Queering the Iron Cage

I have been listening to a lot of Of Montreal's music lately. I've become convinced that Kevin Barnes is the Second Coming, actually. Well, maybe the Second Coming of Ziggy Stardust. For instance, look at this short clip from a performance of "The Past is A Grotesque Animal" from the 2008 ATP vs Pitchfork concert. Barnes' outfit looks like something out of Bowie's closet. But what makes this band so great, apart from their awesome music, is their use of performance art during their shows. During this performance, one of the band members dons a Greek mask and walks to the front of the stage, holding a plastic head in his hands as he surveys the crowd. During another concert, Barnes strips down to nothing but sash and fishnet stockings and performs virtually naked. Or how about this pic of the band? They look like a outer space version of the Village People. Well, maybe not.

Today, I googled reviews of their latest album Skeletal Lamping, and I came across an interview Barnes gave for The New Gay. Since Barnes's stage persona has evolved into some kind of post-sexuality god, Georgie Fruit, I was intrigued with what he might say to a queer-oriented media outlet. Barnes' responses are playful, if lacking in substance:

TNG: That also begs the question of how you identify in terms of sexual orientation.

KB: I dont.

TNG: On the record, you say thing like “I go both ways” and that you're "sick of sucking the
dick." Have you ever slept with guys?

KB: I’ve had experiences.

Thanks for setting the record straight, Georgie Fruit. Perhaps the most insightful aspect of this interview was that it was conducted for The New Gay, a queer media outlet. Although the pictures of a naked Barnes are enough to warrant a front page spread of gay.com, Of Montreal does not seem to fit the tastes of the average, consumer friendly queer. They may be a bit too avant-garde for the consumer queer. To my surprise I discovered that The New Gay is made to appeal those that stand outside mainstream queer culture:

"While we have our differences, our common bond is that we choose to define ourselves instead of letting a narrowly defined mainstream gay culture do it for us. That is what's new about what we're doing here.

We all agree that the mainstream definition of "gay" isn't just a sexual orientation, it's a white male culture defined by consumerism, superficiality and anti-intellectualism. We don't fit into this narrow matrix. We don't want to. We choose to unplug. We choose the red pill."

While one may well call into question whether or not The New Gay is actually "unplug[ging]" from the "narrow matrix" or if it is just another form of consumer-oriented media (surely Kevin Barnes is trying to sell a few tickets and a few records by giving an interview to The New Gay), their thoughts in regards to the mainstream queer culture are poignant and necessary. The culture has indeed been shaped by consumerism. For example, since the early nineties, advertisers like Absolut Vodka have marketed a queer culture. Gays and lesbians have been conditioned to subscribe to an identity that can be achieved through the spending of a lot of money. Designer labeled fashion. Ikea. Viagra. Gay themed Cruises. Gay Day at Disney. And so it goes. Television programming has appealed to this new queer: Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Will and Grace. LOGO. Films too: The Next Best Thing, My Best Friend's Wedding. Through these various sources, we see how the idea of the gay man has been gentrified to embody acute cultural sensibilities in fashion and food and drink. He has a tight and fit body. Good skin care. He makes women wish that he were straight. He encourages straight men to take better care of themselves. He is witty and popular.A great dancer. Above all, he is accepted and has a place within the larger heteronormative community.

Is the mainstream idea of the gay man superficial? Well, yes. It is manufactured, marketed, and sold to a culture that has been all-too-eager to find a place for themselves. Is it anti-intellectual? Sadly, yes. One would be more apt to find a group of gay men at a bar gossiping about celebrity culture than engaging in a discussion about how best to respond to Proposition 8. Gus Van Sant's recent biopic on Harvey Milk serves to remind us of a former time of political action and social struggle, but today's gay pride parades are less political than they are commercial. But I would argue that the manufactured and consumer friendly sphere of queer culture is a microcosm of the larger heteronormative sphere. How different is the average gay man from the average straight man who has his own tastes in music, fashion, and food and drink? The straight man is also a product of marketing forces, albiet different ones. And don't tell me that I should expect to find average straight guys sitting at a bar discussing much more than a topic like sports and sex. Perhaps a comment or two about the economy. Nothing more.

