Jonathan Caouettes Tarnation (2003) A montage language for.docx

Jonathan Caouette's Tarnation (2003):
A montage language for coming into queer selfhood
Lecture notes, clips, and resources
1. Lecture summary: We started with a discussion of
“aestheticism,” noticing
the way that aestheticist strategies which coded sexuality and
spirituality as
“artistic form” in the work of Oscar Wilde – and usually as
“excessive” artistic
form which subverts the relation between confession,
transgression, and
medical pathologization or legal punishment. We saw the way
this oddly
direct and indirect insistence informed the mediation of Alla
Nazimova's first
self-produced film in Hollywood in 1922, in her treatment of
Salomé – the
transposition of aestheticist strategies from nineteenth century
stage to
twentieth century screen, where by “aesthetic” flow seems to
float above the
“spaces of confinement” figured in the play and the film – the
court of Herod,
an almost prison-like space of confinement where Salomé
becomes mobile
dances the “Dance of the Seven Veils,” disappearing into a
stream of liquid
texture. Too, we see Salomé occupying key sites of imagination:
Salomé as
the rarest of white peacocks, as inheritor of hidden jewels.

Thus, while the
film lacks overt representation of queer identities or
embodiments or
political problematics, we notice the way Nazimova built her
proposal for a
modern cinema on a notorious work by a queer aestheticist
writer, Oscar
Wilde, on the one hand, and we noticed this proposal for a freer
cinema as
coming within a tension between confinement, on one hand, and
a higher-
level movement of fluidity and flow that moves through those
“confined
spaces,” and travels through this highly coded work of queer art
as a whole.
You may have also noticed the way that even a recent film like
Moonlight
seems to alternate between patterns of “flow” and spaces of
“confinement.”
2. Recent, more representationalist films continue to make us
question how a
self that is disciplined through social institutions as “abnormal”
finds their
way towards expression, a “language” relating self and society.
This effort
inevitably entails marshalling social relations, ideas of the self,
material
resources, self-presence, and even a kind of historical
momentum towards
some futural desire, enabling an engagement with self-
fashioning that does
not simply end with their own termination – either in medical
terms, as
“perverse” or “insane,” or in legal terms, as “punk” who will be

institutionalized in order to be further punished. Here, the
materials and
effects of aesthetic experience are not simply sense and
sensation but also
the mediation of self and society in terms of embodied memory
and
embodied desire. Thus, the history-making queer cinemas of the
later 20th
century, from Kenneth Anger, Jean Genet, through Barbara
Hammer and
Cheryl Dunye, move from asserting the embodied self as the
site of self- and
social fashioning, and towards embodied memory and desire as
“aesthetic
material.”
3. The implication here is that some process of self-assertion
takes place that is
both individual and collective, and yet, happens in the manner
that in some
ways corresponds to the composition of, or exhibition of, an
artwork: just as
an artwork in the modern sense renders the invisible visible, so
the process
of queer self-fashioning makes the queer self visible and
audible, and tactile.
We can see Rigoberto González' act of writing blossoming from
the
“cocooned” spaces of his youth in a similar way.
For Hammer, the notion of self-naming in a paradoxically
realist “politics of
abstraction” was crucial not only to understanding self and
social making,

but also to a search for queer history that would lay the
groundwork for a
future politics. As Laura Sullivan suggests, Cheryl Dunye
insisted on the
historical register as well, and on the at times necessarily
fictive nature of
queer history – you may have to invent the history you need in
order to move
fully into the future. In these films, “montage” is crucial to the
presenting of
queer self presence as having both the powers of memory and
the powers of
desire, that is, both past and future, even if neither past nor
future is neither
given nor secure.
4. Jonathan Caouette's Tarnation draws on the larger problem
here – how is it
that a self without historical precedent engages in a historical
process that
renders itself present despite official, institutional, as well as
unofficial,
“popular” campaigns of terror that render their history vacant in
an attempt
to cancel out their future?
5. And the film also relies on the montage of aesthetic form
and, in fact, of queer
self fashioning, that allows Jonathan to tell the story of his own
coming into a
sense of self. Most remarkably, his story not only tells of his
own coming to
self-presence, but it unearths the story of his mother's loss of
self-presence,
and embraces his mother's fractured, fraught, sometimes cruel
story of

trying to hang on to her own sense of self in the midst of an
extreme policing
and pathologization of female sexuality. Here, too, we recall
Salomé, and the
ways in which Wilde presented queer aesthetics as much as a
problem of
queer practices of self-making as much as a problem of “racial
othering” (the
reflexive Orientalism of that work) as well as the punishment
and policing of
female desire.
6. Just as Foucault claimed that the diagnosis of the abnormal
was “a new form
of racism,” and described it appearing on the basis of the
medical policing of
female desire as well as ideas about labor, we should see “queer
self-
fashioning” as, in fact, a kind of work, the affective and
material labor of
“making up” a queer self that can sustain historical memory and
futural
desire in acts marking our self-presence.
7. Doubling of practices of looking, as Halberstam suggested;
archival practices
of re-reading history, as in Foucault or in Stone's essay; self-
naming, as in
Hammer's “politics of abstraction”; and the calculation, through
digital
montage, of a history that is necessarily as fictive as it is
descriptive: all of
these are engaged by Caouette in Tarnation.

8. Jonathan's own process of self-naming relies on what appears
to be his
claiming of a fictive, speculative, or at least often questionable
version of his
mother's history, by means of which he not only recovers his
own
experiments in the act of self-making, but further, by the end of
the film, ends
up re-assembling not simply a film of his life, but his actual
nuclear family,
when he is able to gather himself, his mother, his birth father
(and
presumably his lover), in his New York apartment at the end of
the film.
9. The result, wavering between horror-style images of the self
as fractured and
contingent, and music video style sequences that present this
fractured and
contingent self as precariously enduring in lived time, serves to
relate his
own coming of age to his mother's precarious sense of
personhood. In fact,
Jonathan crafts this memoir out of samples of popular media
genres: horror,
on the one hand, and music video, on the other. The result is a
story in which
“saying I” is not a given, but a poetic feat achieved against and
in spite of an
array of extraordinary forces: the patriarchal “nuclear family”;
predatory
social relationships; medical and legal diagnostics and policing;
gendered and
sexed logics of freedom or dependency; and no less important,
the
audiovisual mediation of the self as fractured and dissociated in

the
postmodern, high tech mediascape of the mid-to-late 20th and
early 21st
centuries.
10. Digital filters and effects suggesting the fragmentation and
cohering of the
self, differentiating the use of film (horror) and television genre
(music
video) styles suggest, respectively, the horror of the violence
experienced by
a contingent, fracturing self, and the self image thereof, as well
as the
precarious reintegration of that self, speaking to its futural
movement,
through audiovisual practices making the use of digital
composition
techniques an allegory for queer self fashioning.
2. Clips:
6:00 min.: holding on to the image of his mother – this image
works as a cipher for
the rest of the film, suggesting both Jonathan Caouette's own
narrative of coming of
age while experiencing dissociation disorder and various kinds
of traumatic
experience and abuse, along with the entangled narrative of his
mother's becoming
schizophrenic: two entangled stories of “dissociation” as
“kinship”.
The language of the film is established here. First, the use of
music video-stye
composition to produce the effect of retroactive history being
narrated. Second, the

