Aurora's Take on Cruising Utopia

Aurora Storey's blog on Cruising Utopia for ETST413 with Maricela DeMirjyn

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Hope in the Face of Heartbreak

It is easy to lose all hope when failure arises. It seems impossible to move past and to continue on the same journey when you’ve just fallen off the track and there seems to be no way to get back up. When searching for utopia, failure cannot stop you from moving forward. You must accept what has become queer (which could be what motivates you to keep moving forward or the thing that caused you to fail) and continue to find new motivation to keep on trudging towards what we all desire in life. Hopelessness and heartbreak, failure and hope. They call come together to form a way of queer. Failing is something outside of the norm, so it automatically becomes something queer. But isn’t queerness supposed to lead us to this utopia of being different? Why is failure something any different from other things that are queer? Are you, yourself, not queer? Would you let yourself stand in the way of achieving the utopia you so desperately long for? Failure is about seeing the mistakes you’ve made in the past and pushing yourself forward in an attempt to salvage the good parts. As we keep pushing for a utopia, we cannot let failure keep holding us back. Failure is queer, utopia is queer, we are queer. When things start to seem hopeless, queer them and keep on track for that utopia.

Picture credit: Pinterest and Favim.com

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Race, Sex, and the Incommensurate: Gary Fisher with Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick

Incommensurate: adj. out of keeping or proportion with

Gary Fisher was another statistic in the HIV/AIDS epidemic. His work was never published during his lifetime, work that touched upon the untouchable. Gay sex while embracing racism and the role he played within the society he was given. To embrace something deemed so taboo was something not many queer writers can attest to. Sedgwick took over the heavy lifting of his work - sorting and editing and compiling. Fisher’s work was something immeasurable. Work that continues to push toward the queerness of sexuality and the sexuality of queerness. The HIV epidemic didn’t scare him away from the fantasies he so craved and so explicitly described in his work. He continued to push the boundaries, not only within his work, but also his life. He embraced his sexuality, he embraced his race, and he embraced how his race played into his sexuality. He continued to push the boundaries of racism and he allowed himself to play the degradation of his race into the sexual fantasies he so loved so fondly. No one will ever know what else he could have written or experienced with how early his life was cut, but his work continues to shine through in queerness. He did not deviate from what his sexuality told him he wanted, but he instead played into the aspects of his sexuality that would be frowned upon (let’s be real, most people of color activists would shudder at the thought and all but force a different fantasy to be brought forth). His sexuality was queer, the way he approached it was queer, and his writing was nothing but queer. Fisher’s work continues to lead us into out queer utopia, sharing journeys from every aspect of queerness.

Picture credit: Queerty and Amherst College

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Chapter 10 - After Jack

Failure is something that usually causes for people to stop, give up, move onto something that they will succeed in. Jack Smith was not one of those people. His failure spurred so many other queer artists to keep going, to push past something that wasn’t what could push them towards that utopia. Yet, utopia is made up of things that have failed. Our society has failed over and over again, but we keep striving for utopia. Failure is queer. It deviates from the norm of success. Failure continues to push us to our queer utopia; it continues to push us towards a future where failure is accepted and welcomed with open arms. Queer artists have been using failure to spur on their pursuits for years. Jack Smith’s failures have pushed musical artists, such as Dynasty Handbag and My Barbarian, to continue making their art, their queer art that makes utopia one step closer. Failure is nothing to be ashamed of or to deterrent. Failure is what our utopia is made of, and we will continue to create our utopia as we fail and keep on trying. We never truly stop pushing ourselves towards our utopia, creating new ways to fail and new ways to express our desire to keep on being queer.

