Title: A Critical Examination of the Commodification of Queer Culture in Contemporary Art and Media
Author: River Paterson
Publication Year/Date: May 2024
Document Version: Fine Art Hons dissertation
License:
DOI:
CC-BY-NC-ND
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-ncnd/4.0/
https://doi.org/10.20933/100001303
Take down policy: If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim.
Abstract
This paper serves as an examination of the gendered politics of the contemporary art world from a queer perspective and will explore in depth how those in power in this sphere profit from marginalised identities whilst simultaneously maintaining the institutions that oppress them. This paper will attempt to underline the phenomena of performative activism within these spheres of power, and the active harm this perpetuates against marginalised artists. An objective of this paper is to examine the works of artists such as Marlon T. Riggs, The Gran Fury Collective David Wojnarowicz and Robert Mapplethorpe in the context of the reception and wider socio-political implications of their work. This paper will examine Marx’s theories of commodity underlined in Capital (1867) in relation to this topic. The first chapter will underline crucial context necessary to understand this area of study, defining the term ‘queer’ based on seminal feminist works such as Judith Butler’s ‘Gender Trouble’ (1990) and outlining this text’s stance against biological essentialism and the heterosexual hegemony of our wider social culture. David Getsy’s introductory essay to his anthology ‘Queer’, ‘Queer Intolerability and its Attachments’ (2016) will be used as a point of reference to further define the historical context of the topics explored in this paper. The second chapter will serve as a critical examination of the historic and contemporary censorship of art institutions and galleries against queer artists and the phenomenon of ‘Pink-Washing’, the term coined by activist Sarah Schulman defined as the weaponization of queer identity against non-Western nations to justify colonial aggression. The third chapter of this paper will further explore the phenomenon of assimilation as it lends itself to commodity culture and provide critical analysis of the Gay Liberation Front Manifesto (1971). This chapter will also examine theories explored in José Esteban Muñoz’ book ‘Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity’ (2009). Finally, this dissertation will conclude with a summation of the themes discussed, avenues for further research and a discussion regarding the feasibility of potential reform.
Figures Page
1.1
Gran Fury Collective, Read My Lips (Men’s ver.), 1988 xi poster,photocopyon paper
16 ¾” x 10 ¾”
ACT UP; Spring AIDS Action ‘88.
1.2
Gran Fury Collective, Read My Lips (Women’s, original ver.), 1988 xii poster,photocopyon paper
16 ¾” x 10 ¾”
ACT UP; Spring AIDS Action ‘88.
2.1
David Wojnarowicz, A Fire In My Belly (Film In Progress), xvi Super 8mm film transferred to video (black and white and colour, silent) 1986-87
Introduction
In the introductory essay to his anthology ‘Queer’ (2016) ‘Queer Intolerability and its Attachments’, art historian and curator David Getsy defines the contemporary queer attitude as “outlaw sensibilities, self-made kinships, chosen lineages, utopic futurity, exile commitment and rage at the institutions that police the boundaries of normal”. (Getsy, 2016 p.12) This perspective emerged as a method of resistance against the societal oppression and systemic rejection of sexual minorities and those who did not conform to the heterosexual cisgender framework. Reclaimed from its status as a slur or derogatory term signifying the abnormality, deviance and otherness of the subject, the term queer became a political and activist stance during the tragedy of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s and persists today as a cultural marker of defiance within English speaking countries, primarily the US and UK.
