Queering Kansas in the Pictures

Flow (Still) Matters

Alex Doty

Ryan Murphy, Activist?

American Queer Horror Story

Showing posts with label textual analysis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label textual analysis. Show all posts

Performing Glee: Gay Resistance to Gay Representations and a New Slumpy Class

Posted by Taylor Cole Miller - -

Originally published in FlowTV (14.03): 6 July 2011.

It can be said with reasonable justification that because we are so programmed to be phobic of our own enduring stereotypes, we have become a generation of self-hating homos. Look on any gay dating website and you will see ad nauseum: “I am interested in masculine men” — “masc-only” — “no fems” — “I’m gay – I don’t want to date girls be masc.” These sorts of statements are typically followed by something like, “I am str8 acting …”
kurt1_tOnce I read a profile that went so far as to say that the poster was straight, right before listing that he’s a bottom, likes twinks and … well … a few other things I’m too shy to mention in a post my mom will probably read.
I believe this distaste for male flamboyance is what is happening when gay men tell me they hate Glee’s flamboyantly gay character, Kurt Hummel, who can best be summed up by his response to the question, Is that a men’s sweater? (It’s not.) Kurt says, “Fashion has no gender.”1
Although for much of Glee’s first season, Kurt explicitly comes out at least once per episode, the show continues to rely on his clothing, speech, mannerisms, and song choice to code his queerness, a practice of stereotyping bemoaned by gay men, like those above, who think he is an offensive, anachronistic stereotype.
Gay characters in broadcasting have been around since radio’s inception, but because homosexuality was not “sayable” on radio and later television, and programs were strictly prohibited from employing explicitly gay characters, broadcasting appropriated the process of stereotyping to articulate characters’ sexualities. Gayness was, however, still largely omitted or invisible in popular culture, and as such, homosexuality was understood as nothing more than a sick perversion or mental illness.


Glee's Kurt dressed as a Lady Gaga Character - with Executive Producer Ryan Murphy
As Richard Dyer explains, “Making gayness visible had to overcome the fact that, apart from actual sexual acts, homosexuality is not something visible.” To overcome this issue, gay advocacy groups such as the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) began and/or cultivated practices of stereotyping in the mass media to respond to, denigrate, or take possession of representation of gayness. Once upon a time there was the practice of “queerspotting” wherein certain elements of a person’s style of dress or mode of speech might “identify” them. “The gay project wanted a more secure visibility, it wanted to make widespread the face, literally, of homosexuality.”2 In achieving that goal, the gay project perpetuated and heightened flamboyant stereotypes.
But even with a record number of explicit representations of queerness on television today, shows continue to rely on these flamboyant tropes. We have reached terminal velocity with regard to using stereotypes for visibility’s sake and are now subject to them in all characterizations. Gayness, and to an even greater extent queerness, has become so conflated with stereotype, that we have subscribed to a new species of performativity — one that must be carried out flawlessly so our sexuality is not indeterminate. In this process, certain acts, mannerisms, or preferences become arbitrarily associated with sexuality.


