"Little Freak" Official Video

My colleague and good buddy Elliott Powell sent me the official video for "Little Freak" earlier today.  After watching the video  I think Elliott summed it up perfectly, he said, "what's interesting (or perhaps not) about the video is how absent/forgettable usher is. there are so many shots of women dancing with women (homosocial coreography) and nicki spittin' game, that I actually forgot this was usher's song."

How Do We Make Sense of "Little Freak"?

If you've had your radio tuned to a hip hop station recently I'm sure you've heard Usher's new single "Little Freak" featuring Nicki Minaj.  Minaj, who is openly bisexual, rhymes on the track about "keep[ing] a couple of hos" and seducing a women and bringing her back to  "meet" Usher.

Excuse me lil mama
But you could say I'm on duty
I'm lookin for a cutie
A real big ol' ghetto booty
I really like your kitty cat
and if you let me touch her
I know you're not a bluffer
I'll take you to go see usher
I keep a couple hos
like santa I keep a vixon
Got that dasher, dancer, prancer,
dixon, comet, cupid, donner, blitzen.
I'm hotter than 100 degrees
A lot of bread no sesame seeds
If i'm in yo city
I'm signin them Tig-O-bitties
I'm plotting on how I can take Cassie away from Diddy
The girls want a Minaj yeah they wetter than the rainin
Usher buzz me in
Everybody loves Raymond 

Full disclosure: I really like this song.  Yet, I find myself as a queer women of color and hip hop head trying to make sense of this song and the gender and sexuality performances at play in the song.  

Usher's lyrics tell ladies that if they're "really fucking" with him they better be "little freaks" down to be with other women and have threesomes.  Nothing new there, pretty much par for the course in contemporary hip hop and r&b.  Nicki Minaj's lyrics, however, both play into and complicate the common trope of women engaging in sexual activities with each other for the benefit of a male partner or spectator.  When placed into conversation with Ushers lyrics it would seem like her actions are for his pleasure, but based on Nicki Minaj's lyrics and her rendering of the scenario on its own it's clear that everything she's talking about is for her benefit and enjoyment [and maybe her partner's].  If its more complicated than the easy dismissal of queer female intimacy for male pleasure, the question then becomes, how do we make sense of a female artist enjoying her sexuality and talking about having the "hos" on lock?

Some critics, and feminists cut of a certain cloth, will say that Minaj is trying to gain power and privilege in a male dominated space  (hip hop, and the music industry in general) by acting like a "female chauvinist pig." It's seductive theory, but I've always found that argument to be too facile, slightly racist, and very heterosexist.  That being said, is it useful to think of Minaj as part of a long line of queer women playing with and eroticizing power relations?  I want to say yes but I also want to  acknowledge there there are some problematic things going on as well.   

I'm also interested in how Nicki Minaj's high-femme aesthetics allow her to perform queer female sexuality within hip hop.  While Minaj has definitely provoked a number of homophobic inquiries and comments, for the most part she remains commercially viable and successful.  My hunch is that if Minaj was an AG dyke from the Bronx "Little Freak" might be far more controversial (that is if it even made it to the recording booth in the first place).  How is Minaj putting the prescribed narrow confines of female sexuality within hip hop to work for her?

All that is to say that clearly I have no idea how to make sense of "Little Freak," nor am I sure that we should even be trying to make it "make sense."  But I'd love to know what other folks have to say about the song, Nicki Minaj, and female sexuality and gender performances in hip hop.

Sincerely.the lost bois

Queer Hip-pop tribute to being confident, to being silly, and to crushing hard.

Tortilleras Unidas! The Radical Feminist Queer Sex Positive Potential of Reggaeton

"Dembow dembow sometimes I use a dildo, oh no, oh no, I even got one that glows."

Celiany Rivera Valazquez introduced me to this amazing video by La Perfomera (Awilda Rodriguez). I love this video and it really nails all the radical feminist queer sex positive potential I see in reggaeton music and culture. Because so much of the discourse about reggaeton focuses on how it oppresses women, we often miss how women are engaging with and transforming the genre into a vehicle to address the complexities of sexuality and desire. The emphasis on reggaeton's hetero-masculinity also obscures how reggaeton, perreo, and la pista, provide spaces for homosocial and homoerotic bonding among women (women dancing perreo with other women is a common sight and practice, although it often gets dismissed as for the benefit of males, which is too simplistic an analysis of whats going on). This video gestures towards the pleasures of reggaeton for women and has fun with it.