use of “horror-film” like imagery to suggest a self whose sense
of personhood is
entirely contingent on processes of mediation rather than, say,
an internal sense of
selfhood or kinship relation. Third, digital effects emphasizing
“multiplication”
suggest the forces at work: Renee's becoming ill, with the
opposite effect of de-
multiplication suggesting some temporary return to the
appearance, if not the
reality, of “normative” selfhood.
8:00 min: music video borrowed as narrative form … in the
absence of some actual
coherent narrative of selfhood. The soundtrack here is “Naked
as We Came,” by the
group Iron and Wine, suggesting the sense of intimate bodies
being exposed and
made highly vulnerable to powerful and violent forces.
10:45: Renee meets Steve …
12:00: To Glenn Campbell's “I am a Lineman for the County,”
Jonathan is adopted by
his grandparents (his mother now placed in jail or otherwise
institutionalized), and
then, in foster homes. Jonathan is subjected to abuse in foster
care. Renee's parents
continue to order shock treatment for her in Austin State
Hospital, so that at 25
years old, little trace of her personality remained.
16:00: “My name … is ...” Jonathan as abused housewife,

giving “testimony”
20:00: “Hi camera … coughing … TB – I got TB … tobacco and
beer!” Rosemary
appears in his “Movie”
22:16: Young Jonathan explains himself... Renee's narrative is
entangled with his.
43:45: 1992: “Do something else, you know?” …. The self as
doll or as puppet whose
strings are being pulled by some other agent. Here, Renee
cannily performs as doll,
but with herself pulling the strings … a complex performance of
objectification,
instrumentalization and abuse, and selfhood.
44:00 min.: "nobody on the line"; the self as a lip-synching
subject in formation, to
the track “Diviner,” by a little known group called Hex (Steve
Kilbey, of The Church,
and Donnette Thayer, of Game Theory). Here, the
“multiplication” and “re-
integration” of the self are stabilized and endure in time,
without becoming a
normative portrait of the author.
3. Resources:
A. Here, the lyrics to Hex' song “Diviner”, used in the key
sequence starting at about
44:00 minutes, above, in which Jonathan is pictured lip-
synching in a video taken of
him as a teenager. His face is digitally post-processed so that it
hangs together in a
doubled pattern that both makes him identifiable as a person but

distorted in a
struggle to cohere as a person. It is as if here he is able, through
a performance of
musical self-imagining borrowed from the logics of music
television, to balance his
identity amidst the processes of fragmentation and reintegration
that have defined
his mother's struggle for selfhood.
“High, after the summer
Find all the wells are drunk dry
Miles and miles of starburn
Branded on the hide of the night
Diviner
Low, before the winter
Loser, these vessels are full
Drop between drop of moonshine
Slipping on the surface of our day
Diviner (Water underground)
Diviner (Rock ceiling fossil pool)
Diviner (Blind transparent fish)
Diviner (Seek the liquid dark)
b. Caouette followed up Tarnation with another film that
concentrates more on his
mother's attempts to maintain her fragile mental health. That
film is called Walk Away
Renee, and it also uses digital effects in often stunning ways to
suggest what Caouette
sees as his mother's experience of the world around her, during
a road trip from Texas to

New York in which they lose her medication and cannot get
refills because she is
between doctors. It's available online, and is worth seeing,
especially if you plan on
writing on Tarnation.
The Watermelon Woman
We've seen that queer aesthetics are the materials, methods,
techniques, and effects that support queer
poesis – queer self making and queer social making.
What techniques do the films Watermelon Woman and Nitrate
Kisses use in order to dramatize queer
poesis, and to what ends?
1. Intermediality: relations between media as meaningful as
content within medium.
2. montage: construction requires active viewers putting
together the pieces.
3. Self-naming: “I am a Black, lesbian filmmaker.” Hammer's
reflection in mirror.
4. embodied performance: performing as “Cheryl” in front of
camera; musical
performances included in the film.
5. creation of “historical material” (mockumentary AND mock-
autobiography)
6. use of music and musicality – however off key! - in the
visual image
7. depiction of erotic self and intimate sociality
How do these techniques compare between both films?

1. Both are eminently concerned with historical, personal,
cultural, and sexual memory.
2. One argues that political liberation in the present, for the
future, demands that we FIND the
fragments out of which we can piece these histories together.
3. The other argues that if you cannot find them, that is also a
function of power, and that you
may need to CREATE the history you need to live in your body
and your community.
How many sources of archival memory does Cheryl find (that
is, does Cheryl Dunye invent) in her
search for the “real” Watermelon Woman?
1. video rentals (consumer artifacts)
2. “on the street” or “on campus” interviews with everyday
people or with film students
3. her mom (and her “files” in the basement, that is, boxes of
disorganized personal stuff)
4. Tamara's friend Lee, a collector, with an extensive fan
collection
5. the local library (with several sources potentially helpful, but
an elitist, exclusive attitude)
6. Shirley Hamilton (her mom's old friend, and a member of the
Philadelphia lesbian community)
7. How about the love scenes with Diana (Guinevere Turner)? Is
desire a source of information?
(see clip ending around 44 min.)
8. Camille Paglia, that is, academically-situated “cultural
critics”
9. Performance by “Sistah Sound at Women's Community
Center” (51:28); or the folk singer on
the street after Cheryl misses June but receives her documents

(1:08:52)
10. Family of Martha Page, located by Diana
11. Center for Lesbian Information Technology (also not helpful
- coded as “white”)
12. June (Faye Richards' lover, whom Cheryl doesn't get to meet
because of a health emergency)
What institutions or sites of memory production and recovery
involving sexual memory - besides
industrial Hollywood - does Cheryl discover? Why is recovering
“sexual memory” - that is, memory of
our intimate erotic lives that we can use to locate ourselves in
history and in culture – so difficult?
1. The video store itself
2. the “street” - everyday life itself becomes an archive to the
extent people respond
3. private homes and personal memory communicated orally
4. Informal unorganized archives – like her mom's basement
5. informal organized archives like Lee's
6. formal archives like libraries or CLIT
7. historical jazz clubs pictured in photos
8. local community groups
9. local social events based around music
10. black film production histories
11. NAACP
12. universities (Bryn Mawr)
13. factories or worker communities like the one where Shirley
worked
14. others?
The film's staging of these sources and sites seem to be a
response to Hammer's imperative in Nitrate

Kisses to go out and rediscover your own history: if your own
history doesn't exist, you may have to
invent it. What are some of the implications of such a
comparison of Nitrate Kisses with Watermelon
Woman?
Each says that “self making” and “social making” are also a
matter of “history making” as well as
“making futures.” Sexual “histories” and “genealogies,” in
fragments or in fictive form, are an
important potentiality of queer poesis that becomes material and
knowable through queer aesthetic
practices.
1. self-making
2. social making
3. historical documentation
4. political futurity
Sullivan notes
Clips:
Ch. 5, ca. 40 min.
Ch. 7, ca. 56:30 min.
Ch. 7, ca. 1:01 min.
Ch. 1, ca. 0:00.
Ch. 8, ca 1:10.
Laura Sullivan, “Chasing Fae: "The Watermelon Woman" and
Black Lesbian
Possibility”
1. Sullivan argues that this groundbreaking film uses both