Picture credit: Amazon and Artsy

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Chapter 9 - A Jeté Out the Window

Fred Herko - a queer figure known for his flamboyance. Even more known for his dramatic suicide - performing a dance and leaping out of the window at the finale. His ending was so sudden, something that all of his friends recounted years after his passing, making comments about how they would have reacted had they known he was going to commit suicide (Andy Warhol said he would have asked to film it, but how can we be sure that isn’t his way of trying to cope with the feeling of failure to help his friend?). Herko was too much and not enough at the same time. His dancing was outrageous and sometimes didn’t make much sense, while other times his movements were calculated and minimal. He was a queer icon, almost always being, for lack of a better term, extra. Even his suicide was a performance. But his demise was even something queer of sorts. He battled with addiction, both to drugs and the need to always have the attention of the room he was in (which is obvious considering his dancing and flirting). Suicide is something queer, something that takes away from the notion that we will continue to live, even through our hardest times. Suicide is meditated, carefully calculated - how will it happen, when will it happen, what will I wear as it happens? It’s queered in the way that death is supposed to be finite, yet when you take your own life so suddenly, it leaves behind remnants of a life society tries to decipher. How would Herko have lived his life in a different times, as new inventions came out and new ideas were passed around? Suicide queers its victims; it takes away what could have been and what future utopia could have been created.

Picture credit: Possibilities for a Pleasant Outing and Cruising Utopia

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Chapter 8 - Just Like Heaven

Camouflage. The personalized story begins with camouflage - what it meant for Munoz, what it meant to his father, what Munoz thought of it to mean after reading Hodges. The meanings of camouflage hold more than just splotches of color meant to conceal. The deviation of the military and pain are what make it part of a utopia. To understand that falling away from the status quo means to queer it. Not giving people what they expect, not allowing for the social meaning to dictate what it means to you leads us closer to a queer utopia. Warhol always defies what is deemed as the social norm - his artwork transcends each and every single thing that people expect to be normal artwork. His ability to create such masterpieces in something that is considered nontraditional is something that drives us even closer to a queer utopia. As consumers of media, we want things to mean one thing, to not have multiple meanings. Otherwise, it makes it hard for us to interpret. But the lack of solid definition, a lack of a complete understanding, that is what utopia is comprised of. Utopia isn’t supposed to mean just one thing - it never has. Queer utopia needs to have multiple meanings, to have a way of letting us interpret each thing for our own pleasure and understanding. That means art, literature, life, what a utopia is to you. Camouflage - what does it mean to you?

Picture credit: Public Delivery and artnet

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Chapter 7 - Utopia’s Seating Chart

When something is missing, we often feel incomplete. Where is the rest of the picture or the sentence or the poem? As media consumers, we expect to be able to see the whole picture; we have an incessant need to know everything. But isn’t it more fun when we don’t know everything? Horror movies would be boring if we knew who the killer was the whole time, song would be meaningless if we knew exactly who they were about without any room to interpret. That sense of feeling that something is missing - that is what leads us closer to a utopia. We don’t need to see the whole picture, we don’t need to understand why every single time. Homonormativity is something we see the whole picture of. Do we see the whole picture in queer expressions, relationships, people? AS a human race, we feel that the ability to see every single aspect of every single piece of media gives us the advantage to understand deeply and feel like we’re in the same place as everyone else who views the media. But the distinction between what we see and what we don’t is part of utopia. We shouldn’t see the whole picture - it takes away from interpretation, from personal understanding. So take another look at that picture and fill in the blanks yourself. That will bring you one step closer to finding your queer utopia.

Picture credits: Vanity Fair and Frieze

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Chapter 6 - Stages

The term punk usually brings to mind a very specific image of people - dark clothes, crazy hair, wild actions, loud music. Punk is a way of expression, a way of making yourself feel like you belong with a group of people who are like you and share you interests. Punk is queer. Punk is a stage where everyone is accepted and everyone has a place. Punk doesn’t contain itself to one certain definition or expression; it gives everyone within the opportunity to showcase what punk is to them and whaat it does for them. Punk isn’t seen as a popular culture fixture - it sits in the margins, waiting for those who feel like they don’t belong, for those who need a place to go when everything else seems to push them away. Being queer and being punk are two identities that push you to the outskirts. Being queer is being punk - you deviate away from what the norm is “supposed” to be. You begin to accept yourself and find a community of others who are right there with you, experiencing the alienation and the hate and the how terrifying it’s made out to be whe you aren’t what society views as normal. So play punk music, go to punk shows, identify yourself as a punk - because being punk is being queer. Punk pushes us towards the utopia where being different ant not adhering to mainstream culture is what makes everything beautiful. Punk is utopia and utopia is queer.

