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- Volume 1, Issue 3, 2016
Queer Studies in Media & Popular Culture - Volume 1, Issue 3, 2016
Volume 1, Issue 3, 2016
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Lesbians blending with the crowd on prime-time Spanish television
More LessAbstractThis article examines how five series on prime-time Spanish television introduced and experimented with lesbian characters. These efforts reveal the complex workings of stereotypes, as discussed by Richard Dyer, as well as Judith Butler’s performative nature of gender, which has the potential to transgress gender roles but also to perpetuate them. The image of the lesbian on Spanish television underwent various representations, often attempting to portray lesbians blending with the crowd and thereby exposing societal angst about their difference. Following Dyer’s insistence that there is nothing inherently wrong with stereotypes but rather the problem is who controls them, it becomes clear that either political ideology or market ideology plays a decisive role in the construction of cultural representations of lesbians. Although all of these series are lacking a more diverse and realistic representation, overall the cultural changes can be viewed positively, for they brought the lesbian character into mainstream Spanish (popular) culture.
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To boldly go where we should have gone before: Symbolic annihilation and queer interventions in the Star Trek textual universe
By Paul VenzoAbstractDespite queer readings and interpretations by scholars and fans alike, the official Star Trek universe is devoid of any concrete or obvious representation of LGBTIQ identities. While this appears to be a case of symbolic annihilation, two recent episodes of the Internet series Star Trek New Voyages: Phase II (2004–, webseries), titled ‘Blood and Fire: Part One’ and ‘Blood and Fire: Part Two’, finally go where official Star Trek texts could, or would, not. Taking up the dual perspective of both fan and scholar, in this article I argue that these episodes use the conspicuous absence of representations of sexual diversity in the Star Trek franchise proper as the impetus for a creative intervention, one that embodies the capacity of science fiction texts to explore human sexuality beyond the confines of heteronormative identities.
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Androgyny, masculinities and the re-gendered aesthetics of the new wave: Duran Duran and the second British Invasion
More LessAbstractThe early 1980s presented a reaction to the steadfast musical genres of disco and rock, along with responses to the ways that men were represented during the late 1970s and early 1980s. The genre that responded to the images of masculinity of the time was called ‘new wave’ music. This wave often made reference to bands outside the United Kingdom, in what is generally understood to be the second British Invasion. These new images of the masculine allowed young men to challenge gender norms, and the new male of the time became a visible signifier: a vision of maleness into a post-glam-rock pastiche of movement, contradictions and irony. By using the band Duran Duran as its subject of analysis, this article examines the ways by which the masculine re-signified itself, as well as ways that one can read alternative images of maleness away from the confines of a more mainstream heteronormativity. In doing so, it takes a close look at music history, images of masculinity, the new wave movement and Duran Duran, with the aim of articulating how the youth culture of the time and the second British Invasion provided necessary relief from the sometimes confining realities of maleness and masculinity found in more mainstream cultural production of the early 1980s.
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Making sense of a bromance: Talking with straight men about I Love You, Man
Authors: Ron Becker and Judith WeinerAbstractThis article explores the relationship between mediated bromance narratives and shifting constructions of heterosexual masculinity through a qualitative, cultural studies audience analysis of I Love You, Man (Hamburg, 2009). We conducted one-on-one interviews with 38 straight-identified male college students in which respondents were asked to discuss their reactions to the film, their friendships with men (including gay men) and their use of the bromance discourse. The film’s depiction of male bonding and the bromance discourse itself, we argue, spoke most productively to the men seeking to reconcile their investment in traditional norms of manhood with emerging incentives to renounce such norms as regressive.
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The Queer Porn Mafia: Redefining identity, sex and feminism through commodified sexuality
Authors: Crystal A. Jackson and Laurenn MccubbinAbstractThis article explores the queering of identity and industry in relation to the selflabelled Queer Porn Mafia (QPM), a group of US queer and feminist porn producers and performers. Through in-depth interviews with ten key QPM colleagues, it explores the meanings of ‘queer’ and ‘feminism’ for queer adult film performers and producers. It examines ‘queer’ as both an identity and a politics in the business practices of queer porn and in the relationship between queer porn and the mainstream porn industry. It then interrogates the relationship between ‘queer’ and ‘feminism’ for queer porn performers and producers, arguing that the Queer Porn Mafia is evidence that commercial forms of resistance can be effective tools of representation, visibility and community building. The article concludes with a discussion of how the Queer Porn Mafia’s critique of heteronormative gender, sex and desire illuminates the limitations of feminism as identity and practice for those who queer gender, sex and activism. It demonstrates how the politics of queer porn challenge feminist notions of the relationship between sex and the market as well as disconcerting remnants of gender essentialism in feminist thought.
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Book Reviews
Authors: Octavio R. González and Rachel ReinkeAbstractSENSATIONAL FLESH: RACE, POWER, AND MASOCHISM, AMBER JAMILLA MUSSER (2014) New York: New York University Press, 272 pp., ISBN: 9781479891818, h/bk, $79.00, ISBN: 9781479832491, p/bk, $24.00
VIRTUAL INTIMACIES: MEDIA, AFFECT, AND QUEER SOCIALITY, SHAKA MCGLOTTEN (2013) Albany: State University of New York Press, 178 pp., ISBN: 9781438448770, h/bk, $75.00, ISBN: 9781438448787, p/bk, $25.95
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Classic Media Review
More LessAbstractNORMAN...IS THAT YOU?, DIRECTED BY GEORGE SCHLATTER (1976) Culver City, CA: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
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