In class on Thursday, we did not have time to view the episode of MTV's Decoded that I had hoped we might, nor did we explore what it might mean to queer something. So, I wanted to share MTV's Decoded's Franchesca Ramsey's take on queer prom (with the help of Dylan Marron): "How To Be Queer AF at Prom".
As you view it, here are some ways to think about the use of queer as a verb, or what it might mean to queer something: In my mind, this queering can take many forms, but let me highlight two. It can mean that we take something heteronormative, like prom, and find ways to unearth the implicit queerness in it, or find a way to bring a queer kind of visibility to it and show how queers have already participated in such traditions or how they could. The first kind of queering might notice something like how football players often pat themselves on their butts when they play, an act that isn't really allowed in other kinds of spaces, but in such a heteronormative space, such homoerotic touching is permitted, because, well, we all know that such tough dudes can't be gay, right? This episode of Decoded is operating more in the second way. That is, Ramsey and Marron are showing both the legal/activist history of young queer people's attempt to participate in prom and how these young folks are making it their own.
Here are two comments from Donald Hall that might help us continue to think through what it means "to queer" something:
As you view it, here are some ways to think about the use of queer as a verb, or what it might mean to queer something: In my mind, this queering can take many forms, but let me highlight two. It can mean that we take something heteronormative, like prom, and find ways to unearth the implicit queerness in it, or find a way to bring a queer kind of visibility to it and show how queers have already participated in such traditions or how they could. The first kind of queering might notice something like how football players often pat themselves on their butts when they play, an act that isn't really allowed in other kinds of spaces, but in such a heteronormative space, such homoerotic touching is permitted, because, well, we all know that such tough dudes can't be gay, right? This episode of Decoded is operating more in the second way. That is, Ramsey and Marron are showing both the legal/activist history of young queer people's attempt to participate in prom and how these young folks are making it their own.
Here are two comments from Donald Hall that might help us continue to think through what it means "to queer" something:
- "The fear is always that the 'queer' noun will take on a transitive verb form, will spread its queerness, convert others, awaken discontent, and undermine the system" (14).
- "And this is why I want to 'queer' you. Throughout this book, I want to enlist your help in putting pressure on simplistic notions of identity and in disturbing the value systems that underlie designations of normal and abnormal identity, sexual identity in particular" (14).
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