes.

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REFERENCES Acee, K., and P. Finley. “Call it Sports’ Last Taboo.” The Union-Tribune, September 1, 2003, D-1. Anti-gay slurs. (2007). Retrieved Sept. 20, 2009 at http://www.outsports.com/ antigay/antigayrockerslist.htm. Associated Press Managing Editors. (2005). Statement of Ethical Principles. http://www.apme.com/ethics/. Bean, B., and C. Bull. Going the Other Way. New York: Marlowe & Co., 2003. Black, J., B. Steele, and R. Barney. Doing Ethics in Journalism (Third Edition). Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1999. Brown, R. “Garcia’s First Pass a Winner.” Plain Dealer, July 21, 2004, C2. Brown, R. “Vicious Hits don’t take Respite when Garcia Leaves Field.” Plain Dealer, September 12, 2004, C2. Bryant, M. F. “Life Still Tough for Gay Male Athletes.” The Fresno Bee, November 1, 2002, D1. Bull, C. “The healer.” ESPN The Magazine, February 16, 2004, 90–95. Burke, G., and E. Sherman. Out at Home. Manchester, England: Excel Publishing Co., 1995. Buzinski, J. “Dave Kopay: Still Going Strong.” September 3, 2002 (accessed at http://www.outsports.com/nfl/2002/kopay0902.htm). Buzinski, J. “What’s Wrong with Being Gay?” February 23, 2003 (accessed at http://www.outsports.com/columns/koufax02242003.htm). Buzinski, J. “Vick is Gay Story a Hoax.” April 24, 2004 (accessed at http:// www.outsports.com/nfl/2004/0426vicknotgay.htm). Day, L. A. Ethics in Mass Communications: Cases and Controversies. (Fifth Edition) Toronto: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, 2003. Christians, C. G., J. P. Ferre, and P. M. Fackler. Good News: Social Ethics and the Press. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. Cosgrove-Mather, B. (2004, July 8). Mixed signals for gay athletes: gays try to find their place in sports world. Retrieved Nov. 30, 2004 at http://www .cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/08/national/main628303.shtml. Deford, F. Big Bill Tilden: The Triumphs and the Tragedy. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1975. Englehardt, E. E., and R. D. Barney. Media and Ethics: Principles for Moral Decisions. Toronto: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, 2002. Ford, B. “For Owens, Just Another Day at the Office; for Garcia, Another Loss.” Philadelphia Inquirer, October 25, 2004, C1. Harlan, C. “Stewart puts Pittsburgh Experience in Perspective.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, December 24, 2004, B1. Kopay, D., and P. D. Young. The David Kopay Story: An Extraordinary SelfRevelation. Westminster, MD: Arbor House Publishing, 1977. Lemon, B. Letter from the Editor. 2001. (accessed at http://out.com/html/ edletter90.html).

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Litke, J. “Piazza Denies Rumor as Gay Player Issue Resurfaces.” May 2, 2003. (accessed at January 5, 2004 at http://espn.go.com/mlb/news/2002/0522/ 1385446.html). Maiocco, M. “Garcia Shrugs off Rumors about being Gay.” The Press Democrat, February 4, 2004, C3. Marech, R. “Activists Consider Ethics, Efficacy of Outing.” San Francisco Chronicle, November 11, 2004, A1. Matthews posts disputed column on Internet. (accessed at http://espn .go.com/mlb/news/2002/0522/1385611.html). Merrill, J. C. Journalism Ethics: Philosophical Foundations for News Media. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997. Neimark, J. “The Culture of Celebrity.” Psychology Today. (29:5) (1995): 54–60. O’Rourke, L. “T. O. not saying whether or not Garcia is gay.” The Morning Call, August 11, 2004, C1. Orth, M. “Out of the Locker Room, and the Closet.” The New York Times, November 30, 2003, Sect, 9, Page 1. Pallone, D., and A. Steinberg. Behind the Mask: My Double Life in Baseball. New York: Viking Press, 1990. Patterson, P., and L. Wilkins. Media Ethics: Issues & Cases. (Fourth Edition) Boston: McGraw Hill, 2002. Provenzano, J. “The Gay Gridiron.” 2002. (accessed December 16, 2005, at http://www.qsyndicate.com/SportsComplex.htm). Rice, G. “Titanic Struggle of the Ages.” New York Herald Tribune, October 18, 1924, 1. “Shockey calls Parcells “homo” in magazine interview.” 2003. (accessed at http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/print?id=1592493&type=news). Signorile, M. Queer In America: Sex, Media, and the Closets of Power. New York: Random House, 1993. Silver, M. “In Control.” Sports Illustrated, 96(2), January 14, 2002, 40–46. Smith, R. F. Groping for Ethics in Journalism (Fifth Edition). Ames, IA: Iowa State Press, 2003. Sylvester, C. “One Sorry Lion: Players Left to Answer Questions Millen Wouldn’t.” Detroit Free Press, December 2003, C1. Travis, N. “Page Six.” New York Post, April 30, 2003, 6. Tualo, E., and L. Cyphers. “Free and Clear.” ESPN The Magazine, October 30, 2002. “Twenty Questions. The Terrell Owens Interview.” Playboy, 51(8), August 2004. Windhorst, B. “Garcia Stands Up to Owens.” Akron Beacon-Journal, August 12, 2004, p. C1. Withers, T. “Garcia Wishes Owens Would let Bygones go.” October 20, 2004. (accessed at http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe/document?-m =461780f28333b62f08bbce2d8118af61&_docnum=115&wchp=dGLbVzz -zSkVA&_md5=cc14d2a3f81670ef5eb77858914a0628). Zeigler, C. “How to not treat your closeted boyfriend.” 2001. (accessed at http://www.outsports.com/review/review051501.htm).

Chapter 8

“It Is Just Something Greek; That’s All”: Eugen Sandow— Queer Father of Modern Body Building” Jim Elledge

Sandow is the most wonderful specimen I have ever seen. He is strong, active and graceful, combining the characteristics of Apollo, Hercules and the ideal athlete. There is not the slightest evidence of sham about him. On the contrary he is just what he pretends to be. —Dr. D. A. Sargent1 Although virtually unknown today, Eugen Sandow earned international acclaim during the first decade of his 35-year career in “physical culture,” now called bodybuilding. Considered “the most remarkable example of perfect physical development and prodigious human strength ever seen,” “the most powerful man of the century,” and “one of the icons of the nineteenth century,” he was also “a dangerously handsome young man” and “the first great male pinup in modern history.” One contemporary journalist succinctly described the “fad” that Prussian-born Sandow became almost the instant he arrived in the United States:

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Wherever he went mobs paid . . . to see [him], and after the mobs had looked their fill there were private se´ances to which nice people went; first in secret, then in brazen bravado. . . . It booted little how much he could lift, or whether he could lift anything at all; one attended his exhibitions to look and be exalted by pure beauty . . . 2 Sandow guaranteed his universal acceptance as the father of bodybuilding when he debuted at the Trocadero Music Hall in Chicago on August 1, 1893. However, what is far less acknowledged, but whispered about, is his sexual orientation. Sandow revealed his private life, not just his body, publicly through a brilliant strategy that was as simple as it was effective. He embraced ambiguity in ways that no public figure had before, sporting it as if it were camouflage at the same time that, paradoxically, he was virtually nude on stage before hundreds, posing in imitation of various classical statues then lifting weights, other men, and even horses. The gay codes of the time that were steeped in ambiguity allowed him to highlight clues about his gay life to those aware of the codes while they simultaneously veiled his life against those who weren’t. In Sandow’s day, notions of gender were black-and-white and not debatable. If men and women mused about gender at all, they thought of polarities: maleness at one extreme, femaleness at the other, with each defined in exacting detail. However, by the close of the 1800s, reports of the existence in large metropolitan areas of groups of individuals who were physically male but who sought out other men for sexual relationships were confronting medical and legal authorities. There was no place for such individuals in the gender polarization of the time. The men called themselves belles, queens, queers, pansies, temperamentals, fairies, andro-gynes, and so on. They often cross-dressed (at home, at parties, in clubs, or when they cruised the streets at night), wore makeup, assumed the “submissive” or “passive” role in oral and anal sexual activities, adopted female names, referred to one another using female pronouns, and sometimes worked in “women’s occupations” (e.g., counter help in department stores or stenographers). Medical authorities of the time believed belles had inverted their gender roles, rejecting the male role and adopting the female. Initially, the medical profession called them “inverts” and their state “sexual inversion.” Some may have engaged in sexual activities with other inverts, but many sought what they called “normal” men for sexual liaisons.

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Unlike inverts, “normal” men, who had sex with inverts, were invisible to medical professionals because they looked and acted like heterosexual men. Blending into the mainstream, they were virtually unknown and rarely discussed in the medical literature. “Normal” men engaged in same-sex sexual relationships, often playing the active, assertive male role to the inverts’ passive, penetrated female role. Inverts created small communities of like-minded individuals, marginalizing themselves to some degree while also affording one another support, safety, and a sounding board for ideas about themselves and their place in the world. “Normal” men camped in the mainstream, typically marrying women, fathering children, holding male-identified jobs (police officer, store owner, doctor, member of the armed forces), growing facial hair, and dressing appropriate to their gender. Meeting society’s expectations, their activities, especially those with other men, were virtually above suspicion.3 Sandow wasn’t simply aware of the polarities that governed men’s lives. He understood the trappings of heterosexuality and how he could manipulate them to allow him to enjoy sexual relationships with whomever he chose, especially other men, without consequence. He was especially expert at employing codes that inverts and “normal” men knew in order to communicate one message to them while telling others something completely different. McDonnell reminds us that For artists and writers, musicians and dancers who lived and worked before the gay rights movement . . . acknowledgment of their sexual sides needed to remain private. This situation promoted the invention of codes, of discrete vocabularies that could simultaneously reveal and conceal. Only then could the average viewer pass over gay content without notice, while viewers sensitized to the signs of a gay aesthetic could read it effectively.4 In Sandow’s case, the codes appeared in the photographs of him that circulated widely, in his public and private performances, and even in his writings. “A FINE PIECE OF NUDE” Eugen Sandow, who was born Friederick Wilhelm Mu¨eller on April 2, 1867 in Ko¨nigsberg, Prussia and who later changed his name, offered distinctly different versions of various important experiences in his life.5 He first claimed that as “a child he was healthy and well-formed,

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but there was nothing of the prodigy about him, physically or mentally; nor were either of his parents of anything but normal physique.” His father took him on his first vacation, when he was ten to Rome where “he liked most to frequent the art-galleries, and there to hang about and admire the finely-sculptured figures of heathen deities and the chiseled beauty of some Herculean athlete. . . .”6 Three years later, Sandow offered a very different scenario of the same situation and experience: As a child, I was myself exceedingly delicate. More than once, indeed, my life was despaired of. Until I was in my tenth year I scarcely knew what strength was. Then it happened that I saw it in bronze and stone. My father took me with him to Italy, and in the art galleries of Rome and Florence I was struck with admiration for the finely developed forms of the sculptured figures of the athletes of old.7 The three points that are identical in both accounts are very revealing: Rome, his age, and his reaction to nude, male bodies. The Mediterranean world had a special appeal for U.S. and northern European homosexuals during this period: “the homoeroticism of the [classical] statues remains . . . an example of beauty and virility for all, [but] . . . a representation with a special meaning to homosexual viewers.”8 Things Greek took on a special meaning for homosexuals because of the budding realization during this period that Greece had been what they thought of as a homosexually-inclined culture. In fact, any item associated with Greece—such as sandals, temple columns, garlands, togas, lyres, etc.—became associated with homosexuality even if, like togas, they were also common to other cultures. During the 1800s and early 1900s, several homosexuals recorded how, as boys or adolescents, they were attracted to the classical statuary they studied in school or saw during visits to museums. One of England’s most prestigious literary figures, Sir Edmund Gosse, admitted in his memoir, Father and Son, that “the sculpted classical nude body” had aroused him when he was a boy.9 Sir Edmund’s eroticised interest in the nude . . . does not . . . make him an exceptional spectator in the mid-nineteenth century, but in some senses a representative one, a typical Victorian viewer whose desire to behold the nude risked being described and even experienced in terms of ideas of sodomy.10

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Any museum might provide homosexuals with titillating sculptures, including the British Museum, which had been a favorite amongst homophile Victorian gentlemen who could get an eyeful of flawless male beauty in the Greek statue room without fear of arrest. The historian Matt Cook quotes one gay man who got a completely carried away looking at the statues: “I revelled in the sight of pictures and statues of the male form and could not keep from kissing them.11 In his late twenties and becoming a “fad,” Sandow declared his boyhood admiration for classical, nude, male statues, and doing so echoed an experience common to homosexuals, employing a gay code to signal his identity to other like-minded men. Sandow spent his late teens and early adulthood traveling throughout Europe, touring with circuses, taking part in wrestling matches, giving exhibits of strength. At eighteen, he left Ko¨nigsberg and traveled for two years with a circus to Russia then throughout Europe to evade his military responsibility. In the early months of 1887, the circus went bankrupt, and Sandow was stranded in Brussels jobless. He became a nude model for art students, some of whom were also physical culture students of Professor Attila (Louis Durlacher), a famous strongman in local music halls and the founder of his own bodybuilding school. They introduced Sandow to Attila who, once he saw “Sandow stripped down, . . . decided to take him on as a prize pupil at once”12 At the same time, Sandow also began modeling nude for photographers as well as for well-known artists who could afford to pay.13 He posed as Satan in Charles Van der Stappen’s sculpture Michael Vanquishing Satan and for Joseph Maria Thomas Lambeaux’s sculpture Le Denicheur d’Aigles, among many others. Edmond Desbonnet, who knew Sandow during this period of the Adonis’ life, wrote that Sandow trained with Attila between each “posing session.”14 He went to London with Attila, then to Paris on his own, where he modeled for Gustave Crauck’s Combat du Centaure, posing as the Lapith. After Paris, he traveled across France, and stopped in Italy in 1888, earning his keep as a circus performer. In Rome, he became a wrestler, won the first of a number of wrestling contests, and modeled for artists and photographers: “There are some early photographs of him at this period which show a finely developed, though still immature, athlete swinging an Indian club and striking heroic poses.”15 One of Sandow’s early biographers, William Pullum, questioned the Adonis’ modeling

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activities, suggesting that he was paid for sexual favors by at least one homosexual artist, E. Aubrey Hunt. Pullum noted that Hunt had “discovered he had engaged a model who could do much more with his muscles than a painter might suppose.”16 Sandow and Hunt met on the Lido, a well-known cruising spot for homosexuals.17 As with other important events, Sandow offered two distinctly different versions. The first appeared in his book Sandow’s System of Physical Training (1894): It was at Venice, shortly after his recovery, that Sandow made the acquaintance of the English artist, Aubrey Hunt, R. A., whose admiration of the fine physical development of the great athlete led him to paint the now well-known picture of Sandow in the Coliseum at Rome, in the character of a gladiator.18 Sandow published the second version of this event thirteen years later in the memoir, “My Reminiscences,” after his empire of bodybuilding schools, lecture tours, inventions, and publishing venues were netting him large profits. The second is decidedly more revealing, and probably more honest, than the first. Walking from the ocean across the beach, beads of water dripping from his hair, slipping across his glistening chest and down his abdomen, he was unaware of “the state of physical symmetry” his body exhibited (i.e., how buff he was), until he noticed that he had become the particular attraction for a gentleman sauntering by. As I apologized in passing him he stopped to compliment me upon what he was pleased to term my “perfect physique and beauty of form.” That casual critic proved to be none other than Aubrey Hunt, the famous artist, with whom I afterwards became on terms of close friendship, and to whom I had the pleasure of posing in the character of a Roman gladiator, and my eyes never rest upon that picture but it recalls the many happy days we spent together.19 Queers would have read the snippet as a pick-up. Hunt was cruising the beaches. Sandow was available. He knew he had caught Hunt’s eye and acknowledged that fact, while at the same time he indicated to Hunt that he was available by speaking first. This allowed the gentleman to respond (if he were attracted) or not (if he were not). The thirty-four year-old Hunt did, complimenting the Adonis on his body—“perfect,” beautiful—thus declaring his desire for the 22-year-old.

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Over the years, those who knew Sandow or biographers who had access to Sandow’s contemporaries, published innuendos about the fateful meeting between the artist and the Adonis. All seem too invented to be believable, yet each acknowledges, if subtly, the sexual nature of the meeting. In 1926, the year after Sandow’s death, William Pullum described the incident in more detail than others: Aubrey Hunt, an Associate of the Royal Academy, . . . had journeyed to Italy in search of a suitable subject for depiction as a Roman gladiator. [At the same time,] a young German ( . . . Eugen Sandow), who by physical culture had developed a physique which was coveted by sculptors and showmen. Camping on the trail of these, his quest of the period had brought him also to Italy. One day strolling along the Lido of Venice in musing mood, Hunt saw emerging from the sea just the figure that he had pictured in his imagination. The sight moved him at once to act! Addressing the bather, he introduced himself and explained his mission, inviting the former to pose for the painting he had in mind. The terms he offered made the assignment an attractive one, so it was agreed to on the spot.20 Pullum added the realistic detail of payment, something that was hardly unique: “It had become almost traditional for many workingclass men and boys [of the time] to be sexually available to any ‘toff’ with a disposable income.” 21 Eleven years later, one report claimed that the “words that were first uttered by . . . Hunt, when he gazed upon that beautiful figure at Lido near Venice,” were “The Non-pareil.’”22 Hunt painted Sandow as a gladiator wearing a “leopard-skin costume,” but oddly, the gladiator neither carries a weapon nor faces an enemy, as we would expect. Instead, he “merely stands there heroically, his handsome blond head gazing pensively to one side.”23 Just as strangely, Sandow is not standing in an arena full of gawking Romans, which we would also expect in a painting of a gladiator. The background is only a blur of colors without a single person being discernable. Sandow is the painting’s sole object, with nothing to detract attention from him. We note his highly-muscled body, his beauty, his youth, but nothing else because nothing but his body exists in it. We cannot discern even the slightest narrative fragment in which he might have a role—or the slightest movement. His purpose in the

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painting is simply to offer his body for viewing: to be considered, to be envied, to be adored, to be ogled. “In patriarchal mainstream culture,” Healey reminds us, “positioning a man in front of a camera [or an easel] is inherently problematic, as it entails an unmanly passive acceptance of objectification.”24 He continues: The male object resists the authority of the gaze by displaying contempt or superiority in refusing to look at, or decisively staring through, the spectator; whereas conventionally female models are required to display an obsequient acknowledgment of the (male) spectator even when they do not meet his eyes. Potential passivity is also compensated for by demonstrative activity: men are usually photographed doing something. Whereas women must passively appear, men must actively act.25 Hunt has so thoroughly imbibed the painting with passivity that it is not a slogan for Sandow’s masculinity at all, but offers clues for his feminization. Queers would have “read” the painting as a coded report of Sandow’s willingness to have sex with other men. Making the painting even more coded is the fact that, for the popular culture of the time, the gladiator was considered to be a passive sex object for both men and women, and as such it had found its way into numerous popular novels: Romances . . . between patrician women and gladiators . . . were commonplace in Victorian historical novels . . . for instance, in Whyte Melville’s The Gladiators . . . [and in] Bulwer-Lytton’s The Last Days of Pompeii . . . [in which] the dialogue stresses the women’s sexual excitement as they see the gladiators entering the arena. One of the characters asks her companion, “But who is yon handsome gladiator, nearly naked—is it not quite improper? By Venus! but his limbs are beautifully shaped!”26 Simeon Solomon’s painting Habet! depicts “Women—desiring the fallen gladiator who is under their inspection.”27 A reporter drew a parallel between the gladiatorial code and one of Sandow’s private soirees, noting that “The scene at [Sandow’s private] exhibitions recalled those that were enacted in Rome when the nobles of both sexes visited the gladiators in their quarters and admirably examined their brawn and sinews . . . ”28 The homosexual aspects of the “exhibition” were not lost on the reporter.

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Despite, or perhaps because, the painting emphatically placed him in a queer context, Sandow had a strong attachment to it. At one time, he kept it at home: In Mr. Sandow’s dining-room is a very fine portrait, by Mr. Aubrey Hunt, of the athlete attired as a Roman gladiator, standing in the Colosseum [sic] at Rome. The work is an admirable likeness, and shows off the enormous muscles of Mr. Sandow’s body to great advantage. £500 has been offered for the painting, but, naturally enough, its owner refuses to part with it.29 Three years later, he moved it to his school: “Mr. Hunt painted me in the character of a gladiator in the Coliseum at Rome. This picture, which I prize very highly, is to be seen in the reception room at my St. James’ Street school. I am told that it is a very striking likeness.”30 In the same year that Hunt painted Sandow in Venice, another Englishman, Edmund Gosse, bought copies of a series of photographs of Sandow in a London shop that had been taken a few months earlier. 31 They were “a beautiful set of poses showing the young strongman clad only in a fig leaf”32 Now a rising celebrity in London who was beginning to get minor but important notices in U.S. newspapers, Sandow had begun to replicate then market his body. The profits he reaped were not simply financial. More important, they afforded him a great deal of free publicity, especially among queer men. While the black-and-whites “were sold legally for educational purposes” (i.e., as anatomical studies) “this did not cancel their erotic appeal.”33 Gosse was so enthralled with Sandow’s photographs that he not only snuck them into the funeral of poet Robert Browning at Westminster Abbey to peak at during the service, he shared them with other queer men, including John Addington Symonds, another important man of letters. In acknowledging his friend’s gift, Symonds was as circumspect as the times required, although his prurient exuberance comes through loud and clear: “The Sandow photographs arrived. They are very interesting, & the full length studies quite confirm my anticipations . . . The profile & half trunk is a splendid study. I am very much obliged to you for getting them for me.”34 Symonds was one of a large group of queer men who exchanged nude photos of adolescents and men. The group included Oscar Wilde’s lover, Alfred Douglas, and other British literati.35 Sandow’s photos weren’t simply passed from one hand to another, but were also distributed in journals that catered to queer men:

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one of the numerous quasi-homosexual German magazines of the era, Mannerluff, had photographs of Sandow in almost every issue, always stressing the harmony and joy of the male body, man and boy Mannerluff, published with the contention it was homosexual “in spirit,” but not gay, a distinction best left to academicians.36 Sandow was not the only physical culturalist to be photographed, but he was unique. His rivals had not admired classical statues when they were 10-year-old boys as Sandow had, and their goal was to develop their bodies into machines that could lift incredible amounts of weights, nothing more. Because Sandow sculpted his into an icon of male beauty, he could take his career a step farther than they. His performances included weight-lifting extravaganzas as theirs did, but he also posed to show off his body and to titillate his audience. Audiences might be in awe of the number of pounds that, for example, Luis Cyr could lift, but the barrel-shaped Cyr’s sex appeal was nil.37 When the buff Sandow stripped down to nothing but a fig leaf in photographs and to tiny, tight-fitting boxer briefs and a tank top on stage, audiences lapped it up, caring “little how much he could lift, or whether he could lift anything at all” because they, like Hunt, Gosse, Symonds, and countless other “normal” men, “attended his exhibitions to look and be exalted by pure beauty.” “WHEN THE MAINSTREAM REMAINS BLISSFULLY IGNORANT, BUTCH QUEENS SIMPLY PASS” By April 1893, Sandow had become an extremely well-known and highly-respected strongman in the United Kingdom and across Europe. In fact, he had achieved so much notoriety that Henry S. Abbey of the New York firm Abbey, Schiffel and Grau, a group of vaudeville impresarios, had invited him to perform in the Big Apple, an offer that Sandow eagerly grabbed. The New York Times announced the bodybuilder’s imminent arrival: “Sandow is coming here from England. Sandow’s special line is strength and activity.”38 Despite its best efforts, Abbey, Schiffel and Grau had little success in promoting Sandow’s act. During the 1893 season, audiences at all of the vaudeville houses and even in the legitimate theater establishments were small, due in large part to a heat wave then engulfing Gotham, which kept people out of sweltering, crowded buildings, and to the stock market crash that spring, which had sunk “the economy into a

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deep depression.”39 Complicating matters was the fact that Sandow had also “arrived at the close of the theatrical season,”40 when audiences would’ve been small at any theater regardless of who was performing. Abbey approached Rudolph Aronson, the manager of The Casino Theater, hoping that Aronson would hire Sandow. He suggested that Aronson “place [Sandow] between the two acts or at the finish of [the] operetta at the Casino,” which was the operetta Adonis.41 To Abbey’s amazement and relief, Aronson agreed. Aronson slated Sandow to appear at 10:30 nightly beginning June 12, 1893 as a sort of epilogue to the play, his act commenting on its lead performer’s role as Adonis. Sandow was an immediate sensation. William Gill’s Adonis had already been one of the season’s biggest hits. The role of Adonis was played “by a handsome, trim matinee idol named Henry Dixey” who was very “successful at embodying [the] popular theatrical ideal of physical perfection.”42 The play parodied the Pygmalion and Galatea myth: A sculptress has created in her statue of Adonis a “perfect figure.” Indeed, he is so beautiful and alluring that she cannot bear to sell him as promised to a wealthy duchess. Seeing Adonis, the duchess, together with her four daughters, is instantly and passionately smitten as well. The daughters try to conceal their ardor [but fail]. To resolve the question of ownership, an obliging goddess brings the statue to life.—The pursuit of Adonis [by the women] rapidly [ensues]. . . . Ultimately, Adonis is cornered by all his female pursuers, who demand that he choose among them. Instead, he beseeches the goddess who gave him life, “Oh take me away and petrify me—place me on my old familiar pedestal—and hang a placard round my neck:—‘HANDS OFF.’ ” Thus, exhausted by his stint as a flesh-and-blood object of desire, Dixey as Adonis reassumed the pose of a perfect work of art as the curtain fell.43 That Adonis preferred to return to his stony state rather than succumbing to the lust of a woman would have delighted queers in the audience. Adding to the humor, the operetta also lampooned gender roles. In his role as Adonis, Dixey “ludicrously” donned a women’s dress and becomes “a village maid” to escape the lusty women after him only to be “courted” by a man.44 Again, the queers in the audience must have loved Dixey as an invert.

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On June 12, when the curtain fell, the audience applauded appreciatively then waited for the curtain to rise and cast members to return to center stage for ovations. Instead, when the curtain rose, Sandow was standing in the same pose that Dixey had been in when, as Adonis, he was returned to stone. The audience was stunned, it gasped, then it went wild. One reporter summarized the event: New York has come to look upon Dixey as a fairly well-made young man. When New York has seen Sandow after Dixey, however, New York will realize what a wretched, scrawny creation the usual well-built young gentleman is compared with a perfect man. Sandow posing in various statuesque attitudes is not only imposing not only because of his enormous strength, but absolutely beautiful as a work of art as well.45 Hereafter, Sandow represented the ideal of male beauty throughout the U.S. for decades. Beginning with his tour of the English countryside in the summer of 1890, when he posed for photographer Warwick Brooks, throughout his first tour of the U.S. (Dec. 16, 1893-July 1894), Sandow posed for a number of photographers, all for public distribution. Most of the photographs present one message to the mainstream—that is, heterosexual— audience, while offering a different, coded message to inverts and “normal” men. First, the obvious: Sandow is nude in many of them, posing in each one before a male photographer. In some cases, he is actually wearing a fig leaf while he poses, the band holding it in place plainly visible around the Adonis’ waist. In other cases, however, the photographer added it during the developing process, the Adonis naked during the shoots. The intimacy of the relationship between photographer and model was no less erotic in the imaginations of the photographs’ audience (especially those queers who saw or owned them) than that between painter and model. Even the style of the fig leaf, how the photographer or Sandow positioned it, how the photographer arranged the studio light to strike it, and even its size fueled queer men’s fantasies.46 Such manipulation reveals that either the photographers were aware of the sales potential of such eroticized images to a queer audience or, more likely, that Sandow and the photographers were in cahoots, creating a series of poses that offers, on one hand, the ideal, male physique that a heterosexual man engaged in bodybuilding

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might emulate, but which, on the other, was a highly erotic spectacle for queers. Sandow’s erotic appeal in the photos isn’t simply a matter of his good looks and muscles, nor of the teasing fig leaf. The actual poses Sandow undertook in the photographs were also a coded message. In one pose called “The Dying Parthian” (1893), Sandow recreates a scene in which, for a mainstream audience, a valiant and vanquished warrior is defending himself with his last breath. He’s nude, on the ground, obviously weakened by the fight he’s just lost, but which he heroically tries to continue. In fact, he’s raised his sword with his right hand in an attempt, against all odds, to continue fighting, while in his left, he hangs onto his shield in a last-ditch effort to protect himself.47 For a queer audience, however, the pose is as erotic as it is heroic. His raised sword is undeniably phallic, extending from his crotch as if it were an erect penis that he offers to the soldier he’s fighting—a distraction, perhaps a peace offering, or a bargaining tool.48 In two others, which Sandow included in Sandow on Physical Training, he performs a simple pushup, his muscles knotted under the strain, to instruct his readership how to perform the exercise for best effect. In the first, the naked Sandow raises himself to arm’s length above a bearskin (or lion-skin) rug, which is on top of a leopard-skin rug. In the second, he has lowered himself inches above the rugs. Queer viewers could easily imagine the Adonis’ body’s thrusting downward into a writhing body, and the fact that his genitalia were airbrushed away wouldn’t detract from the fantasy.49 In yet a third photo, a pose often called “The Dying Gaul,” a figleafed Sandow lies on his left side, looking up. His thighs are spread, his right arm up, his right hand open palm out, as if imploring the gods to spare him from his impending death while his face suggests utter acceptance of his rapidly approaching fate. Or so, given the pose’s title, a mainstream viewer might interpret it. A queer man, on the other hand, would see a “normal” man in a state of sexual ecstasy reaching for his lover, his thighs spread in invitation. He isn’t in the last throes of life, but in an erotic swoon. If a queer man saw any suggestion of dying in the pose, it was the petite mort, a euphemism from the Renaissance for “orgasm,” that he noted.50 Indeed, even in the late twentieth century, the sexuality of any bodybuilder who posed as “The Dying Gaul” was immediately suspect: The goal [of a bodybuilder’s routine] is to play by the audience’s accepted rules, and then to shock them within the form, not

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venturing outside it. [Posing as] Michelangelo’s David and the Farnese Hercules are one thing, but, as professional bodybuilder Bob Paris learned, The Dying Gaul is quite another. From the Capitoline Museum in Rome to Columbus, Ohio, Paris concluded his posing program with The Dying Gaul at the 1989 Arnold Classic. It was met with an uncomfortable silence and angry suspicion, the latter confirmed months later when he revealed his marriage to his “husband,” male model Rod Jackson.51 At the same time that Sandow was camouflaging himself with the trappings that disguised him as heterosexual in his photographs, he was able to live openly in “happy domesticity” with another man— Martinus Sieveking, his “great and inseparable friend’ ”—without compromising his masculinity or his career.52 One reporter disclosed that: Sandow is living now at No. 210 West Thirty-eighth Street. With him there lives a friend, Mr. Martinus Sieveking, who is a very able pianist. Mr. Sieveking is a Dutchman. His musical compositions have already attracted considerable attention in London, and he is an unusually brilliant artist. He and Sandow are bosom friends. He thinks that Sandow is a truly original Hercules, and that no one has ever lived to be compared to him. Sandow thinks that Mr. Sieverking [sic] is the greatest pianist in the world and that he is going to be greater. It is pleasant to see them together. Mr. Sieveking, who is a very earnest musician, practices from seven to eight hours a day on a big three-legged piano. He is decidedly in earnest. He practices in very hot weather, stripped to the waist. While he plays Sandow sits beside him on a chair listening to the music and working his muscles. He is fond of the music and Sieveking likes to see Sandow’s muscles work. Both enjoy themselves and neither loses any time.53 “Bosom friends” was often used to indicate a same-sex sexual relationship from the 1800s into the early 1900s. Most queers would’ve been delighted to learn that Sieveking “practices—stripped to the waist” as Sandow “sits beside him on a chair—working his muscles,” that the musician “likes to see Sandow’s muscles work,” and that “Both enjoy themselves and neither loses any time”—a wonderfully ambiguous line that would have raised the eyebrows, and a few chuckles, of anyone in the know.

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They had known one another since Sandow’s “years in Belgium and Holland,” when they were 19, and the “two men had been living together for some time” before Sandow’s debut at The Casino.54 Their relationship was an open secret among London’s hoi polloi. Even the staid Dictionary of American Biography reported their living arrangement. Caroline Ote´ro, called “La Belle Ote´ro,” an infamous Spanish courtesan and lover of “many of the rich, famous, and titled men of her era,” including “King Leopold of Belgium, Prince Albert of Monaco, the future Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany, Prince (later King) Edward of England, and many others” had set her sights on Sandow.55 As she explained: I had heard about Sandow for a long time and was anxious to meet him—I sent him a note, but he never answered, even though he certainly knew who I was. When I didn’t hear from him I assumed he was one of those rare animals, a man who remained faithful to his wife. Then I found out he wasn’t married, and supposed he had a mistress who wouldn’t let him out of sight.56 She continued, “ ‘I made up my mind that if Sandow wouldn’t come to me, I’d go to him.’ ”57 She caught his act at London’s Alhambra Music Hall—“ ‘What a physique! What muscles! My God! I never saw anything like it before in my life’ ”—and hurried to his dressing room as soon as he finished his act: I told him I thought his act was marvelous and that I’d like him to join me and a few of my friends at a small supper party I was giving that evening in my hotel. He said he was happy to accept and would be along just as soon as he was dressed. I nearly told him he needn’t bother.58 She had not planned a “supper party” at all, but a seduction. Her efforts were ill-fated: It was all over very soon. I should have taken the cue when Herr Sandow refused to drink my fine champagne and asked for milk. Faugh! But hindsight is so superior to foresight. Poor fellow! He must have had a bad hour or two with me before I sent him back to the young man he was living with.59

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As La Belle Ote´ro discovered, it was not a mistress’ charms that held Sandow’s rapt attention, but Martinus Sieveking’s. When Sandow moved to New York at Abbey, Schiffel, and Grau’s invitation, he brought Sieveking with him. They arrived on the Elbe a few weeks before Sandow’s debut at the Casino. Safe in his “normal”-man camouflage, Sandow felt free to discuss Sieveking in his second book, Strength and How to Obtain It, four years later: An old friend and famous pianist, Martinus Sieveking, whom I knew years before in Belgium and Holland, accompanied me to the New World. Sieveking was a brilliant artist, but as a man he was exceedingly weak and delicate. He had no powers of endurance, and it was difficult for him to remain at the piano long at a time. “If I had only your strength,” he used to say, “I think I might become almost the greatest player in the world.” I suggested that he should come with me as my guest to America, guaranteeing that in nine months or a year, under my personal supervision and training, he would grow so strong that his best friends would scarcely recognise him.60 Sieveking worked with Sandow, performing music as the Adonis strutted across the stage. One reporter noted that Sieveking gave Sandow’s act a touch of class: “the environments of [Sandow’s] unique act, including the music composed for it by Martinus Sieveking, place the act on a much higher plane than would be otherwise possible.”61 Sieveking even composed music for Sandow’s performances, including “March of the Athletes” and “Sandowia.” Throughout Sandow’s first tour of the United States, Sieveking was his constant and inseparable companion city after city. “From New York I went to Boston, where my system of physical training became very fashionable; and after the Boston visit came Chicago, Mr. Sieveking always accompanying me.”62 Legend has it that, in the summer of 1893, Flo Ziegfeld, Jr., who would make his mark in theatrical history with his well-known series of Follies, had scoured New York City in search of talent for this father ’s Trocadero Music Hall in Chicago. According to the story, Ziegfeld, Sr. had sent his son to Gotham to hire highbrow acts— symphonies, opera stars, or Shakespearean-style monologists. Instead, Junior made the round of burlesque theaters, a long-standing craze in entertainment. Lowbrow in its fare—acrobats, comedians, women

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who whistled lavish songs, men who lifted both inanimate and animate objects, and erotic tableaux vivants63—burlesque attracted rabble that filled theaters to the rafters and made some owners of the theaters in which it was presented rich. During the search, he serendipitously discovered Sandow and hired him on the spot. However, the facts reveal nothing serendipitous about Ziegfeld’s hiring Sandow at all. Sandow’s exploits as a strongman had been publicized four years earlier on the front page of the Chicago Daily Tribune, when he won the title of the strongest man in the world from Charles A. Sampson in London, then again two years later in a list of strongmen and their talents, and a third time two months before he arrived in New York. D. E. Flannery, a member of the Trocadero’s board of directors was first to see Sandow’s money-making potential for the Trocadero, not Ziegfeld: When Sandow’s fame as a strong man sped across the Atlantic to this country one of the first men to call the attention of the Board of Directors to the necessity of securing the muscular phenomenon was D. E. Flannery, attorney for the company and a member of the board. Sandow was a high-priced attraction, but Mr. Flannery told the board the Trocadero could make money on him. “By persistent kicking I managed to win the directors over to my way of thinking,” said Mr. Flannery, “and we authorized Dr. Ziegfeld to secure Sandow at a salary of $1,100 a week. That was the figure set by Sandow’s manager, H. E. Abbey.”64 Ziegfeld pe`re sent his son to New York for the expressed purpose of hiring the Adonis. Sandow debuted at the Trocadero on August 1, the theater’s headliner. Although Ziegfeld cannot be credited with foreseeing Sandow’s profit-making potential, once he recognized it, he protected his investment in several different ways. To deflect rumors about his prote´ge´’s obvious relationship with Sieveking, Ziegfeld created a number of other rumors to underscore the Adonis’ he-man image. He linked several women romantically to Sandow, among them the alluring beauty/actress Lillian Russell. He also had an extremely important suggestion for beefing up Sandow’s act that, in turn, generated free and wild-fire publicity, increased their profits, and catapulted Sandow into superstardom. Before his opening at the Trocadero Music Hall, Sandow typically appeared on stage in a pink leotard that covered him head to toe and

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either a blue shirt or vest over it. Beginning with his premiere at the Trocadero, Ziegfeld had Sandow dress in nothing but a pair of “small white silk trunks.”65 Illustrations from the time show him in a pair of skin-tight boxer briefs and almost always from behind, suggesting that the briefs revealed so much that a frontal view would be too scandalous to publish. In the few frontal views that do exist, his trademark “small white” boxers are usually blackened in to blot out offending bulges. One newspaper drawing of him was obviously traced from a nude photograph of the Adonis, with lines added to suggest the waistband and thigh hems of Sandow’s skin-tight boxer briefs. Sandow’s was the last performance each night. He appeared sharply at 10:45 and typically performed for an hour. Nevertheless, after the curtain fell, his performance was just beginning. When on August 1, 1893, Sandow finished his act: Ziegfeld Jr. walked in front of the footlights and made a daring proposal. Any woman willing to donate $300 to charity would be allowed to come to the strongman’s private dressing room and feel his muscles. Mrs. Potter Palmer and Mrs. George Pullman immediately stood up and made their way backstage.66 That was not the first of Sandow’s private exhibits. At least as early as the previous December, Sandow modeled for a British army physician’s lecture on physical education at Aldershot, a military school. While the physician spoke, Sandow “applied the hands of some of the bystanders to the skin over the chest . . . and other parts of the trunk of his body.”67 By the time he joined the Adonis company, his private soirees had become a substantial part of his act: Five minutes after the curtain went down, Sandow, clothed only in his muscular development, was found crouching in a rubber bath tub in his drawing-room, while an attendant with a rubber pipe doused him with cold water. That was the chance to study Sandow. *** Taking his visitor’s hand, he placed it on his heart . . . and called attention to the fact that there was no violent beating. In fact the action of the heart could not be felt at all through the thick coating of muscle.68 The ambiguous “That was the chance to study Sandow,” who was bathing naked, would not have been lost on a queer readership. That

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the writer was male would have made the scene that much more tantalizing to them. Sandow included the private show during his entire run at the Trocadero, and after his engagement there ended, he repeated it night after night in every U.S. city in which he performed. What had begun as a supplement to his act became a major performance. The following report, published at the end of his first U.S. tour, shows that even during the tour’s last days he was inviting strangers’ caresses: after the show is over and the public has departed and the big building is almost deserted, carriage after carriage rolls up to the door. Men in dress suits and women in opera cloaks alight and pass quickly into the big, empty play-house. There are whispered greetings, and the visitors are taken in hand by an attendant, who conducts them through the darkened theatre up a long, narrow staircase on to the stage and into Sandow’s reception-room. The room is decorated with flags of all nations. From the ceiling at the upper end hangs a chandelier of electric lights whose glare is thrown downward and under which Sandow presently stands. Around three sides of the room are arranged settees, and the handsomely dressed men and women seat themselves in silence. They gaze at the big dumbbells and the rugs on the floor, the portraits on the wall and the sparkling sandals and tights which lie on a chair. At last the curtains that hide the inner room are parted, and Sandow appears before his visitors in all his physical beauty fresh from the bath. A thin pair of flesh-colored tights fitted closely to his well-formed legs, a small pair of white satin trunks and light slippers complete his wardrobe. There is a buzz of conversation on the part of the men and an enthusiastic murmur from the women. He bows with easy grace as he is introduced to each of his visitors, and gives them a giant grasp with both hands. Then stepping under the chandelier, where the light throws into sharp relief the lines of his perfectly moulded figure, Sandow stands erect.69 As Sandow began his discussion of the muscles of his body, “The men look interested. The women gaze at him in wonder.” The reporter notes that there was a far larger contingency of men than women at

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this private soiree, as was also the case for all of his performances, public or private. As Sandow moved among his audience, he said, “I want you to feel how hard these muscles are. As I come around I want you to pass your right hand flat across my chest.” He approaches the first man, takes the outstretched hand and rubs it over the hard muscles of his iron-ribbed chest. An expression of astonishment on the part of the man heightens the expectation of others. Sandow moves along the line, taking hand after hand, until he approaches the first woman in the party.70 As Sandow’s most recent biographer admits, “One thing seems certain . . . : while his admirers were fondling Sandow’s muscles, they were satisfying feelings other than mere curiosity.”71 While Sandow’s private performance was not Ziegfeld’s idea, having both Mrs. Palmer and Mrs. Pullman, grand dames of Chicago’s high society set, give $300 each to charities in order to “feel” the “absolutely beautiful” Sandow was. In fact, it was his most brilliant publicity ploy, assuring that the very next day and for many weeks after, Sandow’s name was on the lips of every society lady of the Windy City—as well as on the lips of numerous society men—“normal” men, inverts, and perhaps even others. “JUST WHAT HE PRETENDS TO BE” Chicago marks the turning point in Sandow’s career, his first step, under the direction of Flo Ziegfeld, to becoming an international star. Once his run at the Trocadero ended, Sandow and Sieveking hurried back to Gotham, where Sandow signed a contract to perform at Koster and Bial’s, one of New York’s best-known venues, in mid-December. According to Ziegfeld, Sandow set sail, probably with Sieveking, for Germany a few days later “on the steamer Columbia with the intention of settling up his European affairs and returning permanently to this country.”72 The report was likely more of Ziegfeld’s hype. Sandow also returned to England to visit photographer Warwick Brooks in Manchester. Brooks had photographed Sandow four years earlier. At the same time, Sandow met Brooks’ daughter, Blanche with whom he had begun corresponding. A newspaper reporter once described her in terms that also suited Sieveking: “tall, slender, exquisitely beautiful,” “eyes— large and soft, black as night, and very sensitive,”

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“hair—just as black.”73 Sandow returned to New York with Sieveking to begin their first tour of the U.S., opening to a highly successful engagement which lasted twice as long as the contract specified. When the tour opened in December, Ziegfeld adjusted Sandow’s act again. They would limit the number admitted to his private soirees to caress the Adonis’ body to fifteen, the small number allowing each person to linger over Sandow’s muscles far longer and more intensely than ever before. The publicity was also more intense than ever before. Throughout the tour, Sieveking was at Sandow’s side, and strangers eagerly lined up for their turn to caress his flesh. They closed the tour in late July. Ziegfeld, Sandow, and Sieveking headed East. Ziegfeld stopped off in Chicago, while the others continued to New York, from which they sailed to London. Sandow had triumphantly conquered the hearts—and other parts of the bodies—of his audiences wherever he performed. Then on August 8, 1894, shortly after his twentyseventh birthday, “normal” man Sandow married Blanche Brooks. Most biographers claim this was unexpected, but their engagement had been announced nearly eight months earlier in the Chicago Daily Tribune: “Eugene [sic] Sandow, the strong man, announces his engagement to Miss Blanche Burns [sic] of London. She is not on the stage.”74 Thirteen days later, the Tribune ran another story, outlining the details of Sandow and Blanche’s meeting, a fairy tale that was certainly one of Ziegfeld’s finest creations and meant to protect his investment. Undoubtedly, Ziegfeld is the unidentified “gentleman in this city:” A gentleman in this city tells a romantic little story about how Eugene [sic] Sandow, the strong man, met Miss Blanche Brooks, the young lady to whom it as recently announced he is engaged to be married, says the New York Herald. While Sandow was performing at the Crystal Palace in London a couple of ears ago the platform of which he was supporting horses on his breast broke and it was only his presence of mind that saved him from being crushed to death. As it was he escaped unhurt and crowds of people rushed forward to shake hands with him and congratulate him. In the midst of this excitement a lady, who was sitting in a box, threw him a bunch of violets. A few moths later a runaway truck horse came near rushing into a coupe occupied by a lady. Sandow, who chanced to be passing, saw the danger, and boy this great strength saw the danger, and by his great strength succeeded in diverting the course of the run-away horse, and so saved the life of the young lady.

