Inclusive Queerness
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Transcript of Inclusive Queerness
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repression and that is why Alexander Doty refers to Queerness as a flexible space
for expression. The awareness of being Queer provides this flexibility of having
access to mainstream culture without losing the different and therefore
oppositional- identity and participating in it without necessarily being
assimilated.
In the opening scene of The Jeffersons episode that I cited through the first
paragraph, both George and Louise are fully conscious about their social, cultural
and racial status quo and at the same time they are participating in the
mainstream of American-ness. In the opening scene Louise says: I gotta keep
remembering who I am. I dont mind living up to our money the whole week but I
gotta have Sundays off! which suggests that they are totally conscious about
their antithetical approaches toward their social class. They know that having one
meal in the late morning instead of two, could be interpreted as poverty in their
previous class level but now by calling it brunch it becomes part of an American
conventional life style that could help them to enjoy their life by spending their
money on consuming luxury goods which in this case would be a piano! They
both know that no one can play piano in their house and also they dont have
enough space for a big piano (as Louise notes many times) but George insists that
a piano would bring real class to this place, as if he is aware of their true social
class and its differences from real or conventionally accepted class. This
awareness raises queerness which usually shows itself along with an ambivalent
attitude. One good example is the difference between Jefferson family and the
Banks, another African-American family in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. The
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Banks family is not queer. They are totally assimilated in the homogenized
American-ness. It seems that they are not aware of their cultural and racial
differences. They dont have African-American accent and slangs, Hillary has silly
problems in referencing her black brothers within her show, Philip becomes
upset and confused when they call him black Hitchcock. These examples
suggests that the Banks family, unlike the Jeffersons, could not be a presentation
of non-straight cultural production and they are actually resisting in front of the
queer identity of Will who has all of those characteristics of being ambivalent and
queer inside their family context.
One of the interesting discussions in Alexander Doty articles is the close
connection between consumer culture and the most visible aspects of queerness
such as the presence of queer characters in the advertisements or in TV shows,
queers fashion, discos and bars for homosexuals and many other aspects of
queerness being used in the culture industry. This approach suggests that there
should be a reasonable reception for advanced capitalism on queer side.
According to Doty there is a particular relationship between queerness and popular
culture which is an alternative reception of the products and messages of popular culture.
All of the non-straight personalities and their weirdness in relation to culture, race or
gender are in accordance with consumerism and pop culture by wondering how they
might have access to mainstream culture without denying or losing their oppositional
identities, how they might participate without necessarily assimilating, how they might
take pleasure in, and make affirmative meanings out of, experiences and artefacts that
they have been told do not offer queer pleasures and meanings. In other words, a central
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issue is how to be out in culture: how to occupy a place in mass culture, yet maintain a
perspective on it that does not accept its homophobic and heterocentrist definitions,
images, and terms of analysis (Alexander Doty, from Out in Culture).
One of the good examples of this relationship between consumption and social
queerness could be referred to a scene in The Jeffersons episode. Through
deliberate mise-en-scene, after they bought the piano, we always see their living
room fully occupied by the presence of this luxury furniture. In almost all of the
living rooms shots, that piano covers the whole scene and part of it is usually
outside if the frame. The presence of the piano in that space is actually a clear
aspect of ambivalence. It brings real class by catching the wealthy neighbors
attention but at the same time it remains an external queer object which
obviously doesnt belong to that space. In this sense, the piano could be an
allegory of Jeffersons queer position among all of those homogenized American families
who are living in that "deluxe residency in the sky". It is also interesting that how
Florence, their sharp-tongued maid, Louise and also George himself are having
issues in moving around because of the presence of the piano as an obstacle
which also becomes a motif through these scenes.
Over the course of reading early TV sitcoms and especially during and after the
project of standardization of American culture, the queerness of consuming
culture stands simultaneously beside the created homogenized and straight
positions of American-ness. However this reading is not confined to sexual and
gendered positions but also stands for anyone who produces or responds to
culture in a non-straight-identifying manner. Whoever stands outside of the
ideological expectations of conformity, whether Lucy in I love Lucy episode by
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violating her role as an obedient housewife, or Ellen in The Ellen show episode by
adopting an ambiguous position regarding to her gender and appearance, or The
Jeffersnos by pursuing a different social class despite of their conventional racial
position, could establish a queer reading; and in all of these examples they approach
toward this queerness by depicting a positive reception of consuming culture. In Out in
Culture Alexander Doty writes: The queer space is best thought of as a contrastraight,
rather than strictly antistraight. Queer positions, queer readings, and queer pleasures are
part of a reception space that stands simultaneously beside and within that created by
heterosexual and straight positions. . . . What queer reception often does, however, is
stand outside the relatively clear-cut and essentializing categories of identity under which
most people function.