Picture credit: ThoughtGallery and BGSQD

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Chapter 5 - Cruising the Toilet

Intersectionality - one of the biggest concepts within human rights activism. Where being black and gay makes it harder for you to achieve the rights you deserve, because you are part of two minorities. The Toilet - a play that exemplifies a time where you could be either black or gay, but you couldn’t be both. Hiding a part of who you were was easier said than done. Obviously you can’t hide the color of your skin, but hiding your sexuality seemed like the best route to take. The 60s were a trying time for so many difference groups. Activism picked up drastically, pushing for equal human rights all around. Women wanted more rights, African Americans wanted more rights, LGBTQ+ wanted more rights - all of which were rightfully longed for and deserved. But where within the Stonewall Riots and pride did having an intersectional identity fit in?Where was is a possibility to fit in with a crowd who didn’t disown you as a part of your other identities? Pride was created for the white person, black activism was created for the straight person. We continue to fight for those with intersectional identities to this day - we push against the blatant racism and homophobia pushed upon the youth of each community as they are killed for their skin color and the person they love. Utopia does not discriminate against your skin color. It does not tell you that you can either be one identity or the other. Utopia is where you can be part of any identity that you please, whether you are a person of color, queer, a woman, or anything that makes you who you are. Utopia is a place where you must accept the differences within each person and not tell them that they can or cannot be a part of who they are. Utopia is something we have not seen, because we keep hurting our brothers and sisters and nonbinary pals by telling them that they can only claim one identity that sets them apart from the others.

Picture credits: Tablet Magazine and GoodReads

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Chapter 4 - Gesture, Ephemera, and Queer Feeling

Kevin Aviance - a huge symbol to the queer community. Musician, performer, queer extraordinaire. His performances had the crowds riled up, feeling every single emotion he was, moving to the beat of a different drum. A single gesture could have the whole audience reeling in their seats. Simple hand motions held more meaning than an entire movie (we’ve all seen those plot-less movies, let’s be honest). Gestures are not rooted in masculine code, but instead transcended everyone into a space where being was just being. It didn’t matter if you were a man, a woman, or someone in between. You are queer in any way possible. Sway your hips, flash your hands, push your movement to the absolute limit. Queering your movement conveys meaning and understanding. Your walk makes you seem feminine, your stature makes you seem masculine, the way you comb through your hair sets you somewhere between the two. Kevin Aviance knew what his motions meant and he knew he was the only person who could truly present them in the way he did. His movements gave the crowd a glimpse inside his mind and within his soul. A queer utopia relies on these gestures. It relies on your expressions and how much you queer yourself in the way you move. Utopia isn’t based simply on how masculine or feminine you are, it’s how you incorporate the two withing the way your body reacts to each shift around you. Your body knows who you are - you just have to start allowing the queerness in your movements to push you closer to that utopia we all so clearly reach for.

Photo credits to: Zimbio and The Standard

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Chapter 3 - The Future Is in the Present

Riots and police brutality and crime. These are all aspects of life that impact the future as it happens in the present. Stonewall was stepping stone in creating something so much bigger in the future. Crime happening in Chicago now impacts the statistics that will push people into or away from the city. In a utopia, we must distinguish the past, present, and future, but also identify how each aspect of time impacts the next. We wish to change our past based on our desire to improve the future, we miss out on the present to focus on the past, we alter our future to live in the present. Within queerness, the present in the pivotal moment for anything and everything. The actions we make and the decisions we create either push us towards a utopia or force us even further away from it. Our utopia is an ideal world we live in, but we can never fully achieve it until we understand the impacts the present has on when we will reach our utopia. The present is always a part of journey to the future we wish to have, and utopia is no different. Creating a present that leads to a strong past that urges us to a better future is the most important step we can take within queerness to ensure that we reach our utopia.

