Exploring Queer Representation in Media

Queer Studies Lecture Series Pt3

Estimated read time: 1:20

Summary

Dr. Young, a Communication Studies professor at USI, explores the portrayal of queer characters in pop culture during her lecture. She shares insights into how cultural texts construct race, gender, and sexuality, offering a comprehensive analysis of tropes in television and film. Dr. Young delves into the evolution of queer representation, showcasing increased visibility and normalization of LGBTQ+ characters. She highlights specific case studies like "The Fosters" and "Sense8" to demonstrate the nuanced portrayal of queer identities. The lecture underscores cultural shifts and the importance of diverse representation, urging for more inclusive storytelling across media.

Highlights

Dr. Young emphasizes the cultural shift towards more acceptance of LGBTQ+ identities reflected in media. 🎬
Increased representation and diversity of queer characters in TV and film since the 90s, promoting normalization. 📈
Insights into the use of 'queer' both as an identity and a verb to challenge norms. 🔍
Discussion on popular series like "The Fosters" and "Sense8" that showcase progressive queer narratives. 📚
Exploration of tropes associated with queer characters and their evolving portrayal. 🧙‍♂️

Key Takeaways

Queer representation in media is evolving, with more diverse and nuanced portrayals appearing in television and film. 📺
Understanding of queer identities is enhanced through pop culture, reflecting larger societal shifts towards acceptance. 🌈
There is a push for more authentic representation, involving queer actors in queer roles and including diverse stories. 🎭
Tropes like the villain, victim, and caricature in queer representation are being challenged and redefined. 🦸‍♀️
Queer-centric shows like "Pose" and "Rupaul’s Drag Race" highlight the importance of storytelling and representation. 💃

Overview

Dr. Young, a communication studies expert, navigates the intricate world of queer representation in media. Her engaging lecture emphasizes the progression from stigmatized portrayals to increasingly common, accepted representations in pop culture. By examining television and film, Dr. Young paints a vivid picture of how these mediums can both reflect and influence societal attitudes.

Delving into the specifics, Dr. Young highlights significant case studies like "The Fosters," showcasing how modern media normalizes lesbian relationships and family dynamics. Another critical analysis is offered on "Sense8," where unconventional relationships defy traditional norms, presenting a richly diverse tapestry of love and identity.

Throughout her talk, Dr. Young underscores the importance of moving beyond traditional tropes—such as the villain or victim—and embracing complex, multi-dimensional queer characters. Her call for authentically written and portrayed media resonates as she advocates for more queer creators behind the scenes, ensuring genuine storytelling that reflects real experiences.

Chapters

00:00 - 01:00: Introduction and Speaker Background The chapter introduces Dr. Young, who is an associate professor in communication studies and the director of the basic course at the University of Southern Indiana. Her research interests include rhetorical studies and queer feminist scholarship, particularly focusing on the ways cultural texts construct race, gender, and sexuality. Dr. Young has contributed to academic knowledge through her publications in several scholarly outlets.
01:00 - 10:00: Defining Queer Terms and Tropes The chapter titled 'Defining Queer Terms and Tropes' introduces a variety of scholarly journals and contributions pivotal to the study of queer communication and culture. Highlighted are journals such as the Journal of International Intercultural Communication, Sexuality and Culture, QED: A Journal of GLBTQ Worldmaking, and Women in Language. The discussion also notes contributions to volumes like 'Queer Communication Pedagogy' and 'Locating Queerness in the Media'. Furthermore, it mentions the co-authorship of the book 'Pursuing Popular Culture: Methods for Researching the Everyday'. Dr. Young, while contributing significantly to this field, also engages in personal interests such as cooking, running, kayaking, and swimming.
10:00 - 30:00: Queer Representation in Pop Culture In this chapter, Dr. Young begins a discussion on queer representation in pop culture. Before diving into the subject, Dr. Young is introduced by Dr. Link and makes a casual mention of spending time with her four cats named Mclovin, Sunshine, Kit Kat, and Waldo. This introduction helps set a friendly tone for the presentation. Dr. Young expresses gratitude for the opportunity to present her research and emphasizes the interactive nature of her talk, highlighting that pop culture offers diverse points of interest for everyone.
30:00 - 40:00: Case Studies: The Fosters and Sense8 The talk is an exploration of queer pop culture with a focus on the case studies of 'The Fosters' and 'Sense8'. Before diving into these examples, there's an introductory segment aimed at defining basic terms related to queer media for those who may be unfamiliar with them. This foundation sets the stage for a deeper understanding of the topics discussed in the talk.
40:00 - 45:00: Future of Queer Pop Culture The chapter titled 'Future of Queer Pop Culture' begins by analyzing major tropes in television and film related to LGBTQ identities. It delves into the subject of representation and the rise of queer-centric television, highlighting its growth and significance. Additionally, the chapter features two case studies conducted by the author. The first case study examines the television series 'The Fosters', and the second focuses on the series 'Sense8', both pivotal works in the representation of queer narratives on mainstream platforms.
45:00 - 64:00: Question & Answer Session In this chapter titled 'Question & Answer Session', the speaker concludes their discussion with thoughts on the future of queer pop culture and its potential directions. They provide a glossary of key terms used throughout the session, emphasizing the importance of understanding these terms to ensure clarity. The chapter focuses on the concept of gender identity, explaining it as an individual's personal sense of their gender. This self-identification process may include identifying as a man, woman, intersex, gender fluid, or other identities, highlighting the spectrum of gender beyond the traditional binary.
64:00 - 64:30: Closing Remarks and Acknowledgements The chapter discusses the important distinction between gender and biological sex, highlighting that gender identity may differ from the sex assigned at birth. The author clarifies the use of 'transgender' as an umbrella term encompassing individuals whose gender identity or expression is different from typical associations with their sex assigned at birth. This includes terms like transgender persons, transgender women, and transgender men, reflecting a spectrum of gender identities under the umbrella of transgender.