"deconstructive" and
"realist" techniques "to examine the way that identity in
contemporary U.S. culture"
of the 1990s "is shaped by multiple forces, primarily race,
gender, and sexual
orientation." The film both "de-centers" and "represents" the
"identity and history
of a figure most invisible in the textual production of the
dominant culture - the
black lesbian" (448).
2. It does this work by combining narrative and documentary
forms in a kind of
"meta-fiction" in which "Cheryl" at times addresses the camera
to talk about her film
project: a film within a film, thus, a meta-narrative or meta-
fiction. Thus, Cheryl's
struggle in the story to make a film about “Fae Richardson”
works as a kind of
reflexive version of the film itself. This is a common quality of
meta-narrative or
meta-fiction: a film within a film, or a story within a story,
makes us think reflexively
about the film or story we are seeing or reading, and it makes us
think about not
only what we are seeing or reading, but how. In this way, highly
reflexive narratives
can often be seen as explicitly asking their viewers or readers
about how and why
they see the world as they do: such stories ask us to participate
in a critical way with
the presentation of the story.
3. So, here, Sullivan is arguing that this film about recovering a
black, lesbian actress'
story is also reflexively about the way we value a black, lesbian

director; Cheryl's
determination to find "Fae" and make a film about her is
reflexively a sign of Cheryl
Dunye's determination to become a director. Thus, there is a key
moment in the
film: when Cheryl says that "I am a black, lesbian director," this
moment stands out
especially once we later notice the closing title that tells us that
the Watermelon
Woman is a fiction - she never really existed.
4. Thus, telling a story about race, gender, and sexual
orientation in film history, is
also a way of "performing" and of "transforming" the race,
gender, and sexual
orientation of film production. A key transformation happens in
both the fictive and
reflexive aspects of the film: Cheryl makes a film about the a
forgotten black actress,
who was made to be invisible and forgotten turns out to have
lived a vibrant life, full
of love and community; Cheryl Dunye makes a film about
making sure that not only
will she herself not be forgotten, but she will have the authority
that will prevent
that from happening.
5. But wait - isn't "class" a major shaping force in the film? We
might think of some
scenes from "Watermelon Woman" in which class is depicted as
the kind of shaping
force to which Sullivan refers. How well does Sullivan's
argument deal with class

issues or economic issues?
6. One important way class gets addressed in the film is through
Cheryl's
exploration of why she has a strong curiosity about, even a
desire for, a woman who
played multiple "mammy" roles in classical Hollywood cinema.
Sullivan argues that
in this film, Dunne exposes viewers to the history of seeing
black women as servants
and as "welfare mothers," and she exposes this history in a way
that also asks us to
critique it, rather than to accept it. Here, Sullivan mentions the
a clip that Cheryl
plays for "us" - a clip of Fe Richards playing a slave who
comforts her southern
mistress. (5:00) In this sequence, Sullivan argues, Dunne as
director "comments on
the historical continuity of the oppression of black women"
(449); the legacy of
slavery continues today, Sullivan argues the film shows, but
also, the stereotypes
derived from slavery continue to determine "acceptable" or
"normal" images of
black women, which negate the lived experience of women, and
helps to limit black
women's options for becoming producers of contemporary
culture (450).
7. Like other films by black women in this period, the film
addresses black women
as black persons, but that makes some people uncomfortable -
people who need to
know that history, too. So the film, instead of just relying on
"direct identification" in
which a film about black lesbians appeals primarily to black

lesbians, also tries to
create an "active viewer," tries in other words to create a
complex set of "viewing
mechanisms" by which to connect to the film and be actively
involved with its
primary subject matter of black lesbians in film history (450).
One key result, then,
is we have scenes in which "the black mammy" figure is
complicated as not simply a
negative stereotype, but, provocatively, an object of desire for a
black lesbian.
8. Sullivan points out this complex framing of a black lesbian
figure in relation to
film history in a key clip: Cheryl miming the words and
gestures of Fe in her
"mammy" role in Plantation Memories. This sequence, though,
is actually repeated
twice: the second time, in the final credit sequence, just before
we are told "Fae" was
entirely fiction.
What do you make of this sequence and the fact that it is
repeated twice? We
discussed this in lecture in terms of the use of "reflexivity" in
the film, and in terms
of challenging the non-black lesbian audience's "desires" for
this problem to be
"solved" for them by Cheryl's making the image of the
"mammy" only a matter of
"her" desire to be a director.
9. At the same time, though a primary emphasis is given to
black lesbian desire,
friendship, productivity, sociality, history, the film also takes
great pleasure in

emphasizing the sex scene between Cheryl and Diana: as
Sullivan points out, it
"documents the existence of interracial lesbian romances."
(40:00). How would you
compare the sex scene here to the ones in Nitrate Kisses?
10. Even though the film emphasizes difference in terms of
historical experience, it
also challenges any final or essentialist claim that difference
should be limiting or
confining: Cheryl clearly feels differently about documenting
Fae than either Shirley
or June, Fae's lover for the last 20 years of Fae's life. For
Cheryl, it is important to be
able to identify with a black lesbian who had an affair with a
white woman, as it is
important to be able to belong to a history of black lesbians who
fought to create
and maintain their own communities and cultures. (453).
11. Sullivan finally comes around to "class identity" on page
454, where she finds it
as complex as anything else in the film.
12.The film thus uses a range of "realist" techniques for their
"readability," and the
power here is that realism can be encourage identification and
politicization (456),
but it also deconstructs realist and documentary cinemas,
showing that these effects
are guaranteed by unstable, unreliable references and signs: we
are seduced
through the realism, but in a way that makes us question

cinema's ability to
"naturally" represent the world and history.
Barbara Hammer: Nitrate Kisses (1992) and "On the Politics of
Abstraction"
1. Aesthetic choices, rhetorical effects: as we have seen so far,
queer aesthetics is not about some
unified approach to art but rather a matter of making assertions
of self that often require
overturning the usual mapping between narrative and aesthetic
forms used to present images of
"personhood." Queer aesthetics since the mid-19th century has
had to do with “self-making,” as
well as “social making.” In fact, experimental documentary
work has taken on this kind of work
explicitly. Challenging narrative conventions is equivalent, in
Barbara Hammer's 1992
documentary essay Nitrate Kisses, to a politics of “self-naming”
which Hammer writes about in
her short essay about her approach, “The Politics of
Abstraction.”
2. In this essay, Hammer acknowledges that a variety of
theoretical paradigms have begun to be
taught in relation to sexual politics. But in her work, she
emphasizes a kind of abstraction that she
feels is “realistic” (73). It’s through a realism that relies on
overt, abstract uses of montage that
Hammer feels she can create the kind of name for herself and
and her lesbian community that is
adequately rich.

3. This realism is not what we usually think of as realism,
meaning representationally lifelike or
accurate; rather, it's more a kind of historical and personal
realism that insists on including first
person perspective and a kind of essayistic result that requires
the audience to think and feel what
she is conveying. Central to her style of realism is an effect of
"naming" rather than simply "re-
presenting." She writes: “I have chosen images rather than
words for the act of naming myself as
an artist and as a lesbian because the level of meanings possible
for images and image
conjunctions seemed richer and held more ramifications. I have
broken rules, studied the
construction of norms, and questioned restraints since I was a
little girl. It was not strange that I
chose to prace in the longtime artistic traditioin of breaking or
modifying the status quo in an
attempt to advance the dialogue. Generally speaking, my films
made in the seventies,
Dyketactics, Multiple Orgasm, Double Strength, Women I love,
and Superdyke, as well as others,
were made with this intention that grew from an unconscious
impulse to a conscious insistence on
lesbian naming” (72).
4. This self-naming is a politics in and of itself; it works againt
the tendency to be made historically
invisible that lesbians have suffered, and it is a necessary part
not only of reclaiming a history but
of documenting (in fact, of creating, of making) a history that is
adequate to one’s historical
reality. Self-naming and documenting history are both political
needs, and Hammer uses a
specific style of montage to achieve them in cinematic terms.

