Greetings, Inver Hills Campus Community!
Here is the second issue of gsa@inverhills. We hope you enjoy it.
Art work "Wemixwell," Worsethanqueer.com/
GAY-LESBIAN-BI-TRANS THINGS TO DO / PLACES TO GO
A glance at GLBT-friendly spots around the Twin Cities, courtesy of CitySearch.
--Vera's Cafe
2901 Lyndale Avenue South, Minneapolis. 612.822.3871
Open until 1 AM daily, this coffeehouse /cafe is known as a great place to hang out with a cup of coffee, or the perfect place for some inexpensive food. Items served at all times include homemade soups, two-fisted sandwiches, and six varieties of scrambled eggs!
Wireless Internet access available, too.
--OUT TO BRUNCH (OTB)
Read this introduction from the Web site:
OTB is a non-profit organization located in Minneapolis. We are dedicated to providing a safe, friendly, social network for all lesbian-oriented women regardless of race, creed, age or ability. OTB is a volunteer organization, relying on its members to provide the energy, ideas and skills needed to offer a wide variety of social activities every month. OTB was conceived by a small visionary group and has expanded to serve hundreds of women over the years. OTB is not affiliated with any political party or religious agenda.
Out To Brunch/ P.O. Box 582682, Minneapolis, MN 55458-2682.
E-mail: otbemail@yahoo.com / Phone: 763-391-3449.
Web site:
Out to Brunch
--QUATREFOIL LIBRARY
Quatrefoil Library exists to collect, preserve, and share materials and information relevant to gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and other sexual minority communities.
Collections include books, videos, and sound recordings, which members may check out. We also have a large collection of non-circulating periodicals.
The library is located at 1619 Dayton Avenue in St. Paul, MN on the southwest corner of Snelling and Marshall Avenues. The library is in the old Richards Gordon School Building. Take the Snelling exit off of I-94, going south on Snelling to Dayton Avenue. Take a right (west) on Dayton. Enter the building using the southwest door. The library, which is wheelchair accessible, is located in Suite 105 on the lower level of the building. (These directions courtesy of the library's Web site.)
Upcoming event: Saturday, 4 December 2004, 1-5 PM. Used GLBT Book Sale.
The sale will be comprised of a large selection of "carefully used" GLBT fiction and non-fiction titles, all $2.00 or less. Sale will take place at the library.
See the Web site:
Quatrefoil Library
ARTICLES
--Homoeroticism or male intimacy? A case study of Joey and Chandler in Friends
This paper attempts to look into men’s friendships as portrayed in the television series Friends. {The} main focus of analysis will be a particular scene where two male protagonists struggle with how to deal with emotional engagement with each other, and why they find this problematic
Homoeroticism of Male Intimacy
--From Hearth and Home to a Queer Chic: A Critical Analysis of Progressive Depictions of Gender in Advertising.
This article considers androgyny and radical sexual chic in advertising.
Think of Calvin Klein's Obsession ads or male underwear ads, and you get the idea.
From Hearth and Home to Queer Chic
WEB SITES
FRIDAE
Read the Mission Statement for this site:
Fridæ is positioned to be the first dedicated, non-pornographic gay and lesbian portal in Asia to tap the full potential of a huge and rapidly growing community. By aggregating the community, Fridæ will become a unique network catering to gays in Asia. The aim is to develop a community with a strong and recognizable brand. Fridæ expects to be the leading Asian gay on-line platform with unparalleled access to this valuable consumer group.
Fridae
--PlanetOut
PlanetOut is an online community of Gay, Lesbian, Bi, and Trans people worldwide. This is arguably one of the most popular virtual communities on the Internet.
PlanetOut
--WORSETHANQUEER
Eclectic site, whose writer / creator is a columnist for Punk Planet Magazine.
Worsethanqueer
--Managing Desire
The goal of this web site is to demystify HIV prevention knowledge and practice
Managing Desire
FILM
--Brother to Brother
2004, USA.
Director:Rodney Evans
Starring: Duane Boutte ; Daniel Sunjata ; Lance Reddick.
Brother to Brother chronicles the extraordinary era of the Harlem Renaissance by way of an experimental exercise. The director, Rodney Evans, "weaves the Harlem Renaissance -- with its many gay artists and writers, including Hughes and Bruce Nugent -- into a contemporary gay New York scene."
Read a review of the film in PlanetOut:
Brother to Brother.
