Lesbian Communities
Class Discussion Outline The L Word, Entertaining Lesbians, and Constructions of Lesbian Communities/Identities
I. Visibility and Fictive “Meta-Identity”: Manufacturing Lesbian Communities/Celebrity
a. Fictional Lesbian Community
We’ve been discussing Gever’s analysis of celebrity in general and lesbian celebrity in particular. How can her analysis be applied to the construction of fictional lesbian communities?
i. How are the characters on The L Word constructed? Who are they trying to reach, and why? Are there limitations that are glaring in this particular construction of a lesbian community and what do those limitations mean?
Gever writes, “If the problem that prevents the legitimation of lesbians is our perceived threat to social order, what could be a better corrective than lesbians who are available only as idealized figures and are not likely to muddy the waters of projected fantasies by exhibiting their less-than-fabulous selves? The problem with this outcome is tat the visibility of “ordinary” lesbians, which is supposed to increase as the result of growing numbers of “out” stars, becomes even more elusive. Visibility politics centered on the entertainment industry recedes as a viable strategy.” (43)
It seems that a fictional show about a lesbian community might be the best vehicle for the entertainment industry to present idealized figures rather than “ordinary” lesbians. This fictional culture is malleable in a way that greatly benefits advertisers and those who market the show.
But Gever doesn’t stop there, she explains that although there is a split between celebrity representations/constructions of lesbian identity and more “ordinary” lesbian identities, there is a benefit to this split. In observing the ways in which visible celebrity lesbians and visible fictional lesbians are incorporated into the existing Hollywood culture, one can gauge the extent to which a lesbian must (often reluctantly) comply with particular gender and sexual norms to achieve inclusion. This is, Gever argues, the visibility of compromise (43). This can be seen in images of celebrity construction as well as the constructed realities of lesbian identity in fictional storylines on television. American celebrity culture is so deeply immersed in the fiction of television that it becomes difficult to discern the celebrity from the character.
ii. MEF clip: Further Off the Straight & Narrow: New Gay Visibility on TV: http://youtube.com/watch?v=Q-kDkJN72-Q
There is little discussion or allusion to homophobia on The L Word—is this a kind of a “performance of acceptance”?
Can we see a “conditional visibility” on The L word where only stories of “good gays who conform to middle class norms of respectability” are told even though it is shown on a subscription channel? How is this idea similar to that of Gever’s analysis of a visibility of compromise?
iii. So, how are “ordinary” lesbians responding to The L Word? How does the fan culture shape itself after The L Word and how does The L Word respond?
b. Fictional Constructed Celebrity
Let’s complicate this some: the construction of a construction of celebrity—that is, fictional lesbian celebrity. Consider the role of Shane as reluctant celebrity or Dana as closeted tennis professional/celebrity. (Shane: http://youtube.com/watch?v=o-RC6y8Oq_k -- Dana clip on DVD)
Is this Hollywood attempting to control the conversation regarding negotiated compromise in lesbian representation? How does this become the co-optation of the dialogue in lesbian communities regarding visibility? What are we to make of Shane’s reluctance?
i. We’ve even got other fictional television shows citing The L Word as a cultural phenomenon. For instance, in The Office, when character Michael Scott is accused of homophobia he responds: “I watch The L Word… I watch Queer as [beep], okay?” Do these inter-fictional conversations between shows further complicate the relationship between actual lesbian communities and fictional lesbian communities? Or does a scene like this actually underscore the absurdity of looking to fictional lesbian communities to gain understandings of lesbian culture?
ii. Additionally, how’s this for complicated? The L Word has a website that includes a link to Second Life- a virtual world that has been created and inhabited by online players in real time. In Second Life there is a virtual version of the café (The Planet) where much of the socializing on The L Word takes place. Viewers are invited to have a cup of coffee at The Planet and “have a dance party with friends, play L Word games, watch clips and full episodes of the show….” (http://www.sho.com/site/lword/second_life.do)
Similarly, Showtime hosts a site called ourchart.com premised upon the fictional relationship chart that connects many of the lesbians on The L Word. An article in the New York Times said of the site:
The site, a joint venture with Showtime Networks, which is owned by CBS, is a way of acknowledging that “audiences own TV shows these days and they want interaction,” Ms. Chaiken said.
Eventually, the portion of the new site devoted to “The L Word” will become less important “as the community takes it over” with user-generated content, said Hilary Rosen, a founding partner and the site’s president. “Every lesbian has their own L world. We thought it would be really interesting to let go of the show in this environment and bring other people’s L worlds into the mix and let them share with each other.
Matthew Blank, chairman and chief executive of Showtime Networks, said the audience for the show “has a tremendous sense of community,” which he equated to “analog social networking.
Everyone I know who watches that show and is gay watches it with their friends,” he said. “It makes for a natural extension.” But he acknowledged that trying to build such a site from a show has not been done before. “We’re not sure what to expect.
(http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/18/technology/18chart.html?ex=1324098000&en=8a25959dfd589e4a&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss)
If the audience for the show “has a tremendous sense of community,” what is the purpose of creating this particular online space? What do you think Showtime is trying to do?
c. Beyond Fiction:
There’s also a very real lesbian celebrity happening here that is beyond the fiction of the show- whereas Martina was a lesbian first and a tennis pro second… the women in this show are known for their portrayal of lesbians first- questions of their “real life” sexuality come next.
i. Gever ends her book with this passage:
“[S]elf-fashioning projects nowadays have become the norm. The injunction to take charge of, discipline, organize, and plot a destiny for oneself has become compulsory. Which prompts a final question: will lesbians trade in imaginative assaults on normalcy for these well-made, well-managed, reasonable selves?”
Given that there have been significant changes in the representation of lesbians since Gever’s research, especially with the birth of The L Word, it is of some import to apply her analysis of celebrity culture to the fictive lesbian celebrity/community culture of The L Word. How does The L Word participate in the fashioning and construction of lesbian selves?
Has the blurry line between lesbian celebrity, fictional lesbian character, and “ordinary” lesbians led to a compulsory self-fashioning in “ordinary” lesbian communities?
Have “ordinary” lesbians become implicated in the strictly controlled representations of identity that celebrities have come to embody?
Monday, November 5, 2007
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The book Entertaining Lesbians was written by Martha Gever who attempts to delineate between what was acceptable and what is acceptable today concerning lesbians in the media.
Gever applause and gives credit to lesbian celebrities who have unveiled their sexual identity to the public eye, especially since “coming out” has not been the easiest secret to share. Gever discusses the advantages and, of course, the disadvantages of lesbian visibility in the media. Even though it would make sense to think that the more exposure lesbians receive in the media is better, Gever argues that overexposure can be negative. For instance, to much exposure could be misleading in the way that the media portrays lesbians. Gever points out the many identities that are automatically paired with lesbian identities. For example, a women sporting a short hair-cut may be seen as butch, or a lady wearing mens apparel could be mistaken as being too masculine for a women and often mistaken for being a lesbian.
Throughout the book Gever discusses many famous lesbian icons, however, some more
in depth than in others such as Radclyffe Hall, Mercedes de Acosta, and Martina Navratilova. These three woman are recognized for self fashioning. One example that Gever used was Mercedes de Acosta who made a name for herself. Even though she was not the right lesbian model for setting an acceptable standard for society, de Acosta challenged society by going against the norm. Gever discusses the importance of their sexual identity and how it has been an important part in contributing to lesbians in the media today. Without precursors such as Hall, de Acosta, and Navratilova lesbians in the entertaining industry might not be given the recognition that they receive today.
