124642 VO BEd 04.2: Cultural Theories and Popular Culture (2024W)

This lecture offers an introduction to Cultural Theories and Popular Culture on the example of queer Pop Culture and Queer Theory. The relationship between queer and popular culture is complex and dynamic, undergoing constant evolution. Queer individuals and communities have consistently played a pivotal role in influencing and contributing to popular culture. However, popular culture has not always fully embraced queer identities and experiences. Historically, queer individuals have frequently been marginalized or negatively represented in mainstream media and popular culture, which has resulted in the perpetuation of harmful stereotypes and the erasure of their voices. Nevertheless, queer audiences have developed sophisticated subversive strategies that have allowed them to engage with, participate in, and contribute to popular culture long before the emergence of the queer movement in the 1990s or even the Stonewall riots. Moreover, queer performers have navigated popular culture, including film, television, music, literature, and social media, to address queer audiences through codes or other opaque forms, and queer audiences have always found ways to queer popular culture. Some genres of popular culture, such as drag, voguing, or musicals, have historically emerged as queer countercultures and subsequently become mainstream.
In this lecture, after a brief introduction into the field of popular culture studies, students will learn about the vexed relationship between queer identified performers, audiences, and popular culture, as well as the relationship between LGBTIQ+ movements and popular culture. We will look into different musical, cinematic, and performative genres to discuss how queer individuals, groups, and movements have carved out spaces for queer culture, supported the queer community, and represented queer identities and issues. We will learn about subversive artistic and performative forms such as camp. Moreover, we will discuss theoretical and analytical concepts such as the celluloid closet, homonormativity, queering, queer reading, heteronormativity etc.