Queer Studies Lecture Series Pt3 Transcription

00:00 - 00:30 dr young is in the communication studies program here at usi so she is an associate professor in communication studies and director of the basic course at the u at the university of southern indiana her research lies at the intersection of rhetorical studies and queer feminist scholarship focusing on how cultural texts discursively construct race gender and section she has sexuality she has published in a number of scholarly
00:30 - 01:00 journals including the journal of international intercultural communication sexuality and culture qed a journal of glbtq world making and women in language she is a contributor to several edited volumes including queer communication pedagogy and locating queerness in the media she is the co-author of the book pursuing popular culture methods for researching the everyday every day and in her spare time dr young enjoys cooking running kayaking and swimming as well as
01:00 - 01:30 spending time with her four cats mclovin sunshine kit kat and waldo those are great names okay all right so i am going to turn this over to dr young thank you so much dr link can everyone hear me hopefully so um i really appreciate uh the opportunity here to talk a little bit about my research and get a chance to hear from all of you um after my presentation because i think one of the great things about pop culture is that we can all find something of interest and so my
01:30 - 02:00 talk for today is somewhere over the rainbow exploring queer pop culture and so oops let's see if that works here click um just a little introduction before we get started i wanted to first uh define some terms again i usually uh teach a lot of courses here that address queer media but i wanted to make sure that first folks who maybe this is the first time even hearing the term queer to get a chance to define some of those basic terms before i jump into some of
02:00 - 02:30 the analysis and then i'm going to switch over and look at some of these major tropes that we see in television and film related to lgbtq identities i'm then going to talk about a little bit more about what representation means and the rise of queer-centric television and then i'm going to really showcase uh two of my case studies that i've done so two um research projects i've done and completed in the past one is on the television series the fosters and the other is on the series since eight and
02:30 - 03:00 then i'll wrap things up with um talking a little bit about the future of queer pop culture and where we can go from here so just a glossary of terms again these are not all encompassing but i thought that it'd be important that when i use these terms that folks know sort of what i mean and so when i refer to gender identity for example i'm referring to a person's sense of their gender so how you self-identify so that may be are you a man are you woman are you intersexed are you gender fluid are you somewhere in between but again that is how the person self-identifies
03:00 - 03:30 in terms of their gender and that's different from sex or what we refer to as biological sex or what you are born with okay um additionally when i use the term transgender i use this as an umbrella term for people who have a gender identity or their gender expression differs from what typically is associated with their sex assigned at birth and so for example when i say transgender persons or transgender women or trans gender men um right again this is an umbrella term in which gender
03:30 - 04:00 identity or gender expression is different from what's associated with uh one sex so i don't have it up here but for example the term cisgender refers to someone whose gender identity or gender expression is typically associated with sex that they're assigned at birth additionally i like to use the term latinx which is a much more gender inclusive term in in terms of latino latina i use latinx and that refers to people whose ancestry is of mexico central america
04:00 - 04:30 south america and the caribbean living in the united states and then let's see what else here um you may not be uh familiar with the acronym and the acronym continues to grow because we have such a wide diversity and spectrum of gender identities and sexual orientations and so the acronym i like to use is lgbtq plus and that stands for lesbian gay bisexual transgender queer um pansexual asexual intersex questioning
04:30 - 05:00 gender variant and everything in between okay and i'm sure if you have questions about the the acronym please feel free to ask them at the the end of my lecture here but again this is sort of an umbrella term um but really sort of the term in my my lecture here is the term queer and so um i like to use this instead of having the mouthful of the acronym to refer to again uh gender or sexual minority identities it sort of is the overall umbrella that sort of encompasses um that um in many ways we
05:00 - 05:30 may have heard this term in the past as something derogatory um has been used in many ways in the past as something that's seen as negative is a stigmatized identity and in many ways queer is now embraced by academics and activists and i think even the younger generation here as something that is a positive thing so again it sort of often stands in for the lgbtq plus acronym using queer um also when we talk about queer okay we're usually talking about this idea of
05:30 - 06:00 identities but also we can think of queer as a verb and so when one is queering instead of thinking about just an identity thinking about how as a verb it's a way of disrupting or rethinking resisting gender and sexual norms oftentimes associated with heteronormativity it's also used in many ways to interrogate the language that we use and how we talk and think and make sense of
06:00 - 06:30 discourses associated with what is deviant or what is seen as perversed um the taboo stigmatized identities sometimes the grotesque anything that is non-normative we can also use queer as a verb to sort of resist and rethink how we think about um some of these categories and so sometimes i'll be using queer as an a queer identity and other times i'll be used using queer as querying as a verb
06:30 - 07:00 to sort of rethink or see it as how do we reconstruct possibilities associated not just with um lgbtq plus identities but thinking about um some of the things we talk about and these discourses surrounding things like again the stigmatized taboo-ness of society so there's a lot of pop culture out there and we could cover a whole bunch of wide variety right we can talk about
07:00 - 07:30 television we can talk about film we can talk about advertisements we can talk about literature we can talk about comic books and video games um celebrity culture um we can have a huge amount of time talking about queer pop culture and so my area of expertise i primarily focus on television and film um so while we could you could take whole courses just on like queer literature right or you know queering you know video games um i i want to just say that like i
07:30 - 08:00 acknowledge that there's a whole world of queer pop culture out there but i'm primarily going to focus on television and film and just a few images here um for those gamers out there you know i think about how video gaming can be an opportunity for us to um embody different queer identities and so uh yes i do play some video games and one of my favorite is assassin's creed odyssey and so you can choose to be one character or another a man or a woman and i've chose cassandra and what's wonderful is in that type of
08:00 - 08:30 interactive world you can make choices about engaging in different relationships and so for me cassandra can be a bisexual character in this video game or she can be a queer character right um so thinking about how video games can be an opportunity for us to explore different uh gender identities and sexual orientations we also see you know for example i was thinking about an animated series you know some of you may have heard of recently i know that the reboot of she-ra was really really big and
08:30 - 09:00 looking at queer representation um one of my favorite series a little more adult in terms of the animated series but uh harley quinn and her relationship with poison ivy in the animated series and so we can see again queer representation in all different types of of mediums when it comes to pop culture but primarily i'm going to focus on television and film so what i wanted to do was spend a little time talking about some variety
