Seeing “Straight” through Queer Eye: Exposing the Strategic Rhetoric of Heteronormativity in a Mediated Ritual of Gay Rebellion

Bravo's hit series Queer Eye for the Straight Guy has garnered much popular and critical acclaim. While from a Queer theory perspective, Queer Eye's openly gay stars and their easy fraternization with straight men can be celebrated, there are reasons for critical concern. In interrogating the series as an expression of the strategic rhetoric of heteronormativity, we examine how Queer Eye functions as a mediated ritual of rebellion that domesticates Queers, contains Queer sexuality, and places straight men at the sociosexual center. The series thus supports the very heteronormative order it seems to challenge.     

Boys Don't Cry and female masculinity: reclaiming a life & dismantling the politics of normative heterosexuality

–This analysis argues that Kimberly Peirce's film Boys Don't Cry can be read as a liberatory narrative that queers the centers of heteronormativity and hegemonic masculinity by privileging female masculinity and celebrating its differences from heterosexual norms. My critique emphasizes how the narrative strategically challenges heteronormativity and, in turn, “narrative's heteroideology” (Roof, 1996), in four ways: 1) by dismantling the myth of “America's heartland”; 2) by problematizing heteromasculinity; 3) by centering female masculinity; and 4) by blurring the boundaries of female masculinity. I argue that the articulation of each subversive strategy within the narratives of Boys Don't Cry can serve a liberatory function, whereby the privileged subjectivities of heterosexuality and hegemonic masculinity are dismantled and, simultaneously, female masculinity and gender fluidity are privileged and normalized. I conclude that the narrative structure of Boys Don't Cry not only privileges gender diversity, but also exposes the inherent sexual bigotry of heteroideology and the brutal and deadly consequences of society's failure to eradicate such prejudice. I just keep on laughing Hiding the tears in my eyes Because boys don't cry. Boys don't cry. (Smith, Tolhurst, & Dempsey, 1988)     

From the Closet to the Loft: Liminal License and Socio-Sexual Separation in Queer Eye for the Straight Guy

Bravo's surprise hit series, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, has attracted a large and loyal viewing audience and garnered a great deal of critical acclaim. Though there is much to celebrate about the show, the authors of this study point out that Queer Eye also represents a new way of containing queers and queer sexuality. This essay argues that this containment is accomplished through a mediated ritual formula that inverts the traditional sequence characteristic of rites of passage and allows queers only temporary and controlled access to the cultural mainstream while ensuring that, in the end, they do not pose any serious threat of socio-sexual contamination by their continued presence there. Further, the authors argue that Queer Eye’s ritual formula illustrates the construction by mainstream media of a new kind of Closet, which they call “the Loft” because of the term's connection to one of the series’ conventions and because this new Closet simultaneously serves to elevate and contain queers and queer sexuality.     

Gay characters in conventional spaces: Will and Grace and the situation comedy genre

This paper explores how Will & Grace, which has been heralded in the popular press for its positive representations of gay men, situates the potentially controversial issue of homosexuality within safe and familiar popular culture conventions, particularly those of the situation comedy genre. This paper draws on feminist and queer theory to examine the liabilities of relying on these familiar situation comedy conventions, demonstrating how the program equates gayness with a lack of masculinity, relies on sexual tension and delayed consummation, infantilizes the program's most potentially subversive characters, and emphasisizes characters' interpersonal relationships rather than the characters' connection to the larger social world. Additionally it argues that by inviting mainstream audiences to read the program within familiar televisual frames, Will & Grace can be read as reinforcing heterosexism and, thus, can be seen as heteronormative.     

On Communicating Pride,Crying in Movies,and Recruiting Innocent Bystanders: The Effect of Sex on Communication Schemas Activated with Gay and Heterosexual Targets

Invoking social identity theory as an interpretive frame, a previous content analysis of heterosexuals' representations of imagined conversations with gay men revealed a number of communication schemas for talk with the latter (e.g., homonegativity and offense avoidance). This study explores the role of participant sex in determining the prevalence of such schemas, comparatively incorporating representations of conversations with a heterosexual target. Two hundred American undergraduates imagined a conversation with a gay or heterosexual male target. Male participants' imagined conversations with a gay target were rated more negative, indicated less evidence of relational development, and included more gay stereotyping than did females' imagined dialogues.     