From Season 1, Episode 9, "Wheels" - Rachel (Lea Michele) and Kurt (Chris Colfer) have a "diva-off" performing the Wicked tune, "Defying Gravity" -- originally composed for a female singer.
For example, watching Glee has become a sort of fag flag. In the new TV Land comedy, Happily Divorced, starring once-gay icon Fran Drescher, when Fran’s husband comes out to her after several years of marriage, she says that his love of Glee suddenly makes sense.
While many gay men are likely to devalue flamboyant gay characters like Kurt, they continue to perform their sexuality as socially learned by engaging with texts associated with the gay communities. Additionally, what I also learned while writing this post, is that more straight women were engaging with Glee specifically for its gay representations than gay men. A sort of reiteration of the ‘90s “Slumpy class” phenomenon as described by Ron Becker in which what he called Socially Liberal, Urban-Minded Professionals (SLUMPYs) consumed gay programming as “a convenient way to affirm their open-mindedness.”3
To test my hypothesis, I took a small cursory sample of Glee fans from Facebook and Twitter and asked them to complete a survey about the show. I was more or less vindicated in my theorizations about gay men, but reading the answers straight women gave surprised me, and it was in that moment I realized that perhaps characters like Kurt, and to a greater extent gay media culture, aren’t necessarily targeted toward gay audiences.
The first, mandatory question posed was “How do you identify?” The overwhelming majority, 62 percent, were straight women while gay men accounted for only 18 percent of my sample, showing that perhaps Gleeisn’t a “gay-only show.”
Bisexual women accounted for 10 percent and more straight men responded (6 percent), than lesbians (4 percent). No bisexual men or transgendered people responded.
When I filter out all but gay men, I find that the most cherished character is actually Santana, a bitchy, sexually confused former cheerleader, who constantly reiterates her discomfort with being labeled.



What’s happening here is that in gay men’s resistance of flamboyant male stereotypes, residual appreciation for flamboyancy is shifted onto powerful, deviant, and often flamboyant women. In addition to a disgust for male flamboyance, gay men sour at how routinely gay characters are subjugated and victimized solely for their sexuality. Kurt serves as a prime example. This is the genesis of the contemporary notion of the gay icon, think Barbra Streisand, Madonna, and now (arguably) Lady Gaga, on which Glee attempts to market itself. It is typical of the gay icon to be bitchy, sexually explicit, sometimes fabulous, and aggressive with straight men. Several indicated that Sue Sylvester was either a close second, or used to be their favorite but is no more.
One respondent elaborated, “As Sue Sylvester’s character has been softened and moved into a more supporting role, the writers have upped the number of zingers Santana delivers and her struggle with queerness has been handled with a lighter touch than Kurt’s before her.”
Though Kurt is not the most hated character (surprisingly that’s Rachel Berry, Glee’s failed attempt at Barbra 2.0), a few respondents said: “he seems inauthentic” “I do not like him,” “he constantly feels like a victim,” “if he were less flamboyant, people would like him more,” and “his relationship seems silly and contrived.” One even said, “He reminds me of a whiny muppet. Way too over the top.”
Having said that, many of these respondents also conceded that his story lines are the ones they most look forward to and that he is a positive step in the right direction. One comment says, “I most like Kurt’s relationship with his father. Though Burt has some growing to do, we finally have a story of a kid who can be loved by his parents — especially their father.”
Conversely, Kurt is the overwhelming favorite for the straight female viewers of the show. “His story is compelling,” “He’s authentic with a sense of humor,” “He is exactly what young gay individuals need,” “I love him so much. No, I’m not gay, but I still feel like I can relate to him. His troubles and the way he handles them affect me so much.”
What many of these statements articulate is that, because Glee is identified as a gay-friendly or gay-associative show, these straight women watch Glee to have their finger on the pulse of gay culture. They regard their own struggles with social norms, and I suspect with internal resistance to the postfeminist landscape (in which they are stripped of agency), as running parallel with Kurt’s and the gay communities’, and as such, they watch Glee in a place of greater political spirit than many of their gay peers.