When reading Entertaining Lesbians I followed the guide lines in the “How to Read.” When doing so I read a common mistake that I tend to do while reading, and that is reading with a highlighter in my hand instead of a pen. So immediately I decided to focus on using a pen while reading material. As a result I noticed that I was much more engaged in the reading more so than with the highlighter. When I used a highlight I would never make an effort to try to understand or remember the importance of that sentence because I would always think to myself that I will go back to it later. However, when using a pen I started to focus more on the important aspects of the reading. I would circle words that were meaningful and words that I did not know. In the margins and I would make little notes to myself about my thoughts, feelings, and assumptions about that certain page or paragraph. Since using this technique it has helped me remember my specific thoughts and feelings during the time of the reading, and has made it easier to refer back to a certain page without having to actually reread the entire page again.
• I am not clear as to why Lesbian visibility was seen as okay in the 19th century, but then changed.
• Favorite quote, “ If representational visibility equals power, then almost naked young white women should be running Western Culture.” I never thought of it that way, and after reading why Gever thought overexposure was negative, it all clicked together.
• I liked the book it gave me a lot of insight on lesbians in the entertaining industry. I had never really thought about gays and lesbians in the media and their specific roles or expectations.
• I appreciated the historical perspective of lesbians during the 19th and 20th century and the information that was shared about how lesbianism came about.
Summary Two – Entertaining Lesbians
1. Summary
Martha Gever’s Entertaining Lesbians explores the multi-faceted issues of celebrity and visibility for lesbians and others in queer communities. For readers who seek a gossipy look into “who is” and “with whom”, this is not the book. Gever specifically states that she is not interested in adding to or evaluating the lore about lesbian icons. Her academic text offers readers a primarily historical and sociological investigation into how/why lesbian celebrity came about and the ways in which it interacts with various cultural phenomena. The author supplements these historical and sociological analyses with biographical explorations of particular lesbian celebrities including Chastity Bono, Radclyffe Hall, Mercedes de Acosta, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Rita Mae Brown, and Martina Navratilova.
Addressing the basic issue of visibility, Gever reveals the contemporary goals of many gay equality organizations. Chapter two is devoted to the relationship between visibility and power, noting the assumptions of many that merely “being visible” equates with acceptance, agency, and authority. This discussion of the risk and rewards of visibility leads to a look at how the media works with (or against) gay representations.
At various points in history collaborating with the media has held very different meanings. While GLAAD has set its sites on achieving popular visibility, the radical movements of the `60s did not approve of such a relationship with the media. Gever explores in depth the relationships between feminism, lesbian feminism, and the conflicts between various factions of civil rights movements. In later chapters, Gever explores the images put forth by lesbian actresses of the first half of the twentieth century and how those identities were mediated by the women themselves as well as by the press. Gever spends her final chapter exploring the self-construction of Martina Navratilova. The author explores image of Navratilova as it changed over time through the eyes of the media and through Navratilova’s own eyes. Readers also learn of the extensive biomedical tools the tennis pro used to create her optimum self. Gever demonstrates how lesbian celebrity and self-invention are navigated in a media-saturated, melodrama-obsessed United States.
2. Insights
Biographize. I tried to explore this facet by looking at the foreword and via internet research. I found surprisingly little online in regards to a biography for Gever. It is clear that the text is academic and complex. I know that she is a college professor and that she did a great deal of research for this book. The book is dedicated to, simply, Yvonne. We do not know who Yvonne is. Is she Gever’s partner? A friend? A relative? Is Gever a lesbian? Does it matter? Her Acknowledgments section reveals that much of her research was funded by gay and lesbian interest groups. From this, one could reasonably expect a pro-LGBT perspective.
3. Topics/Questions/Opinions
• I was surprised when I read about how much contention there was between particular feminists and lesbians during the peak of civil rights/women’s rights movements.
• The de Acosta section: this annoyed me at first. I felt it was clear that de Acosta was not a real celebrity; maybe I felt like the author was “copping out” by researching de Acosta simply because there was information available to study. (After all, de Wolfe, Dietrich, Garbo – none of them admitted their lesbianism – they covered it up). But I also saw later the relevance because she had so much contact with “real” celebrities.
• Why was the media (gossip columnists) so invested in preserving the framework in which lesbianism was not discussed? In an era of McCarthyism, wouldn’t it be most scandalous to “out” them – and therefore good for paper sales, etc? Why weren’t they exposed as deviants if that is what the world really believed?
• Visibility – I, too, had assumed that visibility was a “good” thing. On so many levels, normalization does make sense. Desensitization, as it were. I appreciate Gevers insights about the dynamics between visibility and power and how the two are not the same thing.
Here is an overview of the L Word:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8sXdV6jaH4
Some Fan Responses to the L Word:
Impatience with this season
By Khem
I don't know about anybody else, but I'm liking this season less and less as it progresses, and I'm so disappointed. Watching the show has up till now been a high point of my week (says a lot about my social life, doesn't it? )
I'm feeling like their trying to do too much in each episode, and each of the individual stories is suffering for it. It seems like "Okay, we'll do two minutes with Shane and Hot Mom (I can't even remember that gorgeous girl's name!) and mention Shay once, five with Bette and Jodi--oh let's throw in a shot or two that'll get everbody excited...now a little Jenny weirdness,,,oops gotta get Alice and Tasha in with something political...now, wait...quick throw in something with Kit and don't forget Papi, and, oh, yeah Tina's now this improbable Hollywood exec and our audience has expressed their distaste for her relationship with Henry, so ex him and put a new cute (irritating to Bette--and me, too) director chick in the picture. And then don't forget about Max (who, if he is from Wilmette, IL, CANNOT come from this working class Irish family they've manufactured...do some research please.) And what ever happened to Phyllis?" TOO MUCH, yet not enough.!
I loved the original set of characters, and welcome seeing new sexy girls, but I want the characters to be developed. Right now I feel like the "old girls" are losing their depth and the new ones aren't being given any to begin with. --They're just there as archetypes (the tough/tender chica, the don't ask-don't tell african-american butch, the newly awakened older woman, the deaf artist)
I want my L Word back!
Any thoughts?
Another message board post by cpe_san_diego
Season 1 was brilliant
I was thrilled by the first season's creative and compelling representation of characters. The opening titles, music, dramatizations, editing, as well as, subtle humor of the first season, was an artful and poignant display of life to which many people, regardless of sexual orientation, could relate.
Another post on represntation:
#
I suppose just being gay allows you to be in a type of sub-culture. The author of this article expressed an connection with characters that do not look like her and is seemingly not of the same social class just because they are all gay. I, an African American woman, never felt a special connection with Rachael from “Friends” just because we were both heterosexuals. I never felt a connection with Clare Houxstable, the beloved mother from “The Cosby Show”. We are both African Americans and heterosexuals. African Americans are also under/misrepresentated in television. Had I been a gay woman watching the L-word I would still feel underrepesentated and left-out. My African American lesbian friend can not look at the L-word and relate to that lifestyle. I don’t think that many of the lesbians that do not look like the characters on the show white, black or other could find such a connection either. Too many times we see that being a lesbian is okay or acceptable as long as the lesbians are still appealing to heterosexual men. Although the author says she could relate to the characters on television, I wonder if that assertion was based on actually seeing herself hanging out with these women or just being happy to see lesbian women portrayed positively. I still believe the show lack a polyphony of different types of homosexual women.
