13 thoughts on “Reading Question: Kohnen

  1. Eleanor Krause

    When two men show an intimate connection it is immediately read as romantic. Is this because viewers are not accustomed to a sensitive image of men represented on screen? With more feminine males appearing in film will queer interpretations increase or will the image of standard male relationships change?

  2. Luke Martinez

    What attracts a straight audience to a so-called homosexual “fuckfest?” Isn’t being attracted to this homosexual “soft porn” different from finding queer interpretations of a text because the homosexuality os so overwhelmingly explicit?

  3. Amelia Furlong

    Kohnen says that straight audiences can have queer readings of media texts, which I believe, but she never proves this. How do we know that the users of TWOP are not queer themselves, and are therefore not reading queer meanings from it because of their own identity? Doesn’t it invalidate her whole argument that queer meanings are not only read by queer people when she cannot even show that straight people write about the show? But if we accept her argument without proof, where is her explanation as to why it is straight women who mostly write slash fanfiction? Is it just because it sexually arouses them? Or is it a more psychological reaction in which women can identify with the sexual “otherness” or “difference” of gay men?

  4. Rosalind Downer

    These two articles remind me of my previous question which wondered whether homosexuality needs to be explicit. Queer as Folk is unsubtle to say the least, and so the debate exists: on one side of the fence, Tuller points out “Given all the heterosex that’s been flung in our fag faces through the years, we’re about due for equal time in a mainstream, non-porno medium.” However, does it need to be shoved down our throats in such a way? As the Advocate article quotes the show’s producer, “I think a lot of other aspects of the show–the characters, the issues–were overlooked because people were so shocked by the sexuality of the characters.” Therefore does this explicit representation of gay sexuality ruin the overall intentions of the show?

    In Tuller’s Queer as Folk, he comments “I love that straight America is watching it” which I find extremely interesting, as I wonder who these straight people are identifying with on-screen? It also connotes the idea that heterosexual people are comfortable with watching gay soft porn in what Tuller calls a “fuckfest”. What makes the show watchable for straight people? Are we as a society becoming more open with our sexual outlook?

  5. Anna Gallagher

    The article suggests that mostly heterosexual female viewers engage with certain texts and decode/infer predominantly male homosexual meaning from them. Why is this so? Why aren’t heterosexual men (or women, I suppose) decoding lesbian meanings from mainstream texts? Does this have anything to do with the trend we saw regarding the first zines with predominantly female authorship– are women getting more pleasure from negotiating with media online?

  6. Maria Macaya

    We’ve learmed about negotiation between the intention of the text, and the interpretation of the audience. Kohnen goes further and adds the discourse of the fan community and the interface within which this discourse takes place as additional factors that shape the text’s meaning. Kohnen gives the example of the videos that fans make. This videos show how unstable the meaning of the original text is. We can see exactly the same visual material in the movie and in the fan video, but it’s meaning and how we see it is very different in each case. With all these factors that come into play, is there one real meaning to a film? Which one is it? Does it all depend on who sees and how they see it? While for many fans the queer moments in Smallville are evident, the producers have never mentioned anything about them. How do these two views negotiate with each other?

  7. Amethyst Tate

    Prior to reading this article, I had no idea what slash fiction was, nor had I ever heard of it. After reading about slash fiction in relation to “Smallville,” I googled slash fiction and came across various stories that people would invent about same-sex relationships in movies or shows, such as a relationship between Harry Potter and Snape. Kohnen mentions that most of these writers are heterosexual women as opposed to gay men or lesbians, which I found surprising. Therefore, is slash fiction more empowering for straight women, as it enables them to create a story where the male gaze is not directed at the female like in traditional hollywood cinema, or is it more empowering for gays, bisexuals, and lesbians, as it shows that there are various possibilities out there regarding gender identity? What is the significance in slash fiction being created predominantly by straight women?

  8. Oliver Sutro

    Kohnen questions the writers of Smallville in why they didn’t exploit the queer relationship between Clark and Lex in an explicit manner like they did with the heterosexual relationships, but is it not this explicit tension building of queer images what made Smallville so interesting? Did the writers “fail to realize the possibilities?” Or are they intentionally playing a game of hard to get?

  9. Bryanna Kleber

    “Moreover, I do not want to simply argue that straight people can and do see queerly, but rather that, within the context of slash fandom, they understand it as pleasurable, active, and communal way of seeing.” Do spectators consciously view with a queer eye?

  10. Laura Hendricksen

    « The problem is that the sex is the show’s real focus »… David Butler does a great job highlighting the pitfalls of the American version of Queer Folk: it is excessively sexual and full of stereotypes, this gay ”fuck-fest” doesn’t seem to have the success it hoped for among gay audiences. Interestingly, when one would imagine that the sexual explicitness of the series would at least successfully break down « every last taboo » and provide a new representation of homosexuality in mainstream media, this « too much » seems to have undermined the goal of the show. What kind of portrayal of queerness would be more effective in mainstream media? And, isn’t the American version of Queer Folk an illustration of how media reflects society’s taboos with sexual issues?

  11. Rajsavi Anand

    “These [fan]vids also show the instability of meaning in the original text” What does it mean for a text to be unstable in its meaning? Does instability simply mean the ability to view it through a queer lens that challenges the heteronormative viewing of it? Isn’t every media text unstable then?

  12. Alexander Griffiths

    Despite the fact that the creators of the show have chosen to portray some queer qualities within the relationship of Clark and Lex, surely despite the way (most) viewers are able to negotiate this reading as hetero normative ie Clark and Lex as just friends, suggests that although negotiation is possible, the vast majority of viewers are unable to identify with superman as being gay. Surely if the mass demographic were interested in Clark and Lex as a couple, the network would have adhered to this. Does this not suggest that although negotiation can allow Smallville to be read as queer, those that read the medium as queer are in the minority and so Doty’s point that all characters can be read as queer, suggests that only the minority are able to deceive themselves that Clark is inherently gay. Is this not just a fantasy, like any other fantasy in television medium whether gay or straight, have these slight sexual movements been over exaggerated (by audiences) because queerness has much less representation on the screen? Have people just got a little bit over exited? OR Is this undercurrent of queerness a tool to sustain viewer loyalty with sexual innuendo, audience and producer both knowing this will never come to fruition, but the notion that it just might, so enticing the viewer to keep watching and importantly keeping the queer audience on side?

  13. Joyce Ma

    Kohnen defines “seeing queerly” as recognizing romantic relationships between males characters and non-normative heterosexual relationships. These normative heterosexual relationships are defined by culture and society. Can the norm change when society changes? Is it changing right now? Who defines a non-normative heterosexual relationship?

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