Turn and Face the Strange: Academia’s Failure to Account For Changes in Current LGBT+ Culture
By Matt Pifko
In the world of academic writing, there is no dearth of queer writing. Whether coming from authors belonging to the LGBT community or focusing on the community itself (such pieces often inhabit both spaces), this sort of academic discourse is prevalent. Countless journals are entirely dedicated to sexuality, queer communities, queer texts, and the general study of queer culture. Despite all of this writing, I see a gap in the academic sphere. I see a blank space, a disparity between the world I see every day and the world represented in these journals. There are essential modern queer texts almost entirely absent from the conversation, iconic figures that have yet to be mentioned by slothlike academia, and important features of the community mentioned only by non-scholarly pop culture magazines and niche community websites. In other words, these academic journals that proclaim to deep dive into queer communities with authority and accuracy appear to fail to illuminate and investigate the vibrant, ever-evolving community.
To explain the gap I perceive, I must first explain the other half of the equation. In other words, I must explain the life experiences I have had over the course of the past year. After graduating from my small, homogenized, exceedingly white and conservative high school, I was thrust into that age-old, all too familiar cliche - a wacky arts school in a major city. Emerson College, despite its notorious lack of racial diversity, was a culture shock to me, mostly due to its famous inclusive and vibrant queer community. Here, I was introduced to people of all kinds of sexualities, genders, philosophies, and nationalities. It was here that I was educated in a new language - that of queer culture.
I had been familiar with the LGBT community’s most beloved celebrities and most popular terminology, thanks to the internet and the widespread appropriation of this terminology (which is an entirely different and important discussion best saved for another occasion), but Emerson gave me a whole new vantage point. Here, I could watch other queer people discuss celebrities, films, TV shows, literature, and all varieties of pop culture that they valued. Thus, when I entered the academic sphere, which seemingly includes so many queer voices, I was perplexed to find very few voices discussing the same “icons” I had heard about in person at Emerson.
To understand this relationship between the current LGBT culture I perceive and the culture discussed in academic journals, we must first establish the context in which this relationship exists. The context, in this case, would be LGBT culture of the past, and the general concept of this culture. This culture is both incredibly storied and often hidden/undocumented, a result of the stigma around homosexuality and other “deviant” sexualities in almost every historical society. Given that LGBT individuals existed throughout history in every time period and every region, there has been a lot of lost culture.
It is most useful to examine LGBT culture in the last few decades, in that it is the most similar to the culture of today’s community, and additionally, most information available pertains to this period. LGBT “culture” is not merely a underground collection of gay-themed media, but rather, more like a vast web of mainstream media that is selectively chosen and incorporated into the community, combined with certain works that directly deal with LGBT
themes. Historically, music has been particularly important to the community. In his extensively researched article about gay and lesbian music tastes in the Belgium queer community, Alexander Dhoest (and his assistant researchers) gives some background, explaining that “music contributed to the evolution of lesbian and gay cultures on several levels... it not only provided means to meet other lesbians and gays, whether belonging to a community and the construction of lesbian and gay identities” (e.g. Chauncey, 1994; Taylor, 2012)” (Dhoest et al., 208).
Furthermore, Dhoest notes that lesbian and gay tastes can vary from one another, but there are certainly overlapping artists and sensibilities. Particularly important to the LGBT community is “camp”, a style connected to gay culture that can be described, in the briefest, simplest terms, as a heightened parody of the feminine and “tasteful” society. Such culture is showcased in drag queens and the worship of pop divas. Dhoest elaborates, claiming “In a musical context, camp can be identified not only at the level of the performer and their stage performance; it is also audible through lyrics and musical execution.” Examples of such campy divas include Judy Garland, Madonna, and Whitney Houston (Dhoest et al., 209). LGBT culture is vast and dense, and campy pop singers constitute a small fraction of the bigger picture. Other genres can fall under the lens of camp, such as punk and disco. Additionally, from observations and life experience, I have noted there is a historical admiration in the community for female performers in all musical genres, such as Bjork, Blondie (Debby Harry), and Fleetwood Mac (Stevie Nicks). Historically, camp has also existed in the world of film, in everything from What Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) to the more overtly queer John Waters “Trash Trilogy” (Pink Flamingoes) (1972), Female Trouble (1974), and Desperate Living (1977) (Snider).
So, where has queer culture gone since the 20th century? In an age where the community has been increasingly more accepted and visible, especially in western culture, what content has emerged? In Lauren McInroy and Shelley Craig’s article “Perspectives of LGBTQ Emerging Adults on the Depiction and Impact of LGBTQ Media Representation,” a valuable cross-section of early 2010s LGBT culture is illuminated. As the title suggests, the researchers interviewed various self-identifying members of the community whose ages ranged from 18 to 22 (all located in a Canadian city where McInroy works as a professor) on the subject of LGBT representation in media, particularly TV and film.
