CIEE Screen Cultures

Class #25: Queer Television II


 Previewing the final exam
– 90 minutes (15 minutes allocated to reading through the questions and playing
the two short clips that serve as the basis of the two visual prompt questions)
– 30% of your final grade
– six/seven multi-part questions; you will have to answer three (30 minutes
allocated per question | 10 points per question), one of which must be the visual
prompt question
– one extra credit visual prompt question worth 5 points; it’s up to you to use your
time wisely and to decide to answer this question or not
– all questions must be answered in full-length, cogently argued, and well-
structured paragraphs
– every question will ask you to define the key terms raised in the question itself
(those terms will be italicized)
– while I do not expect you to memorize all characters’ names (descriptions/actors’
names suffice), I do expect you to use the correct terminology (i.e.
reconstitutive, restorational, restorative nostalgia)
– review the PowerPoint presentations and use these as signposts (pay specific
attention to the terms in bold and the discussion questions)
– focus on the connections between concepts, texts and classes: i.e.
• Group them by genre: e.g. melodrama, horror, historical fiction, the sitcom
• Group them by characters: e.g. housewives, independent career women,
white-collar working men, characters of color, LGBTQ characters
• Group them by theoretical investment: e.g. which media texts share an
investment in gender performativity? which highlight different constructions
of (hegemonic) masculinity/ies? which illustrate the power and dynamics of
the abject/the monstrous? which exemplify or rewrite the mechanism(s) of
the male gaze? which can be said to serve as nostalgic texts and how is their
nostalgia deployed?
 Example questions
• How do The Imitation of Life, Far from Heaven, and Mad Men rate as
intersectional projects: i.e. as examples of intersectionality projected on the
screen? Base your evaluation of these films’ intersectional potential by
evaluating how they negotiate/address the four key tensions that have haunted
the project of intersectionality since its inception. Also, speak specifically to
these media texts’ treatment of racism, white privilege, white fragility, and
nostalgia in weighing their critical potential. Lastly, comment on the narrative
and formal/visual strategies employed by these texts in bringing
intersectionality to the screen.


• How do Jackie, I Am Cait, and RuPaul’s Drag Race differ as reality texts/
historical recreations of reality, and what do they have in common? How do the
concepts of the female masquerade and gender performativity allow us to
critically reflect on the gendered performances that animate each of these
reality texts? How are these concepts related, how are they different, and
which text mobilizes which most clearly? In your answer, speak specifically to
the concept and role of feminist cultural memory in Jackie, drag as a
subversive representational politics in RuPaul’s Drag Race and the historical
construction and contemporary reconstruction of transgender identity on I Am
Cait.


• Unpack this ad for Moschino Barbie and weigh its subversive potential: https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=TULVRlpsNWo. Which model of intersectionality is
deployed here? How does it complement the ad’s brand of representational
politics? How does this ad (re)construct blackness, whiteness, and queerness?
Lastly, how does this ad exemplify a specific iteration of postfeminism?
 “Transsexual Empires” (Sullivan)
• In a revealing prelude, Sullivan establishes that Queer Theory’s
interest in transsexual/transgendered bodies lies in their innate
ability to “transgress, and thus help to dismantle, binary oppositions
such as male/female, nature/culture, heterosexual/homosexual.”
– What are the consequences of this understanding of transgender(ism)? What does
it mean for the lived reality/ies of transgender people?
• In tracing the origins of the term “transsexual” (which she back-
dates to 1949) Sullivan notes its deep medicalization/pathologization
as “a medical condition that can be cured in and through surgery.”
– How was transsexuality understood at the time – and how is it understood today?
What implications does this understanding of transsexuality/transgender(ism)
have? What parallels can/should we (not) draw with early theorizations/discourse
on homosexuality?
• Illustrating the power(ful limits) of discourse, Sullivan observes that
sex reassignment surgeries took place prior to the invention of the
term “transsexuality,” which meant that transgender people “were
forced to understand or articulate their identities using other …
terms.”
– How were transgender people “forced to articulate” their identity exactly? How
does it explain the origins of the term “transsexuality”? What has been the long
shadow cast by the use of this term/this understanding of transgender(ism)?
 “Transsexual Empires” (Sullivan)
• Sullivan argues that the “almost inextricable link between
transsexualism and surgery” has had profound implications for
the relationship transgender people (“ought to”) have with
their bodies, and brings up important considerations vis-a-vis
the role of surgery.
– How are trans people meant to come to terms with their bodies? How are
their bodies chiefly understood? What are the common criteria for sex-
reassignment surgery?
• This (forced) “conformity” to gender norms has opened
transgenderism up to a number of critical challenges, many of
which are levelled by (non-trans/cis-gendered) feminists.
– What is the basis of their critique (cf. MTF lesbians)? How is the notion of
“passing” (re)mobilized in this regard? What is some of these authors’
transphobia rooted in? How can we link this to the author’s prelude?
• Sullivan locates the emergence of the term “transgender” as a
replacement for “transsexual” in the late 1980s as a response
to its medicalization and ties to “radical politics.”
– How does Sullivan re-write the definition of transgender(ism)? What are
the (relative) (de)merits of her definition of transgender(ism)?
 “Transsexual Empires” (Sullivan)
• How does the case/person of Teena Brendon/Brendon Teena
illustrate both the risks of visibility and the “effects of
naming”? Where does Sullivan come down on this? What are
the (relative) pros and cons of naming, and in the case of
transgender people, the use of pronouns? Which term/
understanding would Sullivan prefer?
• What are the risks associated with transgender(ism)/cis-
gender(ism)’s “‘elevation to the status of universal
signifier’”? How do the episodes of I Am Cait and Orange Is
the New Black address/redress this?
(Re-)Reading Caitlyn Jenner