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She proved to be the same who had thrown him the bunch of violets, and Sandow now learned that her name was Miss Blanche Brooks. They subsequently became engaged, and expect to be married this summer.75 Regardless of whatever else it may have provided him, Sandow’s engagement camouflaged his travels with Sieveking and their “domestic happiness.”76 With his fiance´e thousands of miles away, the Adonis could have his cupcake and eat him, too. Yet, the two appear to have called it quits at the end of the first tour, on the eve of Sandow’s marriage, and almost immediately, the Sandows and Ziegfeld put together Sandow’s second U.S. tour, this one without Sieveking. It is obvious that Blanche wielded some power in their marriage because the bodybuilder changed his performance drastically. It is not difficult to imagine that Ziegfeld was not happy about the changes, either. When he left London and returned to New York for his second U.S. tour, Sandow sailed with wife in tow and he had axed the private, flesh-caressing sessions that had been such an integral and important component of his act. By most accounts, the second tour was a lackluster series of performances lasting seven and a half grueling months. At the end, Ziegfeld and Sandow were barely speaking, and Blanche, who left the tour early, was pregnant with the first of her and Sandow’s two daughters. Following Sandow’s lead, Sieveking also married, in 1899, and he fathered a son, who died in childhood. He and his wife eventually divorced. He toured the United States on his own several times (as he had before arriving as Sandow’s prote´ge´), giving concerts with good-to-lukewarm reviews at Carnegie Hall and other venues across the United States. He eventually moved to Los Angeles, and when he died on November 26, 1950, his body was placed in a grave, the whereabouts of which is still a mystery. Sandow’s marriage fared only slightly better. He and Blanche remained married, raising their daughters, Helen and Loraine. After decades of touring many countries, of creating an empire of bodybuilding journals and schools, of inventing several physique-training devices, and of endorsing products, all of which made him quite wealthy, he died on October 14, 1925. Sandow’s body, which had given him fame and fortune, had been ooohed and ahhhed over by thousands, had been caressed by hundreds of trembling hands, and had been photographed in every pose imaginable, was buried without a stone or any identifying marker—then immediately ignored. Blanche’s

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“forgetfulness” suggests retaliation, and it appears that her husband had not abandoned his cavorting with men at all. From 1914 through at least 1918, rumors that Sandow engaged in same-sex sexual relations circulated widely in London and in France: Cabaret acts and stage revues often featured performers who imitated Sandow with satirical intent. One skit in the musical pastiche L’Amour is especially revealing. An actor representing what is obviously Sandow impersonating a statue, is standing on a pedestal in a park. A bevy of young beauties cross in front. No reaction. Finally a sailor passes, and the figleaf [sic] begins to rise and rise, until it stands straight out supported, obviously, by an erection.77 When a young American female fan tired to explain why she owned one of Sandow’s photos, she blurted, “Some people think it is terribly indecent—I don’t. It is just something Greek; that’s all”—a rationalization, not an explanation. The photo in question was a shot of Sandow’s “torso, with muscles—like that of the Vatican over which the aged Michael Angelo passed his hands.” 78 With one word, Greek, she unknowingly pinpointed the key to Sandow’s success. His photos’ columns, the sandals he typically wore, even the fig leaf so expertly positioned alluded to classical statuary, the same ones that the 10-year-old Sandow had admired in Rome and that other men like him had also admired during their boyhood and adolescence. The classical accoutrement gave Sandow’s photos a distinctly artsy characteristic, which the young girl, and others of her time, identified as “Greek.” However, had a queer man said, “It is just something Greek; that’s all,” his use of Greek would not have been only to suggest an artiness to the photos but, more pointedly, to indicate an erotic overtone for him: in gay slang, Greek has been a code for anal intercourse between men since the late 1800s. With one word, the young woman unwittingly and succinctly revealed Sandow’s use of ambiguity by the props that appeared in many of his photos. Using Greek, the young woman unlocked Sandow’s secret when she explained his photograph as his queer audience would have when they looked at his photos, but without ever knowing what she had done.

NOTES 1. The quote in the title is from Bourget, Paul. Outre-Mer: Impressions of America (New York: Scribner’s, 1895): 60–61. The epigraph is from Buck, Josh. “Sandow: No Folly with Ziegfeld’s First Glorification.” Iron Game History 5

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(May 1998): 31–32. The sources of the titles for sections one and two are from Callen, Anthea. “Doubles and Desire: Anatomies of Masculinity in the Later Nineteenth Century.” Art History 26 (Nov. 2003): 688; and Healy, Murray. “ The Mark of a Man: Masculine Identities and the Art of Macho Drag.” Critical Quarterly 36 (Mar. 1994): 89, respectively. 2. The quotes are from, respectively, “Sandow To Be at the Schiller,” Chicago Daily Tribune 1 Apr. 1894, 25; “Strength of Sandow” Chicago Daily Tribune 20 August 1893: 15; H.P.M. “The Latest Society Fad: Fashion Pays Court to Sandow, the Strong Man, at His Private Levees,” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly March 29, 1894: 206; John F. Kasson, Houdini, Tarzan, and the Perfect Man: The White Male Body and the Challenge of Modernity in America (New York: Hill and Wang, 2001): 68; and “How the World Went Mad Over Sandow’s Muscles.” Literary Digest 87 (31 October 1925): 46, 48. 3. One of the best discussions about gender polarity and homosexuality in the late 1800s and early 1900s can be found in George Chauncy’s Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890–1940. New York: Basic, 1994. 4. Patricia McDonnell, ‘Essentially Masculine:’ Marsden Hartley, Gay Identity, and the Wilhelmine German Military,” Art Journal 56 (Summer 1997): 65. 5. Sandow’s birth information is from Sandow, Eugen. Sandow on Physical Training. Ed. G. Mercer Adam. New York: Tait, 1894. 23. Although Adams is identified as the book’s editor, it is probable that he actually wrote it. Except where otherwise noted, facts about Sandow’s life and career is from Chapman, David L. Sandow the Magnificent: Eugen Sandow and the Beginnings of Bodybuilding (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1994). 6. Sandow. Sandow on Physical Training. 23, 24. 7. Eugen Sandow, Strength and How to Obtain It (London: Gale & Polden, 1897), 87. 8. Robert Aldrich, The Seduction of the Mediterranean (New York: Routledge, 1993), 160. 9. Jason Edwards, “Edmund Gosse and the Victorian Nude,” History Today 51 (November 2001): 34. 10. Edwards 35. 11. Kate Smith, “Untold London,” www.untoldlondon.org.uk/news/ ART53498-.html (accessed January 25, 2008). 12. Chapman 9. 13. www.ironmagazineforums.com/gallery/showphoto.php/photo/ 7085 will take the reader to a copy of the photo. Taken in 1886, when Sandow was beginning to document the development of his body, the 19-year-old Adonis is wearing only a loincloth and none of the classical allusion that were typical of “physical culturists” of the time, not even his trademark sandals. Note the “V” that the loincloth makes, drawing the viewer ’s

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attention to Sandow’s penis, something that would not go unnoticed by queer viewers. 14. Chapman 11. 15. Chapman 16. 16. Chapman 19. 17. Few homosexuals who cruised Venice for sex partners left actual records of their experiences, but Frederick Rolfe, better known as the author “Baron Corvo,” recorded his meeting with a young hustler in a letter (“Frederick Rolfe to C., November 28, 1909, from Venice,” in Nineteenth-century Writings on Homosexuality: A Sourcebook, ed. Christ White (London: Routledge, 1999), 337–339). 18. Sandow, Sandow on Physical Training 41. 19. Eugen Sandow, “My Reminiscences,” Strand Magazine 39 (March 1910): 147. 20. W. A. Pullum, “The Arrival of Eugen Sandow,” Bodybuilder Magazine (January 1954), www. sandowplus.co.uk/S/bodybuilding%20mag%20jan %2054/sandow%20arrival.htm. 21. Gardiner, James. A Class Apart: The Private Pictures of Montague Glover. London: Serpents Tail, 1992. Excerpted at www.walnet.org/csis/biblios/ monty_glover. 22. “Eugen Sandow: The Non-pareil,” at www.sandowplus.co.uk/S/ s&h-june1937/np.htm. 23. Chapman 19. 24. Murray Healy, “The Mark of a Man: Masculine Identities and the Art of Macho Drag,” Critical Quarterly 36 (March 1994): 86. 25. Healey 87. 26. Michael Hatt, “Physical Culture: The Male Nude and Sculpture in Late Victorian Britain,” In After the Pre-Raphaelites: Art and Aestheticism in Victorian England, ed. Elizabeth Prettejohn (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 1999), 165. 27. Hatt 165. 28. M., H. P., “The Latest Society Fad: Fashion Pays Court to Sandow, the Strong Man, at His Private Levees.” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly, March 29, 1894: 206. 29. Sandow, Sandow on Physical Training 135. 30. Sandow, Strength and How to Obtain It, 93. 31. www.ironmagazineforums.com/gallery/showphoto.php/photo/7086 will take the reader to one of Henry Van der Weyde’s photos of the 22-year old Adonis. Sandow still has not yet grown his trademark mustache nor has he yet disguised his intent with classical accoutrement. Note the fig leaf. Because the light strikes it more brightly than it does any other spot on Sandow’s body, our attention is drawn to it, and its raised position suggests an erection, fueling a queer viewer’s imagination. 32. Chapman 34.

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33. Alison J. Smith, Chicago’s Left Bank (Chicago: Regnery, 1953), 58. 34. John Addington Symonds, The Letters of John Addington Symonds: Volume 3, 1885–1893, ed. Herbert M. Schueller and Robert L. Peters (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1969), 436. 35. The network of men with whom Symonds shared nude photographs was extensive and international and can be tracked in his letters. 36. J. Moriarty, “Sandow: Gay Strongman of the Gay 90s,” Advocate, March 14, 1973: 30. 37. www.sandowplus.co.uk/Competition/Cyr/gallery.htm leads the reader to a gallery of various photos of Cyr. Not anyone’s idea of “pure beauty,” Louis Cyr was one of Sandow’s best-known rivals in the late 1800s. He could lift extraordinary amounts of weight and was a superstar on the weight-lifting circuit. In the top/first photo, note Cyr ’s “fig leaf” and its decidedly vaginal appearance. 38. “Minor Sporting Matters,” New York Times, April 2, 1893, 3. 39. John F. Kasson, Houdini, Tarzan, and the Perfect Man: The White Male Body and the Challenge of Modernity in America (New York: Hill and Wang, 2001), 23. 40. Sandow, Sandow on Physical Training 106. 41. Rudolph Aronson, Theatrical and Musical Memoirs (New York: McBride, Nast, 1913), 82. 42. Kasson 24. 43. Kasson 25. 44. Kasson 25. 45. “The Strongest Man in the World,” New York World, June 20, 1893, 8. 46. http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgibin/query/D?ils:20:./temp/~pp_capR:: @@@mdb=fsaall,brum,detr,swann,look,gottscho,pan,horyd,gethe,var,cai,cd, hh,yan,lomax,ils,prok,brhc,nclc,matpc,iucpub,tgmi,lamb,hec,krb leads the reader to a photo of Sandow illustrating the effects of lighting on the fig leaf he wore. 47. www.stanford.edu/group/SHR/6-2/html/guttmann.html leads the reader to a photo of Sandow in the “Dying Parthian” pose. 48. Ibid. 49. www.sandowplus.co.uk/sandowindex.htm leads the reader to an electronic version of Sandow on Physical Training. Nude photos of Sandow performing push-ups are on page 217. 50. http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?ils:1:./temp/~pp_6Tcn:: @@@mdb=fsaall,brum,detr, swann,look,gottscho,pan,horyd,genthe,var,cai, cd,hh,yan,lomax,ils,prok,brhc,nclc,matpc,iucpub,tgmi,lamb,hec,krb leads the reader to a photo of Sandow in the “Dying Gaul” pose. 51. Samuel Wilson Fussell, Muscle: Confessions of an Unlikely Bodybuilder (New York: Poseidon, 1991), 191. 52. Chapman 51. www.bach-cantatas.com/Lib/Sieveking-Martinus.htm leads the reader to two photos of Sadow’s “bosom friend.”

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53. “The Strongest Man in the World.” 54. Chapman 51. 55. Chapman 51. 56. Arthur H. Lewis, La Belle Otero (New York: Trident, 1967), 102. 57. Lewis 103. 58. Lewis 103–104. 59. Ibid. 60. Sandow, Strength and How to Obtain It, 121. 61. “Music Again at the Trocadero,” Chicago Daily Tribune, September 10, 1893, 28. 62. Sandow, Strength and How to Obtain It, 130. 63. They inspired the way Sandow posed on stage. Alison Smith has informed us that “tableau vivant or pose plastique was a popular form of entertainment in which a group of actors clad in ‘fleshlings’ [i.e., tights] would impersonate a famous work of art. Despite differences of context and audience expectation, life modeling, and the pose plastique were construed as similar activities” (Alison J. Smith, Chicago’s Left Bank. Chicago: Regnery, 1953, 25). 64. “Exit of Trocadero,” Chicago Daily Tribune, January 25, 1894, 1. 65. “He Is a Man of Mighty Muscle,” Chicago Daily Tribune, August 11, 1893, 9. 66. Chapman 60. 67. Chapman 46. 68. “The Strongest Man in the World.” 69. “The Ladies Idolize Sandow,” National Police Gazette, January 27, 1894, 6. 70. “The Ladies Idolize Sandow.” 71. Chapman 75. 72. “Sandow Sails for Germany,” Chicago Daily Tribune, November 5, 1893, 25. 73. Chapman 92. 74. “Gotham Brevities,” Chicago Daily Tribune, January 14, 1894, 3. 75. “Thrilling Romance of Strong Man,” Chicago Daily Tribune, January 27, 1894, 16. 76. Chapman 51. 77. Moriarty 31. 78. Bourget 61.

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Chapter 9

RuPaul: Fashioning Queer Alison Bancroft

RuPaul is an American drag artist whose creative output has included film, television shows, music, and club/cabarets, and he is wellknown for his ambivalence toward gendered personal pronouns, declaring that he does not much care whether he is referred to as “he” or “she.” Most interestingly, though, he is the only drag queen to have been given “supermodel” status, an accolade usually reserved for the world’s most beautiful women. He has been the face of MAC cosmetics and has appeared on runway shows in Paris fashion week for the couturier Thierry Mugler. This chapter will present a psychoanalytically inflected queer reading of fashion. It will interrogate in particular what happens when what is usually seen as unequivocally feminine— fashion—accommodates the equivocal erotic visuality of a biological man masquerading as the very acme of femininity. Usually drag “plays the game,” as it were, and adheres to the security of gender codes even as it plays with them. It works because both masculinity and femininity retain their distinctness within the artist, and the act is successful precisely because of this duality. RuPaul transcends drag inasmuch as, in his fashion work at least, both masculinity and femininity are shown to be inherently unstable, and the very categories of gender themselves are problematized. On television, in films, in clubs, and in sound recordings, RuPaul is a drag artist. It is only in fashion that he becomes more than a drag queen. Arguably, fashion itself, by virtue of its inherent femininity, provides the possibility of transgression that other

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media and art forms do not, and RuPaul evidences this with abundant clarity. Fashion is not necessarily a matter of expressing one’s “identity,” nor is it merely about trends or a matter of business, products, branding, and economics, although there are many instances when these issues are very much in evidence. Fashion is instead largely concerned with innovation in the surface decoration of the body and the wider social and cultural responses to this innovation. Moreover, it is the wearer, and the act of wearing, that are central to fashion. Fashion is not a discreet or enclosed collection of fixed objects. A garment is not an independent, fully formed object that is superimposed on the blank canvas of a woman’s body. On the contrary, it exists only when it is in the process of being worn, and when fashion is encountered in contexts other than the act of being worn, it can often invoke a sense of disquiet. As Elizabeth Wilson has said, “Clothes without a wearer, whether on a second hand stall, in a glass case, or merely a lover’s garments strewn on the floor, can affect us unpleasantly, as if a snake has shed its skin.”1 This unease that wearer-less garments can induce is explored in the fashion/art installation Spring Summer Collection 1770–1998 (1998), by Lun*na Menoh, which demonstrates the processual nature of fashion with a linear depiction from left to right of consecutive changes in style through time. 2 More interestingly, though, it demonstrates how imperative the wearer is to the operation of fashion. These ghostly garments, devoid as they are of any corporeal relation, are suggestive of a sinister otherworldliness that Freud calls ‘The Uncanny.’ They are simultaneously familiar, almost mundane, in the way that only something as ubiquitous as clothing can be, and also alienated, following their removal from their expected context. As Freud puts it, “ . . . the uncanny is in reality nothing new or alien, but something which is familiar and old-established in the mind and which has become alienated from it.”3 Besides its relation to the human body, fashion is also closely associated with femininity and with art. It was Baudelaire’s ‘The Painter of Modern Life’ that first distinguished this association and that tied this relationship to modern culture. In this essay, Baudelaire identifies a shift in fashion, from its role in revealing social distinctions predicated on class to distinctions predicated on gender instead.4 He sees fashion as synonymous with the feminine and suggests that the woman and the dress are inseparable from one another.5 In “The Painter of Modern Life,” Baudelaire uses the words fashion (mode,) costume (costume), and dress (robe) to talk about a particular

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mode of dress that he describes as the historically specific aspect of beauty, and that renders beauty of a particular type, and in doing so makes it all together more human than it might otherwise be. He sees beauty, femininity, and fashion as bound together, contingent upon one another, and at once a product of its time and a-historically classic.6 The mid-nineteenth century, when Baudelaire wrote “The Painter of Modern Life,” is also the point in history when what J. C. Flu¨gel calls “the Great Masculine Renunciation” occurs, when rational men renounced their right to adornment and chose useful work as an alternative means of gaining and maintaining status. Thorstein Veblen tells us too that the need of the new middle class to differentiate themselves from other social classes of the time led to the positioning of women as a vehicle for the vicarious display of her husband’s wealth, a display that was conducted through the physically restrictive and heavily ornamented fashion worn by women at the time. A shift occurred, then, at around the time fashion became distinct from mere clothing in the mid-1800s that led to the association of fashion with the feminine. This association remains even today. Anne Hollander reminds us that men’s fashion is still a minor subsidiary of fashion and carries hardly any of the resonances of fashion that is associated with women. 7 Fashion is unique in this. Usually, where cultural forms (literature, art, film, music) are gendered, they tend to default to the masculine, with the feminine as a subset within the form; there is literature, and there is women’s writing, for instance. There are artists, and there are women artists. Fashion alone defaults to the feminine. Femininity is usually understood to refer to the attributes of woman, whatever they may be. Certainly that is the context in which Baudelaire uses it. In terms of its relationship to fashion, however, I suggest that it can be understood in rather broader terms; as pertaining to feminine subjects, usually but not exclusively women, as pertaining to and contingent upon the body, in particular the female body, and, in a specifically Lacanian idiom, as following an impossible and contradictory logic. These three definitions of femininity anchor fashion to the category of the feminine, while also rejecting any notion of that category as in any way either biologically or anatomically determined, or reliant on social structures for its resonances and its meaning. Besides becoming associated with the feminine in the mid-nineteenth century, fashion simultaneously became associated with art. Baudelaire’s “The Painter of Modern Life” has been acknowledged as the place in aesthetic discourse where fashion is isolated from history of

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costume, clothing or dress itself.8 By suggesting that fashion has a place in artistic discourse, Baudelaire effectively identified fashion as a classification distinct from the operation of clothes, and advocated the centrality of fashion to modern aesthetic practice. This is not to say that fashion is art. Fashion relies on being worn by the human subject for its actualization in a way that art does not, and fashion can and should retain its identity distinct from art because of this. However, there are instances when fashion can be talked about in the same terms as art, and it is those instances that are of interest here. The premise that fashion is distinct from dress and that it creates this distinction through its aesthetic properties is central to the definition of fashion used in this paper. It allows fashion to enter into artistic and critical discourses while still retaining its disciplinary precision, and to simultaneously show up the limitations of existing gender specificity in art theory and practice. Fashion is too dependent on existing social and psychic structures to ever present a realistic or viable challenge to them, and it is therefore difficult to claim that fashion is radical or revolutionary. Fashion is not likely to change the world. I do believe, however, that it is inherently seditious and can and does “subvert from within,” offering profound challenges to existing structures in the terms that are available to it. The point where fashion manifests most clearly the concepts that this paper seeks to address—queer subjectivity and notions of the feminine and the masculine—is also the point where fashion is at its most innovative, provocative, and challenging, and the moments that demonstrate its disruptive potential. FASHION, DESIRE AND A DRAG QUEEN John Galliano is the design director at Christian Dior, part of LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy,) the most dominant luxury goods corporation in the world. For Galliano fashion must be a tangible commodity that exists in the here and now with the sole purpose of generating a financial profit. He is quite clear though that despite this economic imperative, eroticism is fashion’s primary consideration, and, within that eroticism, heterosexual masculine desire is prioritized. Thus, he once famously suggested that the purpose of fashion is to make a man look at a women and think, “I have to fuck her.”9 The appearance on fashion runways and in fashion magazine and billboard advertising of RuPaul thus raises questions for both fashion and for the operation of desire. What happens when what is usually

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seen as unequivocally feminine accommodates the equivocal erotic visuality of a biological man masquerading as the very acme of femininity? I propose that fashion itself, by virtue of its inherent femininity, provides the possibility of transgression of sexed identity and desire that other media and art forms do not, and that RuPaul evidences this with abundant clarity. While much has been written about drag, and it is not my intention to review these debates in detail here, very little has been written about RuPaul himself. One article complains that he is letting down black gay men by dragging, and the practice of “tucking,” where the penis and testes are tucked between the legs to give the impression, if not the authentic appearance, of female genitalia, is seen as symptomatic of his betrayal of black gay men.10 Another complains that drag is a manifestation of the misogyny of gay men and provides a study of drag acts in Atlanta, including RuPaul early in his career, as evidence of this.11 In terms of his involvement in fashion particularly, the wellknown feminist critic Sheila Jeffreys has described his work again in terms of misogyny. She sees Thierry Mugler’s employment of RuPaul as a model in his runway shows as evidence of misogyny in fashion and argues that this is evidence of the marginalization of what she calls “real, live women” in the representation of feminine sexuality.12 The fashion critic Caroline Evans describes RuPaul’s appearance in fashion in quasi-psychoanalytic terms, arguing that it is evidence of a masculine power, the “symbolic power of the phallus,” lurking beneath the surface decoration of femininity.13 The problem with all of these ideas is that they are predicated on the idea of either masculinity or femininity or both as fixed or stable entities, when, as I will show, what RuPaul evidences in fashion is that all sexed identities are at best unstable, or, more likely, a conceptual impossibility. RuPaul is a model drag act, in every sense of the word: model as ideal and also model as mannequin. Thus he suggests an instance where queer interacts within fashion to problematize sexed identity, and, from this, sex and desire themselves. PERFORMATIVITY AND PERFORMANCE The continuum between life and art, or, more particularly, between the artist as subject in their own right and as creative producer, is the basis of Gavin Butt’s analysis of the lesser-known post-war American painter, Larry Rivers. Butt starts his review of Rivers with a reading of a photograph of Rivers in a magazine, which showed him in a variety

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of roles (saxophonist, sculptor, nightclub host) in front of his painting of a number of human faces, all shown as different, but sharing the commonality of montage. The corollary between the many talents of the artist and the multiple fragmentary images of people in his paintings is made in this photograph. This leads Butt to argue that there is in fact little division between the artist as subject and artist as creator, and that the two segue into one another to such an extent that they are indivisible. By drawing attention to “the aporetic tensions between the way Rivers is and the way Rivers acts,” Butts suggests that it is performative enactments that make both the artist and the art. There is no difference between “self “and “work” here. Instead, they are “continuous with the performative being of Larry Rivers, who can no more stop posing than he can stop being an artist since the very ‘being’ of his artistic self is the posing.”14 This argument is clearly derivative of Judith Butler’s profoundly influential 1990 publication Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. In this volume Butler cites drag acts as indicative of the impossibility of a core gender identity, saying that these very specialized performers and performances mock “both the expressive model of gender and the notion of a true gender identity.”15 Drag, for Butler, is a paradigm of the failure of gender in real life, which illustrates in parodying gender how gender is itself a parody. Drag shows the emptiness of the original it ostensibly copies. What is of particular note in Butler’s thesis is her use of the term “performative.” Following from her analysis of drag, she argues that: Gender ought not to be construed as a stable identity or locus of agency from which various acts follow; rather, gender is an identity tenuously constituted in time and space through a stylised repetition of acts. The effect of gender is produced through the stylization of the body and, hence, must be understood as the mundane way in which bodily gestures, movements and styles of various kinds constitute the illusion of an abiding gendered self. This formulation moves the conception of gender off the ground of a substantial model of identity to one that requires a concept of gender as a constituted social temporality. Significantly, if gender is instituted through acts which are internally discontinuous, then the appearance of substance is precisely that, a constructed identity, a performative accomplishment which the mundane social audience, including the actors themselves, come to believe and to perform in the mode of belief.16

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While there is little with which we would wish to argue in Butler’s efforts to denaturalize gender and at the same time remove it from any notion of substantive social truth, her thesis is problematic for a number of reasons. Tim Dean, for instance, highlights the way in which her account of the body evacuates both desire and the subject from sexuality, while Joan Copjec argues for the necessity of the real and its irreducibility to either materiality, language or social structure.17 In a consideration of RuPaul, in particular, Butler’s idea of the performative falls short for several reasons. The first issue is the conflation of performance with performative. Butler derives the latter from the former, although there is no direct or automatic connection between the two. Indeed, there is a strong case to be made for their being entirely separate entities. Performance is entirely and knowingly artificial, and there is a clear disjuncture between the performance and the performer doing the performance. The performer, at the end of the performance, takes off their costume and make-up and goes home. Even in the more radical instances of performance art, such as Orlan or Leigh Bowery, there is no suggestion that the performance is an artistic articulation of the artist themselves. Rather, these artists use performance conceptually, to question the very notion of selfhood or subjectivity itself. These performances are more concerned with the audience than they are with the artist. What is more, these performances take place within certain charmed enclosures, environments in which performance is possible, or indeed expected—art galleries, theatres, and nightclubs in major international cities. These performances are very much an urban cultural form, and it is therefore reasonable to suppose that if these performances were to take place outside of the charmed enclosures in which they are permissible, the performer may well be subject to hostility and opposition, as the Coober Pedy scene in the 1996 film The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert suggests. Here, a drag queen from Sydney (played by Guy Pearce) goes out in full drag in a small mining community in the Australian outback and is violently assaulted by several men of the town as a consequence. His performative parody of gender is very badly received by a group of miners, who have their own very clear ideas about gender. To extrapolate from the idea of a particular mode of performance that directly addresses questions of gender, to the claim that that the knowing artificiality of performance is something fundamental or common to all people in all circumstances, is a connection that is, in my view, untenable. Quite apart from anything else it disregards any

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suggestion of the psychic processes by which gender is constituted, which I have discussed at length throughout this thesis. Also, to commute performance to performativity, that is, “repetitive and stylized acts,” posits a model of the subject that does not account for the many and complex psychic and social processes which shape and influence the subject and their interactions. While Butler is quite right to suggest that there is no core gender identity, and that there is no direct connection between what we understand as gender identity and any anatomical or biological distinction of the categories of man and woman, to understand gender in terms of a performativity that is derivative of performance instead is problematic. Gender, to my mind, is not “instituted in an exterior space through a stylized repetition of acts”18 but is instead constituted at the level of the unconscious, which has little or nothing to do with either anatomy or social mores. It is, in fact, all about the subject. Without the subject there is no gender, normativized or otherwise, and we can say that without suggesting that gender is in some way a “core” to the subject themselves. In fairness to Butler, she addressed many of the concerns that arose following the publication of Gender Trouble in her next book, Bodies That Matter (1993).19 Here she seeks to address the materiality of the body, something that was conspicuous by its absence in Gender Trouble. Unfortunately, this book follows Gender Trouble in that although she mentions various psychoanalytic concepts they do not underpin her arguments in any meaningful way. In the chapter “Arguing With The Real,” for instance, she actually argues with Zizek and his take on the real, rather than the concept of the real itself. She is also particularly concerned with the ways in which the sexed subject is constituted in relation to their own body, and again does not make any reference to the psychic processes that are in psychoanalytic terms essential to any consideration of sex. For the purposes of this chapter, then, the way in which RuPaul’s life and work reflects on the concept of sexual desire and sexuated subjectivity will be central. We will not be speculating on the man himself, nor will we consider him as paradigmatic of a human commonality. If there is a continuum between the man and his work, such as the one suggested by Gavin Butt in his analysis of Larry Rivers, it will be considered in terms of the articulation of particular psychic processes and phenomena, and not as a voluntarist continuum between performance and subjectivity of the kind suggested by Butler and her followers. Where the word performativity is used in this

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chapter, it will be used in the sense of art criticism, and not in the Butlerian sense. In art criticism, the term performativity has been used to describe the process by which external influences become a part of the subject’s own thoughts. This is, in fact, how Peggy Phelan uses the term when she says: The interaction between the art object and the spectator is, essentially, performative—and therefore resistant to the claims of validity and accuracy endemic to the discourse of reproduction. While the art historian of painting must ask if the reproduction is accurate and clear, Calle [the artist under discussion] asks where seeing and memory forget the object itself and enter the subject’s own set of personal meanings and associations.20 Here, Phelan is making the case for the dynamic and active exchange that is the viewer’s encounter with an artwork, suggesting that it is a process of ongoing engagement rather than a static and temporal encounter. FASHION John Galliano is on record as saying that “when a man sees a woman in my dress, I want him to think, ‘I have to fuck her,’ ” while his contemporary, Alexander McQueen, produces garments that make men look at the woman and think, “I wouldn’t dare!” In Lacanian terms these two design philosophies are paradigmatic of the different ways in which the feminine relates to the masculine in the Symbolic, as objet a, which offers the potential for both merely phallic jouissance and the disruptive, anarchic feminine jouissance There is a sense in which RuPaul preempts this debate, as it is played out in Galliano’s and McQueen’s collections. In particular, RuPaul appearances in fashion seem to resist the structural logic of sexuation and desire, especially as it pertains to the feminine, and this can be explained under the rubric of two key terms from Lacanian psychoanalysis: the hommosexuelle and transgression. Lacan refers to the homosexual as the hommosexuelle, a pun on homme (man) and sexuelle (the feminine form of the word sexual). It is clear from his wordplay that conflates man and the feminine sexual that Lacan sees homosexuality not as same-sex desire between men but as an attestation to an extreme love of the feminine. For Lacan, a

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homosexual (hommosexuelle) is a man who occupies a femininesexuated subject position and who loves women differently, indeed who loves rather than desires. Lacan suggests that the hommosexuelle is a man who loves Woman as an ideal and who is defined by both this ideal love and (Lacan departs from Freud here) the wish to keep this ideal distinct from sex. Where Lacan has argued that (the ideal and idealized) Woman does not exist, the hommosexuelle nevertheless believes that in fact she does.21 The hommosexuelle retains the belief of Woman as Ideal and idealizes woman by refusing in his unconscious to acknowledge her representation of lack. This idealization is maintained through a refusal of desire for woman. Unlike a heterosexual man who is quite happy to seek phallic jouissance from woman, the hommosexuelle believes that such jouissance is impossible to attain from the ideal without destroying the ideal. The hommosexuelle, then, manifests a “pure” love, as distinct from heterosexual desire.22 It is worth noting that there is nothing one can do about either love or desire. They cannot be reined in or controlled. They are their own masters and operate in and through the subject, making a mockery of any notion of agency or free will. The mode of desire that emanates from this hommosexuelle love is of a very different order to love as it is defined within the normal heterosexual matrix and can be seen as the manifestation of the disruption of the real in the order of the symbolic. The word jouissance has no direct translation into English but is generally taken to mean some kind of powerful orgasmic joy. How this is experienced depends on the subject and their circumstances, but in terms of desire, the masculine subject will experience merely phallic jouissance (something Slavoj Zizek calls “stupid”) while the feminine subject will enjoy a “jouissance of the other,” an altogether more intense, ecstatic, and troubling experience.23 The jouissance of transgression offers another model of jouissance, one that is not contingent on sexed subjectivity necessarily, but one that arises from breaching the social contract. RuPaul uses fashion in two ways; firstly to articulate the hommosexuelle and the occupation of a feminine subject position by a biological male and so disrupt masculinity and heteronormativity, and secondly to introduce the impossibility of feminine jouissance, and, more importantly, the disorder of transgressive jouissance, into the symbolic order. The question of performance arises at this point, and the extent to which RuPaul’s modeling can be considered performance. I suggest that although it might not be deemed performance in the usual theatrical or artistic sense of the word, his work in fashion can be talked

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about in the same terms as performance for several reasons. They take place, for the most part, in environments where performance is anticipated, and that are at one remove at least from domestic or working environments; fashion runways during fashion week, or professional photographer’s studios, where unusual and non-normative characterization of the self is encouraged, and that are quite literally and figuratively several thousand miles away from RuPaul’s industrial home town of San Diego, California. There is an immediacy to the garments that suggests that once they are removed from the wearer they become, in the words of one magazine editor, “a wardrobe of wilted relics.”24 This immediacy is shared by the MAC advertising campaigns, in that photography is the capturing of a moment in time. In this regard we can see that fashion and performance share the feature of immediacy, they can only exist in the moment. There is the sense that in appearing as a model, he is presenting an artistic piece of work to an audience, in the same way that his video and sound recording performances can be seen as artistic or creative output. By virtue of their having an ongoing quality, with the images still in circulation, RuPaul’s fashion work fits in with the definition of performativity set out by Peggy Phelan, which suggests that an encounter between viewer and art is an ongoing process of engagement and a dynamic and active exchange. Despite the apparent marginality of drag acts, RuPaul was sufficiently well-known for him to be invited to participate in some remarkably high-profile fashion events, and his presence in the feminine world of fashion disrupted absolutely any idea that the feminine is in any way either biologically or anatomically determined, or reliant on social structures for its resonances and its meaning. All of this can be seen as indicative of the performance inherent in his appearances in fashion. More importantly for our purposes, though, Phelan’s idea that the body in performance is metonymic will be helpful in interpreting the many aspects of RuPaul’s fashion work. The body in performance, her argument goes, is a metonym, but for some aspect of the performance (a character, for instance, or movement or sound, or art), rather than the performer themselves. The performer’s subjective presence is lost, thus suggesting the disjuncture between the body and subjectivity. Moreover the body itself can only appear in performance through an addition of some other aspect or element, it can never appear in its own right. This raises two questions regarding RuPaul’s fashion work that we are discussing here. Firstly, if RuPaul’s body is functioning

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metonymically in the performance for some aspect of the performance (and not for RuPaul himself), what is it that his body is standing metonymically for? Secondly, if the body can only appear in performance through an addition or supplement, what is that addition or supplement that makes the body appear here, if indeed it can be said to appear at all? RuPaul’s body in these performances, I suggest, stands for the feminine body as emblem of the lack, the lacuna, that psychoanalysis has identified as being at the heart of subjectivity and that is obscured by dress. This lack is what is central to RuPaul’s modeling, it is this lack that he is articulating through his engagement with fashion, and it is this lack that his body stands for metonymically in his runway and photographic performances. And what is the addition that enables the body to appear? I suggest it is the addition of fashion. The costume and make-up of fashion, then, serve a double and contradictory purpose—they allow the metonymic function of the body in performance, and they also allow the body to elide this metonymy and appear in its own right. This radical and contradictory dualism is what makes RuPaul’s modeling such a unique and iconic phenomenon. Psychoanalysis tells us that it is the feminine body that stands for the lack that is at the heart of human subjectivity and so must be covered. Fashion, arguably, is an essential aspect of the veil that is femininity, and following Joan Rivie` re’s influential 1929 essay, “Womanliness as Masquerade” the association between femininity and masquerade has become a widely accepted critical position.25 Rivie`re argues that femininity is not covered or hidden in some way, but rather is itself the cover, the mask. The question of what it is that femininity masks is precisely what makes the condition of femininity so problematic; it masks that which cannot be represented. There is, moreover, hostility within patriarchy to femininity that emanates from the perception of its duplicity. There is a sense in which the masquerade that is femininity is seen as a willful act of treachery, that women don a mask in order to deliberately mislead men. Examples abound in Western culture of the inherent deceitfulness of women, from the biblical myth of Eve onwards. (The myth of Eve is particularly instructive, as it is she who first insists on clothing to cover the symbolic lack that is central to human subjectivity.) Curiously enough, there is no suggestion that women benefit in any way from this deceit, nor indeed that men are disadvantaged by it, but nevertheless the assumption that there is a degree of agency in it is basis enough for continued suspicion of the feminine as inherently untrustworthy.

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Michelle Montrelay describes this masquerade in terms of the materiality of fashion (it “takes shape in this piling up of crazy things, feathers, hats and strange baroque constructions which rise up like so many silent insignias”) and observes further that “man has always called the feminine defenses and masquerade evil.” 26 For Jacques Lacan, the term semblance is key here and refers to the requirement placed on women to don the colors, as it were, of the Other’s desire, the better that they may be, as they are required to be, the phallus. The masquerade serves to demonstrate how the woman’s lack (of a penis) leads to her instead becoming the phallus. “Such is the woman behind her veil: it is the absence of the penis that makes her the phallus, object of desire.”27 Referring to fashion as a paradigm of the veil behind which feminine sexuality must operate is a common device among critics, and the contribution of fashion and bodily adornment to the inherent masquerade that is feminine sexuality is well established. 28 Adornment is, then, the woman in the symbolic order because she represents lack and lack “is never presented to us other than as a reflection on a veil.”29 Crucially, though, what we see in RuPaul’s fashion modeling is that the hommosexuelle, because of his sexuated subject position, is able to allow the masculine body to stand for lack too. The adoption of seemingly feminine corporeal characteristics in conjunction with the maintenance of the masculine aspects of the body, in particular his height, suggests also that masculinity is not as secure as it might wish to be. In presenting the artifice of the feminine at the same time as disrupting the masculine, as RuPaul does in fashion, heteronormativity is also challenged. Its reliance on stable, oppositional gender identities is shown to be an edifice built on sand. What we see coalescing around the figure of RuPaul are instances of hommosexuelle transgression that can be understood in terms of both psychoanalysis and performance. RuPaul as model can be seen as enacting a performative manifestation of transgressive jouissance, and that is contingent upon a negation of the self. Performance ceases to exist immediately when it comes into being. It must do this in order to be performance. If RuPaul constitutes his queer subjectivity as performance art, which, arguably, his modeling did, this means that RuPaul is enacting in his own work the very dissolution of the subject. His performances suggest the obsolescence of the subject, and specifically the masculine subject. The fact that RuPaul’s performances self-consciously engage with visual signifiers of the feminine merely augment this by demonstrating

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the inherent instability of masculinity, and gender more generally, in the symbolic. Central to any understanding of RuPaul is the idea that he not only transgresses social mores but that he goes further, that he rides roughshod over the underpinnings of sociality itself, as they are constituted through sexed subjectivity. When masculine subjectivity is rendered obsolete, as it is by RuPaul, questions of meaning arise. It is an instance of metonymy not least because although the failure of the masculine is unthinkable in the symbolic, the masculine is in fact on much shakier ground than it realizes. Metonymic slippage in both performance and language is a way of circumventing the ego, the censorship that would have us believe that masculinity is more fixed and stable than is in fact the case. RuPaul’s fashion work is just such a metonymic slippage precisely because they foreground the problems with masculinity that are habitually repressed. Thus, RuPaul’s unique appearances as a model, on the runway and in cosmetics advertising, evidences two decidedly queer concepts. They show that gendered subjectivity is an area of contestation, and that the occupation of feminine (and by extension masculine) subject positions are contingent upon the operation of the psyche rather than either an anatomical actuality or a cultural construct. The hostility that greeted his appearance on the runway, of the kind that we saw in Sheila Jeffrey’s response mentioned earlier, indicate just how disturbing his fashion work can be. Far from being misogynist, RuPaul shows how all gendered identity is problematic. They also show how such anti-normative positioning can be a source of both feminine and transgressive jouissance, and that they are instances of a profound and troubling disruption of the symbolic order. The discomfort that viewers may feel looking at the images of RuPaul as a model is perhaps a jouissance of a sort, and it is the sort of jouissance that is intense and disquieting rather than reassuring and enjoyable. RuPaul reminds us that our comforting assumptions about men, women, sexuality, and the body are precisely that, assumptions, and his foray into the charmed enclosure of fashion made it possible for him to relay that reminder with abundant clarity, and in impeccable style. NOTES 1. Elisabeth Wilson, Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and Modernity (London: I. B. Tauris, 2003) 2. 2. An image of this installation can be seen in Addressing the Century: 100 Years of Art and Fashion (London: Hayward Gallery, 1998) 63.

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3. Sigmund Freud “The Uncanny” (1919) in Sigmund Freud, An Infantile Neurosis and Other Works, trans. by James Strachey and Anna Freud (London: Hogarth Press, 1955) 363. 4. Prior to the mid-nineteenth century fashionable dress was used as a marker of rank, with gender as only a subset within that. In particular, the Sumptuary Laws, vestimentary codes that were common across Europe until the Renaissance, dictated who could wear what fabrics, colours, and so on, so that social rank was clearly visually discernable. For a full description of them, see Marjorie Garber, Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety (London: Penguin, 1993) especially 32–35. 5. Charles Baudelaire, Selected Writings on Art and Literature (London: Penguin, 1992) 424. 6. Baudelaire, Selected Writings on Art and Literature 392. 7. Anne Hollander Sex and Suits: The Evolution of Modern Dress (Brinkworth: Claridge, 2004) 11. 8. Leila Kinney “Fashion and Figuration in Modern Life Painting” in Architecture: In Fashion, ed. Deborah Fausch and Paulette Singley (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1991) 291. 9. Michael Specter, “Le Freak, C’est Chic,” The Observer, 30th November 2003, Magazine section, 17. 10. Keith E. McNeal, “Behind the Make-Up: Gender Ambivalence and the Double-Bind of Gay Selfhood in Drag Performance,” Ethos, 27:3 (1999) 344–378. 11. Paul Outlaw, “If That’s Your Boyfriend (He Wasn’t Last Night),” African American Review, 29:2 (1995) 347–350. 12. Sheila Jeffreys, Beauty and Misogyny: Harmful Cultural Practices in the West (London, Routledge, 2005) 100. 13. Caroline Evans, Fashion at the Edge: Spectacle, Modernity & Deathliness (New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 2003) 124. 14. Gavin Butt “The Greatest Homosexual? Camp Pleasure and the Performative Body of Larry Rivers”, in Performing the Body/Performing the Text, ed. Amelia Jones and Andrew Stephenson (London: Routledge, 1999) 108, 120–121. 15. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York, London: Routledge, 1990) 137. 16. Butler, Gender Trouble, pp. 140–141. 17. See Tim Dean and Christopher Lane, ed., Homosexuality and Psychoanalysis (Chicago; London: The University of Chicago Press, 2001) 174–214 and Joan Copjec, Read My Desire: Lacan against the Historicists (Cambridge, Mass.; London: MIT Press, 1994) 7–24. 18. Butler, Gender Trouble, p. 140. 19. Butler, Judith, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits Of "Sex" (New York, London: Routledge, 1993). 20. Phelan, Peggy, Unmarked: Politics of Performance (London: Routledge, 1993) 147.

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21. Jacques Lacan, On Feminine Sexuality: The Limits of Love and Knowledge (the Seminar of Jacques Lacan; Book XX). trans. Bruce Fink (New York; London: Norton, 1998) 72. 22. Lacan, On Feminine Sexuality 85. 23. Slavoj Zizek, Interrogating the Real: Selected Writings (New York; London: Continuum, 2005) 307. 24. Mariuccia Casadio, in her introduction to Fergus Greer, Leigh Bowery: Looks (London: Violette Editions, 2002). 25. Reproduced in Formations of Fantasy, eds Victor Burgin, James Donald and Cora Kaplan (London: Methuen, 1986) 35–44. 26. Miche`le Montrelay, “Inquiry into Femininity”, m/f, 1:1 (1978) 91–116, 93. 27. Jacques Lacan, The E´crits: A Selection. trans. Sheridan, Alan (London: Routledge, 2004) 322. 28. See Ellie Ragland Sullivan and Mark Bracher, Lacan and the Subject of Language (New York, London: Routledge, 1991): Suzanne Barnard, and Bruce Fink, eds., Reading Seminar XX: Lacan’s Major Work on Love, Knowledge, and Feminine Sexuality (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 2002) (particularly “Feminine Conditions of Jouissance” by Genevie`ve Morel and “What Does the Unconscious Know About Women” by Colette Soler): Caroline Evans, “Masks, Mirrors and Mannequins: Elsa Schiaparelli and the Decentred Subject,” Fashion Theory, 3:1 (1999) for examples of this. 29. Jacques Lacan, The Seminars of Jacques Lacan Book II: The Ego in Freud’s Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis. trans. Tomaselli, Sylvana. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 261.

REFERENCES Addressing the Century: 100 Years of Art and Fashion (London: Hayward Gallery, 1998). Barnard, S., and B. Fink, eds. Reading Seminar XX: Lacan’s Major Work on Love, Knowledge, and Feminine Sexuality. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2002. Baudelaire, C. Selected Writings on Art and Literature. London: Penguin, 1992. Burgin, V., J. Donald, and C. Kaplan, eds. Formations of Fantasy. London: Methuen, 1986. Butler, J. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York and London: Routledge, 1990. Copjec, J. Read My Desire: Lacan Against the Historicists. Cambridge and London: MIT Press, 1994. Dean, T., and C. Lane, ed., Homosexuality and Psychoanalysis. Chicago; London: The University of Chicago Press, 2001. Evans, C. “Masks, Mirrors and Mannequins: Elsa Schiaparelli and the Decentred Subject.” Fashion Theory, 3:1 (1999) 117–139.

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Evans, C. Fashion at the Edge: Spectacle, Modernity & Deathliness. New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 2003. Fausch, D., and P. Singley, eds. Architecture: In Fashion. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1991. Flu¨gel, J. C. The Psychology of Clothes. London: Institute of Psycho-analysis, 1930. Freud, S. An Infantile Neurosis and Other Works, trans. by James Strachey and Anna Freud. London: Hogarth Press, 1955. Garber, M. Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety. London: Penguin, 1993. Greer, F. Leigh Bowery: Looks. London: Violette Editions, 2002. Hollander, Anne. Sex and Suits: The Evolution of Modern Dress. Brinkworth: Claridge, 2004. Jeffreys, S. Beauty and Misogyny: Harmful Cultural Practices in the West. London, Routledge, 2005. Jones, A., and A. Stephenson, eds. Performing the Body/Performing the Text. London: Routledge, 1999. Judith, B. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits Of “Sex.” New York and London: Routledge, 1993. Lacan, J. The Seminars of Jacques Lacan Book II: The Ego in Freud’s Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis, trans. Sylvana Tomaselli. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Lacan, J. On Feminine Sexuality: The Limits of Love and Knowledge. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan; Book XX. Trans. Bruce Fink (New York; London: Norton, 1998). Lacan, J. The E´crits: A Selection. Trans. Alan Sheridan. London: Routledge, 2004. McNeal, K. E. Behind the Make-Up: Gender Ambivalence and the DoubleBind of Gay Selfhood in Drag Performance. Ethos, 27:3 (1999) 344–378. Mestrovic, S., ed. Thorstein Veblen: On Culture and Society. London: Sage, 2003. Montrelay, M. “Inquiry into Femininity” m/f, 1:1 (1978) 91–116. Outlaw, P. “If That’s Your Boyfriend (He Wasn’t Last Night).” African American Review, 29:2 (1995) 347–350. Phelan, P. Unmarked: Politics of Performance. London: Routledge, 1993. Ragland S., and Ellie and Mark Bracher, Lacan and the Subject of Language. New York, London: Routledge, 1991. Specter, M. “Le Freak, C’est Chic,” The Observer. November 30, 2003, Magazine section. Wilson, E. Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and Modernity. London: I. B. Tauris, 2003. Zizek, S. Interrogating the Real: Selected Writings. New York; London: Continuum, 2005.