In terms of representative shows, the researchers found the following to be the most commonly mentioned/popular among LGBT interviewees: Queer As Folk, The L Word, Degrassi, and Glee. Movies included Brokeback Mountain (2005), Boys Don’t Cry (1999), A Single Man (2009), and Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001) (mistitled “Hedwig and the Angry Itch” in the article). Already, it is clear that LGBT culture in the 2000s and early 2010s revolved much more around properties with actual LGBT characters in the narratives. Moreover, the musicians the community supported more openly supported the community in return, as is the case with musician Lady Gaga. Gaga was a favorite due to her larger-than-life media persona and biting wit, but she affirmed the community in return, notably premiering the LGBT pride centered track “Born This Way” in 2011. In these interviews, the LGBT emerging adults (who, it
must be said, were overwhelmingly white and LGB) noted the improved media representation but struggled to name a character or show/film they consumed that displayed queer people in a completely accurate light. Many of the emerging adults preferred new media, i.e. blogs and social media, for LGBTQ representation, because on these platforms the community can represent itself authentically and not be forced to appeal to mass audiences (McInroy). Unfortunately, the 2016 article fails to mention specific new media or new media celebrities, leaving the reader to guess at what exactly the subjects consume.
Regardless of in which era LGBT individuals consumed media, what they consumed, or why they consumed it, it is very clear that this media has an enormous impact, especially when it features some kind of direct representation. In a 2011 study at the Austin Pride Festival, an overwhelming amount of GLB individuals identified media figures as instrumental in their coming-out process (Gomillion et al.). In other words, through these storylines and characters, members of the community can see their own stories, which in turn legitimized and clarified their own hidden experiences and emotions. In a community like the LGBT community, where members typically grow up isolated in heteronormative households/communities, media representation is absolutely essential - for many, including myself, it is a bridge to understanding and acceptance.
Thus, the discrepancy I see between the current LGBT youth culture and the academic sphere does not have anything to do with this underlying understanding. Academic writers understand and have proven through empirical research that media is important to the LGBT community - it’s just that they fail to keep up with, or rather, fail to process this constantly evolving culture in meaningful ways. Each of the academic pieces I have cited contain valuable information, and yet, they all have significant shortcomings. Namely, they are out of date. To a degree, this cannot be helped, as the articles were published in 2015, 2016, and 2011, respectively. That said, the articles do not reference any representative films that were released post-2009, and the most recent TV show referenced began in 2010. Furthermore, these articles are some of the only LGBT-centered academic writing I could locate that deals with the actual community. After scouring the internet and using all the means provided to be as a student at a well-funded communications college, I found that almost all the well-researched, quantitative data on LGBT media and its impact on the community dated back to 2016 or earlier.
To a degree, this is not so much an issue specific to queer academic writing as much as it is emblematic of the faults of the academic genre as a whole. The peer-reviewed, extensively examined processing of academic papers serves as quality assurance, but it also ignores factors such as urgency or influence. This is not to say that academic writing is completely ineffectual in its antiquity and specificity - rather, I believe academic writing is incredibly important, and that the haste with which new material and new research is released should reflect that. In the case of research on LGBT narratives and their effects on the community, perhaps these articles need to be released more expeditiously and become more readily available to the LGBT youth who are
concerned with such matters. Articles like “Radical Love in a time of Heteronormativity: Glee, Gaga, and Getting Better” simply lose relevance in only a few years time.
Therefore, when the cultural items that are examined are no longer essential topics of conversation in the LGBT community, much of the research loses its teeth, and conclusions reached about the community itself can seem inaccurate or outdated. This is not to say that the history of the community cannot be documented, nor are older cultural items like “Glee” unimportant to the visibility of the community. Rather, these simply do not reflect the current values and shared culture of the community, especially for LGBT youths who joined the community long after Madonna and Glee had phased out of popularity. Even in the academic world, timing must be considered. Research regarding an evolving world has to evolve with it and remain relevant, or else the authority of academia will wane further.
Moreover, in the world of academic writing, specifically that which was available to me through my liberal arts style institution, I see two misguided avenues which queer academia often heads down. The first is that of the misguided research. If academic research is to illuminate the influences of media on LGBT individuals, it is essential that the researchers actually interact with LGBT individuals. It is not enough for the researchers to be queer themselves (as is the case with many of the aforementioned articles) - the subjects must be as well. In the piece “Sexuality and Teen Television: Emerging Adults Respond to Representations of Queer Identity on Glee” by Michaela D.E. Meyer and Megan M. Wood, an empirical study is conducted by interviewing various students at a college about their experiences with the TV show Glee. In their opening statement, the authors stress that while previous research has established that queer media can have an impact on emerging adults, they wanted to focus on how these adults are impacted, and in what ways their identities can benefit. This is a valuable vein of research that has yet to be touched, and yet, the researchers miss the mark by solely interviewing straight-identifying individuals. In a study about LGBTQ representation in a show famously important to the community, the researchers allowed for their 97 fans of Glee to be unanimously heterosexual. While the data itself is well organized and analyzed, this oversight renders the data useless in terms of LGBT impact. When the world of academic writing is already so exclusive and, for lack of a better term, narrow, a journal like “Sexuality & Culture: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly” in which this study was published should be providing more accurate and insightful data.