‘Queer’ is as a nebulous term within the parameters of its contemporary definition, as an adjective denoting otherness, performance, subversion and mystique, and as a noun denoting identity, the conscious choice of self-determination, as impossible to define as those who choose to reclaim its use, and in its modern context a challenge to the conventions of normativity, in spite of the painful history of violence enacted on those perceived to be ‘queer’. Getsy notes that “While ‘queer’ draws its politics and effective force from the history of non -normative gay, lesbian and bisexual communities, it is not equivalent to these categories nor is it an identity. Rather, it is a strategic undercutting of the stability of identity”. (Getsy, 2016, p.15) The ‘strategic undercutting of the stability of identity’ is something inherent to those whose sexualities and genders do not fit within the heterosexual matrix, and queer artists have historically often subverted heterosexual convention through the art of performance, the inversion of identity. It is vital to indicate that ‘queer’ is used here not necessarily in reference to the artist’s gender or sexual orientation but in relation to the effect of the artwork or performance; that denotes its status as something ‘other.’ Whilst the two often coincide, it is not necessarily a statement on the artist or performer’s gender identity or sexuality. The “queering effect” (Jones, 2021, p. 16) as Amelia Jones refers to it in her book ‘In-Between Subjects, A Critical Genealogy of Queer Performance art’ (2021) speaks of the queer lens of viewership more than anything else, the through line of performativity in relation to queerness, despite the perhaps outdated nature of this comparison, and the “vicissitudes of emotion, desire, revulsion and other often momentarily
shifting vagaries.” (Jones, 2021, p.16) at the crux of perceived queer art.
In the twenty-first century, with the rise of acceptance in western culture of queer existence, we must look at where this acceptance stems from. In her essay ‘Queer Visibility in Commodity Culture’ (1995) Rosemary Hennessy defines capitalism as “a mode of production characterized by the economic practice of extracting surplus value through commodity exchange, the pro-cesses of commodification pervade all social structures.” (Hennessy, 1995, p. 3)
The hegemonic structures of power that inform our late-stage capitalist society only uphold those that can be profited from, in other words, mainstream, institutional queer acceptance only extends to those whose identities and art can be appropriated and co-opted and shuns that which it deems too out-with the traditional heterosexual mainframe. In his volume, Capital (1867) Marx posits that; “A commodity is, in the first place, an object outside us, a thing that by its properties satisfies human wants...the nature of such wants, whether they spring from the stomach or from fancy, makes no difference.” (Marx, 1867, p. 27) In our modern society, post ‘queer revolution’, I believe the art and culture within our communities have been sterilized and commodified, transformed into products for the prevailing heterosexual cisgender hegemony’s consumption. This essay will explore the complexities and nuance of 20th century queer art as it was influenced by the politics of the time, exploring works by artists and collectives contemporary to the time such as Gran Fury, Jennie Livingston, Robert Mapplethorpe and David Wojnarowicz and will serve as a critique of the white-washed neo-liberal sterilisation of queer culture and history as it is portrayed in modern western media, and how the subtle forced assimilation of queer lives into heteronormative states endangers the most vulnerable members of our communities whilst exploiting those same marginalised identities for profit. The most influential sources I have looked at to date include (Butler, 1990), Jones (2021), Getsy (2016), Newton (1979), Hennessy (1995), Muñoz (2009) and Takemoto (2016). This paper will explore the feasibility of ‘queer futurism’ and discuss potential avenues for reform within societal attitudes toward queer art and culture.
Chapter 1: The Politics of Visibility and Modes of Commodity
“The ‘politics of visibility’ demanded representation and accountability, and they opposed the enforcement of normalcy through radically performed presence”.
(-Getsy, 2016 p. 16)
The ‘politics of visibility’ is defined here as that which is seen versus that which is there, and the conscious choice that is made by institutions of power and society at large with regards to what we choose to see. In her essay ‘Queer Visibility and Commodity Culture’ (1995) Hennessy states; “Like "queer," "visibility" is a struggle term in gay and lesbian circles nowfor some simply a matter of display, for others the effect of discourses or of complex social conditions.” (1995, p. 31) Hennessy argues that post-queer revolution, much of the ‘visibility of sexual identity’ (1995, pp. 31) is tied to the capitalistic viability of the market. What can be sold to the dominant culture, and whose invisible labor is exploited to do so? Queer racial minorities, specifically Black trans women and black gay men were at the forefront of the queer struggle for visibility in the 1980s and 90s. Despite this, the Black queer community is often under-represented or tokenized in contemporary media. We return, then, to the issue of visibility; white queer people in positions of privilege do not, and to an extent cannot, understand the intersection between race, sexuality, and gender at play in the black queer community, and indeed in other racialized communities, and it is often not profitable from a capitalist perspective, or worse, inconvenient, to center these conversations as it demands white queers face their role as vehicles of oppression in our predominantly white, capitalist societal structure. In his work ‘Black Macho Revisited: Reflections of a Snap! Queen’ (1991) Marlon T. Riggs, Black gay film maker, poet, and activist spoke on this phenomenon, saying; “Negro Faggotry is in vogue. Madonna commodified it into a commercial hit. Mapplethorpe photographed it, and art galleries drew fire and record crowds in displaying it. (Riggs, 1991, p. 389)
Riggs speaks on the act of co-opting and assimilating aspects of the culture unique to the Black queer community and its de-racialisation and sterilisation for white consumption. We see this example in the present day with the casual and often incorrectly presented use of African American Vernacular English and slang that originated in the Drag Ballrooms of the 20th century by white gay people who claim it as their own. This overwrought and misinterpreted use of this language by those who do not care to understand its history and
origins, who have no claim to it and yet have claimed it anyway, de-politicises and de-fangs the culture, ready to consume.