Commodifying Gay Icons - Sue Sylvester as Madonna
So while the gay men in the survey watched Glee largely for the entertainment value of the show, which has cleverly studied and commodified popular gay icons of the recent past (Rachel Berry as Barbra Streisand, Sue Sylvester as Madonna, etc.) the surveyed straight women preferred to watch Glee and Kurt because they thought he represented a well-intentioned progressive step for young gay audiences, important to them, even though they’re not gay themselves.
A few other comments illustrate this: “It is more effective in showing gay teens that things get better than the recent, well-intentioned ad campaigns.”
“To me, he is a conglomeration of several guys I know/have known over the years. He is flamboyant, but so were they; therefore Kurt is authentic, not a stereotyped clown.”
“His story can really demonstrate what it can be like for gay students in high school and life. Many students do not get to see that. Especially in small towns where it may not be completely OK yet to come out when you are so young. The more people are exposed to something, the less they fear it.” A case for visibility — quantity over quality.
Vocalizing hate for Kurt is a way for gay viewers to continue to engage with Glee as a gay text, while not subscribing to the media’s continued use of stereotype. Aware of this resistance, Glee creators this season shuffled in two new gay characters, a closeted gay bully, Dave Karofsky, and Kurt’s new, more masculine love interest, Blaine. Those surveyed were indifferent to both, with a few comments stating disbelief in the characters’ interest in Kurt as the cause.  However, Glee’s continued marketing as a gay text has fostered its popularity among straight women allies, eager to associate themselves with gay culture through the “fag hag” stereotype, and all of whom love Darren Criss’ Blaine.
Meanwhile, gay resistance to these gay stereotypes has interestingly created a new breed of stereotype, “the bad gay,” seen by many as a badge of pride for the Respectable New Homosexual. Both of these role rewrites are expertly demonstrated by the hilarious YouTube series Disappointing Gay Best Friend.
Disappointing Gay Best Friend
Image Credits:
NOTES
  1. This article was originally published in FlowTV (14.03): 6 July 2011.
  2. Glee Season 2 Episode 1: Audition [↩]
  3. Dyer, Richard. Gay Icons. London: National Portrait Gallery Publications, 2009. Print. [↩]
  4. Becker, Ron. “Gay-Themed Television and the Slumpy Class: The Affordable Multi-Cultural Politics of the Gay Nineties.”Television & New Media. Vol. 7 No. 2. May 2006. [↩]
[ Read More ]

Read Full Post

Katy Perry's "Firework" - Mobilizing Notions of Americanness for Self-Empowerment

Posted by Taylor Cole Miller - -



Sirens sound and the city hums while aerial shots establish the skyline of Budapest late at night.   A woman walks onto the balcony of a palace, dressed expensively in a white gown with pearl rosaries and jewel-encrusted earrings, her privilege demonstrated as she sings to the city below.  But not everything is as it seems, for when the camera pushes back into an overhead shot, we see that this palace and this woman are bathed in a dreamy blue light in harsh contrast with the real-world yellow tonalities of the city below.  And as the wind rustles her skirt, it feels as though she is vulnerable, as if she could fall, or scarier still, jump.




Shortly after the release of her music video, “Firework” in October 2010, Katy Perry dedicated the self-empowerment anthem to the It Gets Better Project, tweeting that, “[...] everyone has the spark to be a FIREWORK.”1  The project was created to prevent suicide among GLBTQ2 youth when, in response to the suicide of gay teen Billy Lucas, the project’s founder Dan Savage wrote, “I wish I could have talked to this kid for five minutes. [...]  I wish I could have told him that, however bad things were, however isolated and alone he was, it gets better.”3  This message of individual endurance, of empowered independence, of success through adversity, and of the celebration of the underdog are all cornerstones of American ideology and are all likewise employed by Katy Perry through both the lyrics of her song and the imagery of her video, “Firework.”  To best understand how “Firework” can function as a self-empowerment anthem for struggling youth by mobilizing classic American ideologies, a close textual analysis is necessary of both the video’s narrative devices and its semiotic imagery.  In what follows, I explore in temporal order how Katy’s video employs these strategies by complicating her positioning as narrator, offering her a place outside the story to maintain her American authority, while empowering the teens of the foreign city below with the frank, emotive symbolism of the American firework.


Fresh off the decidedly American video, “California Gurls,” placing Katy within the diegesis of a strange European city allows the video to construct a cultural disconnect, enhancing the feeling of alienation and isolation important in the song’s message.  Budapest, which sits deep within the heart of Europe (both physically and culturally), is known globally to be one of the birth places of the Renaissance, a culture that values and celebrates artistry and difference – a culture of flourish in stark contrast with American streamlining.  Situating the video here facilitates the idea that the people here are different, but romanticizes that difference as beautiful – that there can and should be no conformity where eccentricity is celebrated.