5. Notably, while she herself appears in the film, as a reflected
image of a woman holding a camera
in a window relatively late in the film – and notice the multiple,
complex “frames” implied in that
image – and we also hear her voice early on in the film, but
never “see her talking” in the
conventional manner of the “talking head” presentation we are
used to in typical documentary or
interview films about history. For Hammer, perhaps, including
her voice among other voices, and
her own image on a building among other images of bodies and
buildings is a form of self-naming
that can only really be achieved through both the articulation of
lesbian community and through
the reclaiming of lesbian history.
6. What kinds of aesthetic choices does she make? What are
we to make, particularly, of the
contrast between the abstract shots of vibrantly passionate,
sexual lesbian bodies and vacant,
abandoned buildings?
a. Black and white still images and moving images; sometimes
processed. Stark.
b. Often this is roughly shot, and sometimes, it is home movies,
or personal snapshots.
c. Then again, mass-produced, iconic images of sexualized
women: both Dietrich and
Garbo, icons for many in the lesbian community in part because
of their numerous roles
performed in men's clothing, show up in the film; or, pulp
lesbian fiction book covers.
d. Oral interviews on soundtrack, recorded by Hammer.
e. Realistic footage of lesbians (and sometimes, to a lesser

degree, of gay men), speaking,
walking outside in public, being seen together in public;
dancing; sometimes one
person’s face is pixillated, presumably to protect her identity.
f. Abstract footage shot by Hammer, of abandoned buildings;
g. And abstract, erotic footage of female bodies, often older, or
later in the film, younger;
not centered on the face, and equally interested in various
erogenous zones of the body.
h. In effect, the montage plays visibility against invisibility;
presence against abandonment.
i. The soundtrack is sometimes Hammer’s voice, sometimes the
voice of her interview
subjects; but these voices are spliced together in sampled
fragments which closely follow
on one another, and they are not synchronized with the bodies
on screen; they are all part
of a flowing, historical continuum that is attentive to
individuals but seems to be able to
make room for many views;
j. The views expressed include ideas about work, social
relations, physical pleasure. One
woman says she was a very sexy child, interested in sexual play
as a child. But we hear
this as we are seeing older women having sex. The sense is that
sexuality is human,
present, but perhaps varying, from the time of childhood to the
time of old age. This

clear-eyed account counters that all-too-common trope which
suggests homosexuality
implies pedophilia.
k. sometimes we do get the sense that a particular image is that
of a woman who has been
speaking at times – but this is the effect of our own interpretive
work, our own paying
attention, our own discovery, over time, as we watch the film. I
think that Jerre appears
in the film, and we know Jerre’s name because her partner has
introduced this name into
the conversation; we have to do the work of recognition, it's not
automatic, guaranteed by
the medium or the narrative form - seeing and understanding
who people are requires
effort, participation, curiosity, good will, etc.
l. and there is music from earlier eras (I don’t think there is any
contemporary music). This
is Ma Rainey, a blues singer from the early 20th century who
has also been a lesbian
icon, for example, singing the “Prove it On Me Blues.” Or,
there is Strauss’ “the Red
Knight,” Der Rosencavalier, an opera that features cross-
dressing and gender masquerade
and which, as it happens, has been historically popular among
some queer audiences.
This varied soundtrack is important; the soundtrack careens
from a range of American
musics, to European musics, and back again; but too, so does
the history of same-sex
desire that Hammer is telling span from American queer
communities, including
interracial couples, to European histories of lesbian histories
and lesbian disappearances,

both during the Holocaust, and after. The flow of music
parallels the flow of history.
m. Similarly, languages we see and hear are also imporant:
English, German, French. Sound
and image here are “polyphonic.” The overall montage of music
and image tends to
emphasize a stream, a flow, but a historical flow, yet one that
has to be recovered and
that, again, requires our effort to make sense of;
n. And this sense of flow is also achieved in the montage of
images, where it seems to
emphasize visibility and invisibility, presence, or abandonment;
pleasure and affirmation,
or disappearance. The key opposition that is operative in
Nitrate Kisses’ visual “record”
is that between living, breathing, dancing, desiring bodies, and
abandoned, almost
haunted-appearing buildings. Living history, recovered,
recorded, and projected in this
film, counterpoints images of histories lost, abandoned - like
past queer histories lost to
policies enforcing silence and exclusion, and like future queer
histories, in Hammer's
view, if they are not recorded and shared as they are lived and
become historical.
o. So we do get to know people like Jerre, one of the women
interviewed, to some degree as
individuals; but more broadly, we get to know them as players
in a vast historical stream
that Hammer is bringing to light, and which Hammer's film
suggests proceeds against
two risks: becoming forgotten, in the past, or becoming
unrealized in the future.

p. There is the theme of the invisibility of lesbians and lesbian
history, signified by
abandoned buildings as a history full of holes; this is a history
of disappearances, and of
death, ultimately: this history is dominant history; And, on the
other hand, there are the
living bodies, living voices, which flow through this history,
and define it, giving it
shape, sense, sex, and a present tense. These sounds and images
indicate embodied, often
struggling, living persons in a flowing, vital stream of life.
q. So this is audiovisual montage as a “politics of abstraction”:
abstracted from fragmented
pieces often alternating between vital desires for self-
knowledge and self-sharing, and
emptiness or dereliction; but for the audience, a flowing, living
process which we must
interpret, recognizing images in which desire is found to
animate knowledge, or puzzling
over images suggesting processes of decay, in order to discover
and to understand the
goals and the challenges of self-naming and "making history."
r. In this process, any one fragment risks disappearance,
abandonment, all over again; but
by joining fragments together, and asking us to spend time
gazing on "fragments" of
buildings, in effect, to re-inhabit them with our desire and
curiosity to know, Hammer
creates not only sensual visual metaphors of dominant history as
abandonment or death,

but more importantly, in this process of "abstraction," as these
sensuous visual metaphors
provide the pleasure of seeking, they become re-associated
with, and function as a kind of
invitation to, a process in which the desire to know and the act
of self-naming work in a
kind of mutual process of revelation. The film works by
prompting this kind of
combinatory viewing and re-associating of distinct elements:
images plus sound and
music; image plus voice; etc. There is never a reduction of
"desire" or "naming" either to
only sound or to only image, and vice-versa. Life is a process of
engaged, sensuous,
piecing together of pieces, carried out at the risk of
abandonment and with the goal of
community formation and political and social transformation.
Political struggle must be
inscribed even as it is lived, but creating archives, recovering
memories, is also political
struggle in its own right.
s. As we learn in the film, “Nothing that has happened in
history ever has to be considered
lost.” If you're working with abstraction, missing or incomplete
pieces are part of the way
you work; you count on and need the audience to actively help
you fill in those pieces, as
well; history might work the same way;
t. Overall, lesbian history is regained as it is identified in
relation to other histories: gay
history, black history (as heard in the blues used on the
soundtrack, for instance).
u. Notice the difference in the temporal vector, compared with