Posted by Charlette L. Matts | May 11, 2005, 9:45 pm
In Martha Gever’s Entertaining Lesbians: Celebrity, Sexuality, and Self-Invention, Gever discusses the celebrity, visibility and construction of the lesbian celebrity. She discusses how the ideas of the lesbian celebrity came about, and some of the actresses and other celebrities who played major roles in shaping the perception and visibility of perceived lesbians in media culture. In her introduction she clarifies exactly what she will do in this work, as she admits that the title can give way to the common misconception that she is looking to provide biographies on the lives and “outing” of popular lesbian celebrities. She brings an end to this assumption by asserting that what she hopes to do in this work is to inquire about “the social factors that inform lesbian celebrity” (Gever 1) as well as to explore how “lesbian celebrities…have become familiar figures in American popular culture” (Gever 2) even after undergoing a past which at some points popularized their androgyny and at other points condemned their alleged sexualities. In order to begin to discuss the history, socialization of and popularization of the “lesbian celebrity” Gever first defines this term. She defines the lesbian celebrity as those who accept their sexuality and who are endorsed by the “mainstream media” (Gever 6), they are not self-discovering individual sexual entities but “social phenomena” constructed for media and visibility purposes. She also discusses the problems with this phenomenon and how it is regulated based on the era. With this piece Gever works to highlight how ‘lesbian’ works with in the context of societal ideology during certain eras. She does not highlight the lesbian celebrity as being a wonderful individually constructed goddess but instead she shows that she is instead a socially constructed media project that can be visually asserted or culturally removed for the purposes of the morals presented in each part of our American timeline.
In the second chapter of Entertaining Lesbians Gever discusses the process and importance of visibility and outing lesbian celebrities in media culture. She discusses how with the emergence of certain prideful lesbians intermixed with the portrayal of either masculanized or specifically gay women in cinema, the lesbian celebrity was recreated in this area as a new symbol for sexuality and otherness in American media. In “Celestial Configurations: Aspects of Lesbian Stardom”, Martha Gever highlights certain aspects of how lesbians became prominent figures in early literary and cinematic culture. She frames her discussion about the formation of the celebrity in the early 20th century using the life and work of author Radclyffe Hall as well as emphasizing the importance of photography and electronic in creating the celebrity, which worked to publicize the private lives of prominent American figures. In later chapters she discusses how lesbians began to construct themselves in the public eye to gain both following, sponsorship and worldwide celebrity (highlighting Mercedes De Acosta and Martina Navratilova) and how these attempts both worked for and against their reputations. She concludes by discussing how the lesbian celebrity creates herself but how society, aspects of melodrama as well as political perspectives work to create the right lesbian figure for that time.
Some insights that I gathered from the reading involved how celebrity was created in general. I never considered the process that it took to invent celebrity and the celebrity. Although I realized that celebrity meant certain things during different eras, such as writer and poet during one period and actress in another, I did not take into consideration all of the forms of construction, such as photographic media, that went into popularizing these figures. In learning this, one understands more about how much celebrity is constructed in the eyes of society as those who are “celestial” because they are such untouchable creatures who have increased their distance as well as their glamour through mediums that serve them. In terms of the “How to Read” document by Professor David Chioni Moore, I basically wrote reactions to ideas that were new to me in the text. I also worked to historicize the text by understand that celebrity is a particularly 20th century concept that is constructed for different purposes in every decade to serve the perceived immediate needs of society. I enjoyed reading Gever’s book, because it gave me a new history lesson on both celebrity and lesbians and how those two concepts are heavily invested in each other.
Points of Discussion:
• Women of color: I did not like how she grazed over that topic. I would like to understand a bit more about the whiteness of lesbianism and how women of color (especially celebrities) play a role in this.
• I think she should have had one gossip chapter about some closet lesbians, just to show how many there may or may not be.
• What was the sexual activity between lesbians in the twenties. Were they more mental lovers then physical? And how were these relationships initiated? What were their relationships with gay men during this time, especially gay Black men?
Summary Assignment 2: Entertaining Lesbians
The book Entertaining Lesbians by Martha Gever talks about the importance and the creation of the “lesbian celebrity”. Gever defines “lesbian celebrity”, saying, “My interpretation of the term is limited to instances where a celebrity is known to be and does not deny being a lesbian…the stardom of these lesbians is achieved and authorized within the institutions of popular culture, endorsed by the mainstream media” (Gever 6). Gever gives a number of different examples of what a “lesbian celebrity” is and who she would characterize as such. The main points she discusses in relation to the creation and importance of the “lesbian celebrity” are: “lesbian visibility politics”(5), a historical analysis of the cultural, economic, and technological changes that have occurred in the past century that allowed for the creation of the “lesbian celebrity” (6), an examination of recent decades leading to the “lesbian celebrity” as we know it today, and the creation of celebrity Martina Navratilova as the ideal production of the lesbian celebrity. Gever uses extensive knowledge from the historical beginnings of lesbian celebrity in her discussion of early Hollywood lesbians, the use of gay and lesbian visibility as political power and the spread of knowledge, and the creation and production of the body. Gever’s discussion of visibility and the governmentality of the body shows how the lesbian celebrity is created and used a political centerpiece for change and acceptance in popular culture and media.
I gathered insights from the “close reading” as suggested in the “How to Read” essay. I searched online for both the author and the book title to see what I could find. I found a lot of information on the book itself and other books the author had written. However, I could not find any biographical information about the author. I found that the author has written six other books which have similar topics related to queer issues in media. Amazon.com was the most useful site in finding out information about this book and its author. I found the acknowledgements much more useful in finding out details of the author’s life. This book was published in 2003 in New York (this can be found in the book itself). This is important in reading the book, because it helps the reader understand the context within which the book was written. Obviously, knowing the era and nation in which the text was written is important because it allows the reader to properly conceptualize what they are reading. Lastly, one of the more important things I noticed when reading this book is when Gever discusses lesbians or the lesbian community, she uses “we”. This lets the reader know that Gever is subjective, and a part of the community of which she is writing, which means that although this is an academic and socio-analytical text you know that she is writing from a non-objective point of view.
Points to be Discussed
1. The creation of the “self”.
2. The creation of a media image, and the “celebrity”. How the “lesbian celebrity” is different in creation.
3. How gender is played out in these lesbian celebrities’ images.
4. How “lesbian style” is portrayed and reproduced through the media. (i.e. L word)
5. The importance of visibility. Why is it so important? The conceptualization of the “closet”.
6. Why “coming out” and being visible as queer is a political identity.
Works Cited
Gever, Martha. Entertaining Lesbians: Celebrity. Sexuality, and Self Invention. New York:Routledge, 2003.
In her book Entertaining Lesbians, Martha Gever discusses the development and changing landscape of lesbian celebrity in the United States throughout the 20th century. She rejects monolithic critiques of celebrity visibility and invisibility in favor of an analysis that, through extensive research into lesbian celebrity in Hollywood throughout the 20th century, tells a more complete story of the construction of lesbian celebrity identity as a public political push and pull.
Gever argues that the relationship between lesbian celebrity visibility and political power and representation is in fact a complicated and possibly tenuous one. She suggests that instead of employing a critical analysis of issues surrounding lesbian celebrity that is rooted in faulty assumptions and simplistic logic, one should apply a theoretical outlook largely informed by cultural studies in which the critic “theorizes popular culture as a site of struggle over definitions and meanings of key terms in shared cultural vocabularies” (5).