Anyway, more thoughts to come, but in the meantime enjoy this fantastic video by La Performera.

Hanifah Walidah: "Make a Move"

Check out Hanifah Walidah's new video "Make a Move" featuring an all queer and women cast and crew. Beautiful.

LA Queer Studies Conference 2009: The Queer Vicissitudes of Hip Hop Expressive Culture

Matt Lipps ©

As promised here are the panel and paper abstracts for a panel I'm participating in with Michael Ralph and Laurence Ralph on Queer Hip Hop at the UCLA Queer Studies Conference (October 9-10). If you're in the LA area the conference is free and open to the public and is a great chance to see some rising young queer scholars.

Anyway, without further ado...

The Queer Vicissitudes of Hip Hop Expressive Culture
This panel delves into hip hop lyricism, fashion, and imagery to explore the queer vicissitudes that structure this mode of expressive culture. A vicissitude is a variation, an alternation, a change in fortune, a mutation: a reversal, perhaps. At the very least, it captures the gap between what one is and what one has imagined oneself to be. The aporia signaled here is not the space between the perspectives of two different rappers— i.e. a gay rapper versus a straight one—but the tension between two different views of one’s self. We explore this phenomenon of doubling by discussing the musical and visual production of several hip hop artists that dominate the contemporary landscape, these include: R. Kelly, Kanye West, Lil’ Wayne, T Pain, T.I., Andrew 3000, and Common.


“No Homo": Racialized Sexual Surveillance in Hip Hop
Hip hop culture is increasingly constructed by scholars and detractors alike as a hypermasculine space of unabashed violence, materialism, misogyny, and homophobia. This concern with sexuality and bodily comportment in hip hop performance tends toward a reified a mode of analysis which places too much emphasis on dubious standards for respectable discourse. In this paper I focus on performances of queer masculinity in hip hop as spaces that contradict dominant depictions of hip hop sexuality as increasingly narrow and formulaic. Hip hop masculinity often straddles the contractions of sexuality, desire, and gender performance, revealing the artifice of its constructions. Performances of queer masculinity in hip hop simultaneously disrupt and reify existing structures of oppression in the process of articulating a complex sexual and gendered personhood that is vibrant, diverse, and complex. By charting the ambivalence of the fad phrase, “no homo,” I explore how hip hop artists speak homophobia as a way of enacting nonnormative intimacies that interrupt racial and sexual surveillance. In this paper, I examine two performances of queer masculinity and intimacy: the first is the phallocentrism of Jim Jones’ “Pop Champagne” music video. The second mode of performance surfaces in a series of advertisements that Lil Wayne did for Strapped Condoms. I demonstrate that these queer performances eschew “respectability,” in favor of a masculine persona that embraces conflicting conceptions of intimacy and desire. These performances do not merely expose the fissures of hip hop masculinity, they exploit them, reveling in their pretenses. By grappling with the complexity of these ambivalent performances, I believe we can establish a scholarly discourse on hip-hop sexuality and gender performance that is, if not quite feminist, undoubtedly queer.

Marisol Lebron
Department of Social & Cultural Analysis
New York University


“I’m a Flirt”
In centering their attention on the “down low” phenomenon, analysts of male same sex intimacy feed social paranoias that frame homosexuality as the principal source of death and disease in African American lived spaces. They also tend to conflate homoeroticism with homosexuality in a way that is both crude and imprecise. Given that male rappers are increasingly marketed as sex symbols for both men and women, and since some of the social contexts rappers draw from (like jails and prisons) are widely known as arenas where male same sex intimacy flourishes, there is sufficient evidence to consider how male homoerotics structure interpersonal relationships in music that draws upon prison culture, like hip hop/r & b. In the song, “I’m a Flirt,” for instance, one man’s claim that he is capable of stealing another man’s girlfriend is precisely what generates a male homoerotic episode—a narrative in which those activities that a man finds titillating become central to a dialogue with other men that evinces more intimacy between them
than with any of their purported female objects of desire.