Eisenstein. Eisenstein used
montage to suggest a future identity of masses, eroticized in
their new, revolutionary
relationships with one another; Hammer uses montage to present
an inquiry into erotic
history, labor history, and intellectual history, all of which can
be recovered by the
present.
v. “Language organizes sexuality.” This comment suggests a
similar understanding of the
history of sexuality to that of Foucault, for whom "discourse"
(including language but not
limited to it) organizes sexuality as a power relation. In any
case, if so, re-assembling
sound and image to form a different, historical, audiovisual
"language" of desire and
memory might challenge that organization. [New media note:
Christine Tamblyn is cited
in credits.]
7. Example: Discovery and Disappearance: feminist and queer
theories of history. Eve Sedgwick
observes in Epistemology of the Closet that feminist inquiry and
antihomophobic inquiry are not
the same thing. Here’s an example of how Hammer
differentiates them.
a. Kaleidoscopic, panning, spiraling: buildings and women.
And, images of female icons.
Vo: figure out the historical coding. What do these images
actually mean to audiences?
b. images of female carresses; intercut with footage of
abandoned buildings.
c. Women’s bodies, again, sensuously: we move on to a

comment about lesbians being
excluded from The Life and Times of Rosie The Riverter (1980,
Connie Field), a
documentary:
i. Jerre Kalbas, Lathe Operator: “I mean, Rosie the Riveter
thing I gave an
interview for that. They didn’t take me because they were
taking women who
had husbands or sons if you notice the movie; they weren’t
going to take
someone who was single and a lesbian; but they had my whole
story down there.
You know how I had to fight the men, and fought the union, to
be able to get the
other women to get their amount of money that they were
supposed to get.
Because they tried to hold me back. Oh yes, I fought like crazy.
And then, that
was the first time. And sat and did nothing for months until
they would hear my
story.”
d. Other woman (I think this is Sandy Kern): I used to go to
“Holland,” I used to go to
“Smalls.” (These were bars.) Cut to women dancing; then
again, cut to women
carressing. A miniature of lesbian life, from socializing to
sexuality.
e. Ma Rainey blues on soundtrack: “Sho got to prove it on me.”
f. AIDS, losses; abandoned buildings. Jerre standing outside
what looks like an activist

center in NYC. It was her who took a young friend to his first
opera; she educated him,
helped to bring him up, just as the women educated each other
about sex; his loss from
AIDS then is a great historical loss in an extremely personal
sense, another terrible
challenge to self definition through mutality, cooperation, and
autonomy.
g. Christopher Street: memories of raids: lesbians couple up and
dance with gay men in
cases of raids.
h. Ma Rainey: “I don’t like no men; It’s true I wear collars, and
a tie” … “you sho got to
prove it on me.”
i. Raids at a bar on Barrows Street. Jerre: in her fifties,
protecting the young boys in drag,
going with them to the police station.
j. Hammer: writing biographies from the points of view of
social change agents, then you
get a view of the out groups. “Like anything, it’s a tool in a
political context.” Now, we
have cut to women making love.
k. Authorial honesty (note that this is a very newly reconfigured
kind of honesty; one that
does very little with the highly "coded" explorations of
sexuality by figures like Wilde,
Sergei Eisenstein, or Gertrude Stein, etc.); and the contradiction
of inscribing sexual
subjects into history, and into film history. You need to try to
leave the subject her own

space, but on the other hand, her body is a kind of canvas on
which various groups
inscribe their issues.
l. How does Hammer use this canvas?
122N Lecture Discussion: Recent Queer Media:
“Masculinization” and “Feminization” beyond
Binaries
Zebra Katz, “Ima Read”
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oo4Sqt2Bmag): I see this
work as using
queer music video in the interest of a claim of epistemological
valuation and transformation. If being
on the, let's say, “street” or “urban” side of raced, sexed,
gendered, classed knowledge structures means
that your claims of knowledge are not considered properly
“epistemological”. Meanwhile, the force or
violence of “official” knowledge production appears as
“neutral” classroom presentation or library
classification schemes. This video proposes specifically Black
verbal, musical, rhythmic,
choreographic modes of “street” knowledge as being expressive
of what it means to know the self and
to know the world as a queer person or woman of color. Further,
setting this vocal, music, rhythm, and
dance in a classroom and library, with (sexy) “prep school”
teachers and evil dancing twins who appear
as black but with white masks, suggests that “unofficial”
knowledge (of race, sex, gender, class) in fact
as having all the epistemological force of “official knowledge,”
or at least of standing in for it. As if

that weren't enough, the video also additionally suggests that
“unofficial” knowledge has the power to
destabilize and re-format the way that (what turns out to be
overtly) artificial “official” knowledge is
produced, through systems of presentation and classification
that are exclusionary and disciplinary
rather than neutrally “knowing.” Tables are turned, values are
transvalued, queer desire transforms the
site of racial and class exclusion into a site of sexed, gendered,
raced knowing: “taking that b* to
college” indeed.
Mykki Blanco, “Wavvy”
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sokeAMDm7mk): “getting
wavvy” here
means not simply getting “high” (the drugs appear to be
drugstore pain relievers), but getting
“elevated” by transforming economic precarity (the street) into
a site (the club) where wealth is
destroyed in a ritual of inclusion, body positivity, and highly
variegated sex, gender, raced expression.
“Getting wavvy” seems, then, to be a practice of “queering,”
here, of transforming social relations such
that same-sex sexual desire is crucial in transforming social
relations. Gender becomes non-binary; race
becomes multiplex; bodies are non-normative, but sexy in their
capacity to express sexed, gendered
personhood.
Haley Kyoko, “Feelings”
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TV-_Yuc228s): “feelings”
here follow
the queer version of a Hollywood horror film, set to a joyous
declaration of love. It's a re-take on
Michale Jackson's Thriller video which is through-composed
from start to finish as a choreographic

work, as if out of a Hollywood musical. Here, though, the
sensation of fear and foreboding that arise
when a group of “queer freaks” pull up to a ghostly gas station
where a young woman is getting gas
quickly give way to a girl-meets-girl dance routine where
Hayley Kyoko wins over her heart's desire by
declaring her feelings. Kyoko's production, direction, vocals,
music, and choreography all suggest the
inevitability, joyousness, and innocence of women-centered
desire – especially striking given she is a
woman of color and that her object of desire here is
ambiguously raced. Here, queer feeling transforms
Hollywood and music video genres that have often been coded
as queer, that is, having been produced
to be interpreted as queer without saying as much, so that the
video simply recoups and insists on queer
desire as central, normative, but also, crucially, transformative.
Normativity here is more important
here in relation to “expression” than to a regime of
“repression,” which is more familiar in relation to
queer figuration. That Kyoko, a child of Hollywood, insists here
on the expressive powers of lesbian
desire in a work that she stars in and produces as a career-
making move in the service of her
development as an artist, too, suggests Alla Nazimova's star
turn in her own Hollywood production of
Salomé (1922) almost 100 years before.
Perfume Genius, “Hood”
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOpkr8uNWpk): Here,
Perfume
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sokeAMDm7mk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOpkr8uNWpk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TV-_Yuc228s

Genius' Mike Hadreas and now deceased gay porn star Arpad
Miklos appear in relation to a certain
kind of ambivalence that, presumably, is to be expected, even to
be embraced and embodied, with the
expression of queer sexuality, sensuality, and vulnerability. As
the lyrics intone, “You will never call
me baby if you knew me true.” And as we hear the song play
out, we see scenes of intimacy between a
“butch” daddy figure “grooming” an increasingly feminized,
and “wifely,” “boy.” Is this intimacy
imagined, or impossible, or hypothetical? Part of the
hypothetical, apparently, is the acknowledgment,
and embracement, that queer intimacy – if it can be achieved –
may well appear as monstrous to some,
and these two embrace that possibility. Along with the
expressive and transformative powers of queer
desire is, still, the risk of inviting repression, policing, and
phobic violence. Here, ambivalence has to
do with two possibilities embraced: vulnerability and exposure
of intimate “feelings” which we saw in
Kyoko's work, along with appearing at the same time,
contradictorily, as aggressive, monstrous, and
dangerous, as a result of taking the risk of being vulnerable.
This ambivalence being embraced,
however, means that feminization and masculinization are seen
as processes, involuntary and
voluntary, and entangled with one another, rather than
“assignments” of normative bodily identity that
a single body has to identify in terms of exclusively.
Masculinization and feminization as entangled
processes suggests in itself a transformed context for queer
desire and sociality, and especially in
relation to, rather than exclusive of, expressions of race, ability,
class.