09:00 - 09:30 of tropes or what's known as literary devices in uh television and film and so what we see is that um historically in many ways there are particular sort of stereotypes that are used over and over again in media when we look at queer characters and so i wanted to address some of these and think about what are the things that we continue to see in pop culture and what are things that are perhaps um being addressed or being countered or resisted okay
09:30 - 10:00 and so one trope uh that we see when it comes to queer characters in television and film is what's known as the villain okay so often times queer characters are seen as predatory as scheming as pathological as dangerous as evil um vito russo's the celluloid closet by the way is an amazing book um and also was turned into a documentary that addresses some of these tropes in film and looks at the history of film and how these are used time and time again um and so some
10:00 - 10:30 of the things to think about is uh you know people talk about you know looking at these different sort of uh villains and you can see it from you know dramas and television and film to even animated disney films and so for example um silence of the lambs right the the sort of psychopath ends up being a transvestite jonathan dem who wants to murder women and and wear their skin for clothing right um and so he's right reinforcing the villain the sort of predatory dangerous pathological right
10:30 - 11:00 somehow mentally ill uh villain um you have downton abbey's thomas barrow and i actually wrote about this um in my analysis where thomas wright is an employee of downton abbey and time and time again he's seen as sort of scheming as backstabbing as not seen as a responsible character not to be trusted um and so again that's even in right you know in contemporary representations we see that um i even say that you know
11:00 - 11:30 like characters like the ursula on the little mermaid um i joke that a lot of my classes i ruined disney films for students but one of the things is thinking about how in many ways she is visually marked as a non-feminine right uh sort of perhaps lesbian character and therefore um she's then reinforcing sort of the villain i don't know if you've ever seen the little mermaid right but ursula is the sea witch who wants to uh steal uh the little mermaid's voice and ultimately like
11:30 - 12:00 capture her and and sort of rule the sea world okay um but again here again you end up having the the trope of the villain over and over again and so um queer characters are not to be trusted they're dangerous they're predatory um they're in fact um the villain and and we don't usually see heroes right the opposite of villain are heroes when it comes to these stereotypical tropes another trope we see over and over again in media is the victim and so we see um
12:00 - 12:30 storylines and characters in which often gay and trans characters are pitied are miserable they're often a tragic figure they're often the victim of violent murders there's usually what i call the unhappily ever after so in many story lines you might have a gay couple right um and i i i don't want to joke or belittle but
12:30 - 13:00 oftentimes you end up having for a brief minute the the gay couple is happy and then one of them ends up having an untimely death and so you end up never having really sort of there's always these sort of tragic story lines associated with um gay romantic couples um you end up having characters such as tom hanks plays andy beckett in the film philadelphia in which he's a character that contracts hiv aids because he's gay and um right is slowly dying and and tries to sort of have a lawsuit against
13:00 - 13:30 his his employers uh and so you end up having sort of again he's sort of a tragic figure um back in the day the the big movie was brought back broke back mountain i don't know i feel like some of you younger folks out there might not remember this film but it was right the gay cowboy film and um not to ruin it for you but jack twist one of the characters is brutally murdered and so again these are just a few examples but we see this over and over again that you end up having um gay characters or trans characters queer
13:30 - 14:00 characters who are are somehow um the sad character the tragic character oftentimes murdered or um suicidal and and so we we're supposed to sort of sympathize for them but not necessarily empathize with them okay a few more um one is the and that is something that vito russo talks about in his work um the is sort of the caricature of gay men
14:00 - 14:30 um and so we see this as sort of over-the-top flamboyant effeminate they're often right into fashion they're well groomed we see this in a number of series i think of like sex in the city um in the film the bird cage uh you know probably for some of you might know jack macfarlane from will and grace and so they're often used as sort of over the top again caricatures they're used for comic relief and they're also known as camp gay because they're so over the top
14:30 - 15:00 they're again seen as funny so we don't really ever take them seriously and in fact in some ways it doesn't humanize but rather ends up having gay men be seen as this one particular type and so we don't see a diversity of representation here rather it reinforces um sort of again sort of the flamboyant gay and this is a the is a trope that's been used um throughout film like if you look at the history of film in terms of the 1920s and 30s um the
15:00 - 15:30 is used again to um provide comic relief and as russo writes here made everyone feel more manly or more womanly by occupying the space in between and so that character never actually um perhaps has their sexual orientation or sexual identity um specifically marked but because of their performance of them right having these particular effeminate stereotypical characteristics we then interpret them as right the or the gay character on the series
15:30 - 16:00 or film okay and then the last one that kind of extends sometimes to the there's sort of an overlap here um is the gay best friend and so we see this trope time and time again um in a number of film and television where it's usually like the platonic best friend to the straight woman um where they're just sort of the ideal except the one thing is that they're gay right so sometimes they're right they have sort of they're
16:00 - 16:30 emotionally sensitive they're fashionable off sometimes they're used for comic relief um i remember when i was gosh this dates me when i remember watching my best friend's wedding um and george downs right is one of her besties and um pretends to be straight when she ends up going to um her other best friend's wedding to try to win him back and so again in many ways we see some of this in in film and television um probably some of you may have heard of unbreakable kimmy schmidt and titus andromedan kind of isn't so much the
16:30 - 17:00 ideal platonic friend as he is the gay best friend but in many ways he continues to reinforce sort of that comic relief even though he might be a bit more uh three-dimensional as a character he's kind of over the top he's still a bit flamboyant um but again he's supposed to somehow um emotionally support the main character on the series which is kimmy okay so again we see this time and time again of sort of the gay best friend and this is not to say that it's a negative stereotype it's just
17:00 - 17:30 that we see sort of these these sort of tropes over and over again that they're really sort of ends up reducing the characters into sort of one-dimensional sort of spaces rather than seeing them as three-dimensional um characters in film and television okay so what do we see well for many of us who watch tv we can see that there actually has been increased representation of lgbtq characters in television um i would one
17:30 - 18:00 question uh i was asked recently was when do you remember the first like queer character that you saw on television or can you think of right the first sort of character that you you saw as a gay character or bisexual character or a lesbian or trans and what's funny is that um i don't remember right i can't think of a time when i didn't but i would have to say that some of some of the sort of stories that i remember were um the first time