BOOKS
--Media, Gender, and Identity
Author: David Gauntlett. Publisher: Routledge,2002. ISBN: 0-415-18960-8
Read this excerpt from the book's Conclusion:
In the conclusion of Media, Gender and Identity, a number of themes are drawn out from the discussions contained in the previous chapters. These chapters include:
Representations of gender in the past
Representations of gender today
Giddens, modernity and self-identity
Michel Foucault: lifestyle analyst
Queer theory and fluid identities
Men's magazines and modern male identities
Women's magazines and female identities today
Directions for living: Role models, pop music and self-help discourses
The themes include fluidity of identities, the decline of tradition, the knowing construction of identity, the idea of 'role models', masculinity in (possible) crisis, 'girl power', popular feminism, diversity of sexualities, gender trouble, media power, contradictions and change. Each of these themes is briefly discussed below.
Fluidity of identities and the decline of tradition
We have seen various ways in which popular ideas about the self in society have changed, so that identity is today seen as more fluid and transformable than ever before. Twenty or thirty years ago, analysis of popular media often told researchers that mainstream culture was a backwards-looking force, resistant to social change and trying to push people back into traditional categories. Today, it seems more appropriate to emphasize that, within limits, the mass media is a force for change. The traditional view of a woman as a housewife or low-status worker has been kick-boxed out of the picture by the feisty, successful 'girl power' icons. Meanwhile the masculine ideals of absolute toughness, stubborn self-reliance and emotional silence have been shaken by a new emphasis on men's emotions, need for advice, and the problems of masculinity. Although gender categories have not been shattered, these alternative ideas and images have at least created space for a greater diversity of identities.
Modern media has little time or respect for tradition. The whole idea of traditions comes to seem quite strange. Why would we want to do the same as previous generations? What's so great about the past? Popular media fosters the desire to create new modes of life - within the context of capitalism. Whether one is happy with capitalism, or seeks its demise, it must surely be considered good if modern media is encouraging the overthrow of traditions which kept people within limiting compartments.
The knowing construction of identity
Not only is there more room for a greater variety of identities to emerge; it is also the case that the construction of identity has become a known requirement. Modern Western societies do not leave individuals in any doubt that they need to make choices of identity and lifestyle - even if their preferred options are rather obvious and conventional ones, or are limited due to lack of financial (or cultural) resources. As the sociologist Ulrich Beck has noted, in late modern societies everyone wants to 'live their own life', but this is, at the same time, 'an experimental life' (2002: 26). Since the social world is no longer confident in its traditions, every approach to life, whether seemingly radical or conventional, is somewhat risky and needs to be worked upon - nurtured, considered and maintained, or amended. Because 'inherited recipes for living and role stereotypes fail to function' (ibid), we have to make our own new patterns of being, and - although this is not one of Beck's emphases - it seems clear that the media plays an important role here. Magazines, bought on one level for a quick fix of glossy entertainment, promote self-confidence (even if they partly undermine it, for some readers, at the same time) and provide information about sex, relationships and lifestyles which can be put to a variety of uses. Television programmes, pop songs, adverts, movies and the internet all also provide numerous kinds of 'guidance' - not necessarily in the obvious form of advice-giving, but in the myriad suggestions of ways of living which they imply. We lap up this material because the social construction of identity today is the knowing social construction of identity. Your life is your project - there is no escape. The media provides some of the tools which can be used in this work. Like many toolkits, however, it contains some good utensils and some useless ones; some that might give beauty to the project, and some that might spoil it. (People find different uses for different materials, too, so one person's 'bad' tool might be a gift to another.)
Generational differences
There are some generational differences which tend to cut across these discussions. Surveys have found that people born in the first half of the twentieth century are less tolerant of homosexuality, and less sympathetic to unmarried couples living together, than their younger counterparts, for example (see chapters one and four). Traditional attitudes may be scarce amongst the under-30s, but still thrive in the hearts of some over-65s. We cannot help but notice, of course, that older people are also unlikely to be consumers of magazines like Cosmopolitan, More or FHM, and are not a key audience for today's pop music sensations. In this book's discussions of popular media which appear to be eroding traditions, I have focused on generally young audiences with the implicit assumption that anti-traditional (or liberal, or post-traditional) attitudes established in the young will be carried into later life. This may not be so, however: maybe conservative attitudes, rather than literally 'dying out' with the older generations, tend to develop throughout the population as we get older. There is evidence that people's attitudes become somewhat less liberal as they get older, but at the same time the 'generation gap' in attitudes is closing (Smith, 2000). We can note that those people who were 25 in the 'swinging' times of the late 1960s are now entering their sixties themselves. Nevertheless, as I have argued throughout this book, the mass media has become more liberal, and considerably more challenging to traditional standards, since then, and this has been a reflection of changing attitudes, but also involves the media actively disseminating modern values. It therefore remains to be seen whether the post-traditional young women and men of today will grow up to be the narrow-minded traditionalists of the future.
