Queerness

[Angela Minucci]

  Post #5

I just really wanted to talk about this and thought it would be an interest contrast to some of the articles that we read in class. 

    I want to introduce everyone to a chapter out of John Storey’s novel “Cultural Theory and Popular Culture” that I read in my Media Studies class. The chapter is titled “Gender and Sexuality” and has to do with feminism and queer theory in popular culture. The article goes through feminism in popular films, television, novels, and magazines but the part I wanted to focus on was the section on Queer theory. In class we spoke of the definition of “Queer” and how it might be more about of an umbrella term. Queer is more about inclusiveness,  a binary of hetero + homosexual qualities, queer includes everything from closeted to pansexual to bisexual to omnisexual; everything in-between, up or over.

      In the chapter by John Storey, he combines Judith Butler’s theory of gender as performance with theorist Alexander Doty’s idea that “queerness as a mass culture reception practice is shared by all sorts of people in varying degrees of consistency and intensity" (Storey, 143). I think that Doty’s idea of queerness matches somewhat to the one we spoke of in class. However, he describes it as a “contra-straight” space rather than a fully inclusive one. What was interesting to me about Doty’s Queer Theory was the idea that no matter how you identify sexually, you may experience certain media in a queer way. Contrasting this theory with Butler’s idea that gender is culturally formed, could I say that our gender is formed on certain levels of queerness? I’m really unsure about this but think it may be an interesting concept to discuss.  I really wanted to bring this up because I still don’t think I have the best grasp on queerness or queer studies in comparison to feminism or women’s studies. Even the chapter by John Storey, Queer Theory was only prominent for about a two to three pages. 

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