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Chapter 10

Boi’s Story Barclay Barrios

This is a story about boi. Not about a boi, but about boi. And not about boy but very specifically about boi. Though homonymically related, boi and boy differ greatly in meaning. What’s more, there are several different understandings of what this new version of boy means, and who gets to claim it as a marker of identity. In this chapter, I want to explore these competing meanings of boi as well as the various genealogies behind the term. I am interested not simply in what the several meanings of boi have in common, but even more so in the ways in which certain subcommunities have come to police the term. In other words, while personally fascinated with the story of boi, I am critically interested in mapping who gets to tell that story. To place this development in context, the emergence of boi is only one manifestation of a larger linguistic liberalization in LGBT communities. As Rona Marech (2004) explains in the San Francisco Chronicle, “With the universe of gender and sexual identities expanding, a gay youth culture emerging, acceptance of gays rising and label loyalty falling, the gay lexicon has exploded with scores of new words and blended phrases that delineate every conceivable stop on the identity spectrum—at least for this week.” Marech goes on to offer as examples terms such as “polygendered,” “bi-dyke,” “stud,” “stem,” and, of course, “boi” (2004). But while this lexical explosion would seem to be one benefit of greater acceptance of LGBT individuals, since it opens the possibilities for identity, it is actually a dangerous development, for these terms are what Tony Thorne of the English Language Center

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at King’s College London calls “unstable” (2004). Jonathan Duffy quotes Thorne as saying “They’re liable to change their connotations and meanings depending on who is saying them, to whom, in what circumstances, sometimes even depending on their tone of voice” (2004). Given this instability, literacy is crucial. You need to know not simply how to read the term but how to deploy it as well. So what exactly is a boi? That all depends on who you ask. One location for the emergence of the term is within the lesbian community. And yet even within that one community there are various meanings for the term—“it’s a fluid identity,” writes Arial Levy, “and that’s the whole point” (2004). But Levy also identifies a key common denominator: “What all [lesbian] bois have in common is a lack of interest in embodying any kind of girliness, but they are too irreverent to adopt the heavy-duty, highly circumscribed butch role,” a description supported by one self-proclaimed boi dyke who claims that “boi dyke is simply an extension of the butch community” (2004; What am I?, n.d.). Levy goes on to locate several possible genealogies for this understanding of boi, ranging from gay male SM relationships to the increasingly visible transgender and transsexual communities. Certainly, the term has strong roots within the transgender community, where it is used to describe a female-to-male or FTM transsexual. Thus veganboi writes on his homepage, “I’m not a girl, not really a boy, but somewhere in between, but I identify more as a boi, so the label would actually be FTM” (n.d.). In terms of the genealogy of boi in the trans community, Jes Kraus (2003) relates the altered spelling to feminist reclamation of words like “women” through spellings like “w-o-m-y-n.” Interestingly, then, the trans and lesbian senses of the term seems to reference each other for the term’s origin. For boi dykes, the term emerges from the FTM community. For trans bois, it is related to the kind of feminist practices traditionally associated with the lesbian community. Of course, boi dykes also reference, in part, gay male sadomasochistic (SM) relationships—Daddy/boy configurations in which “boy” refers not to age but to mindset and in which the relationship is characterized by dominance, submission, and affection. Gay male leather thus functions as another milieu for the circulation of this term. A search through screen names on America Online, for example, would yield any number of boys and bois. Other Web sites devoted to gay male SM similarly are populated by both boy spellings. On the site World Leathermen, for example, Beardadmaster (n.d.) advertises for a “Son & boi” and CigarDaddy (n.d.) seeks “likeminded Boiz.” But, curiously,

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within this particular community, the terms seem to be, at times, interchangeable. Thus on the same site LordFalconJock69 (n.d.) seeks a “boy/boi” and ROPEDBOI (n.d.) refers to himself as a boy. This makes some sense since boi is neither a new term nor a new identity within this community, just a new spelling. One possible genealogy for gay leather bois has to do with a contiguous sexual community, gay skinheads. Submissive gay skinheads sometime use this spelling as a way to mark both their boy and skin identities. “Oi!”—named by Gary Bushell—is a kind of skinhead music, and so boi, in this sense, specifically marks a gay male submissive as a skin. Skinhead bois often intermingle with the larger gay male leather community, which helps explain the circulation of boi out of the skin community and into gay male leather in general. The aforementioned World Leathermen site, for example, is only one site of several run by a single company. These sites are all interlinked and include a site devoted to gay skinheads. Thus, while boi has a very specific meaning for gay skins, because that meaning is analogous to boy for gay leathermen, the two terms intermingle as the two groups do. There is, too, a more general understanding of boi in the gay community. Reacting to Levy’s description of boi dykes, Towleroad (2004) blogs that “Gay men have adopted the term as a way to give off the impression of youth and innocence while still retaining enough of a masculine sensibility to not be considered effeminate. It’s the anti-bear.” Yet while “confused” by the adoption of the term among lesbians, his description of the gay boi is remarkably similar, in some ways, to the dyke boi (Towleroad 2004). Just as boi is counterposed to the more “grown-up” butch for lesbians, boi is here set against the more “grown-up” bear of the gay community. We might assume that these gay bois are white, based on the general perceived racial composition of the gay male community, but boi also circulates specifically within the gay African-American community. There is, for example, a very specific black gay male understanding of boi in the leather community. Lolita Wolf (2004), posting to the gl-asb mailing list, writes that Rodtney Ross used boi because “He felt that as an African American being called ‘boy’ was inferior but being called ‘boi’ was a term of endearment.” Phil Ross (2004) adds to Wolf’s observation: “so far as I know, I created this spelling as the ‘familiar’ of boy to distinguish it’s [sic] use in the African-American community as a term of endearment. It has NOTHING whatsoever to do with gender. It’s an oral language and so the spellings are ‘made-up’; but All [sic]

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African Americans recognize the difference of use by inflection.” Ross’s claim that “all” African Americans recognize the difference is, perhaps, unsupportable, and yet boi clearly circulates in a larger AfricanAmerican gay community. The homepage for Club Boi, a gay bar in Miami, explains that “The name CLUB BOI speaks for itself. Run by bruthas with years of club experience who created an environment especially for the ‘bruthas’ in the South Florida area. The Kids have their clubs, the girls have theirs, but this is OURS” (n.d.). In this usage, boi seems to be specifically African-American but not specifically gay. One of the two men who make up the singing group OutKast goes by the name Big Boi. There are other bois as well. Singer Avril Lavigne’s hit debut was the song “Sk8r Boi,” which led blogger Towleroad (2004) to comment “Apparently there are straight bois as well.” And, in the discussion of boi on the gl-asb mailing list, Steve Scofield notes that the emergence of boi can also be explained by the limitations of identity on the Internet, specifically the limitations of various screen names. He notes the creation of “Musc, musl, mscl for muscle; bare, ber, behr for bear. So [he] suggest[s] that boi and boyz and boiz are used by many simply as alternative spellings without any awareness of the cultural context” (2004). It is perhaps in part this usage of boi—divorced from specific meaning—that has prompted a certain policing of the term. While boi is a term with multiple meanings for multiple communities, and while across its usages it seems to reflect a renegotiated masculinity, there are isolated stirrings to restrict both its meaning and circulation. This is the very instability Thorne warned of, and this is precisely why having a fine-tuned literacy is crucial when using the term boi. In his World Leathermen profile, for example, BullKiser writes: “Please note: if you spell boy as boi, then don’t bother to contact me . . . you obviously don’t know leathersex and its history well enough to create trust with me. A boi is not of male gender in Old Guard Leathersex” (n.d.). MrKevin’s profile has a similar tone in reference to boi: “I have been in the BD/SM community long enough . . . to know the term ‘boi’ was coined to describe a biological female who identified as a ‘boy’. Even though pop culture has now taken on the term. It should make sense that I find it odd and somewhat telling about ones experience level when a biological male describes himself as a ‘boi’” (n.d.). MuscleCubAOL seems even more adamant: “If you REALLY KNEW what the term ‘boi’ meant, you’d never EVER use it. Ever. Ask a sociopolitical historian” (n.d.). Not being a sociopolitical historian myself,

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and not having one handy to ask, I can’t help but wonder what the term really does mean. And yet again, I’m not sure how to read this policing. While certain segments of the gay male leather community seem to be vehemently rejecting the usage of the term in their community, what remains unclear is why. Is there, for example, a kind of transphobia in operation here, where the masculinity of the biologically male leather community needs to be protected from FTM intrusion? Or is the opposite true? Is this a way to protect and respect female leather boys and FTMs? Or, perhaps, is this simply a reactionary response from older members of a community? After all, with his 18 year history in the BD/SM community, MrKevin’s response to boi seems similar to the response of some butch/femme lesbians to the term. Levy quotes Deborah, an out femme dyke for fourteen years: “And the whole b-o-i business. I’m like, what the fuck? What does that mean? In one respect I thought it meant a little bit butch of center, slightly more andro, with this whole tweezed-eyebrow business that makes me want to puke” (2004). These questions are a crisis in my own literacy: I just don’t know how to read these reactions to boi. But they are part of boi’s story, as surely as any of its meanings or origins. And so boi is a story without an ending. For now. Language, after all, never remains unstable. Ultimately, perhaps, boi will have a clear meaning, one that will, most likely, erase other meanings and one that will, we might suppose, have a single if metaleptically constructed genealogy. In other words, some day boi will grow up. For now, though, boi’s just a boi—mischievous, playful, energetic, and wild. And that is quite a story.

NOTE This chapter originally appeared in MEAT JOURNAL.COM, Vol. 1.1 (Spring 2005). Reprinted with permission.

REFERENCES Beardadmaster. (n.d.). beardadmaster. Retrieved October 27, 2004 from http://www.worldleathermen.com/beardadmaster. BullKiser. (n.d.). BullKiser. Retrieved October 12, 2004 from http://www .worldleathermen.com/bullkiser. CigarDaddy. (n.d.). CigarDaddy. Retrieved October 21, 2004 from http:// www.worldleathermen.com/cigardaddy.

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Club Boi. (n.d.). clubboi.com. Retrieved March 14, 2005 from http://www .clubboi.com/gay_black_miami.html. Duffy, J. (2004). “The terms they are a-changin”. Retrieved March 4, 2005 from http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fe/-/1/hi/magazine/3554684.stm. Kraus, J. (2003). Defining ourselves. Retrieved March 4, 2005 from http:// www.uusociety.org/sermons/define.html. Levy, A. (2004). Where the bois are. Retrieved March 4, 2005 from http:// www.newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/news/features/n_9709/. LordFalconJock69. (n.d.). LordFalconJock69. Retrieved December 14, 2004 from http://www.worldleathermen.com/lordfalconjock69. Marech, R. (2004). Nuances of gay identities reflected in new language. Retrieved March 4, 2005 from http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi ?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/02/08/MNGKO4RNJP1.DTL. MrKevin. (n.d.). MrKevin. Retrieved September 30, 2004 from http:// www.worldleathermen.com/mrkevin. MuscleCubAOL. (n.d.). MuscleCubAOL. Retrieved October 17, 2004 from http://www.worldleathermen.com/musclecubaol. ROPEDBOI. (n.d.). ROPEDBOI. Retrieved October 12, 2004 from http:// www.worldleathermen.com/ropedboi. Ross, P. (2004, February 9). Re: “boi”, boy, boyz; etc, etc. Message posted to gl-asb mailing list, archived at http://groups.queernet.org/cgi-bin/mj_wwwusr ?user=&passw=&func=lists-long-full&extra=gl-asb. Scofield, S. (2004, February 9). Re: “boi”, boy, boyz; etc, etc. Message posted to gl-asb mailing list, archived at http://groups.queernet.org/cgi-bin/ mj_wwwusr?user=&passw=&func=lists-long-full&extra=gl-asb. Towleroad. (2004). Boi crazy. Retrieved March 4, 2005 from http://towleroad .typedpad.com/towleroad/2004/01/who_are_the_rea.html. Veganboi. (n.d.). Coming out: again and again. Retrieved March 4, 2005 from http://www.angelfire.com/folk/veganboi/comginout.html. What am I? (n.d.). Retrieved March 4, 2005 from http://boidyke78.tripod.com/ id4.html. Wolf, L. (February 8, 2004). Re: “boi,” “pig” and the evolution of language. Message posted to gl-asb mailing list, archived at http://groups.queernet.org/ cgi-bin/mj_wwwusr?user=&passw=&func=lists-long-full&extra=gl-asb.

Chapter 11

He’s My Gay Mother: Ballroom Houses, Housework, and Parenting1 Marlon M. Bailey

In November of 2005, the National Black Justice Coalition (NBJC)2 held a State Wide Town Hall Meeting in Oakland, California to discuss their national campaign for marriage equality. A political comrade of mine suggested that I go to this meeting to get a better sense of what members of the black LGBT community think about same-sex marriage. For much of the meeting, it was clear that although the gathering was said to be designed to allow for people in the community to express their views on the issue, the executive director of the NBJC was aggressively promoting “coming out” and marriage as the most important ways to improve the lives of black LGBT people. These sentiments seemed to be shared by most of the members of the panel as well as members of the audience. Some people at the meeting even suggested that marriage is an effective way to decrease HIV/AIDS infection rates among LGBT African Americans, it will raise our economic standing, and it is a central means through which we can resist and eradicate the various forms of gender and sexual inequality that we face. While listening to this litany of so-called virtues of marriage in general, and the direct benefits that same-sex marriage supposedly offers black LJBT people in particular, I became disheartened and confused. Fortunately, one of the panel members expressed concern that we were

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not subjecting marriage to scrutiny and that marriage may not be “our” issue. Having felt uneasy about expressing my strong opposition to same-sex marriage in the midst of such fervent support for it, the reservations expressed by the panel member was an opportunity for me to raise questions regarding the narrow identity and class-based assumptions that formed the basis of the discussion. I suggested that some of the members of black LGBT communities are ambivalent about this promotion of marriage because it ultimately gives the State the license to intrude in our lives and regulate black gender and sexual relations, while rights and privileges that should be accessible to all people/ citizens are cordoned off and circumscribed within the regulatory institution of marriage. Chiefly, I was concerned about people who are marginalized in multiple ways, those of us who do not enjoy race and class privileges and those of us who do not have the option of making open claims of nonnormative gender and sexual identities due to the often violently homophobic environments and conditions in which we live. When I raised these concerns, I was rebuffed by the executive director who suggested that we all have choices, and we should all choose to “come out” as a form of resistance, just as our foremothers and forefathers of the civil rights movement chose to fight racial segregation. He added that there are those of us who have class privilege and many of us are the ones who do not come out and that it is essential that we do so. For him, “coming out” and marriage equality are analogous to civil rights struggles against racial discrimination even though the oppression that black gender and sexual marginials experience often comes from within black communities. Thus, the homophobia that many black LGBT people experience within black communities (as well as in society at large) is joined with the racism that we face in overall society, make for a very complicated set of conditions under which black, primarily working-class, LGBT people live on the daily basis, conditions for which same-sex marriage is not a solution nor a desire, at least for most of the people with whom I work and socialize. In light of the experience I described above, I am concerned about the hastening move toward a politic and logic of what Lisa Duggan refers to as the new homonormativity. Homonormative logics do not contest dominant heteronormative assumptions and institutions, but rather uphold and sustain them, while pushing for a depoliticized gay constituency that aims to be included within gender and sexual normativity.3 And what is more disturbing is that a small number of black LGBT people purport to represent and speak for the entire

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community, and in most cases, subordinating and excluding the positionalities and experiences of working-class black LGBT people. How can one organize one’s life differently within this hegemonic discourse of marriage? Can we conceive of forms of kinship that are not based on heteronormativized notions of family? It is within these questions and contexts that I situate Ballroom Culture as an alternative that many black working-class LGBT people have taken up. The members of the Ballroom community create and sustain a queered form of kinship that revises normative gender and sexual relations, notions of family, and community. This chapter delineates the dimensions of Ballroom Culture in two main points. First, I examine how, through a reconstitution of gender and sexual identities, Ballroom houses revise the gender and sexual relations of the familial structure. While in some ways, houses reify the gender hierarchies and social arrangements characteristic of the biological families from which they have been excluded, I am more interested in the necessary labor or what I refer to as “housework” that the members take up that sustains the community. Second, in order to enact the labor of care that is necessary to the maintenance of the house, Ballroom members forge parental bonds based on friendship and partnership rather than romantic and sexual ones. This form of parenting exists in tension with the roles that parents play in dominant configurations of family and kinship. I see the social maintenance of the Ballroom house through “house work” and parenting based on friendship as cultural labor. This cultural labor points to the ingredients per se to the building of a community within collective marginalization that has not only material and social dimensions, but psychic and spirituals ones as well. BALLROOM CULTURE Notoriously underground in most places, Ballroom culture, sometimes called “house culture,” is a national black and Latino/a queer phenomenon where gender and sexual performativity, kinship, and community coalesce to create an alternative world. My overall study focuses on the Ballroom community in Detroit, Michigan and highlights two inextricable features upon which the entire culture depends: flamboyant competitive ball rituals, and houses, the familylike structures that produce these rituals of performance. Ballroom gender and sexual identities and familial roles are based on system that offers more gender and sexual identities from which to choose

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than available to its members in the “outside” world. What members of the Ballroom community refer to as the “gender system” consists of the following: Gender Identity System 1. Butch Queens (gay men) 2. Femme Queens (male-to-female transgender people at various stages of reassignment) 3. Butch Queen up in Drags (gay men that dress and perform as women) 4. Butches (female-to-male transgender people at various stages of reassignment) 5. Men (males born as male and that live as men but do not identify as gay) 6. Women (females born as female and live as female and are straight, lesbian, or queer) This gender system is an important form of labor and is the social machinery of Ballroom Culture. This system structures the performance criteria at the balls as well as the members’ roles in the houses. Houses are led by “mothers” (Butch Queens, Femme Queens, and Women) and “fathers,” (Butch Queens and Butches) who, regardless of age, sexual orientation, and social status, provide a labor of care and love with/for numerous Black LGBT people who have been rejected by their blood families, religious institutions, and society at large. This presents distinct challenges in Detroit, a place known as both the “chocolate city” and the “motor city,” signifying its unique racial and class character. Many of the LGBT people that I interviewed described Detroit as considerably homophobic. I might add, Detroit is not unique in this sense given the marked increase in homophobic violence cases reported throughout the country. The intense, often collectively competitive, performances within the ball rituals create a space of celebration, affirmation, and critique. Thus the ball combined with the social relations within the houses outside of it are mutually constitutive and, taken together, make up the world of Ballroom Culture. Members of the Ballroom community undertake a labor of care and love that Black communities fail to provide for people who occupy the lowest realms of society, socially, economically, and politically.

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Similar to gender and sexuality, for Ballroom, houses are performative. Not able to rely on fetishized biological/blood bonds to define them, the naming of and the identification with the house function in tandem with the work behind it. In other words, the existence of the house depends on its members, the relationships in which they are engaged, and individual and collective performances at the balls. For instance, Kali from the now defunct House of Ford described a house: A house is a clique of friends that got to know each other within the gay life. The establishment of our house was a result of us being friends for 6–7 years. Most of us were just a group of friends and then the year of 1998 decided to become a house. According to my understanding, there were about 5 of my friends who were coming back from a trip to Atlanta during Black Gay Pride, and they came up with the idea to start a house. We’ve been together every since. Kali somewhat downplays the kin-making component to the house, but foregrounds the role of friendship. Thus, such friendship within the context of the house as a family-like structure is an important element to Ballroom members’ reconstitution of the experience of kinship. Offering a slightly different view, Prada Escada elaborates: First of all, a house is a collection of like minded-individuals that share common interests, who for the most part can agree on different issues and ideas . . . or they can just agree to disagree. It is born from groups of good-good friends. The house structure is geared specifically towards the ball scene (particularly in Detroit). As far as its purpose, houses provide a source of family nurturing that often times a lot of kids don’t get at home. It gives kids a sense of pride in saying a member of such-a-such house or that Miss Thing is my mother, particularly if the house or parent is thought of as sickening4 in Detroit. Prada speaks to the function of houses beyond “just a clique of friends” to suggest that they serve multiple functions, including a space of friendship, nurturing, conflict, affirmation, and belonging. Further on in Prada’s response, he suggested, in some cases, that houses serve as an actual physical shelter for “those lost souls to craft and cohabitate.”

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Lovely of the House of Mohair, only 20 years old, articulates the need to earn the right to be a part of a house through commitment: My house is a place of refuge. Here, we do not have a lot of balls. We focus on family, community, and togetherness . . . Some people jump from house, to house, to house, but in my house, once you jump out you can’t come back. I am not going to play that. That is no respect . . . So yeah they jump around here, but I tell them in the beginning, “once you leave here, do not think about coming back. And whatever happens don’t look for my protection because it was your choice.” As participants in the production of a new social sphere, one that provides the kind of support, recognition, and critique that many members do not get in the outside world, Ballroom members are always marking and reconciling the difference between just being a member of a house and distinguishing themselves from others within the house through commitment and deeds. All of my interlocutors’ explanations rest on the notion that Ballroom house members, for whatever reason, decide to participate in the “doing of family.” Thus, in deciding to be family, one has to be committed to what the doing of family entails. This is an implicit critique of their biological family’s failure to perform the labor that the concept of family signifies. Ultimately, in Ballroom, the house and house chapters only exist as long as the members do the work. BALLROOM PARENTING Even though many gay people are vigorously engaged in a struggle for marriage equality, marriage is a failing institution in the United States. This is in large part due to the perceptions of marriage as an inadequate institution among the national citizenry. Many people are finding it difficult to adhere to rigid heteronormative constraints associated with marriage. As E. Patrick Johnson notes, the pervasive heteronormative logic of marriage sees two loving heterosexuals nesting together as the ultimate sign of family wholeness.5 Actually, this does not vibe with many people’s lives. I have written elsewhere that historically, the United States has always sought to violently attack, aggressively undermine, and ultimately delegitimize black cultural institutions. Black people have had to do whatever they could to sustain the entire community by creating a variety of kin structures to care

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for our children and ourselves and to, as a community, struggle against sexualized, gendered, racial forms of oppression. For black people, then, such rampant practices have instantiated a vexed relationship with the State and its sanctioned institutions like marriage. This is a far different scenario for our white, especially male, counterparts. Thus, marriage, parenting, and family in actual practice have meant something very different to black people than what can be gleaned from current discourses on these topics. As a product of both American culture and black culture, Ballroom’s kinship system is, in part, an outgrowth of both dominant and alternative forms of kinship. As a dissidentifactory strategy, the Ballroom house structure both reinscribes hegemonic gender and sexual hierarchies within the house unit while recasting what bodies actually engage in the domestic labor of the house. For example, foundational to Ballroom kinship and the community in general is a form of parenting that is nonheteronormative and non-romantically/intimate. I argue that Ballroom members emphasize the actual practice of parenting as opposed to a mere title or an entitlement based on biological ties. Ballroom parenting brings into focus how mothering (as socially configured domestic labor) bears the brunt of the work of parenting and thus is an integral aspect of the friendship and partnership that leads the Ballroom household. It is worth mentioning that many house mothers and fathers are single parents. Most mothers are Butch Queens, although increasingly there are more Femme Queens and Women running houses. Masculinity, whether it is attached to and/or performed by male, female, or transgender bodies, to some degree, enjoys privilege within the Ballroom scene as it does outside of it. This element influences how members chose to be referred to as either fathers or mothers depending what “kind” of masculinity or femininity they embody, perform, and represent. Having said that, as one can guess, in the house, mothers do most of the work. For instance, Danny of the House of Galliano stated that: Housemothers are recognized for mostly her performance experience. They are usually femme and usually walk femme categories. 90% of housemothers are older and have been around for awhile. They are usually into mothering . . . doing the things that mothers do. . . . If they are good, they are sometimes asked to start other houses in other places. The most important thing for a house to have is a legendary mother.

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As Danny further states, mothers are into the “mothering.” House mothers do the labor of what Evelyn Nakano Glenn describes as the social, rather than biological, construct of “mothering.”6 All of my informants state that the mother performs most of the labor of care on which the house depends. “She arranges all of the events and makes most of the decisions,” says Danny. Let me offer another illustration of this point. In a brief exchange between Ariel, a Femme Queen, and Grandfather Reno, a Butch, Ariel expresses her realization that being a mother is difficult: Ariel:

Reno I never knew that being a mother of a house would be this hard but it is and when I see that things is going well, it keeps me going and pressing on.

Reno:

Yes Mother, it is tough being a parent. If I may give some sound advice . . . remember our job is to help the kids learn to help themselves. We are guides, not “getovers.” You are a natural nurturer, like a “real mother” should be.

This exchange, along with the identities involved, demonstrates how complicated gender and parental roles are in Ballroom Culture. In most cases, house mothers are Butch Queens; therefore, the division of labor that makes the mother the worker, the domestic laborer, to be performed by a woman, in Ballroom houses, it is assumed by a gay man. In the case of Ariel and Reno, Ariel is a Femme Queen and Reno is a Butch, two identities that have primary coherence in the Ballroom scene. (Femme Queen is an identity that was created by Ballroom and does not exist outside of it, and Butches exist outside of Ballroom but not in the same way.) As a biological female but living as a man, Reno takes on the role of the “fatherly” advisor. Contrary to most Ballroom experiences with their biological fathers, as a biological male, now living as a woman, Ariel is the “mothered” mother, the nurturer, the caretaking and the socially configured domestic of the house. In specific ways, masculinity still trumps femininity, yet Ballroom allows for more flexible and elastic masculine and feminine roles and performances. This reconstitution of gender and parental roles directly influence the parental relationship in houses. Again, by and large, parental relationships in houses are built on platonic relationships rather than a romantic/intimate one. In some cases, they are more like what we call “judies” in Ballroom to signify hanging buddies. In general, although they have conflicts, intimate/sexual struggles and politics do not dictate house parents’ relationship, at least not in the same way that they

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do in the outside world. Parents are enthralled in building and sustaining the house, to make sure its members can compete, and to make sure all the kids are emotionally, morally, and in some cases spiritually provided for. For example, the house parents of the House of Galliano have been running the house together, as friends, for six years (at the time of the interview). Danny says that typically parents are not “together” nor do they always reflect a butch/femme binary. Sometimes, both the mother and the father are Butch Queens and feminine but sometimes not.7 Friendship underpins most relationships in Ballroom. When I asked Richy Rich (a Butch Queen) house mother of the Detroit chapter of the House of CMB (Cash Money Boys) what influenced him to be a mother and to choose his mother he said: friendship (Mother Goddess the Overall Mother of the House of Rodeo, shook his head in agreement). In 2002, the House of Prodigy’s Detroit Chapter was led by a masculine Butch Queen father and a biological woman who is queer and their relationship was based on friendship. Within the Ballroom social sphere, where its members do not enjoy a diverse range of intimacy within their biological families, Ballroom houses offer a space for love, care, and critique between people who share similar life experiences. It is important to understand that not only is this bond drawn on characteristics of kin, it is also based on a common competitive drive to “slay and snatch” trophies for the house and its individual members to gain legendary acclaim throughout the Ballroom scene. Again, the focus is on the work involved in parenting, in bonding, in slaying and snatching, and in building a kin unit as a part of an overall minoritarian sphere. CONCLUSION Ballroom exemplifies the transitive nature of culture that directly deconstructs itself and illustrates that just as diaspora is never finished, never an accomplished fact, the tasks of self-fashioning, creating and sustaining social configurations such as houses, and in effect building a community is ongoing. Even when this cultural labor is steeped in the structures of oppression that it purports to stand against, the productive space in-between full hegemony and full transformation or the interstices is where possibilities and hope exist. Ballroom houses offer an alternative perspective to the same-sex marriage debate, if its members are ever asked, that takes into account the very complex realities that structure black queer lives. I do not mean to suggest that

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Ballroom has all the answers; instead, I want to reveal how its member “make do” with what they have in order to survive. NOTES 1. A version of this paper was presented at the 2005 American Anthropological Association’s (AAA) Annual Conference in Washington D.C. 2. In the National Black Justice Coalition brochure, the organization describes itself as “the only national civil rights organization of concerned Black, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals and our allies. Our organization and its programs address the problem of gay inequality in America with a goal to increase African American support for gay and lesbian equality.” 3. Lisa Duggan, The Twilight of Equality? Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics, and the Attack on Democracy (Boston: Beacon Press, 2003), 50. 4. In black queer lingo, “sickening” means that one is so good or that one’s clothing is so exceptional that it is difficult to accept. One has a hard time looking at it. 5. E. Patrick Johnson, Appropriating Blackness: Performance and the Politics of Authenticity (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003), 79. 6. Evelyn Nakano Glenn, “Social Construction of Mothering: a Thematic Overview,” In Mothering, Ideology, Experience, and Agency, ed. Grace Chang, Linda Rennie Forcey, and Evelyn Nakano Glenn (New York: Routledge, 1994), 3. 7. Parental couples usually consist of two Butch Queens, or a Butch Queen and a Femme Queen, or a Butch Queen and a Butch.

Chapter 12

From the Margins to the Mainstream: Communication about Travel and Tourism in the Gay Community, 1960–2000 David R. Coon

Giving a speech at the 2006 convention of the International Gay and Lesbian Travel Association (IGLTA), Mark Elderkin, founder of the popular Web site Gay.com, said that “the evolution of the gay travel market [had] been 12 years in the making.”1 He made his comment in response to the perceived overnight development of what is now a $54 billion industry in the United States.2 The perception is understandable given that in 2004, just two years before Elderkin’s speech, cities like Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Bloomington, Indiana, made headlines because of their attempts to attract gay and lesbian travelers. 3 Though these seemingly radical moves initially drew skepticism, they were very lucrative for the cities involved, and soon other cities and resorts across the country were clamoring to construct their own promotional campaigns to lure gay and lesbian travelers. Jeff Guaracino, the marketer behind Philadelphia’s gay-friendly campaign, notes that 2005 and 2006 were “pivotal years in gay tourism, with a record number of destinations coming out as gay friendly.”4 Cities like Boston, Dallas, Atlanta, Washington D.C., and Phoenix launched campaigns targeting gay and lesbian tourists. Membership in the IGLTA grew to over a thousand members, as airlines, hotels, resorts,

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travel agents, and rental car companies saw the possibilities offered by this market.5 Gay and lesbian travel periodicals like The Out Traveler began appearing alongside other travel magazines in mainstream bookstores. In essence, gay and lesbian tourists came to be seen as a viable target market, and cities and companies large and small were quick to pitch their products and services to this highly desirable group. Although gay tourism went from being a risky marketing experiment to a booming growth market in a very short time, Elderkin’s comment that the market had been 12 years in the making suggested that it was not quite the overnight success it appeared to be, and that tourism professionals should recognize the years of work involved in developing the market. However, Elderkin’s timeline is still too short. While the 12 years before 2006 may account for the recent work of marketers trying to identify and appeal to gays and lesbians as a market, it is a mistake to think that gay tourism did not exist before marketers recognized it, or that it was in fact created by marketers. The true development of the gay and lesbian tourism industry has a much longer and more complicated genealogy, generally mirroring GLBT struggles and successes over the years, including secrecy and fear in the pre-Stonewall1960s, the growing gay rights movement in the 1970s, and the AIDS crisis in the 1980s. In addition to being too short, the 12 year timeline suggested by Elderkin also ignores the efforts of the men and women who were excluded by the mainstream travel industry for decades, and thus took it upon themselves to develop their own means of exchanging valuable travel information. Filling the gaps left by traditional travel agents, gays and lesbians provided a subtle yet significant form of resistance to the oppressive conditions placed upon them by heteronormative society. This chapter traces the development of gay tourist promotion over the second half of the twentieth century, showing the many years of growth and change that created the huge market only recently discovered by the mainstream.6 Gay tourism’s evolution from near invisibility in the 1960s to a multi-billion dollar industry in the 2000s raises a number of questions. For example, during these developmental years before gay travel magazines, Web sites, and high-profile ad campaigns, how did travelers know where to find gay or gay-friendly establishments and other safe spaces? Who made such information available? How was this information collected and distributed? How did the exchange of information change over the years, and what did those changes signify within the broader context of identity politics and the social struggles faced by gays and lesbians in American society?

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Through the analysis of a series of texts dealing with travel, including gay-oriented periodicals and travel guides written for homosexuals, this chapter answers the above questions to reveal how gays and lesbians communicated about tourism in the years before becoming a prized target market. 7 Without the aid of large promotional budgets, publishing houses, or national networks of communication, gays and lesbians found ways to exchange information about travel and tourism, often relying on underground channels. The tactics employed in this endeavor display the creativity and ingenuity that have become vital survival tools for a group frequently ignored or ostracized by mainstream heteronormative society. As the materials examined in this chapter demonstrate, the current boom in gay tourism—driven by mainstream marketers and large corporations— is founded upon four decades of development by individuals within the gay and lesbian community.8 FOUNDATIONS: THE 1960S The 1960s are known for their political turbulence and upheaval. The Civil Rights movement and Vietnam protests gave voice to racial minorities and a youthful counter-culture. Homosexuals, however, remained largely invisible and silent despite the efforts of homophile organizations like the Mattachine Society, ONE, Inc., and the Daughters of Bilitis, all of which worked to raise awareness and protect the rights of homosexuals in the United States.9 Writing about the social atmosphere in the 1960s, journalists Dudley Clendinen and Adam Nagourney note that most homosexuals “kept their feelings inside, identifying themselves only to each other, if they did so at all.”10 Historian John D’Emilio suggests that, “Since the power of homophobia in postWorld War II America was so strong, it necessarily forced things gay into the background” for most of the 1960s.11 Homosexual behavior was criminalized, as evidenced by the regular police raids in gay bars and the confiscation of gay materials sent through the postal service.12 This does not mean, however, that homosexuals did not communicate with one another or find ways to congregate and meet other homosexuals. They simply had to be more careful and secretive about their activities. It was in this environment that the first recognizable traces of homosexual travel appeared in significant numbers. A notable example of this is the series of trips organized by ONE, Inc., a homophile organization based in San Francisco. The first trip, a tour of Europe, was organized in 1964 by the Social Services Division

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of ONE, Inc., which had previously been devoted to assisting homosexuals facing difficulties with regard to housing, employment, the law, or other troubles. The trip was “available to Friends of ONE (Associate class) only,” and was primarily publicized through ONE Confidential, a periodical distributed only to the Friends of ONE (those who paid dues or gave donations).13 As noted by the editors in the December 1964 issue of ONE Confidential, it was “not the Social Service Divisions’ intention to open the doors wide to any save those whose support of ONE has been demonstrated.” 14 In addition to running articles to attract travelers in the months leading up to the trip, ONE Confidential published a wrap-up of the trip, including letters from some of the men who had gone, and describing the hospitality of the various homophile organizations who had acted as hosts in the countries visited. Noting that this was the “first such enterprise ever undertaken by a homophile organization,” the editors declared it a success and announced plans for future trips to Europe and other destinations.15 Yearly European tours were eventually joined by a Caribbean cruise and a Mediterranean Holiday. As the pre-tour and post-tour articles in ONE Confidential demonstrate, these early tours were intended for, and in the end involved, a small, select group of individuals. Only dues-paying Friends of ONE were notified, and only those paying enough to qualify as “Associate class” were allowed to participate. The trip was essentially coordinated by a network of friends, a model that would dominate homosexual tourism for the next couple of decades. ONE Confidential was not the only periodical to discuss gay travel in the 1960s. The Los Angeles Advocate launched in 1967, initially targeting the gay community of southern California, and eventually becoming national in scope as The Advocate. Although not specifically a travel publication, it featured gay travel and tourism information early and in a number of ways. Preeminently, discussions of travel appeared in columns and feature stories. Early issues featured a column called “The Gay Traveler,” which included personal accounts of trips to various cities and offered tips about interesting attractions, gay bars in the area, and the best places to meet people, find a date, or engage in an anonymous sexual encounter.16 Along with occasional columns, The Advocate sometimes ran standalone stories about travel, such as the February 1969 article “Holy Toledo: Midwest Swings,” about the gay scene in and around Toledo, Ohio. 17 Moreover, early issues of The Advocate occasionally offered updates on laws, regulations, and civil rights issues in various cities, states, and countries, providing helpful

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information for travelers to better understand the social climate of destinations that they might visit.18 Furthermore, The Advocate’s 1960s advertising specifically promoted gay travel. One ad in the August 1968 issue announced “Tours exclusively for guys. To every major area: Europe, Caribbean Mexico, Orient, etc. Beginning with a Christmas Tour to Hawaii.”19 The ad did not say who was organizing the trip, but gave Los Angeles contact information for anyone interested in more details. Another ad the following spring announced “Trip ‘69’ to Europe,” which was organized by Jackson Travel Service in San Francisco and described as “a leisure tour of Europe for businessmen visiting London” and included “experienced guides to assist you in searching out the gay life!”20 These advertisements show that there were multiple groups arranging excursions specifically for gay travelers in the late 1960s, and unlike the trips organized by ONE, Inc., these ads did not mention membership restrictions and were seemingly open to anyone who could afford the trip. The majority of the ads in early issues of The Advocate were for Los Angeles bars, restaurants, bathhouses, and book stores, which would have been helpful not only to those living in Southern California, but also to visitors. In addition to the local ads, early issues occasionally ran ads for establishments in other cities, most likely aimed at Los Angeles residents traveling to places such as Reno, Seattle, or Vancouver.21 The other notable references to travel in early Advocate issues were the advertisements for gay travel guides (discussed in more detail below). The most commonly advertised guide was Barfly, a guide assembled, at least in part, by Advocate staffers, and eventually published under the Advocate umbrella. Additional ads trumpeted the arrival of the 69 Gay Directory and Carl Driver’s Gay Europe ‘70. The Advocate may be the most recognizable and significant gay periodical of the era, but other publications also provided information about gay travel. The Homosexual Citizen, published by the Mattachine Society of Washington, D.C., focused on “news of civil liberties and social rights for homosexuals.”22 As part of this discussion, the journal often included reports on the progress of rights in certain locations, such as Illinois, Russia, and Yemen. As with similar reports in The Advocate, these articles were not written as tourist guides, but they would have been helpful for gays traveling to the destinations discussed, letting them know where it was or was not safe to express their sexual identity openly. In June of 1965, The Cruise News and World Report made its debut. Produced in San Francisco, Cruise News was a tabloid-size publication,

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usually about eight pages long, providing news of interest to homosexuals, including updates on rights and civil liberties as well as entertainment and humor. Cruise News had a limited circulation and was only published for a few years, but it exemplifies the small-scale, underground publications that allowed members of the gay community to communicate in the 1960s. Sent by mail to those who paid for a subscription (in “plain, sealed envelopes” according to the editors), this small publication also included detailed information about select cities of interest.23 The first issue, for example, featured a fold-out map of San Francisco with listings for tourist spots, restaurants, clubs, news stands, and “places to go and not to go” when cruising for sex. The second issue featured a similar map of Los Angeles (referred to as “Gomorrah, a sleepy Mexican village 450 miles south of Sodom”) with the same general information that was offered for San Francisco.24 The editors did not get so involved with cities outside the state of California, but future issues contained short articles describing the gay scenes of other American cities, based on writers’ personal experiences. In addition to the articles and maps, Cruise News ran ads for a number of travel guides, including the Lavender Baedeker, Lavender World, and The Gray Guide, all of which were published by Strait and Associates, the publishers of Cruise News. Beyond these periodicals were the many gay travel guides produced during the 1960s, most of which were simply lists of gay or gay-friendly establishments in various parts of the world. The first known guide of this type, Gay Guide to Europe, was printed in Paris in 1960 by Ganymede press. This 14-page guide was clearly an amateur production, printed with a ditto machine on standard letter-size paper, folded and stapled. The guide offered a broad introduction to European culture in general, along with a few comments about the status and behavior of homosexuals in each country listed. The section on France, for example, noted that the French (gays and straights alike) almost never invited strangers home because of “the lack of privacy due to the housing shortage and the feeling that the home is reserved uniquely for the family.”25 Beyond the brief descriptions of each country and its culture, the guide merely listed the names and occasionally addresses of gay bars, restaurants, and other places where homosexuals could meet. Many of the early guides were similar to Gay Guide to Europe in terms of content and quality. World Report Travel Guide was slightly more extensive than the Gay Guide to Europe, covering all parts of the world and offering minimal indications of the quality of establishments. According

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to a note on the first page, an asterisk “indicate[d] good” and two asterisks “indicate[d] very good.”26 Maintaining its presentation, the guide grew quickly in just a few years, expanding from 27 pages in its first edition to 114 pages by the fifth edition in 1965.27 The Lavender Baedeker, from the publishers of Cruise News and World Report, announced itself as “A Guidebook to Gay, Interesting, Hysterical & Historic Places in the U.S.”28 Moving beyond the U.S. focus of The Lavender Baedeker, two other publications from Strait and Associates, Lavender World and The Grey Guide, worked to cover the rest of the world.29 These publications were hardly a wealth of information, offering little more than names (and sometimes addresses) of gay establishments. But without any more formal means of collecting information about gay-friendly establishments, even these minimal booklets would have been valuable resources for gay travelers in this era. Some publishers produced smaller guides for particular cities rather than attempting to cover entire countries or the world. The publishers of Gay, a Canadian magazine, produced the Gay Guide to New York, an eight page, pocket-sized pamphlet offering information about bars, baths, beaches, clothing stores, night clubs, and restaurants. Covering a more confined area and fewer establishments, this guide offered more detailed descriptions of each location listed, including prices, the type of clientele to expect, and the general feel and quality of the location.30 The editors of The International Guild Guide, which first appeared in 1965, prided themselves on being better than the competition, noting in the introduction to the second edition, “The great success of the 1965 Guild Guide has confirmed us in our belief that a guide of quality will ultimately prevail over those inferior items which have flooded the market.”31 The 210-page, professionally-produced, paperback edition offered names, addresses, and occasionally phone numbers for bars, restaurants, and other gay establishments throughout the United States and a few major cities in other countries. Another higher-quality guide, the inconspicuously titled Directory 43, was produced by a Minnesota-based company called Directories, Inc. Like many of the guides, the pocket-sized, hard cover Directory 43 was a basic list of bars, restaurants, and baths, with no descriptions or codes of any kind to identify clientele or quality. Unlike most publications, however, Directory 43 explained why descriptions were not included. “No attempt has been made to comment on the furnishings, location, or clientele of places listed in this Directory. No two persons would evaluate a place in the same way.”32 This comment emphasizes the

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nature of these early guides. They were informative, not promotional, letting gay travelers know where they could go, rather than telling them where they should go. Although the listings remained simple, Directory 43 contained two helpful elements left out of most guides: phone numbers for every establishment listed and population estimates for the cities included. The most significant guide to appear during this period was Bob Damron’s Address Book, commonly referred to as Damron’s, which is the only early guide that survives to this day. The first edition, published in 1965, was 48 pages, pocket-sized, stapled together, and with a heavy-stock paper cover. Boasting “more than 750 places to go in 220 cities,” the book offered names and addresses of bars, restaurants, and clubs, along with the occasional bit of added advice.33 The 1968 listings for Columbus, Ohio, for example, contained the following: “Some bars turn neon signs off and appear to be closed. Don’t let this fool you.”34 Certain listings were given code letters, explained by a key at the beginning of the book. Moving in the opposite direction of Directory 43, which specifically avoided categorizing establishments, the early Damron’s offered these codes as a way of identifying the activities, mood, and clientele that one could expect. For example, “D” indicated dancing, “PE” meant “pretty elegant,” and “M” referred to a crowd that was “mixed, and/or tourists.”35 The end of the 1960s saw the appearance of Barfly, the guidebook advertised so heavily in early issues of The Los Angeles Advocate. A close relative of the early Damron’s, Barfly was produced by Advocate Publications, Inc. and came in two editions, one for the Eastern states, Canada, Mexico, and Puerto Rico, and the other for the Western states. Like the early versions of Damron’s, Barfly was pocket-sized, less than 100 pages, and offered names, addresses, and codes to designate the types of crowds, atmosphere, and activities to expect at various venues.36 The gay travel guides of the 1960s all had similar goals and shared many common traits, but they also varied significantly in a number of ways. All of the guides remained very simple in appearance, with no color printing or illustrations beyond an occasional logo. They were basically lists of establishments with varying levels of detail, occasionally offering simple descriptions, usually in the form of a code. The earliest gay guides included little or no paid advertising, though they were essentially providing a form of publicity for the establishments listed within their pages. Most of the guides were completely ad free. The Lavender Baedeker contained a few simple ads, usually just highlighting the name of an establishment, perhaps with a logo or directions.