The nuance of said culture is hard to grasp in a contemporary era, as someone who did not experience the pain, fear, and resentment wrought by the AIDS crisis first hand, and yet the art that era left with us provides a lens through which to glimpse that time. The culture did not manifest itself out of nowhere, fully realised, however it can be argued that the political and social landscape of the time provided a crucible for the queer community’s varying art, culture, and lifestyles to burgeon into mainstream social consciousness, whereas before it had remained, due to a distinct lack of visibility, on the fringe. One aspect of this rich body of culture, is drag.
‘Drag,’ defined by Esther Newton in her book ‘Mother Camp: Female Impersonators in America’ (1979) as “a double inversion that says, “appearance is an illusion” … “my outside appearance is feminine, but my essence ‘inside’ is masculine.” At the same time … the opposite inversion; “my appearance ‘outside’ is masculine, but my essence ‘inside’ is feminine.” (Newton, 1979, pp.100-101) is an art form that allows the performer to occupy another gender, to transcend the limits of the body. Newton recognizes drag and unconventional expressions of gender as a transformative confrontation to the formerly compulsory and inflexible societal norms surrounding heterosexual gender roles. By unveiling the underlying artificiality of the commonly accepted gender norms, we gain insight into the constructed nature of everyday instances where individuals engage in socially accepted gender production.
“That the gendered body is performative suggests it has no ontological status apart from various acts which constitute its reality.” (Butler, 1999, p. 185)
The art of gender performance, as discussed by Butler, is, as she delineates, not exclusive to the queer social consciousness. Indeed, the performative aspects of heterosexuality and cisgendered conformity to the myth of the assigned gender at birth are a theatrical production that has significantly influenced our contemporary Western society. Queer performance art, specifically drag, in a sense, serves to undermine this paradigm by blurring the lines between what is masculine and what is feminine, and becomes radical when it exists to confound and subvert the cultural laws that govern us.
One of the few examples of media depicting drag and the drag ball culture from the late 20th century is Jennie Livingston’s 1990 documentary film ‘Paris is Burning.’ Starring Dorian Corey, Pepper LaBeija, Venus Xtravaganza, Octavia St. Laurent, Carmen Xtravaganza, Willi Ninja, Angie Xtravaganza, Sol Pendavis Williams, Freddie Pendavis and Junior Labeija, the documentary functions as an exploration of the intersectionality of race, class, gender, and sexuality in America and has become a seminal part of documented modern queer history, of which there is very little. The documentary, filmed over the course of six years, offers insight into the lives of the participants and into New York Ballroom culture toward the end of the ‘golden age’ of the Drag Ball and during the height of the AIDS crisis. As mentioned, the documentary is considered a seminal work, an invaluable account of queer history. But for whom? There is a voyeuristic element to the project that must be unpacked. Livingston, a Yale graduate from a middle-class background, focuses her lens primarily on Black and Hispanic drag queens and trans women, some of whom are living in poverty, some of whom are sex workers. In presenting this documentary to a mainstream, predominantly heterosexual white cultural and social consciousness, it could be argued that Livingston makes the subjects of her documentary targets for fetishisation. Livingston herself, is a lesbian, and was a prominent member of the ACT UP! Collective, and so this paper does not intend to cast aspersions on her intent with this documentary; however, given the success of the work and the large audience it reached, authorial intent becomes secondary to the effect produced.
