David Halperin the Queen is not dead. - Divine / John Waters

David Halperin noticed his students were bored/dissatisfied with gay male literature. They were more excited by the edginess of queering straight culture, specifically female centred movies/TV shows. They were drawing cartoons identifying themselves with the female characters. Gays have identified with women in Hollywood and music for a long time. Halperin suspects that there needs to be a study done on this and I agree. He proposes that queering is a way of identifying with a global sense of gayness, thereby avoiding stigma and shame put on the individual person. Its an expression of gay desire that is free to go deeper into fantasy.

The expression of queer culture in the appropriation of famous female stars was firstly mined from 20th century Hollywood film. Divine channels Elizabeth Taylor in this clip from Female Trouble. There are references to the 1966 film "Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf?

David Halperin proposes that gay culture is disappearing due to gentrification, changes in law and the rise of the internet. Gentrification of inner city enclaves that were once thriving gay communities has occurred throughout the 1980's onwards. People used to have to physically go out to meet others. The internet is now a popular way to connect socially. Gay bars and newspapers are declining in numbers. The social app Grindr is widely used by gay men to hook up. The public sphere for homosexuals has changed. Now there are more gay people living in small towns that are isolated except for the internet.

The goals of gay rights have changed to gay marriage, military service and religion. These are all elements of  heteronormativity. While they are about human rights, they are also about assimilation.  Queer culture is disappearing under a blanket of heteronormativity. Halperin argues that gay men have queered heterosexual culture as a way of making their own unique space. Diversity is valuable. Reality is bland if its all heteronormative.


     Halperin, David M., How To Be Gay, Harvard University Press, 2012.

Cara Delevingne: Come and Find Me/ Fantasy, play and desire in advertising.

Why didn’t we have the revolution that Karl Marx predicted? Because Marx didn’t predict the effects technological advances have had on society. Modern medicine means we have had unprecedented population growth. Modern communications means businesses can be run globally. Mass media and advertising have had huge effects on societies consumption patterns.

Rachel Bowlby (1993) examines the psychology behind the process of consumption. She looks at sales and marketing manuals from the 1890s and the development of advertising psychology and the development of Freudian psychology in the 20^th century. She compares Freud’s approach to psychology as being similar to the gain and loss scenario of ‘making up’ a term used in sales manuals from the 1920s onwards.

Bowlby describes the four basic stages of a sale as

1. Attraction

2. Interest

3. Desire

4. Sale (Action)

She describes the point at which a customer decides to buy a product as “The point at which both control over actions and mental conflict – a tension between ideas – are eliminated. “ Bowlby states that this moment is similar to the moment of recognition that occurs during analysis because it involves intuition and is a turning point.

Bowlby argues that the psychological practices of consumption make it a sophisticated process and therefore not something to be devalued or not considered. How much psychological influence have television shows and commercials had on human beings consumption habits? What kind of a play/drama are you performing every time you enter a store? Is your decision to purchase experienced as a magical moment?

Bowlby, Rachel, (1993) Make up your mind: scenes from the psychology of shopping and selling, In, Shopping with Freud (pp.94-119). Routledge. ISBN 0-415060079

Alexander McQueen : Taste and consumption

When discussing the phenomenon of consumption, Jean Baudrillard (1998) argues that popularization of a need or product can only occur after it has been first formed at an elite level of society. It then flows down to the lower and middle classes in their unending quest for improvement of status. Baudrillard refers to this pattern as a structured social field. It is a law that governs the introduction of new distinctive commodities and needs.

This theory may not always be true. Alexander Mc Queen who is from a working class background was a fashion designer, artist and showman. His innovation with design was unique. It was only after he gained popularity with the public that Givenchy employed him. This example shows how new ideas can form and grow in approval from any level of society.

McQueen's Autumn/Winter 2007 show was inspired by Elizabeth Howe, an ancestor of his who was murdered in the Salem witch trials of 1692. His shows were like performance art, his clothes were an alchemy of imagination, skill and passion.

Baudrillard, Jean (1998), The social logic of consumption. In, The consumer society: myths and structures (pp.49-68). SAGE. ISBN 0-761956921.

The value of video

In her essay 'Indigenous media: faustian contract or global village?' Faye Ginsburg discusses the use of video as cultural mediation by Indigenous people in Australia and Canada. Ethnographic filmmaking is a practice associated with Anthropology. Some filmmakers began addressing questions of ethics and agency in the 1950s and 60s. Indigenous people in Australia and the U.S. Began making their own film and media in the 1970s. The popularity of VCR's and the launch of communication satellites in the 1980s brought Western mainstream media into remote Indigenous settlements in Central Australia and Alaska. These communities used the technology to insert some of their own cultural content into the programming. (Ginsburg 1991)

Small community media groups (Warlpiri) and larger organizations (CAAMA, Imparja) began programming Australian Indigenous content in the 1980s. Works being produced were addressing historical injustices, dreaming stories, dances, music, food hunting techniques and biographies of elders. The vision and audience is local and the culture includes contemporary life. Ginsbergh (1991 105) proposes that in this way culture is preserved and also evolving at the same time.

“They [Australian indigenous produced films] are not based on some retrieval of an idealized past, but create and assert a position for the present that attempts to accommodate the inconsistencies and contradictions of contemporary life. For Aboriginal Australians , these encompass the powerful relationships to land, myth and ritual, the fragmented history of contact with Europeans and continued threats to language, health, culture, and social life, and positive efforts in the present to deal with problems stemming from these assaults.”

Francis Jupurrula Kelly is one of the key founders of Warlpiri media and he is still producing work there today. This clip shows him directing actors for a documentary co-produced by PAW media and Rebel films. He speaks two languages on set and has his own vision of how the story will be recreated. The resulting work 'Coniston' is very powerful because many people got to tell their story of the 1928 massacre for the first time. A historical crime is told from an Australian indigenous perspective. This is part of the process of identity construction through culture.

Co-writer/director Francis Kelly interviews one of the descendants of the survivors of the Coniston massacre. Ginsburg, F. (1991). "Indigenous media: faustian contract or global village?" Cultural Anthropology 6(1), 92-112.