SOC 902 Hollywood, Sexuality and Queer Theory Lecture Notes PDF

SOC 902 Hollywood, Sexuality and Society  Part ONE Situating Sexuality & Queer Theory Socially and Sociologically  Situating Sexuality & Queer Theory Jackson Katz offers a broad and applicable sociological and queer theory based conception of sexuality a...

SOC 902 Hollywood, Sexuality and Society  Part ONE Situating Sexuality & Queer Theory Socially and Sociologically  Situating Sexuality & Queer Theory Jackson Katz offers a broad and applicable sociological and queer theory based conception of sexuality as category and states: (a) “as social categories of engagement heterosexuality & homosexuality are not objective but instead are understood as subjective fields indicating inclusion or exclusion within defined social spaces” (b) as social categories, “sexuality is defined or based on the object of one’s desire, but via classified gender categories within contemporary understanding, knowledge & expectation” (c) heterosexuality is understood then as “the norm, against which homosexuality is defined as deviant”  Situating Sexuality & Queer Theory Where does the term - or name - come from? Teresa de Lauretis introduced the phrase in an article entitled "Queer Theory: Lesbian and Gay Sexualities” (1991) For de Lauretis, “queer theory challenges heterosexist bias and privilege as well as a worldview that labels anyone who is not heterosexual as Other.”  Situating Sexuality & Queer Theory Characteristics and Motives of Queer Theory: (a) explore relationships “between lesbians, gay men and the (dominant) culture” which continues to “exclude rather than include”. (b) shift the focus away from “what it means to be queer” and onto the performances of heterosexuality and the use of homosexuality as a narrative foil. (c) locate queerness in places that had previously been thought of as strictly for the “the straights” such as a suburban domestic space marked by a nuclear family (d) interrogate the very “naturalness” of gender and the narratives supporting “compulsory heterosexuality” (Adrianne Rich)  Situating Sexuality & Queer Theory Cultural Studies is derived from the social theories of Antonio Gramsci and Michel Foucault and operates interdisciplinary with both sociology and queer theory Cultural studies: a) The study of culture cannot be divorced from its political and social context - culture is intimately bound up with the role that gender, class, race, sexuality and the state play in everyday life. b) Cultural studies view all media texts as open to multiple readings. Members of divergent genders, classes, ages, races, nations, sexualities, and political ideologies interpret texts differently. c) Cultural studies is a critical approach to studying subjectivity and power and how subjects - persons - are formed and how they experience cultural and social space  Part TWO Hollywood and Sexuality via Representational Hegemony  Hollywood and Sexuality Antonio Gramsci via the Hegemonic Apparatus sees power as: Power: wielded (maintained) in dominant culture industries; for example, Hollywood Culture: in everyday life, culture is where we agree and consent to current social arrangements Consent: consent is bound up in power and structures that enable “people and institutions to possess power and then produce consent in the less powerful”  Hollywood and Sexuality As Judith Halberstam (2005) explains, queer theory challenges hegemony, and in this case, heteronormativity as a hegemonic apparatus For example, queer theory challenges “compulsory heterosexuality” as a socio-political framework while also seeking non-straight spaces of cultural production and reception: how does Hollywood, represent queerness on screen, and from what voices and perspectives do these  Hollywood and Sexuality To offer some context re slide 9: From a Post-Hays Code (1966) Hollywood throughout the 1970s, 80s and even for much of the 90s, when, or ___ queer characters were featured in Hollywood, “they were typically presented as deviant and pathological human types, from murderers and sociopaths, to victims of psychological instability, sexual abuse and/or physical and emotional illness” (Halberstam) More specifically still, the 80s in particular comprised popular cinema constituting queer male bodies as deviant and diseased amidst the rise of the HIV-Aids crisis, and queer female bodies as “queer by way of a negative experience with men.” For example, “queer as choice” not biology and/or angry, self-loathing and violent. How have we seen a return to this rhetoric as a narrative device in 2024?  Hollywood and Sexuality Larry Gross (1995) offers a theoretical perspective to employ in connecting sexuality and Hollywood and introduces > Symbolic Annihilation: “an invisibility of gays and lesbians in Hollywood into the 1980s (outside the deviant archetype of illness and disease) and this invisibility was demonstrated physically (simply not represented) as well as socially (shown, but shown as in crisis and in peril through a health crisis) Beginning in the 1990s however there was a marked increase in representation steering away from crisis but now into tokenism: queer characters as “the best friend” or “the funny queen” or as tokens reduced to their homosexuality and the stereotypes that went with it.  Hollywood and Sexuality Goss continued: The shift taking place in 1990s Hollywood shows a move “from the ‘polluted’ gay to the ‘normal’ gay. The latter is presented as being fully human: as the psychological and moral equal of the heterosexual However, for Goss, the “the normal gay” is expected to be gender conventional, link sex to love and a marriage-like relationship, reflect family values, and personify economic capitalism”  Part THREE Hollywood and Sexuality via Queer Theory  Hollywood and Sexuality Making Things Perfectly Queer: Interpreting Mass Culture (Alexander Doty, 1993) Thesis: a) to uncover queer meanings and queer pleasure within mainstream, heterosexual popular cinema b) how does popular cinema reinforce or disrupt traditional dichotomies and the associations among them - white/black; straight/gay; masculine/feminine; good/evil c) can this particular text be read against the grain to unearth hidden queer meanings and pleasures? d) queer readings aren’t simply “alternative readings, wishful readings or reading too much into things” readings. Instead they are the result from the recognition and articulation of the complex range of queerness that has been in popular culture texts and their audiences all along  Situating Sexuality & Queer Theory Doty and Queer Theory con’t Offers a range of critical practices that study the relations between sex, gender, and sexual desire (Judith Butler; Michel Foucault; Eve Sedgwick) Challenges the notion of fixed identities – for example: one is lesbian, and through this assigned identity there is an innate or “essential lesbian-ness” about that person The above marks one of the primary tenets of queer theory: the interrogation and dismantling of the homo/hetero binary - for example, the “tomboy” archetype addressed via The Kids Are All Right (2010) Queer and queerness then always maintains an active component that is attempting to disturb the norm, is always in process and avoids fixed positions.  Hollywood and Sexuality Doty and Queer Theory on American Beauty (1999) Doty argues (1995) the “safe homosexual body arose in tandem with capitalist consumer culture. For example, the couple in American Beauty have gained access to dominant culture (occupation, economics, neighborhood, mobility) yet remain “alternative or negotiated, but not fully subversive” or included and accepted. The couple have access to the mainstream – and all it entails - without denying or losing their oppositional identities, participate without necessarily assimilating, but continue to find resistance in the process.  Hollywood and Sexuality As we see with American Beauty then, and as Doty argues, “queerness as a mass culture reception practice... is shared by all sorts of people in varying degrees of consistency and intensity” As Doty explains, “queer readings are not confined to gays and lesbians, heterosexual, straight-identifying people can experience queer moments” (for example, in recognizing and legitimizing the couple’s being subjected to an identifying heteronormative gaze, from Col. Fitts.)  Hollywood and Sexuality The term “queer” then is used by Doty “to mark a flexible space for the expression of all aspects of non- straight interpretation, understanding and reception. As such, a “queer space” recognizes the possibility that various and fluctuating queer positions might be occupied whenever anyone produces or responds to culture, for example, the culture shown on a Hollywood screen.  Screenings The Kids Are All Right/ American Beauty