Laurence Ralph
Department of Anthropology
University of Chicago


“Where I come from, gay people were like aliens …”
Photos that flooded the Internet while Kanye West and friends were visiting Paris Fashion Week in February 2009, ignited a firestorm of controversy. The sartorial decisions that had everyone buzzing concerned Mr. West and the motley crue of fashionistas that looked, by all concerned, “gay.” Kanye dismissed the rumors, explaining that “the way a man dresses doesn’t have anything with what he likes to do at night.” Still, he was more empathetic than angry. In fact, Kanye indicated that he considered it his duty to “educate” his brethren and attributed the prevailing homophobia to the hypermasculinist ethos that pervades street cultures like the one in which he was reared, “Where I come from,” he said, invoking his native land, the south side of Chicago, “gay people were like aliens.” It was an apt image, and not simply because Kanye has routinely cast himself as a space explorer. For his 2008, “Glow in the Dark” tour, ‘Ye cast himself as a protagonist who crash landed on an unidentified planet. This, after he had already featured the track “Spaceship” on his debut album The College Dropout. This paper explores how rappers who artists who are frequently branded as queer—Kanye West, Lil Wayne, Common, and André 3000—have cast themselves as aliens to explain the way they fit into the broader cultural phenomenon that we call “hip hop.” André is an ATLien, Lil Wayne is a Martian, and Common has deployed futuristic, space age sounds, and accoutrements to craft his own gender-bending persona. These are but a few of the examples this paper will explore toward a theory of queer vicissitudes in hip hop lyricism and performance.

Michael Ralph
Department of Social & Cultural Analysis
New York University

Great article on No Homo....Pause

I am at this very moment actually working on a conference paper for the LA Queer Studies Conference about the rise of the "no homo" phenomenon and how the phrase actually worked to subvert and parody racialized sexual surveillance during the panic over the "downlow." This recent Slate piece by Jonah Weiner addresses many of the points I will touch on in my conference paper, particularly the way that "no homo" functions as a pun that actually draws attention to possible queer readings and nonnormative male intimacies. I'll post the panel and paper abstracts in a day or two, but in the mean time enjoy the Slate piece.

Does This Purple Mink Make Me Look Gay?

The rise of no homo and the changing face of hip-hop homophobia.

By Jonah Weiner
Posted Thursday, Aug. 6, 2009, at 9:55 AM ET

In August, 2005, three weeks before his nationally televised declaration that "George Bush doesn't care about black people," Kanye West made a statement he'd later describe as braver and more difficult than his attack on the White House. Hip-hop, he told MTV, was supposed to be about "speaking your mind and about breaking down barriers, but everyone in hip-hop discriminates against gay people … I wanna just come on TV and just tell my rappers, tell my friends, 'Yo, stop it.' " Taking on Bush was a perfectly hip-hop move, but taking on homophobia, West feared, could be career suicide. Undeterred, he revisited the subject in a November 2005 interview, discussing his love for his openly gay cousin, not to mention his conflicted but evolving attitude toward his interior decorator. West's call for tolerance remains the highest-profile rebuke of gay-bashing that hip-hop has seen.

But old habits die hard, and last week, West amended his position somewhat on "Run This Town," a new Jay-Z single on which the Chicago rapper is a featured guest. "It's crazy how you can go from being Joe Blow," West begins his rap, "to everybody on your dick—no homo." No homo, to those unfamiliar with the term, is a phrase added to statements in order to rid them of possible homosexual double-entendre. ("You've got beautiful balls," you tell your friend at the bocce game—"no homo.") No homo began life as East Harlem slang in the early '90s, and in the early aughts it entered the hip-hop lexicon via the Harlem rapper Cam'ron and his Diplomats crew. Lil Wayne brought the term into the mainstream, sprinkling "no homo" caveats acrosscameos, mix tapes, and his Tha Carter III LP, which was 2008's best-selling album. (Jay-Z has used the word pause in a similar way.)

The term's appearance in hip-hop coincided with the rise of the so-called "down-low brother," a closeted black figure often demonized as a disease-spreading boogeyman, invisible by definition and thus potentially, frightfully, everywhere. Saying "no homo" might have started as a way for rappers to acknowledge and distance themselves from the down-low phenomenon. As the phrase has spread, many have decried no homo as depressingly retrograde, a pigheaded "That's what she said" for homophobes. But the term functions in a more complicated way than a simple slur. As society becomes increasingly gay-tolerant, hip-hop is reassessing its relationship to homosexuality and, albeit in a hedged and roundabout way, it's possible that no homo is helping to make hip-hop a gayer place.