The experience and expression of romantic jealousy in same‐sex and opposite‐sex romantic relationships

This study examines and compares how males and females in same‐sex and opposite‐sex romantic relationships experience and express romantic jealousy. Undergraduates at a large, southern university and visitors at a metropolitan Pride Celebration (N = 149) completed measures assessing cognitive and emotional jealousy experience, jealousy expression, and demographic information. The reported usage of two of Guerrero, Andersen, Jorgensen, Spitzberg, and Eloy's (1995) communicative responses to jealousy typology significantly varied by sexual orientation and sex. Specifically, gay males were significantly more likely to use violent communication/ threats than were heterosexual males. Further, lesbians reported using manipulation attempts to a significantly lesser degree than did heterosexual participants and gay males. In contrast, levels of cognitive and emotional jealousy experience did not significantly differ by sexual orientation or sex. Implications for these findings are presented in light of the broader study of close opposite‐sex and same‐sex romantic relationships.     

Deciphering Kokopelli: Masculinity in Commodified Appropriations of Native American Imagery

Kokopelli “the hump-backed fluteplayer” has become an icon of the Southwest as well as a metonym for the region's Native American cultures. Guided by the trope of the primitive, this essay analyzes contemporary Kokopelli imagery as a projection of Euro-American masculinist fantasies and as a contemporary commodity form, the cipher. Kokopelli imagery models a virile and promiscuous heterosexual masculinity while erasing its anatomical signs. It articulates intersections of gender, race, and culture that simultaneously highlight and obscure primitive masculinity and racial difference, enabling the use of Native American culture and spirituality to (re)vitalize Euro-American masculinity and promote (neo)colonial appropriations.     

Reinventing Privilege: The New (Gay) Man in Contemporary Popular Media

In recent years, the gay man/heterosexual woman couple configuration has become a genre unto itself in mediated popular culture, resulting in unprecedented mainstream visibility for gay men. Major mainstream films, such as My Best Friend's Wedding, Object of My Affection, and The Next Best Thing, showcase this combination as their centerpiece, as does the highly rated prime-time network situation comedy, Will & Grace. In this essay, I assess this particular performance of gay identity in order to discern what qualities render it – as presented in this configuration – not only acceptable but popular, given the heteronormative sensibilities that characterize the mainstream audience to which it is directed. I argue that, in these texts, homosexuality is not only recoded and normalized in these representations as consistent with privileged male heterosexuality but is articulated as extending heterosexual male privilege. In so doing, blatant sexism is reinvented and legitimized, and gay male identity simultaneously is defined by and renormalizes heteronormativity.     

The wounded man: Foxcatcher and the incoherence of white masculine victimhood

American cinema has recently favored representations of white men as victims of socioeconomic and political change. Recent scholarship on white masculinity suggests that representations of male victimhood enable white men to disavow that hegemonic white masculinity still fundamentally structures society. This essay argues that Hollywood’s wounded man similarly provides white masculinity with stable footing. I illustrate how the unintelligibility of screen masculinity evades criticism and, further, how melancholic male dramas nurture a traumatic attachment to victimhood. Examining the film Foxcatcher (2014), I show how unmasked portraits of white male victimhood function as counterparts to the hard-bodied action hero. The filmmaker’s effort to parse the distinction between material and superficial wounds reifies the experience of noble suffering as a superlative expression of aggrieved white manhood. Foxcatcher’s fragmented portrayal of white masculinity illustrates the elasticity of victimhood even where “crisis” suggests that white masculinity is open to revision.     

On Misfits and Margins: Narrative,Resistance, and the Poster Child Politics of Rosie O'Donnell

This essay addresses why Rosie O'Donnell's “coming out” as a lesbian, as a gay parent, and as an advocate for gay adoption generated such little and lukewarm response, arguing that O'Donnell's lesbianism was rationalized in the public discourse by powerful preexisting narratives that constructed her as both maternal and childlike. These narratives converged with the narrative alterity of O'Donnell's homosexuality in such a way as to sharpen and strengthen established heteronormative discursive margins. The O'Donnell case contributes to an understanding of how dominant narratives negotiate competing narratives of resistance and offers an opportunity to examine mediated representations of “coming out.”     

The Parasocial Contact Hypothesis

We propose a communication analogue to Allport's () Contact Hypothesis called the Parasocial Contact Hypothesis (PCH). If people process mass-mediated parasocial interaction in a manner similar to interpersonal interaction, then the socially beneficial functions of intergroup contact may result from parasocial contact. We describe and test the PCH with respect to majority group members' level of prejudice in three studies, two involving parasocial contact with gay men (Six Feet Under and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy) and one involving parasocial contact with comedian and male transvestite Eddie Izzard. In all three studies, parasocial contact was associated with lower levels of prejudice. Moreover, tests of the underlying mechanisms of PCH were generally supported, suggesting that parasocial contact facilitates positive parasocial responses and changes in beliefs about the attributes of minority group categories.     

Ed Bliss-Words for Murrow An Interview

Michael C. Keith's most recent book is Queer Airwaves, coauthored with Phylis Johnson. His forthcoming book, Sounds in the Dark, examines the role of all-night radio in American life. He is this journal's feature editor.     

