Although much work on media and politics is polarized into a utopian/dystopian binary, cultural studies has sought various ways in which to connect or problematize such simplistic approaches.  Unfortunately, even cultural studies has increasingly become disconnected from both close textual analyses of culture (specifically popular culture) and theory that is engaged with specific socio-political trends.  This paper will attempt to continue the project through which “production” and “audience” are destabilized within both political and popular culture.  Through an analysis of the changing sexuality of Mr. Garrison in the television show South Park, it will demonstrate how cultural texts can act discursively within the wider framework of contemporary politics.  Over the course of ten seasons, South Park has incorporated this character specifically to address and attack rhetoric surrounding queer identity, (hyper)masculinity, femininity, and heteronormative sexual politics.  Although the paper uses primarily a postmodern approach to narrative and character analysis, through an exploration of fragmentations and disconnections rather than continuity or its “utopic potential,” it will not seek to remove the show from its context.  Rather, it will be primarily concerned with tracing the genealogy of the character across ten years of political discourse.  Engaging with Michael Warner, Lisa Duggan, Wendy Brown, and other theorists of queer cultural politics, the paper attempts to formulate an understanding of queer identity based not in “difference,” “tolerance,” or “resistance,” but as an assemblage of discourses and representations that are both reactions to and attempted critiques of dominant (binary) positions on sexuality.  The movement from an anti-gay, highly performed masculinity to conflicted gay identity to highly exaggerated homosexuality is interesting enough, but as the character has recently been used to specifically address the politics of “metro” sexuality and gay marriage, often outside the range of either mainstream queer theory or politics, it has attained a level of discursiveness that has wide-ranging implications for cultural studies and theories of popular culture.

Author: Ted Gournelos, Institute of Communications Research
[note:  two more abstracts to follow for the other papers on the panel]

In recent years, particularly after the 2004 presidential elections in the United States, sexuality has become an increasingly charged location for political articulation.  Often not centered in traditional identity politics, such articulations actively use sexuality to accentuate or reinforce institutional, socio-political, and economic norms.  Primarily centered in what intellectuals such as Michael Warner, Lisa Duggan, Wendy Brown, and Judith Butler see as a disturbing unity between neoliberal and neoconservative ideologies, political discourse has retained traditional public/private emphases while simultaneously relying on the breakdown of such binaries for much of their currency.  Mass media have of course played a large role in this process, as the “gay fad” becomes a multi-billion dollar industry with such shows as Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and Will and Grace.  However, because the rhetoric involved relies on both the division between “public” and “private” and its breakdown, it becomes simultaneously easier and more important to locate instances of instability and discursive flux.  Through a historical genealogy of sexuality in television, followed by specific case study analyses of V for Vendetta, South Park, and the vampire film, this panel will chart various ways in which sexuality is developed, used to destabilize or reinscribe the dominant, and is ultimately a site through which representation and political action are negotiated.

Society for Cinema and Media Studies National Conference, Chicago 3/11/2007 2:15-4:00 pm