I once asked Method Man whether he thought we'd ever see an openly gay gangsta rapper. He grew visibly agitated. "You can't be fuckin' people in the ass and say you're gangsta," he responded. As Kanye West has observed, gay and hip-hop have traditionally functioned as mutually exclusive terms, Venn diagrams that don't touch (and get really testy at the suggestion that they might, you know, want to). In 1989, Big Daddy Kane summed up the reigning attitude: "The Big Daddy law is anti-faggot." When DMX insulted rivals 10 years later by rapping, "Y'all niggas remind me of a strip club/ 'Cause every time you come around it's like I just gotta get my dick sucked," hip-hop was still so aggressively understood as hetero-centric that it was inconceivable to DMX that there might be anything the least bit gay about his fantasy of a roomful of men fellating him.

No homo tweaks this dynamic because it allows, implicitly, that rap is a place where gayness can in fact be expressed by the guy on the mic, not just scorned in others. In the very act of trying to "purify" an utterance of any gayness, after all, the no homo tag must contaminate it first—it's both a denial and a flashing neon arrow. This isn't to suggest that saying no homo is a radical act, but there's an appealing sense in which the phrase refuses to function as tidily as some of its boosters might like. This is especially striking in those cases when rappers add no homo to statements of sexual pleasure we'd otherwise have no reason to think of as gay. "No homo, I go hard," Chamillionaire rapped on a recent mix tape, implying that an erection is inherently homosexual. Even more absurdly, when Cam'ron named a song "Silky (No Homo)," it was hard to decide what he was disavowing. The emotions of sadness and longing expressed in the lyrics? Or the tactile sensation of silkiness itself?

Often, no homo appears not just as a disclaimer but as a punch line, a See what I did there? that flaunts one's cleverness. "Just shot a video with R. Kelly, but no homo though," Lil Wayne rapped in 2007. In this line—a sly nod to both a music video co-starring Wayne and Kelly and to the R&B singer's alleged sex tape—no homo isn't an afterthought; it's the keystone that holds the whole joke together. A funny side effect here is that the no homo vogue doubtless encourages rappers not only to scrutinize everything they say for trace gayness, but to actively think up gay double-entendres just so that they can cap them off with no homo kickers.

Beyond this, there's a sense in which no homo, rather than limiting self-expression in hip-hop, actually helps to expand it. We see this play out in the rhymes and personas of the term's most famous practitioners. Cam'ron and the Diplomats are, ironically, among the most homoerotic MCs in rap. They wear pink and purple furs and brag regularly about how good they look. In the video for "Pop Champagne," Jim Jones and Juelz Santana giddily douse each other with frothy white geysers of bubbly. On Cam'ron's "Hey Ma," he describes having sex with a female paramour with seven vague words—"She was up in the Range, man"—but when the girl leaves, he immediately calls Santana to narrate the act in detail and, in a sense, to enjoy and consummate it fully. Similarly, Lil Wayne has been photographed kissing his mentor, the rapper Baby, on the lips and cultivates a shirtless, slithering, rock-star-worthy air of libertine sexuality. Kanye West attends runway shows, keeps an entourage of designer-clad dandies, and blogs regularly about design. When these rappers say "no homo," it can seem a bit like a gentleman's agreement, nodding to the status quo while smuggling in a fuller, less hamstrung notion of masculinity. This is still a concession to homophobia, but one that enables a less rigid definition of the hip-hop self than we've seen before. It's far from a coup, but, in a way, it's progress.

Jonah Weiner is a pop critic for Slate.

Article URL:http://www.slate.com/id/2224348/

Lil Mama Apologizes to Leiomy Maldonado

Lil Mama, a judge on MTV's America's Best Dance Crew ( I still don't understand how she landed that job), has issued an apology for her disgusting comments directed at Leiomy Maldonado, an openly transgender member of the all queer group Vogue Evolution.

A behind the scenes clip that ran before the group's performance showed Leiomy storming off during rehearsal and acting diva-ish as the other member of the group complained about her attitude. Despite an outstanding performance Lil Mama berated Leiomy for her bad attitude. Lil Mama told Leiomy:

“Leiomy, come on. Your behavior… it’s unacceptable,” Lil Mama said after watching their performance. “I just feel that you always have to remember your truth. You were born a man and you are becoming a woman. If you’re going to become a woman, act like a lady. Don’t be a bird, like ‘Oh my god, I’m not doing this!’ You know what I’m saying? It gets too crazy and it gets confusing. You’re doing this for America. Even though you’re the face for transgenders, you’re the face of America right now with this group and it’s not about anybody else. It’s about y’all. You know what I’m saying? So do it for the team. Do it for the team.”