Role models
We have noted that the term 'role models' is bandied about in the public sphere with little regard for what the term might really mean, or how we might expect role models to have an impact on individuals. Nevertheless, in this book I have suggested that by thinking about their own identity, attitudes, behaviour and lifestyle in relation to those of media figures - some of whom may be potential 'role models', others just the opposite - individuals make decisions and judgments about their own way of living (and that of others). It is for this reason that the 'role model' remains an important concept, although it should not be taken to mean someone that a person wants to copy. Instead, role models serve as navigation points as individuals steer their own personal routes through life. (Their general direction, we should note, however, is more likely to be shaped by parents, friends, teachers, colleagues and other people encountered in everyday life).
Masculinity in crisis?
We saw in chapter one that contemporary masculinity is often said to be 'in crisis'; as women become increasingly assertive and successful, apparently triumphing in all roles, men are said to be anxious and confused about what their role is today. In the analysis of men's magazines (chapter eight) we found a lot of signs that the magazines were about men finding a place for themselves in the modern world. These lifestyle publications were perpetually concerned with how to treat women, have a good relationship, and live an enjoyable life. Rather than being a return to essentialism - i.e. the idea of a traditional 'real' man, as biology and destiny 'intended' - I argued that men's magazines have an almost obsessive relationship with the socially constructed nature of manhood. Gaps in a person's attempt to generate a masculine image are a source of humour in these magazines, because those breaches reveal what we all know - but some choose to hide - that masculinity is a socially constructed performance anyway. The continuous flow of lifestyle, health, relationship and sex advice, and the repetitive curiosity about what the featured females look for in a partner, point to a clear view that the performance of masculinity can and should be practiced and perfected. This may not appear ideal - it sounds as if men's magazines are geared to turning out a stream of identical men. But the masculinity put forward by the biggest-seller, FHM, we saw to be fundamentally caring, generous and good-humoured, even though the sarcastic humour sometimes threatened to smother this. Individual quirks are tolerated, and in any case we saw from the reader responses that the audience disregards messages that seem inappropriate or irrelevant or offensive. Although the magazines reflected a concern for men to find an enjoyable approach to modern living, then, there was no sign of a 'crisis' in either the magazines or their readers. Rather than tearing their hair out, everybody seemed to be coping with this 'crisis' perfectly well.
The self-help books for men (discussed in chapter ten) also refuted the idea that changing gender roles had thrown men into crisis. The problem for men was not seen as being their new role - or lack of one; instead, men's troubles stemmed from their exaggerated and pointless commitment to men's old role, the traditional role of provider and strong, emotionless rock. Where men had a problem, then, it was not so much because society had changed, but because they as individual men had failed to modernize and keep up. Happily, the books took the view that people can change, and that troubled men would be able to create a satisfying and more relaxed life for themselves if they put in a bit of effort.
It's not all a world of transformed masculinities, though. Images of the conventionally rugged, super-independent, extra-strong macho man still circulate in popular culture. And as incitements for women to fulfill any role proliferate, conventional masculinity is increasingly exposed as tediously monolithic. In contrast with women's 'you can be anything' ethos, the identities promoted to men are relatively constrained. We noted evidence in chapter one that, whilst young females are taking to the full spectrum of school subjects and jobs, their male counterparts still generally avoid subjects and work that they see as 'female'. These things are continually crumbling, though. It is worth remembering, as we noted in chapter four, that even that archetype of masculine strength and independence, James Bond, cannot be too hard and self-reliant in today's Bond movies without being criticized for it by another character.
Girl power
One of the most obvious developments in recent pop culture has been the emergence of the icons and rhetoric of 'girl power', a phrase slapped into mainstream culture by the Spice Girls and subsequently incorporated into the language of government bodies as well as journalists, educationalists, culture critics, and pop fans themselves. Magazines for young women are emphatic in their determination that women must do their own thing, be themselves, and/or be as outrageously sassy and sexy as possible (see chapter nine). Several recent movies have featured self-confident, tough, intelligent female lead characters (chapter four). Female pop stars sing about financial and emotional independence, inner strength, and how they don't need a man; and the popular mantra of self-help books is that women can become just as powerful as these icons, if they cultivate their confidence and self-belief, and draw up a plan of self-development (chapter ten). This set of reasonably coherent messages from a range of sources - their clarity only disturbed by the idea that women can be extremely tough and independent whilst also maintaining perfect make-up and wearing impossible shoes - seems to have had some impact on the identities of young women (as the Britney Spears and Destiny's Child fans quoted in chapter ten would attest), as well as being very successful within pop culture as an image/lifestyle idea.