Through her use of this theoretical lens, Gever also argues that when lesbian celebrity became a fixture in the topography of popular cultural celebrity, a historical revisionism of the lives and communities of ancestral lesbian icons took place. In considering this revisionism she recasts the lives of some historical lesbian icons as “exemplary studies in image management and theatricality” to more deeply engage with issues of constructed lesbian identity (8).
Finally, Gever does a case study of constructed lesbian identity in her chapter on Martina Navratilova. Through this case study, Gever underscores that self-fashioning of celebrity identity has moved well beyond the familiar cosmetic changes that were largely employed throughout the early 20th century. In fact, she argues that the act of coming-out can be a kind of deliberate and tactical kind of self-invention in the face of (sometimes professionally) imposed physical and psychological demands that are, at times, at odds with normative cultural imperatives of gender and sexuality.
I chose to use Professor Moore’s active reading technique of ending each section of reading with a few lines of my own writing about what is being written and my response, as I typically type up notes while I read a text. Although this was unsettling to me in some way as I was concerned that I would forget important points, I found that this technique was very effective and possibly less time-consuming than my traditional technique.
Ultimately this technique helped me to discern a particular pattern of visibility critique more swiftly (although maybe only marginally) than I likely would have had I approached the reading in my usual way. More importantly however, the summaries that I wrote at the end of particular sections of readings are proving more valuable in reviewing my notes on the book as I no longer have to go through the process of condensing my notes into cogent, cohesive thoughts as it has already largely been done.
Topics I would like the class to discuss:
• The ways in which fictional lesbian icons and celebrities are also carefully constructed identities—and the roles these fictional women play in the construction of real celebrity identity and real lesbian identity generally.
• The relationship between lesbian style/aesthetic and visibility now that lesbian style has been co-opted for years.
• Popular gay and lesbian culture has become the location of a particular liberal political identity that does not leave meaningful room for discussion of alternative politics. How has the GLBT community taken on the role of celebrity itself—that is, how has the larger community been deliberately shepherded and fashioned to attain a certain popular status?
Summary “Entertaining Lesbians”
In her book “Entertaining Lesbians” Martha Geever discusses the nexus of sexuality and celebrity. She contends that the two are linked by control and presentation of self image, and she notes that the visibility of such an image is not inherently good for either portion.
Both implicit by her subject of the book and explicit at points within the book, Geever feels that celebrity and lesbian statuses link through a mastery of self image. Geever claims that “both modern stars and lesbians can be described in terms of particular modes of subjectivity achieved through practices of self-fashioning and image management” (Geever 4). Both lesbians and celebrities are expected to present themselves in a particular way through dress and physique as well as storytelling.
Geever notes the views on expected attire for lesbians and stars. She notes the belief that lesbians dress in a specific, masculine, manner (Geever 31). This masculine dress of ties and pants often also corresponds to a self-created masculine physique. In describing the lesbian tennis star Martina Navratilova, Life wrote “except for the small breasts and shapely hips, her…physique might be that of a man (Darrach in Geever 172). Navratilova worked hard to obtain this physique, a masculine one that could be seen as corresponding to her “gender queer” sexuality. At the same time that lesbians are seen as creating a masculine self, it is expected for a female celebrity to dress in a way overplaying their feminine side, such as the “burlesque” look of Monroe or Madonna or the “’female female impersonator’” Parton (Geever 34). While the two groups are expected to dress differently, both are expected to represent themselves through their attire and limit their stories of sexuality to match.
When celebrity and lesbian statuses meet, the image management is even more critical, but visibility of this image can be even less obviously beneficial. While Geever claims she does not take a stand on visibility politics, she indicates an aversion to a reliance on visibility as a way to obtain political goals. She says that advocates of visibility politics “mistake symbolic representations in the media for political representation and social legitimation” (Geever 5). Thus, making lesbians noticeable does not make them acceptable, united or strong. An example is Hall’s book which Geever maintains “received high marks for visibility but failed to effect significant reforms” (Geever 51). Not only has it not been proven effective, but visibility politics can backfire by making lesbians more visible to those who want to oppress them through regulation or through a lack of protection because they are already too dominant. Geever fears that another form of backfire from lesbian visibility politics is the commercialization of and loss of radical views in the lesbian community as it becomes “commodity lesbian,” (Geever 39) used just as a market for commercial goods and Hollywood productions.
Using the How to Read guidelines, I “[wrote] back” in order to gain a more thorough understanding of the text. I commented on areas I thought were interesting, wrote “Huh?” on parts I did not understand the relevance of at first and summarized after every few paragraphs. Through this reading I focused my thoughts and noticed the recurring themes. Ideas which at first seemed passing (like image mastery) later reappeared and linked to my earlier notes. Starring and redefining key terms helped me note important inconsistencies in the book, discussed in the next section. When reading the more complex portions of the book, I was able to mark what I saw as key so that I could come back and take note of the passage in light of later fact patterns. Ex.: I first marked the comments about exemplary status for sanitized lesbians, then later reread the marked passage (Geever 117) and applied it to visibility through being “out.” In this sense being visibly “out” could only be productive if you fit this normalized, “sanitary,” almost asexual, image. Active reading allowed me to notice and analyze connections.
I would like to discus that through active reading I noticed inconsistencies.
1) Geever’s defines a lesbian celebrity as “a celebrity is known to be and does not deny being a lesbian” (Geever 6) but later contradicts herself.
a. Elsie de Wolfe is analyzed as a lesbian celebrity, but “inserted [in her autobiography] an account, entirely fictional it turns out, of a long-term, but also long-distance love affair with an unnamed man just in case her marriage” was not enough to make her seem heterosexual (Geever 123).
b. Contradicts her definition by defining as lesbian a woman who faked marrying and having an affair with a man to deny being lesbian.
2) Geever also claims she will not take a side on whether visibility politics is good, yet a careful reading shows the reader the falsity in this statement.
a. GLAAD’s stand on visibility is deemed “propaganda” (Geever 17).
b. The connotation of this term is clear, so I marked it as a sign that she does not believe what GLAAD is arguing and feels it is inaccurate or a lie.
While I did not like the inconsistencies, I liked the comparison and link between visibility of celebrities (especially sexually deviant celebrities) and out lesbians. This link can e discussed further.
1. Gever’s work is an “inquiry into the social factors that inform lesbian celebrity” (p. 1). She discusses the historical and social contexts that have affected the way that several lesbian celebrities have been perceived, and notes the significance that the lesbian and gay movement has placed on visibility – or being “out.” Gever questions whether visibility is always positive, and explores the ways that lesbians have been visible in the media throughout different periods of time and cultural contexts. Gever’s work examines how “individual sexuality and sexual identity, like a celebrity image, are articulated through interactions with social norms and systems of representation” (p. 10).
Gever questions why visibility is often equated with power, and notes that visibility cannot equal undisputed power – the notion requires critical thought about what contexts of visibility translate into power. She points out that if visibility equaled power, almost naked young white women would be in power. Gever discusses lesbian celebrities from then 1920’s until now and gives insight to their individual challenges in the culture that made it easy or difficult for them to be described as “lesbian,” either by self identifications or that of the public.