Lil Mama's comments prompted an uproar among ABDC's LGBT audience, some of whom alerted gay watchdog group GLAAD about the comments. In a statement released by GLAAD Lil Mama apologized saying:

"I would like to clarify anything that was misunderstood from Sunday's show. My remarks were never meant to be disrespectful regarding Leiomy's gender nor offensive to the LGBT community, which has been a community that has supported me in all my endeavors. However, in hindsight, I recognize that my words may have come across as hurtful. I spoke with her privately after the taping to express that it was not my intent to offend her or any member of the transgender community and that I still live for Vogue Evolution."

Between Shane Sparks' barely concealed weekly homophobic panics and Lil Mama's ignorance and insensitivity I doubt that much will change with how ABDC deals with the members of Vogue Evolution, especially Leiomy. Right now the show's producers are probably counting on ABDC's presumed teenaged hetero demographic not to keep voting for Vogue Evolution as the show gets closer to the finale. In essence this move would rid the show of the "problem" that queerness "causes" without having to interrogate ABDC's implicit heterosexist and gender normative standards.

In the end I just wished that the judges (and the audience) shut the fuck up and deal with their discomfort and unease because Vogue Evolution are some fierce ass queers of color and they deserve the title.

The Brief and Wonderous Life of No Homo

Dipset's Juelz Santana coined the ubiquitous term "No Homo" in 2003's "Santana's Town" when he proclaimed "no homo but they cocking them/Four-fos and glocks and them." 5 years later and "No Homo" is still going strong and is practically a movement onto itself (especially if you've been around teenage boys at all in the last 5 years). People have been trying to understand the "No Homo" phenomenon and now Hip-Hop blogger Jay Smooth of illdoctine.com is weighing in on the matter. Jay recently released a new clip called "A Beginners Guide to No Homo" where he attempts to breaks down the origin and meaning of the phrase "No Homo," for those who may have been living under a rock. Check out the clip...

As always Jay Smooth is funny as hell and does an excellent job pointing out just how stupid and out of control the "No Homo" phenomenon has gotten in both hip-hop culture.

While I agree with Jay Smooth's points, I definitely think that their is more to the "No Homo" phenomenon than meets the eye. The phrase is often used to demonstrate hip-hop's rampant homophobia, and while I agree that saying "No Homo" every five seconds might qualify as homophobic, I think it is more complex than that and deserves serious scholarly interest and attention. I think it is interesting to consider the time frame when the phrase "No Homo" really gained popularity in hip hop culture. In 2003 and particularly 2004 with the release of J.L. King's On the Down Low, black men and their sexuality became subjects of national inquiry. Perhaps, "No Homo" gained momentum as a form of backlash against this inquiry. That doesn't make "No Homo" any less homophobic, but I think it gives us an appropriate context in which to consider the popularity of the phrase "No Homo" among young Black and Latino men involved in hip hop culture

Oprah and J.L. King basically set up a witch-hunt to smoke out brothers on the DL, offering paranoid girlfriends, wives, and causal observers 10 ways to spot a man on the DL. Check out J.L. King's website, breeding suspicion and fear is his bread and butter.


At the height of a cultural moment when anything could be used to prove that you're on the DL, the development of a defense mechanism like "No Homo" seemed almost inevitable. Throw in all the time, money, and marketing going into creating hypermasculine imagery, and the almost exclusively male atmosphere in hip-hop and there you have it..."No Homo."

There are actually some scholars doing interesting work on homoerotism and homosociality within hip-hop culture. I saw two excellent panel presentations at the Race, Sex, Power: New Movements in Black and Latino/a Sexuality conference at University Illinois-Chicago this past April.

Antonia Randolph, Assistant Professor of Black American Studies at University of Delaware, presented a paper entitled “Stuntin’ Like My Daddy”: Managing Homosocial Intimacy Through Speaking Homophobia In Hip-Hop Culture, that explored hip-hop culture's possessive investment in Lil Wayne and Baby's heterosexuality and (hyper)masculinity.


