Queer Media Images

LGBT Perspectives

Contributions by Kimiko Akita, Richard D. Besel, Kristin Comeforo, Bruce E. Drushel, Jennifer Guthrie, Brittani Hidahl, Kristel Hladky, Richard Kenney, Zoe Kenney, Adrianne Kunkel, Lori Montalbano, Kristen Norwood, Valarie Schweisberger, Rachel E. Silverman, Shannon Weber, John M. Wolf, Jason Zingsheim Edited by Theresa Carilli, Jane Campbell

Not available to order

Publication date:

16 May 2013

Length of book:

200 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

ISBN-13: 9780739180297

Queer Media Images: LGBT Perspectives presents fifteen chapters that address how the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered communities are depicted in the media. This collection focuses on how the LGBT community has been silenced or given voice through the media. Through a study of queer media images, this book scrutinizes LGBT media representations and how these representations contribute to a dialogue about civil rights for this marginalized community. While the communication discipline has been open to the LGBT community, there has been an absence of published research and a marginalizing or tokenizing of the queer voice. Through a study of media representations, this unique collection provides a snapshot into the issues surrounding LGBT identity during a time when the Defense of Marriage Act is called into question and explores what it means to study images through a queer lens.

Introduction
Jane Campbell and Theresa Carilli

QUEER IMAGES
Chapter 1: Focus on the SpongeBob: The Representational Politics of James Dobson
Jason Zingsheim
Chapter 2: The Complex Relationship Between (and within) the Suppressed and the Empowered: Contradiction and LGBT Portrayals on The L Word
Jennifer Guthrie, Adrianne Kunkel and K. Nicole Hladky
Chapter 3: Comic Corrections towards a Family Perfection: (Re)Reading Queer as Folk and Will and Grace
Rachel E. Silverman
Chapter 4: Revisiting The Celluloid Closet
Jane Campbell and Theresa Carilli
Chapter 5: To Glee or not to Glee: Exploring the Empowering Voice of the Glee Movement.
Lori Montalbano

PERFORMANCES OF SEXUALITY AND GENDER
Chapter 6: A Pregnant Pause, a Transgender Look: Thomas Beatie in the Maternity Pose
Kristin Norwood
Chapter 7: The Rhetoric of Sexual Experimentation: A Critical Examination of Katy Perry’s I Kissed a Girl
Brittani Hidahl and Richard D. Besel
Chapter 8: Queer Male TV Commentators: Kinjo-no-Obasan in Advanced Capitalism
Kimiko Akita

LIVING IN THE MARGINS
Chapter 9: The Construction of Queer and the Conferring of Voice: Empowering and Disempowering Portrayals of Transgenderism on TransGeneration
K. Nicole Hladky
Chapter 10: “Born This Way”: Biology and Sexuality in Lady Gaga’s Pro-LGBT Media
Shannon Weber
Chapter 11: First But (Nearly) Forgotten: Why You Know Milk but not Kozachenko
Bruce Drushel

QUEER ISSUES
Chapter 12: “Is she a man? Is she a transvestite?”: Critiquing the Coverage of Intersex Athletes
Rick Kenney and Kimiko Akita
Chapter 13: The Commercial Closet: How Gay-Specific Media and the Images of “the Closet” Erases the LGBT Community from the Mainstream Gaze
Kristin Comeforo
Chapter 14: “Should We Stop Believin’?”: Glee and The Culture of Essentialist Identity Discourse
John Wolf and Valarie Schweisberger
Chapter 15: “The play’s the thing”: Representations of heteronormative sexuality in a popular children’s TV sitcom
Zoe Kenney

From Sponge Bob to Glee to I Kissed a Girl, this much needed, comprehensive collection addresses how gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people are depicted across a wide variety of media. Through intriguing analyses of images, sexuality as performance, and the implications and effects of living marginalized, this book is a must-read for anyone interested not only in the specifics of the right to realistic representations but also in issues of identity and ethics of representation.