Edge of seventeen: melodramatic coming‐out in new queer adolescence films

Queer adolescence films in the US and Britain in the 1990s show positive representations of same‐sex attraction, romance, and confrontations with homophobia. Films like Beautiful Thing, Edge of Seventeen, and Get Real are primarily targeted at young gay and lesbian viewers who need supportive and optimistic visualizations of eroticized queer politics, struggle and success, agony and happiness. These films are characterized, however, by complicated representations of the queer body, eroticization of physical inequality in same‐sex relationships, and the melodramatic coming‐out of agonized protagonists, which highly support the notion of a fixed and stable sexual orientation.     

Regenerating Masculinity in the Construction of Hindu Nationalist Identity: A Case Study of Shiv Sena

With the help of a case study of the Hindu nationalist party, Shiv Sena, I show that there is a strong connection between the Hindu nationalist discourse of Shiv Sena and masculinity. I demonstrate that Shiv Sena's Hindu nationalist rhetoric deals with a perceived threat to masculinity. I argue that Shiv Sena's rhetoric seeks to recover manhood by constructing nationalism from a masculine perspective. Although this is a single case study of the Shiv Sena party, the results of this study are consistent with the larger literature on nationalist identity and gender.     

Pistols and petticoats,piety and purity: To Wong Foo,the queering of the American monomyth,and the marginalizing discourse of deification

–Recently, the mainstream media have begun to include positive portrayals of gays and lesbians. This essay suggests that these positive portrayals demand critical scrutiny to determine how they redefine mainstream culture and how they serve to challenge and/or reinforce heterosexual bias. In an analysis of To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar, we examine how a narrative film negotiates the practice of drag and represents gay male “drag queens” through a progressive refiguring of the monomythic themes which inform the popular genre of Western film.     

Negotiating Understanding in “Intercultural Moments” in Immigrant Family Interactions

This article aims to advance an interactionally sensitive, emic view of intercultural communication by exploring the organization of “intercultural moments” in conversation—moments during which cultural and linguistic differences between people become exposed. Field video recordings of ordinary face-to-face interactions in Russian–American immigrant families are analyzed using the methodology of conversation analysis. The article focuses on sequences in which participants deal with actual or anticipated understanding problems and examines how participants' assumptions about their asymmetric cultural and linguistic expertise are revealed in their actions. Some interactional payoffs in adopting the role of a cultural expert vis-à-vis a novice are described to show how an ostensible non-understanding is both a participants' problem to be solved and a resource for social action.     

Radiating Emergency: The Perils and Promise of the Broadcast Signal in the Atomic Age

This essay argues that the development of CONELRAD marked a pivotal—and often overlooked—moment in the history of media and communications in the United States. As the nation's first coast-to-coast emergency broadcast system, CONELRAD established a new paradigm of networked communications for a new world order. Through close critical examination of the institutional events and discursive controversies surrounding CONELRAD's development, I show how those events and controversies were inflected by both contemporaneous atomic anxieties and older hopes and fears associated with over-the-air communications. I also suggest how they articulated, in the domain of electronic mass media, the politico-legal theory and practice of the state of exception.     

A pentadic analysis of ideologies in two gay rights controversies

The application of Kenneth Burke's pentad in rhetorical criticism can reveal ideologies at work in a controversy. This paper is an example of how to use the pentad to understand ideology. Rhetoric in favor of gay rights is informed by an ideology that features agents as primary and acts as derivative. Rhetoric opposed to gay rights features acts as primary and agents as derivative.     

Romancing ‘kung fu master’ – from ‘yellow peril’ to ‘yellow prowess’

Present study critically investigates the cinematic depiction of leading Chinese masculine figures in Hollywood film productions, with a specific focus on how the positioning of white female characters romantically involved with Chinese martial arts fighters serves to construct Chinese masculinity. In noted films such as The Tuxedo (2002), Kiss of the Dragon (2001), and Dragon: Bruce Lee Story (1993), Chinese martial arts fighters not only managed to fight off white antagonists but also succeeded in winning the ‘heart’ of white heroines. Drawing on Gestner's theoretical assertion that white women's falling for a man of color signifies the invasive movement of a new masculine discourse into the space traditionally bounded by the ideal of white masculinity, and grounded on Hall's conception of articulation, my critical examination of these three film texts revealed how the privileged cultural and racial position of whiteness was reformulated and rejustified via the strategic dramatic construction of romantic encounters between Chinese martial artists and their white partners. More importantly, the current study sheds light on an emerging form of cultural politics that transformed conventional mediated construction of interracial romance and yet perpetuated the racial hierarchy sustained through racist assumption and ideology.