Randolph argued that despite evidence that might point to a homosexual relationship between rappers Lil Wayne and Baby, the hip-hop community and segments of the Black community cannot afford to cast aside these two successful young Black men from New Orleans and are actively attempting to recoup the duos heterosexuality and masculinity. What is important is not whether Baby and Lil Wayne are or are not in a sexual relationship, but the way that the hip-hop community, more so than the two rappers, are invested in protecting Baby and Lil Wayne's heterosexuality in order to deploy them as "positive" and "successful" role models of Black masculinity.

Laurence Ralph, a Ph.D. student in the department of anthropology at the University of Chicago, presented a conference paper entitled Out of the Closet, in the Club with Kells: Homophobia and Homoeroticism in Hip-hop.


Ralph's presentation explored homoerotism in R. Kelly's lyrics particularly in his song "I'm a Flirt," featuring rappers T-Pain and T.I. Ralph argued that what the song demonstates is a climate of oneupmanship and male compitition in which men are the objects of attention and women serve as the conduits for that attention. For instance, he argued that T.I.'s lyrics where he describes how and what he will do to another man's woman serves as a homoerotic moment where T.I. is inviting other men to recognize and admire his sexual prowess. T.I. is demonstrating that prowess not for the benefit of his female sexual partner but for an unknown male spectator. Many times in hip-hop's more sexualized lyrics we see that women are not the targets for those lyrics, but instead they are often directed at other men.

I think that by moving away from a position that solely critiques hip-hop for being homophobic, misogynistic and heterosexist, we can see the ways in which alternative gender norms and sexualities are performed in hip-hop. Randolph and Ralph's work make way for productive conversations and analysis of queer agency within hip-hop while also allowing us to critique the things that need critiquing.

Does anyone else know anybody who is doing interesting work on queerness, homoeroticism, or homosociality in hip-hop?

In the meantime, enjoy this clip from Boondocks, that lampoons the unspoken homoeroticism in hip-hop ...

Trans Representations on Reality TV

Yesterday US Magazine broke the story that one of the 14 contestants to compete in the new season of America’s Next Top Model is transgender. 22-year old Isis is from Prince George's County, Maryland and will be one of fourteen women competing to become America’s Next Top Model. When asked by US if she wants to be a role model she replied "I like to help people, but I'm here to follow my dreams." GLAAD is already all over this with the president of GLAAD, Neil Giuliano, saying "We applaud Tyra Banks and The CW for making this historic visibility of transgender people possible." The new season debuts September 3rd on the CW.

I haven’t really been following the VH1 show I Want to Work for Diddy, but I certainly have been following the talk about Laverne Cox, a transgender woman competing for a chance to become Diddy’s assistant. Diddy’s reality show also features and openly gay black man named Rob Smith. In a piece he wrote for AfterElton.com he says:

Like they say here, visibility matters, and for both myself and my transgender competitor Laverne Cox, I know that it was very important that we represented who we were openly from the very beginning. But let’s not get too serious. We‘re all aware of how absurd reality television is, and I plan on both injecting a little humor into these recaps and taking every opportunity available to laugh with and at everyone onscreen, not least of all myself.


Smith’s quote brings up interesting points about both Queer visibility and the nature of reality television. The question I have is about the precarious nature of advancing queer visibility through a vehicle such as reality television. At this point it is fair to say that there is nothing real about reality TV. It is pretty well established that most shows are scripted so some extent and I’m sure that I Want to Work for Diddy and America’s Next Top Model are no exceptions. My question is will reality television allow queer folks to represent themselves in a complex and multidimensional way? I’m thinking about the way that the so-called “non-traditional” models in America’ Next Top Model are paraded around like diversity show ponies. The plus-sized models and models with disabilities are defined solely by the factor(s) that sets them apart from the “normal” models, the “real” models.

Increased visibility for marginalized people always presents itself as a double-edged sword. On the one hand, media visibility is incredibly important in terms of its ability to alleviate feelings of alienation and invisibility by creating characters who challenge racial, gender, and sexual norms. On the other hand, marginalized people often remain marginalized on television, never shown or allowed to be fully realized individuals. These portrayals as much as they might knock the door down can also reify the boundaries between normative and non-normative behaviors and people.

I don’t think that there is an easy solution to an obviously complex problem, nor am I trying to take away from the importance of those who are going out on a limb attempting to increase the visibility of marginalized groups. (Let’s be real, you know I’m going to be rooting for Isis and Laverne!) I do think, however, that we need to be aware of the ways in which the media industry shapes how we see our identities reflected back to us. In many ways media and popular culture mediates our understandings of ourselves and others (which is obviously why I think Pop Culture Studies is really important). What do these representations mean to trans people and queers in general? What do they mean to people of color? What do they mean to women? What do they mean to everybody else?