Dorian Electra, “Man to Man”
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3K6_89Ee4U): a recent
work that
is being hailed as “ending toxic masculinity” is of course an
entry in the larger canon of queer
audiovisual works that has long presented queer practices of
looking (like “doubling”) in relation to
non-binary gender and same-sex object choice, self-naming, and
open-ended narrative or rhetorical
composition that proceeds on the basis of gesture, illusion,
decoration, or ambivalence (rather than on
“linear” plot development and clear narrative conclusion). Here,
masculine femininities and feminine
masculinities emphasize gender as non-binary, not oppositional,
not arranged on a spectrum from one
to the other, and rather as mutually invested or engaged or
otherwise cycling together in open-ended
process. Here, transmasculine appearance engages with
masculine gay figuration in a distinctly
transformed notion of how “men” are to relate to other “men”;
the key transformation in transformed
masculine relationality seems to be that “violence” becomes
rather a question of affording intimacy
amidst differently embodied masculinity, rather than a question
of bodily violation perpetuated by one
masculine body against another that produces corporeal,
psychological, or spiritual damage.
Throughout all of these works, and across them, in terms of all
of the differences they embrace, we see
a larger conversation in which queerity of color, gender
nonconformance, and same sex desire are all in
dialogue in terms of how queer desire can become productive of
non-violent modes of sex-gender
coreporeality where gender is not organized in terms of
opposition and where same-sex desire is key to

expressive, transformative power, even as “norm,” rather than
in terms of repression, censorship, or
enforced silence. This, apparently, is today's queer scene, at
least in its online music video expression.
We observed historical dialogs at work in, say, Looking for
Langston viewed alongside Tongues
Untied, and in the context of “new queer cinema” of the 1980s
and 1990s generally (with Barbara
Hammer and Cheryl Dunye). We concentrated on these films to
find a poetic dialogue happening
between them: thus, while LFL looking backward to ask about
the desire for queer history, TU looked
forward to insist on a future for queer desire. These films asked
crucial questions not simply in the
articulation of queer self-knowledge, but also in the face of the
HIV/AIDS pandemic that was then
decimating queer communities and communities of color. Now,
queer music video, putting problems of
historical memory and futural desire on display, seem to be
acting out that conversation both within
specific music videos and across them. Masculinities and
femininities are in play even as modes of
racialization are interrogated and resisted – Pasolini's
“problematic figure” now a historical agent in the
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3K6_89Ee4U
popular, commercial form of the music promotional clip.
Running Head: QUEER AESTHETICS

Queer Aesthetics
Name
Institution
Queer Aesthetics
Queer Aesthetics
Fight for Acceptance
Introduction
Aesthetics: Experience of Sense and Sensation
Same sex marriages or same sex relationships have been around
for as long as someone
can remember. Queer/ same sex has always been viewed as
unorthodox or unacceptable to the
society and that is why the people in this community have
always been shut down or even killed
because they are associated with the wrong side of things such
as bad omen. The Queer
community these are people just like us and it is not their
choice to be something that people
disgrace. It comes from within or rather it is biological as it
will be discussed later. For years the

gay community have been fighting for acceptance and their
rights and they have won the fight
yet up to this moment. There are individuals at this moment still
think that all the sexes present
have been made up and individual wakes up one and decides to
be bisexual or transgender or any
other sex in the gender spectrum. People have always wanted to
define everything and also want
this to happen to this community most conventional leaders still
believe that there are two
genders or gender should be binary; you are either male or
female. But that is not the case as
people in some areas in the world cannot express themselves
because they might be stigmatized
or treated unequal, even not accepted by their family members.
Well looking at this is a struggle
that is the same just as any other struggle like racism, religious
acceptance or even asking your
government to work harder. The most important thing is that
these people want to feel and
Queer Aesthetics
treated as the human beings they because whichever gender they
might identify with, because

they did not ask for it, it is a gift and they accept it fully.
Whereby in past few years the Queer community has such a
sensation that can be
identified as Queer Aesthetics. They have received support,
they have run campaigns, they have
a movement and a month dedicated to the such as pride month;
whereby almost all major
companies supported this movement. Through the years of
suffering and hiding; not coming out
of the closet until your death. Know even teenagers can identify
themselves as early as possible
to take their gender path. This is a step for this community that
powerful people in this
community have used their platforms to make their voice heard
so that the world can accept them
as they are. Technology has their major platforms know through
social media a lot of things can
change. Another channel is art a lot of artist have used their
artistic expertise to push the queer
agenda to the rest of the world like Kehinde Wiley, Langstone
Hughes who will the point of
focus and Andy Warhol among others. These are artist that have
made an impact in the LGBTQ+

community with their contribution. Like for instance Andy
Warhol was a gay icon that had
various gay movements, to the extent that his factory was
termed as degenerate. Langstone
Hughes on the other hand apart from focusing on race equality,
using the poem Café 3 a.m. he
was able to express his concerns about the state of
homosexuality during hat time. whereby it
brought about a lot of controversy especially to the people who
studied this artist. Additionally,
Kehinde Wiley, a renowned artist through his floral themed art
he has also been able to support
the LGBTQ+ movement which he is part of with works such as
the “Third Gender.” All these
people have successfully built the queer aesthetics through their
works among others.
Queer Aesthetics
Key Scholars
The struggle of the LGBTQ+ community has been documented
by a lot of scholars
whom of which will be discussed in the following sections.
Queer Aesthetics has made such an

Impact not because of social media or art it is because the
influential members were brave
enough to pave the way for the future generation of the
LGBTQ+ community. One of the issues
faced and that have caused so much uproar is the fact that
people don’t understand their situation
and what they go through in their daily lives. Rather people be
first to judge not understanding
this actually is a biological occurrence just as a person might be
born blind or dyslexic among
other biological occurrences human beings have. According to
Fausto 2018, sex is not binary
because of biological reasons. Meaning for one to have a gender
different from the norm is
mostly Influenced by the biological aspect of rather than the
cultural aspect which seems to be
what most people think. One might wonder why know is the
queer aesthetic aspect so important,
well since time in memorial there are only two sexes that
describe the human variety that is the
male and the female. This based from the societal rule and
norms set to dictate and eliminate
everything does not conform to what is considered as normal by
the society. Whereby stringent

measure was placed to see that this societal norm is seen
through, for instance the roman empire
killed people with mixed sex as they were seen as bad omen
because they did not conform to the
normal binary sexual classification.
This did not end currently there are forces that also work hard
to bring down the Queer
community, like some governments use model similar to the
roman model to suppress these
groups. Obviously not killing these people because it is not
legal, “but at least deny their
Queer Aesthetics
existence.” Which according to Dr. Fausto is wrong morally and
scientifically and it can be
proven. The Trump administration; “Now the Department of
Health and Human Services wants
to follow suit by legally defining sex as “a person’s status as
male or female based on immutable
biological traits identifiable by or before birth.” This is because
as mentioned before an
individual does not suddenly decide to become a particular
gender; it is a process that starts when

they are still an embryo and the XY chromosomes might not
form normally and that is what
destroys the expected binary sexual expectation. According to
DR. Fausto “By birth, then, a baby
has five layers of sex. But as with chromosomal sex, each
subsequent layer does not always
become strictly binary. Furthermore, the layers can conflict
with one another, with one being
binary and another not: An XX baby can be born with a penis,
an XY person may have a vagina,
and so on.” which is why these Queer aesthetic movement is
basically there for the members to
be accepted into the society.
Jude Bennet on the other hand looks at the life of Langstone
Hughes and his life in the
article: Multiple Passings and The Double Death of Langstone
Hughes. Whereby the main work
of focus in this period will be Café 3 a.m. that Hughes actually
uses it to push the
acknowledgement of the Queer Aesthetics, joining the other
artist who experience sense and
sensation despite the fact that there are some people who are
ready to tear them down. Café 3
a.m. was part of the collection of the poems from the large book