On the other hand, academic writing can miss the mark by focusing too much on the thematic analysis of queer media. After finding article after article about the state of the community written in 2015 or earlier, I began to look for specific articles about current LGBT cultural items of which I knew, those that I had heard in conversations with actual LGBT emerging adults. Researching these items, I found some peer-reviewed entries (there were significantly more entries on queer film/TV as opposed to queer music, despite music’s aforementioned important role in the community), and yet, these were almost always a thematic analysis of the text. Specifically, “Beating Hearts: Compassion and Self-Discovery in Call Me By Your Name” by Joanna Di Mattia and “Call Me By Your Name: Not Pedophilia, Still Problematic” by Renee Sorrentino and Jack Turban are examples of such analytical articles about a relevant LGBT cultural item. Call Me By Your Name, a 2017 film based on the book of the same name, has been immensely popular due to its sensitive and visually splendorous take on gay romance, and therefore, would be a fantastic artifact to conduct research on. That said, these authors, despite writing for publications such as “Screen Education” and “Psychiatric Times,” offer up little more than their review of the material through slightly different lenses. The articles vary in their opinion on the quality of the representation, but each neglects to investigate the actual effects of the material on the represented people. “Beating Hearts” almost purely focuses on the technical and narrative elements of CMBYN, while Sorrentino and Turban’s article makes a surface level connection between modern LGBT youths who use hookup apps and the main character of the film’s experiences. Thematic analysis and opinion based evaluation is not without merit, but there are plenty of conversations on film analysis and queer themes already going on outside of the academic sphere. In order for academia to be necessary and essential in today’s world, it must differentiate itself by providing the kind of empirical data and findings that art journalism cannot cover.
If the goal of the academic sphere is to educate other academics, then researchers must make an effort to reach out of the academic world and learn about things outside of their domain. If the goal of the academic sphere is to educate students my age, then research that is genuinely reflective of the world in which we live must be made available to us. Many of these articles are valuable in certain respects, and on the whole, this body of research constitutes a wealth of useful information when cross-referenced with one another to fill in the gaps. Nonetheless, we, as a community and as young people with a thirst for information, deserve better. Ultimately, the most crucial oversight in the queer academic community is simple - there is a lack of new voices with new information. Whether in the form of impactful texts or influential figures within the community, these perspectives must be addressed and must be heard. Meaningful research must be done that intimately involves these voices in the process itself. It is not easy to change gears within the academic community, to ask a sloth to move faster, but valuable change is never easy. Strong academics do not teach and communicate because it is easy, but rather, because they understand that knowledge and perspective is unimpeachably important. Perhaps, academics can understand that communicating with the current culture themselves is the first step towards communicating this knowledge to others.
Works Cited
Bingman, Andrew. Influence of Media on Gay and Bisexual Identity Formation. 2016.
EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsbas&AN=edsbas.D7683790&site= eds-live.
Boyer, Sabrina, and Erin Brownlee Dell. € ̃Pop Culture Is Our Religionâ€TM: Paulo Freire, LGBTQ Rights and Radical Love. 2015. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsbas&AN=edsbas.EED4E14&site=e ds-live.
Dhoest, Alexander, et al. “Into the Groove: Exploring Lesbian and Gay Musical Preferences and ‘LGB Music’ in Flanders.” Observatorio (OBS*), no. 2, 2015, p. 207. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edssci&AN=edssci.S1646.595420150 00200011&site=eds-live.
Di Mattia, Joanna. “BEATING HEARTS: Compassion and Self-Discovery in Call Me by Your Name.” Screen Education, no. 91, 2018, p. 8. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsgao&AN=edsgcl.576220095&sit =eds-live.
Kies, Bridget, and Thomas J. West, III. "Queer nostalgia and queer histories in uncertain times."
Queer Studies in Media & Pop Culture, vol. 2, no. 2, 2017, p. 161+. Contemporary Women's Issues, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A496450962/CWI?u=ecl_main&sid=CWI&xid=b2c 1e0b. Accessed 8 Apr. 2019.
Meyer, Michaela D. E., and Megan M. Wood. “Sexuality and Teen Television: Emerging Adults Respond to Representations of Queer Identity on Glee.” Sexuality & Culture, vol. 17, no. 3, 1 Sept. 2013, pp. 434–448. PsycINFO, Emerson College, doi:10.1007/s12119-013-9185-2.
Mcinroy, Lauren B., and Shelley L. Craig. “Perspectives of LGBTQ Emerging Adults on the Depiction and Impact of LGBTQ Media Representation.”
Journal of Youth Studies, vol. 20, no. 1, 19 May 2016, pp. 32–46. Taylor & Francis Online, Emerson College, doi:10.1080/13676261.2016.1184243.
Snider, Sarah. “The John Waters Trash Trilogy.” Culture Wars, 19 June 2007,
www.culturewars.org.uk/2007-06/trash.htm. Sorrentino, Renee, and Jack