Katy’s status as American, coupled with her expensive clothing and placement on the balcony, establish her Western privilege, as though she has overcome; she has embraced her independence, and as such, has become a successful woman who can dress in extravagant garments and inhabit a position above the city.  Her new empowered American self sings with concern to the city below, where teenagers from the less wealthy, less powerful nation struggle with their own personal crises.  But at the same time, Katy still seems vulnerable as she comes to the end of the balcony, singing, “Do you ever feel, like a plastic bag, drifting through the wind, wanting to start again?”  In so doing, Katy acknowledges that she has been where these teens are, as the underdog, and that they should, like she does, believe that life will get better even if you’re standing on the edge.  


The video’s narrative is interlaced with sub-stories of youth struggling with complicated issues of domestic violence, body shame, and sexual orientation.  It positions Katy as a kind of homodiegetic narrator,4 meaning that she is a character within the realm of the story; however, throughout the course of the narrative, several elements of mise-en-scène suggest that, although Katy appears to be a part of the world in which she sings, she is simultaneously apart from it.  Conventionally, while character narrators (or homodiegetic narrators) are more intimate than heterodiegetic ones, they are also traditionally less objective and less authoritative.  Giving Katy both roles simultaneously allows the text to straddle the line between an intimate connection with Katy’s character and her granted authority as an extra-textual figure, who is able to see all elements at once.  Katy’s displacement from the diegesis is first introduced when the overhead shot of her on the palace balcony at the beginning of the video juxtaposes the two color tonalities, that is, the blue light washing over Katy and the palace versus the yellow light washing over the city below.




The first interlacing story represented in the video shows a boy cradling his younger sister who is upset by her fighting parents.  The young boy turns to look over his shoulder at the adults slapping and screaming at each other, while his younger sister clasps her hands over her ears and shakes her head, overwrought.  “Do you ever feel, feel so paper thin, like a house of cards, one blow from caving in?” Katy sings, as a cut back to her reveals the look of worry in her eyes while she stares deep into the camera, and ostensibly, into us, identifying our personal connection.


Another young girl sits in a chair near the edge of a pool cloaked in a heavy coat, while her friends strip and jump into the water, splashing one another and encouraging her to come in.  She shakes her head timidly, embarrassed of her overweight body and afraid to show who she is under her clothes.  Returning to a tighter shot of Katy’s face reveals a more encouraging countenance just before she sings, “Do you know that there’s still a chance for you?”  This sends us into the hospital room of a bald young girl with leukemia who looks longingly at the beautiful hair of the dancing woman on her television screen.  On her wall is the massive image of a butterfly, which itself represents the hope of transition, from the sheltered confines of a cocoon to a limitless world where it can fly as the wind blows.


As she sings, “There’s a spark in you.  You just gotta ignite the light and let it shine,” Katy leans her head back and closes her eyes as if she’s giving in and allowing herself to let go – a visual articulation of the release of her inner power.  Firework sparks begin to burst forth from her chest as she stretches out her arms, illuminating her once blue-washed face in a beautiful prism of colors.  In the first, most directly referential moment of  American ideology, she sings,  “Just own the night like the 4th of July.”  Here, Katy is mobilizing the image of the American firework that is, literally, bursting forth from her heart to demonstrate her own empowerment.  By associating the lyric with the image of her firework in the video, she is ascribing all the visceral and metaphorical connotations of the American firework to its visual representation.  In American culture, fireworks explode over cities across the country to celebrate its independence day and are often colloquially associated with the American Revolution and the national anthem as iconic5 representations of the “rockets red glare” and “bombs bursting in air.”  For Katy and the teens, the firework becomes the necessary symbol of their imagined unity – that is, it becomes demonstrative of their search to, as Jochen and Linda Schulte-Sasse would say, “overcome [their] separation and [extreme] differentiation [from] modern societies.”6