Popular feminism, women and men
The discourses of 'girl power' are today's most prominent expressions of what Angela McRobbie calls 'popular feminism' - the mainstream interpretation of feminism which is a strong element of modern pop culture even though it might not actually answer to the 'feminist' label. Popular feminism is like a radio-friendly remix of a multi-layered song, with the most exciting bits sampled, and some of the denser stuff left out. As McRobbie notes,
To [many] young women official feminism is something that belongs to their mothers' generation. They have to develop their own language for dealing with sexual inequality, and if they do this through a raunchy language of 'shagging, snogging and having a good time', then perhaps the role this plays is not unlike the sexually explicit manifestoes found in the early writing of figures like [feminist pioneers] Germaine Greer and Sheila Rowbotham. The key difference is that this language is now found in the mainstream of commercial culture - not out there in the margins of the 'political underground'. (1999: 126).
McRobbie further argues that 'This dynamic of generational antagonism has been overlooked by professional feminists, particularly those in the academy, with the result that the political effectivity of young women is more or less ignored' (ibid). There is an interesting parallel here with the scholarship on men and masculinity - the texts on masculinity are largely focused on the difficulties of middle-aged or older men who find it hard to shake off traditional masculine archetypes. And perhaps predictably, these studies are apparently written by middle-aged or older men who also cannot help bringing in the older tropes of masculinity. Meanwhile there is a generation of younger men who have adapted to the modern world (in a range of ways), who have grown up with women as their equals, and who do not feel threatened or emasculated by these social changes. These men and their cultures are largely ignored by the problem-centred discourse of masculinity studies. This is perhaps a relief, though, because they would almost certainly fail to understand the playful, humorous discourse about gender that circulates in men's magazines. (These magazines are not wholly anti-sexist, and there is a legitimate concern that dim readers will take 'joke sexism' literally, of course, but the more significant observation should perhaps be that sexism has shifted from being the expression of a meaningful and serious ideology in former times, to being a resource for use in silly jokes today). As we found in chapter eight, the magazines are often centred on helping men to be considerate lovers, useful around the home, healthy, fashionable, and funny - in particular, being able to laugh at themselves. To be obsessed about the bits which superficially look like 'a reinscription of masculinity' is to miss the point. Men's magazines are not perfect vehicles for the transformation of gender roles, by any means, but they play a more important, complex and broadly positive role than most critics suggest.
Diversity of sexualities
Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people are still under-represented in much of the mainstream media, but things are slowly changing. In particular, television is offering prime-time audiences the chance to 'get to know' nice lesbian and gay characters in soap operas, drama series and sit-coms (see chapter four). Tolerance of sexual diversity is slowly growing in society (chapter one), and by bringing into people's homes images of sexual identities which they might not be familiar with, the media can play a role in making the population more - or less - comfortable with these ways of living.
Gender trouble
In chapter seven, we discussed Judith Butler's manifesto for 'gender trouble' - the idea that the existing notions of sex, gender and sexuality should be challenged by the 'subversive confusion and proliferation' of the categories which we use to understand them. The binary division of 'male' and 'female' identities should be shattered, Butler suggested, and replaced with multiple forms of identity - not a new range of restrictive categories, but an abundance of modes of self-expression. This joyful excess of liberated forms of identity would be a fundamental challenge to the traditional understandings of gender which we largely continue to hold onto today.
Butler, as we noted, did not make direct reference to the mass media, but it seems obvious that if there is to be a major proliferation of images in the public eye, then the media must play a central role. To date, there have only been a relatively small amount of media representations fitting the Butler bill. Some advertising - such as the sexually charged but androgynous imagery promoting the CK One fragrance 'for a man or a woman' - had reminded viewers of the similarity of genders, hinting that it wouldn't matter which of the attractive male or female models you chose to desire. Other ads (such as ones for Impulse deodorant and Kronenbourg lager) playfully teased heterosexual desires only to reveal that the lust object was more interested in their own sex, pointing audiences to the unpredictability of sexualities. In this book we have discussed further cases of films, TV shows and magazines which have also celebrated non-traditional visions of gender and sexuality. Nevertheless, there remains a great deal of scope for the mass media to be much more challenging in these areas.
