Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Hottentot Minaj






This is a photo of Sara Baartman, also colloquially known as the Hottentot Venus. In 19th Century Europe, she was exhibited as a "freak show" where white Europeans marveled at the (alleged) size and shape of her buttocks. So what does the Hottentot Venus have to do with Nicki Minaj?  The commonality is that Minaj embodied the past stereotype of the Hottenton Venus of the 21st Century on last week's Saturday Night Live.

Monday, January 31, 2011

Men On... 2.0?: Black Gay Men on TV


I read this article on TheRoot by Michael Arceneaux (which is one of my favorite website) and was disturbed.  As many people know, much of my scholarly work centers on the limited representations and constructions of black gay men on television.  But this article bugged me, not because the author is wrong, but because he selectively chose which information to include and which to delete.

His gripe is that there is a revolution happening on television in terms of gay characters appearance and acceptance on TV but that black gay men have not been/are not a part of that revolution. And he rightly points out that these representations are disproportionately white. No arguments so far.  Where he goes off the rails (for me) is in his selection of Antoine Dodson (of "Hide Yo Kids" fame) and Lawrence Washington (from The Real Housewives of Atlanta). While perhaps his selection of these two celetoids (to borrow a phrase from the brilliant Chris Rojek who defines it roughly as a person who acquires short, intense bursts of media attention) speaks to their omnipresence in media he is remiss in recognizing that the Entertainment Weekly article DID mention Calvin from Greek who is an out black gay man, former president of his fraternity, has an interest in sports and has been written such that he has relationships (albeit with white men) that include kissing and sometimes the implication that there was same sex sexual intercourse. 

Also conveniently missing from this analysis is the gang from Noah's Arc.  Are they not gay representations (or at least not the "right" gay representations)?  Are the only "approved" (by whom?) ways that black gay men on television can be represented is as ultra masculine like Keith Charles on Six Feet Under?  What about Carter Heywood from Spin City?  Why is he missing from this analysis?  He is certainly the father of the movement whereby gay black men on TV began subscribing to what Evelyn Higginbotham calls a politics of respectability. 

We have to get beyond this notion of positive and negative when it comes to representations of black gay men in media.  These terms are entirely subjective.  Whose positive? Who's negative?  I often say to a friend of mine that nuance is dead and this article speaks to that notion loud and clear.  If we subscribe to Charles Cooley's notion that TV is a place we turn to in order to see ourselves reflected, then for someone, these representation are grounded in their truth.  Do some of these representations rely on stereotypes?  Of course they do, but stereotypes are grounded in a truth, perhaps not yours or mine, but someone's truth.  It's extraordinarily facile to dismiss black gay characters because they fail to conform to the ways in which we construct what black gayness (or gayness, generally for that matter) is or is not. 

I can't argue that we still need to search for the black gay men on TV, but the notion that all we have to pick from are the caricatures of gayness that harken back to the days of Men On... from In Living Color is a bit disingenuous.  We still have a long way to go, (the same is true for many televisual groups including lesbians, who are as invisible on TV as black gay men), but we have more choices than Arceneaux asserts.

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Glee and Construction of Gay Men

My first piece for PopMatters was published while I was on vacation, so I'm a little remiss in publishing it here.  It takes a look at Kurt Hummel and the construction of gay men on television.  Enjoy!

Friday, July 2, 2010

Hetereonormalizing Gay Relationships

 I have (as is usual) been consuming a lot of media recently.  What is interesting is the amount of that media that works to heteronormalize gay relationships.  I've been catching up on Modern Family (a show I have really grown to enjoy and am teetering on the brink of calling myself a fan) and well, the gay relationship between and Cam and Mitchell is not so modern.  And it has nothing to do with the idea that they have not kissed, although there is a Facebook group of more than 13,000 people who want that to happen.  No, it has more to do with the way in which the producers of Modern Family have constructed this couple along "traditional" tropes of the family.  

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Companies Don't Necesarrily Want GLBT people, Just Their Money

Once again, a company tries to court the gay dollar to help their fledgling business.  To Amtrak, I say, kiss my ass!  Where has Amtrak been on other important issues for GLBT people?  As far as I am concerned, epic fail.  Not to mention that for most gay people, the only way they travel by train is the subway system. 

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

White Washed Broadway

In the interest of full disclosure, I work in marketing and public relations and fully understand niche marketing.  That, however, in no way means that I like the concept or that I think it's valuable from a consumer/user perspective.    

The consumer me sees niche marketing as a ploy by companies to get me to spend my money and most of the time I tend to reject that sort of marketing/outright ploy.  The primary reason I do so, is that it rarely means that the company supports your "community" but rather that there is market research that shows you and your "community" are an "untapped market" or is a growing consumer segment.

What's with all the Lady GOGA?

It's always been my contention that female sexuality is far more fluid that male sexuality.  We've graduated from the days where lesbians were portrayed as psycho killers and have moved on to an era where the idea of lesbianism is primarily presented for the titillation of heterosexual men.  So, is it any wonder that we are bombarded with images of faux lesbianism in media?  From Chaka Khan and Patti LaBelle on the BET Awards to Miley Cyrus, female celebrities seem to be embracing their inner Lady G.O.G.A. (that's "girl on girl action" for the uninitiated.)