"Wait… is this gay representation?"
Less theory, more geek for this entry.
I just have to give a little shout out to Brian K. Vaughn and Lost for the scene which made me utter this post’s subject line in a tone of disbelief. And, most especially, for the fact that they did not leave the queerness of two men getting very familiar with one another in a hotel room in the realm of the subtextual:
Minor character, gratuitously queer with no particular relevance to plot and no angst whatsoever. Imagine that! It’s almost like watching Doctor Who (Russell T Davies edition, the last season of which featured bisexual Shakespeare and two little old ladies married to one another, in addition to Captain Jack‘s equal opportunity lechery). Given that Vaughn, who wrote this episode, slipped a wee Doctor cameo into the Buffy Season 8 comic he wrote, I suspect I’m not the only one seeing the resemblance in strategies for queer representation.
There is, of course, a lengthy critique to be made about the kinds of meaning attached to queerness on TV (US TV in particular, though certainly not exclusively) that caused this blink-and-miss-it moment to make me jump up and down in my chair with glee quite so hard. But I just finished Battlestar Galactica S3 and I have a lengthy post about Starbuck brewing that will definitely be going there; I think I’ll save it for that.
*ETA: Sorry, I forgot to resize the image and now it will mess up your RSS reader, if mine is anything to judge by.*
Hey. I haphazardly came across your blog, and I’m very glad I did. It’s nice to find another Queer Geek out there who’s also very into Theory. I’m a sophomore at Princeton and I’m trying hard to make my own major, based on Critical Theory (so some Queer Theory, Feminist Thought, Postmodernism, Psychoanalysis, Marxist thought, Postcolonialism, etc.). I’m meeting with some resistance unfortunately, but I’m still up for fighting the good fight! I have a core of supportive professors and it looks likely that my proposal will be approved. We’ll see. Anyway, I look forward to seeing what else you post (if you start posting again). Take care.
Oh and p.s. I’m also into some sf books like Neuromancer and The Matrix, and the futurity-related stuff (and critical focus on “reality”). I figured you might be interested as well.
Hi Princetonian, and yay for fellow queer geeks! Good luck with your major — it sounds like you really know your stuff, and that’s a great set of theories to be studying.
Neuromancer isn’t my favourite sf, I must admit, but I think that’s largely because I read the hype before the novel. Wendy Chun has a great critique of Gibson and his mythology in Control and Freedom (the second chapter, I think).
The blog is definitely not abandoned (I have a half-baked post sitting on my desktop…) I’ve just been extremely busy. I need to get into a more regular posting schedule. In fact, I think your comment might have shamed me into pulling something out of my personal archives to post!
WordPress mistakenly interpreted my punctuation as an emoticon! Huh. I like emoticons as much as the next geek, but that’s annoying.
Good piece! Found this interesting article on Queer and marriage. Not quite on representation but some of your ideas made me think of this.
http://o.b5z.net/i/u/10034758/f/Jones_Sexless_Marriage_Sextures_Volume_1_Issue_1_Enl.pdf