Picture credit: MoMA and Jeremiah's Vanishing New York

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Chapter 2 - Ghosts of Public Sex

HIV is a stigma that haunts the queer community. The epidemic left people confused, scared, and completely abandoned. Public sex, though, that’s where everyone could come together. Queer sex was expressed in a social form, erasing the fear of HIV and the nasty ghost that follows it around. Sweat and passion and togetherness - isn’t that what queerness is all about? Not accepting that relationships must be kept private, kept in a way where you don’t know that the queer people walking down the street were sharing their bodies with each other, fighting against the stigma of gayness leading to an imminent death (media coverage and biases can really push that point across). Gay sex was celebrated and toted around with pride during this time. Public sex pushed people together, giving everyone a piece of what they wanted. But HIV haunted the queer community and the queer community haunted the straights. Establishments got shut down, queer groups were forced back into private sectors to engage in their intimacy, and straights could finally breathe again. But the ghosts that now follow the queer community are that of losing their places to be openly queer with one another in th most physical form. Utopia accepts these ghosts. These ghosts fuel what utopia should look like and what we crave out of it. A craving for a primal desire, which is what queerness is comprised of. Primal desires push our utopia and our utopia pushes for us to embrace our queerness.

Picture credit: Interview Magazine and Tony Just

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Chapter 1 - Queerness as Horizon

To understand where we need to go in order to achieve a utopia in the future, we must look at the past. We must look at the discrimination and pain and hurt that has been caused to every single person who falls outside of what is considered the norm - we must take into account those who fall into the margins. Utopia has to look a t what went wrong in the past to understand the changes that need to be made in order to create a better future. So why is queerness seen as a horizon? Queerness breaks away from “straight time,” something so linear and unchanging - a straight line that doesn’t deviate. Queerness deviates. It isn’t a straight line with no end in sight. There are bumps and hills and mountains and colors that light up the sky. A horizon is beautiful, regardless of if it’s a straight line or if it’s a sunset. We must keep walking towards queerness in order to gain what we so need - a utopia where we fall alway from the norms of life, away from what is considered to be popular in media. Queerness creates the bumps and mountains and colors in the sky, and the horizon is always much more beautiful when it isn’t just a straight line.

Picture credits: Unsplash and Juicy Ecumenism

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Introduction

José Esteban Muñoz’s Cruising Utopia sets the audience up with an idea as to what a queer utopia truly is. “Queerness is a longing that propel us onward, beyond romances of the negative and toiling in the present.” (Munoz 1) Setting up the background research done, Munoz describes the sources he used and the consumption of queer art that furthered his understanding as to what a utopia would look like in queerness. He also further explains his setting, not focusing on the whole world, but rather focusing on those centers of queerness that draw so many people to them. “Most of this book is fixated on a cluster of sites in the New York City of the fifties and sixties that include the New York School of poetry, the Judson Memorial Church’s dance theater, and Andy Warhol’s Factory.” (Munoz 4) There is hope in a queerness. There is hope in queerness of utopia. The utopia that Munoz, and I myself, strives for is one that is queer. Queer is not just an aesthetic for Instagram (which seems to be some peoples’ goals nowadays as a way to seem inclusive), queer is the worldview we should all have and attempt to make our own aesthetic. There is no right or wrong way to be queer, to express queer, to just queer. The utopia we are moving towards is queer, and that’s just the way it should be. Hope continues to fuel the ideas and dreams behind a utopia. We as a society may never achieve it, but maybe some people find it within themselves and their queerness.

Picture credit: The Principle of New Utopia 

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