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Gay Guide to New York contained a single pitch for the magazine that published the guide, but nothing more. By its 1968 edition, Damron’s Address Book had added a single ad for a bookstore, an early sign of a trend that would eventually become the norm. In general, the production quality of these early guides was fairly low. Some, like the Gay Guide to Europe, World Report Travel Guide, The Lavender Baedeker, Lavender World, and The Grey Guide were clearly produced in homes or offices by amateurs. Others, like The Gay Guide to New York, Directory 43, The International Guild Guide, Barfly, and Bob Damron’s Address Book offered a more professional appearance, though they were still produced by small-scale printers, not national or international publishing houses. Reflecting the lack of acceptance of homosexuals in this preStonewall, pre-liberation movement era, most of the guides remained very discreet. Because many of the users were closeted, most of these guides remained largely in the closet themselves. The two primary exceptions were the Gay Guide to Europe and the Gay Guide to New York City. If their titles did not give them away, the repeated references to homosexuality in their country overviews (in the case of the former) or brief establishment descriptions (in the case of the latter) left little doubt as to the specific nature of these guides. Lavender World announced itself as a “guidebook to gay bars, baths, and beaches,” making it pretty hard to misunderstand.37 The rest of the guides remained more subtle. The Lavender Baedeker and The Grey Guide announced themselves as guidebooks to “gay, interesting, historical and hysterical places.”38 In the absence of any other references to homosexuality, the word “gay” here might be interpreted to mean something other than homosexual—perhaps lively, or merry. The Lavender Baedeker contained a few ads for gay catalogues and gay Christmas cards that would likely give it away, but The Grey Guide offered no further indication of any connection to homosexuality. This was also the case with the early editions of Damron’s Address Book, World Report Travel Guide, Barfly, International Guild Guide, and Directory 43, all of which made their gayness essentially invisible to anyone who was not already in the know. Directory 43 offered this intentionally vague introduction: “This directory has been compiled to help you know where to go on your travels when seeking entertainment or new acquaintances.”39 The others remained similarly vague in their introductions, referring to their publications and others like them simply as “guides,” without ever specifying a particular type of guide. With their nondescript titles, plain front covers, and simple lists of establishments,

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these guides could easily have been left on a coffee table or bookshelf with no threat of revealing their owner’s sexual behaviors or identities. This level of secrecy was also important to the establishments listed inside, since gay and lesbian bars were no more acceptable than gay and lesbian individuals. Many of these bars were owned and/or protected by organized criminals, and most owners paid off the police and public officials in order to avoid harassment.40 Minimizing public visibility was necessary to the survival of these establishments, and the lack of detail in the guides of this era aided in this process. The early travel guides were compiled and written primarily by individuals and small groups, and the work involved in putting the guides together was often mentioned in the book itself. The editor of The Lavender Baedeker invited guests to visit the editorial offices, but suggested calling first, “to assure that the editor is not out, asleep, or cruising for news or for some other reason.”41 This revealed the small size of the operation responsible for the guide book. The introduction to the first edition of Damron’s Address Book said that Bob Damron himself “personally visited some 200 cities in 37 states and crossed Canada in the Spring of 1965” to obtain the information in the book.42 While the other guides did not present a heroic compiler like Bob Damron, many of them did emphasize the process involved in assembling their own guides. Directory 43 claimed that “No place pays for its listing. All listings are from recommendations made by our customers and thru staff research.”43 Highlighting the improvements made since their first edition, the editors of The International Guild Guide 1966 noted that they had “made every effort to verify the accuracy of the information received. Where there were states and areas not well represented, we wrote to friends and customers in these areas and corrected the deficiencies.”44 Recognizing the need for additional help (in part because of the underground nature of most gay establishments as well as their often rapid turnover), most of the guides made appeals to their readers, asking for updates, corrections, and additions. Editors of The International Guild Guide noted that their attempts to list all possible establishments had not been enough. They noted that there was “much room for improvement and we must rely upon our readers to provide the information which will close the gap.”45 World Report Travel Guide went so far as to include a tear-out form for readers to send back to the publishers with information on establishments that had been left out of the guide, or which had changed or closed since the last printing. This particular guide was apparently updated so frequently that the

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purchase of one guide included “one year ’s revision service (all corrections, additions, and revisions issued).”46 The early guides were distributed primarily (and in some cases exclusively) by mail order. Almost every guide contained information about how to order additional copies, with the Gay Guide to Europe and the World Report Travel Guide including notes saying that this was the only way to order the guides. The Gay Guide to New York was most likely distributed to subscribers of the magazine that published it. According to an ad in Cruise News and World Report, The Lavender Baedeker was available at a number of gay bars and book stores on the west coast.47 Other guidebooks were available at gay establishments in or near the cities in which they were printed. Given the importance of readers in the production/updating of the guides, the publishers likely depended on those same readers to publicize the guides and their availability by word of mouth. The vast majority of travel information circulating in this period was aimed primarily at gay men, with lesbians either included as an afterthought or excluded entirely. Damron’s included lesbians as part of their coding process. Just as a “D” next to a listing indicated dancing and an “R” indicated a restaurant, a “G” identified establishments where one might find “Girls, but rarely exclusively.”48 From the travel articles in The Advocate to the listings in Directory 43 and Barfly, there was very little acknowledgement of the possibility that women might have different interests or concerns from men. On the whole, the early gay travel guides represented a network of homosexuals sharing information with one another. The guides were not produced by outsiders trying to attract gay travelers, but were assembled by insiders as a way of establishing and identifying a network of spaces that could help create a sense of community. The exchange of information took place largely underground, reflecting the status of the majority of gay establishments and a large proportion of gay individuals at the time. As historian Les Wright notes, gay businesses began to come together in the 1960s, “creating an economy parallel to the social mainstream, but still invisible, or downright incomprehensible, to outsiders.”49 By making this parallel economy visible to those who wanted to find it, the guidebooks of the era aided in the early development of the GLBT community. Through the creation and use of these travel guides, gay and lesbian individuals generated a discourse that, in turn, created what Michael Warner describes as a “counterpublic.” Warner notes that “a counterpublic comes into being through an address to indefinite strangers,”

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and he goes on to suggest that the individuals addressed by such a discourse, “are socially marked by their participation in this kind of discourse; ordinary people are presumed not to want to be mistaken for the kind of person who would participate in this kind of talk or be present in this kind of scene.”50 Counterpublics are clearly marked as different from the mainstream, and the gay travel guides of the 1960s helped to nurture the development of a queer counterpublic from a group of marginalized individuals within American society. GROWTH AND VISIBILITY: THE 1970S Sparked by the highly publicized Stonewall Riots of 1969, many gay and lesbian organizations, publications, and individuals decided to move away from the secrecy and invisibility of the 1960s. Increasing numbers of gays and lesbians fought openly for civil rights, strengthening the movement’s organization and achieving national visibility. In 1971 the National Organization for Women passed a resolution endorsing lesbian rights, thus aligning the gay rights movement with the more established feminist movement.51 In 1972, Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern invited gay and lesbian activists Jim Foster and Madeline Davis to the Democratic National Convention to speak about gay rights.52 In 1973, gays and lesbians formed the Lambda Legal Defense Fund to help fight gay civil rights cases, and the American Psychiatric Association voted to remove homosexuality from its list of psychiatric disorders. 53 These and other advances in political, legal, and medical arenas set the stage for increasing openness and visibility in the realm of gay travel and tourism. The defining characteristic of The Advocate during the 1970s was growth. The original press run was just 500 copies, but by 1976 The Advocate had become one of the nation’s fastest-growing magazines, with a circulation of 60,000 nationwide.54 Through the early 1970s, the publication was supported primarily by advertisements for gay establishments in Los Angeles and classified ads, many of which were rather explicit, showing partial nudity and referencing sexual activities. In the mid 1970s, the editors redesigned The Advocate, moving classifieds and more sexually explicit ads to a separate pullout section. Katherine Sender notes that explicit content was removed from the main body of the magazine “so that mainstream advertisers might find The Advocate a more hospitable context for national ads.”55 As The Advocate grew and changed as a publication, much of its connection to gay travel remained the same. The magazine still ran

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feature articles about travel, such as the 1975 article “Breckenridge Holds Special Attraction for Gay Skiers,” which highlighted the resort town’s gay establishments and overall friendliness.56 Also continuing from the early days were paid ads for Southern California establishments like bars and bathhouses, as well as ads for various gay travel guides, including Douglas Dean’s Gay Mexico II and Skipper’s Gay Guide.57 The primary change from the earliest issues was the significant increase in the number of classified ads appearing throughout the magazine in the early 1970s, and in the pullout section beginning in the mid 1970s. These ads, sometimes in a special “Travel” section of the classifieds, promoted specific destinations and establishments around the world, sought travel companions, offered places to stay and guided tours in particular cities, and sold guides and maps to specific cities and unusual attractions, like California’s gay nude beaches. The growing number of classifieds indicated an increased flow of communication between members of the gay community as the growing readership of The Advocate allowed those who ran such ads to reach larger and more dispersed audiences. Although the volume of communication was increasing, the majority of the ads were placed by individuals and small businesses, and they were placed in the less expensive classifieds section, as opposed to larger ads mixed in with editorial content. The role of these notices was more informational than promotional. As The Advocate matured and grew, a handful of new gay-oriented periodicals made their debut. Gay and Gay Scene were both published in New York and focused largely on the city that was their home, covering gay rights news, entertainment reviews, and personal interest stories. The biweekly Gay (not to be confused with the earlier Canadian publication of the same name) ran a regular section called “Where Will You Go Tonight?” which served as a directory of gay establishments and special events in the city—a handy reference for locals as well as visitors to the city.58 The monthly Gay Scene more commonly ran travel features, including stories about foreign countries, significant American cities, and interesting resort towns.59 Both publications also featured ads for New York establishments as well as display ads and classifieds for various resorts and travel guides, including Damron’s Address Book, Skipper’s Guides, Gay Ways 1972, and EOS’s Gay Guide. The Los Angeles and New York publications may have reached the largest audiences, but they were by no means the only gay periodicals making an impact in the 1970s. Gay newspapers appeared in cities across the country, including Gay Chicago, Seattle Gay News, G. Milwaukee,

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Philadelphia’s Gay News, Houston’s Montrose Star, and Atlanta’s The Barb. These papers connected local gay readers with news of the larger gay world, but their ads for local establishments and news of local events also acted as references for gay visitors. As the number of cities with gay papers increased, it became easier for gay travelers to acquire accurate, up-to-date information on the gay scenes in the cities they visited. As periodicals grew, changed, appeared, and disappeared in the 1970s, so did gay travel guides. By its 1977 edition, Bob Damron’s Address Book had expanded from its original 750 listings to “approximately 3,575 listings.”60 The explanation of listings had been expanded to include a notation for “Cruisy Areas” where visitors could likely find public sex. The listings also sought to specify crowds based on race and age. Notes included “B” for “blacks frequent,” “OC” for “older/more mature crowd,” and “YC” for “young/collegiate types.”61 International Guild Guide also continued into the 1970s, changing very little over the years. The guide’s parent company, Guild Press, Ltd. closed its doors in 1973 (“after a decade of uninterrupted harassment from the Post Office and the FBI”), but in 1976 a new edition of the guide was released.62 The guide remained a simple list of establishments and their addresses, sometimes with phone numbers, along with occasional code letters to indicate clientele or atmosphere. Barfly also continued well into the 1970s, in its eastern and western editions, providing a basic list of gay bars and clubs in a handy, pocket-sized booklet. A handful of new guides appeared during the 1970s, the most significant of which was Spartacus International Gay Guide. As Damron’s became the dominant guide to the United States, Spartacus, produced in the Netherlands, became the dominant international gay guide. It offered a coding system similar to Damron’s, eventually offering information not only about clientele and atmosphere, but also the quality and safety of the establishments listed. The guide also offered overviews of individual countries’ laws and social mores as they applied to homosexuals. Spartacus was first published in 1970, but it was not made available in the United States until 1975.63 Many other new guidebooks, including Gay Times’ International Gay Guide, and The Golden Key for Gay Swingers, followed the basic “list of establishments” approach, but none were as successful as the long-running Spartacus. Meanwhile, other publications began moving away from solely listing bars and clubs, opting instead for more varied and/or detailed information. One such publication was Skipper’s Guide. While most of

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the guides originated in large cities such as Los Angeles or New York, Skipper’s Guide was published in the small town of Danville, Kentucky, suggesting a further expansion of gay networks beyond large urban centers. Skipper’s Guide was joined by Skipper’s Newsletter (“News about products and services for gay guys”), Skipper’s Mates (a pen pal club for gays), and Skipper’s GUYS GUIDE (personal ads).64 According to its own introduction, Skipper’s Guide offered “names and addresses not only of bars, baths, etc., but also of gay magazines and newspapers, other gay guides, mail order dealers, and gay-liberation groups.”65 Still aimed at those traveling away from home, Skipper’s Guide provided a broader range of information than most other guides. This expanded focus also characterized the Gayellow Pages, which first appeared in the early 1970s and continues to be available. Early editions announced coverage of bars and restaurants, places to stay, health clubs, gay movement and counseling services, publications and newsletters, radio programs, theater groups, businesses and commercial enterprises, all of which specifically welcomed gay patrons.66 Entries were arranged as they would be in any phone book, grouped together based on the type of establishment or the type of service provided. Another guidebook that went beyond bars and clubs was A Gay Person’s Guide to New England, which described itself as “a practical guide to living gay in New England.”67 It covered everything from bars, bathhouses, and cruising areas to churches, clothing shops, and gay rights organizations. Moreover, this guide offered brief descriptions of every establishment listed as well as feature articles of interest to gay readers and maps of various towns and cities. Like the Gayellow Pages, this guide listed information that would have been helpful to residents of the area as well as visitors. While some guides offered expanded depth and breadth in their coverage, others targeted a segment of the homosexual population that had previously received little attention: women. As previously mentioned, the majority of travel materials aimed at homosexuals over the years have been produced primarily for men. Although most of the guides in the 1970s made occasional references to establishments catering to lesbians, the main focus of the guides was gay men. The Girl’s Guide and Gaia’s Guide, both started in the mid 1970s, were written specifically for women. Despite their shift in focus, both followed the model made popular by Damron’s, Barfly, Spartacus, and others, offering little more than lists of establishments. Gaia’s Guide

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included an elaborate system of coding, with the number of stars indicating the proportion of lesbians likely to be found in the establishment. More stars indicated more lesbians, while fewer stars indicated more gay men or heterosexuals.68 Aside from these two publications, most of the available information about tourism continued to be directed at gay men. The sources of information about gay travel headed in a number of different directions during the 1970s. The production of gay-oriented periodicals increased in number, quality, and circulation, providing easier access to the various kinds of information included in such publications—travel articles, ads for local establishments and travel guides, and classified ads to connect individuals with one another, despite geographic separation. While some, like The Advocate, attempted to move toward the mainstream by eliminating explicit sexuality, others, like Gay and Gay Scene, made no such attempt, regularly including nudity and blatantly sexual advertisements in their pages. Travel guides also moved in different directions. Some, like Damron’s, Spartacus, and International Guild Guide, greatly improved their production quality with glossy covers, photographs, and professional-quality binding, while others, like The Girl’s Guide, Skipper’s Guide, and Barfly, still exhibited the amateur feel of most of the 1960s guides. Many of the guides continued to favor basic lists of bars, baths, and clubs, while others went broader to cover additional services and attractions, and still others went deeper to provide more detailed information about the locations covered within their pages. While very few of the guides in the 1960s featured advertising, very few of the 1970s guides went without it. International Guild Guide remained ad free, as did Skipper’s Guide and The Girls Guide. Other publications, however, embraced the support of those willing to contribute advertising dollars, representing the growing level of cooperation between individuals and establishments within the gay community. Damron’s, for example, which contained no ads in its early days, increased its ad content significantly during the 1970s. While the number of ads increased, they were limited to establishments listed in the book, such as bars, book stores, and bath houses. Spartacus also featured ads for listed establishments, placing them among the listings for the countries that were home to the establishments. The sections for some countries, such as France, Germany, and the Netherlands, were filled with advertisements, while others, like New Zealand, Ghana, and Italy had no ads. In general, this reflected the acceptance of homosexuality in various countries, as indicated by the brief

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country descriptions given by the guide’s editors. The countries with the most ads tended to be those that were the most tolerant of homosexuality. Countries where gays had to be particularly careful and discreet were less likely to feature ads at all. Proprietors in these countries were unlikely to feel safe officially declaring the gay-orientation of their business, which a paid advertisement would certainly do. In the 1960s, most of the guides essentially remained “in the closet,” keeping their gayness subtle or invisible so as not to out their owners. A few guides continued this trend to varying degrees into the 1970s, including Skipper’s Guide, Gaia’s Guide, and The Girls Guide, all of which featured non-descript covers, but included references to gayness in either their introductions or their specific listings. International Guild Guide, which had offered no obvious traces of gayness in the 1960s, remained discreet on its cover and in its listings, but included a photo of a shirtless young man and the tagline “The most complete guide to the gay scene ever!” on its first page.69 (One could potentially tear this page out and erase the book’s gayness, as it made no other explicit references.) The other guides, however, appeared to be out and proud, reflecting the increasing visibility and political activism of the growing liberation movement. A Gay Person’s Guide to New England clearly announced and openly referred to gayness in its name, listings, and ads, but not in a sexually explicit manner. Damron’s, Spartacus, Barfly, and Gayellow Pages featured ads that included either photos or drawings of full or partial nudity and explicit references to sexual activities. Gay Times’ International Gay Guide featured a naked young man on the front cover and erotic illustrations of hypermasculine, hypersexualized, semi-nude men throughout the book. There was no mistaking these guides for anything other than what they were. In terms of information collection, the guides generally continued to stress the importance of reader contributions, often thanking readers for their suggestions and letting them know how to contribute updates for future editions. Skipper’s Guide stressed the personal effort and cooperation that had made the guide possible. “None of the information has come to us from any newspaper, magazine, or other gay guide; the information has come to us from more than three thousand men who have responded to our numerous gay scene survey questionnaires.”70 The Girls Guide emphasized its dependence on user contributions— along with its focus on women—by saying, “if we’ve guided you to a place that was so bad it almost sent you rushing back to your dangerously violent husband—why not write and tell us so that we can strike it off in future years?”71 Spartacus highlighted the cooperative nature of

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the project, saying “Spartacus is really a huge information exchange— and we emphasize the “exchange” part of this! One of the keys to the Guide’s success is the large contribution made by readers.” 72 The emphasis on a sense of grassroots cooperation reflected the values of the gay liberation movement, which sought to bring homosexuals together to achieve rights and visibility. Gayellow Pages took a different approach to information collection. Rather than listing establishments and organizations based on personal research or reader recommendations, Gayellow Pages based its listings on applications submitted by proprietors. The application form gave business owners the chance to describe the type of product or service they provided, the clientele they typically served, hours of operation, and other basic information, and required that they sign a statement confirming that “the enterprise detailed in this form welcomes the patronage or participation of gay people.”73 Although it gathered its information in a slightly different way, Gayellow Pages still took an approach that depended on participation by members of the increasingly visible gay community. Distribution of the travel guides did not change significantly from the 1960s. Travel guides in the 1970s continued to be available primarily by mail order, with ordering information and/or forms included in the guides themselves and in The Advocate, Gay, Gay Scene and other gayoriented periodicals. Bars also continued to distribute the guides, particularly those in which they advertised. Some of the higher-quality guides were increasingly available at gay book stores, primarily in large cities. Overall, the trend in guide books in the 1970s was one toward increased visibility. Unlike most of the guides from the previous decade, which often concealed their very gayness through vague language and lack of detail, the guides of the 1970s were more explicit, both verbally and visually. The increased visibility of these guides reflected the gay liberation movement’s idea that homosexuals should no longer have to hide and should be able to openly come together to create change. The counterpublic generated in part by the travel guides of the 1960s became more visible and outspoken during the 1970s. While Gayellow Pages and A Gay Person’s Guide to New England followed The Advocate in avoiding, minimizing, or marking off sexually explicit content, many of the guides emphasized sexuality as a part of their identity. Through their descriptions, ads, and other illustrations, many of the guides explicitly highlighted the sexual differences that set homosexuals apart from the mainstream. The liberation movement

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brought homosexuality out into the open, but the publications still gave the impression that information about gay travel and tourism in this period was distributed by gays, for gays, and among gays, reflecting their continued marginalization in society. MOVING TOWARD ACCEPTANCE: THE 1980S AND 1990S The attention generated by the gay rights movement in the 1970s led to more than just increased visibility—it also generated a backlash. The outspokenness of gay rights advocates evoked responses from antigay groups and individuals. Those speaking out against homosexuality in the late 1970s and early 1980s included politicians like California State Senator John Briggs, who fought to remove gay employees from public schools, as well as religious leaders Jerry Falwell and Pope John Paul II, who argued that homosexuality was a sin.74 The HIV/AIDS epidemic that first gained national attention in the early 1980s continued to demonize homosexuals as the disease was framed by many as a punishment for homosexual activities. After a brief period of fear and silence, the gay community came together stronger than ever, as they united to raise awareness of AIDS and to fight for gay rights. The remainder of the 1980s and the 1990s were defined by a constant struggle for acceptance, marked by both defeats and victories. Court decisions like Bowers vs. Hardwick (1986), which protected the constitutionality of state anti-sodomy laws; legislation like the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which legally defined marriage as one man and one woman; and hate crimes like the 1998 torture and murder of gay college student Matthew Shepard all presented setbacks in the fight for equality and acceptance. President Clinton’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” military policy generated a mixed response, but his appointment of out lesbian Roberta Achtenberg to a high-level cabinet position paved the way for other gay and lesbian federal appointees. Kentucky vs. Wasson (1992) and similar cases and legislation in other states turned against the precedent of Bowers vs. Hardwick, declaring that consensual acts of sodomy should not be considered criminal behavior.75 As John D’Emilio argues, gay rights in the 1990s moved from marginal status to mainstream status, as major corporations regularly offered domestic partner benefits, mass media outlets featured openly gay performers and characters, advertisers targeted gay consumers, and gay/straight alliances appeared in schools across the country.76

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During the same period, gay and lesbian groups struggled with internal conflicts, as some (like ACT UP and Queer Nation) took an aggressive, in-your-face approach that highlighted sexual difference, while others tried to argue that homosexuals were not that different from heterosexuals. The changes and struggles within the gay community and society at large led to similar changes in the realm of gay tourism. Building on the 1970s increase in visibility, periodicals and travel guides in the 1980s and 1990s worked toward an increase in acceptance, respectability, and even mainstreaming. Leading the charge was The Advocate. Having distanced itself from sexually explicit ads and content in the 1970s, the magazine continued to position itself as a lifestyle magazine similar to mainstream magazines—aside from the fact that its readership happened to be gay. As Sender points out, the early 1980s onset of the AIDS epidemic frightened away some mainstream advertisers who were afraid to associate themselves with the community that was most publicly associated with the disease.77 This slowed the magazine’s bid for mainstream acceptance, but it did not stop the publishers from producing a magazine with the look and feel of a mainstream publication. The magazine continued to feature stories about travel, presented glossy color photos of exotic locations around the world, and occasionally included an ad for one of the more popular travel guides like Damron’s. Increasingly, the magazine ran ads for all-gay resorts, guesthouses, and travel agencies around the nation. No longer forced to settle for the one yearly gay vacation adventure planned by an agency otherwise geared toward heterosexuals, readers now received information about agencies dedicated to planning vacations solely for gays and lesbians. For example, Hanns Ebensten Travel, Inc. advertised its Amazon cruises and other vacation packages through much of the 1980s and 1990s.78 In 1985 RSVP Travel Productions (later to become RSVP Cruises, one of the biggest names in gay travel), announced their first event, “A seven-day, luxury ‘Cruise to Remember.’ ”79 By the early 1990s, Atlantis Events was sponsoring cruises for men and women, while Olivia Cruises and Resorts offered women-only vacation packages. The Advocate and other gay magazines gaining prominence in this period, such as Out and Genre, became primary sources of information about gay-owned and gay-operated travel resources. The International Gay and Lesbian Travel Association, founded in 1983, also provided more centralized information and assistance for both travelers and businesses associated with the travel and hospitality industries. With the availability of these resources, finding gay

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travel information became easier, but it still had not gone completely mainstream. Most of the travel guides during the 1980s and 1990s also took on appearances similar to mainstream publications. By the end of the 1980s, Damron’s Address Book had grown to 463 pages and “over 6,000 listings.”80 Changes in the explanation of listings represented changes in the times. In addition to the “B” for “blacks frequent,” this edition contained a notation of “BWMT” for “black and white men together,” while the 1980s fitness craze had led to the addition of entries for health clubs and gyms. The book also responded to the AIDS crisis by adding information about AIDS hotlines and other services. At 678 pages and containing “over 8,000 listings,” the 1995 version of the guidebook made the pocket-sized travel guides of the 1960s a distant memory.81 Reflecting an increasing awareness of diversity within the gay community, the explanation of listings had added notations for wheelchair accessible spaces as well as a number of multi-racial categories, including “multi-racial, mostly Asian-American,” “multi-racial, mostly African-American,” and “multi-racial, mostly Latino-American.”82 While early editions of the guidebook presented “cruisy areas” as acceptable locations for public sex, the AIDS-conscious 1990s editions offered an extensive notice about the dangers of these areas, adding that “Most police depts. in the USA have copies of the address book, beware.”83 The book also added information about sodomy laws in various states, as well as phone numbers for gay and lesbian legal services, youth services, and a hate crimes hotline. Spartacus and Gayellow Pages also continued to follow their established formulas for success, while most of the other earlier travel guides faded from the scene. Most likely the success and dominance of Damron’s (for bars, baths, and clubs in the United States), Spartacus (for similar establishments internationally), and Gayellow Pages (for more general, daily life listings) made the other guides unnecessary. Unable to compete, the old guides largely disappeared by the mid 1980s. New guides that appeared rarely lasted for long, and in some cases were intended as single volume guides, rather than publications that would issue yearly editions. In an attempt to gain respectability, many specifically tried to distance themselves from the traditional travel guides, which were seen as lists of places to find sex partners. Most of those that did appear during this time attempted to fill a specific gap left by the bigger, more established guides. Places of Interest, for example, attempted to reach out to international visitors, offering information about cities in the United States and

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Canada in English, French, Spanish, German, and Dutch.84 The Advocate Gay Visitor’s Guide to San Francisco offered a book-length, in-depth look at “the social and cultural opportunities offered to gay men and lesbians in America’s most vibrant gay community.”85 The guide (library-ready with its ISBN and Library of Congress number) sought respectability by way of its connection to the magazine with which it shared its name. As the back of the book boasted, “This authoritative guidebook is brought to you by the editors of America’s most respected gay magazine, The Advocate.”86 Covering far more than just bars and clubs, the book also featured chapters on shopping, cultural events, and gay history. The editors of Now, Voyagers!, billed as “The Newsletter for Gay Travelers,” specifically critiqued guides like Damron’s in an attempt to distinguish their newsletter. A letter to potential subscribers lamented the failure of previous guides, suggesting that they often led to disappointing vacations. As the letter stated, “the only ‘guide’ for us has been various book-length listings of bars, baths and cruise areas—as if gay travel means nothing more than a sex hunt away from home.”87 The newsletter was intended as a remedy for the detail-deficient, sexoriented guides of the past. Out & About Gay Travel Guides also attempted to separate themselves from guides like Damron’s and explicitly stated a desire to be read as mainstream: “We think of our books as a mainstream travel series with a distinctly gay perspective. Most gay guidebooks have focused on sex, with travel being secondary.”88 The most notable example of mainstream recognition came in 1996, when the popular Fodor’s travel series began printing Fodor’s Gay Guides to cities and countries around the world. These books offered extensive information about local culture, political climate, history, and traditions as well as locations and directions to various attractions, hotels, restaurants, and so forth. Unlike many gay travel guides, Fodor’s excluded most sex-oriented businesses from its pages. In this way, the publication followed the path of gay periodicals like The Advocate and Out, which, as Rodger Streitmatter and Katherine Sender have demonstrated, eliminated sex-oriented advertising as part of their attempt to lure more “respectable” advertisers.89 The inclusion of gay and lesbian travelers by such a prominent travel series was a significant moment in the shift toward making gay tourism more acceptable. In general, the travel guides of the 1980s and 1990s went in one of two directions. Some, like Damron’s and Spartacus, built on their past success, while most newcomers carved out space for themselves by offering formats and content that differed from previous guides. One

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trait they shared was a level of professionalism and quality. Guides were professionally produced, in some cases by large publishers, and had the look and feel of library-quality books. While the older guides continued to focus on offering lists of gay establishments, newcomers offered more detail about specific areas and included a wider variety of activities and points of interest that might appeal to the gay traveler. Advertising in Damron’s and Spartacus increased not only in volume, but in variety, as national advertisers like Skyy Vodka and Holiday Inn began taking out ads that ran alongside those for bars, clubs, phone sex companies, and adult film studios. Most of the newer guides stayed away from advertising entirely, or reserved a few spaces for prominent national companies. All of the guides of this era built on the increased visibility established in the 1970s and made no attempts to conceal their gayness, but their presentation of gayness varied. For Damron’s and Spartacus, gay identity was driven by sex, and the guides continued to offer lists of places to meet potential sex partners. Gayellow Pages and most of the newer guides presented a different version of homosexuality by offering information and advice that would appeal to the social, cultural, political, and spiritual needs of gay travelers in addition to (or in some cases instead of) their sexual needs. This may have been, in part, a response to the AIDS epidemic, which equated gay sexuality with dangerous sexuality in the minds of many Americans. Minimizing the sexual aspects of gay travel allowed certain guides to move closer to the mainstream, in part by suggesting that gay travelers were just like any other travelers. Although they did not shy away from sexuality, Damron’s and Spartacus did respond to the AIDS crisis, encouraging responsible sexuality and offering information related to AIDS and HIV. The division between the two groups of guides carried over into production and distribution. Damron’s and Spartacus continued to be produced by and for gays, and continued to reflect the notion of community members sharing information with one another. The newer guides, while written or edited by gays, often took on a more detached, corporate feel. They were written by editors of major magazines, or included in larger series of travel guides—in other words, they were produced by “experts” rather than average folks who decided to share information with others and needed the help of readers to stay current. The guides were still produced primarily by members of the gay community, but their move toward the mainstream hinted at the future of gay travel, when homosexuals would become a target market for outside businesses and mainstream tourist destinations. The older guides

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continued to be sold by mail order, and were often found in gay bookstores. The newer guides, however, appeared not only in gay bookstores, but also in some mainstream bookstores and libraries. This split between the different sets of guides reflected the politics of the era. The gay community was split over the question of sameness versus difference. As Stevi Jackson argues, the assimilationist stance sought “to be included into heterosexual privilege, rather than to challenge it,” while an argument based on difference “has always been seen as a challenge to institutionalized heterosexuality, a refusal to live within its boundaries.”90 These two views are represented respectively by the guides that minimized sexuality and difference and by those that foregrounded it. The argument over this division continues to this day, and the two sides of the argument continue to be reflected in communication about contemporary gay travel. CONCLUSION: THE EVOLUTION CONTINUES The earliest gay travel guides were simple, amateur productions, distributed by mail order or word of mouth, and containing information based on personal travel and/or knowledge passed along through friends and associates. But the significance of these guides goes well beyond their initial use as sources of information. The guides highlight the status of gays and lesbians as segregated, invisible outsiders, working to build a network of businesses and gathering spaces in the shadow of mainstream America. While local communities of gays and lesbians were developing in individual bars, neighborhoods, and cities, they remained very isolated. Much like a game of connect the dots, the early travel guides provided links between these isolated communities, sketching out a picture or map of the nationwide gay and lesbian community that was beginning to emerge. The early travel guides also demonstrate the creativity, ingenuity, and subtle resistance that was essential for the development and maintenance of gay and lesbian communities at all levels. Ignored, ostracized, and persecuted by mainstream society, gays and lesbians—like many other minority groups before and since—had no choice but to turn inward and rely on themselves. They created their own guidebooks and built their own networks to share information and build a community under the noses of those who refused to accept them. As time went on, these guides became more substantial in terms of content and attracted a greater number and wider variety of advertisers. Some continued to focus on simply identifying gay establishments,

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while others, like Fodor’s and Out & About, focused on general travel concerns, including gayness as one of many components of a traveler’s identity. While the earliest guides were circulated among the gay community and required a certain amount of effort to track them down, the more recent guides have moved more into the mainstream. Current Fodor’s and Damron’s guides can be purchased through Amazon.com and in mainstream bookstores. This evolution of gay travel guides parallels what Dereka Rushbrook identifies as a “transformation of gay culture, from an introverted, closed, private space epitomized by dark, unmarked bars to a space appropriated from the night and beckoning with neon signs and full-length windows open to the street.”91 The gay travel guide’s slow progression from the margins toward the mainstream laid the groundwork for the more recent developments in gay tourism—specifically the large-scale promotional campaigns attempting to lure gay and lesbian travelers to cities and resorts across the country. As this chapter demonstrates, this was not an overnight development, but a long, slow evolution. Mainstream marketers did not create gay tourism. This recognition by outsiders is only the most recent step in its evolution, as marketers tap into an industry that was initiated and cultivated for many years by the gay community itself. Now that cities and resorts are welcoming gay and lesbian tourists with open arms, we must not forget the hard work and creative methods that allowed gay and lesbian tourism to flourish long before the mainstream came calling. NOTES 1. Jeff Guaracino, Gay and Lesbian Tourism: The Essential Guide for Marketing (Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann, 2007): 3. 2. Guaracino, xvii. 3. Pia Sarkar, “Top Dog San Francisco Runs into Competition for Gay Tourist Dollars,” San Francisco Chronicle, October 24, 2004, J1; Deborah Sharp, “More Cities Cast a Rainbow-Friendly Image To Lure Gay Travelers,” USA Today, January 4, 2004, L6. 4. Guaracino, 4. 5. International Gay and Lesbian Travel Association, “IGLTA Facts,” 2008, http://www.iglta.org/facts.cfm (10 May 2009). 6. This research is based primarily on materials housed in the archives of the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction. I would like to thank the librarians and staff at the Institute, particularly Liana Zhou and Shawn C. Wilson, for helping me to locate valuable resources and artifacts within the archive’s vast collection of materials.

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7. The analysis of texts such as these presents numerous methodological challenges. Gay travel guides, particularly in their early days, were largely underground publications, produced by and for a segment of the population that was forced underground by an intolerant majority. The individuals and small businesses who produced the guides were not keeping archives of their own products, and most of the guides never made it to libraries. Many of the individuals who purchased the guides did so in secrecy, and likely made an effort to keep them hidden or destroyed them when they were no longer useful. Due to the rapid turnover of many gay establishments, the guides were constantly being updated. Outdated guides were of little use, and therefore were discarded. As a result, a history of these guides must be pieced together from those that remain. My discussion is based on a collection of these guides housed at the Kinsey Institute in Bloomington, Indiana. Based on the commonalities and trends revealed by the guides that are available, one can reasonably read them as indicative of broader trends which would include those that are missing. I have attempted to fill in the gaps based on the evidence that is currently accessible. 8. I have broken the development of gay travel communication into decades primarily for the sake of convenience. I do not wish to imply that these periods are marked by firm or impermeable boundaries. Gay travel over the past forty years has been defined by gradual rather than abrupt changes, and it has responded to broad trends rather than distinct events. Therefore, the periods identified should be read as more suggestive than definitive. 9. Walter L. Williams and Yolanda Retter, eds. Gay and Lesbian Rights in the United States: A Documentary History. (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003): 72–80. 10. Dudley Clendinen and Adam Nagourney, Out for Good: The Struggle to Build a Gay Rights Movement in America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999): 12. 11. John D’Emilio, The World Turned: Essays on Gay History, Politics, and Culture (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002): 24. 12. Walter L. Williams and Yolanda Retter, 88. 13. “Social Services,” ONE Confidential ix, no. 2 (1964): 3. 14. “Social Services,” ONE Confidential ix, no. 12 (1964): 4. 15. “Social Services,” ONE Confidential ix, no. 12 (1964): 3. 16. For example, “The Gay Traveler: Take a Cycledelic Trip,” The Los Angeles Advocate, September 1967, 5. 17. “Holy Toledo: Midwest Swings,” The Los Angeles Advocate, February 1969, 19. 18. For example: “Germany, Canada Pass ‘Consenting Adults’ Laws,” The Los Angeles Advocate, June 1969, 3. “Connecticut Passes Sex Reform Law,” The Los Angeles Advocate, August 1969, 1. 19. Tours. Advertisement. The Los Angeles Advocate, August 1968, 9. 20. Trip “69.” Advertisement. The Los Angeles Advocate, May 1969, 13.

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21. For example, Dave’s VIP Club. Advertisement. Los Angeles Advocate, May 1969, 23. Also Dave’s Steam Baths. Advertisement. Los Angeles Advocate, June 1969, 29. 22. The Homosexual Citizen 1, no. 1 (1966): front cover. 23. “Subscribe,” The Cruise News and World Report 1, no. 2 (1965): 3. Kinsey Institute, Indiana University,Vertical File: Homosexual Publications— Cruise News and World Report. (Hereafter VF: CNWR). 24. The Cruise News and World Report 1, no. 2 (1965): 4–5, (VF: CNWR). 25. Gay Guide to Europe (Paris: Ganymede Press, 1960): 4. 26. World Report Travel Guide (New York: World Travel Guide Publishers, 1964): 1. 27. George A. Davis, Letter to WRTG Owner, August 12, 1965. Kinsey Institute, Indiana University, Vertical File: Homosexual Guide Books. (Hereafter VF: HGB). 28. The Lavender Baedeker ’66 (San Francisco: Strait & Associates, 1966): front cover, (VF: HGB). 29. Lavender World (San Francisco: Strait & Associates, 1965). Kinsey Institute: “Collection of pulp fiction, periodicals and travel guides of gay themes.” (Hereafter KI: Pulp Fiction); The Grey Guide (San Francisco: Strait & Associates, 1965), (VF: HGB). 30. Gay Guide to New York (Toronto: Gay Publishing Co., 1965), (VF: HGB). 31. International Guild Guide (Washington, DC: Guild Press, Ltd, 1966): 3. 32. Directory 43 (Minneapolis: Directory Services, Inc. 1965): Introduction– no page number given. 33. Bob Damron, The Address Book (San Francisco: Pan-Graphic Press, 1965): 1 (VF:HGB). 34. Bob Damron, Bob Damron’s Address Book 1968 (San Francisco: Pan-Graphic Press, 1967): 66. 35. Bob Damron, The Address Book (San Francisco: Pan-Graphic Press, 1965): 2 (VF:HGB). 36. Barfly, eds. Bill Rand and Bo Siewert (Los Angeles: Advocate Publications, Inc., 1973), (KI: Pulp Fiction). 37. Lavender World (San Francisco: Strait and Assoc., 1965): front cover, (KI: Pulp Fiction). 38. The Lavender Baedeker (San Francisco: Strait and Assoc., 1963): front cover, (VF:HGB). The Grey Guide for 1965 (San Francisco: Strait and Assoc., 1965): no page number, (VF: HGB). 39. Directory 43 (Minneapolis: Directory Services, Inc., 1965): Introduction– no page number. 40. Marc Stein, City of Sisterly and Brotherly Loves: Lesbian and Gay Philadelphia, 1945–1972 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000): 50. 41. Cruise News and World Report (May, 1965): 4 (VF: CNWR). 42. Bob Damron, The Address Book (San Francisco: Pan-Graphic Press, 1965): 1 (VF: HGB).

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43. Directory 43 (Minneapolis: Directory Services, Inc., 1965): Introduction– no page number. 44. International Guild Guide (Washington, DC: Guild Press, Ltd., 1966): 3. 45. International Guild Guide (Washington, DC: Guild Press, Ltd., 1966): 3. 46. World Report Travel Guide (New York: World Report Travel Guide Publishers, 1964): front cover. 47. Cruise News and World Report, (May 1965): 2 (VF: CNWR). 48. Bob Damron, The Address Book (San Francisco: Pan-Graphic Press, 1965): 3 (VF:HGB). 49. Les Wright, “San Francisco,” in Queer Sites: Gay Urban Histories Since 1600, ed. David Higgs (New York: Routledge, 1999), 177. 50. Michael Warner, Publics and Counterpublics (New York: Zone Books, 2002): 120. 51. Williams and Retter, 124. 52. Williams and Retter, 127. 53. Williams and Retter, 131–132. 54. Katherine Sender, Business, Not Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004): 30–32. 55. Sender, 32. 56. Rick Hayes, “Breckenridge Holds Special Attraction for Gay Skiers,” The Advocate Pullout, February 28, 1975, 5. 57. Douglas Dean’s Gay Mexico II, advertisement. The Advocate, March 12, 1975, 44; Skipper’s Guides, advertisement. The Advocate, February 26, 1975, 38. 58. “Where Will You Go Tonight?” Gay (February 1, 1972): 2. 59. For example, “If You’re Going to France,” Gay Scene 1, no. 8 (1971): 9; “Cincinnati – The Queen City,”Gay Scene 4, no. 12 (1974): 16; “Fire Island, Famous Gay Resort,” Gay Scene 4, no. 12 (1974): 8. 60. Bob Damron, Bob Damron’s Address Book ’77 (San Francisco: G. Howard, Inc., 1976): 3. 61. Bob Damron, Bob Damron’s Address Book ’77 (San Francisco: G. Howard, Inc., 1976): 4. 62. Guild Book Services, Inc. Letter to “Friend.” October 15, 1975, (VF: HGB). 63. Spartacus International Gay Guide, advertising flyer, (VF: HGB). 64. Skipper’s Guide (Danville, KY: Skipper’s Guides, 1972): 80 (VF: HGB). 65. Skipper’s Guide (Danville, KY: Skipper’s Guides, 1972): 3 (VF: HGB). 66. Gayellow Pages application, 1975, (VF: HGB). 67. David Peterson, ed. A Gay Person’s Guide to New England (Boston: GCN, Inc., 1976): 3. 68. Gaia’s Guide, seventh edition (Palo Alto, CA: Up Press, 1981): 2. 69. International Guild Guide 1976 Bicentennial Edition (Washington, DC: Guild Press, Ltd., 1976): 1. 70. Skipper’s Guide (Danville, KY: Skipper’s Guides, 1972): 3 (VF: HGB). 71. The Girls Guide 1974 (San Francisco: Publisher Unknown, 1974): 1.

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72. John D. Stamford, ed. Spartacus International Gay Guide (Amsterdam: Spartacus, 1979): 9. 73. Gayellow Pages application, 1975, (VF: HGB). 74. Williams and Retter, 144; 162–163. 75. Williams and Retter, 206. 76. D’Emilio, x. 77. Sender, 36. 78. Hanns Ebensten Travel. Advertisement. The Advocate, October 1, 1985, 14 and 31. Hanns Ebensten Travel. Advertisement. The Advocate, February 7, 1995, 21. 79. RSVP Travel Productions. Advertisement. The Advocate, October 1, 1985, 7. 80. Bob Damron, Bob Damron’s Address Book ’89 (San Francisco: Bob Damron Enterprises, 1988): 21. 81. Gina Gatta, Damron Address Book ’95 (San Francisco: Damron Enterprises, 1994): Front Cover. 82. Gina Gatta, Damron Address Book ’95 (San Francisco: Damron Enterprises, 1994): 27. 83. Gina Gatta, Damron Address Book ’95 (San Francisco: Damron Enterprises, 1994): 28. 84. Marianne Ferrari, Places Of Interest (Phoenix: Ferrari Publications, 1983), (KI: Pulp Fiction). 85. The Advocate Gay Visitors Guide to San Francisco, revised 1982-83 edition (San Mateo, CA: Liberation Publications, Inc., 1982): 7, (VF: HGB). 86. The Advocate Gay Visitors Guide to San Francisco, revised 1982-83 edition (San Mateo, CA: Liberation Publications, Inc., 1982): back cover, (VF: HGB). 87. Robert Schirmer, letter to “Gay Traveler,” n.d. [1982?], (VF: HGB). 88. Billy Kolber-Stuart and David Alport, Out and About Travel Guides: USA Resorts and Warm Weather Vacations (New York: Hyperion, 1997): 4. 89. Rodger Streitmatter, Unspeakable: The Rise of the Gay and Lesbian Press in America (Boston: Faber and Faber, 1995); Katherine Sender, Business Not Politics: The Making of the Gay Market (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004). 90. Stevi, Jackson, “Sexual Politics: Feminist Politics, gay politics and the problem of heterosexuality,” in Politics of Sexuality: Identity, Gender,Citizenship, eds. Terrell Carver and Veronique Mottier (London: Routledge, 1998): 71. 91. Dereka Rushbrook, “Cities, Queer Space, and the Cosmopolitan Tourist,” GLQ 8, no. 1–2 (2002): 193.