Media power versus audience power
In chapter two we set out the background debate over whether the mass media has a powerful influence upon its audience, or if it is the audience of viewing and reading consumers who wield the most power, so we should return to that question here. During the discussions in this book we have found, unsurprisingly, that the power relationship between media and the audience involves 'a bit of both', or to be more precise, a lot of both. The media disseminates a huge number of messages about identity and acceptable forms of self-expression, gender, sexuality, and lifestyle. At the same time, the public have their own even more robust set of diverse feelings on these issues. The media's suggestions may be seductive, but can never simply overpower contrary feelings in the audience. Fiske talked in terms of semiotic 'guerrilla warfare', with the audience metaphorically involved in 'smash and grab' raids on media meanings, but this imagery inaccurately sees change as a fast and noisy process. It seems more appropriate to speak of a slow but engaged dialogue between media and media consumers, or a rather plodding war of attrition against the forces of tradition and conservatism: the power of new ideas (which the media conveys) versus the ground-in power of the old ways of doing things (which other parts of the media still like to foster). Neither the media nor the audience are powerful in themselves, but both have powerful arguments.
Contradictory elements
We cannot bring this discussion towards a close without noting the inescapable levels of contradiction within popular culture. Although we may occasionally find ourselves saying that 'the mass media suggests' a particular perspective or point of view, the truth is that not only is 'the mass media' wildly diverse, but that even quite specific parts of media culture put out a whole spectrum of messages which cannot be reconciled. It is impossible to say that women's magazines, for example, always carry a particular message, because the enormous range of titles target an equally diverse set of female audiences. Furthermore, even one magazine will contain an array of viewpoints. As we saw in chapter three via the account of one Cosmo editor, magazine staff - like almost all media producers - are far more interested in generating 'surprise' than in maintaining coherence and consistency. Contradictions are an inevitable by-product of the drive for multiple points of excitement, so they rarely bother today's media makers, or indeed their audiences.
The contradictions are important, however, because the multiple messages contribute to the perception of an open realm of possibilities. In contrast with the past - or the modern popular view of the past - we no longer get singular, straightforward messages about ideal types of male and female identities (although certain groups of features are clearly promoted as more desirable than others). Instead, popular culture offers a range of stars, icons and characters from whom we can acceptably borrow bits and pieces of their public persona for use in our own. In addition, of course - and slightly contradictorily - individuals are encouraged to 'be yourself', and to be creative - within limits - about the presentation of self. This opens the possibilities for gender trouble, as discussed above. Today, nothing about identity is clear-cut, and the contradictory messages of popular culture make the 'ideal' model for the self even more indistinct - which is probably a good thing.
Change
As we have noted numerous times, things change, and are changing. Media formats and contents change all the time. Audiences change too, albeit more slowly. Views of gender and sexuality, masculinity and femininity, identity and selfhood, are all in slow but steady processes of change and transformation. Even our views of change itself, and the possibilities for personal change and 'growth', have altered over the years. Although we should be careful not to overestimate the extent or speed of transformations in society and the media, it is worth reasserting the obvious fact that things do change, because some authorities within the disciplines of media studies and gender studies tend to act as though things do not really change over periods of ten or twenty years - filling textbooks with mixed-together studies from the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s as if they were providing accounts of fixed phenomena. These things are not stationary. To discuss gender and media is to aim arguments at moving targets - which, again, is just as well.
Finally:
In this book I have sought to argue, and demonstrate, that popular media has a significant but not entirely straightforward relationship with people's sense of gender and identity. Media messages are diverse, diffuse and contradictory. Rather than being zapped straight into people's brains, ideas about lifestyle and identity that appear in the media are resources which individuals use to think through their sense of self and modes of expression. In addition to this conscious (or not particularly conscious) use of media, a wealth of other messages may breeze through the awareness of individuals every day. Furthermore, people are changing, building new identities founded not on the certainties of the past, but organized around the new order of modern living, where the meanings of gender, sexuality and identity are increasingly open. Different aspects of popular media can aid or disturb these processes of contemporary reorientation. Some critics say that the media should offer traditional role models and reassuring certainties, but this view is unlikely to survive. Radical uncertainties and exciting contradictions are what contemporary media, like modern life, is all about.
Now, read the book!
Until next time!
GSA Student Editors
Image Credits
--"Blue Men," 300 x 305 pixels - 5k
www.gmhp.demon.co.uk/
--"Calvin Klein, Obsession," 1317 x 905 pixels - 164k
www.textanalyse.dk/ Reklamesexualkropssprog.htm
--"Harlem Renaissance," www.artthrob.co.za/ 01oct/images/driskell01a.jpg
330 x 450 pixels - 27k
--"Rainbow Bison," 300 x 219 pixels - 39k www.orgs.bucknell.edu/ flagb/
--"Two Women," 157 x 197 pixels - 4k www.turismogays-lesbians.com/
--"Wemixwell," http://www.worsethanqueer.com/slander/links.html