Wu Tsang, queer filmmaker and performer whose work focuses primarily on exploring marginalised narratives and deconstructing binary categories explained in a 2011 blog post; “The way that film [Paris is Burning] (and things like it) function for mainstream audiences –to like capture and placate their fantasy of queer/poor/poc self-expression.” (Tsang, 2011)
Tsang posits that there is something fetishistic about the way certain audiences engage with the work, which has developed past the authorial intent to document and preserve this history. It raises the question of the viability of visibility; at what point does it stop being helpful and become a hindrance? At the time, the documentary was ground-breaking for the voice it gave queer people of colour in the New York ballroom scene, however in the 21st century, the documentary has become somewhat of an avenue for fantasy and speculation of the privileged in their class relation to those depicted in the film. It has become a vehicle for fetishisation, defined by Marx in relation to his theory on commodities as; “a definite social relation between men, that assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between
things…This I call the Fetishism which attaches itself to the products of labour, so soon as they are produced as commodities, and which is therefore inseparable from the production of commodities.” (Marx, 1867, p. 47)
In relation to the notion of queer fetishisation, particularly that of queer people of colour, I would argue that this phenomenon stems from the colonial desire to possess and dominate that which is deemed ‘other’. ‘The straight mind’ historically has flinched away from anything overtly ‘queer’ at the same time as it longs for de-politicised, easy access to the language and culture. Heterosexual, cis-gendered people do not want to be LGBT, as it pertains to transness or sexual attraction. They do not want to experience the outsider status, trauma, shame, homophobia, transphobia, and rejection that informs so much of queer art and aesthetics, however certain demographics of liberal heterosexual cisgendered people, particularly in the online era, wish to indulge in the commodity and novelty of the culture without having to engage with it beyond surface level. This issue is a distinctly modern one, however, having stemmed from decades of shifting politics and increased comfortability surrounding queer discourse, and to understand why Livingston sought to create ‘Paris is Burning’ in the first place, and why it was so ground-breaking in its time, we must address the ‘politics of visibility’ once more, regarding queer activism and resulting protest artworks contemporary to the making of the documentary.
Emerging from the ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) movement, a collective organisation formed in 1987 that advocated for direct political action regarding the AIDS crisis and access to treatment for those inflicted with the disease, The Gran Fury Collective formed as an AIDS activist artist community that sought to disseminate information about the disease and campaign for gay rights through the medium of advertisements and prints that were easy to re-produce and distribute. Named for the automobiles the New York City police force used at the time and established in an era where “the ‘irreversible’ association between gay men and AIDS was often used to position homosexuality itself as a form of sickness and public threat” (C. Meyer, 2002 p. 226), the collective sought to challenge the general public to engage with queer visibility politics during this unmitigated epidemic.
What we see in the 21st century however, regarding the marketing of queer imagery at a level of mass production often is a symptom of ‘Rainbow Capitalism’ the phenomenon of
corporations and brands co-opting queer aesthetics to sell back to the community in the form of material goods, often at the expense of the exploited labour of workers in the global south.
This is not to suggest complicity on the part of the Gran Fury Collective, or fault on their part for a phenomenon taking place decades later within the sphere of the capitalist market, but it raises a question of Visibility vs. Commodification. It is, apparently, a fine line between the representation of queer lives, and the exploitation of them. If Marx is correct, and the “Fetishism which attaches itself to the products of labour, so soon as they are produced as commodities, and which is therefore inseparable from the production of commodities.” (Marx, 1867, p. 47) Then how are we to make ourselves visible without feeding into the cycle of fetishism and exploitation that comes with the production of our art? It begs the question of how we maintain community and authenticity in the face of western values of hyperindividualism, when that which construes our respective identities is so easily commodified, even, and often unknowingly, by ourselves in the very act of producing it.