What do you all think? Is there a way, perhaps even a socially just way, to increase the visibility of disenfranchised and marginalized populations in the entertainment industry? Or are we stuck with a Catch-22?

In the meantime check out the Laverne’s amazing website, she is definitely one beautiful and intelligent women and the one to beat on I Want to Work for Diddy according to this clip...

Reconsidering Brokeback

So last week with all the hoopla about The Dark Knight and Heath Ledger’s posthumous performance as the Joker, a friend and I landed on the topic of Brokeback Mountain.

“So how do you feel about Brokeback?”

I confessed that I actually owned the film on DVD and enjoyed it quite a bit when I first saw it. I still think that the film has some of the most breathtaking cinematography I have seen in a long time. What I hated about Brokeback was the hyped up mainstream celebration of the film and the lack of critical race and sexuality analysis. For me, seeing the film in a theater packed with gay white men in Chelsea, I noticed the film became a collective moment for the predominantly Anglo audience to share their despair at the fact that there was no happy ending for the two white male protagonists.

In April I attended the Race, Sex, Power: New Movements in Black and Latino/a Sexualities Conference at UIC and heard a presentation by Jeffrey Q. McCune Jr. entitled “Brokeback Ain’t Black.” The paper McCune presented spoke about the ways in which Brokeback reified the idea of coming out as necessary and the only route to freedom from the oppression of the closet (as if queers face no oppression outside of the closet). The film leaves you feeling that if Jack and Ennis had come out to themselves and others they would have been able to live an honest and open life with each other, ensuring their happy ending. McCune argued that because the two protagonist were white they were able to escape the stigmatization of the “Down Low” label. While Jack and Ennis see their secret moments at Brokeback as precious and their silence as necessary, contemporary audiences are provided cues in order to recognize their relationship as from another era. Because the film is set in the American West from 1963- 1983 their relationship is seen as quaint and antiquated. The film is historicized in such a way that it positions the timeframe of the film as a distant time where discretion and silence were the norms and violently enforced (as if that is still not the case for many queers of color and gender non-conforming queers). This allows contemporary audiences, and by extension society, to congratulate themselves on how far gay rights have come.

Check out this excerpt from "Probing the 'Brokeback Syndrome'":

One label Jack and Ennis rarely, if ever, get tagged with is “men on the down low,” even though they are married and have children, but still secretly sleep with men. Boykin, who is black and co-founder of the National Black Justice Coalition, a black gay rights group, says this represents a “racial double standard” since the relationship between Jack and Ennis is heralded as an epic love story instead of a threat to other people.

“It’s not really the term [down low] that matters, it’s what the term implies—and when you hear ‘down low,’ you don’t think good things, you think evil and deceptive,” Boykin says. “We’re more willing to consider the nuances of why [Jack and Ennis] are doing this, instead of seeing them as pathological the way we do with black men.”

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Brokeback succeeds in reinforcing the idea that the down low is unnecessary, antiquated, and ultimately wrong in contemporary mainstream gay culture. Black and Latino/a queer culture's attempt to embrace terms like “Down Low,” “MSM” (men who have sex with men), and “women who love women” as identities and markers are seen as aberrations rather than strategic attempts to redefine both mainstream gay culture and Black/Latino/a culture.

While I am set in the idea that Brokeback enforces and celebrates hegemonic mainstream gay male culture, my friend made me consider something positive about the way that white masculinity is dealt with in the film. He told me that what he really appreciated about the film was the way that Brokeback shows the way that hegemonic masculinity and heteropatriarchial society can crush a person. He cited the scene at the end of the film when Ennis is almost dancing with Jack’s bloodied denim shirt as a moment when the devastating effects of heteropatriarchy are made real. I agree with him that the film does show the brutality of normative hegemony, and succeeds in doing so through sparse dialogue, beautiful cinematography, and intense images of isolation which are more accessible to mainstream audiences.

I like Brokeback, and I think it is an important cultural artifact, but I also applaud academics and politicos like Jeffrey Q. McCune Jr., Keith Boykin, and others who are bringing critical race theory to the table in order for us to consider the impact of the film on the entire queer community.