2. I focused on the biography of the author. Finding information on Martha Gever was extremely difficult, which says something about the type of work that she does. I learned that she’s an assistant professor of communication at Florida Atlantic University and is a former editor of The Independent Film and Video Monthly magazine. Other than those two facts, I really didn’t find any information about Martha. Her experience as a communications teacher and editor of a film and video magazine lead me to believe she has a strong understanding of the role and effects of the media, so I know that her writing is more than just her own opinion – it is also grounded in her research and knowledge.
3. Topics to Discuss
• Gever says that although “deWolfe’s reticence about her sexuality could be compared to refusals to be relegated to an identity pigeonhole that are common today, her timing of her manufactured straightness must be seen in the context of specific historical circumstances quite different from the present” (p. 124). Gever goes on to describe this historical context as the entrenched view of lesbianism as pathology.
• Is lesbianism still pathologized? What reasons might lesbians today be reticent about their sexuality?
• What does it mean to be “reticent” about one’s sexuality? Does this mean a person is ashamed or private?
• I think it’s interesting that Gever asserts that deWolfe’s reticence must be viewed in a historical context. “Heterosexual” and “homosexual” were not categories of identity until around 1865, and even then “heterosexuality” was a concept discussed largely by psychologists, not the public, until the 1920’s and 1930’s. Can we really know that deWolfe was reticent about her sexuality? Isn’t it also possible that she was reticent about the term as an identity?
Summary
Martha Gever charts the rise of the lesbian celebrity in mainstream pop culture in her book Entertaining Lesbians: Celebrity, Sexuality, and Self-Invention. Her main argument concerns the increasingly popular topic of visibility. She addresses the question of “Has the increase in popular lesbians helped or hurt the cause of the lgbt (mostly lesbian) community?” Being “out” is now (relatively) acceptable to the media, and an increasing number of celebrities are choosing to incorporate their sexuality into their image. They have created a particular image that now frequently stands as the representation of all lesbians. There are certainly drawbacks from this approach because it marginalizes particular experiences. Gever uses several case studies to investigate self-invention, sexual politics, and issues of visibility.
Insights
• This may sound really obvious and something that I probably should have caught the first time, but by re-reading the introduction after the book, I suddenly understood her argument. There can’t be lesbian celebrities without having previously created the lesbian celebrity concept. It is the media
• Biographize – Martha Gever is Assistant Professor of Communication at Florida Atlantic University/Broward. She has written several other books concerning the entertainment and communications industry and its relation to queer life. Gever speaks as a member of the lesbian community. Her account is certainly well-supported and academic, but also has a personal touch.
• Entertaining Lesbians is published by Routledge Press. Routledge is known for their academic works. Their website shows several ways to browse their titles, most notably by academic discipline or subject. They also include a special focus on textbooks. This is not the publishing company of novels and frivolous fiction, but one of serious academic endeavors.
Discussion Questions
• Now that we’ve read Gever’s perspective on lesbians in popular culture, do you think that the increase of visible lesbians is hurting the queer cause?
• What is the queer cause? Can there be a unifying “cause”? How does it get defined? Who gets to define it? Why do they get to define it?
• I’ve had a problem with the hierarchy of knowledge that seems to exist. Is Gever more qualified to speak about the lesbian community because she herself is involved in a tranquil domestic relationship with dancer Yvonne Rainer? This presumption that those who are personally involved are the best to speak for themselves certainly has merit but also served to marginalized other opinions. There must be some middle ground.
• How does Gever’s argument about visibility affect our perception of J.K. Rowling’s recent announcement about Dumbledore’s sexuality? Is the visibility created by this prominent fictional character beneficial to the gay community?
Summary
The book “Entertaining Lesbians” by Martha Gever has several themes that are threaded throughout. The one that intrigued me the most was her idea of image maintenance or self-construction, although other themes of necessity to the text are lesbian celebrity, as well as the inevitable visibility politics that arise. Through a discussion of several historical lesbian celebrities, a term the author does not use lightly, the intersection of these themes is elucidated.
Self-construction is a very culturally controlled phenomenon that goes along with a sense of self-identity, gender identity, belonging to a community or a social category, and community awareness. As the famous tennis player Navratilova discusses, it was her image that was her biggest problem. As the author says, “… the image problems that troubles Navratilova’s position as a public figure were not produced by individual idiosyncrasies but can be traced in every instance to uneasy encounters with another set of social institutions and ritualized cultural practices- primarily those involving definitions of gender and sexuality” (189). It was not personal characteristics or individual oddities that caused problems economically and socially; instead, it was her inability to conform to norms that adversely affected her. Social norms dictate lives but are so hidden that they often do not get events or situations attributed to them. The image problem is one most of us face, whether we are too feminine or not enough, if we have gender-bending qualities, if we are straight bisexual or lesbians, this applies to us all. But for someone in the spotlight, especially a gendered and sexually “othered” individual, social construction of the self is taken to a new, or at least much more visible, level.
Visibility politics were also brought up, with the main question being whether coming out in a highly visible situation was necessarily positive for the gay community as a whole. On pages 94-97 the author goes into detail about how since the origination of the gay liberation movement, the idea that coming out was the most important action for progression as a community was there. Because of this, the idea of celebrities coming out was especially attractive, as they would give much more visibility to the cause. The central idea is encapsulated quite well by Johnston, who the author quotes as saying “’coming out will precipitate social recognition and respect, thus liberation’” (96). Not everyone is convinced by this seemingly straightforward idea, and it does need to be taken into account whether the visibility that comes with coming out is actually progressive. Critics take into account how long “coming out” has been activated and the lack of changes for the gay community, as well as economic and social repercussions of coming out, when weighing the options. There is no answer, but then again, the point of the book is not to provide answers. It is more to raise questions. And this is a major question that was raised for me, which I will discuss later in the Topics to be Discussed section.
Self-construction and the idea of visibility are presented and explained throughout the book, which made it a particularly interesting read.
How to Read
For this, I looked at the publishing company, Routledge in New York. It appears to be mostly a textbook retailer, which gives the book an interesting sort of framework. In looking at the book as a cultural object, it is an academic text and could also qualify as a textbook, albeit one that does not seem to conform to other textbook norms. Then again, the author does not seem to me one that would conform. The layout of the book lends to textbook form, but the personalized, or I guess personal nature, of the book do not scream textbook to me. Either way, it is certainly interesting to think about comparisons between textbooks and academic works, their differences, and what these imply.
Topics for Discussion
One topic that was particularly pertinent to me having to do with visibility politics was the metaphor of the gay closet vs. the gay world- is visibility the thing to strive for? Or is a separate life fun and acceptable? P.96
Where does one draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable image maintenance and self-construction of identities? Are these lines different for celebrities and people not in the spotlight?
Summary: Entertaining Lesbians
- Sophia Iem
The book Entertaining Lesbians: Celebrity, Sexuality, and Self-Invention by Martha Gever examines the concept of lesbian celebrity and provides insightful links to its relation to culture, politics, history, and social change. The book is more scholarly than anything else—and the substantial amount of research is well-employed by Gever to provide an accurate look at how celebrity influences and is influenced by society. She is not afraid to present contradictions and paradoxes in her research, and, as a result, it is difficult to summarize her work in broad, definitive statements, however, readers can focus on a few main themes in her work, namely, visibility, celebrity, and the presence (or lack therefore) of lesbian celebrities in history.
