The television program Queer Eye for the Straight Guy for example may offer the gay viewer a space within the media realm where they cay identify with the characters. For example, John F posted this remark on a forum entitled Queer Eye for the Straight Guy: “It’s about time they made something for our kind to watch… Finally the sodomy laws are relaxing and we can be more open with our feelings without fear of persecution from heteros” (2003). In this sense, theses ‘queer’ media identities in Queer Eye for the Straight Guy may function in unison with identity politics in that the gay community are enabled to engage and identify with the Fab Five. The Fab Five’s affirmation of their ‘gay identity’ can also function as a form of political empowerment for the ‘queer community’, and may subsequently encourage gay and lesbian identities to express their ‘non-normative’ sexualities.
Larry Gross identifies the difficulty with assuming the meaning that a text will provide because each individual audience member determines the message. While stereotypical representations of gay identities within the media may exclude certain parts of a community, there is the possibility that such a depiction may offer a sense of solidarity and satisfaction to some audience members. Gross writes: “…for many isolated gay people any recognizably gay character may provide some degree of solidarity” (2002, 67). Therefore, the representation of any non-normative sexual identity, whether it be a stereotypical portrayal or not, may potentially offer particular viewers the opportunity to identify with the characters, which can function to improve the gay communities position within the mainstream medium of television.
Identity’s connection with politics becomes visible in that some identities are clearly more advantaged than others are and by affirming an individual’s identity as homosexual restricts the possibility of other ways of being. For example, Offord argues that the logic of identity signals identity as fixed and which “denies or represses difference” (1991, 209). Therefore, identity politics can limit other ways of being for an individual because it ultimately enforces a fixed notion of gender and sexuality. While the program may allow homosexuality to be exposed within the media realm, it is limited by representing a stereotypical account of how homosexuals behave while it may also exclude women, non-white and lower class homosexuals as the Fab Five in Queer Eye for the Straight Guy solely represent homosexuality as male, white and middle-class.
The media’s representation of queer identities may therefore create division within the ‘queer community’ as some individuals may be unable to identify with such a stereotypical representation and whose situation remains unrepresented and invisible within the media realm. Eric Dawson posted the following remark on the Queer Eye for the Straight Guy forum: “Could they seriously be any more stereotypical of the gay community? Not all of us are self-loathing, skinny, “cultured”, silly faggots. I mean, my god, how many negative images can they throw our way and still have us eating out of their hands. This show looks like yet another slap across the face from the “straight community!” (2003). Dawson is evidently arguing for a more accurate and positive portrayal of queer identities within the media. Stearns and Carstarphen follow this idea by calling for a less stereotypical and a more positive depiction of non-normative sexualities in the media, which they believe will offer the queer community political progress and an increasing visibility within the mainstream. Stearns and Carstarphen write:
Not only would lesbians and gays find more positive images to foster their sense of identity as individuals and as a community, but also the mainstream audience could begin to view homosexuality as more mainstream itself, thus erasing boundaries that prevented lesbians and gays from gaining true political and social power. (1999, 190)
Stearns and Carstarphen’s views are generally from an identity politics standpoint, as they believe that more of a positive portrayal of homosexuals will generate political empowerment while offering the community a place where they can identify with characters similar to them.
On the surface, the television program Queer Eye for the Straight Guy may be ultimately summed up by its title in that the show fundamentally reinforces a clear distinction between ‘queer’ and ‘straight’ identities. Throughout the program, the term queer is read to signify a male, white, wealthy and cultured homosexual and operates in contestation with the notion of queer that cultural studies has theorised. Throughout the series, it is evident that the representations of these men do not push the audience from its comfort zone as they seldom talk about their sex lives or visually express their sexual practices to the audience. While the representation of gay men within a mainstream television show does signal empowerment for some members of the audience, the program operates here in contestation with the aims of queer theory, as these identities are not challenging the normative institution of sexuality.
One reading of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy could be that the power of heterosexuality is reinforced throughout the program, as the Fab Five function to alter the heterosexual man in order to nurture the heterosexual bond. This is evidently depicted at the end of each program where the heterosexual couple are even more in love while the Fab Five more or less discuss how they have satisfied and improved the heterosexual relationship. Gross writes that: “The gender system is supported by the mass media treatment of sexual minorities. Mostly, they are ignored, or denied- symbolically annihilated; when they do appear they do so in order to play a supportive role for the natural order and are thus narrowly and negatively stereotyped” (2002, 63). While the Fab Five are portrayed as the stars of the show, they can be read in fact as the supporting characters who function to merely offer their expertise in order to assist the ‘natural order’, which is traditionally heterosexual relations.
