Making Things Perfectly Queer: Interpreting Mass Culture
Alexander Doty
Language: English
Pages: 168
ISBN: 0816622450
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
makes Judy's spectacular show- and narrative-stopping, woman-bonding, straight man-bashing speech seem to be Judy's response to the news of Bubbles's marriage W H O S E T E X T IS IT A N Y W A Y ? to Jimmie. Thus positioned, the speech makes one wonder a bit about the possibility of Judy's repressed queerness, especially as she im plicitly defends Bubbles in her indictment of straight male sexuality as the illusory base for patriarchal empowerment: "We'd laugh too," Judy shouts out to the
hidden and projected gay desires. These marks of excess could also be the result of a sissy boy's/feminine gay man's love-hate 1 8 relationship with the gender he recognizes his affinities with even while he feels restricted by conventional straight definitions of that gender. Reubens/Pee-wee is the sissy boy/feminine gay man who both enjoys and resents his connection with women. This position is even more intensely held for having been developed in a period such as the 1950s and the 1960s in
censorship surrounding Robert Mapplethorpe's photographs, the airing of Tongues Untied on P B S , Looking for Langston s production, and various NEA grant decisions; British television's Out on Tuesdays series; John Greyson's camp ac tivist videos; the Video Against AIDS collection; the return of politi cal camp and drag via AIDS and women's health activism; and the reexamination of feminist positions on pornography in the face of gay, lesbian, and bisexual production and criticism. 5 It is my
on a street, and in the stage directions we had written the instructions: 'Mel answers, using the voice of a Colored, Jewish Fag.' Damned if he didn't do it, but it never got on the air" (Benny Show, 103). Benny's name is also invoked in a series of interviews with lesbians about mass culture conducted by Claire (formerly Judy) Whitaker, "Hollywood Transformed: In terviews with Lesbian Viewers," Jump Cut 24—25 (1981): 33—35; rpt. in Jump Cut: Hollywmd, Politics, and Counter-Cinema, ed. Peter
68-69, 71, 73-74 Day, Doris, 13 de Lauretis, Teresa, xiv-xv, 42 del Rio, Dolores, 108nl6 Deming, Robert H., 40 Depp, Johnny, 9 Designing Women, 6, 41-43, 45, 47, 57-61, 102-3, 118n6, 124n33, 125n36, 125n37, 125n39 Dick Van Dyke Show, The, 43 Dietrich, Marlene, 6, 120-21n21 Dillon, Matt, 9 Dinner at Eight, 20 Dirty Dancing, 11 Divine, 132-33n20 Donohoe, Amanda, 103 Dougherty, Cecilia, 12 Dracula, 14 drag. See cross-dressing Dreyer, Carl, 14 Dry Kisses Only, 12, 14, 102, 113n9, 115n26 Duff,