In the first part of her book, Gever critiques claims about the importance of lesbian visibility and representation. The argument that “any visibility is better than none” does not seem to hold up, as there is not a clear causal relationship between visibility and power. As one person wryly notes, “If representational visibility equals power, than almost-naked young white women should be running Western culture” (Gever 26). Still, Gever also takes the time to explore the arguments of advocates of visibility, that visibility 1) gives lesbians a presence, 2) can promote “positive images” to contradict harmful stereotypes of lesbians as deviant, and, 3) allows visible lesbians to serve as role models for young women who have no other support for their sexuality. However, she cautions that while this may be true, other problems emerge with increased visibility. For example, when specific celebrities are made the focus of visibility, the visibility of “ordinary” lesbians, who do not fit the celebrity image, is decreased.
In the middle of her book, Gever examines the difficulty of employing lesbian celebrity as a means of social reform by looking at the feminist movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Gay and feminist activists had an antagonistic relationship with celebrities, as a key value of activism is equality—and activist leaders felt celebrities undermined the democratic nature of the groups. However, simultaneously, the wieldy influence of a celebrity’s coming out is nearly impossible to deny, regardless of what that coming out will result in.
The last part of Gever’s book is perhaps the most “juiciest.” Although Gever wrote in her introduction that she was uninterested in examining specific lesbians biographically, she does examine certain celebrities in a historical context, notably, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Mercedes de Acosta, and, later, Martina Navratilova. She examines the difficulties faced by these stars in coming out, and also how others around the stars, Hollywood or the sports industry, responded and, more often that not, assisted in keeping the celebrity’s sexuality from the public. Gever spends a great amount of time exploring de Acosta and Navratilova to explore image management and its interplay with celebrity. It is seen here, clearly, how the personal is indeed political.
Insights
1. By looking at the How to Read document, I was able to look at the book itself as a historical document. I learned a little more about Martha Gever, who is, in fact, a professor of communications, in addition to being a media activist and critic. This was helpful because it prepared me for her scholarly approach, and increased her own authority in discussing the topic.
2. I was also encouraged to look at the book’s mood, which I found to be fair, and, if not objective, than at least very self-aware of potential biases. In every argument presented, Gever would present a counter-argument, not simply in the name of fairness, but to explore why that argument also holds veracity, and in what contexts does each version play out?
3. It was also helpful to focus on the “bigger picture” as the document recommended. When I reached the end of the book, the personal details of de Acosta were so absorbing, it was very tempting to treat the second to last chapter as a biography, when, in fact, there was a large point that Gever was making about image.
List of Topics to Discuss/Personal Reactions/What I Learned
1. Even though we briefly discussed it in class, and it was mentioned in Chauncey’s book, I was glad to re-encounter the connection between Prohibition and gay culture. Before entering this class, I had never made that association. But it shows how being gay became criminalized, and for reasons less to do with sexual morality than specific historical events. To me, that is just mind-boggling.
2. Overall, just seeing things from a historical perspective was very helpful to me. It was interesting, again, to see how homosexuality evolved from being placed in a medical context in the early 20th century to being placed in a moral context in the late 20th century.
3. I was surprised that being masculine and athletic in the 1920s was associated with being over-sexed, but not necessarily homosexual. The assumption was that being masculine was associated with increased sexuality (women were not supposed to have sexual appetites), so female athletes were accused over being overly heterosexual. It is only later, in the 1930s, that the image of the “invert” athletic woman was formed. This was eye-opening to read, because by seeing the actual formation of stereotypes, you can see how truly inaccurate they are.
4. I was surprised to learn that Hollywood had a desire to keep actors’ and actresses’ homosexuality secret. In fact, much effort was made to do so. I had watched The Celluloid Closet, and it seemed like there was a purging of gays and lesbians in the media. However, Hollywood had a high investment in making sure that it appeared wholesome to the public, and a large part of this was tied up in the appearance of wholesomeness in its stars.
ENTRTAINING LESBIANS
By: Martha Gever
Entertaining Lesbians by Martha Gever is a historical account of the development of media and the influence lesbians have played in shaping mainstream politics and media production today. The Visibility of lesbians was more apparent before 1930 but eventually was censored by Hollywood Studios and lesbianism was turned into a perverse sexuality.
According to Gever “ Until recently, lesbian personhood was valued negatively in just about every corner of popular culture. Lesbianism was considered a perversion and synonymous with depravity, it was hardly somethinh that someone striving for public recognition would want to aver.” (Gever, 3) Having said this Gever details the stereotypes and media portrayals of lesbians in the pubic eyes, from Marlene Dietrich, Chastity Bono to Martina Navratilova have been powerful lesbian personas in public. The coming out process has negatively affected many well-known lesbians. Navratilova and King are good examples of discrimination because of sexual orientation. Endorsement contracts are not offered or as lucrative to lesbian athletes. Gever points out the political, social and economic discrimination that occurs when the visibility of a famous lesbian persona comes out to the public.
Gever also describes the “cyborg manifesto” as a transformation of physical body to please critics and the public. The transformation of women to look and act a gender role that is not their own is highly important to mainstream society. The visibility of lesbians has been more accepted but sometimes at the cost of misrepresenting what the lesbian community is truly about.
How to Read Handout:
HISTORICIZING
In reading Entertaining Lesbians, I thought it was a great historical account of how lesbianism has been a part of our cinema culture during a time that I believed everything was closeted and people were repressed over their sexualities and the portrayal of gender. When I think about history during the 1900’s, its always been portrayed as a very conservative and people would dare not speak of their sexuality whether it be straight or gay.
More specifically, I thought it was a time when any overt sexual action could cost you your livelihood, family and friends.
The evolution of women’s sexuality in Hollywood has been a transformation of gender. The acceptance of more masculine women as well as more feminine men has found some acceptance within the mainstream. I ask myself when will transgender people become part of the visibility movement.
Discussion Questions:
I’m interested in discussing the perception of gender in the media and whether physical transformation can be an effective form of portraying gender variations in the media.
How can we the people assist in politicizing and pressuring studios to have more gender equality programming and be inclusive to everyone in the LGBT community?
Summary Paper for Entertaining Lesbians By Martha Gever
The book Entertaining Lesbians looks at self-invention in the context of the intersection of “homosexuality, female gender, and celebrity” (Gever 2003). Each chapter looks at a historical figure or concept that connects with present ideas of celebrity and lesbian. Gever refuses to talk about celebrities that are reportedly closeted or make her book simply profiles of out lesbian celebrities. She tries to weave together movements from the last hundred years that contributed to the ideas of lesbian and celebrity as a cultural phenomenon, using paradigms employed by critics of visual and media culture. The first chapter outlines the chapters and highlights the flow of her arguments about and around self-invention.
Chapter 2 engages the debate about lesbian and celebrity visibility by looking at the politics and the media. Is visibility enough to get social agency? What happens when lesbian images are shown so much in the media (as a certain type) that they lose their relevance and importance? Lesbian style as portrayed by the media changes over time, from consciousness raising (work boots, no makeup) to K. D. Lang Lesbian chic. Another debate that Gever highlights is the assimilation idea of visibility with the idea of radically different lesbians, and how they coincide in mass media representations. She also talks about how race and gendered representations play a role in visibility too.