18:00 - 18:30 perhaps might have been with um you know dawson's creek right where he ended up having a gay character i know will and grace was really popular at the time when i was sort of growing up and so what we've seen is that there actually has been you know since the 90s uh increased representation and visibility of lgbtq characters in television and what this really means in many ways is that um we're seeing more visibility
18:30 - 19:00 and in that way creates sort of a normalizing effect that is it doesn't become just the token best gay best friend it's that we end up seeing them as just as many different characters in television um we're also seeing um increased racial diversity of lgbtq characters on television and so traditionally what we've seen are often sort of gay white men have been sort of the norm if we're talking about gay characters on tv and film and what we're seeing now is an increase of racial diversity of
19:00 - 19:30 queer characters and so for example in 2021 glaad reported that approximately nine percent of broadcast scripted primetime shows including these streaming platforms we call tv right hulu netflix amazon we're seeing about nine percent actually have um queer characters or story lines in these series um but we're seeing also increased racial diversity and just a few pictures on the side here i was thinking for example if you watch grey's anatomy um if you watch or have watched
19:30 - 20:00 glee modern family one of my favorites is is true blood and so um in a wide variety from sort of sitcoms to dramas to sci-fi fantasy we're seeing sort of more and more uh you know a diversity of queer characters and i think that's important because in many ways it's saying right that we can sort of um recognize the sort of normalization right that these are just many sort of uh characters in the character world on television
20:00 - 20:30 okay um also thinking about you know makeover reality television so it's not just fictional characters but also having um you know reality television can play a real great role in thinking about seeing real people and so uh again there's so much television out there but one of my favorites is queer eye and um one of the great things about i think queer eye is that um the fab five right go and help people
20:30 - 21:00 and when i say makeovers right even the sort of sort of signage here says queer more than a makeover right did you end up having these five individuals come in and help people who transform their lives and you often end up having them this might be the first time that um a person is interacting with someone who is who's identifies as queer or gay um and so what's wonderful about this series in many ways is that these makeovers again allow us to sort of humanize um
21:00 - 21:30 queer individuals and in real settings and situations there's also been several episodes of queer eye where you end up having the person who's getting a makeover right is uh a minority may it be right racial minority sexual or gender identity right and so in many ways that also humanized when we see more of these um real representations in terms of reality television that can also be an opportunity for uh audiences who may not perhaps right click over to particular uh
21:30 - 22:00 queer-centric uh tv shows but this might be the first opportunity for folks to really sort of humanize uh individuals okay so there's one thing to have including queer characters in television there's a whole other thing of having and constructing television for queer audiences and so just a few to think about because again there's a wide variety um is thinking about queer-centric television and so
22:00 - 22:30 again i i reached to when my experiences um the l word first came out in 2004 and ran until 2009 and this was the first series in which it was um uh sort of again fictional but the lives of lesbian and bisexual women like the cast right was of these women these queer women in west hollywood california and then recently there's been the reboot of the l word generation q and even in the images you can see um a wide variety of
22:30 - 23:00 representation but the l word in many ways it was extremely significant in the early 2000s because it was the first time really that you end up having a cast that was of queer women um and so in many ways this becomes the queer centric television and thinking about um queer audiences this is the first time you may end up seeing yourself in some of the characters i would say that it was a fun series don't get me wrong but of course there's always limitations um i would call the l word kind of a soapy soap opera drama
23:00 - 23:30 you're also talking about west hollywood california so not always in terms of a wide variety of representation and diversity associated with socioeconomic class right these are usually um really very wealthy uh lesbians and and bisexual and queer women um they're also very feminine and many of them most of them are extremely feminine and so in some ways um perhaps not a true or authentic depiction of the diversity of queer women um in society
23:30 - 24:00 but again it's it was one of the first series that really resonated and was is is groundbreaking in terms of having an all cast of queer uh uh uh queer women um as the center of these stories a few other examples one is rupaul's drag race if you haven't already heard of rupaul google rupaul um but a reality competition series it's been airing
24:00 - 24:30 since 2009 and in many ways um i think that uh drag race has helped a lot of folks who may have never heard of drag culture or drag queens um to get a chance to be exposed to uh drag queen cultures and so i wanted to show a clip real quick a trailer from i think two seasons ago but thinking about again how this series right this is this reality competition series is queer centric right it really sort of highlights and and um celebrates uh drag queen culture
24:30 - 25:00 and now a message from the president of the united states my fellow americans the time has come for america's first drag queen president friday february 28th 13 new candidates enter the race hey i'm here to slay the competition jerry is a big loud broadway dane we are the best queens in the world but
25:00 - 25:30 i'm the one to eat serving our country with opulence i love this runway look i became very excited it was some next level liberating with laughter i'm going to press the trapdoor button and defending the us of shape i love to give face you do that face ain't moving shady boo our nation's biggest stars come out
25:30 - 26:00 you made it i'm a little frightened but fascinated the hilarious leslie jones looks so beautiful are you ready for a season so groundbreaking being gay is still punishable by death i'm so thankful that you're part of our country thank you i think you are fabulous it will broke out in nursery
26:00 - 26:30 gentlemen i have a surprise so big you'll never see it coming you aren't ready what are you waiting for join the revolution do it for your country i pledge allegiance i pledge allegiance i pledge allegiance to the drag to the drag to the drag i pledge allegiance to the drag rupaul's drag race season 12 premieres friday february 28th at 8. it's not that drag queens and drag
26:30 - 27:00 culture haven't been mainstream but i think in many ways um rupaul's drag race has um exposed audience that may not know about drag queens and drag culture and we even see sort of i want to call it almost mainstreaming we see even some of the language and the fashion associated with drag queens um today so for example this idea of throwing shade is very clearly a language that is used in in drag queen culture and performance and so i think
27:00 - 27:30 what's fascinating is that while you end up having what's considered traditionally a marginalized performance space and a queer sort of culture of drag queens and drag kings by the way um then in fact that rupaul's drag race has ultimately again exposed audience a wide audience and sort of mainstreamed drag race or drag queens into mainstream america um i would also say that that it's fun right you see sort of the the playfulness the overtoppedness um you know and you end up having these queens competing right