The development of queer theory followed the gay assimilationist movements of the 1960’s, which were often seen as enforcing sexual and gender identities as stable, natural and innate. Queer theory aims to oppose the dominant, challenge the norm and endeavours to disrupt the power relations that have formed throughout discourse. Queer theory operates somewhat in contestation with identity politics, as the theory aims not to attain recognition and tolerance for non-heterosexuals, as gay and lesbian groups have done in the past, but to deconstruct and challenge the assumptions that such identities are based upon. Queer theory contests categorical definition, functions to destabilise fixed notions of gender and sexuality by theorising identity as performative, and thus advocates the transgression of such identities.
Drag performances play a fundamental role in re-signifying the notion of normative feminine and masculine identity and consequently destabilises the notion of gendered and sexual identities as essential and innate. This concept relates to the notion of performativity, coined by Judith Butler, who contested the notion that gender is natural. Butler fundamentally argues that individuals are not born with an identity, rather it is constituted and constructed through “the repeated stylisation of the body, a set of repeated acts within a highly rigid regulatory frame that congeal over time to produce the appearance of substance, of a natural sort of being” (1990, 33). Butler argues against the authentic nature of gender identities and she theorizes gender identities as an anti-voluntarist performance that is unconsciously learned. Butler argues that gender is not an expression of a pre-existing gender identity but rather that performativity produces the fiction of an internal and unified identity. In other words, performing creates an illusion of identity; identity does not create the action of performance.
The television program Queer Eye for the Straight Guy may function to some degree to represent the causes of queer theory in a cultural studies sense. The program may be read polysemically by the audience as a way of destabilising the norm, which is one of queer theories premises. Traditionally, homosexual identities have been denied by the elite parts of society the opportunity to exist within popular culture mediums such as television and the existence of such identities have generally been portrayed as the deviant or victimised character and rarely portrayed in a positive light. In Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, however, these ‘queer’ men are empowered throughout the program over the heterosexual male as the Fab Five teach the heterosexual male how to dress, what or how to cook, and where they should shop. This program subsequently has the ability to operate on a polysemic level and subsequently read by the audience as a way of disrupting and reversing the traditional binaries of power and dominance.
Queer Eye for the Straight Guy represents Judith Butler’s notion of performativity, which is a fundamental element within cultural studies theorisation of the term queer. The show has the capability to demonstrate that gender and sexuality are a performance, whether that is through the Fab Five’s excessive portrayal of homosexual stereotypes to the point of parody or through the fact that these heterosexual males can become in a sense gay-like simply by walking a certain way and by wearing the right item of clothing. The program may be read by the viewer as a way in which sexuality and gender is identified as a performance. For example, each program depicts a heterosexual male successfully transformed into a ‘queer guy’ within the course of twenty-four hours. The show has the capability of subsequently demonstrating that gendered and sexual identities are not intrinsic or innate but that they are transgressive. The stereotypical portrayal of the Fab Five may also be read as mocking or parodying the traditional gay male stereotype as feminine. These men may be seen to be playing up the very notion of the feminine homosexual to a point where it is parodying such a stereotype and highlighting the performativity of gender and sexuality.
Madonna’s performances demonstrate that she is a queer media identity from a cultural studies and identity politics view through her portrayal of non-normative gendered and sexual behaviours. The pop star has created excessive controversy through her portrayal of lesbian, sado-masochism and transgendered behaviours, which functions to challenge normative notions of gender and sexuality. Madonna also appears to mock traditional stereotypes of masculinity and femininity by performing each to excess through parody and exaggeration. Douglas Kellner connects Madonna’s performances to Butler’s notion of performativity when he writes:
To deconstruct traditional gender oppositions and relations of power and domination, Madonna uses irony, humor, and parody to push the sensitive buttons of “masculine” and “feminine” and to provoke reaction to the overthrowing of traditional images and stereotypes and their exchange and mixture in the genders of the future. (1995, 282)
In this way, Madonna’s performances can be read by queer theorists as representing what Butler coined as performativity, through her representation of excessive notions of gender to a point where it becomes highlighted as a mere performance.
During Madonna’s performance with Britney Spears at the 2003 MTV Music Awards, Madonna dresses as a male and takes on the role of the groom. While Butler does not solely identify drag with the notion of performativity, it is worthwhile examining how such a performance functions to represent Butler’s theories. During the performance, Madonna is dressed as a man while Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears portray themselves as hyper-feminine, dressed in white lacy lingerie, pearls around their neck, and who represent the figure of the bride. The performance functions to blur the traditional boundaries of how a man and a woman should perform their gender. Madonna, Spears and Aguilera’s performance can be read by the audience as an attempt to mock gendered identity by accenting the fragility of patriarchal and fixed concepts of identity and highlighting them as fluid and unstable. Their performance appears to defy the strict codes and conventions that are enforced through a normative framework by penetrating the mainstream popular culture with a performance of transgressive bodies. Through Madonna’s performance of the traditional notion of masculinity and Spears and Aguilera’s representation of a parodied and exaggerated form of hyper-femininity, their performances transport non-normative gendered bodies to the fore, which may also play a role in improving the visibility of transgendered bodies by improving their acceptance within mainstream society. In this sense, Madonna as a queer media identity may function to represent and highlight identity politics while also working in unison with the concepts deployed by queer theory.