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Chapter 13

Pride Translated: The Gay Carnival, San Francisco 2008 Christal Seahorn

Sunday, June 29, 2008, 8:30 A . M .—The parade begins in two hours. Figuring to work the early crowd, I arrive at Market Street on a brisk San Francisco morning (campy weatherman said 67 degrees for the high today, and with the clouds and the biting bay winds, it feels more like December than California June). Surprisingly, there are only a handful of people along the parade route. No indication of the estimated 1.2 million expected. If not for the police barricades and the procession of rainbow flags lining Market Street from Beale to 8th, I would worry I had the wrong date. No worries, a quick glance at my “Pocket Pride” confirms the 10:30 A.M. start time. I strike up a conversation with a young group of women sitting atop one of the barricades and ask about the sparse crowd. “Queens,” says an athletic blonde wearing a purple Tootsie Roll t-shirt with the caption The slower you lick, the longer it lasts, “they’re all still in bed. They’ll show up fashionably late and want to squeeze in up front.”1 9:15 A.M.—The streets are still pretty ghostly. Restaurant vendors are setting up tables in front of their stores, wafting smells of breakfast burritos and sausage sandwiches toward the noses of unprepared spectators who left home without food. I am one of those unprepared spectators and experience immediate buyer’s remorse as I purchase my “Pride Special” breakfast: burrito and water, $11. Official Pride volunteers are busy posting “Keep Off” signs on the Muni Metro

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entrances. Apparently, the intoxicated or balance-challenged have a history of succumbing to the excitement of the day and falling into the tunnels. Sadly, the diligent volunteers would spend most of the parade shooing participants off the subway walls, many of whom were standing or sitting atop these same “Do Not Sit” signs. 10:45 A.M.—The parade starts on time (10:30 A.M.), and the opening contingent reaches my position in 15 minutes. I hear them long before I see them. A distant, low rumble progresses to a rib-shaking roar. The thunderous sounds of contingent #001: Dykes on Bikes. This iconic group marks the official start of the 2008 San Francisco Pride Parade (SF Pride). 2 The procession’s largest contingent, Dykes on Bikes (officially, Dykes on Bikes/Women’s Motorcycle Contingent) is a parade within a parade. Stretching more than five city blocks, this cavalry of Harley, Honda, and moped-riding women (and a few men comically crashing the women’s party rather than riding with Mikes on Bikes) represent a legacy at SF Pride that spans more than three decades. In 1976, a small group of 20 to 25 female motorcyclists spontaneously joined the head of the procession, giving the parade its first motorcycle escort. One of these first women coined the phrase “Dykes on Bikes,” and the San Francisco Chronicle picked it up and ran with it. For the next several years, riders simply showed up and rode the parade with no formal organization or registration. In the late 1980s, SF Pride became more structured and the riders’ numbers swelled into the hundreds. The need to organize became necessary, and the Women’s Motorcycle Contingent (WMC) was born (“Dykes on Bikes Women’s Motorcycle Contingent History,” 2007). This year, with the California Supreme Court’s recent ruling to legalize same-sex marriage, some members of the normally leather-clad group have traded their jeans and vest for wedding dresses and veils. The jubilant trail of exhaust fumes and lace announces a theme of nuptial equality that would pervade throughout the festival. The ensuing nature of the procession becomes a river of carnivalesque revelry: wig-wearing unicyclists, acrobats on stilts, balloons in every color of the rainbow, marching bands, flag-covered police cars and fire trucks, go-go dancers, and rodeo riders. Impressively, the 2008 SF Pride coordinators keep the party on schedule: The parade runs about two hours with the Civic Center After-Party beginning around noon and running until roughly 6:00 P.M.What happens during this time, and what has taken over the city of San Francisco the entire week leading up to these final events, resists chronological confinement in its ordinary sense. The event becomes a nearly mystical time of celebration

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and merriment that transcends the societal constraints of daily life. Generally, in their expression of freedom, love, and self-identification, Gay Pride celebrations are a combination carnival, Mardi Gras, and Woodstock for the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) community. The official SF Pride Web site identifies the San Francisco festival as “one of the last remaining pride events that can truly be called a rite of passage” (San Francisco Pride, 2008: “Celebration Info”). With over 200 parade contingents, 300 exhibitors, and 19 stages and venues, the San Francisco LGBT Pride Celebration, Parade, and Civic Center After-Party is the largest LGBT gathering in the nation. Life during Pride is pleasure-seeking and at times hedonistic, yet the festival is more than simply a huge gay block party. The following exploration of the 2008 SF Pride celebration considers some of the most meaningful elements of the festival and why it holds such a place of importance for the LGBT community. Specifically, the 39th annual SF Pride captures an apex of LGBT triumph, celebrating California’s (short-lived) legalization of same-sex marriage and foreshadowing the tremendous success of Universal Pictures’ Milk movie, set to be released in November.3 A closer look at this celebration illustrates how the carnivalesque atmosphere of Pride in combination with the gay culture symbols represented throughout the event at once embody and complicate preconceptions of socio-political unity, group/individual identity, and community. Ideally, these representations, expressed and embraced during Pride, have the potential to transcend these complications and elevate the LGBT community to a feeling of true membership and inspiration. SF Pride markets itself as a big, gay carnival. The festival culminates the last weekend in June with the official LGBT Pride Celebration. The days leading up to and immediately following the event reveal a month-long series of gay-friendly, official and unofficial Pride events. The National Queer Arts Festival hosts a series of art shows, readings, performances, and panels at more than a dozen city venues throughout the month (“National Queer Arts Festival,” 2008). Frameline puts on the San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival—the world’s premier showcase for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender cinema— with more than 200 feature and short films playing at the historic Castro Theatre and other venues (“Film Festival,” 2007). Exclusive to female participants, the San Francisco Dyke March occurs the day before the Pride parade with women of every shape, size, and haircut gathering at Dolores Park to celebrate the “ ‘Dyke Identity’ to include women who are questioning and challenging gender constructs and

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the social definitions of women, and who are gender-fluid” (“The Dyke Identity,” 2008). A 7:00 P.M . march and motorcycle ride follows the women’s rights rally. Ultimately, the Arts Festival, Frameline’s Film Festival and the Dyke March, though wildly popular and well-attended, are tame social gatherings compared to the lively pandemonium of the Pink Saturday Street Party. Held on Pride parade eve (or Pink Saturday as it is know), this Castro District block party is a homosexual, Bacchanalian celebration, complete with hedonistic consumption of enormous pizza slices and ingestion of copious amounts of alcohol and various other mindaltering substances. The “block” party actually extends more than five blocks with bands playing and revelers dancing in the street. Affectionately called San Francisco’s gay village, The Castro stretches from Market Street through the Noe Valley neighborhood. The historical area is home to many of the major LGBT night clubs and bars in the city. It has ties to the nearby Haight-Ashbury district made famous by the 1967 Summer of Love hippie rebellion and connections to the late Harvey Milk, who had a camera store there before he began his political career as a gay rights activist in the late 1970s early 1980s. Additionally, the area houses Twin Peaks, the nation’s first groundfloor gay bar with expansive and clear glass windows; it is the site of the famous Castro Theatre and the place where the world-renowned AIDS Memorial Quilt got its start in 1987 (San Francisco Study Center, par. 2). More than a common street party, Pink Saturday occurs on land deeply rooted in the history of social activism. Me? I did my homework. As I squeeze my way through the throngs of partiers and weave toward the Castro Theatre, I understand that I am on hallowed ground. Yet, most celebrants I speak with that night have little understanding of the historical importance of their party space. In fact, they seem a bit put off by my questioning, like making them think about the symbolism of Castro takes away from their “party-high.” Notably, this feeling of a collective emotional “high” is a uniquely special moment in group settings. Psychologists Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and John MacAloon refer to a similar sensation as the “flow experience.” Like an athlete “in the zone,” this feeling arises when a person/people are fully immersed in and invigorated by their activities. According to Csikszentmihalyi, participants risks losing this zone/high/flow if they become conscious of their state. “While an actor may be aware of what he is doing, he cannot be aware that he is aware—if he does, there is a rhythmic behavioral or cognitive break. Self-consciousness makes him stumble . . . flow becomes

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non-flow and pleasure gives way to worry, problem, and anxiety (qtd. in Turner 56)4. If Pride events occur in relatively sacred spaces (i.e., Castro District and San Francisco in general), then the sense of party high perhaps results from the free expression allowed by these spaces. My interview questions may seem like a sort of invasion that threatens to “break the flow” of the event. Yet, even if Pride participants do not (and maybe dare not) focus too hard on the meaning behind the festival, the undercurrents of civil unrest and rebellion course visibly beneath the joviality of the celebration. Secular and irreverent, Pride is the Gay Carnival. The weekend gives voice to expressions of oppression and calls for more inclusive civil rights. During Pride, the LGBT community, having been pushed to the margins of society, claims the right to mock power rules in a completely Bakhtinian sense.5 The playfulness and humor of Pride offers a chance for the “other” to reign—a brief moment where the world is turned upside down and gay is normal. The Pink Saturday Party of 2008 Pride provides a perfect example of the ways in which Pride participants thumb their noses at the prescriptive societal limitations that deem same-sex relationships offensive, unclean, and immoral. After my initial attempts to interview the crowd, I do less questioning and more watching. A line wraps around the one pizza stand that is still open. Police outside instruct the owners to stop serving beer for fear that the crowd will get out of hand. Considering the large number of people, there is surprising room to move once I get passed the entrance. The atmosphere is, well, happy. I see friends hugging, partners holding hands. The dull thump of techno music pumps up from the distant stage at the bottom of the Castro Street hill. The cigarette smoke is thick at times and occasionally smells of an herb stronger than tobacco. To one side of the street, poetically juxtaposed directly beneath the Castro Theatre sign, stands a beautiful, Adonis-esque, thin young man with flowing blond hair and . . . absolutely no clothing. A small crowd has gathered. The man is standing, stark naked and simply chatting with friends. Frequently, he pauses to take photos with anyone who asks before returning to his conversation. A while later, he hugs his friends, hops on his bike, and casually cycles off.6 I watch these events with a sense of wonder and amusement. The drugs, the alcohol, the music—all up to this point make this forum no different from many other festivals. But the nakedness, the nakedness stretches the margins even further and is a definite sign that Pride has unraveled normal social constraints. It is more than a fun testing

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of boundaries; it is a political statement. This young man’s nakedness mocks social rules, invites conservatives threatened by homosexuality to take an unobstructed look at what they shun, and visually announces a claim for acceptance and freedom. In From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play, Victor Turner identifies two types of freedom: “freedom-from” and “freedom-to” (Turner 37). Pride participants experience a freedom from institutional prescriptions of heterosexuality and a freedom to create a new world where they can transcend structural limitations and prejudices. Many of the participants I speak with on Pink Saturday and during Sunday’s parade and after-party identify Pride as a “safe” space. They describe feeling a freedom to do and have things they do not have in their everyday lives: holding hands, kissing, and wearing openly-gay paraphernalia and symbols. According to Rinda, a school teacher from Los Angeles attending her first SF Pride, the festival “means being free to feel safe in an environment where people can let their guard down and be themselves without any reservations, kick up their heels, and have a good time” [Lesbian, 37, Los Angeles, Teacher]. Others express feelings of trust and ownership, a sense of the parade as their space. Although gay-bashing and other homophobic hate crimes are less prevalent since the AIDS scare of the 1980s, this craving for a safe space expresses a collective reality for the practicing LGBT community. At some point, they each had to face the transition from the heterosexual world in which they were born to the homosexual one with which they now identify. To varying degrees, LGBT members experience an oppressive fear, unsure how their relationships will be received by the mainstream society. The Pride atmosphere again parallels the Bakhtinian carnival in that it releases this pressure and “takes away what is frightening in ordinary time” (Bakhtin 47). It inverts what is normal and expected of public behavior and allows time for being abnormal. Of course, freedom from conservative social norms is complicated in a Pride festival. LGBT members often wish for a broader acceptance of the sense of “normal” to include their lifestyles. While hand holding and kissing are common enough actions for homosexuals and heterosexuals, a sense of normalcy and worth for same-sex couples may not be available outside of the sacred grounds of a Pride festival. Public nakedness speaks to the heart of what is threatening and “unnatural” about the homosexual world. The body is a display item that announces its difference from the heterosexual world while showing off its similarities. It is a physical freedom, sure, but it also

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challenges the limits of sexual taboo. The LGBT lifestyles challenge these limits on their own, but at Pride they become even more prevalent with nudity, sadomasochistic demonstrations, and overt displays of affection being the norm for the sacred festival space. It champions the “other” and destabilizes the control of the more conventional and “civilized.” Nudity confronts the hegemonic belief that the homosexual lacks, and hence must be an object of scorn rather than envy (Gilbert 480). The dominant culture must maintain this perception of non-procreative gays as deficient or less than in order to frame its definitions of homosexual identity as inferior. The naked gay body, then, asserts strength and rebellious power. It makes sexuality undeniable and expresses confidence and a lack of fear that is a form of subversive social activism as well as a mark of festive playfulness. Beyond the naked paraders, the dissidents of Pride are inevitably linked to LGBT socio-political issues. In 2008, equal rights are at the forefront as the festival theme announces itself as “United by Pride, Bound for Equality.” By definition and tradition, Pride is a festival of politics. It was founded on a bed of political uproar. Historically, Pride Celebrations commemorate the three-day march of LGBT patrons following a police raid on the Stonewall Inn in New York City’s Greenwich Village on June 27, 1969. The march was a civil but rebellious response to the injustice and cultural prejudice behind the raid. The year after Stonewall, the first “Gay-In” took place in San Francisco on June 27, 1970, and was the forebear to the current Pride festivals. Since 1972, the event has been held every year, though under various names: “Christopher Street West” in 1972, “Gay Freedom Day” from 1973 to 1980, then “International Lesbian & Gay Freedom Day Parade” from 1981 to 1994, and finally, its present title, “San Francisco Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Pride Celebration” (San Francisco Pride, 2008: “FAQ”). The Stonewall riot gives Pride a calendrical importance, offering participants a chance to communicate cultural values and reflect on the seminal socio-political events in LGBT history.7 For San Francisco specifically, the 1978 assassination of Harvey Milk fuels the political bent of the Bay Area Pride festival. Milk became the first openly-gay person to be elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977. The outspoken Milk devoted his life to politics and freedom of expression. After only 11 months in office, Milk and then-Mayor George Moscone were assassinated on November 27, 1978. Feelings of anger and injustice mounted after Milk and Moscone’s killer, former fellow Supervisor Dan White was absolved of charges and received only a seven-year sentence (“About Harvey Milk,” par. 4).

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The 2008 SF Pride celebrated a special tribute to Milk’s legacy by naming as Celebrity Grand Marshals Milk’s nephew, Stuart Milk, and the director (Gus Van Sant) and screenwriter (Dustan Lance Black) of the Milk movie. Historically, Pride is inseparable from social politics. In this sense, the 2008 SF Pride becomes more than a jovial carnival and transitions into a strident political call for fairness and civil rights. Politics are part of the festival’s evolution. Politician and celebrity representatives offer credibility through support and official recognition. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom attends the celebration. Theresa Sparks, President of the San Francisco Police Commission and the highest-ranking transgender official in the United State, is the parade’s Lifetime Achievement Grand Marshal (“Resolution No. 238-08,” par. 6). Charo, Margaret Cho, and Leslie Jordan are Celebrity Guests of the event, and Cyndi Lauper joins Stuart Milk and the Milk contingent as Celebrity Grand Marshals. Often, social politics come with the presumption of a relatively consistent political platform. Pride events propose this unity; however, the LGBTcommunity is far too diverse to present uncomplicated agreement on whose agenda gets priority. In “Party with Politics,” Kath Browne acknowledges that the Pride party is “negotiated and ‘(re) formed’ through a multitude of individual and collective ‘politics of performance” (64–65). These multitudes add to the richness of expression at Pride but can also dilute the message and limit the strength of possible reformations. Each year, the festival shouts demands for social change. Yet, in the years when major events or adjustments to legislative policies occur, the LGBT Pride voice sounds loudest: HIV/AIDS awareness in the 1980s, gays in the military/“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in 1993/1994, and sodomy and civil union laws at the turn of the twentyfirst century. Celebrants at San Francisco Pride 2008 experience another historical moment of unifying political focus for the LGBT scope. This year, the rebels again have their cause: the end of Proposition 22 and the legalization of gay marriage. On May 15, 2008, the California Supreme Court ruled that barring same-sex couples from marriage was unconstitutional; this decision overturned the 2000 Proposition 22 ruling that marriage was only between a man and a woman. Beginning June 17, 2008, same-sex couples were free to marry in California. From 5:01 P.M. on June 16 (when the Prop 22 ban lifted) through June 23,San Francisco County reported 849 marriage license registrations.8 The weekend of Gay Pride, the San Francisco county clerk had 259 marriage license appointments and 284

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reservations for wedding ceremonies scheduled for that Friday alone (Vara-Orta, par. 5). At the parade, the liberation and vindication offered by the Supreme Court ruling takes over the procession as recently married men and women announce their wedding dates and march in favor of the change. The Civic Center honors the occasion with a first time venue: the “Get Engaged! Wedding Pavilion.” Participants are invited to “Come celebrate the recent victory for marriage equality . . . Get all the answers you need about marriage rights, meet and greet civil rights leaders, and get engaged with the movement to defend marriage equality for all couples . . . Can same-sex couples marry in California? Yes” (San Francisco Pride, 2008: “Get Engaged! Wedding Pavilion,” original italics). The acknowledgment of marriage to include same-sex couples infuses a feeling of accomplishment and progress into 2008 Pride. The ruling was lauded as a break-through for the LGBT community and upheld as a beacon of righteousness and liberation. The tributes to same-sex marriage where made more poignant by the fact that a mere three weeks earlier (June 2) opponents against gay marriage turned in enough signatures to add Proposition 8 to the upcoming November general elections.9 The Pride celebrant marched knowing there was a real threat to their most recent legislative success. Like the symbolism of naked celebrants, marchers for marriage equality also demonstrate rebellion against social constraints; however, this group represents a more everyday reality where same-sex couples present a vision of family and commitment that is less morally condemnable than the public nudity. Beyond declarations of socio-political cause, the 2008 SF Pride Celebration is decorated with distinct emblems of LGBT identity and community. Perennial Gay Pride symbols including pink triangles, rainbow flags, leather, and drag queens/kings pervade the parade route and after party. Each of these symbols 10 relates to freedom, politics, and the history of gay culture. During the Holocaust, Hitler forced homosexual inmates to wear pink triangles on their clothes so they could be easily recognized and further humiliated inside the concentration camps. Between 5,000 to 15,000 homosexuals died in these camps (Schwatz par. 2). SF Pride honors LGBT members victimized by the Nazi reign with a Pink Triangle Installation and Dedication Ceremony. Early on parade-day morning, volunteers with Friends of the Pink Triangle construct a gigantic pink triangle on the Twin Peaks bar in the Castro. Elected officials and parade Grand Marshals attend the event; a champagne christening follows the installation. The ceremony has been a part of

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each SF Pride weekend since 1996. The triangle is said to serve as a “symbol of man’s inhumanity . . . a [reminder] of the hatred and prejudice of the past to help educate others and try to prevent such hatred from happening again” (San Francisco Pride, 2008: “Official Pride Events”). Historically, there have been attempts to re-appropriate the pink triangle symbol as an affirmative sign of LGBT solidarity. Perhaps due to its negative origins, however, the pink triangle is a less common representation of gay unity than the rainbow flag. Rainbow-striped flags flood the Market Street parade route and overflow onto the Civic Center’s downtown buildings and most of the hotel entrances and department store windows lining the corners of Union Square. The rainbow flag debuted at the San Francisco Gay Pride Parade on June 25, 1978. It was created by San Francisco artist Gilbert Baker as a symbol of pride and support for the gay community. Originally, the flag had eight colors. In his piece “The Rainbow (Gay Pride) Flag,” Ramon Johnson (par. 2) identifies the symbolic meaning of each original color [top to bottom]: pink (sexuality), red (life), orange (healing), yellow (sunlight), green (nature), turquoise (magic), indigo/blue (serenity), and violet (spirit). Although, hot pink and turquoise have since been removed, the multicolored flag still serves as a symbolic representation of the multi-facets of the homosexual population. Leather, another staple adornment at Pride, shifts symbolism from an emblem of unity to a lascivious venture into the taboo sub-culture of leather sex. According to one informant, “There is no accidental leather at Pride. I made a conscious choice to wear these chaps. I’m saying ‘tie me up and whip me, Baby’ ” [Leather Male, 41, San Francisco, Dispatcher]. As this quote exposes, the leather community is closely related to the S&M community. Members describe the style of wearing black leather clothing, like boots and vests, as important signatures of participation in the leather sub-group. In addition to the erotic component, the leather group has shared symbols and rituals: leather flags, leather competitions, and titles (Browne 65). Like many of the large contingents that represent a distinct LGBT sub-culture, the Leather Pride Contingent holds formal events throughout the week to honor Pride. SF Pride 2008 sees the First Annual Dirty Jock Strap Sale where Chaps Team Members11 wear one jock for the week leading up to the final Pride weekend. On Pink Saturday, these jocks plus five others from Chaps celebrity go-go dancers are auctioned off with all proceeds going to STOP AIDS (San Francisco Pride, 2008: “Official Events”). Additionally, Sunday’s Civic Center After-Party hosts “Leather Alley” as one of its pavilion venues. The venue advertisement reads “Do you think leather

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is hot? Curious about SM? Kinky? Got a fetish? Visit Leather Alley. Novices, curious people, and experienced players come together at Leather Alley to foster friendship and family in a safe and supportive environment. Check out our real life BDSM12 demonstrations. Visit a variety of LGBT leather and SM groups” (San Francisco Pride, 2008: “Leather Alley”). The only after-party venue with an entry fee, “Leather Alley” is walled in by huge black fences. At the door, representatives offer information on the importance of trust and communication as a part of the leather environment. Inside the gate, spectators can witness demos and ask scene participants about the leather lifestyle. The leather culture is a private community, and this exhibit is a unique instance of taking what is normally a private encounter and opening it to the public. The invitation embodies the freedom of expression, taboo experimentation, and information-sharing that epitomizes the overall Pride experience. The foundations of Pride as a homosexual festival and the existence of drag kings/queens as another major symbol of the celebration challenge notions of gender identity and preconceptions of what it means to be male or female. Drag kings/queens best capture the symbolic role reversal and blurring that occurs in same-sex couples. Like Bakktin’s description of Carnival clowns and fools, drag kings/queens represent “a certain form of life, which [is] real and ideal at the same time. They [stand] on the borderline between life and art, in a peculiar mid-zone . . . they [are] neither eccentrics nor dolts, neither [are] they comic actors” (8). Drag kings/queens are often the glam and the fabulous of the Pride festival. Their outrageous costumes and enormous personalities make no apologies for their gender choices. They use parody to subvert what is perhaps most threatening about the homosexual lifestyle: its presumed feminization of men and masculinization of women. Cross-dressing is a common existence at pride, with feminine males or butchy females, but true drag divas/studs takes these stereotypes to an extreme. They revolt against the “thou shalt not’s” (Babcock 21) of traditional hegemonic society. In their choice to live life so loudly, drag kings/queens engender the respect of the LGBTcommunity in a way that the others do not. Yet, gender-bending clothing is common at Pride, and the ways in which it problematizes gender assumptions do not stop at drag kings/queens. Referring to the occurrence of symbolic inversions in festival settings, Barbara Babcock notes that “inversion” is a common term for homosexuality. She goes on to clarify that during festival, the term denotes “ritualized ‘role reversals’ and not actual sexual practices”

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(22, my italics). Yet, Pride festivals celebrate the very intertwining of role reversal with sexuality that Babcock attempts to separate. Unlike gender inversions in heterosexual celebrations (e.g., men dressing up like women), role reversal is part of ordinary non-festival time for the homosexual community. Inversion during festival is not a complete suspension of time, or “time out of time,” as anthropologist and folklorist are prone to call ritual/festival periods. Rather, Pride inversions journey beyond playful cross-dressing into pronouncements of identity and group membership. The LGBT community is less a singular community and more a collection of distinct cultural groups. Participant dress at Pride proves gender identity to be more fluid than conventionally assumed. The choice of “costume” is particularly important because the symbols of one’s “uniform” often proclaim group affiliation. Each LGBT subgroup has its own unofficial code of dress. Women dress themselves to represent their categories: fem, jock, butch, stud, fish, professional, nature girl, grunge. Men do the same: twink, faerie, daddy, bear, queen, prep. Lamenting potentially negative media representation, one 2008 SF Pride participant identifies that “in some ways, everyone reverts to being a stereotype [at Pride] which always ends up on the news and perpetuates these stereotypes” [Lesbian, 38, Australia, Geologist]. Yet, at the risk of typecasting, categories remain important components of gay cultural expression. Everyone has a group, and the San Francisco Pride organizers attempt to recognize each one. The parade is a procession of affiliations: Bare Chest Calendar; San Francisco Leather Pride Contingent; Bears of San Francisco; Straights for Gay Rights; Transgender San Francisco; BABN—Bay Area Bisexual Network; Me, Not Meth, and so on. The Civic Center After-Party has multiple venues celebrating LGBT diversities: Women’s and Transgender pavilions, Swing Block, Youth Space, Elder Space, Family Garden, Faerie Village, and so on. With few exceptions (i.e., Leather-Alley, Faerie Freedom Village, Family Garden), each venue has pretty much the same activities. The music changes, but the course of events is the same—a stage, grouprepresentative musicians or comedians, a crowd. Unlike more traditional culture festivals, visiting and remaining at a venue showcases one’s identity. Usually, this is a conscious choice made by the spectator; however, the LGBTcommunity is so attuned to labels that lingering at a venue too long can classify a person as one identity or another. In a sense, Pride is a formal way to “out” your LGBT identity and to explore or create new ones. Coming-out narratives are a personal part of gay

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folklore that is never a fully complete process. Coming “out” is certainly an occasion for a special celebration, but Pride spectators accept outing as a risk/benefit of the festival. The prohibitions that regulate gay life as unacceptable in ordinary time are reversed, as homosexuality becomes accepted and expected during the festival. Limey, a DJ from Los Angeles, explains it best when he clarified that “If you’re not LGBT . . . in other words if you’re straight [at Pride], you’re assumed to be gay” [Gay male, 29, Houston, Disc Jockey.]. Unlike festivals that attract a large set of passive spectators, Pride refuses mere observation. Event participation is assumed as a declaration of LGBT membership. A desire to be viewed as anything else requires marching with PFLAG (Parents, Families, & Friends of Lesbians and Gays) and/or making some other obvious display of heterosexuality (e.g., public displays of affection with the opposite sex, t-shirts declaring sexual preference). In many ways, Pride functions as a unified declaration of equality—a declaration as important for the participants to make as it is for the conservative, heterosexual mainstream to hear. Speaking to the merger of personal values with communal cohesion, one informant asserted that “Pride is all about defining who and what the gay community is about, both on a personal level and normally in larger groups” [Nathan, Female-To-Male Transgender, 37, Hawaii, Border Patrol Agent]. In day-to-day life, the mass collection of LGBT subgroups can make it difficult to sustain a collected identity. Somehow though, the disparate personalities of gay culture seem more collective during Pride events than at any other time. One sense of this shared community of sub-groups is the transgenerational modeling that occurs at Pride. My experience at 2008 San Francisco Pride reveals a different perspective from the conclusions of Peacock et al. whose 2001 study found a “lack of connection, lack of shared values, and lack of shared aesthetics between young gay and bisexual men and the ‘mainstream’ [i.e., ‘older ’] gay community” (193).13 Admittedly, most participants with whom I speak have put little thought into the fact that Pride might serve as a form of generational role-modeling; yet, it seems obvious that modeling occurs, even if subconsciously. At the Civic Center after-party, I meet Seth, a 20-year old male attending his first Pride celebration. The interview is a bit challenging because the young man had been dared by his female friends to spend 30 minutes completely naked. Intrigued by the sight of this small-statured, visibly embarrassed young man with none of the arrogant bravado of my previously-witnessed unclothed revelers, I meet up with Seth mid-dare. He willingly answers my questions. He

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is in town from Oakland. His parents do not know he is gay, but his friends all do. He is enjoying his Pride experience so far because he thinks it “cool to see so many people like [him]” [Seth, Gay Youth, 20, Oakland, Student]. Seth’s comment indicates that young homosexuals look to Pride experiences as a way to find a sense of belonging. With much of the LGBT community accepting Pride as a rite of passage, new LGBT members inevitably learn what it means to “be gay” from the more versed members at the festival. All people are raised in a heterosexual world; gay, then, becomes a learned behavior.14 Pride offers a grandscale image of what the gay lifestyle encompasses and what it could be if free from the confines of societal pressure. The festival offers a venue for the transference of history and cultural lessons to younger members of the LGBT community; these early experiences are seminal moments in the development and sense of self for Pride novitiates. In many ways, the common voice of the celebration says to young/ new Pride participants, “These are our values. These are our important causes. Welcome, and what are you going to do to help?” Like other marginalized groups, the strength and socio-political success of the LGBT community depends on a unified message of purpose. Pride celebrations create a unique atmosphere of oneness often elusive outside of the festival. Members share the common experiences of isolation, ostracism, and discrimination within conventional social structures. Bonds of social togetherness are born from these trying conditions. The sharing of this restrictive existence in combination with the freeing atmosphere at a Pride festival allow for a spontaneous emotional connection among LGBT members that anthropologist, Victor Turner calls communitas.15 According to Turner, if reached, this feeling, this communitas “has something ‘magical’ about it. Subjectively there is in it a feeling of endless power’ . . . [when] compatible people . . . obtain a flash of lucid mutual understanding on the existential level, when they feel that all problems, not just their problems, could be resolved” (47–48). A Pride festival’s greatest success comes when the separate LGBT affiliations merge into a shared group identity. If this happens, the community as a whole enlarges, hopefully creating a feeling of oneness reflexive of Turner’s communitas and relating back to the sense of a “flow” or a collective “party high.” Ultimately, however, Pride (like communitas) is an ephemeral experience, contained only in the space of the ritual/festival. Its true success may be measured on how well it refreshes and motivates LGBT members to continue their fight for free expression and equal legislative treatment once life’s normalcy returns.

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If only limited to one June week in San Francisco, the 2008 LGBT Pride Celebration, Parade and Civic Center After-Party accomplished what its spectators expected it to: a carnivalesque party, celebrating of the LGBT community, and offering a safe space for same-sex expression. The party holds intrinsic value for its participants beyond the publicity and media hype. A lack of conscious awareness about the lessons of Pride does not mean that these lessons are absent. Often complicated by warring political and cultural agendas, the meaning of a Pride festival can often be lost on its party-going participants. Quite honestly, the major politics of queer often take a subconscious backseat to the more enjoyable and fun actions of the event. Yet, the dancing, the drinking, the costuming, and even the subversive nudity—all embody the playful rebelliousness of Pride that challenges conventional norms, questions the politics of exclusionary social policies, allows for a free expression of individual identity and communal unity, and contests the confining bifurcation of gender and sexuality in mainstream American society. In illuminating some of the historic traditions and legacies present in the 2008 LGBT San Francisco Pride Celebration and Parade, I hope to foster the development of an audience that loves and better understands the event and its important symbols. Although a short-lived apex of socio-political accomplishment with the subsequent passing of Proposition 8, the true success of SF Pride 2008 was that it offered a chance to envision a world where love was accepted in all forms, where difference was celebrated, and inclusiveness was the status quo. NOTES 1. To note, I did later see a very slightly built man clutching a camera and being body-surfed by his friends over this same group of young women. I can only assume that this was, in fact, an effort to “squeeze” him in up front. 2. SF Pride will be used throughout the paper to refer interchangeably to the pre-parade celebration, the parade itself, as well as the after-party. 3. Milk would go on to win two Academy Award Oscars: “Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role” (Sean Penn) and “Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen” (Dustin Lance Black). 4. Anthropologist Victor Turner notes that flow occurs in a structured environment. As such, it does not quite capture the spirit of Pride. Turner uses the term communitas to describe a more spontaneous feeling of group unity and connection. 5. For further information on the concept of Bakhtinian Carnival, see Rabelais and His World (1984) by the Russian Literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin.

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6. This would be my first experience of nudity at Pride but not at all my last. At the parade, many Dykes on Bikes members rode topless. Other costumed women sprinkled with glitter, wearing heals and tights often had nothing but pasties covering their nipples. Some men’s pants had cutouts where the back pockets should have been. Others (usually men) had nothing on at all but shoes and a hat. 7. On June 1, 2009, President Barack Obama formally proclaimed June as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month. 8. This 849 represents a 700% increase from the 120 license applications the same time the previous year (Vara-Orta, par. 5). 9. On Nov, 4, 2008 (during the month in which LGBT members would be remembering the 30th anniversary of the assassination of Harvey Milk), California voters passed Proposition 8, amending the California Constitution to eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry. California Supreme Court decided to uphold Prop 8 but the court protected the more than 18,000 existing marriages that took place before the between May and the November election (“Marriage for Some,” A24). 10. The symbols relate to what Rory Turner and Phillip McArthur term “reference points of identity” (83). 11. Chaps is a gay bar in San Francisco’s SoMa (“south of market” street) neighborhood. 12. BDSM is muddled combo-acronym mixing bondage/discipline, dominance/submission, and sadism/masochism. 13. The Peacock et al. study focuses exclusively on the homosexual and bisexual male sub-communities in San Francisco, and does not purport female LGBT members. Since my informant is male, my example of Seth remains an appropriate counterpoint illustration. 14. “Gay” in this sentence refers to the cultural actions and expressions of gayness. It is not a comment on the nature vs. nurture debate on whether homosexuality is biological or environmental. 15. Turner’s work in From Ritual to Theatre focuses mostly on sacred rituals and rites of passage as it relates to theatrical aesthetics.

REFERENCES “About Harvey Milk.” The Harvey Milk City Hall Memorial. Harvey Milk City Hall Memorial Committee, 2004. Web. December 5, 2008. Babcock, B., ed. The Reversible World: Symbolic Inversion in Art and Society. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978. Print. Bakhtin, M. Rabelais and His World. Trans. Helene Iswolsky. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984. Print. Browne, K. “A Party with Politics? (Re)making LGBTQ Pride Spaces in Dublin and Brighton.” Social & Cultural Geography. 8.1 (2007): 63–87. Print.

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“Dyke Identity.” The San Francisco Dyke March. n.p., 2008. Web. August 15, 2008. “Dykes on Bikes Women’s Motorcycle Contingent History.” Dykes on Bikes Women’s Motorcycle Contingent. San Francisco Dykes on Bikes, April 9, 2007. Web. 4 May 2008. “Film Festival.” Frameline. n.p., 2007. Web. August 5, 2008. Gilbert, R. “ ‘That’s Why I Go to the Gym’: Sexual Identity and the Body of the Male Performer.” Theatre Journal. 46: 4 (1994): 477–488. Print. Johnson, R. “The Rainbow (Gay Pride) Flag.” About.com: Gay Life. About.com, 2009. Web. July 14, 2009. Kugelmass, J. “ ‘The Fun Is in Dressing up’: The Greenwich Village Halloween Parade and the Reimagining of Urban Space.” Social Text 36 (1993): 138–152. Print. “Marriage for Some.” Editorial. Los Angeles Times, May 27, 2009 home ed.: A24. Print. “National Queer Arts Festival.” The Queer Cultural Center Presents. n.p., n.d. Web. August 8, 2008. Peacock, B., et al. “Delineating Differences: Sub-Communities in the San Francisco Gay Community.” Culture, Health & Sexuality Vol. 3.2 (2001): 183–201. Print. The President of the United States of America. “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month, 2009.” The White House. The Briefing Room, June 1, 2009. Web. August 14, 2009. “Resolution No. 238-08.” sfgov.org. San Francisco Board of Supervisors, May 9, 2008. Web. August 14, 2009. San Francisco Pride. sfpride.org, 2008. Web. December 4, 2008. San Francisco Study Center. “Pride.” Diverse Destinations San Francisco. San Francisco Grants for the Arts/Hotel Tax Program, 2008. Web. June 14, 2009. Schwatz, T. P. “Holocaust: Non-Jewish Victims.” 1.1. Holocaustforgotten.com. The Holocaust Forgotten Memorial, 2008. Web. May 30, 2009. Turner, R. and P. H. McArthur. “Cultural Performance: Public Display Events and Festival.” The Emergence of Folklore in Everyday Life: A Fieldguide and Sourcebook. Ed. George H. Schoemaker. Bloomington: Trickster Press, 1990. 83–93. Turner, V. From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play. New York: PAJ Publications, 1982. Print. Vara-Orta, F. “Same-Sex Unions Boost California’s June Wedding Average: Survey Finds That More Than Two and a Half Times the State’s Usual Number of Couples Are Issued Licenses.” Lesbian Dating & Relationships. June 29, 2008. Web. December 8, 2008.

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Chapter 14

A Thin Line Between Being Straight or Gay: Portrayal of Lesbian Women in Advertising Malgorzata Skorek

Advertising can be seen as one of the most powerful visual forces shaping our society. Wherever we look advertisements “pop up” unexpectedly and want to be looked at: buildings, newspaper pages, bus stops, mailboxes, and Web sites. We can hardly hide from them and attempt to remain unaffected in our buying decisions. However, advertisements are not only selling products; they “sell” a great deal more: values, addictions, and concepts of success, love, and sexuality (Kilbourne 2000). They communicate information about ourselves and dictate our lifestyles. This happens partly because products are rarely presented in advertising alone; in fact, the majority of ads are accompanied by human models. The roles that people portray in advertisements are powerful images that can influence how people act in real life. The problem is that they are not always presenting the roles of men and women that they really have, but instead they often show overly generalized and negative imagery. People may, in turn, start orienting themselves towards these outdated or simply fictional roles and introduce them into their everyday lives. In other words, advertisements cultivate a “reality’” that is not necessarily true, but viewers are likely to “buy

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into it” following repeated exposure (Gerbner et al. 1986). That is why the study of advertising content becomes so crucial. It reveals the major concepts, symbols, and images we are exposed to as well as the extent to which these are correct depictions of the real world. Advertising has been criticized on this account especially for showing men and women in highly stereotypical fashion. The first critique of the portrayal of women in advertising was brought about in the late 1960s by the women’s liberation movement in the United States. Women’s concerns were soon after confirmed by content analyses that revealed that indeed advertisements tended to portray women in ways limited to unprofessional jobs, as housewives, and as sex objects (Courtney and Lockeretz 1971, Belkaoui and Belkaoui 1976, Pingree et al. 1976). Further studies have showed that men are presented in advertising in stereotypical ways as well, as dominant over women but also often objectified (Courtney and Lockeretz 1971, Rohlinger 2002, Skelly and Lundstorm 1981). Researchers continue to find gender stereotypes in advertising in more recent years (Hovland et al. 2005, Wiles et al. 1995). Even though many content analyses of the portrayal of men and women in advertising have been conducted (for a review see Wolin 2003), their sexual orientation remained largely ignored. This could be due partly to the fact that portrayals of gay men or lesbian women in mainstream media used to be extremely rare. In the recent decade, however, the media have increasingly portrayed gay and lesbian couples, especially in advertising. There are two major reasons for this development. First, advertisers began to recognize that homosexual consumers constitute a market segment with above-average income and a willingness to spend (Lukenbill 1995), often referred to as the “Dream Market” (Oakenfull and Greenlee 2004). Second, more than half of these consumers do not read gay magazines (Poux 1998), and as Tharp (2001) reported, 90 percent of gay and 82 percent of lesbian consumers regularly read mainstream titles such as Newsweek, Time, National Geographic, People, or Men’s Health. Hence, advertisers considered mainstream media to be the only possibility to reach this market. Being more often portrayed in mainstream advertising, gay communities are likely to have similar concerns as women did four decades ago. Are the depictions of their lifestyle, activities, and behaviors reflective of reality? What positive or negative stereotypes are conveyed in those ads? What effect do these ads have on their homosexual and heterosexual audience? How do the portrayals of gay men and lesbian women differ? All these questions received very little attention in the

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literature so far. Content analyses are valuable investigations of how different groups are portrayed in advertising and they are a first step in providing information on the image promoted by the media. Unfortunately, very little research has been done on the portrayal of gay men and lesbian women in the mass media. Rohlinger (2002) analyzed portrayal of men in ads from five U.S. mainstream magazines published in 1987 and 1997 and showed an increasing trend towards eroticizing men. Moreover, she reported more portrayals of men whose sexuality was unknown in 1997 than in 1987. These findings suggest that “sex sells” motto seems to apply equally to men as to women and that the rise of sexually ambiguous portrayals of men may indicate that gay men are becoming more present in advertising. Less literature exists describing the way lesbian women are portrayed in the media. One study by Va¨nska¨ (2005) provided an art history perspective on three ads of lesbian women found in a British Vogue and discussed new ways of looking at gender by using the concept of “femme-ninity.” Ragusa (2003) analyzed the content of business news articles published in the New York Times between 1970 and 2000 related to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, and queer groups. She found that gay men were twice as often covered in the business news as lesbian women in the studied period, but the discrepancy was smaller in the last two decades than between 1970 and 1990. In addition, a content analysis of The Advocate, one of the leading gay and lesbian magazines, reported that lesbian-targeted imagery accounted only for 3 percent of all advertising content in 1999 (Oakenfull and Greenlee 2000). In these two studies it becomes apparent that lesbian women are somehow forgotten in the mass media, in general. A possible explanation for why advertisers are not targeting lesbian women as much as gay men is their lower economic status as compared to gay men. Marketers are more focused on attracting money from gay male consumers (Schulman 1998) and therefore use more gay imagery in advertising. Even though lesbian women are still rarely portrayed in magazine advertising, they are not portrayed in a simple or a uniform way. Instead, I observed a wide variety of their portrayals that range from very implicit portrayals of female friendship to sexually explicit depictions of a lesbian relationship. As suggested by previous research, overt portrayals remain a taboo even after the gains of the gay liberation movement (Clark 1995). Moreover, explicit and more overt depictions of lesbian women are likely to have different effects on the heterosexual public. Oakenfull and Greenlee (2004) exposed

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heterosexual participants to explicit or more implicit images of samesex couples in advertising. A greater amount of intimacy depicted by the ads was considered indicative of a more explicit portrayal of homosexuality of the models. The study found that heterosexual men had more positive attitudes towards ads with overtly lesbian images than with less overt lesbian imagery. This was considered to result from the fact that lesbian relationships have an erotic value for heterosexual men. For heterosexual women, Oakenfull and Greenlee (2004) found an opposite effect; women had a more positive attitude towards implicit than towards explicit images of lesbian models. To explain this relationship, Kite and Deaux’s (1987) application of Freud’s (1953 [1905]) inversion model was used. The model proposes that homosexuals are seen as more similar to the opposite-sex heterosexuals; homosexual women more similar to heterosexual men and homosexual men are more similar to heterosexual women. Therefore, heterosexual women in the sample were expected to consider overtly lesbian women as out-groups and identify with them less than with less explicit portrayals of lesbian women. The explanations provided by Oakenfull and Greenlee (2004) are not necessarily substantiated. It seems that men would be attracted by overt and intimate portrayals of any women, not only lesbians. Moreover, Freud’s (1953 [1905]) model of homosexuality expects all gay men and lesbian women to be the same, which is a great simplification. Nevertheless, this study showed that the gender of heterosexual viewers might lead to very different preferences of lesbian portrayals in advertising. Based on the above findings it is clear that we need to explore different types of portrayals of lesbian women, which were largely ignored in the previous research. This is important because different types of imagery are likely to have very different effects on the homosexual and heterosexual audience. In this chapter, I would like to cast more light on the ways advertising depicts lesbian women and their relationships and discuss implications of these different portrayals. AN INVESTIGATION OF THE PORTRAYAL OF LESBIAN WOMEN IN PRINT ADVERTISING Approximately 50 print ads presenting explicit or more implicit homosexual female couples were retrieved from a number of mainstream magazines published in the United States in the recent years,

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Table 14.1 Indicators of different sexual relationships of women portrayed in the ads Heterosexual relationship

Homosexual relationship

Gaze Touch

Non-seductive Absent

Kiss

Absent

Nudity

Absent

Role-play

Absent, women are portrayed in a similar way (as equals)

Seductive Holding hands, embracing, touching lips, face, hair, neck, breast, belly, buttock On the lips or cheeks (both the act of kissing or being about to kiss) Present (women wearing underwear, swimsuit, a revealing top, etc.) Present (masculine and feminine role, a nurse and a patient, policewoman and a villain)

including Cosmopolitan and Elle, as well as ads from a Google image search.* The brands that portrayed lesbian couples in their advertisements found in this sample included Coors, Dior, Dolce & Gabbana, Dove, H & M, Jean Paul Gaultier, Sisley, Skyy Vodka, Versace, and a few others. The selected ads contained two or more female models, since an interpersonal relationship was needed to determine the sexual orientation of the models. Ads presenting single models were considered to convey too few cues to retrieve this kind of information. All ads were qualitatively analyzed and different cues served as indicators of a homosexual relationship. These cues were then used to create different portrayal categories. Please see Table 14.1 for an overview of these indicators. After a careful investigation of the material, all collected ads fit into five categories of a lesbian relationship portrayal: • Sisterly friendship. Women are shown as close friends but nothing more, there is no physical contact between them nor do they gaze at each other in a seductive way. *English keywords were used in the online image search in order to find images posted by English-speaking Internet users. I selected only those advertisements that had slogans in English and that featured brands that are commonly advertised in the United States. Yet, I was not able to rule out the possibility that some of the ads were Canadian or British. The reason why I needed to resort to an Internet search is that there are very few portrayals of lesbian relationships found in mainstream print media, as suggested in the literature review section.

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• Innocent touch. Women hold hands, embrace each other, or one of them touches parts of her partner’s body, but these touches seem innocent and accidental; other cues of a homosexual relationship, for example, seductive gaze, are missing. • Role play. Women do not necessarily touch or gaze at each other but they are presented in opposite gender roles (masculine and feminine) or other role play situations—e.g. a nurse and a patient, policewoman and a villain—and often involves dressing up. • Loving caress. Women’s touch is more sexually overt, and often both women touch each other and gaze at each other in a seductive way; some nudity may be also present. • Sensual kiss. Women are shown kissing or about to kiss, and both fully clothed or nude portrayals are possible. An example of a sisterly friendship ad would be a recent H&M ad in which two women advertising a new collection of dresses stand next to each other, one in the front, the other in the back. Both women gaze into the camera with a neutral expression on their faces. They are standing freely without any physical contact to one another and come across just as two models who happen to be in the same shot. Based on the facial expressions, body language, and the atmosphere of this ad there is no indication that these two models could be in an intimate homosexual relationship but friendship at best. Dolce & Gabbana has created a series of advertisements of clothing and accessories that feature women lying in hay. One of them views from above two blond women lying in hay and facing each other. The blond on the right, dressed in a short lace dress, lies on her side and gazes into the camera. The women on the left lies on her belly and with her left hand touches the lace of the other woman’s dress close to her breasts. Her gaze follows her action. The described scene in a subtle way depicts a very close and almost intimate relationship that may go beyond friendship. However, the viewer does not have enough evidence to know that there is more. This and similar ads were placed in the innocent touch category. Women are also often shown as having opposite gender roles and at some occasions even are involved in stereotypical couple-games like the naughty nurse and a patient, policewoman and a villain. The portrayal of role play may reflect a sexual and intimate but playful relationship between two women. More importantly, taking up a masculine role by one of the women may be a further hint at the fact that the

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women are in a relationship that mimics a heterosexual gender role set-up. According to Butler (1993, 233), this performance of traditional heterosexual gender roles by lesbian women or gay men demonstrates a “critique of a prevailing truth-regime of sex.” One example for this category could be a fashion ad by Jean Paul Gaultier. A long-haired blond women in a short black dress is sitting on a bar stool. She is touching her hair with the left hand and holding a handbag with the other. On her right stands a woman with a very short haircut. She is wearing knee-high army-like boots and pants, and a tight top with stripes. She is resting her left arm on the first woman’s shoulder. Both women are gazing into the camera without a smile. When viewing this ad, the impression of a strong split between feminine and masculine roles is obvious and, even though still quite implicit, it hints at a close relationship between the two women. More explicit scenes of a potentially lesbian relationship were contained within a loving caress category. Women were portrayed as touching each other and gazing at each other in a more sensual and intimate way that lead the viewer to doubt their innocence. For instance, an ad of Coors beer depicts two women in a public bathroom. One of them is a blond attractive woman sitting on the sink and smiling at the other one while looking into her eyes. The second model, to the right of the picture, faces the first woman and stands very close to her, grabbing her left knee with her left hand and applying a lipstick with another. Her right arm also seems to press against the blond woman’s exposed breasts. The women in this scene are unlikely to be seen as close friends helping each other out, because too many cues dictate to think that these women are sexually attracted to each other. An act of kissing or being about to kiss (sensual kiss category) was the most explicit relationship portrayed found in the sample of ads. It also conveys the most intimacy out of all five types of portrayals identified above. A kissing scene was found in ads by Sisley and Dior. The first one showed a close-up of women’s faces only, while the latter also showed their bodies. More explicit scenes of a lesbian couple than the kissing scene were not found, and women were never portrayed in bed together or in a related overt depiction. A sisterly friendship category was included in this categorization scheme, even though this portrayal would be most likely considered a heterosexual relationship. It is included because several portrayals of women’s relationships are ambiguous. Sometimes very few cues exist that would indicate that the portrayed relationship is homosexual, but many others would speak for the heterosexual orientation. That is why

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Figure 14.1 An implicit-explicit continuum of different types of lesbian portrayals.