Nevertheless, I was sold on The New Gay. I have been standing outside the gay mainstream for somewhere between five and eight years now. I too was alarmed by its superficiality, bu its anti-intellectualism. I hated having to stop going to bars and clubs but I could not identify with most of the guys who were going there, and moreover, I grew tired of trying to identify with them. I read this engaging piece written by Ameriwire on The New Gay that reminds me of my own struggles with the queer community:

"As the confident (or drunk?) guys on stage showed us the neat tricks they could do with their bodies and celebrated their near nakedness—and as I caught myself enjoying it alongside the horny, flirty, muscular masses—it suddenly clicked for me why I came to ‘hate the gay scene’ so much, and why I’ve been sitting it out for the last five years or so. The fact is I really don’t hate it and I never really stopped being a part of it anyway; I just participated begrudgingly until recently. How can I deny that I liked seeing cute shirtless guys grinning, rockin out, and parading their neatly packaged groins on stage?! How can I deny that it’s absolutely thrilling for me when guys slip me their numbers or compliment my body, making me feel fantastically attractive? How can I deny that I love being a member of a group that has inside jokes that require no explanation for me, but which would be completely lost on most straight men? I can’t deny those things, they’re great. There are things that I really love about being around groups of gay men. So how did I come to think I hated it so much? What is it exactly that I dislike and how am I different?

I realize now that I’m very different in some ways and not so different in others. Yes, like almost all gay men, I love attention and affection from attractive young men; but no, I don’t appreciate the condescension, hostility, and shallow unfriendliness that I usually have to navigate to get it. I love feeling like I’m attractive and desirable and I like that many (though alas certainly not all) gay guys seem to appreciate my muscles, often even telling me so. But I hate the enormous pressure I feel to be in top shape at all times, or risk losing any value I might have had to them. And yes, like all human beings, I love feeling like I’m a valuable and appreciated part of a group . . . but I hate the fact that in gay circles I so often feel that I’m not.

The disdain I have had for Washington’s gay culture was misplaced; there was no need to throw out the gay baby with the designer bathwater. The value I get out of being involved is bound to outweigh the isolation I’ve felt by living in (halfhearted) protest. I’ve decided to re-engage the scene on my own terms. The things that frightened me into exile before won’t matter now, because I’m not gay anymore. I’m New Gay, baby."

Ameriwire's issues with body image mirror mine. When I regularly went to bars and clubs, between 18 and 22, I tanned, bleached my hair blonde, and kept my weight down to around 160 lbs. In short, I looked like a twink:


And


Although I felt attractive, I could not escape the issues that came with it. For instance, there was a common perception that I must have also been brainless (I was naive, rather) and that I was constantly looking for sex (on the contrary, I may have hooked up with someone once or twice in all my years of going to these places). On more than one occasion, I would share a drink with someone sitting by me, and after having had an interesting conversation with this person, about topics like philosophy and education, he would ask me to go home with him. I would say "no" and then this person would then leave as though we never had this conversation to begin with. Or I would be on the dance floor, enjoying the music, and then be approached by a guy or a group of guys and then have to fight to keep their hands off of me. Perhaps I was a prude and needed to loosen up. I definitely should have gotten laid more often. But back then, I was more interested in finding friends, soul mates, and good conversations than I was in looking for random hook ups. I could not shake the feeling that people did not take me seriously and I connected my failures to finding what I was looking for to my body and what perceptions about me it created within the mainstream. So, I stopped bleaching my hair, I stopped tanning, and I put on a gross amount of weight.


And


Of course, there were plenty of other reasons for the dramatic change in appearance and weight--a love of beer, for example, contributed mightily to this new me--but a need to separate myself from the mainstream was a primary factor in my need to drastically alter my appearance. I wanted to be taken seriously, even at the expense of my looks. Moreover, I wanted to concentrate on my studies. So, sure enough, the opposite happened: nobody hit on me at the bars and clubs. Then I stopped going out to these places altogether and I quietly disappeared from the scene altogether. But was I ever there to begin with?

What is interesting about Ameriwire's piece is that he acknowledges he was in error to "disdain" the mainstream queer culture. He decided to "re-engage" it on his own terms. Likewise, I was in error to disdain and then reject the culture altogether. Even if the mainstream is defined by consumerism, superficiality, and anti-intellectualism, it is a reality that one cannot escape from as it is the prominent aspect of queer culture. I would even go so far as to allude to Max Weber and his writings about bureaucracy in describing the queer culture for people like Ameriwire and other contributers of The New Gay, for myself, and for some other people as an Iron Cage that one struggles with but cannot escape from. We must learn to do with it what we can. For me, it begins with dropping a few more pounds. Maybe going back to the bars and clubs. Not worrying so much about the mainstream. And then in the cultural sphere, while acknowledging the dominance of consumerism in mainstream culture, we may also incorporate new aspects of communal identity that are less superficial than meaningful and less anti-intellectual than intellectual. We may start by looking to historical figures like Harvey Milk, whose taped last words provide a wonderful meditation about how far we have come. And then by engaging with forums like The New Gay, we may may achieve such aspirations.