Montage of Dream Deferred.
This poem was explicitly written to deal with the queer aspect
whereby this was in the 1950’s
joining the early pioneer who started the fight for this group to
be recognized. This poem was
mainly inspired by the change of location for Hughes, whereby
he moved to Harlem and made
many gay men and some of them were married. Homosexuality
during this period had not
Queer Aesthetics
garnered the much attention it required, mainly because of
issues like the Aids scare whereby it
was called “their disease.” Therefore, the queer movement was
not as popular as today, the poem
café 3 a.m. was a directly addressing the fact that gay people
need acceptance and understand
which makes it to perfectly fit into this essay. The poem
explicitly looks at the sexual spectrum
and how ambiguous it is, making this the more reason that there
should be acceptance.
According to Bennet the name of the poem, café had a hidden
meaning to the fact that it is open

up to the late night obviously has some hidden meaning. In
addition to the fact that there is a
voice that is incapable of making complete sentences using
vocabulary like “spotting fairies.”
Detectives from the vice squad
With weary sadistic eyes
Spotting fairies
Degenerates,
Some Folks Say.
But God, Nature,
Or somebody
Made them that way.
Police lady or lesbian
Over there?
Where?
Queer Aesthetics
The café is turned into a bar, the act is carried by vice squad
with weary sadistic eyes, day
becomes nights, created multiple points of view. Showing how

people lack consideration and
treat the community as not human beings. They cannot even
address them properly “Degenerates
some folk says” which brings out the common people in the part
they play in making things hard
for the Queer community. This paints a whole image of extreme
homophobia only make a
consideration of where the queer community can get hope “But
God, Nature or Somebody made
them that way.” Here Hughes echoes Dr. Fausto trying to show
the audience that no one really
knows why an individual would want to go against the society
sexual binary norm, knowing that
it will be hard for them. really nobody knows why individuals
would wasn’t to belong to
whatever gender in the spectrum by at least Dr Fausto has tried
to explain the occurrence
biologically which has clearly fallen on deaf ears. Hughes
through this short poem has been able
to express all the aspects of the queer community including the
stereotypes, at the end there is the
line “Police lady or lesbian,” typically up to this point a police
lady is considered a lesbian or any
other who takes a job that society has only designated for men.

Also, this line explains the gender
confusion in place, people are not sure if he is man or she is a
woman, the different forms in
which gender can take. In this case the sexist stereotype clearly
shows how indistinguishable the
policewoman and lesbian are, because they have taken the role
of men that society has set aside.
The queer community always leaves the common people with a
lot of questions and that
is why maybe this poem was filled with questions, to further the
confusion people already have
intended in an artistic manner. Like for example the last
question “where?” it symbolizes the
need most of the common people who want homosexuality to be
defined, that is if not male or
female then what it is then? Additionally, the question acts as a
representation of a common
Queer Aesthetics
reaction to a lot of people; asking the “where the police lady or
lesbian?” is clearly a matter of
spotting more fairies or degenerates which is actually what most
people do for the purpose of

continuing to stigmatize or gossip about the degenerates.
Additionally to draw the “homosexual
panic,” just as his other narrative Hughes does promise or
assure anything in the sense that the
confusion is already created but there is certainty that identities
will be fixed or order be
established, what he does is to further blur the boundaries which
technically represents fully
homosexuality; it is a blur line there is no definition. In this
poem homophobia and
homosexuality are both blurred just as in his other works like
Blessed Assurance (1963). Hughes
can be considered a master in poetry but also in queer aesthetics
because he uses his platform to
experience and make others experience sense and sensation of
the queer culture with just a short
poem, he has been able to address all the homosexuality topics.
Which plays an important role in
the fight for acceptance in gay community in addition to the
other artists or influential people in
history who have used their platforms to bring inform the
common people about what they don’t
understand.
Technology (The Use of Social Media in the LGBTQ+

community)
The fight for acceptance is not left to the influential people; as
know a lot of people come
out of the closet and with large numbers anything can be
achieved. Therefore, queer individuals
don’t need to have big audiences or platform like Langstone
Hughes or Andy Warhol, they just
technology. Something simple like a tweet or an Instagram post
can go long a way in their fight
for acceptance. At this point is clear that being a queer
individual is not an easy task in out
society that is heteronormative, that is based on the groups
around the world that are far-right
Queer Aesthetics
queer individuals feel it more difficult to be themselves which
is the essence of queer aesthetics.
But know with technology everything has become easier,
through the use of technology the
LGBTQ+ community has been able us it as platform to voice
their experience and help spread
their cause. Just as any other cause like #metoo or
#blacklivesmatter the queer community has

been able to use the social media platform to further their cause
just like #pride. This is in the
event of intolerance, discrimination they receive from the
common people in their society,
whereby through social media the queer community can
empower each other using groups,
hashtags, campaigns and maybe pages.
Social Media Platforms
According to Walthman 2018, twitter is considered as one of the
most active social media
platforms for the queer community. Twitter is used as a “brave
Space” that allows queer
individuals to be really themselves, whereby twitter also puts in
efforts such as the Pride Month
movement. Twitter users develop weekly hashtags that trend
globally, here members of the queer
community, members engage in different activities such posting
selfies which helps them to
express themselves in their own comfortable skin. Through such
platforms also helps the queer
community spread positivity, make friends, partners and come
together for the same cause.
Twitter also helps them to grow and develop like figuring out
sexuality or any other related issue.

Which actually proves that social media plays a vital role in
assisting and empowering the
members of the LGBTQ+ community.
Facebook on the other hand is not that popular to the LGBTQ+
community, but there are
pages and groups which use themes based on the queer
community; whereby members can share
Queer Aesthetics
posts, memes and stories that can empower and inspire at the
same time. for instance, a
Facebook page superficial that is a meme page that have
countless interactions because actually
it is a safe place for the young queer individuals.
Instagram on the other hand has been under criticism for
mistakenly removing content
that was LGBTQ+ related. Which basically has not discouraged
the queer individuals to use the
social media space to push their agenda and inspiring more
people. The #pride has also been
used on Instagram together with photos of the rainbow themed
content, whereby celebrities have

shown support in pushing for this culture. Like for instance,
Taylor Swift’s Music Video “You
Need to Calm Down” that was specifically developed to support
the LGBTQ+ community. It
was directed, casted among other various posts was filled by a
queer individual.
Which brings us to YouTube that has also been criticized for
having policies that are
considered to be homophobic, like for instance “anti-LGBTQ+”
ads during the influential Pride
month. This platform has been used to push the agenda of the
queer community, just like Taylor
Swift Music Video; You need to calm down that was used to
garner support for the Equality Act
which would provide the LGBTQ+ community equal
opportunities as anyone else. Just as
Langstone Hughes Taylor Swift has been able to use her huge
fanbase and platform to send a
message to common people who still don’t understand that the
queer individuals need to
accepted. With over 150 million views on YouTube this music
video has clearly brought and
enlightenment with lyrics like “Shade never made anybody less
gay.” Additionally, YouTube has