27:30 - 28:00 and and and having makeup and clothing and performance but you also saw some of the judges who are very clearly not drag queens but we recognize them and so it's really interesting to see how queer-centric television here with rupaul's drag race has sort of been become sort of mainstream and then the last series that i was thinking about in thinking about queer-centered television again series that really focus on queer cultures is ryan murphy's pose i don't know if you've ever seen or heard of pose i think there were three seasons if i'm
28:00 - 28:30 correct but pose looks at rather than drag culture what's known as ball culture in new york city during the 1980s and 90s and so it centers on more a black latinx trans queer and gender non-conforming uh persons um and so again what you have is a series that's not just having one token trans character or one token you know black lesbian but rather it's sharing stories and experiences and developing a whole cast of characters that focus on specifically
28:30 - 29:00 ball culture and so um what we end up having then is recognizing and we continue to see not just these increasing queer characters in television but also shows and series that are centering on specific queer cultures okay so one thing i wanted to put a caveat to is that when we think of queer again we think of um lgbtq plus identities um but in many ways i've mentioned how querying
29:00 - 29:30 is a verb and so querying uh sort of what i would say heterosexuality in media this was something that happened maybe a year ago i had one of my students actually send an email to me and say have you seen this episode of house hunters and i went no tell me more um but house hunters um you know the sort of reality series where people try to find their you know perfect house or maybe their their their vacation home or what have you um on hdtv uh for the first time had
29:30 - 30:00 a throuple okay so it ended up having a couple uh who ended up having a third person and so it was a throuple as that's sort of the term here but ended up having a throuple look for their forever home and so it was interesting how the series again a reality show here um that ends up having sort of normalizing right that this is a throuple looking for a home and they end up sharing right um their romantic partnership and and in many ways this isn't just about queering uh queer identities but
30:00 - 30:30 also here in some ways rethinking um what it means in terms of heterosexuality right and so it sort of extends those bounds associated with heterosexuality traditionally being about monogamy right um two people and here you end up having a threesome sort of right three people in this this couple um so calling it a throuple um but i think that's interesting if you know we may be seeing more of that in terms of how we queer uh heterosexuality in media as well
30:30 - 31:00 okay so let me take a breather here um there's a lot out there and so i wanted to briefly touch on two case studies of my own queer pop culture research you may find it interesting um you may not uh but for me i watch a lot of tv and i i joke about this but i watch a lot of tv and i can't turn it off when i'm watching television i'm constantly thinking about these intersections of gender sexuality um class race and and just sort of i can't turn it off
31:00 - 31:30 and so what i find is that i enjoy sort of critiquing analyzing and trying to understand what are the meanings being communicated um what are the messages being communicated in in pop culture um when we're talking about uh sort of uh you know queer identities so specifically one case study that i looked at was the tv series the fosters um what's interesting about the fosters it was aired initially on free form abc family that became free form and this
31:30 - 32:00 show really focuses on um a lesbian couple uh and and their the last name is the fosters and they end up having a wide variety of sort of family formations and so they adopted two individuals two children they have a biological son from a previous marriage um you end up fostering children as well and so the fosters it's sort of a plan where it's not only their last name but also the fact that they are fostering um but the series really is is you know when you look at the audience the fosters really
32:00 - 32:30 was sort of um i would say teen pre-teen um sort of emerging adult uh sort of audience here um which is different from maybe some more of you know traditional adult shows and so what you end up having is looking at what are the messages then being communicated to a younger audience you know maybe adolescent to preteen to teen here um associated with the fosters and specifically i looked at because you could you could analyze television in a number of ways but i was really interested in the representation of lena
32:30 - 33:00 and staff as both um an interracial as well as an uh as a lesbian couple and in many ways the series over time and there's been multiple seasons but the series and looking at the first few seasons you see um that it normalizes the lesbian couple right they're just two moms trying to figure out how to be a family in these multiple ways um but what you find in the series is just how
33:00 - 33:30 normal it is to see affection um physical intimacy um at one point they're thinking about starting you know perhaps getting pregnant um and so there's one episode where even they're having what any perhaps married couple with kids might have which is trying to figure out a time to end up having their own romantic sexual time together and maybe it has to be in the car in the driveway because they just have so many kids and so many obligations um but what's interesting again is how it just ends up normalizing
33:30 - 34:00 um there's sort of romantic and sexual intimacy in in the series and that's what's also important is thinking about um while we may end up having more representation of queer romantic partnerships um what we tend to find still is that sexual intimacy and you know sort of i won't say sex scenes but having any type of sexual intimacy often is still considered taboo when we look at romantic relationships associated with same-sex couples um the other clip i wanted to show
34:00 - 34:30 briefly um and i think we have time here is when lena talks to one of her foster sons about again sort of um gender expression and so he's being bullied at school associated with with wearing nail polish and so she tries to sort of talk to him about this and and ultimately um you know he's kind of confused as to you know you know why he's being bullied and things like that but i think here's a really sort of um touching scene of mothering that i think is is important
34:30 - 35:00 here you know just a little dab do the trick okay
35:00 - 35:30 steph and i are at home we hold hands and kiss really well we used to do it a lot more often but we've just been really busy lately what does being busy have to do with holding hands okay we're getting a little off track here um my point is sometimes when we're we're out in the new neighborhood or we're walking home late to our car
35:30 - 36:00 we won't hold hands why some people out there are afraid of what's different sometimes they want to hurt people like steph and me so every time we're out and i want to hold steph's hand but i decide not to i get mad i'm mad at the people who might want to hurt us but mad at myself too it's not standing up to them the thing is
36:00 - 36:30 if you're taught to hide what makes you different you end up feeling a lot of shame about who you are and that's not okay there is nothing wrong with you for wearing nail polish just like there's nothing wrong with me for holding steph's hand what's wrong is the people out there who make us feel unsafe on the one hand we can say they're just
36:30 - 37:00 a normal family they're just like everyone else and yet that scene mentions specifically a few unique stressors and things that sort of that steph and lena face as well as their foster son right and one is this idea of sometimes we feel we're fearful of being out as a couple right we recognize that there's hate that there's potential violence that there's right homophobia out there and so we're just cautious of that and and yet it's not right and so i think that's also important that the
37:00 - 37:30 series throughout the seasons do address some unique issues associated with same-sex couples specifically um with this lesbian couple steph and laina and also um a wonderful scene that reinforces to jude right that there's nothing wrong if he chooses to wear nail polish then it's really it's not it's who he is and that should be just fine um but to also you know recognize that it's it's the problem is other people not him and so i think that's a really unique scene there that highlights um