Chapter 2: Institutional Discrimination and Pink-Washing
In their book ‘Homo Economics: Capitalism, Community and Lesbian and Gay Life’ (1997)
Gluckman and Reed posit that; “The profits to be reaped from treating gay men and lesbians as a trend-setting consumer group finally outweigh the financial risks of inflaming right-wing hate”. (Gluckman, Reed, 1997, p.3) Gluckman and Reed imply here that corporations and institutions, and those who govern them, do not necessarily care for the intricacies of queer culture or, more importantly, the lives that have shaped it, but rather that in pandering to a wealthy consumer market of LGBTQ+ people that were never before exclusively marketed to or singled out as a “trend-setting consumer group” (Gluckman, Reed, 1997) prior to the late 20th century, they were able to exploit the imagery and aesthetics used often in protest and in signification of community and sell them back to the community that produced them, co-opt them to advertise their products.
This is reflected somewhat in the mass-reproduction and selling of prints of photographer Robert Mapplethorpe’s work. Known for their controversy amongst right-wing detractors and depictions of sexual intimacy and documentation of the gay kink communities in New York throughout the late 20th century, in our contemporary social climate, when the most mainstream and ‘accessible’ of Mapplethorpe’s works are no longer seen as controversial by the large majority and are sold as keepsakes in the form of reproductions of his less ‘raunchy’ photographs in galleries, it feels as though much of the struggle for visibility and the deconstruction of censorship has been white-washed. It is a net positive that we no longer view artists like Mapplethorpe in the lens of the same moralistic outrage that characterised how his work was construed by his contemporary detractors, however, the ‘de-fanging’ of the politics of the work that comes when it is commodified and coded into popular culture so thoroughly as Mapplethorpe’s artwork has is, I would argue, a cause for concern.
Robert Mapplethorpe was a gay photographer who was prevalent during the AIDS crisis, and possibly serves as one of the most famous examples of institutional censorship and simultaneous exploitation of queer artists and artworks during and after that era. His body of work consists primarily of portraiture and figurative photography, and his most controversial series explore and preserve the gay kink scene of America in the sixties and seventies, documenting the lifestyle and attempting to encapsulate the lived experiences of many gay men during the time, including himself, as he features predominantly in his works. Famously, in the months leading up to his death of AIDS in 1989, the retrospective exhibit of his works that was to be displayed in seven galleries across America, titled ‘The Perfect Moment’ came under heavy scrutiny from legislators, Christian groups, and politicians at the time. Scheduled to be displayed in the cities Philadelphia, Chicago, Washington DC, Hartford, Berkeley, Cincinnati and Boston, the collection largely consisted of works from Mapplethorpe’s ‘X Portfolio’ and spanned twenty-five years of his career. Outrage was sparked largely because part of the funding for the exhibition came from the National Endowment of the Arts fund, or NEA, a government scheme that relied on taxpayer money. In Washington, the Meese anti-pornography commission, established in 1985, called for the elimination of the NEA, and due to pressures exerted by several conservative politicians and the
commission, the ‘Corcoran Gallery of Art’ folded to their moral outrage and refused to host the exhibition.
The tour of the works would come under further controversy in the Contemporary Arts Center of Cincinnati where, famously, lawmakers issued indictments on the CAC and charged its director at the time Dennis Barrie with “pandering obscenity for pictures of homoerotic acts and the illegal use of a minor in nudity-oriented material” (Moore, 2015) Barrie and the CAC would go on to win the trial and display the exhibition, including Mapplethorpe’s works, as intended, however, perhaps due to the massive financial toll the proceedings took on the gallery and the withdrawal of much corporate sponsorship, the CAC would prove reluctant to ever host such a contentious exhibit again.
More recently, in 2010, the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery would host an exhibition titled ‘Hide and Seek: Differences in Desire in American Portraiture’. Part of the exhibition was David Wojnarowicz’s video ‘A Fire in My Belly’ (1987). Wojnarowicz was a renowned and influential queer painter, filmmaker, activist, and essayist whose career also spanned the AIDS crisis, and who, like Mapplethorpe, would also fall victim to the disease and to government negligence.