The firework is colorful, unique, and can light up the darkened sky devoid of color.  Encouraging the teens, and by extension the audience, to “own the night” suggests that, no matter how much it is surrounded, the bursting firework will defeat the darkness of the night, illuminating the sky as it explodes with brilliant, individual colors – our true colors, which represent characteristics that are unique to each of us.  But more than just the image of the explosion of light itself, the firework is powerful, unapologetic, and dangerous to anything in its path.  It is loud and proud and representative of strength.  We are thus encouraged to free ourselves, to celebrate ourselves, and to demonstrate to the world our pride as we show them who we are and what we are capable of doing in the darkened slate of the night sky.


As the shots cut further away from Katy so that ultimately only the imagery of her fireworks can be seen by the patient from the inside the hospital, we encounter the only moment in the video in which Katy assumes a homodiegetic role – a character in the story.  But even while the sparks from Katy’s chest are visible from the patient’s hospital window, Katy’s body is not.  So while she does assume an influential role inside the realm of the narrative, particularly for the patient addressing her, she is still able to maintain her own personal separation from the story – her sovereignty survives in tact.


Shortly after Katy’s firework erupts, the boy, looking over his shoulder once again, takes on a new kind of motivation, as his firework itself begins to spark empowering him with the strength to protect his sister.  He rushes over to his parents and pushes them apart, as the chorus continues, “Baby you’re a firework.  Come on let your colors bust.  Make ‘em go, ‘Oh! Oh! Oh!’”  In a darkened dance club, bathed in red light, a wallflower sits alone watching sadly as the people around him dance and celebrate.  While Katy’s fireworks shoot across the night sky, the girl at the pool, still with a nervous, uncomfortable look in her eyes, stands and begins to remove her jacket.


Suddenly dressed in a more casual outfit sans fireworks, Katy exits the palace onto the thriving street, walking through the crowds of people, but going unaddressed by any of them, still devoted to the camera as she sings.  The lighting on her face, though no longer tinted blue, continues to be different from the other groups of people on the street.  In the club, the wallflower turns to look at a straight couple sitting next to him, kissing and comfortable with the public display of their sexuality.  He looks forward, stands up and starts walking toward the bar.  The girl at the pool now removes her pants and shirt so that she stands dressed only in her bra and underwear, for the first time displaying her overweight body.  Another teen walking down an alleyway is thrown against a brick wall while a group of “thugs” attempt to mug him.  When one of them reaches into his pocket, he starts pulling out mutli-colored handkerchiefs tied unendingly together, and when another opens his coat, two white doves fly out, startling them and revealing him as a street magician.  Though it feels out of place, this particular story taps most tangibly into the American valuing of individual endurance and the overcoming of obstacles through entrepreneurial spirit and talent – by literally winning over those who would bring us down and turning misfortune into opportunity.


The cancer patient walks through the corridors of the hospital, looking into a room where a woman is giving birth, screaming as her chest shimmers with the vigor of her firework.  The camera cuts to a shot of the patient through the colorful sparks, showing the change on her face as she realizes the beauty and power of what happens before her.  Just then, the wallflower reaches the bar where another boy turns to look at him.  The two gaze into each other’s eyes and, after a moment of brief intensity, lean into to kiss while a dance of colorful embers explode around them.


The patient steps outside the doors of the hospital still dressed in her hospital gown and looks up into the night sky.  The teen magician continues to impress the “thugs” on the street with tricks as his firework brightens the darkened alley.  Breathing out a sigh, the girl at the pool runs and cannonballs, jumping up from the water and reaching toward the sky as her firework ignites.  And finally, with her eyes closed, and a smile on her face, the cancer patient throws back her bald head and shoots her fireworks high into the evening sky as the wind whips her hospital gown and Katy sings, “You’re gonna leave ‘em all in awe awe awe.”