Madonna’s Blonde Ambition tour also represented transgressive bodies through male performers with large breasts and female performers with prosthetic penises which Douglas Kellner suggests ‘subverts previous boundaries between men and women’ (284). The representation of transgressive bodies within the media signals alternative ways of being within society by opening up the idea that gender and sexuality are never fixed or stable and that they can change from one day to the next. Transgression within media identities may operate in contestation with identity politics as it fails to develop a sense of community or a fixed group with similar situations, which may limit the political progress that identity-politics-based groups seek to generate. As a result, the representation of transgendered bodies within the media may be seen to take away the ‘queer communities’ sense of unity. However, from a queer theories standpoint, the performance of transgendered bodies within popular culture may function to be representative of it aims through the portrayal of non-normative bodies.
The criss-crossing of boundaries that transgressive bodies enact can be seen through the work of Della Grace who portrayed how a body can transgress through multiple gender and sexual identities. Grace’s work may function accordingly with Madonna’s performances in that the instability of gender is highlighted, which challenges the traditional patriarchal notion that gender and sexuality are clearly marked and distinct categories. The works of these two artists, may operate, however, to demonstrate that gender and sexuality is in fact a performance thrust upon us by society and which is not so black and white, but in fact has the potential to be fluid, multiple and shifting. Gauntlett writes: “The pop icon Madonna seemed to be the living embodiment of Butler’s manifesto” through the “…blurring and confusion of genders, fluidity and sexuality, transgression of masculine and feminine stereotypes…” (2002, 142). David Gauntlett reads Butler as calling for a proliferation of these non-normative performances such a Madonna’s through the mass media, which would penetrate areas of the globe and subsequently function to disrupt common assumptions of gender and the binaries formed by such distinctions.
Throughout the analysis of these queer media identities, including the characters in the television program Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and the pop icon Madonna, a clear contestation between queer theory and identity politics are illustrated. Such media identities are clearly deemed limited from an identity politics standpoint through the fact that they exclude certain members of the queer community through stereotypical representations. From a queer theory stance, these queer media identities are restricted due to the very same stereotypical representations and the fact that these identities are insufficient in expressing non-normative sexualities, which fails to challenge heteronormativity. However, these queer media identities can operate at a polysemic level, where viewers may form their own interpretations of these texts. In addition, as queer theory’s premise declines to be fixed and exclusive, to theorise that such media representations work in opposition to or in contestation with queer theory would counteract its objectives. The meanings derived from some sectors of the audiences may in fact illustrate that such queer media identities operate in unison with the aims of queer theory by disseminating non-normative sexualities into a frequently heternormative realm, which can then function to disrupt traditional power relations and binaries. Similarly, these queer media identities can operate in accordance with identity politics in that the portrayal of non-normative sexualities within the media realm can open up a space for identification and which may signal the promotion of political empowerment and visibility for a traditionally stigmatised group.
References
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London: Routledge, 1990.
Gauntlett, David. “Queer Theory and Fluid Identities.” Media, Gender and Identity: An Introduction. London: Routledge, 2002. Pp 134-151.
Gross, Larry. “Out of the Mainstream: Sexual Minorities and the Mass Media.” Eds Gail Dines & Jean M. Humez. Gender, Race and Class in Media: a Text-Reader. University of Massachusetts: Sage Publications, 2002. Pp 61-69.
Idato, Michael. “Pride or prejudice?” Sydney Morning Herald. articles/2003/09/28/1064687667152.html.
Jagose, Annamarie. Queer Theory. Melbourne: Victoria Press, 1996.
Kellner, Douglas. “Madonna, Fashion and Image.” Media Culture. London: Biddles Ltd, 1995. Pp 263-296.
Lee, Richard. “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual.” Edifying Spectacle.
Offord, Baden, Cantrell, Leon. “Identity as Freedom or Entrapment.” Multicultural Queer: Australian Narratives. Ed.s Peter Jackson, Gerard Sullivan. New York: Haworth Press, 1991. Pp 209-212.
Stearns, S and Carstarphen, M. “Deconsturcting Ellen: Time, Sitcoms, and the Meaning of Gayness.” Carstarphen, M and Zavoins, S (eds). Sexual Rhetoric: Media Perspectives on Sexuality, Gender, and Identity. Westport: Greenwoood Press, 1999. Pp. 184-197.
.
