Making out in the mainstream
Subtitle: GLAAD and the politics of respectability
By: Vincent Doyle
Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
Published: 2016
Language: eng
Number of pages: 297
ISBN-13: 9780773546783
Subjects: Gays in mass media; Gay activists; Gay rights; Press coverage; Gay liberation movement; Sexual minorities in mass media; Mass media and gays; Gays in popular culture; Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation
Description: "Documenting the rise and evolution of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), Vincent Doyle presents a nuanced perspective on the complexity, contradictions, and ambivalences of advancing social causes through popular media. Based on participant observation, in-depth interviews, and archival research carried out at GLAAD{u2019}s New York and Los Angeles offices from 2000 to 2001, the book analyzes the GLAAD Media Awards and the organization{u2019}s responses to controversial public figures such as Dr Laura Schlessinger and Eminem, and programs such as Queer as Folk. Doyle argues that the earlier political strategy of coming out to the mainstream, intended to dismantle closeted life and create a mass movement, has been supplanted by the market-oriented 'making out' in the mainstream, which privileges respectable images of homosexuality in the pursuit of political and economic gain. He shows how this emphasis on respectability clashes with the development of a diverse movement that campaigns for greater inclusion and he offers a sophisticated appeal for more complicated understandings of assimilation and anti-normalization."--From publisher description.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 273-280) and index.