His film depicts ants swarming a crucifix and was never completed due to Wojnarowicz’s untimely death. The film was intended as an exploration of “colonial exploitation, religious hypocrisy, and the social and economic inequities of industrialized societies”. (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, n.d.) However, under external pressure, most notably from The Catholic League’s Bill Donahue and republican representatives Eric Cantor and Jack Kingston, the latter of which calling it an “in- your-face perversion paid for by tax dollars” (Starnes, 2015) in an interview with Fox News, the Smithsonian elected to remove Wojnarowicz’s video from the exhibition, effectively censoring his work.
There is something to be said for the adult themes in these two respective bodies of work that faced censorship, it could be argued that they faced derision and institutional rejection due to the unsettling nature of the art rather than the sexualities or identities of the artists, however I
would argue that the two cannot be separated in this instance, and that discomfort, awkwardness, exploration of visceral reality and faltering confusion are themes inextricably linked with queer art because they are aspects of life many LGBTQ people are forced to confront more tangibly, particularly in regard to what constitutes our identities in relation to the society we live in and how the two often find themselves at odds. The imagery and themes explored in Mapplethorpe and Wojnarowicz’s work that unsettled lawmakers were not shocking or upsetting for the sake of being so, I would argue, but because many queer artists suffer for our understanding of themes such as those depicted and are more intimately acquainted in their production than most. Violence, sexual themes, and imagery that provokes disgust or discomfort is not inherently bad to explore within the lens of art, nor are these things intrinsic to the so-called queer experience but rather are often a by-product of how our identities clash with the ideals of the society that govern us, particularly in Wojnarowicz and Mapplethorpe’s time. The intended effect of art, I would argue, is to provoke thought and feeling. By censoring these artworks, the Corcoran Art Institute and the Smithsonian Portrait Gallery lost some of whatever artistic integrity they possessed.
In relation to institutional pink-washing, these key examples are important to bear in mind of times that these structures of power that queer artists find themselves at the whims of, have betrayed the communities they claim to uphold, and in doing so, have shown their hypocrisy.
‘Rainbow-Washing', or ‘Pink-Washing’ refers to the political and corporate strategy of promoting LGBTQ+ rights and freedoms in an attempt by a governing body, institution, or corporation to appeal to the concepts of democracy and liberalism, specifically in its original context to distract from or justify colonial violence in countries outside of the Western World. A coinciding term is ‘homonationalism’ the phenomenon of exploiting sexual minorities as a justification for xenophobia and racism. The term ‘Pink-Washing’ was coined by gay rights activist and author Sarah Schulman in 2011 regarding the Israeli Government’s strategy for promoting relations with Western powers. In the New York Times article in which she coined the term, Schulman wrote, “After generations of sacrifice and organization, gay people in parts of the world have won protection from discrimination and relationship recognition. But these changes have given rise to a nefarious phenomenon: the co-opting of white gay people by anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim political forces in Western Europe and Israel.” (Shulman, 2011) The legacy of homophobic rhetoric in the West has trickled down
throughout the decades and haunts us to this day, the automatic response for many LGBTQ+ people, particularly white members of the community in positions of greater privilege with closer proximity to the structures of power set in place in our society, is to, as Schulman describes, “mistakenly judge how advanced a country is by how it responds to homosexuality”. (Schulman, 2011) Western queer liberation is used in these instances as a facet of imperialist oppression enacted against countries in the global south by portraying these nations as ‘uncivilized’ or ‘barbaric’ for their anti-LGBTQ+ policies, these policies often remnants of colonial occupation in the first place. By weaponizing queerness governments may attempt to justify any mode of violence against these countries, despite the West’s own violent homophobic and transphobic past and despite the anti-LGBTQ+ attitudes still alive and well within Western spheres of power. We see this taken to its extreme with regards to the ongoing violence against Palestinians in Gaza, where this line of thought has been weaponized in an attempt to reduce sympathy for the Palestinian people. In an Instagram post from the 26th of May 2021, alqaws.org released a statement positing that, “Pinkwashing is a form of colonial violence. It promotes harmful narratives and policies that alienate queer Palestinians from our own communities”. (alqaws.org, 2021) The use of ‘PinkWashing’ as a tool of colonialism is one facet of the capitalist western hegemony’s commodifying of queerness as a tool to be used to garner profit and to further establish itself within a global sphere via its weaponization.