37:30 - 38:00 the series okay the other series that i want to speak to real quick is sense8 um and specifically since eight follows a number of individuals across the world it was uh directed by the wachowski sisters if you know um they were the ones that directed the matrix which i think is coming there's a new one coming out soon um and sense8 focuses on um just that uh these uh eight individuals who are i wouldn't say psychically connected but
38:00 - 38:30 they're connected they are able to access each other's sort of knowledge skills and feelings and experiences but also sometimes they can literally transcend and visit each other across the world and so you end up having these eight characters in different places and spaces um and it's sort of a sci-fi series it aired for two seasons it was cancelled and because there was such a huge audience that demanded it come back they ended up having a two-hour finale a movie finale and so that's also
38:30 - 39:00 the power of audiences sometimes to think about how well the series was it was just very popular and it but it was cancelled because of i guess it's probably more expensive than i think one of the reasons was it was shot in around the world it was more expensive than game of thrones to be shot uh that that was why it was cancelled um but audiences definitely wanted an ending to the series um one it is sort of a wrap up well one of the things that i love about sense8
39:00 - 39:30 is that in many ways it is queering identities in relationships and what i mean is that when you look at the different characters there are just a wide diversity of romantic relationships going on in the series um and so for example you know having nomi and amita who are an interracial transgender lesbian relationship you have leto hernando and daniela daniela ends up sort of being i called the non-normative threesome because lido and hernando are our two gay men in their relationship but they sort of allow her to be um the
39:30 - 40:00 third partner um and then finally uh uh kalia wolfgang and rajan it's interesting they take the trope of the love triangle who will she choose will it be wolfgang or rajon and not to spoil it um she doesn't have to decide the series ends up having it be accepted that they can be in a polyamorous relationship and so i think here what we have is not just queer characters but also looking at
40:00 - 40:30 this querying of romantic relationships um the other thing it was probably one of considered one of the sexiest series on netflix um and one of the things that was talked about was um in both season one and two there is a polysexual orgy that occurs so you have these very very attractive sexual very attractive people who end up having these sort of um orgies that occur but in many ways it's not so much that the orgies are just orgies but rather
40:30 - 41:00 it's rethinking how we relate to others and so it ends up being a way to how they end up sort of connecting not just right sexually but also psychically and and physically and so um one of the analysis i did was looking at how the song that's going on during the cluster uh orgy i guess you could say is played and if you look at the the dot the the lyrics to the song you can see how this in some ways is trying to resist
41:00 - 41:30 what we think about in terms of monogamous relationships so the the the dial the the lyrics say everyone is freaks and harry's dykes and fairies tell me where is sanity i'd love to but i don't know what to do so i'll leave it up to you and so the lyrics sort of reinforce the transformative energy of of sex and sexuality is not just sort of one person or two people but many people and so perhaps it's a way of thinking differently of possibilities um or you could just watch the series and be like there are really sexy people
41:30 - 42:00 having an orgy okay so what should we think about in terms of the future of queer pop culture well we continue to have controversies um i don't know how many of you have gone to see eternals at um just came out in the movie theater um eternals was banned in china as well as several other countries because there is a gay character and has a same-sex kiss with his husband um and there's also been controversy the new dc comics superman was announced as a bisexual character and so you continue
42:00 - 42:30 to have um these controversies resistance um a lot of times folks are talking about how somehow right these are these are characters and we don't need to have any type of sexuality um or any type of right sort of what will you know sort of the rhetoric sometimes is what will what will the children think how will we protect the children okay um but i think what we're seeing again is that we continue to have um queer pop culture is on the rise and and is is being in many ways uh um marginal or not marginalized but sort of um put into the
42:30 - 43:00 forefront um the last thing i want to say because i want to just wrap up here and have time for questions is not just again centering characters but centering stories um and i want to show a clip here um sort of snl got kind of funny with this but like lately we've had the rise of what's known as lesbian period dramas in film and snl sort of did a skit here that i thought was funny and thinking about um and sort of making fun of these lesbian period dramas and
43:00 - 43:30 sort of the sort of the the patterns of of uh or sort of things that are going on in the lesbian period drama so i want to show a real clip a clip of that and then end with talking a little bit about disclosure the documentary okay so i don't know if it was i find it hilarious but but again sort of thinking about centering queer stories um and
43:30 - 44:00 clearly there seems to be an increase of lesbian period dramas for snl to sort of um play on that the final thing i wanted to say is that i see the future of pop culture increasing in terms of representation of gender queer characters and transgender identities and i think a really great documentary for anyone is the netflix documentary disclosure which focuses on just that is looking at the history of trans individuals in in television and film and also perhaps where uh that will go so um but i am gonna wrap it up because
44:00 - 44:30 i would love to hear from you i've been talking now for about 50 minutes and would love to to get a discussion going and so i really appreciate your time and consideration but man i want to hear from all of you so please feel free to to ask me questions and let's have a dialogue thank you nothing you can hear
44:30 - 45:00 all right thank you so much dr young for that presentation for those of you who don't know me i'm dr kristen lafollette i'm an assistant professor in the english department but i'm going to be facilitating our question and answer this afternoon so i did see that we had one question come in someone was curious about um so we see more queer representations since the 90s and they're kind of wondering maybe what happened from the 90s to the present that led to the trend of us seeing more queer
45:00 - 45:30 representation in the media yeah that's a really good question i think so one of the things about pop culture is how it's both a reflection of the cultural shifts right um that are going on in larger society as well as also it's not just a reflection but also can be a way of making those shifts as well and so what we see is um i think a cultural shift over time of just more acceptance and so what you end up having are um even before sort of i one of the
45:30 - 46:00 big sort of moments i think was when ellen came out on her series uh that's one of sort of that one of those big moments in television um but you start to see more of that partly because i think there's greater acceptance i think you end up having more television i also think that you end up having you know cultural shifts and attitudes about lgbtq individuals change over time and so it's reflected in media as well as media sort of potentially making those changes as well as i said like the greater visibility sometimes can help