As the song continues, “Boom boom boom, even brighter than the moon moon moon,” hundreds of teens in a color array of outfits run excitedly through the city of Budapest toward Buda Castle, where huge bursts of fireworks flare above the castle’s dome.  Katy walks alongside them, still brightly lit as she sings, “It’s always been inside of you-ou-ou, and now it’s time to let it through-ough-ough.”  As the teens skip into the courtyard of the castle, Katy has already arrived in the center of the square, again a nod toward her displacement from the confines of the real-world diegesis of the story.  The youth circle around her and an aerial shot shows them appearing to burst outward like a firework in coordinated movement.   As the teens jump and dance around Katy, their fireworks begin to blaze, now more powerful than sparks, shooting up into the sky and exploding above the castle.  Aerial shots continue to alternate with close-ups of Katy and the kids – the strength of their unity now represented as they are all together and protected by the strong stone walls of the castle.  




A shot from below a well-lit Katy, with fireworks exploding all around her, again portrays her as a model of heroic American imagery as the teens celebrate what she has, ostensibly, given them.  This angle, sometimes referred to industrially as the “hero-angle”, gives the subject a sense of importance, because, when shot from below, the person is literally being looked up to – almost statuesque and immortal.  The next shot, from overhead, reverses this by showing Katy amongst the still dancing and celebrating youth suggesting that while she may be physically, or ideologically, distanced from the teens as a heterodiegetic figure, she is still intrinsically connected to them.  The video ends with a display of dozens of simultaneous firework explosions, each unique and beautiful of its own accord, but through their collective illuminations, shining even brighter and more beautifully than the moon.


Ultimately, it is important to acknowledge that, while “Firework” does indeed mobilize many American ideologies as strategies for self-empowerment (while not necessarily delimited to empowering just Americans), it also uses particular American ideologies to talk back to what it sees as regressive discourses of Americanism, such as the valuing of America as a “melting pot”7 – that is, the notion of American culture as a motley amalgam of other value systems – as opposed to celebrating its many colorful branches of individualism.  So, while “Firework” can be read as encouraging a particular breed of American cultural imperialism – other, just as appropriate readings, might find it in opposition, for even while the video ends with the fireworks bursting in sync, the brilliance of their colors is never diluted – it only gets better.









Notes & References:


1 -  Zumwalt, Scott. "Katy Perry Dedicates New Video 'Firework' to It Gets Better Project." It Gets Better Project. N.p., 28 Oct. 2010. Web. 6 Mar. 2011. [ Link to article ]


2 - Though the acronym is by no account concrete, many scholars and queer theorists place the L in the initial position as if to counteract the invisibility of lesbians.  My decision to re-reverse the letters is to demonstrate that the word gay, unlike the word lesbian, is not necessarily a gender-essentializing sexual identity, especially since new incorporations of queerness and post-modern feminism argue that the male/female dichotomy is not one to which the community should be subscribing.


3 - Savage, Dan. "Give 'Em Hope." Savage Love. The Stranger, 23 Sept. 2010. Web. 6
     Mar. 2011. [ Link to article ]


4 Kozloff, Sarah. "Narrative Theory and Television." Channels of Discourse,
     Reassembled: Television and Contemporary Criticism. Ed. Robert C. Allen.
     2nd ed. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1992. 67-100.
     Print.


5 Seiter, Ellen. "Semiotics, Structuralism, and Television." Channels of
     Discourse, Reassembled: Television and Contemporary Criticism. Ed. Robert
     C. Allen. 2nd ed. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press,
     1992. 31-66. Print.


6 Jeffords, Susan. "Hard Bodies: The Reagan Heroes." Hard Bodies: Hollywood
     Masculinity in the Reagan Era. N.p.: Rutgers University, 1994. 24-63.
     Print.


7 Jensen, Klaus Bruhn. "The Humanities in Media and Communication Research."
     Handbook of Media and Communication Research : Qualitative and
     Quantitative Methodologies. London: Routledge, 2002. 15-39. Print.

[ Read More ]

Read Full Post