Gay Identity, New Storytelling and The Media (eBook)

CHRISTOPHER PULLEN Senior Lecturer in Media Studies at Bournemouth University, UK. He is the author of Documenting Gay Men: Identity and Performance in Reality Television and Documentary Film (2007). His research interests relate to the representation and performance of minority identity within contemporary media, and contexts of gender and sexuality.

Cover 1
Half Title 2
Title Page 4
Copyright Page 5
Dedication 6
Table of Contents 8
List of Figures 11
Preface to the Paperback Edition 13
Acknowledgements 16
Introduction: Placing the Self within the Frame 17
Vulnerability, and intimate participation 20
Discourse, life story and identification 22
Mobility, becoming and thematic framework 25
Conclusion 26
1 New Storytelling: Transitions from the Past 28
Introduction 28
Outside the literary, and towards the vernacular frame 31
Transitions in new storytelling: rejecting the myth 33
Audience identification with iconic performers and the relay of narratives 36
BBC radio and Male Homosexual 38
Gore Vidal: the performance and the partnership 42
k.d. lang and Waymon Hudson: role models, vernacular voices and political forces 47
k.d. lang: establishing the arena 49
Waymon Hudson: the personal self and the political frame 52
Conclusion 56
2 Gay Identity and Self-Reflexivity 58
Introduction 58
Christopher Isherwood, storytelling and self-reflexivity 60
Stereotypes, archetypes and The Green Bay Tree 63
Social construction, Oscar Wilde and ‘queer’ 67
Quentin Crisp and The Naked Civil Servant 70
Trial by media: Peter Wildeblood and testimony 74
Ellen DeGeneres and George Michael: therapy and subversion 78
Conclusion 87
3 Community, History and Transformation 89
Introduction 89
The discursive gay community 91
History, the unified subject and postmodernity 96
Transformation 98
Victim and Dirk Bogarde: intended identification 99
Armistead Maupin and Sarah Waters: popular frames 105
Tony Kushner and Angels in America: community and transformation 116
Conclusion 120
4 Factual Media Space: Intimacy, Participation and Therapy 123
Introduction 123
Factual media space: Joshua Gamson, the talk show and vulnerability 124
Oppositional public sphere, intimacy and emotion 127
Russell Harty and Dirk Bogarde: signposting, domesticity and humanity 129
Peter Adair and Pedro Zamora: whole person learning and AIDS 135
The Ultimate Brokeback Forum: therapy and agency 146
Conclusion 151
5 Commodity and Family 153
Introduction 153
Family values and Debra Chasnoff 155
Commodity: use and exchange 157
Economy of narratives, shared experience and the real 160
Debra Chasnoff: school, narratives and humanist education 162
Derek Jarman and Russell T Davies: domesticity, exchange and transformation 165
Derek Jarman: domesticity under construction 167
Russell T Davies: commodity identity 173
Conclusion 179
6 Teenage Identity and Ritual 182
Introduction 182
Gay teen identity: similar experiences and expectations 184
Ritual and performance: liminality, participation and antistructure 187
Jonathan Harvey, Beautiful Thing and reflective realism 190
Todd Haynes and Alan Bennett: gay youth narratives in film 194
Coming Out to Class and LGB Teens 201
The Gay Youth Corner: affirmation, disclosure and agency 206
Conclusion 210
7 Other Storytelling and the New Frontier 213
Introduction 213
New identifications within the queer diaspora 216
Dangerous Living: other storytelling, colonialism and the new frontier 219
Nature and instinct in Before Night Falls 223
Uruguay, Two to Tango and Gay on the Cape 228
Out in Iran and Jihad for Love: civil rights, family and belief 235
Conclusion 242
Conclusion: Cohesion, Fragmentation and ‘Becoming’ 245
Notes 249
References 257
Works cited 257
Internet sources 267
Select Filmography 270
Index 274