inclusive queerness

8/11/2019 Inclusive Queerness

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repression and that is why Alexander Doty refers to Queerness as a flexible space

for expression. The awareness of being Queer provides this flexibility of having

access to mainstream culture without losing the different and therefore

oppositional- identity and participating in it without necessarily being

assimilated.

In the opening scene of The Jeffersons episode that I cited through the first

paragraph, both George and Louise are fully conscious about their social, cultural

and racial status quo and at the same time they are participating in the

mainstream of American-ness. In the opening scene Louise says: I gotta keep

remembering who I am. I dont mind living up to our money the whole week but I

gotta have Sundays off! which suggests that they are totally conscious about

their antithetical approaches toward their social class. They know that having one

meal in the late morning instead of two, could be interpreted as poverty in their

previous class level but now by calling it brunch it becomes part of an American

conventional life style that could help them to enjoy their life by spending their

money on consuming luxury goods which in this case would be a piano! They

both know that no one can play piano in their house and also they dont have

enough space for a big piano (as Louise notes many times) but George insists that

a piano would bring real class to this place, as if he is aware of their true social

class and its differences from real or conventionally accepted class. This

awareness raises queerness which usually shows itself along with an ambivalent

attitude. One good example is the difference between Jefferson family and the

Banks, another African-American family in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. The


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Banks family is not queer. They are totally assimilated in the homogenized

American-ness. It seems that they are not aware of their cultural and racial

differences. They dont have African-American accent and slangs, Hillary has silly

problems in referencing her black brothers within her show, Philip becomes

upset and confused when they call him black Hitchcock. These examples

suggests that the Banks family, unlike the Jeffersons, could not be a presentation

of non-straight cultural production and they are actually resisting in front of the

queer identity of Will who has all of those characteristics of being ambivalent and

queer inside their family context.

One of the interesting discussions in Alexander Doty articles is the close

connection between consumer culture and the most visible aspects of queerness

such as the presence of queer characters in the advertisements or in TV shows,

queers fashion, discos and bars for homosexuals and many other aspects of

queerness being used in the culture industry. This approach suggests that there

should be a reasonable reception for advanced capitalism on queer side.

According to Doty there is a particular relationship between queerness and popular

culture which is an alternative reception of the products and messages of popular culture.

All of the non-straight personalities and their weirdness in relation to culture, race or

gender are in accordance with consumerism and pop culture by wondering how they

might have access to mainstream culture without denying or losing their oppositional

identities, how they might participate without necessarily assimilating, how they might

take pleasure in, and make affirmative meanings out of, experiences and artefacts that

they have been told do not offer queer pleasures and meanings. In other words, a central


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issue is how to be out in culture: how to occupy a place in mass culture, yet maintain a

perspective on it that does not accept its homophobic and heterocentrist definitions,

images, and terms of analysis (Alexander Doty, from Out in Culture).

One of the good examples of this relationship between consumption and social

queerness could be referred to a scene in The Jeffersons episode. Through

deliberate mise-en-scene, after they bought the piano, we always see their living

room fully occupied by the presence of this luxury furniture. In almost all of the

living rooms shots, that piano covers the whole scene and part of it is usually

outside if the frame. The presence of the piano in that space is actually a clear

aspect of ambivalence. It brings real class by catching the wealthy neighbors

attention but at the same time it remains an external queer object which

obviously doesnt belong to that space. In this sense, the piano could be an

allegory of Jeffersons queer position among all of those homogenized American families

who are living in that "deluxe residency in the sky". It is also interesting that how

Florence, their sharp-tongued maid, Louise and also George himself are having

issues in moving around because of the presence of the piano as an obstacle

which also becomes a motif through these scenes.

Over the course of reading early TV sitcoms and especially during and after the

project of standardization of American culture, the queerness of consuming

culture stands simultaneously beside the created homogenized and straight

positions of American-ness. However this reading is not confined to sexual and

gendered positions but also stands for anyone who produces or responds to

culture in a non-straight-identifying manner. Whoever stands outside of the

ideological expectations of conformity, whether Lucy in I love Lucy episode by


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violating her role as an obedient housewife, or Ellen in The Ellen show episode by

adopting an ambiguous position regarding to her gender and appearance, or The

Jeffersnos by pursuing a different social class despite of their conventional racial

position, could establish a queer reading; and in all of these examples they approach

toward this queerness by depicting a positive reception of consuming culture. In Out in

Culture Alexander Doty writes: The queer space is best thought of as a contrastraight,

rather than strictly antistraight. Queer positions, queer readings, and queer pleasures are

part of a reception space that stands simultaneously beside and within that created by

heterosexual and straight positions. . . . What queer reception often does, however, is

stand outside the relatively clear-cut and essentializing categories of identity under which

most people function.

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