I argue that advertising presents women’s relationships on a sexual continuum, with portrayals ranging from explicitly heterosexual to explicitly homosexual and a grey area in between, rather than using a clear dichotomy of who is who. The diagram in Figure 14.1 maps the different lesbian portrayals on this continuum. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS This preliminary study of the portrayal of lesbian relationships provided some evidence that the media, advertising in particular, do not portray lesbian relationships in a uniform and clear way. Instead, they use subtle or more explicit cues about women’s relationships that lead to a variety of different depictions of female homosexuality. These portrayals differ in their depictions of physical contact, gaze, and nudity. They suggest varying degrees of intimacy between women that could correspond to different stages in a relationship or the extent to which women may need to hide their relationship from the general audience. In fact, many of the distinguished portrayals, like the sisterly friendship, innocent touch and role-play, were considered implicit; that is, the women’s sexual orientation was ambiguous. This suggests that advertisers are skeptical about the possible effects of using overt portrayals of lesbian couples and rely on the use of implicit imagery to attract gay consumers without alienating the mainstream. A possible explanation for it may be the fact that consumers’ negative attitudes towards homosexuality are likely to translate into negative attitudes towards ads featuring gay models (Bhat et al. 1996). The strategy of using “dual messaging” is a way to target both homosexual and heterosexual consumers and avoid possible problems resulting from heterosexuals holding negative attitudes towards gays or lesbians. Advertisers can use a certain “language” which signs and symbols can only be meaningful by gay or lesbian consumers, whereas the heterosexual audience is unfamiliar with it and therefore

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their attitudes towards the product or brand remain unaffected by subtle homosexual language. In a way, these types of ads tell at least two possible stories and it depends on the consumers which one they will perceive. A question that this essay has not answered is whether portrayals of lesbians in advertisements are true depictions of female homosexual relationships, or are these rather portrayals of what heterosexual marketers think homosexuality is like. This essay does not resolve this issue but encourages a further discussion and analysis of this topic. This study’s main limitation lies in that we looked only at ads portraying couples or multiple women. Would it be possible to determine sexual orientation of advertising models if only one model is present? My intuition is that it would be very hard. The fact that we tend to assume heterosexuality when looking at single women until proven otherwise seems to be a problematic issue that needs to be addressed. We also do not know the publication dates of the majority of ads analyzed. A comparison of prevalence of implicit-explicit portrayals over time would reflect important changes in social norms with respect to the acceptance and promotion of female homosexuality in mass media. Another drawback of this preliminary study is the inclusion of ads derived from an Internet image search, which might have contributed non-U.S. ads to the sample. FURTHER RESEARCH One of the further questions that come to mind is whether advertising portrayals of gay men are also as implicit as the portrayals of lesbians. Can we distinguish between different types of portrayals of gay relationships and are they likely to evoke different reactions in their viewers? Further research could also explore the level of generalization of this study’s findings. Could we see a similar pattern of portrayals in other U.S. media, such as television commercials or online ads, and in other countries? Is the scale extended in the explicit direction in any media by including even more overt depictions of lesbian women than a kissing scene? Do advertisers in different countries use a similar array of implicit or explicit portrayals of homosexuality? An investigation of cross-cultural differences in the portrayal of gay and lesbian couples would reflect interesting differences in tolerance and promotion of homosexuality in advertising across the globe. It would be interesting to investigate what impact religion and a

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political climate of different nations have on the extent to which companies are willing to engage in creating ads featuring homosexuality. Further content analyses of the portrayal of gay men and lesbian women are needed. The existing literature offers very little insights into the ways these two groups are presented and it does not provide answers to questions posed above. Researchers should also address the issue of positive and negative stereotypes conveyed by these different portrayals, whether they correspond to the reality and how harmful they might be. Investigating the portrayal of the gay community in the media is not only interesting for communication scientists and psychologists but also for future advertisers’ practices. REFERENCES Belkaoui, A., and J. Belkaoui. “A Comparative Analysis of the Roles Portrayed by Women in Print Advertisements: 1958, 1970, 1972.” Journal of Marketing Research 12, no. 2 (1976): 168–172. Bhat, S., T. Leigh, and D. Wardlow. “The Effect of Homosexual Imagery in Advertising on Attitude Toward the Ad.” In Gays, Lesbians, and Consumer Behavior: Theory, Practice, and Research Issues in Marketing, edited by D. Wardlow, 161–176. Binghamton, NY: The Haworth Press, 1996. Butler, J. Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “sex”. New York, NY: Routledge, 1993. Clark, D. “Commodity Lesbianism.” In Gender, Race and Class in Media: A Text Reader, edited by G. Dines and J. Humez, 142–151. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1995. Courtney, A., and S. Lockeretz. “A Woman’s Place: An Analysis of the Roles Portrayed by Women in Magazine Advertisements.” Journal of Marketing Research 8, no. 1 (1971): 92–95. Freud, S. “Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality.” In The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud, edited by J. Strachev, 136–148. London: Hogarth Press, 1953 [1905]. Gerbner, G., L. Gross, M. Morgan, and N. Signiorelli. “Living with Television: The Dynamics of the Cultivation Process.” In Perspectives on Media Effects, edited by J. Bryant and D. Zillman, 17–40. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1986. Hovland, R., C. McMahan, G. Lee, J. S. Hwang, and J. Kim. “Gender Role Portrayals in American and Korean Advertisements.” Sex Roles 53, no. 11/12 (2005): 887–899. Kilbourne, J. Killing us softly 3: Advertising’s image of women. Documentary, 2000. Kite, M. E., and K. Deaux. “Gender Belief Systems: Homosexuality and the Implicit Inversion Theory.” Psychology of Women Quarterly 11 (1987): 83–96.

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Lukenbill, G. Untold millions: Positioning Your Business for the Gay and Lesbian Consumer Revolution. New York, NY: Harper Business, 1995. Oakenfull, G., and T. Greenlee. “A Content Analysis of Advertising in Gay and Lesbian Media.” Working paper, 2000. Oakenfull, G. K., and T. B. Greenlee. “The Three Rules of Crossing Over From Gay Media to Mainstream Media Advertising: Lesbians, Lesbians, Lesbians.” Journal of Business Research 57 (2004): 1276–1285. Pingree, S., R. Hawkins, M. Butler, and W. Paisley. “A scale for Sexism.” Journal of Communication 24, no. 4 (1976): 193–200. Poux, P. D. “Gay Consumers MIA from Media Surveys.” Advertising Age 69, no. 16 (1998): 26. Ragusa, A. T. “Social Change in the Media: Gay, lesbian, Bi, Trans and Queer (GLBTQ) Representation and Visibility in The New York Times.” Ph.D. dissertation, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 2003. Rohlinger, D. A. “Eroticizing Men: Cultural Influences on Advertising and Male Objectification.” Sex Roles 46, no. 3/4 (2002): 61–74. Schulman, S. “The Making of a Market Niche.” Harvard Gay and Lesbian Review (1998): 17–20. Skelly, G. U., and W. J. Lundstorm. “Male Sex Roles in Magazine Advertising, 1959–1979.” Journal of Communication 31, no. 4 (1981): 52–57. Tharp, M. C. “Gay Americans: Sexual Orientation as community Boundary.” In Marketing and Consumer Identity in Multicultural America, edited by M. C. Tharp, 213–241. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2001. Va¨nska¨, A. “Why are there no Lesbian Advertisements?” Feminist Theory 6, no. 1 (2005): 67–85. Wiles, J. A., C. R. Wiles, and A. Tjernlund. “A Comparison of Gender Role Portrayals in Magazine Advertising: The Netherlands, Sweden and the USA.” European Journal of Marketing 29, no. 11 (1995): 35–49. Wolin, L. D. “Gender Issues In Advertising: An Oversight Synthesis of Research: 1970–2002.” Journal of Advertising Research 43, no. 1 (2003): 111–129.

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Chapter 15

“Seeing Is the Tithe, Not the Prize”: Queer Femme Gender Expression in the 1990s and Current Decade Anika Stafford

Queer counter-cultures are in the unique and fabulous position of being intrinsically influenced by the mainstream culture in which they take place and standing at a critical distance from it. This distance allows for expressions of sexuality and gender that are outside of popular cultural images and norms as to what is “correct” male and female behavior. However, an outsider status does not necessarily allow individuals to escape dominant hierarchies. This chapter looks at the position of femme-identified people within lesbian and queer women’s communities. The position of femmes within these communities provides an excellent example of how counter-cultures can challenge mainstream hierarchies while simultaneously and unintentionally reproducing them. This chapter discusses how oppressive gender norms have been extended toward femmes within their communities. I examine how this speaks of the depths to which norms regarding gender and sexuality have become part of taken-for-granted cultural frameworks within dominant North American thought. In order to demonstrate the active agency femmes employ to contest (and reshape) oppressive positions, I focus on how current art and activism by femmes attempt to extricate queer femme identity from

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historically demeaning views regarding femininity. I examine discourses surrounding queer femme cultural productions of photography, music, and narrative writing using contemporary queer and feminist theories. I begin by over-viewing terms such as gender, femme, femininity, and misogyny as they apply to current queer women’s and feminist contexts. From there I discuss the history behind misogynist conceptualizations of female bodies stemming from sexological and psychoanalytic discourses. I do this in order to better investigate how the meanings made regarding female bodies (and the following meanings made regarding “female homosexuality”) can become part of both dominant and counter-cultural thought. Preceding queer and feminist thought of 1990s and current decade, “radical lesbian feminism” strongly influenced feminist discourse and community life. The rejection of Freudian psychoanalytic accounts of gender identity was a focus of this era of feminist and lesbian organizing. Current femme art and activism not only responds to sexological and psychoanalytic framing of gender identity and expression but also to radical lesbian feminism. The “historical context” section of this essay serves to provide a better understanding of the popular and alternative frameworks being addressed by recent queer femme action. Drawing from theorists such as Judith Butler and Michel Foucault, I analyze femme counter-cultural production and provide useful tools for challenging misogynies embedded in notions as to what it means to occupy a feminine subject position. As much of the art and activism takes place in the context of third-wave feminism, I analyze trends within third-wave feminist discourses that at times re-inscribe masculinity as the source that makes femininity powerful. My paper investigates how this trend illustrates the insidious way in which misogyny has become part of both mainstream and alternative understandings of gender and sexuality. KEY TERMS In examining what the terms femme and femininity can mean, it is important to briefly talk about what gender and sex can mean. On February 2, 2007, Aaron H. Devor presented a lecture, “How Many Sexes? How Many Genders? When Two Are Not Enough,” with the Institute for Critical Studies in Gender and Health at Simon Fraser University. Devor described how the dominant gender schema views sex as an intrinsic biological characteristic of which there are only two: male and female. According to this dominant schema, it is impossible

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to be both male and female and impossible to be neither male nor female. Gender, within this framework, comes to be seen as the cultural manifestation of sex of which there are also only two: masculine and feminine. Females are then expected to be feminine women and males, masculine men. If there is recognition that there are those who do not fit this description, it is generally seen as due to imperfect role of socialization or psychological pathology. The second wave feminism in the 1970s and 1980s sought to disrupt aspects of what Devor refers to as the “dominant gender schema.” During second-wave feminism, the general consensus came to be that sex referred to categorizing bodies as male and female whereas gender was the socialization of male and female into roles. As Eve Sedgwick states in Epistemology of the Closet, “The charting of the space between something called ‘sex’ and something called ‘gender’ has been one of the most influential and successful undertakings of feminist thought” (27). While this may have been useful in challenging the dominant gender schema, current queer theory often problematizes the concrete distinction between these two terms. Repeatedly, in contemporary queer and feminist thought, the division between gender and sex is blurry. For example, in Epistemology of the Closet, Eve Sedgwick writes, “Sex, gender, sexuality: three terms whose usage relations and analytical relations are almost irremediably slippery” (27). Sedgwick contests the idea of a “natural sex” outside of social influences by asserting that “nature has a history” and that what constitutes sex often has taken place in a troubled and disputed terrain (5). She complicates the segregated and binary relationship of nature and culture by stressing how the two inform each other. Sedgwick writes, “The immemorial, seemingly ritualized debates on nature versus nurture take place against a very unstable background of tacit assumptions and fantasies about both nurture and nature” (40). The assertion that biological sex is a gendered and socially constituted category does not deny that there are variations among human bodies. However, physical variations that do not fit concretely into either category, such as intersex bodies, are often overlooked within this schema. It is difficult to tell where the physical bodies begin and social constructions end; however, I chose not to engage with bodily differences as concrete in order to better analyze the social processes that inform the interpretations of bodies. Within my theoretical framework, I use the term gender to delineate all the ways people are inscribed with bodily, psychological, and social differentiations of male and female, masculine and feminine.

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I do this to facilitate an examination of the ways in which bodily investments, such as misogynist views of bodies categorized as female, blend into psychological and social constructions. When I refer to “female bodies,” I use this terminology specifically to refer to what was seen as a female body and subsequent misogyny directed at those who occupied the social position of female. I do not use this terminology to deny the existence of transgender people who identify as female but who are not labeled as women in this context (or those labeled as women who do not identify as such). Rather, I refer to female bodies as a way to recognize a site upon which oppressive discourse takes place. What “femme” can mean changes through generations. There is a cultural history of femme in relationship to the lesbian butch-femme bar scene during the middle of the twentieth century. While femmes in this context often appeared conventionally feminine, they exercised great risk in actively pursuing their desire within cultural expectations of mandated heterosexuality and passivity in women. Texts that were written about this period emphasize femme expression as taking place within an erotic exchange between butches and femmes as opposed to purely physical styles of appearance. Although I discuss femme counter-culture several decades after this period, I attempt to trace a lineage that shows a connection between these communities. I do not use the terms femme and femininity interchangeably. I use the term femininity to describe cultural meanings made surrounding female-bodied people. Such meanings may be ascribed to physical, psychological, or emotional traits and are generally used prescriptively to construct what “women” should be or how they should behave. While femmes may reference traits that have been culturally positioned as feminine such as styles of dress or body language, these traits are generally adopted as something that has pleasure or significance for the individual as opposed to an inevitability of being female-bodied. Though femme is currently being discussed in contexts outside lesbian communities, my focus remains on femme in a lesbian framework. As with the concepts of femme and femininity, misogyny means different things in different eras. When I use the term misogyny, I am referring to derogatory meanings read onto female bodies that are then credited as “causing” other negative qualities that are deemed feminine. This often manifests as contempt for those who are seen as “women;” however, the way in which ideas regarding female bodies are not separable from constructions of femininity creates a climate

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wherein misogyny can be reiterated in complicated ways and upon numerous sites (more below). HISTORICAL CONTEXTS In order to examine the misogynist meanings made regarding femme identity, femininity and female bodies, I draw from writing within sexology and psychoanalysis, whose discourses are part of the foundation to which my analysis responds. Often these discourses positioned the female body as a passive object of an active male subject (Buhle 73, Freud 138, Mitchell 73, Storr 17, Young Buehl 41). From Freud’s claim that the “inadequacy” felt by females due to their lack of a penis gave them a psychological propensity toward neurosis (Freud 137), to Weininger’s claim that this made women incapable of reason and development on par with men (Greenway 29), sexological writing from the turn of the twentieth-century tended to hold views of the female body and mind which they credit as cause for women’s unequal status with men. This misogyny is focused on the female body; however, such ideology attributes the “lack” of the female body as part of an “essential” feminine psyche. This was differently applied to female-bodied people depending on how their genders were perceived—such as whether they are seen as masculine or feminine (Freud 79). Desire was viewed as active and therefore masculine. Femme—or feminine—lesbian desire was somewhat unfathomable within psychoanalytic theory since those deemed feminine were understood to be, by definition, passive recipients of desire (not subjects who could possess desire). Because of the visual way in which butch—or masculine—lesbians disrupted gender norms for female-bodied people, they were often viewed as capable of desire. An extension of these biases was the view that butches were the “true” lesbians. As Merl Storr writes in, “Transformations: Subjects, Categories and Cures in Krafft-Ebing’s Sexology,” “Krafft-Ebbing’s characterization of sexual inversion . . . insists that sexual inversion is not merely a desire for members of one’s own sex, but such a transformation of one’s entire sexual being that the latter no longer corresponds ‘completely and harmoniously’ with one’s physical sex” (17). Though some sexologists, such as Havelock Ellis, viewed masculinity in female-bodied people as “grotesque” (Felski 5), there was a definite tendency to view the masculine lesbian as the true invert. In other words, the masculine lesbian’s gender transgression was seen as her true inversion. It was

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her masculinity that caused her to be seen as an person capable of desire. Not only was gender expression linked to notions of sexual orientation, lesbians positioned as feminine were seen as incapable of conscious desire. This was replicated within the bar culture where often femmes were viewed as suspect, fickle members of the community that would be as easily swayed back to heterosexuality by a man as they were swayed into homosexuality by butches (Nestle 143). In other words, they were seen as the objects of butch or male desire, but not subjects who were capable of active desire themselves. In this way, although the bar culture challenged many misconceptions regarding female passivity, it also simultaneously reproduced them through the treatment of femmes. Sexologists such as Freud, Krafft-Ebbing, Ellis, and Weininger position “female homosexuality” differently according to the different ways in which they view the “masculine” and “feminine” lesbian. Their misogyny, though originally linked to the female body, became differently linked to what is seen as feminine and what is seen as masculine regardless of whether the bodies in question were both female. The idea that misogyny can be differentially iterated against female bodies disrupts the idea that misogyny is simply replicated by men against women. The misogyny in sexology and psychoanalysis was the subject of much second wave feminist critique in the 1970s and 1980s, particularly by radical feminist theorists such as Andrea Dworkin, Sheila Jeffreys and Catherine Mackinnon. The rejection of Freud’s ideas regarding the inadequacy of the female body and the way in which that shapes femininity and a “feminine psyche” was a primary focus in such theory. As Mari Jo Buhle states in Feminism and its Discontents: A Century of Struggle with Psychoanalysis, “The repudiation of Freud was a basic principle in second-wave feminism” (210). The ideology of the passive female body and its subsequent naturalization of a subservient femininity was attacked as creating a conceptualization of sex that was based in violence towards and repudiation of female bodies. As Catherine Mackinnon writes in, Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law, “ . . . the analysis of the social relation between the sexes is organized so that men may dominate and women must submit and this relation is sexual- in fact, is sex” (3). Andrea Dworkin further asserts that such conceptualizations of femininity takes away women’s ability to give consent. In her book Intercourse, she states in heterosexual sex, women “do not have to have an orgasm; that terrible burden is

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on them. We are supposed to comply whether we want to or not. Want is active, not passive . . . ” (134). In her first book, Woman Hating, Andrea Dworkin described androgyny as a concept that rejects Freudian theory of feminine maturity necessitating repression in order to become “appropriately” passive. Dworkin writes, “Androgynous mythology provides us with a model which does not use polar role definitions, where the definitions are not, implicitly or explicitly, male=good, female=bad, man=human, woman=other . . . androgyny as a concept has no notion of repression built into it” (153). Dworkin further asserts that androgyny should be the “basis of sexual identity and community life” as it has no imperative to “discipline woman as the embodiment of carnality” (154). Similarly, when discussing oppressive gender norms, Mackinnon promotes “Androgyny as a solution,” and claims that it gives people a “free choice of qualities of both roles” (118). There were those within the feminist movement however, who still felt that butch and femme gender expressions were an integral part of their sexualities and selves, and did not feel that this was at odds with their feminist politics. Instead, they felt that the radical lesbianfeminist taboo against gender expressions other than androgyny was oppressive. Many have seen the work of such radical feminists as creating oppressively moralistic taboos concerning sexual practices and expressions of gender (Allison 105, Bright 38, Califia 161). The debates concerning taboos on gender expression, known as the lesbian “sex wars” (Healey 19) also inform my analysis as these debates often argued over the meaning of what is considered feminine. CURRENT ERA The activism and political idealism of the 1970s created a climate for a new generation of feminist activism in the 1990s that was distinct from previous generations. Many young women had grown up taking for granted the positive social changes won by second wave feminist activism such as increased access to career advancement and university education, as well as having a more established language to articulate the forms of discrimination and oppression they experienced. The “sex war” debates during the 1980s made it difficult for feminist theory and activism to operate as if there was political unity among feminists regarding tactics for social change. Feminists from differing social locations with respect to racialization, class background, disability and so on, consistently argued that conceptualizations of what

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constituted a “feminist concern” were complicated and multiple (Heywood and Drake 3). Many young feminists began to identify as “third wave,” that is, to ascribe to a feminism that can be seen as building on but also departing from tactics of the second wave feminism of during 1970s and 1980s. Often third wave feminist writings stress that they share much with second wave concerns but approach these concerns within a different framework and era as well as using different methods of activism. A departure point of third wave feminism from second wave feminism is often in the perception of the complexity of power relations. Current queer theory has complicated notions of solid identities and positions of power (Butler, Foucault, and Sedgwick). This is reflected not only in theory, but in narrative and community activist based writing as well. For example, in Third Wave Agenda: Being Feminist, Doing Feminism Leslie Heywood and Jennifer Drake write, “We define feminism’s third wave as a movement that contains elements of second wave critique of beauty, culture, sexual abuse, and power structures while it also acknowledges and makes use of the pleasure, danger, and defining power of those structures” (3). This different approach and context is often said to complicate what activism will look like. Feminist activism is often framed, in agreement with Butler ’s theory of gender performativity, as taking place when one simultaneously engages with and challenges oppressive norms. Contemporary feminist writers such as Heywood and Drake assert that this may make feminist activism manifest in ways that could appear to be confusing. Heywood and Drake write: Third wave feminisms must remain aware of the complex ways that power, oppression, and resistance work in a media saturated global economy so that what at first glance looks like progress might not be the change we most need, and what looks like regression might actually be progress. (23) Heywood and Drake complicate the notion that there is one clear definition of what oppression is with a concrete path to a decisive liberation from that oppression. Not only does this type of feminist framework leave room for reclaiming “feminine” identity as a powerful place, but it has also complicated how sexuality and power are understood. A Foucauldian understanding of power as taking place within an ever shifting matrix of privilege and oppression is reflected within

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third wave feminist writing. These shifting places of privilege and oppression are then explored as tools for pleasure, power, and subversion of dominant social hierarchies. Indeed, the role of pleasure and its complex relationship to power looms large in most writings on third wave feminism. Jennifer Baumgardner writes about this in Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism and the Future. She discusses how third wave feminists have successfully, “created a joyful culture that makes being an adult woman who calls herself a feminist seem thrilling, sexy, and creative (rather than scary, backbiting, or a one-way ticket to bitterness and the poorhouse)” (xx). Part of this sexy and thrilling approach in third wave feminism is an emphasis on reclamation not just of sexuality in general but of appropriating, for feminist purposes, terms and attitudes that had previously existed within an oppressive framework. As Baumgardner describes, “More and more women own . . . cunt (both the complex, odiferous body part and the wise, badass woman), and slut (the girl whose sexuality is owned by no one but herself)” (52). This kind of reclamation focuses on changing the meanings of social norms and opens dialogue around how performances of femininity can take place away from oppressive contexts. Reclaiming terms that have previously been used in derogatory ways and questioning the context in which the derogatory meanings were created is characteristic of feminisms in the current era. This generation has examined the ways in which terms demarcating identities (race, gender, sex, and so on) have been interpolated by discriminatory constructions (racism, heterosexism, and sexism) (Sedgwick). For example, the construction of men and women as separate dualistic categories is seen as having been created in a sexist and misogynist climate. Therefore part of our understanding of the concepts of men and women is embedded in discriminatory ideologies. However, according to current feminist and queer ideologies, this does not mean that we need never make use of such terms when describing identity categories. Butler writes that it is “precisely because such terms have been produced and constrained within such regimes, they ought to be repeated in directions that reverse and displace their originating aims” (123). She states that this is because “one does not stand at an instrumental distance from the terms by which one experiences violation” (ibid.). This gives a person, “the occasion to work the mobilizing power of injury, of an interpellation one never chose” (ibid.). In other words, claiming an identity (even one created in the context of oppressive norms) can give a person the power to shift the meanings made about that identity.

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Third-wave feminism is often skeptical of the idea that one can find a true gender expression that is separate from oppressive gender norms, or a sexuality that is not within the current structures of power. Such ideology is clearly prevalent in academic thought that currently shapes queer theory. For example, Butler engages with Foucault’s conceptualization of sexuality being enmeshed with power. Butler writes, “Foucault, who, in claiming that sexuality and power are coextensive, implicitly refutes the postulation of a subversive or emancipatory sexuality which could be free of the law” (Gender Trouble 38). Butler concludes that this ideology does not leave room for an idealistic promise of a sexuality uncomplicated by societal norms such as those proposed by radical lesbian-feminists. As Butler describes, “if lesbian sexuality is no more and no less constructed than other modes of sexuality, then there is no promise of limitless pleasure after the shackles of the category of sex have been thrown off” (158). Such a framework does not necessitate denying that oppression exists within misogynistic and sexist constructions of sexuality that have been historically and culturally produced. Rather, the approach to contesting such power structures is changed from searching for expressions of sexuality and gender that are free from power dynamics and towards seeking ways to change the oppressive meanings within oppressive norms. For example in new anthologies on femme identity, such as Brazen Femme: Queering Femininity, Cloe Brushwood Rose and Anna Camilleri attempt to make a space for femme gender expression to exist in a way that is separate from historical constructions and positionings of femininity. Brushwood Rose and Camilleri contest the way in which femme gender expressions are often positioned as passive and otherwise linked to stereotypically demeaning views associated with women in a misogynist and sexist culture. As part of these contestations they engage terms that are often positioned in negative ways and reassess them through a feminist lens. Brushwood Rose and Camilleri write about femme as: a way of being that cannot be described as quintessentially feminine. Instead, femme might be described as “femininity gone wrong”—bitch, slut, nag, whore, cougar, dyke, or brazen hussy. Femme is the trappings of femininity gone awry . . . Femininity is a demand placed on female bodies and femme is the danger of a body read female or inappropriately feminine (13). The authors focus on reclaiming words that were previously seen as negative. In addition, they allude to historical and current cultural

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demands that prescribe meanings to bodies seen as female and the corresponding notions of what constitutes femininity. Instead of engaging in the “sex war” debates which argue whether or not femme gender expression can take place within a feminist framework, they explore how femme gender expression can engage with changing the meanings of misogynist and sexist norms. In this way, femme identities are seen not only as active, but also engaged in actions that challenge the status quo. Brazen Femme further envisions an ability to challenge the position femme identified people have occupied within counter-cultures which have held demeaning views of femmes. Brushwood Rose and Camilleri write: Femme is inherently “queer” in the broadest sense of the word— as bent, unfixed, unhinged and finally unhyphenated. Released from the structures of binary models of sexual orientation and gender and sex. Released from a singular definition of femme. Released from the “object position” where femme is all too often situated. (12) They assert that femme can be un-hyphenated, that is to say, not dependant on a butch-femme dyad. This challenges the concept of femininity as the site of absence, or the passive receptacle of masculinity. In doing so, they reframe the discourse around those with femme identities as having the potential to act as desiring subjects as opposed to solely being objects. Brushwood Rose and Camilleri challenge traditions of sexology and psychoanalysis through actively engaging with and building upon them. Radical lesbian-feminism asserted that because women have been positioned as the feminine objects of masculinity, the solution is for all people to adopt androgyny. However, current third wave femme identified feminists argue that femme gender expressions can be reconstructed in a way that challenges the association of femininity with being an object (for those who choose such an expression). This helps to facilitate an examination of different ways misogynist, sexist and heteronormative views of gender can be recreated in different contexts. Central to the ideology in Brazen Femme is the conceptualization of femme identity not only as independent from masculinity but also as dangerous to the status quo that has equated femininity with being “violable” (Mackinnon 118). This is clear from the front cover of Brazen

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Femme in which Camilleri is photographed alone, wearing a short, low-cut dress, gripping a knife with the blade barring access between her legs. Camilleri narrates: I reached for the knife. This was not planned or pre-meditated. I had, however, lived this moment, imagined this moment many times over. The point of meeting—cold steel on warm skin, the utility of both (my) knife and (my) hand. The union of function and poetry, each functional, each poetic . . . I dared the viewer, the imagined viewer, to look. My legs spread apart, knife gripped tightly, mediating access. Seeing is the tithe, not the prize. A brazen posture? Yes. (11) Camilleri intentionally employs an image generally associated with “feminine” sexual availability and then challenges the meaning of those associations by controlling the availability in the image. In the photograph, the knife comes to represent sexual power wherein the subject who possesses it is not the object of an active masculine gaze, but one who actively challenges the assumptions of the one who looks. The location of the knife positions it as a replacement of the phallus. The femme subject holds a knife where convention would assume the phallus. This challenges the historical construction of the masculine subject being the one who possesses the phallus (which comes to stand for sexual subjectivity and power) with the feminine object embodying the receptacle of that power. In such a framework the concept of penis envy is refigured. Judith Butler writes about the way in which the phallus has come to symbolize male, or masculine, privilege that is invested in the penis and social meanings constructed around it, but that is not necessarily anatomy itself. Butler writes that with such recognition the site of such privilege can be challenged (Bodies that Matter 88). The gendered meanings placed onto bodies and gendered expressions such as femme take place within social hierarchies. Such hierarchies are intertwined with notions as to what bodies are considered enviable and what bodies are deserving of contempt as well as who is seen as an object and who is seen as a subject. These notions have created gendered privileges wherein femininity comes to be associated with sites of domination. By mixing an image that has been associated with the feminine with an image associated with holding power and control, Camilleri challenges the ways in which power has been linked with masculinity. In addition, I argue, she challenges discourses

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that construct the penis as the site of phallic power. Thus, such an image can work to dislodge the cultural meanings of the phallus as inextricably linked to conceptualizations of male bodies and masculinity. Reconceptualizing femininity as something that can come from an active, powerful and assertive place is often found within current third wave feminist, femme writings. However, writings such as Melanie Maltry and Kristin Tucker’s “Female Fem(me)ininities: New Articulations in Queer Gender Identities and Subversion” at times position femme gender expression as active and powerful based on the way femmes often employ typically masculine characteristics along with those deemed feminine. While there may be subversive potential in such expressions of gender, I question whether the act of crediting “masculinity” as what makes “femininity” powerful can, however unintentionally, recreate discourses that deny the possibility for a feminine subject position as the feminine position is still defined as a site of “lack.” In other words, recreate discourses which assume that “femininity” requires “masculine” signification. Butler describes the conceptualization of femininity being without agency as located in an historical context wherein the “mute facticity of the feminine [is] awaiting signification from an opposing masculine subject” (Gender Trouble 48). I use the following examples from Maltry and Tucker in order to illustrate how current era counter-culture can reproduce such ideology and therefore not fully investigate the ways in which oppressive norms can be recreated through conceptualizations of what makes particular gender expressions powerful. In “Female Fem(me)ininities: New Articulations in Queer Gender Identities and Subversion” Maltry and Tucker discuss femme subversion of femininity in a way that is characteristic of the third wave, queer era. They discuss the specific gender expressions of some femmes and analyze why certain aspects of their appearance can be seen as subversive and feminist. For example, they discuss the gender presentation of author/performer Michelle Tea. They position her aesthetic presentation as “disrupting normative femininity,” through creating “visual politics” that are subversive (100). They write that while Tea is: stereotypically feminine in many ways (Tea has glasses with sparkles, long hair in a pony tail, lipstick, and feminine looking clothing), she tweaks femininity to her liking. Her long ponytail is dyed blue, and her scant clothing reveals a number of tattoos. Both of these expressions are discordant with the idealized feminine. (100)

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Maltry and Tucker’s critique position Tea’s femme gender expression as feminist based on the way she “tweaks” femininity through “alternative” aesthetics. While I critique Maltry and Tucker’s analysis of the subversiveness of Tea’s gender expression based on the way it could potentially create new normative prescriptions of gender (as discussed below), it is not my intention to judge Tea’s expression as “unsubversive.” Rather my approach is consistent with Butler who writes, “I am not interested in delivering judgments on what distinguishes the subversive from the unsubversive. Not only do I believe that such judgments cannot be made out of context, but that they cannot be made in ways that endure through time . . . ” (Gender Trouble xxi). On the contrary, what I wish to examine is the practice of using this type of criterion that judges specific aesthetics to determine what has feminist potential and what does not. As with lesbian-feminist investments in androgyny, I fear this practice also has the potential to create normative prescriptions of gender. This runs the risk of reproducing hierarchies that deny feminist agency to those who employ particular expressions of femininity. Rather than inquire as to which aesthetics are subversive and which are not, I find a more useful mode of inquiry would be to examine what limitations are placed on gender expressions and what ideologies perpetuate such limitations. For example, rather than defend a particular femme gender expression on the basis of specific aesthetics (e.g., hair color and tattoos), I question why the “feminine” attributes of gender expression were seen as reflecting a “lack” of ability to make an active choice in the first place. Butler clarifies the differences between these two modes of inquiry and the importance this difference has for being able to challenge oppressive gender norms as opposed to create new hierarchies. Butler writes that it is difficult to critique current gender norms without creating a new set of norms. She warns that: positive normative vision . . . cannot take the form of a prescription: “subvert gender in the way that I say, and life will be good.” Those who make such prescriptions or who are willing to decide between subversive and unsubversive expressions of gender, base their judgments on a description. Genders appear in this or that form, and then a normative judgment is made about those appearances on the basis of what appears. But what conditions the domain of appearance for gender itself? We may be tempted to make the following distinction: a descriptive account of

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gender includes considerations of what makes gender intelligible, an inquiry into its conditions of possibility, whereas a normative account seeks to answer the question of which expressions of gender are acceptable, and which are not, supplying persuasive reasons to distinguish between such expressions in this way. (Gender Trouble xxi) Maltry and Tucker’s analysis provides an example of a current mode of challenging heteronormative gender roles which can be applied in such a way that subversiveness is decided based on descriptions of appearance. As a result, potentially oppressive ideologies behind why one gender expression is acceptable (or subversive), while another is not may be left unchallenged as a new norm will already have been created. The new norm may then inadvertently serve to reinforce old hierarchies. Maltry and Tucker again illustrate this potential for the meanings behind norms to go unchallenged though their description of young femmes in riotgrrl and punk movements. In addition to their description of Michelle Tea, Maltry and Tucker describe how many young femmes, particularly those within the riotgrrrl and punk movements, adopt “loudness” in style of clothes as well as volume of voice as a way of combating the stereotype that femme expressions, or femininity, require quiet passivity. They tell of one “grrrl” who performs dressed in “girly” clothes and “wails in her intentionally ‘little girl voice,’ ‘suck my left one’” (100). Maltry and Tucker cite this as an example of femininity being enacted in a way that is powerful. This mix of gendered expressions may subvert expectations of what is acceptable for “girls” and may be a source of pleasure and excitement for the performer. However, positioning femininity as powerful because of the “feminine” person’s reference to possessing male anatomy may not challenge the phallus as a signifier of power that is linked to male anatomy. Without further inquiry into this analysis, there is risk of the presence of “masculinity” symbolically being what gives “femininity” status. In this way femininity is still the object that requires masculinity to gain status as a subject. While I critique ways in which individuals may have ascribed to positivist gender prescriptions that do not adequately challenge hierarchical gender norms, I do not wish to position such risks as the inevitable outcome of third wave feminist ideologies. Rather, I hope to explore such inadequacies as potential shortcomings as well as looking at how third wave feminist ideology can also be used to overcome hierarchies. For example, in the interview “I’ll Be the Girl: Generations

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of Femme” Barbara Cruikshank discusses possibilities for femme subjectivity within a third wave feminist framework which draws from the trend within queer theory of questioning solid identities as they have been constructed within mainstream thought. Cruikshank writes about sex with her butch girlfriend during which she was “talking dirty” with her lover in a way that helped her lover construct a butch gender as a female and masculine person. Cruikshank writes about telling her girlfriend, “You put on your masculinity as a show for me like male birds show off their plumage to get the girl. Your dick is more real than any man’s because yours gets made up every time we fuck; we make it real. It is never taken for granted” (107). Cruikshank, however, saw herself as someone who had erotically constructed a femme gender expression. Yet her girlfriend was unable to conceive of such gender transgression within the context of femaleness and femininity. When Cruikshank asked her girlfriend to speak erotically about her gender expression, her girlfriend replied, “‘you are the girl; you’re all girl . . . you don’t have to do anything different” (107–108). Cruikshank describes how she wanted her girlfriend to “give words to my fem the same way I made her butch” (108). Cruikshank concludes this section of her interview by politically framing the encounter with her girlfriend. She states: . . . I complained and tried to tell her that to just assume I was the girl, just because I am a girl, was sexist. This was truly no better than heterosexuality; I was “just a girl.” I wanted to be a fem, and to find a way to do it that didn’t depend solely on being seen with a butch. I felt dependent. If her boyness was an act, I wanted my girlness to be an act- not in the same sense of play acting, but in the sense of enacting, accomplishing something. (108) Cruikshank’s girlfriend was unable to see Cruikshank’s femme expression outside dominant cultural conceptions of feminine as an inactive default for female-bodied people. Consequently, any agency Cruikshank had in constructing her femme expression was dismissed in a way that her girlfriend’s masculinity was not. By challenging the inevitability of her “femininity,” Cruikshank challenges the conceptualization of femininity as a “lack” of masculinity, or as the site whereupon the masculine subject acts. Instead she positions her construction of femme as part of an active, creative desire and identity. By doing this she challenges sexological and psychoanalytic misogynist ideologies regarding the female body and by extension, femininity. Femmes within

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the current third wave feminist era such as Cruikshank have employed queer theory in a way that challenges heteronormative prescriptions of femininity both from dominant culture and within their counter cultural communities. Though this approach is sure to prove to be a partial analysis, as were second wave feminist ideologies, grounds are beginning to be established which challenge the inevitability of conceptualizing femininity automatically playing a second and dependent status to what is seen as masculinity. CONCLUSION The ways in which femme gender expressions have been positioned within lesbian and queer women’s subcultures illustrate how misogynist notions of female bodies can be transferred and replicated through views regarding femininity and consequently those who are associated with it. I have reviewed some of the ways in which femmes have argued that they are able to express a femme gender while being assertive and active in pursuing their desires. Within each of the examples I have discussed, femmes have asserted that they are able to construct and negotiate their identities from a powerful place. However, that femmes have had to employ such arguments attests to the fact that the social climates within their counter-cultures often replicated dominant cultural views which assumed that femininity denies a person such qualities. Femme gender expression has clearly been positioned in ways that reiterate oppressive norms. These views regarding femmes have even been perpetuated within countercommunities that are otherwise fighting against such norms. Ideologies within sexology and psychoanalysis have become part of the cultural assumptions regarding gender that have created takenfor-granted customs. Butler refers to this as gender being simultaneously taken for granted and “violently policed” (Gender Trouble xix). Femmes within current queer counter cultures have challenged gender norms that were often based in misogynist ideologies regarding meanings created about female bodies often perpetuated by sexology and psychoanalysis. Often the surrounding climate of the lesbian and queer subcultures in which femme gender expressions have taken place have viewed these expressions in a way that is more consistent with such dominant cultural views of femininity than with the ways in which femmes position their own identities. From within the third wave, queer era, many femmes stress that their femme identities are chosen subversions of gender or sexual customs,

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rather than concrete or obligatory roles. Despite differing frameworks, femmes across generations have argued that, “through a reshaped femininity [they] exhibit an assertive sexuality” (Harris and Crocker 1). Recently some texts have begun to bring these frameworks together and examine the ways in which femmes have contested misogynist, sexist and heteronormative conceptualizations of gender across several generations. For example, Harris and Crocker write that femme is a “contestatory lesbian identity, a radical feminist position, and a subversive queer model” (1). That such examinations are necessary is indicative of the amount of contestation concerning their gender expressions that femme-identified people have faced within their sub-cultures and communities. That people with gender expressions linked to femininity could have the capacity to construct their expressions as part of an active engagement with feminist concerns challenges a long history of beliefs regarding what femininity can mean. The idea that femininity is a passive state, or the object of masculine desire, relates to misogynist notions based on conceptualizations of female bodies as inadequate or failed versions of male bodies. For this reason, challenging such notions regarding femininity has the potential to challenge residual misogynist constructions of femaleness. The ways in which oppressive gender norms have been extended towards femmes within lesbian and queer communities that are often feminist speaks to the depth of which such norms have become part of a taken for-granted cultural framework within dominant North American thought. It is precisely because of the insidious way that misogyny and other oppressive gender norms are embedded in Western cultural thought that exploring ways in which such norms can be replicated and contested outside of the mainstream becomes important avenue to understanding mainstream and counter-cultural communities. The ways in which the debates surrounding femme gender expressions have played out through the provide some insight into ways such insidious norms can be reproduced as well as resisted.

REFERENCES Allison, D. Skin: Talking About Sex, Class and Literature. Ithaca: Firebrand Books, 1994. Baumgardner, J., and A. Richards. Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000.

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Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex.” New York: Routledge, 1993. Bright, S. Susie Sexpert’s Lesbian Sex World. Second Edition. San Francisco: Cleis Press, 1998. Brushwood R., C., and A. Camilleri, ed. “Introduction.” Brazen Femme: Queering Femininity. Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2002. 11–15. Buhle, M. J. Feminism and Its Discontents: A Century of Struggle with Psychoanalysis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998. Butler, J. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Second Edition. New York: Routledge, 1999. Califia, P. Public Sex: The Culture of Radical Sex. Second Edition. San Francisco: Cleis Press, 2000. Crocker, E., and L. Harris. Femme: Feminists, Lesbians and Bad Girls. New York: Routledge, 1997, 1–15. Cruikshank, B., and J. Nestle. “I’ll Be the Girl: Generations of Fem.” In Femme: Feminists, Lesbians and Bad Girls, edited by Elizabeth Crocker and Laura Harris. New York: Routledge, 1997, 105–119. Devor, A. “How Many Sexes? How Many Genders? When Two are Not Enough.” Vancouver: Simon Fraser University, February 2, 2007. Dicker, R., and A. Piepmeier. Catching a Wave: Reclaiming Feminism for the 21st Century. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2003. Dworkin, A. Intercourse. New York: Free Press Paperbacks, 1987. Freud, S. “Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality,” In Freud On Women, edited by Elizabeth Young Bruhel. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1990. 89–146. Greenway, J. “It’s What You Do with It That Counts: Interpretations of Otto Weininger,” In Sexology in Culture: Labeling Bodies and Desires, edited by Lucy Bland and Laura Doan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. 27–44. Healey, E. Lesbian Sex Wars. London: Virago, 1996. Heywood, L., and J. Drake, eds. “Introduction.” In Third Wave Agenda: Being Feminist, Doing Feminism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997. Mackinnon, C. Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987. Mitchell, J. Psychoanalysis and Feminism: Freud, Reich, Laing and Women. New York: Vintage Books, 1975. Sedgwick, E. Epistemology of the Closet. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. Storr, M. “Transformations: Subjects, Categories and Cures in Krafft-Ebing’s Sexology.” In Sexology in Culture: Labeling Bodies and Desires. edited by Lucy Bland and Laura Doan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. 11–27. Young B., Elizabeth, ed. “Introduction.” In Freud On Women: A Reader. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1990, 3–48.

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Chapter 16

Celebrating Ostara: A Ritual Performance by Gay Male Contemporary Pagans John S. Gentile

Spring is a resurrection of all life, and consequently of human life. In that cosmic act, all the forces of creation return to their first vigour. Life is wholly reconstituted; everything begins afresh; in short, the primeval act of the creation of the cosmos is repeated, for every regeneration is a creation of the cosmos repeated, for every regeneration is a new birth, a return to that mythical moment when for the first time a form appeared that was to be constantly regenerated. —liade, Patterns 309 On Sunday morning, March 20, 2005, I drove through Atlanta, Georgia, and enjoyed the flowering trees lining its streets that were just starting to burst into blossom. It was Palm Sunday. As I passed various churches, I saw the faithful gathering together and carrying clusters of palm branches. On a usual Sunday morning, I attend All Saints Episcopal Church where I meet my friends for mass and, afterwards, we might discuss the day’s sermon while we share a meal. This Sunday was also the vernal equinox and I was forgoing mass at All Saints in order to attend a very different ritual—a contemporary pagan ritual to celebrate Ostara.

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“From the 1970s onward the United States,” writes Ronald Hutton in The Triumph of the Moon, a history of the movement, “has been the world centre of modern paganism [ . . . ]” (340). Even informal contact with contemporary paganism readily shows that gay, lesbian and bisexual people are welcomed within the movement and that they form a significant presence among its followers. Voices from the Pagan Census reports that: 4.8 percent [are] lesbians, 4.5 percent gay men, and 19 percent bisexual. The large number of bisexual respondents in both studies is an indication of Neo-Pagans’ openness to alternatives— including sexual alternatives. (28) My current research interest is to investigate how gay male contemporary pagans create ritual performance to express their spirituality. Contemporary paganism offers a rich field of study for its creativity: its syncretism of beliefs, its use of folklore, mythology and history (and pseudo-history) to invent a spiritual tradition, and its bricolage of old mythical images and stories. “The characteristic feature of mythical thought,” Claude Levi-Strauss writes in The Savage Mind, “is that it expresses itself by means of a heterogeneous repertoire[ . . . ]” (17). The purpose of this chapter is threefold: to establish a context by considering contemporary paganism and its relation to gay spirituality, to describe the Ostara ritual that took place in Atlanta on the morning of March 20, 2005, and, finally, to consider the ritual’s efficacy. THE CONTEXT: CONTEMPORARY PAGANISM AND GAY SPIRITUALITY Contemporary paganism as a religious movement began in this country in the 1960s and has continued to mature in the following decades. As it gained momentum as a religious movement, contemporary paganism also developed a growing body of academic scholarship and its own field of study known as pagan studies.1 My understanding of the movement is based upon my study of its scholarship as well as my reading of devotional or practical publications, my personal attendance at various pagan gatherings and rituals, and my conversations and correspondence with contemporary pagans over several years. What is contemporary paganism? Graham Harvey cautions us in Contemporary Paganism: Listening People, Speaking Earth, that the religious movement “is evolving, it has no complete, codified or orthodox

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form” (2). However, I offer a working definition indebted to many sources, particularly Margot Adler’s Drawing Down the Moon: it is a contemporary religious movement which identifies its origins as antedating Christianity and monotheism in the European, pre-Christian nature religions—primarily the Celtic, Greek, Roman, and Norse—as well as Eastern and Native American traditions and revives and reinvents them creatively while blending them into new forms. “Ritual,” as folklorist Sabina Magliocco in her full-length study Witching Culture writes, “is a form of practice that unites all the Neo-Pagan traditions” (126). Contemporary pagan rituals are tied not only to rites of passage in the human life cycle but also to calendrical rites connected to the seasonal changes. “Just as rites of passage give order and definition to the biocultural life cycle,” writes Catherine Bell in Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions, “so calendrical rites give socially meaningful definitions to the passage of time, creating an ever-renewing cycle of days, months, and years” (102). “The Wheel of the Year,” as it is commonly called in pagan circles, celebrates seasonal ceremonies of eight major sabbats. Additionally, contemporary pagans often gather for rituals performed at lunar esbats, held at the new and full moons.2 Contemporary paganism represents not so much a revival in any purist sense but the invention of a new religion inspired by, in highly individualistic, eclectic fashions, ancient nature-centered religions. Contemporary paganism is an invented tradition in the sense meant by Eric Hobsbawn in his book The Invention of Tradition: “Invented tradition” is taken to mean a set of practices, normally governed by overtly or tacitly accepted rules and of a ritual or symbolic nature, which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behavior by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past. (1) The central tenants of contemporary paganism include a belief in polytheism and that the sacred is immanent and inseparable from nature. “Whereas the Christian God is transcendent,” writes Michael York in Pagan Theology, “the pagan godhead is immanent”(13). Additionally, creativity and Eros, the Life force in its many manifestations, including sexuality and fertility, are considered sacred and often honored in rituals by the symbolic union of the Goddess (the feminine principle) and the God (the masculine principle). The centrality of the Goddess and the God is strongest for those contemporary pagans influenced by the writings of Gerald Gardner, whose teachings have passed

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into pagan folklore. Often such individuals identify themselves with Wicca, defined by Scott Cunningham as “a contemporary Pagan religion” that “views Deity as Goddess and God” (206). Therefore, a central tenant of contemporary pagan valorizes heterosexual union and fertility. Why does such a religion attract gay men in search of a congenial spiritual path? To answer that question, I turned to the writings in gay spirituality and spoke with gay pagans. Called the “first book to seriously explore the spiritual complexities and gifts of being gay,” Mark Thompson’s book, Gay Spirit: Myth and Meaning, published in 1987, has also been credited by one reviewer as inspiring “a burgeoning gay male spirituality movement” (Cotton 35). Other titles include Randy P. Connor’s Blossom of Bone: Reclaiming the Connections Between Homoeroticism and the Sacred, Brian Bouldrey’s Wrestling with the Angel: Faith and Religion in the Lives of Gay Men, Will Roscoe’s Queer Spirits: A Gay Men’s Myth Book, and Mark Thompson’s Gay Soul: Finding the Heart of Gay Spirit and Nature and Gay Body: A Journey from Shadow to Self. Writers often argue that the horrors of the AIDS epidemic coupled with the anti-gay politics and rhetoric of the Christian Right in the Culture Wars gave impetus to the gay spirituality movement. However, as early as 1978, Arthur Evans argued in Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture that gay men should reclaim gay history by uncovering its links to pre-Christian spiritual traditions. Evan’s book helped inspire the Radical Faerie movement and encouraged gay men to consider contemporary paganism as their own spiritual path. Christopher Pencrak, in Gay Witchcraft: Empowering the Tribe, chronicles his personal spiritual journey from his disillusionment with Christianity, his move into agnosticism, and eventual sense of coming home by following the pagan Wiccan path. Penczak notes that his journey may be emblematic of many gay male pagans: Those who felt disenfranchised from mainstream faiths, continually searching for their path, often found their way to Wicca. Quite a few of these folks were gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered, coming from feelings and experiences very similar to mine, now feeling the sense of coming home again. (xiv) What attracts gay men to contemporary paganism? “Many lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals are drawn to Neo-Paganism,” writes Magliocco, “because of its accepting attitude toward all sexual orientations, especially compared with the judgmental stance of most mainstream religions” (Witching 62). In addition to its non-judgmental

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stance, I argue that gay men are attracted for the same reasons that are people of all sexual orientations: its emphasis on the individual’s intellectual and personal growth, its inherent feminism and appreciation of the feminine, its response to environmental concerns, it privileging of the arts and the individual’s creativity, as well as its non-authoritarian foundation which is based in its polytheism. As Magliocco explains in her essay, “Ritual is My Chosen Art Form,” contemporary pagans “see themselves in contrast to the dominant hegemonic American culture: they are attempting to construct a more meaningful and satisfying moral order that includes respect for the earth, feminism, racial equality, cultural diversity, and an alternative to conspicuous consumption” (1996, 94). The Website for the Radical Faeries confirms Magliocco’s study: [W]e tend to be Gay men who look for a spiritual dimension to our sexuality . . . Our shared values include feminism, respect for the Earth, and individual responsibility rather than hierarchy. Many of us are Pagan (nature-based religion). (“Who are the faeires?”)3 Contemporary pagans like many gay men (pagan or otherwise) resist Christianity’s tendency to demonize the human body and sexuality. As a nature religion, contemporary paganism celebrates Eros and the erotic, for “at its heart,” writes Starhawk in her influential book Spiral Dance, “is precisely about the erotic dance of life playing through all of nature and culture” (9). One gay male pagan practitioner explained to me: We believe [our spiritual] goal is best served for ourselves in a Wiccan context for the following reasons: It is nature oriented. It sees the divine in nature rather than separate from it. It is Goddess/God oriented. It recognizes and pays attention to both the masculine and feminine aspects of divinity. It is structured enough to give us the form we want, yet it’s non-authoritarian enough to provide freedom of conscience of its members. (EricM32) Contemporary paganism’s emphasis on individual growth, creativity, and eroticism along with its non-authoritarian, polytheistic understanding of the diversity and pluralities, readily invites gay men to adapt symbols and practice in ritual performance, reinterpreting the

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feminine-masculine polarity of the Goddess and the God to encompass a gay male sensibility. One informant, John Skolund, explained that he felt no conflict between the traditional Gardnerian ritual with its male-female duality and his sexuality because “each of us has the other sex within us.” He felt fully comfortable performing the ritual in its classic Gardnerian form. Another informant wrote: We’ve also done away with thinking in terms of male and female roles. We’ve taken the stand that none of us are strictly male and strictly female in a spiritual sense. We are all made of both. (Klaatu01) This metaphoric reinterpretation recalls Jung’s concept of the anima and the animus and argues that we all embody both the Goddess and the God, whatever our outward gender. Jonathan Rehm, one of my hosts for the March 20, 2005 ritual, resolves the apparent heterosexuality of the ritual Goddess-God by considering it beyond purely gender terms: “it’s really all about polarity.” Gay men’s spirituality groups have been influenced by their pagan members and have incorporated ritual as a central tenant of their practice. “An important part of this soul loss of our present age,” states the 2005 brochure for the Gay Men’s Medicine Circle, “is the absence of meaningful rituals and ceremonies in the life of the individual and the community” (4). THE RITUAL: CELEBRATING OSTARA My invitation to the Ostara ritual came in early March over the internet via a listserv for Gay Spirit Visions (GSV), a national community “committed to creating safe, sacred space that is open to all spiritual paths, wherein loving gay men may explore and strengthen spiritual identity” (GSV Mission 2). The importance of the internet to create and maintain community is evident in both contemporary paganism and gay spirituality (in general and GSV in particular), for both movements claim ancient roots while participating fully in contemporary postmodern, late-capitalist American culture and its reliance on electronic forms of communication/community-building. One of the hosts, Jonathan, sent subsequent messages that included driving directions and suggestions for ritual preparation, including ritual cleansing prior to the event in the form of intentional bathing.