Chapter 3 focuses on Radclyffe Hall, author of The Well of Loneliness, and how she became famous for her use of “male” style. Her fame interplayed with many cultural factors such as the creation of photography. She also examines other celebrities around that time (Oscar Wilde, Marlene Dietrich, etc.) and how celebrity gossip through newspapers and gossip columns made celebrities more accessible to larger audiences. In capitalist culture there is interplay between what is produced and what is consumed. Since an interest in consumption is deemed feminine, while production is viewed as masculine, gendered metaphors abound. Even though lesbian images were banned by the production code from 1937-1950, lesbian relationships were fostered in the voyeuristic view of women’s bodies.
Chapter 4 highlights celebrities in the gay and lesbian liberation movements, for example Kate Millet and Jill Johnston, who were media stars but often openly spoke out against celebrity. There became this idea that self-actualization came from self-knowledge and coming out was the way to achieve this almost higher state of being.
Chapter 5 looks at Mercedes De Acosta and her entourage. Acosta is a lesbian legend that entertained many female celebrities during her time in Hollywood. This chapter shows through Acosta’s writing and biographies the many people that De Acosta was involved with, and helps to paint a portrait of lesbian identity at the time.
Chapter 6 examines Martina Navratilova and her rise to tennis fame as well as her interplay with the media. This chronicles her self-invention both in her athletic life but also in her romantic life. This chapter looks at her gender expression and how it interplays with her sexual identity in the media.
-Gever seems to fluctuate between third person descriptions of Lesbians and saying “us” p. 48 and “our” pg. 18 (with this lack of clear insider vs. outsider perspective, how does that change the novel’s ethos?)
-Book was published in 2003, yet looks at the last hundred years of media in no linear form. Why? How does looking at the past hundred years make her ethos more viable? How does it make the argument seem a little weaker because the book doesn’t follow an easy path?
-themes:
Change in theatrical fashioning to practical “selves” (argument against assimilation?) What are Gever’s leanings?
Theatrical lesbianism and celebrity?
Aids crisis and image? How did lesbian community help with that?
-whole book is academic with loss of tone of voice sometimes, why? Is it not academic enough?
-Why did she focus on Navratilova? On the other characters?
-How old is Gever? Did she come out around Navratilova’s time? 2003, hmm?Wasn’t that when the l word was starting?
Entertaining Lesbians, by Martha Gever, pays close attention to the multiplicity of roles that celebrity lesbians play in society. By this, I mean to focus on the image portrayal that celebrity lesbians convey to the masses, and how this may or may not differ from their lives off camera. In Entertaining Lesbians, Gever asserts that one of the main reoccurring themes is image management. I think this is crucial to understand the importance of image in relation to celebrity lesbians. In discussing particular lesbian celebrities in America, Gever notes the pop-music industry as “providing plentiful examples”:
“k.d. lang and Melissa Ethridge, of course, but also Me’ Shell Ndegeo’Cello, Albita, Sinead O’Connor, Ani Defranco, and the Indigo Girls, not to mention the various singers who it is said have taken over the folk music scene in the United States (Hadju 2002). Indeed, lesbian celebrities seem to crop up regularly in this arguably more freewheeling cultural field, and the lesbian histories of such eminent singers from earlier generations as Ma Rainey, Carmen MacRae, Janis Joplin, and Dusty Springfield have not been entirely suppressed.” (Gever, pg. 8)
In a historical context, Gever references iconic lesbians of color that only seem to pop up in this portion of fame. Music. This leads me to the topic of visibility. Keeping in mind Gever’s ideas surrounding image management, I can’t help but to question why are lesbians of color so retained by the music business. Even Gever so faintly lets this issue fall by the wayside, professing that she doesn’t possess enough knowledge of the music industry. I think this is the interlinking of image management and black queer visibility that we briefly discussed in class.
US culture has systematically lessened the platform for black women to have a voice in society, and in the LGBT culture, it is similarly worse. The black lesbian is constantly dealing with a triple oppression of gender, race and sexuality, and here Gever clarifies that even further. In the chapter Celestial Configurations, for example, Gever explains the history and qualifications behind the term “Celebrity.”
“Indeed, celebrities and celebrity itself have emerged as central preoccupations only in modern (or modernizing) societies. Moreover, a particular kind of person came to define celebrity in the early decades of the twentieth century: the entertainment celebrity.” (Gever, pg. 52-53)
How then, does the black musical celebrity differ from, Martina Navratilova? As discussed in class, Navratilova underwent measurable physical changes in light of coming out as a lesbian. Gever does, however, counter this:
“The problem with these and related precepts common to visibility politics is that they perpetuate the idea that symbolic representations will redress power imbalances. In the process, visibility politics neglects how such social categories as gender, race, sexuality, and class always posit a relationship between two asymmetrical terms- man/woman, white/nonwhite, hetero/homo, upper class/lower class- where the second group is always defined as the opposite and inferior to the first.” (Gever, pg. 27)
I think it’s also important to note that Navratilova is a foreigner to the United States. What does this say about the images that we project on other cultures?
I don’t believe that Gever’s idea of self-invention could be applied to Navratilova for these very reasons. She is not self-made. She is a hybrid of a lesbian and an iconic U.S. athlete, with one being more powerful in consumerism than the other; however, Gever does maintain that Navratilova’s self-invention could be looked at differently, for her “coming out” as a lesbian.
Background Information
Martha Gever is currently an Associate professor at University of California, Irvine’s Department of Studio Art. Her interests in popular culture, art, social and critical theory, gender and sexuality have led her to write her latest text entitled, Entertaining Lesbians: Celebrity, Sexuality and Self-Invention in which she examines the various historico-social representations of lesbian celebrities within the context of the United States. Entertaining Lesbians was published in 2003 by Routledge while Gever was an Assistant Professor of Communications at Florida Atlantic University. Academic texts such as Gever’s tend to take an average of about 7 years to complete since much research is required to produce such a work—one can assume then, the production of Entertaining Lesbians began around 1997. Interestingly, the following year Routledge was purchased as an “imprint” of Taylor & Francis, which then merged with the larger UK publishing company, Informa PLC in 2004.
Acknowledgements
In her acknowledgements, Gever names the “resources” (individuals and institutions) that were “necessary for [the] completion” of a project in which the production of—took a “lengthy period of time” that was “spent in various locations.” She traveled/received aid from to several institutions such as the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at the City of New York, Barnard College, the School of the Art Institute at Chicago, The University of Illinois at Chicago, Hampshire College, Florida Atlantic University, the Performing Arts Division of the New York Public Library (Billy Rose Theater Collection & the International Gay Information Archives Division) and Smith College (the Neilson Library). Aside from supportive family, friends and colleagues, Gever and her work came in contact with two “visible” lesbians: Rosie O’Donnell and Candace Gingrich (Human Rights Campaign Foundation), both of whom provided Gever with their “celebrity “knowledge.
Chapter 1- Introduction: Celebrity Talk, Lesbian Style
What triggered Gever’s curiosity were the questions “about how and why” this identity surfaced and is now quite visible in American media. She found that “the possibility of this kind of celebrity involves cultural and political transformations that go beyond more widespread recognition of a constellation of sexual identities and practices defined as lesbian” (my italics) (2). Gever also tries to make clear her understanding of subjectivity which she defines as being a “set of effects.” This particular perspective on subjectivity enables Gever to focus on the various “cultural institutions and practices, discursive figurations, and political debates” that help shape lesbian celebrity (3). In other words, Entertaining Lesbians is not an inquiry of ‘desire and identification’; but rather, “an inquiry into the social factors that inform lesbian celebrity” (1). Additionally, she refers to a number of theorists such as Richard Dyer, Stuart Hall, Ian Hacking, Nikolas Rose, Teresa de Lauretis whose interests and expertise range from sociology, cultural studies, bioethics, biomedicine, cinema, feminism (to name a few)—to support her argument.
