"You’re articulating a very common and important position, which is that for a lot of queer people who are forced to engage with pop culture, they don’t find a lot there that is really about them. But at the same time, we don’t want to retreat into an avant-garde world where everything has to be identity oriented and identity based, and is just alternative small scale cultural production.
We live in a world where popular culture is a kind of currency. And it’s important to be able to trade in it. We’re all exposed to pop culture, and pop culture is exposed to us—people who make pop culture are also exposed to the queer worlds that we inhabit, so there are inevitably little areas of overlap. Those areas of overlap between queer communities and popular culture are very important, because it gives you a platform for expression and for ideas to circulate through that isn’t completely insular to your community.
Think about it as a platform, rather than as just some multi-million dollar corporate venture that is there to exploit people and to continue to circulate models of normativity. Pop culture is controllable, it goes viral very quickly, it contains all kinds of contradictions, and it’s a very lively atmosphere for debate and disagreements and contradictions. So I personally get a lot of pleasure from pop culture and I find it to be a very rich resource. And I find it’s a good place for me to connect with readers, who may not have read the latest thing in queer theory but who have recently seen an animated film or something like that."
We live in a world where popular culture is a kind of currency. And it’s important to be able to trade in it. We’re all exposed to pop culture, and pop culture is exposed to us—people who make pop culture are also exposed to the queer worlds that we inhabit, so there are inevitably little areas of overlap. Those areas of overlap between queer communities and popular culture are very important, because it gives you a platform for expression and for ideas to circulate through that isn’t completely insular to your community.
Think about it as a platform, rather than as just some multi-million dollar corporate venture that is there to exploit people and to continue to circulate models of normativity. Pop culture is controllable, it goes viral very quickly, it contains all kinds of contradictions, and it’s a very lively atmosphere for debate and disagreements and contradictions. So I personally get a lot of pleasure from pop culture and I find it to be a very rich resource. And I find it’s a good place for me to connect with readers, who may not have read the latest thing in queer theory but who have recently seen an animated film or something like that."
Judith “Jack” Halberstam on Pop Culture and Queers
[K] I might quote that from now on, everytime someone questions the basic premise of my thesis (that there is queer pleasure in pop culture).
(Source: lambdaliterary.org)
02.07.12 ♥ 11
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