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His suggestions, like all acts of ritual preparation, were intended to heighten the experience of separation discussed by van Gennep in The Rites of Passage. The ritual was held in the home of Jonathan and Eliot in a large apartment complex near Emory University in Atlanta. Being the first to arrive for the 11:00 A.M. gathering, I had the opportunity to talk with the hosts about their background in contemporary paganism, their preparation for the morning’s company, and to observe closely the setting the hosts had created for the ritual. Jonathan and Eliot, whom I had not met prior to that morning, warmly welcomed me. Their immediate emotional openness, generosity and trust surpassed what I had already found typical of the men of GSV. From the moment of my entrance into their home to the beginning of the formal ritual, I had entered a heightened pre-liminal phase that further separated me from my ordinary, profane life into the sacred time and place of the ritual. An altar table was located within the center of their small living room and served as the focus of the ritual. The images and objects upon the altar demonstrated a striking syncretism of various spiritualities, including European, Hindu, Buddhist, and Native American traditions. A large Green Man tapestry hung behind the altar draped over (and obscuring) an e´tage`re and entertainment unit that held a television and a CD player along with books and photographs. Along with sacred objects, candles, and spring flowers, the altar held images of Eostre, an obscure Anglo-Saxon goddess of the spring. For this reason, contemporary pagan devotional and practical books identify the vernal equinox as Ostara, named after Eostre, whose name, the authors argue, the early Christian church appropriated in its naming of Easter as the celebration of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. The books also link Eostre to Eos, the classical goddess of the dawn. Ronald Hutton in The Stations of the Sun traces the connection to Eostre back to the writings of Bede and follows other scholars, such as Venetia Newall in An Egg at Easter: A Folklore Study, in questioning whether or not the ancient Anglo-Saxons ever worshipped such a goddess.4 Whatever her veracity as an ancient goddess, Eostre now represents for contemporary pagans the Goddess in her maiden, or Kore, aspect, and as such is connected to beginnings and openings. The veneration of Eostre by contemporary pagans shows how a spiritual tradition is invented and how belief may be a conscious choice. Other objects upon the altar included eggs, home-baked hot cross buns, and, in a lofty place of honor atop the e´tage`re, a store bought chocolate bunny.

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This last ritual object, perhaps more than any other object, embodies the humor and pastiche typical contemporary paganism. Along with the ritual objects and altar preparation, the hosts prepared an extensive brunch featuring a variety of egg-based entrees (including many quiches). The guests arrived, bringing with them more flowers and contributions to the brunch meal. The foodstuffs, I noted, were all homemade emphasizing a mutual giving of time and care between guests and hosts. Some of the guests changed into sarongs, which served as ritual costumes, supplied by the hosts. The tone of the morning continued to be joyful and playful. Participation in the morning ritual was highly reflexive and self-conscious. Members of company (a term I will use to include the hosts) shared comments that indicated complex levels of belief. At times, their comments expressed devotion and serious spiritual practice while at other times they expressed a comic distance or humorous perspective on the day’s ritual. The emotional dialectic between gentle humor and serious devotion informed the entire morning; all participants seemed comfortable in holding the tension between faith and doubt in an emotional double-distance toward their spirituality without moving to extremes of either skepticism nor uncritical faith. They were able to participate in the ritual’s meaning while recognizing it as construct by holding the ritual in symbolic consciousness. “The trick of symbolic consciousness,” D. Stephenson Bond writes, “is in allowing yourself to maintain the distance—I am aware that I’m pretending, gaming, imagining—while at the same time preserving participation” (19). Voices from the Pagan Census confirms this understanding of contemporary pagan symbolic consciousness. Its authors note, Many Neo-Pagans simultaneously participate in the rituals and stand outside of them to the degree that they can reflect on the rituals as something that they created. Neo-Pagans often joke about their own rituals and seem to be taking themselves and their religious practice with a grain of salt, at the same time viewing their spiritual practices as serious. (7) At no time did I perceive a naı¨ve or zealous literalist belief, which is in marked contrast to my experience with members of more established religions, especially fundamentalist Christians, who demonstrate a noticeable lack of critical distance from their faith or church. Jonathan called the company together to begin the ritual, which demonstrated both traditional and emergent qualities in its adaptation

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of contemporary pagan (especially Wiccan) practice. He scented each participant with burning sage and then invited four guests from among those men more experienced in pagan ritual to call the spirits of the four cardinal directions and to create the ritual circle. Based upon a scripted invocation, each spoke in turn, holding a candle, and called the spirits of the East, South, West, and North. The intent of the ritual circle was to create a sacred emotional space emphasizing protection and mutual caring. In The Sacred and the Profane, Mircea Eliade writes, “the religious man sought to live as near as possible to the Center of the World” (43). The invocation moved us into the liminal phase of the ritual and effectively created the sense of being at the axis mundi or sacred center throughout its duration. “Among the most important items found upon a Pagan altar,” writes Sabina Magliocco in Neo-Pagan Sacred Art and Altars, “are images of the deities” (26). Upon the Ostara altar were images of Eostre and Hyacinth, whom the two hosts then honored as the Goddess and the God, the female and male principles, by telling their myths. The choice of Hyacinth, a beautiful young man beloved by Apollo, as the mythic image of the masculine principle in the morning ritual, is indicative of gay spirituality’s mythopoesis. Will Roscoe retells the story of Hyacinth and Apollo in his book, Queer Spirits: A Gay Men’s Myth Book, which reclaims same-sex myths as sacred texts. Robert Drake includes Ovid’s version of the myth in The Gay Canon: Great Books Every Gay Man Should Read. By choosing Eostre and Hyacinth, mythic figures from two different traditions, Anglo-Saxon and Greek, the hosts demonstrated the practices of syncretism and bricolage typical of contemporary paganism. Additionally, Hyacinth and Eostre, despite their different cultures of origin, represent male and female images of the archetype of the Puer/Puella, which Jung’s identifies in “The Psychology of the Child Archetype,” as concerned with futurity. Thus, they are highly appropriate deities for meditation on the season of spring and its multiplicity of meanings connected to its promise of new beginnings. Jonathan honored the Goddess principle and offered a telling of a myth of Eostre. Immediately following, Eliot honored the God principle and told the myth of Hyacinth and indicated the hyacinths on the altar. The hosts then passed around a small bowl of hard-boiled white eggs, while Jonathan explained their symbolism as the ovaries and ova of the Goddess. Additionally, he reconfigured the symbolism of the eggs to represent for us the testes and sperm of the God. His discourse affirmed the creativity and generativity manifested in each

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individual, especially those present. The hosts then passed a chalice of champagne and the plate of hot cross buns among the men to drink and to eat. At this point, the hosts invited the company to the meal and to color the eggs using a variety of dyes. Along with eating, drinking, and egg dying, the remainder of our time together was spent in casual conversation and fellowship. At the time the first guest indicated his need to leave, the hosts called us together to close the ritual, broke the chocolate bunny to share, invited the four men to thank the spirits of the cardinal directions for their presence, and gave gifts of baskets to each man present. The limen was closed; the circle was opened. The guests were invited to stay for as long as they wished. Those men remaining behind gave warm farewells to those departing as they faced reincorporation into their daily, profane lives. THE EFFICACY OF THE OSTARA RITUAL Ritual is a device or practice to reduce existential anxiety. “By conforming to models or paradigms that refer to the primordial past,” states The Encyclopedia of Religion, “ritual also enables each person to transcend the individual self, and thus it can link many people together into enduring and true forms of community” (406). By linking the individual to his/her human community, the seasonal cycles of nature, the celestial bodies, the cosmic order, and divinity, ritual reduces the unbearable reality of the isolation of the human soul. The Ostara ritual certainly achieved this intention. By various means, including its feeling tone, its aesthetics, and its use to the mythology, it connected its participants interpersonally to their common humanity as well as the natural, seasonal, and celestial orders, and, ultimately, to the sacred. Furthermore, the Ostara ritual, as an experience that affirmed, celebrated, and sanctified gayness, allowed its participants to experience communitas, which Victor Turner defines in The Ritual Process as a “generalized social bond” emphasizing “homogeneity and comradeship” (96). Mary Douglas in Purity and Danger discusses the concept of abomination presented in the Book of Leviticus. “Hybrids and other confusions,” writes Douglas, “are abominated.[ . . . ]Holiness requires that individuals shall conform to the class which they belong. And holiness requires that different classes of things shall not be confused” (66–67). Gay people, by confusing heterosexual gender roles and sexuality are “hybrids and confusions” and, therefore, abominations. “If a man also lie with mankind,” declares Leviticus, “as he lieth with a

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woman, both them have committed an abomination [ . . . ]” (Lev. 20:13). Deeming gay men and women “abominations” based on Biblical injunction, American society has forced them to live as second-class citizens on its social margins. The gay rights movement, particularly its recent call for same-sex marriage, has transgressed heterosexual privilege, which, in turn, has resulted in a vehement backlash by the Christian Right and the Bush administration. Against this hostile, homophobic socio-political context, the Ostara ritual offered a time and place to celebrate the Gay Man and all his creative confusions of heterosexual gender expectations. In doing so, the ritual affirmed the Gay Man in ways reminiscent of Jung’s statement on homosexuality in “Concerning the Archetypes, with Special Reference to the Anima Concept”: In view of the recognized frequency of this phenomenon [i.e. homosexuality], its interpretation as a pathological perversion is very dubious. The psychological findings show that it is rather a matter of incomplete detachment from the hermaphroditic archetype, coupled with a distinct resistance to identify with the role of a one-sided sexual being. Such a disposition should not be adjudged negative in all circumstanced, in so far as it preserves the archetype of the Original Man, which a one-sided sexual being has, up to a point, lost. (71) Driving home, I was filled with a strong sense of wellbeing and connection to the men I had met that morning. The spring afternoon beckoned in all its beauty. I stopped at the home of my friends who had just returned from the mass for Palm Sunday at All Saints. Upon my arrival—without any prompting from me—one of them, Rob Piacentino, broke into a complaint against the service. Rob said he felt “talked down to”—“alienated,” “unmoved,” “bored,” and “ignored.” “For once,” Rob continued, “I wish they would really talk to me!” Despite the beauty of the music and the church building, he experienced no sense of connection, no sense of communitas. The contrast between our two ritual experiences further emphasized the efficacy of the Ostara ritual. I found myself looking forward to attending Jonathan and Eliot’s ritual celebrating Litha, the summer solstice: Spring begins in the dead of winter. This year’s palms of living glory become next year ’s ashes of death, as the cycle repeats and the year goes around, always connected to the past, always

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moving toward the future. The movement from dead of winter to the rebirth of spring is complete, but our march toward high summer has just begun. (Santino 111) NOTES 1. The emergence of pagan studies as a academic field of study may also be seen in the publication of the peer-reviewed journal devoted to the field, The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies, and the annual Conference in Contemporary Pagan Studies connected to the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion. Additionally, the Department of Religion at the University of Florida offers doctoral program in Religion and Nature. 2. Many pagan books, both academic and devotional, discuss the solar sabbats and the lunar esbats. See, for example, Harvey’s Contemporary Paganism: Listening People, Speaking Earth and Sandra Kynes’ A Year of Ritual: Sabbats and Esbats for Solitaries and Covens. Margaret Alice Murray discusses esbats in The Witch-Cult in Western Europe, her highly controversial but influential book (112–23). “Most scholars believe,” writes Margot Adler in Drawing Down the Moon, “Murray invented this term” (110). For a critique discrediting Murray’s work on witchcraft, see Simpson. 3. See also Margot Adler’s chapter on “Radical Faeries and the Growth of Men’s Spirituality,” in Drawing Down the Moon, 338, 48. 4. As early as 1916, Robert Haven Schauffler was questioning Bede’s account of Eostre as a German goddess of the spring whose name gave the inspiration for Easter. See Schauffler. For a more recent consideration of the question of the authenticity of the goddess Eostre, see Cusack.

REFERENCES Adler, M. Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America Today. Rev. ed. Boston: Beacon, 1986. Bell, C. Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Berger, H. A. A Community of Witches: Contemporary Neo-Pagansim and Witchcraft in the United States. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1999. Berger, H. et al. Voices from the Pagan Census: A National Survey of Witches and Neo-Pagans in the United States. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2003. Bond, D. S. Living Myth: Personal Meaning as a Way of Life. Boston: Shambala, 1993. Campanelli, P. Wheel of the Year: Living the Magical Life. St. Paul: Llewellyn, 1992. “Celebrate the Spring Equinox.” Gay Mens Medicine Circle (brochure). 2005: 4.

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Clifton, C. S., and Graham Harvey. The Paganism Reader. New York: Routledge, 2004. Conner, R. P. Blossom of Bone: Reclaiming the Connections Between Homoeroticism and the Sacred. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993. Cotton, A. “Spiritual Visionaries.” Rev. of Queer Spirits: A Gay Men’s Myth Book, by Will Rocoe, Wrestling with the Angel: Faith and Religion in the Lives of Gay Men, by Brian Bouldrey, and Gay Soul: Finding the Heart of Gay Spirit and Nature, by Mark Thompson. Southern Voice. July 6, 1995: 35. Cunningham, S. Living Wicca: A Further Guide for the Solitary Practitioner. St. Paul: Llewellyn, 1993. Cusack, C. “The Goddess Eostre: Bede’s Text and Contemporary Pagan Tradition(s).” The Pomegranate 9.1 (2007): 22–40. Douglas, M. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. London: Routledge, 2002. Drake, R. The Gay Canon: Great Books Every Gay Man Should Read. New York: Anchor Books, 1998. Eliade, M. Patterns in Comparative Religion. Cleveland: World, 1966. . The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion. Trans. Willard R. Trask. New York: Harper, 1959. EricM32. E-mail to author. February 3, 1995. Evans, A. Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture. Boston: Fag Rag Books, 1978. Gardner, G. B. The Meaning of Witchcraft. New York: Weiser, 1959. . Witchcraft Today. New York: Citadel, 1954. “Gay Spirit Visions Mission Statement.” Visionary: The Journal of Gay Spirit Visions. 11.1 (Winter 2005): 2. Harvey, G. Contemporary Paganism: Listening People, Speaking Earth. New York: New York University Press, 1997. Harvey, G., and Charlotte Hardman, eds. Paganism Today: Wiccans, Druids, the Goddess and Ancient Earth Traditions for the Twenty-First Century. San Francisco: Thorsons, 1995. Hobsbawm, E. “Introduction: Inventing Traditions.” The Invention of Tradition. Ed. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983: 1–14. The Holy Bible. King James Version. Nashville: Nelson, 1977. Hopman, E. E., and L. Bond. People of the Earth: The New Pagans Speak Out. Rochester, Vermont: Destiny, 1996. Hutton, R. The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. . The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. . Witches, Druids and King Arthur. London: Hambledon and London, 2003.

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Jung, C. G. “Concerning the Archetypes, with Special Reference to the Anima Concept.” Trans. R. F. C. Hull. The Collected Works of C. G. Jung. Vol. 9.1. Bollingen Series 20. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990. 54–72. . “The Psychology of the Child Archetype.” Trans. R. F. C. Hull. The Collected Works of C. G. Jung. Vol. 9.1. Bollingen Series 20. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990. 151–181. Klaatu01. E-mail to author. February 11, 1995. Kynes, S. A Year of Ritual: Sabbats and Esbats for Solitaries and Covens. St. Paul: Llewellyn, 2004. Levi-Strauss, C. The Savage Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966. Lewis, J. R., ed. Magical Religion and Modern Witchcraft. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996. Magliocco, S. Neo-Pagan Sacred Art and Altars: Making Things Whole. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2001. . “Ritual is My Chosen Art Form: The Creation of Ritual as Folk Art Among Contemporary Pagans.” Magical Religion and Modern Witchcraft. Ed. James R. Lewis. Albany: State University of New York P, 1996: 93–119. . Witching Culture: Folklore and Neo-Paganism in America. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania P, 2004. McCoy, E. Ostara: Customs, Spells and Rituals for the Rites of Spring. St. Paul: Llewellyn, 2003. Murray, M. A. The Witch-Cult of Western Europe. Oxford: Clarendon, 1921. Newall, V. An Egg at Easter: A Folklore Study. London: Routledge, 1971. O’Gaea, A. Celebrating the Seasons of Life: Beltane to Mabon. Franklin Lakes, NJ: New Page, 2005. . Celebrating the Seasons of Life: Samhain to Ostara. Franklin Lakes, NJ: New Page, 2004. Orion, L. Never Again the Burning Times: Paganism Revisited. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland, 1995. Penczak, C. Gay Witchcraft: Empowering the Tribe. Boston: Weiser, 2003. Piacentino, R. Personal interview. March 20, 2005. Pike, S. M. Earthly Bodies, Magical Selves: Contemporary Pagans and the Search for Community. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. . New Age and Neopagan Religions in America. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004 Rehm, J. E-mail to author. March 2, 2005. . Personal interview. March 20, 2005. Santino, J. All Around the Year: Holidays and Celebrations in American Life. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994. Schauffler, R. H. Introduction. Easter: Its History, Celebrations, Spirit, and Significance in Prose and Verse. By Susan Tracey Rice. Miami: Granger, 1976. Simpson, J. “Margaret Murray: Who Believed Her, and Why?” Folklore 105 (1994): 89–96.

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Skolund, J. Personal interview. April 1, 1995. Starhawk. Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1989. Turner, V. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1995. Van Gennep, A. The Rites of Passage. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960. “Who are the faeries?”About RadFae.Org. October 18, 2001. Radfae.org. April 17, 2005. http://www.radfae.org/about.htm. York, M. Pagan Theology: Paganism as a World Religion. New York: New York University Press, 2003. Zuesse, E. M. “Ritual.”The Encyclopedia of Religion. Ed. Mircea Eliade. 16 vol. New York: Macmillan, 1987.

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Chapter 17

Matthew Shepard: Giving a Human Face to Anti-Gay Violence Rodger Streitmatter

As the final decade of the twentieth century was unfolding, gay and lesbian America had reason to believe that it was approaching full acceptance into the national culture. In 1993, Philadelphia proved that a big-budget motion picture about a gay man with AIDS could triumph at the box office. In 1994, Roseanne showed that the country’s television sets did not implode when their screens depicted two women locking lips. In 1996 and 1997, throngs of moviegoers wholeheartedly embraced a range of gay men—from fooh-fooh Nathan Lane in The Birdcage to hunka-hunka Rupert Everett in My Best Friend’s Wedding. The Ellen phenomenon was a milestone as well; although Ellen DeGeneres’s program didn’t survive, the fact that a major TV network was willing to feature a lesbian as the leading character on a sitcom was certainly a progressive step. And then came October 6, 1998. It was 10:30 P.M . when University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard walked into the Fireside Lounge not far from campus. As the five-foot-two-inch, 105-pound young man who was impeccably dressed in jeans, a sport coat, and patent-leather loafers was sitting at the bar and quietly sipping a cocktail, two local men approached him.

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The pair of high school dropouts said they, too, were gay and asked their new acquaintance to come home with them, intimating that a sexual threesome would follow. By accepting their invitation, the 21-year-old student made the worst decision of his life. As soon as the two men had Shepard inside their pickup, they began striking him with the butt of a Smith & Wesson .357-caliber handgun. But that physical brutality was only a warm-up exercise, as the thugs then drove the blond-haired, blue-eyed Shepard to a remote area, just past the local Wal-Mart, where they tied him to a rough-hewn wooden fence, burned his arms with lighted cigarettes, kicked him repeatedly in the groin, and struck his head so hard and so many times that his skull collapsed. After the men bludgeoned Shepard beyond recognition, they left him to die in near-freezing weather. When a passing bicyclist found him 18 hours later, the only spot on his entire head that was not covered in dried blood was just below his eyes—he had cried while being beaten, so his tears had rolled down his face and washed his cheeks clean. Five days later when Matthew Shepard took his last breath in a local hospital, every major print and broadcast news organization in the country reported his death.1 “For homosexuals, the key to winning acceptance and respect has been to make themselves familiar, visible and known,” the New York Times stated on its editorial page. “Yet in almost 30 years of struggle, the modern gay rights movement has never achieved a recognizable public face. Now, in a victim, it has been given one.”2 The country’s most prestigious newspaper had begun reporting on the incident while Shepard was still struggling to survive his injuries, prompting other major dailies and the television networks to cover the story as well. That plethora of stories helped propel mass rallies and marches in more than 50 American cities, including several thousand men and women joining Ellen DeGeneres and openly gay Representative Barney Frank for a candlelight vigil on the steps of the U.S. Capitol.3 As Dan Rather reported on the CBS Evening News, “Matthew Shepard’s death has set off a nationwide wave of demonstrations protesting anti-gay violence.”4 The avalanche of news coverage that followed the attack on Shepard sent several messages. First among them was that, despite the progress that had been made by the final years of the twentieth century, a significant number of Americans continued to hate gay people. The second message was that the nation’s print and broadcast news organizations were uniformly outraged at how the young man had been brutalized. A third message was more mixed, with some

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leading news outlets supporting and others opposing hate-crime laws that increase the penalties when a crime is based on a victim’s sexual orientation. A final statement that the extensive coverage communicated was that family members are often remarkably supportive of their gay loved one. HATRED OF GAY PEOPLE A discussion of the degree to which the gruesome murder illuminated the hatred that many Americans of the late 1990s felt toward gay people rightly begins by looking at what motivated the vicious attack. The New York Times was among the first news organizations to report on the backgrounds of Russell Henderson, 21, and Aaron McKinney, 22, who were arrested after a pistol covered in Shepard’s blood was found in the back of McKinney’s pickup. Henderson had dropped out of Laramie High School and worked off and on at various jobs, including as a roofer; he had been convicted twice for drunk driving. McKinney had followed a similar route and also was the father of a four-month-old son born to his girlfriend; he had recently been convicted of robbing the local Kentucky Fried Chicken.5 Although neither man had a steady job, every few weekends they managed to scrape together enough money to buy a hefty supply of methamphetamine—also known as crystal meth. One friend of Henderson and McKinney said they had smoked or snorted about $2,000 worth of the drug the weekend before they crossed paths with Shepard. That friend speculated, in fact, that the men may have still been feeling the effects of their recent binge on the night the attack took place.6 Henderson and McKinney came into the Fireside Lounge about an hour after the college student had arrived, ordering a $5.50 pitcher of beer that they paid for by pulling quarters and dimes from their pockets. The bartender told reporters that the two local men had approached Shepard, rather than the other way around, by leaving their barstools and moving to where the lone man was sitting, several feet away from them. The three men talked for awhile and then left the bar together about 1 A.M.7 Exactly what happened after they climbed inside the pickup is difficult to know for sure, as the only details came from Henderson and McKinney when they went on trial for first-degree murder. According to their testimony, soon after the three men were alone, Shepard

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placed his hand on McKinney’s leg, presumably as a sign that he was ready to begin the sexual activity that he expected to take place. But that action prompted McKinney to tell Shepard, “Guess what? We’re not gay, and you just got jacked. It’s Gay Awareness Week!” That last sentence came in response to the fact that gay and lesbian activists had posted fliers around Laramie to promote a series of activities leading up to National Coming Out Day, which was scheduled for the next week.8 McKinney then began hitting Shepard, according to Henderson’s testimony, with the butt of the handgun while repeatedly yelling “Queer!” and “Faggot!” Law enforcement officials speculated that hatred was the primary motivation of the two killers, as they took the $20 inside Shepard’s wallet but did not steal the expensive watch he was wearing.9 News organizations soon reported that hatred of gay people was by no means limited to McKinney and Henderson. An NBC Nightly News segment included a patron of Wild Willie’s Cowboy Bar in Laramie saying, “If you come to Wyoming and you’re gay, you’re lookin’ for trouble,”10 and the New York Times reported that a billboard advertising a nearby history museum had been vandalized so the original “Shoot a Day or Two” slogan would read “Shoot a Gay or Two.”11 Based on an entry in the homecoming parade at Colorado State University, according to ABC World News Tonight, college students were no more tolerant of gays than members of older generations; the bicyclist who found Shepard hanging from the fence had said he initially thought the body was a scarecrow, so members of Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity mocked the killing by adding a scarecrow to their float and using spray paint to scrawl the words “I’M GAY” across the figure’s face.12 (Salon magazine was one of the few news outlets that reported the fact that the words “UP MY ASS” were also painted on the scarecrow’s backside.)13 Perhaps the most disturbing evidence of gay hatred was broadcast to media consumers as part of the coverage of the slain student’s funeral. All of the major television networks—ABC, CBS, CNN, and NBC—covered the event, which meant that millions of viewers saw protesters standing outside St. Mark’s Episcopal Church carrying pickets that read “No Tears for Queers” and “Fags Die, God Laughs.”14 The country’s largest-circulation newsweekly reproduced some of the hateful signs as well. A Time cover story titled “The War on Gays” included a photo of an angry man shouting at members of Shepard’s grieving family while he held up a sign that said “AIDS Cures FAGS.”15

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Hatred of gay people did not end with harsh words. During the previous year, according to ABC World News Tonight, 21 gay men and lesbians had been killed specifically because of their sexual orientation.16 OUTRAGE FROM THE NEWS MEDIA Beginning with the earliest stories, it was clear that news organizations had no intention of limiting their coverage of Matthew Shepard’s murder to answering who, what, when, and where. Journalistic voices immediately communicated their outrage that a college student had not only been killed but had been savagely tortured as well. One indication of the news media’s strong editorial position came through the sympathetic words they chose to use when describing the victim. The New York Times set the tone by characterizing him as “trusting,”17 “clean-cut,”18 “soft-spoken,”19 “polite,”20 “sweet,”21 and “boyish.”22 The Washington Post followed suit, telling its readers that the slain youth had possessed a “cherubic face” 23 and had been “shy,”24 “sensitive,”25 and “slight of stature, gentle of demeanor,”26 while quoting the police officer who found Shepard on the fence as saying he looked “like a child” rather than a man.27 Newsweek painted a highly sympathetic portrait of the young man as well, calling him “meek,”28 “well-groomed,”29 “sweet-tempered and boyishly idealistic,” 30 and beginning one story with the statement: “From his first breath, life was a struggle for Matthew Shepard. He was a preemie at birth—a tiny slip of a kid who would grow up to be barely five feet tall. He was shy and gentle in a place where it wasn’t common for a young man to be either. The state of Wyoming features a bronco buster on its license plate.”31 The Times, Post, and Newsweek also were among the news outlets that compared Shepard to another gentle man who was savagely beaten and then left to die: Jesus Christ. “There is incredible symbolism about being tied to a fence,” the Times said in its front-page story reporting the student’s death. “Many people are comparing it to a crucifixion.”32 The Post made a similar observation, commenting on “the powerful Christ-like imagery of Shepard being assaulted and strapped to a fence.”33 Newsweek’s reference to the image came in the form of a quotation from the young victim’s godfather: “The only way I can be released from the bitterness and anger I feel is when I concentrate on the Son of God being crucified, the same way as Matthew was, almost 2,000 years ago.”34

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That trio of publications also expressed outrage about the grisly nature of the crime. The Times said, on its editorial page, “The details of Matthew Shepard’s murder are a public horror.”35 The country’s most respected newspaper did not stop there, as one of its liberal columnists accused a conservative organization of being an accomplice to the crime. Specifically, Frank Rich criticized the Family Research Council for airing television ads portraying homosexuality as a disease that could be cured. “The ads ooze malice,” he wrote. “In one of them, homosexuality is linked to drug addiction and certain death by AIDS.” Such messages inevitably lead to physical attacks, Rich argued, like the one against Shepard. “If you wage a well-financed media air war in which people with an innate difference in sexual orientation are ceaselessly branded as diseased and sinful and un-American, ground war will follow.”36 Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen made strong accusations as well, blaming conservative politicians for Shepard’s murder. “I will figuratively place the young man’s body at the doorstep of Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott,” Cohen wrote. That reference was to a statement by the Mississippi senator, in June 1998, that homosexuality was a disease comparable to kleptomania. “Lott has likened a sexual preference to a wacky mental disease and also called it a sin,” Cohen wrote. “In his rhetoric, he and others have, bit by bit, robbed homosexuals of their humanity.” The columnist ended his piece with the statement: “Anti-gay politicians have given voice to some of the ugliest sentiments in American society—legitimizing the sort of hate that left Matthew Shepard tied to a fence, lynched on account of being gay.”37 In Newsweek, angry words came from media critic Jonathan Alter. “Violence against gays is a national disgrace,” he wrote. Like Cohen from the Post, Alter blamed Trent Lott and other Republican leaders, saying there was a direct connection between “verbal gay-bashing in Washington and gays actually getting their heads bashed in.” Alter then added another element to the argument by comparing violence against gays to the physical abuse that African Americans historically had suffered. “Just as white racists created a climate for lynching blacks,” he wrote, “so the constant degrading of homosexuals is exacting a toll in blood.”38 Among the television journalists who expressed outrage at Shepard’s murder was Tom Brokaw. “It’s a crime that goes beyond despicable,” the NBC Nightly News anchor said during one broadcast.39 During another, he shook his head as he asked, with an expression of

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bewilderment on his face, “What causes someone to turn on another human being with such anger, such hatred?”40 His network colleague Katie Couric provided an answer to that question when she said, on the Today morning show, “Conservative Christian political organizations certainly are helping to create an anti-homosexual atmosphere in many parts of the country.”41 DEBATE OVER HATE-CRIME LAWS Advocates of many public policy initiatives spend years trying to bring attention to their particular cause. And then, suddenly, a single event can propel that little-noticed issue into the national spotlight. Matthew Shepard’s murder played that role for a proposal to expand hate-crime laws to include sexual orientation. During the 1970s and 1980s, 40 states and the District of Columbia had passed laws that increased fines and jail time when prosecutors were able to prove that a crime had been committed specifically because of the victim’s race, religion, color, or national origin, with 21 one of those states and D.C. also including sexual orientation in their laws. Shepard’s attackers were not charged with a hate crime, however, because Wyoming was one of the states that did not have a hate-crime law that extended to sexual orientation. Indeed, it was one of the 10 states that had no hate-crime law whatsoever. “Gay leaders hope that Mr. Shepard’s death will galvanize state legislatures to pass hate-crime legislation or broaden existing laws,” the New York Times reported in one front-page article. “Wyoming has been a holdout on hate-crime laws, rejecting three bills since 1994.” The story also pointed out who objected to the public policy initiative, as well as why. “Conservatives, particularly Christian conservatives, generally oppose such laws, saying they extend ‘special rights’ to minorities.”42 The Times established itself as a strong proponent of expanding the definition of a hate crime to include an attack motivated by a victim’s sexuality. “Members of minority groups have often had to pay a terrible price just for being who they are,” one editorial began, going on to say that African Americans and Jews were the most frequent targets of violence. “But other groups have been the victims of that murderous impulse too, and homosexuals have always been among them.” After describing the attack on Shepard, the Times ended the editorial by stating: “His death makes clear the need for hate-crime laws to protect those who survive and punish those who attack others, just because of who they are.”43

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In the months following the incident and as the trials of Russell Henderson and Aaron McKinney approached, the New York Times continued to campaign—in news stories as well as in editorials—for hate-crime laws that included sexual orientation. Indeed, some articles on the issue sounded like they had come directly from press releases crafted by advocacy groups. “The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force says the laws are valuable because they shape the way society thinks about itself and they draw boundaries of what society will tolerate,” one story read. “Advocates argue that society speaking out, clearly and specifically, against crimes directed at members of a minority group can make the members of that group feel less isolated and threatened. And, they say, police officers might become more vigilant about such crimes if the laws require training on the issue, as the laws in eight states do.”44 One of several occasions on which the Times promoted the issue on its editorial page came in the wake of Henderson’s decision to plead guilty to murder charges in exchange for avoiding a possible death sentence. The paper applauded the judge who sentenced the killer to two consecutive life terms, but it criticized the Wyoming legislature for failing to enact any type of hate-crime law. “In the days and weeks after Matthew Shepard’s murder, it seemed that the nation would be awakened to the virulence of anti-gay beliefs that propelled the murder,” the Times stated. “Yet in a very short time, the old prejudice that homosexuals are not discriminated against and do not warrant ‘special’ protection has resurfaced.”45 Various other major news organizations echoed the Times’s position. “While laws can’t stop hate, they do send the message that society will not tolerate such bigotry,” an editorial in the Boston Globe argued. “They also reinforce the constitutional guarantees that should extend to all individuals in a civilized society.”46 USA Today also supported hatecrime laws that include provisions regarding sexual orientation, saying that opponents of such legislation were wrong when they insisted that it would give special rights to gay people. “Such statutes help punish crimes that are committed because of who or what the victim is: black or brown; Muslim or Mormon; male or female; gay or straight,” the nation’s largest-circulation newspaper stated. “If that’s part of some mysterious ‘homosexual agenda,’ then so is the preamble to the Declaration of Independence and the equal-protection clause of the Constitution.”47 Not all liberal-leaning news organizations, however, endorsed hate-crime laws—whether related to sexual orientation or other factors.

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A Washington Post editorial dubbed the effort to enact such laws “misguided,”48 with a commentary piece in the same issue illuminating the Post’s reasoning: “What Henderson and McKinney allegedly did was a terrible, evil thing. But would it have been less terrible if Shepard had not been gay? If Henderson and McKinney beat Shepard to death because they hated him personally, not as a member of a group, should the law treat them more lightly?”49 Regardless of the arguments for and against hate-crime laws, Shepard’s murder prompted considerable debate on the issue, in Wyoming and several other states. Ultimately, however, neither the media attention nor the widespread discussion led to any additional laws being enacted. As NBC anchorman Tom Brokaw put it in 1999, “It appears the death of Matthew Shepard has done little to change any minds.”50 LOVE FOR A GAY SON In 1993, the film Philadelphia had depicted a young gay man whose family supported him during a difficult time in his life. Five years later, the news coverage that revolved around Matthew Shepard spotlighted real-life parents whose love was every bit as powerful and as unconditional as those that had been portrayed in the landmark motion picture. Television viewers met Dennis and Judy Shepard on the day the grieving parents buried their son. Cameras showed the father and mother, tightly gripping each other’s hand, standing somberly outside the church as snow fell around them, determined to tell the world about their son. “Matt was the type of person who, if this had happened to another person,” Dennis Shepard said, “he would have been the first one on the scene to offer his help, his hope, and his heart.” Before the father finished his brief statement, his wife broke down and cried openly, the cameras capturing the image and broadcasting it nationwide. Across the street, protesters could be seen carrying signs that read “God Hates Fags” and “Matt in Hell.” The correspondent for ABC World News Tonight finished her report by saying that the Shepards “chose to ignore” the protesters. “Instead, they gave thanks to the thousands of well wishers from around the world who have comforted them in their time of sorrow.”51 Katie Couric of NBC gave television viewers a much more intimate look at the couple when she interviewed them on the Dateline news magazine show four months after the funeral. “He wanted to go into

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diplomacy,” Dennis Shepard said of his son, “and work overseas for human rights.” Judy Shepard spoke during the program as well, but her voice was so soft that listeners had to strain to hear her words. “He wasn’t just my son,” the mother said. “He was my friend, my confidant, my constant reminder of how good life can be.”52 Dennis and Judy Shepard had been living in Saudi Arabia when their son was attacked, the father working as an engineer for an oil company. They flew to Wyoming to be with Matthew as he lay comatose in the hospital and then to bury him. But when Dennis Shepard returned to his job halfway around the world, Judy Shepard stayed in the United States. She wanted desperately to retreat into the privacy of her personal grief while returning to her role as a stay-at-home wife, but gay rights activists convinced her that she could be a uniquely effective public spokeswoman against anti-gay violence. When reporters—whether they worked for the Atlanta Journal,53 Los Angeles Times,54 or Minneapolis Star Tribune55—asked her why an affluent woman who wanted nothing to do with the public limelight had agreed to give up her comfortable life with her husband to crisscross the country, usually traveling by herself, to speak before dozens of groups in such far-flung towns as Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and Willimantic, Connecticut, Judy Shepard’s answer was always the same: “I’m doing this for Matthew.”56 Journalists also repeatedly asked Shepard about when and how she and her husband had learned of their son’s sexual orientation. They had suspected Matthew was gay long before he came out to them, she said in a Boston Globe story, so she read everything she could find about how parents could make it easier for gay children during the oftentraumatic process of acknowledging their sexuality. “I tried to educate myself,” she said, so she and her husband could react as supportively as possible. After absorbing what experts and other parents of gay children had to say, Judy Shepard concluded that the ideal response would be to accept the news matter-of-factly. She and her husband even rehearsed the conversation that they knew was coming, she said, so when Matthew—at age 18—finally told them, they didn’t so much as blink an eye. “We acted like it was no big deal, even though our hearts were pounding a mile a minute,” she recalled. “That seemed to us like the ideal reaction, so that was how we reacted. Matthew’s well-being always came first.”57 Judy Shepard shared other details about her son’s life as well. He had become fluent in three foreign languages—French, German, and Arabic—while attending boarding school in Switzerland, she said,

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and had worked to raise money for AIDS research. Not all aspects of Matthew’s life had been pleasant, however, as his mother also told of how, during a trip to Morocco during his senior year in high school, he had been gang raped by six men. “After that, he had the posture of a victim,” she said. “He was the kind of person whom you just look at and know that if you hurt him that he’s going to take it—that there’s nothing he can do about it, verbally or physically. When he walked down the street, he had that victim walk.”58 Even though the stories painted Dennis and Judy Shepard to be remarkably caring and compassionate people, the public was still unprepared for the extraordinary act of human generosity the couple performed in November 1999. After Aaron McKinney was found guilty of first-degree murder, the Shepards asked the judge to show leniency to the man who had tortured their son. Because of that request, McKinney was sentenced not to death but to life in prison. Dennis Shepard delivered the news to a stunned courtroom. “I would like nothing better than to see you die, Mr. McKinney,” the father told the killer. “However, this is the time to begin the healing process—to show mercy to someone who refused to show mercy to my son.”59 “THE CRUCIFIXION OF MATTHEW SHEPARD” When looked at from an analytical perspective, some of the messages sent by the heinous killing of Matthew Shepard and the extensive news coverage of that crime were conflicting. On the one hand, the incident served as a sobering wake-up call, communicating that a critical mass of Americans continued to hate gay men as much as people from earlier eras had. On the other hand, the myriad statements of outrage voiced by the nation’s leading news organizations indicated that many of these powerful institutions were appalled that such a despicable crime had been committed. Efforts to broaden hate-crime laws to include sexual orientation offered mixed messages as well; the prestigious New York Times fervently supported the proposal, but other liberal journalistic voices such as the Washington Post opposed it. One of the few topics related to Matthew Shepard’s murder on which there was no ambiguity was that his parents loved him—completely and unconditionally. In the context of the evolution of the media’s treatment of gay people, the most intriguing question about this case study is: Why did this particular incident of anti-gay violence attract so much attention and

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thereby propel the issue of anti-gay violence into the national spotlight like no event before or since? Clearly part of the answer involves the gruesome nature of the crime. Two homophobic thugs lured a gay college student out of a bar, took him to a remote area, tied him to a fence, tortured him, and brutally beat him—the kind of details that create a riveting story. But Matthew Shepard was by no means the only gay man who had been the victim of inhuman treatment. Five months after the highly publicized murder, an Alabama man was bludgeoned to death with an ax handle and his lifeless body was then burned on a stack of rubber tires,60 and, a few months after that, an Army private stationed in Kentucky was dragged from his bed and killed by fellow soldiers who beat him with a baseball bat.61 And yet the name of neither man—Billy Jack Gaither nor Barry Winchell—became part of the public consciousness or the collective American memory to the degree that the name Matthew Shepard did. Vanity Fair magazine attempted to identify the specific factors that set the Wyoming incident apart from others that had occurred during the same general time frame. A 15-page story titled “The Crucifixion of Matthew Shepard” concluded that the major factor was how the media portrayed the victim. “Parents throughout the country felt that Matthew could have been their son, an idea many had never contemplated before about a gay person,” the magazine argued. “In part, this may have been a result of the fact that while he was described as gay, the press did not portray Matthew as a sexual adult. He was depicted as having parents, rather than partners, and those parents were loving and affluent.” Shepard’s physical characteristics added to his media appeal, Vanity Fair continued. “Photographs in the press showed him as having a fragile, childlike appearance—a look of pale purity, the translucent beauty favored in religious art.”62 The various words and phrases that journalistic organizations used to describe the murder victim clearly contributed to this impression that the college student, despite being 21 and therefore legally an adult, was really more of a boy than a man. The New York Times called him “trusting,” “sweet,” “boyish”; the Washington Post spoke of his “cherubic face,” his “shy” and “sensitive” nature, his “slight” stature, his looking “like a child”; and Newsweek added that he was “meek” as well as “sweet-tempered and boyishly idealistic.” The comparisons to Jesus Christ nailed to a cross reinforced the image of a victim who was both guileless and blameless; the gay and lesbian news magazine The Advocate observed that the mainstream media “painted him as a veritable gay saint.”63

Matthew Shepard

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In short, Matthew Shepard was portrayed as a waif-like child who had been taken advantage of because he was weak and vulnerable. Billy Jack Gaither and Barry Winchell had clearly been men, not boys. The first was a middle-aged, working-class man with only average looks; the other was a muscular, battle-ready soldier who had fought his attackers, losing only because they outnumbered him. Neither Gaither nor Winchell was a pampered member of the upper-middle class and neither was incapable of defending himself. Matthew Shepard was the only one of the three, therefore, whose appearance was consistent with the traditional stereotype of homosexuals as weak and effeminate beings. And so the nation’s news outlets eagerly ushered him into the media spotlight. NOTES 1. See, for example, James Brooke, “Gay Man Dies from Attack,” New York Times, October 13, 1998, A1; Tom Kenworthy, “Gay Wyoming Student Succumbs to Injuries,” Washington Post, October 13, 1998, A7; CBS Evening News, October 12, 1998 (the newscast was anchored by Dan Rather; the segment was reported by Cynthia Bowers); CNN, October 12, 1998 (the newscast was anchored by Judy Woodruff; the segment was reported by Brian Cabell); NBC Nightly News, October 12, 1998 (the newscast was anchored by Tom Brokaw; the segment was reported by George Lewis in Laramie, Wyoming, and Pete Williams in Washington). 2. “The Lesson of Matthew Shepard,” New York Times, October 17, 1998, A14. 3. Allan Lengel, “Thousands Mourn Student’s Death,” Washington Post, October 15, 1998, A7. 4. CBS Evening News, November 24, 1998 (the newscast was anchored by Dan Rather; the segment was reported by Richard Schlesinger). 5. James Brooke, “Men Held in Beating Lived on the Fringes,” New York Times, October 16, 1998, A16. 6. JoAnn Wypijewski, “A Boy’s Life,” Harper’s Magazine, September 1999, 62. In November 2004, the ABC news magazine program 20/20 aired a widely discussed segment in which Aaron McKinney stated that his primary motivation for beating Matthew Shepard was not to hurt a gay man but to rob the well-dressed student so he could fuel his methamphetamine binge. 7. James Brooke, “Men Held in Beating Lived on the Fringes,” New York Times, October 16, 1998, A16. 8. James Brooke, “Witnesses Trace Brutal Killing of Gay Student,” New York Times, November 21, 1998, A9. 9. James Brooke, “Witnesses Trace Brutal Killing of Gay Student,” New York Times, November 21, 1998, A9.