46:00 - 46:30 people to to have attitudes change about particular groups of people they may have not have been exposed to or may interact on a daily basis um and so there are a lot of changes gosh i mean we can talk about the history but you know the 80s was really sort of a focus on the hiv aids epidemic right um and then sort of i would say you start to have things like don't ask don't tell in the 90s and 2000s you end up having a push of activism for marriage equality and same-sex marriage right you end up having a lot of these
46:30 - 47:00 sort of cultural shifts i think that ultimately are reflected in media and so that actually leads well into our next question someone was curious about what you think about the usi community and if you think our university community is uh is or maybe like a better way to frame this is how can we bring more awareness to the usi community to create a more inclusive and accepting space on campus
47:00 - 47:30 sure i think one thing is having lectures like this i think right opportunities for dialogue are really important recognizing that we have faculty across the university who do this type of research who do things right are related to different uh right uh minority groups so it doesn't necessarily have to be right lgbtq um but i think that's one thing that's really important is recognizing that our faculty can be resources especially for our students who may not even realize that this is some of the
47:30 - 48:00 stuff that we do i think another thing are some of the the small things so for example um i know a lot of us over in liberal arts we include sort of pronouns right and having small little things like adding pronouns and recognizing our students um right pronouns um i'm also thinking things like for example um questioning sort of you know um i just had a lecture on on talking about transgender rights and talking about like where are for example gender neutral bathrooms on campus right
48:00 - 48:30 how is that right um that small little thing can potentially communicate to students and faculty and staff right that we are much more inclusive and so there's these little things i think that are really important for us to address um that are really significant right as simple as including examples in our lectures um where you end up having you know a same-sex couple right i think those little things do matter um so i think that's sort of the first step is is sort of reflecting on what are the practices that we have here at usi and what we can do to to better that
48:30 - 49:00 yeah absolutely someone when i did my queer studies lecture back in september someone asked a similar question and i touched on some of those same things that i get questions from students about those things too like where are the gender neutral restrooms on campus and those kinds of things so i think i think it's good to talk about that um dr lynn did you have any questions do we have any more i always have questions
49:00 - 49:30 so i actually going back to the start of your talk when you were talking about terminology which is always great because i know like i i feel sometimes lost as well um but you know i there was some pushback recently about using queer for an older generation of people who grew up with queer as as an epitaph right like as something that was hurled at them um as a slur and so have you seen this
49:30 - 50:00 kind of same thing this resistance to using that phrase and or i don't know maybe like how you would address that trepidation of older generations of people who don't like the word yeah i think it's so as a communication scholar one of the things that i'm fascinated with is the the i don't say evolution of language but how language shifts and changes over time right so for example i talk to my
50:00 - 50:30 students and i say look when i was in college right um is the first time i even heard of some of these terms and that for me um what resonated for me was when i came out was i identify as bisexual right and so now for many younger people they see that term almost as outdated right that they're saying look what about pansexuality right like so there's always i think language that's evolving that's changing that's shifting but the words should resonate with the individual in many ways right that says
50:30 - 51:00 look this is if this is a word or term that allows me to um be able to communicate my identity to be able to express right who i am then that's extremely important i will say absolutely that the term queer right comes from a very negative place but it's also the sort of what i would call reclaiming the term i see more and more of the usage of term queer as a way to reclaim um and empower individuals by saying look this was something that was
51:00 - 51:30 a derogatory term used to attack to bully to write and now we're taking it back and that can be a really powerful tool in in sort of engaging in in terms of empowering oneself um but if you don't use the term right that that's okay too right i think what it is is having those discussions about language and how language can change over time i keep learning new terminology for my for my students right um again like gender fluid right like these are terms that you know genderqueer like
51:30 - 52:00 these language continues to evolve and i think that's important that we have these discussions about again where the terminology comes from but also how it can be used in powerful ways today thank you yes so yes thank you for that because i i have students ask me those questions a lot too like i heard that this term was not acceptable but i hear people still using it and it's just a recognition of the way that language changes over time
52:00 - 52:30 good way to segue into lessons about that i think in my classes at least um okay so this is a question that i didn't even think of but i love this and i i'm interested to hear what you have to say about this but someone asked what do you think about heterosexual actors playing queer characters um they said let's see on social media a lot of queer people have an issue with it whereas others think it's acceptable because regardless queer people and queer stories are being represented
52:30 - 53:00 and they said as a queer person i do feel slightly bothered that queer actors are not always used for queer roles so what do you think about that i think it's a it's a tough one i think that what we need are more stories that are queer centric that allow for possibilities for mo right for more um lgbtq actors to play those roles i i think that you're absolutely right i
53:00 - 53:30 think that um but i think it's also a challenge because there are times where you end up having right the director chooses an actor based upon their celebrity status you know and so they not necessarily might not identify as queer but i think what we need is trying to find more not just characters that are queer and actors who are queer occupying those spaces but i think we need more writers and directors and filmmakers and television producers who are um i think that's also extremely
53:30 - 54:00 important it's not just who's on the screen but also who's writing those stories um and even with um the snl skit right they mentioned like oh clearly they joked right the sex scene and they said clearly this is a man who's directing right because in fact reinforces that hypersexuality and so i think one of the things is not just looking at representation in terms of these characters and who who's performing those characters but also we need to just expand the stories we need more and when you have more than there are more opportunities for folks
54:00 - 54:30 to to you know tell those stories yeah it's been something that i have started doing recently whenever i'm watching a show or a film where there is a queer character i always want to know like is there representation here of an actual queer actor or actress like how how are they going about doing that in this but um yes well i i hear about that a lot and i i i think it's an interesting conversation to have because it is nice to have the representation but you also
54:30 - 55:00 want the real people behind the film and the show to be represented as well um okay so someone else asked do you believe people will get used to more queer representation they're thinking specifically about the movie eternals um and that apparently it was rated not i haven't actually seen the ratings for this but apparently it was rated as the worst marvel movie do you think it is possible having a gay character has something to do with the low reviews that it got
