Post your questions for the Doty *or* the Gauntlett readings here. Or, if you like, post a question that responds to or integrates the two readings. But remember that you only need to write one question this week. Please do read both readings though, as we’ll be drawing on both in class and for your prompts.
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« For me, any text is already potentially queer ». What do we read as queerness? Is queerness always defined as alternative or sub straight? Isn’t Alexander Doty showing the contrary though? Finally, do the ”categories” of queerness and straightness imply that there is a distinct gay gaze, bisexual gaze and straight gaze that constrain the spectator to engage and identify with characters only according to their own sexual orientation?
Doty:
“While thinking about, taking pleasures in, and writing about certain texts, I am in a queer zone – no longer “being or positioning myself as gay or feminine, and also not “being” or positioning myself fully within the other remaining gender and sexuality labels, including “straight”.”
Is Doty contradicting previous readings by suggesting that while viewing a film the audience takes on a non-gendered role? Is it possible to abandon one’s gender role without adopting the alternative position?
Take a quick look at the original definition of queer: strange or odd from a conventional viewpoint; unusually different.
Will the term queer be changed or modified as queer subjects become more prevalent in popular media?
“Do we, in our roles as queer producers, audiences or cultural critics, always have to play to, or consider, the segments of the population that prefer “hit them over the head messages”… I think Doty draws on an interesting point here, do we need to be so explicitly told when someone is gay/straight/bisexual? Or can it be inferred? Is it so important, if it’s not part of the storyline?
“If its as queer as it is straight” and films are not the exclusive property of straight culture, what does this mean? Is society still repressing queerness in favour of a safe model of homosexuality that is usually expressed very distinctly in film? How would “queer as it is straight” be seen to be playing out in children’s film, I’m not exactly sure how Disney would respond to the claim that characters whose gender is shrouded in mystery are denoting homosexuality. For example what would be Doty’s take be on Captain Jack Sparrow?
In summarizing Butler, Gauntlett says, “by creating a binary ’women versus men’ opposition, feminists were conforming the notion of women as a unique species.” This reminded me of what Gauntlett paraphrased of Foucault, “The exercise of power on the one hand actually produced the resistance.” Once you act upon something you stand for or against, does it strengthen, and in some cases create, the unwanted opposition?
Doty describes how “queer” understandings of classic texts are ways in which those who do not identify as heterosexual can resist heteronormativity when it comes to understandings of movies and other texts that involve, for example, opposite-sex relationships or characters that do not identify as gay, bisexual, etc. If this is a site of resistance for “queer” identities, then what about the heterosexual individual who might interpret the text in the same manner? Is that a form of resistance or is it negotiation? Is it possible for a heterosexual to resist “mainstream” texts and read the text as a lesbian, gay, or bisexual person might, or is resistance only possible for those who are subjugated?
On Gauntlett:
Gauntlett expresses that “by giving a different form to our daily performances of identity, we might work to change gender norms and the binary understandings of masculinity and femeninity”(153). However we also learn from Butler that gender is a performance and that we are constantly perfoming. If we are contantly performing, we are not always performing our gender conciously. Can we change gender norms if our daily performances are unconcious? Or do we have to acknowledge the gender norms and conciously act/perform against them in order to contribute to social change?
Gauntlett calls the “queering” of texts exemplified by Doty in the introduction to Flaming Classics “a bit of a waste of time,” instead choosing to focus on “queer theory as a tool for thinking about identity that is relevant to everybody.” Why? Are the two approaches to queer theory incompatible?
Also, can you make gender trouble through film? How does this compare to real life gender trouble?
Alexander Doty states:
It makes sense that a queer man provides the bridge in this film between art and politics, love/sex, and career, and, more generally, those aspects of the traditionally feminine world and traditionally masculine world.
Doty is specifically referring to the character Leeland from Citizen Kane but this can also apply to Monty in It. In class, we have argued about the woman being the object and the man being the subject and vice versa. How is the queer man’s role different than the male spectacle in musicals discussed by Steven Cohen? How is he different than the female spectacle? How is he more limited than the female spectacle?
Gauntlett cites Madonna as one (of his only) example(s) of a celebrity who engaged (s?) with queer theory, saying that “Butler’s proposed gender challenges would gain much strength if a lead was taken by popular media figures.” Can we think of any more *current* celebs who take after her/ take on queer theory in a new way?
P.S. Here’s a link to her stills from her “Sex” book which is also mentioned in the chapter. It looks zine-like to me. What do we think?
http://www.madonna-online.ch/m-online/galleries/1992/92-10-21_sex/92-10-21_sex.htm
P.P.S. Warning: the link above contains explicit material. Just FYI. =)
On Doty:
How do a media representations of “queerness” deviate from what is “real life?” if the producer or writer of such texts identified themselves as queer would the representations in the text be more accurately portrayed and decoded?
“It makes sense that a queer man provides the bridge in this film between art and politics, love/sex and career, and, more generally, those aspects of the traditionally feminine world and those of the traditionally masculine world.” Isn’t a statement such as this just the opposite of the queer theory advocated by Judith Butler? Does Doty’s representation of a queer look into media only help to further the dilemma of stereotypically constructed genders/sexualities that Judith Butler talks of?
On Doty:
To use the example of Leland in “Citizen Kane,” is the text necessarily queer because it portrays intense homosocial friendships? Why is a media text that has this kind of relationship “queer”? Isn’t it the opposite, heteronormative, because it delegates women to the status of sex object, while it is men who have the meaningful friendship?