Chapter 2- Visibility Now! The Sexual Politics of Seeing
Gever describes the sociopolitical climate of the 1990s and examines the debates concerning gay and lesbian visibility politics and representation. She comments on the ways in which the ‘propaganda’ offered by Political organizations such as Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLADD) could be interpreted. Gever observes that the regularly made assumptions about visibility “is that whatever constitutes visibility is, literally, self-evident: to be seen as represented, to be accorded social agency, while to be refused such recognition is to be denied personhood” (17). This understanding of visibility becomes problematic when it is not viewed critically, and one must be careful not to “conflate” symbolic representation for political representation.
Gever briefly discusses the kinds of sexualities female celebrities are allowed to express which also depends on complex histories of race and racial appearance; lesbian celebrity, “has been almost exclusively a middle-class, white, preserve” (36). Moreover, the term “lesbian celebrity” signifies the “superposition of” a “representational enterprise constituted by images” as well as a figure that can “project some form of consummate femininity and identifiable lesbianism” (37). Gever also provides examples of how popular magazines, advertising/marketing strategies and other economic projects, ‘frame’ celebrities such as k.d. lang and Dolly Parton—both of whom elicit confusion as to what a lesbian really is.
Chapter 3- Celestial Configurations: Aspects of Lesbian Stardom
Gever then ‘travels’ to early 20th century America to investigate the discourses/discursive practices, cultural institutions and political debates and movements that informed lesbian celebrity. In the beginning of the 20th century, knowledge about the “private” lives of celebrities began to proliferate: photographs and gossip columns became popular. Hence, the celebrity can be conceived as a kind of “product” sold to audiences hungry for more knowledge of them—which highlights the inseparable relationship between celebrity and consumer culture (however, this is not to say that celebrities are the only factors that drive ‘the market’). Years later, Gever notes that the melodrama emerged as a new genre of theater that was labeled feminine. Melodramas are characterized as being emotionally intense—playing on the audience’s desire for a kind of cathartic closure once the climax of the story has passed. Interestingly Gever explains, “the devices used to arouse and satisfy audience’s desires establish an imaginary, but also material, foundation for lesbian passion […] All such common features of popular culture can be plausibly described as potential lesbian occasions” (77).
Chapter 4- Going Public: Star Wars in the Liberation Movements
Liberation movements during the 1960s and 70s contributed to particular kinds of knowledge practices; that is, “the practical production of new kinds of lesbian identities after 1968, which rendered coming out the most potent weapon in the liberation arsenal” (98). The ways in which the movement deployed the act of “coming out” greatly influenced the meaning of “liberation” in the 1990s.
Chapter 5- In Retrospect: Legends of Mercedes De Acosta and Company
After detailing the lesbian/gay movement of the 1960s and 70s in the previous chapter, Gever explained how the movement’s members “made repeated efforts to establish the enduring presence of lesbians in Western culture.” Lesbian/gay publications made ‘legends’ of their newly established ancestry—which included ‘well-known lesbians’ such as Radcliff Hall and Gertrude Stein (115). “Lesbian” was not necessarily an accepted or perhaps even a known identity in certain histories and the “discovery of lesbian histories […] give to contemporary lesbians an impressive ancestry, which was previously hidden or censored but can now be made public” (116). However, Gever argues that the “disclosure of the secrets”—sexualit(ies)—of these celebrities sustains the “narrative of progress” of lesbian celebrity history. She explains that revealing oneself or another as a lesbian celebrity does not necessarily lead from “oppression to emancipation, from loathing to pride” (116). Rather, Gever argues against this and devotes much of the chapter to examining Mercedes de Acosta; her memoir, her appearance, clothing, behaviors etc. illustrating how a material body could be “read” (interpreted) in a number of ways.
Popular Mechanics: Advanced Technologies of Lesbian Celebrity
She ends her inquiry of lesbian celebrity with an analysis of Martina Navratilova, a former number one world champion in tennis. Perhaps the most significant portion of Gever’s analysis concerns technologies of the self that ignored gender, biopower (and biopolitics). Naratilova transformed herself into what Donna Haraway refers to as a “cyborg.” She achieved this through a disciplined fitness routine that enabled her blur gender boundaries as well as become the best tennis player in the world. Hence, celebrity is a “cultural site” in which “new kinds of people are made” (190). However, this implies that celebrity is a site of contestation and Gever concludes by asking the reader whether lesbians will “trade in imaginative assaults on normalcy for…well-made, well-managed, reasonable selves?” This question resonates with the on-going political debates concerning visibility and assimilation.
Amy J. Greene
11/6/07
WMST 494
Summary Paper #2 – Entertaining Lesbians
Martha Gever’s 2003 work, Entertaining Lesbians: Celebrity, Sexuality, and Self-Invention uses examples of lesbian celebrities (perhaps most notably those of star tennis player and out lesbian Martina Navratilova) to illustrate the role of lesbian visibility in the attainment of equality, and relationships between celebrity and lesbian communities. Gever introduces us to a thoughtful and thorough investigation of the varied and subtle implications of lesbian and minority visibility. She reminds her reader that although the popular conception is that any visibility is good visibility and is the quickest, simplest path to acceptance and validation, the truth is that popular media representation of a minority group or its members can be a double-edged sword. Gever points this out quite tartly and succinctly when she says, “If representational visibility equals power, then almost-naked young white women should be running Western Culture.”
Gever stresses that this book is not a gossip novel and that it is not aimed at adding to any sort of speculation or scandal about the lives of particular celebrities. She clearly wants this book to be understood as a sociological investigation of lesbian celebrity, and that all biographical material about celebrities is used purely to support her academic research into this idea of lesbian celebrity, not to feed any sort of rumor.
Gever also focuses on the importance of the self-styled nature of the lesbian celebrity, using Martina Navratilova as her main example. Gever chronicles Navratilova’s changing career, showing us how the tennis star’s image changed over time in the public eye as Navratilova herself changed. In control of her own representation, Navratilova set the stage for the lesbian celebrity. Gever also compares everyday lesbians to this process of self-invention; since there is no real precedent for either the lesbian or the lesbian celebrity, in both cases the individual must take control and create her own image, as Gever suggests that Martina Navratilova has done over the course of her career.
I read this book using the “How to Read” guidelines constructed by Professor David Chioni Moore. Perhaps most obviously, I followed his suggestion to “write back” and read with a pen rather than a highlighter in hand. As he suggested, I summarized sections and circled parts of particular importance. This is perhaps most obvious in the introduction to the book, where each paragraph is individually summarized in the margins.
I also historicized the book in part by ascertaining when it had been published—in 2003. Since it was published 4 years ago means that it does not have up-to-date information including the latest news concerning the lesbian community and celebrity.
Discussion Questions:
1. One complaint would be that I’d like to see a more contemporary discussion of lesbian visibility in this book, although since it was published four years ago and therefore must have been being written for a while before that, I know that this is impossible.
2. Gever’s comparison of lesbians to lesbian celebrities really interested me. I like the idea of self-invention being a linking thread between people in our community.
3. Gever seemed to think that Martina Navratilova was an excellent example of how lesbian celebrity required self-invention. How do Martina’s career and public image change over time?
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