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10. NBC Nightly News, October 9, 1998 (the newscast was anchored by Tom Brokaw; the segment was reported by Roger O’Neil). 11. James Brooke, “After Beating of Gay Man, Town Looks at Its Attitudes,” New York Times, October 12, 1998, A9. 12. ABC World News Tonight, October 14, 1998 (the newscast was anchored by Peter Jennings; the segment was reported by Lisa Salters in Fort Collins, Colorado). 13. Lily Burana, “Letter from Laramie,” Salon, October 16, 1998 (http:// archive.salon.com/news/1998/10/16newsb.html). 14. ABC World News Tonight, October 16, 1998 (the newscast was anchored by Peter Jennings; the segment was reported by Lisa Salters in Casper, Wyoming, and Rebecca Chase in Atlanta); CBS Evening News, October 16, 1998 (the newscast was anchored by Dan Rather; the segment was reported by Cynthia Bowers); CNN, October 16, 1998 (the segment was reported by Joie Chen); NBC Nightly News, October 16, 1998 (the newscast was anchored by Tom Brokaw; the segment was reported by Roger O’Neill in Casper, Wyoming, and Pete Williams in Washington). Many of the signs were carried by followers of the Rev. Fred Phelps, an anti-gay minister who led a group of protesters to the funeral from his Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas. 15. Steve Lopez, “The War on Gays: To Be Young and Gay in Wyoming,” Time, October 26, 1998, 39. 16. ABC World News Tonight, October 16, 1998 (the newscast was anchored by Peter Jennings; the segment was reported by Lisa Salters in Casper, Wyoming, and Rebecca Chase in Atlanta). The death figure was attributed to the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs. 17. “Murdered for Who He Was,” New York Times, October 13, 1998, A18. 18. Michael Cooper, “Killing Shakes Complacency of the Gay Rights Movement,” New York Times, October 21, 1998, A1. 19. Frank Rich, “Journal: Loving Him to Death,” New York Times, October 24, 1998, A17. 20. Frank Rich, “Journal: Loving Him to Death,” New York Times, October 24, 1998, A17. 21. Frank Rich, “Journal: Loving Him to Death,” New York Times, October 24, 1998, A17. 22. James Brooke, “Wyoming City Braces for Gay Murder Trial,” New York Times, April 4, 1999, A14. 23. Justin Gillis and Patrice Gaines, “Pattern of Hate Emerges on a Fence in Laramie,” Washington Post, October 18, 1998, A1. 24. Tom Kenworthy, “Hundreds Gather to Remember Slain Man as ‘Light to the World,’ ” Washington Post, October 17, 1998, A3. 25. Allan Lengel, “Thousands Mourn Student’s Death,” Washington Post, October 15, 1998, A7. 26. Tom Kenworthy, “Gay Man Near Death after Beating, Burning,” Washington Post, October 10, 1998, A1.

Matthew Shepard

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27. Wil Haygood, “Honor Thy Son,” Washington Post, July 13, 2003, D1. 28. Howard Fineman, “Echoes of a Murder in Wyoming,” Newsweek, October 26, 1998, 43. 29. Howard Fineman, “Echoes of a Murder in Wyoming,” Newsweek, October 26, 1998, 43. 30. Mark Miller, “The Final Days and Nights of a Gay Martyr,” Newsweek, December 21, 1998, 30. 31. Howard Fineman, “Echoes of a Murder in Wyoming,” Newsweek, October 26, 1998, 42. 32. James Brooke, “Gay Man Dies from Attack,” New York Times, October 13, 1998, A1. 33. Tom Kenworthy, “Hundreds Gather to Remember Slain Man as ‘Light to the World,’ ” Washington Post, October 17, 1998, A3. 34. Howard Fineman, “Echoes of a Murder in Wyoming,” Newsweek, October 26, 1998, 42. The godfather’s name was Steve Ghering. 35. “The Lesson of Matthew Shepard,” New York Times, October 17, 1998, A14. 36. Frank Rich, “Journal: The Road to Laramie,” New York Times, October 14, 1998, A23. 37. Richard Cohen, “Legitimizing Hate,” Washington Post, October 15, 1998, A23. 38. Jonathan Alter, “Trickle-Down Hate,” Newsweek, October 26, 1998, 44. 39. NBC Nightly News, October 9, 1998 (the newscast was anchored by Tom Brokaw; the segment was reported by Roger O’Neil). 40. NBC Nightly News, October 12, 1998 (the newscast was anchored by Tom Brokaw; the segment was reported by George Lewis in Laramie, Wyoming, and Pete Williams in Washington). 41. John Corry, “Murder in Wyoming,” American Spectator, December 1998, 72. 42. James Brooke, “Gay Man Dies from Attack,” New York Times, October 13, 1998, A1. 43. “Murdered for Who He Was,” New York Times, October 13, 1998, A18. 44. Rick Lyman, “Hate Laws Don’t Matter, Except when They Do,” New York Times, October 18, 1998, D6. 45. “A Stiff and Proper Sentence,” New York Times, Apri1 6, 1999, A26. 46. “Wyoming’s Lesson About Hate,” Boston Globe, October 14, 1998, A18. 47. “A Brutal Assault Boosts Case for Expanding Hate Crime Laws,” USA Today, October 15, 1998, A12. 48. “A Murder in Wyoming,” Washington Post, October 14, 1998, A14. 49. Michael Kelly, “Punishing ‘Hate Crimes,’” Washington Post, October 14, 1998, A15. 50. NBC Nightly News, February 5, 1999 (the newscast was anchored by Tom Brokaw; the segment was reported by Roger O’Neil in Ft. Collins, Colorado).

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51. ABC World News Tonight, October 16, 1998 (the newscast was anchored by Peter Jennings; the segment was reported by Lisa Salters in Casper, Wyoming, and Rebecca Chase in Atlanta). 52. Dennis and Judy Shepard interview by Katie Couric, Dateline, February 5, 1999. 53. Kirk Kicklighter, “Mother’s Tale of Murdered Son Briings Quiet, Then Tears,” Atlanta Journal, January 2001, 19, E1. 54. Julie Cart, “Matthew Shepard’s Mother Aims to Speak with His Voice,” Los Angeles Times, September 14, 1999, A5. 55. Terry Collins, “Matthew Shepard’s Mom Fights the Hatred that Killed Her Son,” Minneapolis Star Tribune, March 29, 2001. 56. Julie Cart, “Matthew Shepard’s Mother Aims to Speak with His Voice,” Los Angeles Times, September 14, 1999, A5. 57. Adrian Walker, “Mission Found After Son Is Lost,” Boston Globe, March 25, 2000, B1. 58. Melanie Thernstrom, “The Crucifixion of Matthew Shepard,” Vanity Fair, March 1999, 267. 59. Angie Cannon, “In the Name of the Son,” U.S. News & World Report, November 15, 1999, 36. 60. Kevin Sack, “2 Confess to Killing Man, Saying He Made a Sexual Advance,” New York Times, March 5, 1999, A10. 61. Francis X. Clines, “Killer’s Trial Shows Gay Soldier’s Anguish,” New York Times, December 9, 1999, A18. 62. Melanie Thernstrom, “The Crucifixion of Matthew Shepard,” Vanity Fair, March 1999, 272. 63. Chris Bull, “All Eyes Were Watching,” The Advocate, November 24, 1998, 33.

Index

Abbey, Henry S., 126, 127 ABC World News Tonight, 278, 279, 283, 288 n.14 Abercrombie & Fitch ads, 23, 27, 31 Absolut Vodka, 51 Achtenberg, Roberta, 197 Adler, Margot, 261 The Adonis. See Sandow, Eugen (The Adonis) Adonis (Gill), 127–28 The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (film), 151 advertising, gay themes in, 21–33, 48; committed relationships, 24–25, 31; consumer culture and, 39–40; disposable income and, 28–30; equal rights and, 25–26; fun-loving themes in, 27–28; in gay travel guides, 194–95, 198, 201; lesbians in, 22, 26, 28, 29–30, 227–36; in print ads, 230–34; same-sex couples in, 21–22, 25–26, 30, 33, 230; sexuality in, 23–24, 229 The Advocate (magazine), 229, 286; gay tourism and, 182–83, 189, 190–91, 194, 196, 198, 200 African Americans, 31–32, 280, 281; Ballroom culture and, 171–78;

boi and, 165–66; LGBTcommunity and, 169–70. See also RuPaul AIDS, 97, 218, 280, 285; gay spirituality and, 262; HIV and, 24, 31, 169, 197, 201; Philadelphia and, 275; in sports, 97, 98, 105; travel guides and, 180, 198, 199, 201 AIDS Memorial Quilt, 212 Allison, Bevin, 18 Alter, Jonathan, 280 Amaechi, John, 85 American Psychiatric Association, 190 anal intercourse, 90, 139 androgyny, 245, 249 anti-gay violence. See Shepard, Matthew Aronson, Rudolph, 127 art, 153; fashion and, 146, 147–48, 155; performance and, 149–50, 153 Ashe, Arthur, 97, 109 Associated Press Managing Editors Statement of Ethical Principles, 108 athletes, outing of. See sports, outing in; specific athlete Atlanta Falcons (football team), 100 Attila, Professor (Louis Durlacher), 121

292

Index

Austin, “Stone Cold” Steve, 58 Avis rental car ad, 25 Babcock, Barbara, 219–20 bad girl, in pro-wrestling, 69 Baker, Gilbert, 218 Bakhtinian carnival, 213, 219 Ballroom Culture, 171–78; gender identity system in, 171–72, 175, 176; parenting in, 171, 174–77 Banana Republic ad campaign, 24–25 Barfly (guidebook), 186, 189, 194, 195 Barney, R. D., 108 baseball, outing in, 86–92, 105–7; Tadano case, 89–92 Baudelaire, 146–48 Baumgardner, Jennifer, 247 Bayenhof, Barb, 18 Bean, Billy, 105 Bell, Catherine, 261 Belles, 118. See also inverts/ inversion Benetton ads, gay-themes in, 24, 31 Bishoff, Eric, 72 Black, J., 108 black gay men, 149. See also African Americans; RuPaul Bodies That Matter (Butler), 152 bodybuilders. See Sandow, Eugen boi dyke, 163–67 Bond, D. Stephenson, 266 Bordo, Susan, 13 Boston Globe (newspaper), 282, 284 Bouldrey, Brian, 262 Bowers v. Hardwick (1986), 197 boycott/buying power, 46, 48, 52 Bradshaw, Terry, 104 Brazen Femme: Queering Femininity (Brushwood Rose & Camilleri), 248–50 Bridgestone/Firestone ad, 25 Brokaw, Tom, 280–81, 283 Brooks, Blanche, 136, 137–38

Brooks, Warwick, 128, 136 Browne, Kath, 216 Brushwood Rose, Cloe, 248–50 Buhle, Mari Jo, 244 Burke, Glenn, 105 Bushell, Gary, 165 Business, Not Politics (Sender), 40 butch community, 164, 172 The Butch Cook Book (Lynch et al.), 15–18 butch-femme dyad, 249 butch lesbian, 16, 243–44, 245 butch queen, 172, 176 Butler, Judith, 233, 240, 247, 250; Gender Trouble, 150–52, 248, 252–53, 255; performativity and, 150–53, 246 Butt, Gavin, 149–50, 152 Buzinski, Jim, 85, 87 Camilleri, Anna, 248–50 Camp, 63. See also humor Cartier jewelry ads, 30, 32 Cataldo, Rick, 60 CBS Evening News, 276 celebrity: culture of, 95–96; at Pride events, 216 Cena, John, 76 Chasin, A., 40 Cheney, Lynn, 26 Chicago Tribune (newspaper), 31, 133, 137 Chili’s restaurant ad, 27–28 Christians, C. G., 112 Christopher Street Connection, 71–72 Chyna (Joanie Laurer), 60–62, 75 Cirque du Soleil, 78 civil rights, 170, 181, 190, 216. See also gay rights movement Clark, Thurmond, 6, 7, 9 Clendinen, Dudley, 181 Cleveland Browns (football team), 102–4

Index

Cleveland Indians (baseball team), 90–91 Cleveland Plain Dealer, 29 Clinton, Bill, 197 Clinton, Hillary, 9, 58 Cohen, Richard, 280 Cole, Michael, 76–77 Combs, W., 39 coming out, 7, 29, 170; Pride festivals and, 220–21. See also See sports, outing in committed relationships, 24–25, 31. See also same-sex marriage Communitarianism, 112–13, 114 Communitas, 222, 269 Connor, Randy P., 262 consumer culture, 39–41, 43–44, 47, 51 Contemporary Paganism (Harvey), 260–61 cookbooks, lesbians and, 11–18; gender identity and, 14–15; humor in, 16, 18; performance of femininity and, 12, 15, 17 Coors beer ad, 26, 46, 233 Copjec, Joan, 151 Corbin, J., 42 Couric, Katie, 281, 283 Crocker, E., 256 cross-dressing, 127, 219–20. See also RuPaul Cruikshank, Barbara, 253–55 Cruise News and World Report, 183–84, 189 Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly, 212 Cunningham, Scott, 262 Dahr, Jane, 6 Damron’s Address Book, 186, 187, 188, 189, 192, 199, 203; advertising in, 194, 195, 198, 201 Danger, Allison, 72 Daughters of Bilitis (DOB), 181 Day, L. A., 109

293

Dean, Tim, 151 Deaux, K., 230 Defense of Marriage Act (1996), 197 Degeneration X (DX), 61, 75 DeGeneres, Ellen, 275, 276 D’Emilio, John, 181, 197 desire, 148–49, 243–44 Detroit, Ballroom culture in, 171–78; gender identity system in, 171–72, 175, 176 Devor, Aaron H., 240–41 Diana, Princess of Wales, 95 Diesel jeans, gay ad by, 25 Dior, Christian, 148 Directory 43 (guidebook), 185–86, 187, 188, 189 disposible income, of gays, 28–30, 51 Dixey, Henry, 127–28 Doing Ethics in Journalism (Black et al.), 108–9 Dolce & Gabbana, 232 Douglas, Mary, 268 drag performance, 74–75, 219. See also RuPaul Drake, Jennifer, 246 Drake, Robert, 267 Drawing Down the Moon (Adler), 261 Dreamer, Tony, 73–74 Duffy, Jonathan, 164 Duggan, Lisa, 170 Dworkin, Andrea, 244–45 “The Dying Gaul,” 129–30 Dyke March (San Francisco), 211–12 Dykes on Bikes, 210 effeminacy, 2, 4, 7–8. See also femininity Elderkin, Mark, 179, 180 Eliade, Mircea, 259, 267 Elliott, Deni, 111 Ellis, Havelock, 243, 244 Englehardt, E. E., 108 Eostre (goddess), 265, 267. See also Ostara ritual

294

Index

Epistemology of the Closet (Sedgwick), 241 equal rights, 25–26. See also civil rights; gay rights erotic: fashion and, 148–49; homoeroticism, 120; in lesbian cookbook, 13. See also sexuality Escada, Prada, 173 ESPN (sports network), 103, 106 Etheridge, Melissa, 29 Evans, Arthur, 262 Evans, Caroline, 149 Eve myth, 156 Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW), 57, 73. See also prowrestling, queer image in Fackler, P. M., 112 faggots, 99, 101, 278 family, in Ballroom Culture, 174 Farrell, John, 91 fashion: art and, 146, 147–48, 155; femininity and, 145–47, 153–57; jouissance and, 153, 154, 157. See also RuPaul Father and Son (Gosse), 120 Fearless Speech (Foucault), 87 Feinstein, Rob, 72 Fejes, F., 38 “Female Fem(me)ininities” (Maltry & Tucker), 251–52 female-to-male (FTM) transsexual, 164, 167, 172, 176 femininity: fashion and, 145–47, 149, 153, 155; femme and, 242, 244, 249, 251, 254, 256; masquerade of, 156–57; performance of, 12, 15, 17, 175; in pro-wrestling, 62. See also effeminacy feminism, 241, 244; power relations and, 246–48; third-wave, 240, 245–48, 253–55 Feminism and Its Discontents (Buhle), 244

Feminism Unmodified (Mackinnon), 244 femme gender expression, 16, 239–56; cultural history of, 242; femininity and, 242, 244, 249, 251, 254, 256; historical contexts, 243–45; misogyny and, 240, 242–43, 244, 247, 254, 256; social hierarchies and, 250; third-wave feminism and, 240, 245–48, 253–55 Ferre, J. P., 112 Flannery, D. E., 133 Flu¨gel, J. C., 147 Fodor’s Gay Guides, 200, 203 football, outing in, 98–104; Tuaolo case, 27–28, 98–99, 101 Ford Motor Company, 30 Foucault, Michel, 87, 89, 240, 246, 248 Fox News Channel, 22, 29 Freet, Melissa, 18 Freud, Sigmund, 146, 230; misogyny of, 240, 243, 244–45 From Ritual to Theatre (Turner), 214 Gaia’s Guide (lesbian guidebook), 193–94, 195 Gaither, Billy Jack, 286, 287 Galliano, John, 148, 153 Ganymede Press, 184 Garcia, Jeff, 96, 97, 102–4 Gardner, Gerald B., 261–62, 264 Gaultier, Jean Paul, 233 Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), 51–52; pro-wrestling and, 70, 71, 78–79 Gay (biweekly), 191, 194, 196 Gay (Canadian magazine), 185 gay codes, 118–19, 124, 128 gay community, 222; media portrayals of, 52, 53 Gayellow Pages, 193, 195, 196, 199, 201 Gay Guide to Europe, 184, 187, 189 Gay Guide to New York, 185, 187, 189

Index

gay identity, in media, 38, 39, 40, 42. See also media, gay representation in gay liberation movement, 196–97, 229 gay marriage. See same-sex (gay) marriage gay men, 2; butch queens, 172, 176; leather community, 165, 167; paganism and, 260 gay newspapers, 191–92 A Gay Person’s Guide to New England, 193, 195, 196 gay pornography, baseball players in, 90–91, 92 gay rights movement, 180, 184, 190, 269; Milk and, 212; Shepard killing and, 276, 284. See also same-sex (gay) marriage Gay Scene (monthly), 191, 194, 196 gay sexuality. See sexuality Gay Spirit (Thompson), 262 Gay Spirit Visions (GSV), 264, 265 gay travel guides. See travel guides and tourism Gay Witchcraft (Penczak), 262 gender identity, 219; in Ballroom community (Detroit), 171–72, 175, 176; boi, 163–67; dominant schema, 240–41; femme, 239–40; normative account, 252–53, 256; performance and, 150–52, 157, 158; polarization, in 1800s, 118; power relations and, 247–48; stereotypes, in pro-wrestling, 60, 62, 66. See also femme gender expression; masculinity Gender Trouble (Butler), 150–52, 248, 252–53, 255 The Girl’s Guide, 193–94, 195 GLAAD. See Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation Glenn, Evelyn Nakano, 176 Global Associated News, 100

295

Goldust (pro-wrestler), 62–66, 69–70 Good News: Social Ethics and the Press (Christians, et al.), 112 Gorgeous George (pro-wrestler), 59–60 Gosse, Edmund, 120, 125 Greek statuary, 120–21, 139 Greenberg, Richard, 113 Greenlee, T., 229–30 The Grey Guide, 184, 185, 187 Gross, L., 38 Guaracino, Jeff, 179 Guerrero, Eddie, 58 Guild Press Ltd., 192 Hardaway, Tim, 85, 89 Hardesty, Sue, 15 Harris, L., 256 Harvey, Graham, 260–61 Hass, Charlie, 77 hate-crime laws, 281–83, 285 Healey, Murray, 124 Hearst, Garrison, 99–100, 101 Henderson, Russell, 277, 282 hermaphroditic archetype, 269. See also androgyny heteronormativity, 14, 157, 249; Ballroon Culture and, 171; femme identity and, 256; marriage and, 174; in professional sports, 88 Heywood, Leslie, 246 HIV/AIDS, 24, 31, 169, 197, 201. See also AIDS Hobsbawn, Eric, 261 Hodges, Louis W., 110 Hollander, Anne, 147 homoeroticism, 120. See also Erotic; Sexuality homonormativity, 170 homophile organizations, 182 homophile rights, 1. See also Gay rights

296

Index

homophilia, legal ramifications of, 3–7 homophobia, 46, 181, 269; in black community, 170, 172; in pro baseball, 86; in pro football, 101–2; in pro-wrestling, 58, 60, 63, 65, 69, 70–71, 77 Homosexual Citizen (publication), 183 Homosexuelle transgression, 153–54, 157 Hot Lesbian Action (HLA), 72–74 house culture, 171. See also Ballroom Culture humor, 16, 18, 28; in pagan ritual, 266 Hunt, E. Aubrey, 122–25 Hutton, Ronald, 260, 265 Hyacinth myth, 267 identity, 163, 247; politics of, 14–15. See also gender identity If They Only Knew (Chyna), 75 Ikea ad, gay-theme in, 25 Iliade, Mircea, 259, 267 “I’ll Be the Girl: Generations of Femme” (Cruikshank), 253–55 Intercourse (Dworkin), 244 International Gay and Lesbian Travel Association (IGLTA), 179, 198 The International Guild Guide, 185, 188, 194, 195 Internet, identity on, 166. See also Web sites intimacy, circles of, 110 The Invention of Tradition (Hobsbawn), 261 inverts/inversion, 219–20, 230, 243; Sandow and, 118–19, 127, 128 Iwata, E., 39, 44 Jackson, Stevi, 202 Jackson Travel Service, 183 James, Mickie, 66–70, 73

Jeffrey, Sheila, 158 Jennings, Dale, 2, 9 John Hancock Financial Services, 27 Johnson, E. Patrick, 174 Jones, Todd, 107 jouissance (orgasmic joy), 153, 154, 157, 158 Julber, Eric, 6, 7, 9 Jung, Carl G., 264, 267, 269 Kama, A., 38 Kantian ethics, 110–11, 113 Kates, S. M., 40 Kentucky v. Watson (1992), 197 Kirby, David, 24 Kite, M. E., 230 Kline, Chris, 90–91 Kopay, David, 96 Koufax, Sandy, 87, 107 Kraft-Ebbing, Richard von, 243, 244 Kraus, Jes, 164 Lacan, Jacques, 147, 153–54, 157 Lambda Legal Defense Fund, 190 Lane, Lenny and Lodi, 70 Lasorda, Tommy, 105 Latinos, 31–32, 64, 171 The Lavender Baedeker (travel guide), 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189 The Lavender Locker Room (Warren), 85 Lavender World (guidebook), 185, 187 leather community, 165, 167, 218–19 Leno, Mark, 113–14 lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT), 7, 163; African Americans and, 169–71, 172; boi dykes and, 163–67; media representation of, 41, 46, 52; Pride festivals (See San Francisco Pride (2008)); socio-political issues and, 215; subgroups, 220, 221; tourism and, 189

Index

lesbian butch-femme, 242 Lesbian Erotic Cookbook (Morgan), 11–14 lesbian feminism, 240. See also feminism lesbian guidebooks, 193–94, 195 lesbian kiss, 275; in advertising, 231, 233 lesbians: in advertising, 22, 26, 28, 29–30, 227–36; categories of relationships, 231–33; in NBA, 87, 88; in pro-wrestling, 72–74; same-sex couples, 230 lesbians, cookbooks and, 11–18; humor in, 16, 18; identity politics and, 14–15 Levi-Strauss, Claude, 260 Leviticus, 268–69 Levy, Arial, 164, 165, 167 LGBT. See lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Logo (television network), 40, 49, 51 Los Angeles, 182, 183, 184, 191 The Los Angeles Advocate (magazine), 182, 186 Lott, Trent, 280 Lukenbill, G., 40 Lynch, Lee, 15, 18 MacAloon, John, 212 Mackinnon, Catherine, 244 Magliocco, Sabina, 261, 262–63, 267 Maltry, Melanie, 251–52, 253 Manifesta (Baumgardner), 247 Mannerluff (magazine), 126 Marech, Rona, 163 Marella, Santino (Santina), 74 marriage. See same-sex (gay) marriage masculinity, 175; desire and, 243–44; fashion and, 145, 147, 157, 158; femme identity and, 249, 254; objectification of, 124, 130; phallic power and, 149, 250–51, 253

297

Mason, R., 43 Mattachine Society, 2, 3, 181, 183 Matthews, Wallace, 106 McDonnell, Patricia, 119 McKinney, Aaron, 277–78, 282, 285 McLean, Lindsy, 99–100, 101–2 McMahon, Vince, 58, 78–79 McQueen, Alexander, 153 media, gay representation in, 37–54; boycott/buying power, 46, 48, 52; business interests and, 48, 49–50; conspicuous representation, 43–51, 52–53; consumer culture and, 39–41, 43–44, 47, 51; gay identity and, 38, 39, 40, 42; interview procedure, 41–43; tokenism, 45, 46 media ethicists, 108–12 Mendes, Rosa, 74 Merrill, J. C., 108 Miami Herald (newspaper), 24 Michaels, Shawn, 61 Michaels, Tammy Lynn, 30 Milk, Harvey, 212, 215–16 Millen, Matt, 101 misogyny, 149, 244, 247, 256; female body and, 240, 242–43, 249, 254 Montrelay, Michelle, 157 Morgan, Ffiona, 11 Mu¨eller, Frederick Wilhelm. See Sandow, Eugen Mugler, Thierry, 145, 149 Murdoch, Joyce, 6–7 “My Reminiscences” (Sandow), 122 Nagourney, Adam, 181 Nash, Kevin, 70, 78 National Black Justice Coalition, 169 National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, 63, 113, 282 National Organization of Women, 190 National Queer Arts Festival, 211 Navratilova, Martina, 28

298

Index

NBC Nightly News, 280–81 Neimark, J., 95–96 Newall, Venetia, 265 Newsom, Gavin, 9, 216 Newsweek magazine, 279, 280 New York City, 126–27, 185, 191; Stonewall Riots (1969), 190, 215 New York Daily News (newspaper), 86 New York Post (newspaper), 86, 89, 105, 106–7 New York Times (newspaper), 23, 28, 126, 229; same-sex couples in, 21–22, 25, 30, 33; Shepard killing and, 276, 277, 278, 279–80, 281–82, 285, 286 NFL. See football, outing in; specific teams Nielsen rating service, 49 Noonan, Bode, 14–15 Oakenfull, G., 229–30 Obama, Barack, 58 O’Keeffe, Michael, 85, 86, 88 Oleson, Otto K., 5, 9 ONE Inc., 181–82 ONE Confidential (magazine), 182 One magazine, gay marriage and, 1–9; legal ramifications of homophilia and, 3–7 orgasm, 129. See also jouissance (orgasmic joy) Orton, Randy, 76 Ostara ritual, 259–70; efficacy of, 268–70; Hyacinth and Eostre in, 267; paganism and, 260–64 Ote´ro, Caroline, 131–32 Out & About Gay Travel Guides, 200, 203 outing. See coming out; sports, outing in Out magazine, 106, 198, 200 Outsports.com, 85–86, 87, 89 The Outsports Revolution (O’Keeffe), 85

The Out Traveler (periodical), 180 Owens, Terrell, 103, 104 paganism, 260–64, 270 nn. 1–2. See also Ostara ritual “The Painter of Modern Life” (Baudelaire), 146–48 Pallone, Dave, 105 parenting, in Ballroom Culture, 171, 174–77 Paris, Bob, 130 patriarchy, 47 Patterns (Eliade), 259 Patterson, P., 110–12, 111 Peacock, B., 221 Penczak, Christopher, 262 Perez, Eddie, 107 performance, 175; Butler on, 150–53, 246; drag, 74–75, 219; of femininity, in cookbooks, 12, 15, 17; Ru Paul and, 154–56, 157–58 persons of color, poverty of, 31–32. See also African Americans; Latinos Petite morte, orgasm as, 129 phallic power, 149, 250–51, 253 Phelan, Peggy, 153, 155 Philadelphia, 25, 50, 179 Philadelphia (film), 275, 283 physical culture, 117, 121, 126. See also Sandow, Eugen (The Adonis) Piacentino, Rob, 269 Piazza, Mike, 87, 88, 92, 96, 97, 105–7; New York Post story and, 86, 89, 105, 106–7 Pink Saturday Street Party, 212, 213, 218 Pink Triangle Installation, 217–18 Pittsburgh Steelers (football team), 100 Places of Interest (guidebook), 199–200 Playboy magazine, 62, 103 political agenda, 40; Pride festivals and, 215–16, 223

Index

pornography, baseball players in, 90–91, 92 power relations, feminism and, 246–48 Price, Deb, 6–7 Pride festivals. See San Francisco Pride (2008) promiscuity, 2, 8, 23 Provincetown (P-town), 26, 50 pro-wrestling, queer image in, 57–80; backstage at, 75–78; Christopher Street Connection, 71–72; drag performance, 74–75; gay satis(faction) in, 70–72; GLAAD and, 70, 71, 78–79; homophobia, 58, 60, 63, 65, 69, 70–71, 77; influential characters, 59–63; opposites attract in, 63–70; sexuality in, 61–62, 64–65, 69, 72; women, 60–62, 66–70, 71, 72–74 Pullum, William, 121–22, 123 Purity and Danger (Douglas), 268 Queens, 209. See also drag performance Queer Eye for the Straight Guy (television series), 37 queer femmes. See femme gender expression queer image, in sports. See pro-wrestling, queer image in; sports, outing in Queer Spirits (Roscoe), 262, 267 queer theory, 246, 248, 255 Radical Faerie movement, 262, 263 Ragland, Shannon, 89 Ragusa, A. T., 229 Ramon, Razor, 63–66, 69 Rawls, John, 111 Red Beans and Rice (Noonan), 14–15 “Reformer’s Choice: Marriage License or Just License?” (Saunders), 2–3

299

Rehm, Jonathan, 264, 266–68 Rich, Frank, 37, 280 Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions (Bell), 261 “Ritual Is My Chosen Art Form” (Magliocci), 263 The Ritual Process (Turner), 152 Rivers, Larry, 149–50, 152 Rivie`re, Joan, 156 The Rock (Dwayne Johnson), 76–77 Rohlinger, D. A., 229 Roscoe, Will, 262, 267 Ross, Phil and Rodtney, 165 RSVP Travel Productions, 198 RuPaul, 145, 148–58; desire and, 148–49, 154; fashion and, 145–49, 153–57; feminine masquerade and, 156–57; femininity and, 145–47, 149, 153, 155; gender identity and, 150–52, 157; Lacanian analysis, 147, 153–54, 157; performance and, 154–56, 157–58; supermodel status, 145 Rushbrook, Dereka, 203 sadomasochism (SM), 164, 166, 167, 218 safe sex, 24 same-sex (gay) marriage, 169–70, 177, 269; in advertising, 21–22, 25–26, 30, 33, 230; Ballroom Culture and, 174–75; effeminate gays and, 2, 4, 7–8; legalization of, in California, 210, 211, 216–17; legal ramifications of, 3–7; in One magazine, 1–9; in pro-wrestling, 70–71 Sandow, Eugen (The Adonis), 117–39; eroticized photographs of, 125–26, 128–30, 139; gender codes and, 118–19; Greek statuary and, 120–21, 139; Hunt and, 122–25; male companion of (Sieveking), 130–31, 132, 133, 136,

300

Index

138; marriage of, 136, 137–39; in New York vaudeville, 126–27; as nude model, 121–22; Ote´ro and, 131–32; private soirees of, 124, 134–36, 137; Ziegfeld and, 132–34, 136, 137, 138 Sandow’s System of Physical Training (Sandow), 122, 129 San Francisco: Castro district, 212, 213; gay tourism and, 181, 183, 184, 200. See also San Francisco Pride San Francisco Chronicle (newspaper), 27, 210 San Francisco Examiner (newspaper), 31 San Francisco 49ers (football team), 99, 102 San Francisco Pride (2008), 209–23; coming out and, 220–21; crossdressing at, 219–20; dyke march, 211–12; as “flow” experience, 212–13; nakedness/nudity in, 213–15; parade, 210; Pink Triangle Installation, 217–18; as rite of passage, 221–22; as safe space, 214, 223; same-sex marriage and, 216–17; social politics in, 215–16 “Sappho Remembered” (Dahr), 6 Sargent, D. A., 117 Saunders, E. B. (Dale Jennings), 1–3, 9 Scofield, Steve, 166 Sedgwick, Eve, 241 Sender, Katherine, 39, 40, 190, 198, 200 sexuality: in gay-themed ads, 23–24, 229; lesbian, 248; in pro-wrestling, 61–62, 64–65, 69, 72, 75–76. See also erotic; pornography “sex war” debates, 245, 249 Shapiro, Mark, 90–91

Sharpe, Shannon, 101 Shelton, Benjamin, 77 Shepard, Judy and Dennis, 283–85 Shepard, Matthew, 197, 275–87; crucifixion of, 285–87; hate-crime law and, 281–83, 285; hatred of gays and, 277–79; media response to, 276, 278–81, 282; parents of, 283–85 Shields, Mark, 113 Shockey, Jeremy, 101 Sieveking, Martinus, 130–31, 133, 136, 138 Signorile, M., 113 Simmons, Roy, 98, 99 Sipple, Oliver W., 109 sissy stereotype, in pro-wrestling, 60 skinheads, 165 Skipper’s Guide, 192–93, 194, 195 Skolund, John, 264 Slater, Don, 5, 6 Smith, Jerry, 96 Smith, R. F., 110 Smoltz, John, 107 social justice theory, 111 Society of Professional Journalists, 108 sodomy, 120, 197 Sparks, Theresa, 216 Spartacus International Gay Guide, 192, 194, 195–96, 199, 200, 201 Spiral Dance (Starhawk), 263 spirituality, gay, 260–64. See also Ostara ritual sports, outing in, 85–86, 94–114; baseball, 86–92, 105–7, 113; communitarianism and, 112–13, 114; culture of celebrity and, 95–96; football, 27–28, 98–104; media ethicists and, 108–12. See also pro-wrestling, queer image in Sports Illustrated magazine, 100 spring rituals. See Ostara ritual

Index

St. Louis Post-Dispatch (newspaper), 22, 29, 31 Stanley, Julian, 8 Starhawk, Spiral Dance, 263 Steele, B., 108 stereotypes, 8, 228; in pro-wrestling, 60, 62, 66 Stewart, Kordell, 100 Stonewall Riots (New York, 1969), 190, 215 Storr, Merl, 243 Strait and Associates, 184, 185 Stratus, Trish, 66–70, 73 Strauss, A., 42 Streitmatter, Rodger, 39, 200 Strength and How to Obtain It (Sandow), 132 Subaru ads, 26, 28 Supreme Court, California, 210, 216–17 Supreme Court, U.S., 67 Symonds, John Addington, 125 Tadano, Kazuhito, 89–92 Take Me Out (Greenberg), 113 Tea, Michelle, 251–52, 253 television culture, 48–49, 52 Tharp, M. C., 228 The Theory of the Leisure Class (Veblen), 43 The Thin Thirty (Ragland), 89 Third Wave Agenda (Haywood & Drake), 246 Thompson, Mark, 262 Thorne, Tony, 163–64, 166 Tilden, Bill, 98 Time Out New York (periodical), 87 Tokenism, 45 Toklas, Alice B., 12 tourism. See travel guides and tourism Towleroad (blogger), 165, 166 transgender, 164. See also female-tomale transsexuals

301

travel guides and tourism, 179–203; acceptance of (1980s–1990s), 197–202; advertising, 194–95, 198, 201; The Advocate and, 182–83, 189, 190–91, 194, 196, 198; foundations of, 181–90; gay liberation movement and, 196–97; growth and visibility of (1970s), 190–97; lesbian guidebooks, 193–94, 195 Travis, Neal, 86, 105 Triple H (pro-wrestler), 61 The Triumph of the Moon (Hutton), 260 Tuaolo, Esera, 27–28, 98–99, 101 Tucker, Kristin, 251–52, 253 Turner, Victor, 214, 222, 268 U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, 6 USA Today (newspaper), 282 Valentine, Bobby, 86–87, 105 Van Gennep, A., 265 Vanity Fair magazine, 24–25, 286 Va¨nska¨, A., 229 Veblen, Thorsten, 43, 147 Vick, Michael, 100 Voices from the Pagan Census (Berger, et al.), 266 Wall Street Journal, 24, 29 Walters, S. D., 38 Ward, Nel, 15 Warner, Michael, 189–90 Warren, Patricia Nell, 85 Washington Post (newspaper), 22, 23, 29; gay-themed ads and, 26, 27; Shepard killing and, 279, 280, 283, 285, 286 Washington Star (newspaper), 96 Web sites: Gay.com, 179; Orbitz, 40; outing on, 100; Outsports.com, 85–86; sadomasochist, 164 Weininger, Otto, 243, 244

302 West Hollywood Blonds (wrestling tag-team), 70 White, Reggie, 101 Wicks, Sue, 87, 88 Wilkins, L., 110–12, 111 Will & Grace (television sitcom), 37 Wilson, Elizabeth, 146 Winchell, Barry, 286, 287 Witching Culture (Magliocco), 261 Witeck, R., 39 Wolf, Lolita, 165 “Womanliness as Masquerade” (Rivie`re), 156 women, in pro-wrestling, 60–62, 66–70, 71, 72–74. See also femininity; lesbians Women Hating (Dworkin), 245 women’s liberation movement, 228

Index

Women’s Motorcycle Contingent, 210 Woolfolk, Butch, 101 World Championship Wrestling (WCW), 57, 70 World Report Travel Guide, 184–85, 188–89 World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), 58, 75, 78, 79. See also pro-wrestling, queer image in Wright, Les, 189 York, Michael, 261 Zeigler, Cyd, Jr., 85, 87 Ziegfeld, Flo, Jr., 132–34, 136, 137, 138 Zizek, Slavoj, 152, 154

About the Editor and Contributors

EDITOR Jim Elledge’s most recent book, A History of My Tattoo (Stonewall, 2006), won the Lambda Award for poetry and was a finalist for the Thom Gunn Award. His collection of prose poems, H, an impressionistic biography of Henry Darger, is due from Busman’s Holiday Press in 2011. His poems have appeared in Barrow Street, Denver Quarterly, Five Fingers Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Indiana Review, North American Review, Paris Review, and others. His essay on Tina Turner, “Tina and I,” appears in My Diva: 65 Gay Men on the Women Who Inspire Them (ed. Michael Montlack, 2009), and his “Dunstan Thompson’s ‘beautiful and butcher beast’ Unleashed and on the Prowl” is forthcoming in Dunstan Thompson: On the Life and Work of a Lost American Master (eds. D. A. Powell and Kevin Prufer, 2010). He directs the MA in Professional Writing Program at Kennesaw State University, just outside of Atlanta, and the Writers Workshop of Puerto Rico, a summer study program in San Juan, Puerto Rico. CONTRIBUTORS Marlon M. Bailey is an Assistant Professor of Gender Studies and African American & African Diaspora Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington. He is also a former Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow in Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of CaliforniaBerkeley. Marlon’s most recent essays have appeared in Souls: A Critical

304

About the Editor and Contributors

Journal of Black Politics, Culture and Society and the Journal of Gay and Lesbian Social Services. He is currently completing a book manuscript titled, Butch/Queens Up in Pumps: Gender, Performance and Ballroom Culture in Detroit, a performance ethnographic study of Ballroom Culture in Detroit that will be published by the University of Michigan Press. Alison Bancroft is a specialist in interdisciplinary approaches to modern culture and media and is committed to thinking across media forms, theoretical domains, and cultural contexts. Her research interests include visual culture and theory, psychoanalytic thought and cultural life, and sexualities. She teaches at Queen Mary, University of London, and has published several papers on her current interest, psychoanalysis and fashion. She has recently been awarded a PhD from the University of London, and her thesis “Jacques Lacan and an Encounter with Fashion” is the basis of a forthcoming book and exhibition. Barclay Barrios is an Assistant Professor of English and Director of Writing Programs at Florida Atlantic University. His research focuses on writing program administration, composition/rhetoric and technology, and the intersections of queer identities and composition/ pedagogy. David R. Coon is an Assistant Professor of Media Studies at the University of Washington Tacoma, where he teaches courses in film and television studies and video production. His research interests include gender and sexuality in the media, visual representations of cities and suburbs, and the work practices of media professionals. He has published articles in the Journal of Popular Film and Television and Feminist Media Studies. Lyn J. Freymiller is on the faculty of the Communication Arts & Sciences department at Penn State University. He received his MA from the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee and his PhD from Penn State University. His research focuses on issues of gay identity and media portrayals of gay characters. He has analyzed such television programs as Six Feet Under, Queer as Folk, and Will & Grace. John S. Gentile is Professor and Chair of the Department of Theatre and Performance Studies at Kennesaw State University. He received

About the Editor and Contributors

305

an MA and PhD in Performance Studies from Northwestern University and an MA in Mythological Studies from Pacifica Graduate Institute. He is the author of Cast of One: One-Person Shows from the Chautauqua Platform to the Broadway Stage (University of Illinois Press) and the founding co-editor of Storytelling, Self, Society: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Storytelling Studies. His stage production inspired by Joseph Campbell’s work, The Hero’s Journey: Mythic Stories of the Heroic Quest, was featured as a plenary session at the international Mythic Journeys conference, and his adaptation of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick received the award for Best Performance at the Casablanca Theatre Festival in Morocco in 2009. His essay, “The Pilgrim Soul: Herman Melville’s Moby Dick as Pilgrimage,” is forthcoming in Text & Performance Quarterly. Mark John Isola, who earned his PhD in literature from Tufts University, is an Assistant Professor of English at the Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston. Mark John’s interests include American literature, gay studies, AIDS literature, and critical theory. Isola has published journal articles in the Nordic Journal of English Studies and eSharp and has contributed to several GLBTQ reference collections, including critical essays on the Violet Quill and the impact of AIDS on literature. He has been selected to chair panels and present papers at several national-level conferences, including MLA, ALA, and PCA/ ACA, and he serves as the LGBT Studies Area Chair for the MidAtlantic Popular/American Culture Association. Richard Kenney is a media ethicist, former journalist and the Scripps Howard Endowed Professor of Journalism at Hampton University in Virginia, where he teaches media writing, ethics, and law. Dr. Kenney’s research has been published several times in the Journal of Mass Media Ethics, and he contributed several chapters to the textbook Doing Ethics in Journalism. Kenney has also presented and published work on the ethics of language choice in media coverage of LGBT issues. He is an Ethics Fellow with the Poynter Institute for Media Studies. He earned his PhD from the University of Georgia. Bryan Luis Pacheco is a Community Initiatives Associate for The Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network (GLSEN). He is the recipient of a highly competitive 2009/2010 Public Allies apprenticeship. He attended Middlebury College on a prestigious POSSE full-tuition scholarship, majoring in Spanish Literature, with a minor in Teaching

306

About the Editor and Contributors

Education. Pacheco has been an avid pro-wrestling fan for 12 years, watching it as a young boy with his brother Brandon. As a gay man, he often questioned the way Queers were represented in prowrestling and in general on television. Bilingual, he has taught in Costa Rica and has devoted much of his young career to working with marginalized groups in educational settings. He is currently researching the injustices that occur on the Mexico/U.S. border and how they affect queer people. He hopes to use writing as a tool to bring attention to urgent Latino and queer issues. Christal Seahorn currently teaches at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette where she is working on her PhD in Rhetoric and Folklore. She travels each summer experiencing Pride festivals around the world. To date, her Pride roster includes Houston, New York City, London, Amsterdam, and, of course, San Francisco. Malgorzata Skorek is currently a PhD Candidate in Social & Cognitive Sciences at the University of California, Merced. Her major research interest is in the ways mass media portray men and women and in the effects these often-stereotypical portrayals have on the viewer’s perception and behavior. She is conducting content analyses of diverse mass media and experiments of short-term exposure to selected imagery. She received her MA in International Communication and BA in Integrated Social Sciences from Jacobs University Bremen in Germany. Anika Stafford is a PhD student in Women’s and Gender Studies, where she determinedly writes about education, critical disability studies, and sordid queer theory. Her previous publications include “Beyond Normalization: Challenging Heteronormativity in Children’s Picture Books,” in Who’s Your Daddy? And Other Writings on Queer Parenting (Sumach Press). For the past 15 years she has been hosting workshops and organizing events on myriad anti-oppression topics. She currently resides in Vancouver, British Columbia. Rodger Streitmatter is a Professor in the School of Communication at American University in Washington, D.C. He is the author of eight books, including Unspeakable: The Rise of the Gay and Lesbian Press in America, Empty Without You: The Intimate Letters of Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena Hickok, and From “Perverts” to “Fab Five” ~ The Media’s Changing Depiction of Gay Men and Lesbians. Streitmatter is a former reporter for

About the Editor and Contributors

307

the Roanoke Times & World News in Roanoke, Virginia, and he holds a PhD in U.S. History from American University. Katharina Vester is the Acting Director of American Studies at American University in Washington, D.C. She specializes in transnational cultural studies and the dynamics of power in everyday practices. She was assistant professor of American Studies at the University of Bochum (Germany) from 2002 to 2007, where she earned her PhD summa cum laude. She holds an MA in American Culture from the University of Potsdam and the Free University of Berlin. She is completing a book manuscript on the construction of identity narratives and resistance to hegemonic norms of gender, race, and sexuality in culinary discourses. She is the editor, with Kornelia Freitag, of Another Language: Poetic Experiments in Britain and North America, in the series: Transnational and Transatlantic American Studies (2008). C. Todd White earned his PhD in anthropology from the University of California, where he studied the Los Angeles-based origins of the homosexual rights movement. He is an editor for BeforeStonewall: Activists for Gay and Lesbian Rights in Historical Context and author of Pre-Gay L.A.: A Social History of the Movement for Homosexual Rights. White is a frequent participant in American University’s Lavender Languages and Linguistics Conference and a contributor to LGBT periodicals, including Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide. With Jonathan Ned Katz, he helped to launch the OutHistory.org Web site, hosted by the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies, and has also created Web sites for the Homosexual Information Center, the Society of Lesbian and Gay Anthropologists, and the Committee on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender History. He lives with his partner in Rochester, New York, and teaches anthropology at the Rochester Institute of Technology and at the University at Buffalo.