been used by a lot of Queer individuals who actually are most
influential individuals in this
platform coming up with creative and inspiring content like
their Coming out stories. “Yes, there
Queer Aesthetics
are controversies involved in many of the platforms, but the
number of queer individuals using
them to empower themselves outweighs the defects.”
In conclusion this might be seen as a battle that might not be
worn, the most important
thing is the progress that is made. Everyday the queer
community get a win, and they never shy
to express themselves for who they really are. With the aspects
like gay marriage and maybe the
passing of the Equality Act this will mean that the queer
community is almost there in winning
the fight for acceptance. This is throughout the world, whereby
people united by the same cause
will have to leave like the rest of the common people without
fear of being judged or being left
because of their sexual orientation. Technology definitely and
in specific social media has

changed everything in the way they approach Queer Aesthetics.
Before it was influential people
like Hughes or Warhol who would make impact but today
anyone can make the change they
desire, making it easier for the queer community to express
themselves adequately. Being an
aspect that has been considered as degenerate for the longest
time, it is only right that the queer
community is embraced by society to change the narrative for
once. So that the coming
generation would not have the ideas of discrimination and
isolation of queer individuals but
enable the queer individuals to identify their sexuality early
enough which would be better for
everyone.
Queer Aesthetics
References
Multiple Passings and the Double Death of Langston Hughes by
Juda Bennett.
Langstone Hughes, Café 3 a.m. Montage of a Dream Deferred.

Queer Aesthetics
LGBTQ+ Community Using Social Media To Empower Itself by
Luke Waltham, 16th June 2018.
Retrieved from https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/luke-
waltham/opinion-lgbtq-
community-using-social-media-to-empower-itself_
Taylor Swift – You Need to Calm Down, August 23rd 2019.
Retrieved from https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dkk9gvTmCXY
Why Sex is Not Binary by Anne Fausto, October 25th 2018.
Retrieved from https://
www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/opinion/sex-biology-
binary.html?searchResultPosition
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/luke-waltham/opinion-lgbtq-
community-using-social-media-to-empower-itself_
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dkk9gvTmCXY
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/opinion/sex-biology-
binary.html?searchResultPosition
Running head: QUEER POESIS ! 1
Queer poesis
Queer poesis especially lesbianism in the society has received
lot of opposition, and

people do not want to associate with people who are
heterosexuals. Lesbianism has indeed
received mixed reaction and in film making industry, those
practicing lesbianism rarely access
the platform of acting. Therefore, they are discriminated. This
work therefore evaluate some of
the techniques that have been used discriminate those practicing
queer poesis. The paper will
compare and contract Nitrate Kisses and Watermelon Woman in
their films.
In the nitrate kisses film, explores eroded as well as images for
lost vestiges of gay and lesbian
culture as directed by Barbara Hammer. Hammer decides to put
in context a forbidden and
invisible history of marginalized people through sexual
activities of both lesbian and gay
couples. The society has indeed resisted association with gay
and lesbian culture. People do not
want to even imagine that lesbian and gays existed in the
society especially lesbian of color. In
filmmaking, they are denied to the opportunity in acting.
According to Gever et al. (1993) the
audiences of the film expects heterosexual acts in the film and
when they see the homosexual

acts like lesbianism, they are disappointed. The film industries
have also refuted or even refused
to showcase lesbian or gay content. Those characters that act, as
lesbian and gay do not receive
lot of length is the film. In fact, film companies like Hollywood
do not perceive the content as
lesbianism. It is depicted far from the intentions of the actress
or artists. . Barbara indicate that
lesbian cinema are indeed invisible on screen. It is quite
difficult to see lesbian representation in
cinema. Moreover, they carried out in invisible lines throughout
and heated by projector lamp.
QUEER POESIS ! 2
Therefore, the audiences do not see the vivid real acts of lesbian
and gay (Rich et al. 1993).
According to authors involved in production of homosexual
content in early 1970s, they faced
lot of problems since there were no images for lesbians. They
were even termed as feminists
semioticians with essential meaningless ideology. Through
nitrate kisses film, the author is said
to be forcing people what they have for long time avoided.
Moreover, there existed restriction

that censorship ruling had against lesbian and gay arts in
cinema. It is quite clear that the study
depicts the problems faced by artists as well as directors in
charge of homosexual content. The
society was not very interested in their content and Barbara for
instance was in the move of
making history, which attracted the political resistance from the
society across the world.
The watermelon film on the other hand was the first film to
feature made by black woman. The
film receives lot of problems due to lesbianism content. Racism
also comes in since it involves
the people of color. There is primary tension in the film since it
involves intersection of race as
well as sexual orientation, politics as the movie addresses
black-white lesbian relationship.
According to Cheryl Dunye the voices of black women had been
missing from the dominant
cultural production and it is time at this century to address the
elision. The content or the image
of black women has been coined to be harmful as well as
inaccurate stereotyping. Stereotyping
has been as major technique to blow out lesbian content in film
production. Additionally, they

have been termed as sexually deviant, which therefore goes
against the norms of the society
since the society, which is largely occupied by heterosexuals. A
large section of US community
do not confirm to sexual gratification, which involve use of
objects. Therefore, they reject all
content that do not promote heterosexuals and therefore such
lesbians content has not attracted
QUEER POESIS ! 3
audience like other movie which involve heterosexual acts.
Nevertheless, watermelon content
has attracted the curiosity of the audiences and according to
Sullivan (2007), the watermelon
film does provoke the curiosity of the audiences and they find it
simply fascinating as they
follow up when cheryl as deterctive looks for clues regarding
the unknown black actress. The
actress indicate that there has been discrimination of black
women for long time since their
stories have never been told. The voices of black women has
been absent especially in the
dominant cultural production of content especially text and

film. In fact, prominent film
production companies like Hollywood have depicted black
women as domestic servant and
recently as welfare mothers. Therefore, black women in the film
has always been assigned
insignificant role and the main reason for such practice is
discrimination and negative
stereotyping. The discrimination and form of hatred has even
made the producers to even ignore
listing of black women in the credits. Racism ha really led to
demeaning and devaluing of black
women in the filmmaking industry (Sullivan, 2000).
Additionally, Sullivan claim that black lesbian women have not
been active in the production
since they have been denied equal chance of participating in the
mainstream media. According to
Jewell Gomez, black lesbians are few visible group in both fine
arts and popular media and to
make matter worse lesbian of color should not even exist. Black
women involved in homosexual
rarely receive the chance to appear before camera.
In conclusion, women have really been discriminated in the
society for long and despite the

milestone they have made in fighting for equity, equality and
freedom; the film industry has not
yet accepted women role participation fully. Additionally, the
practice of homosexuality
QUEER POESIS ! 4
especially lesbianism has really been rejected by not only those
involved in production of film
but also the audiences. The black females are the most affected
and the women spearheading the
production of lesbianism have been criticized and termed as
feminist seek for political
recognition.
QUEER POESIS ! 5
References
Rich, B. R., Gever, M., Parmar, P., & Greyson, J. (1993). Queer
Looks: Perspectives on Lesbian
and Gay Film and Video.
Sullivan, L. L. (2000). Chasing Fae: The Watermelon Woman
and Black Lesbian
Possibility. Callaloo, 23(1), 448-460.

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