55:00 - 55:30 um so i went and saw it and i would say no um i mean i think i think and this is my critique of the film and and i apologize for folks who haven't seen the film i think they tried to do too much in a film format i think there was such a wide diversity of characters you need it to almost be a television series where you could focus on each character more so for me it wasn't so much you end up having the negative reviews be associated with the queer character but rather they try to
55:30 - 56:00 do too much in too little of time um but i do love that right you end up having for example the first marvel uh um character uh superhero who's deaf right i mean there's like there's there's clearly a wide diversity of representation in the film but the story perhaps isn't tight enough and i think that's what what sort of happened with the poor reviews yeah but that's my but that's my interpretation
56:00 - 56:30 good to know i i'm interested in seeing that but i i had not seen the reviews yet i i i look at rotten tomatoes too much in it and oh i didn't know i also think i think the film again this is sort of side tracker but i think the film didn't have to be connected to the marvel universe like for me it just it was almost they're trying to do too much again or um and it would have probably been a better and that's the different format between
56:30 - 57:00 television and film you're right television allows for going more in depth because you have it's over time so instead of two hours you have right 20 episodes or how many episodes you want right and so i think that that also is trying to compress everything into to one film might perhaps the format the medium itself might have been a disservice to the storytelling right right that makes sense uh okay let's see um what got you interested in this area of research and how do you think society
57:00 - 57:30 will change along with uh media becoming more accepting so besides the fact that um i love watching tv i i guess it wasn't until really grad school that i realized that i could do this as research so my background actually is in rhetorical studies so traditionally rhetoric and rhetorical criticism focuses on public speaking and speeches um but then looking at how texts right and text can be a number of things but like how a
57:30 - 58:00 film or a book or a television series right can be analyzed and so i was constantly trying to unpack what are the messages being you know what are my interpretations or messages being communicated in in tv so i i think that's i sort of stumbled across pop culture but i've always enjoyed watching television and pop culture um what was the second question i i think you kind of already addressed it in that earlier question but they had asked like how do you think that um
58:00 - 58:30 society i guess maybe what they're getting at is do you see society changing as more as media is becoming more inclusive and accepting i think so too i think also we have um a multiplicity of platforms so for example streaming services have played a huge role in expanding audiences i mean if you go onto any platform you can also see how algorithms allow you to sort of um segment into genres you can go and look at lgbtq right sort of genre and then
58:30 - 59:00 there'll be suggestions there i also see you know things like facebook live and tick tock which allow for um just about anyone to generate and create right um videos that can write um present particular stories or characters or even comment associated with cultural issues and so i think that's also interesting traditionally we've had sort of the top down of these are the media producers and now people are are sort of
59:00 - 59:30 in also producing their own media and so the i think the more you have it the more you end up having folks having dialogue um associated with with queer media and queer pop culture yes thank you so i think in the interest of time maybe we'll wrap up with this last question here so okay this person is thinking about because you talked a bit about how gay
59:30 - 60:00 characters they're sometimes the trope that um gay characters are presented as scheming or sinister and so they were wondering whether or not that representation has anything to do with the fact that historically people who identified as lgbtq have had to hide their identity because of the impact that society would have um if they knew the truth about that identity oh yeah absolutely and i think what it is is again pop culture and tropes are
60:00 - 60:30 reflecting of larger societal norms and so what you end up seeing right is that if you end up having homophobic stereotypes such as you know gay men or sexual predators right or uh right any of those sort of horrible stereotypes you know homosexuality is a sin right you have all of these sort of negative things the tropes are going to reflect those stereotypes and so i think one of the things is that absolutely you also probably as as the person had said sort of um the fact that um
60:30 - 61:00 you know you end up having oftentimes queer uh individuals because of their stigmatized identity not coming out or right not having to be secretive of um their particular sexual orientation or gender identity um that that also plays a role in sort of the idea of the scheming villain right of being secretive or non-trusting but absolutely those tropes are going to reflect larger societal norms that are often homophobic transphobic right and stereotypical
61:00 - 61:30 and i said that was the last one but there's one more that i think it would be really interesting to hear your response to so i will ask this really quick but this person was interested in if you have researched um queer representation in stories and characters in films and shows from other countries and if so how has that differed from the work you've done um with shows and films within the us i have not and that is one of those areas where i really that you're you're
61:30 - 62:00 showing off right you're telling me like have you done that i was like it's on the list of things to do um but yes i would love to look at more global media one of the things that i tell folks is not only do i do sort of queer pop culture but i'm also very interested associated with again with not just gender and sexuality but also racial issues and so representation of for example asian american women in in media and so what i really am interested in eventually doing on the list of things that i want to do is looking at
62:00 - 62:30 queer identities in korean um kdramas i think that to me would be interesting because you know sort of recently right squid game was a huge you know success globally so um korean dramas and korean pop culture i think has just become a global phenomenon and so i'd be really interested in doing more of sort of looking at queer representation in kdramas and and korean pop culture so that is on the list of things to do
62:30 - 63:00 that would be awesome because there's so much good content coming out of south korea right now and i myself have been watching a lot of them but i want to say thank you to dr young for taking time out of her very busy schedule to share some of her research and i want to encourage students that you know if you want to know more because a lot of you had some really great questions there are two professors right here right in front of you who teach fantastic classes on campus who could teach you some of
63:00 - 63:30 these things we we've been talking about all semester so introduction to queer studies with dr laflette and dr young teaches in communications so lgbt rhetorics i know is a class for upper level communications majors but we have it in the gender studies minor it will certainly be in any future classes for queer studies that we hope to have so if you have more questions i would encourage you to talk to dr young and dr lafollette because we are lucky to have
63:30 - 64:00 them on campus with us so thank you everyone for coming um and thank you for everyone who's been attending our our lectures this semester i think it's been a lot of fun um and we will certainly continue these someday just you know give us a chance to plan them again so thank you everyone for coming this has been really fantastic thank you both for teaching us so much teaching me so much too and thank you to carolyn for being our backdoor person on zoom for every single
64:00 - 64:30 one of our queer studies talks so thank you all for coming and enjoy the rest of your week and the rest of your semester so