One of the ways in which we qualitatively measure the progress of the LGBTQ movement is through pop culture and the media. Five scholars from around the country participated in a roundtable discussion Aug. 10 that focused on various recent examples of LGBTQ portrayal from "Glee" to the recent Broadway revival of "The Normal Heart."
The roundtable took place at the Leather Archives and Museum and was part of a daylong event that served as a preliminary symposium to The Association for Theatre in Higher Education's (ATHE) annual conference. Those who attended this LGBTQ "pre-conference" attended the greater conference Aug. 11-14 at the Palmer House Hilton Hotel.
Moderated by Willa Taylor, director of education and community outreach for the Goodman Theatre, members of the pre-conference panel addressed different examples of queer representation in television, film and theatre to share with the audience.
Madison Moore, a doctoral student at Yale University, began by showing a clip from a relatively new show on MTV's Canadian network called 1 Girl 5 Gays in which a heterosexual girl asks five gay men a series of 20 questions ranging from the fun and light-hearted to the deeply personal and sexual. Moore praised the show for showcasing different experiences and perspectives through use of a more honest approach.
Patrick McKelvey, a doctoral student at Brown University, went with a more mainstream example in Fox's hit show Glee. He pointed out that the hit show tailored a good chunk of its second and most recent season around openly gay character Kurt Hummell (Chris Colfer) in a way that mirrored this past year's "It Gets Better" project.
Panelist Kim Marra, professor of American studies and theatre arts at the University of Iowa, used Ellen DeGeneres and last year's Oscar-nominated film The Kids Are All Right to address the growing heterosexual framework used to describe lesbian marriage in which one woman is depicted as the "butch" and the other the "femme," which she said continues to negatively impact societal views of women.
Roundtable coordinator Jason Fitzgerald is the member-at-large for the LGBTQ focus group sub-sect of ATHE. He assembled a panel of scholars that he personally respects and asked them to study these various representations in the media and talk about them as symptoms of a political movement.
"I've always been interested in popular culture and the question of progress which I think is kind of a tricky word," Fitzgerald said. "I wanted us to examine other ways to think about progress other than the linear 'we reach this goal and then we move on to something else.'"
Other roundtable participants were Carrie Sandahl, associate professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago in the department of disability and human development, who highlighted the lack of visibility with regards to issues of sexuality in the disabled community, and University of Southern California professor David Roman, who discussed the Tony-winning revival of The Normal Heart and how a generation of young people has now arisen that has known about AIDS their entire lives.
Fitzgerald said feedback was positive for the pre-conference and that it reconfirmed for him that LGBTQ representation in pop culture goes beyond mere visibility.
"I think it proved if nothing else that popular culture is a place where politics is happening and in conflicting and different ways," he said. "We need to think about how we watch television and movies. … There's more to be said than 'Wow that's great—two lesbians on screen!' It's import to say that but also to say more after that."
The panel concluded with a 30-minute discussion and ended with each panelist's thoughts on what defines progress. All agreed that more conversations need to happen within the LGBTQ community and that pop culture should not ultimately define queer progress.
