Queer Media Images: LGBT Perspectives - Softcover

Campbell and Carilli (both, Purdue University Calumet) have assembled a collection of accessible essays that interrogate contemporary LGBTQ texts, politics, and experiences. Contributions include reflections on and controversial responses to programs such as SpongeBob SquarePants, The L Word, Will and Grace, Queer as Folk, Glee, and TransGeneration; a modern application of Vito Russo's arguments from The Celluloid Closet (CH, Mar'82); critiques of songs such as 'I Kissed a Girl' (Katy Perry) and 'Born This Way' (Lady Gaga); the subversive potential of effeminate/queer Japanese male television commentators; the dissident maternity photos of Thomas Beatie; the often-forgotten legacy of Kathy Kozachenko, the first voter-elected openly lesbian city councilor in the US; the sex/gender policing of intersex athletes; (in)conspicuous advertising to/within the LGBTQ community; and sexualized/hetero-normative assumptions of children's television programs. Many of the essays also offer recommendations about the ways in which a queer representation could be fashioned into a more nuanced and socially just representation. The breadth and depth of this collection is impressive; it is a must read for anyone interested in media criticism, popular culture, and LGBTQ studies. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates, graduate students, researchers/faculty, professional/practitioners. * CHOICE * From Sponge Bob to Glee to I Kissed a Girl, this much needed, comprehensive collection addresses how gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people are depicted across a wide variety of media. Through intriguing analyses of images, sexuality as performance, and the implications and effects of living marginalized, this book is a must-read for anyone interested not only in the specifics of the right to realistic representations but also in issues of identity and ethics of representation. -- Debra Merskin, University of Oregon

Queer Media Images: LGBT Perspectives presents fifteen chapters that address how the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered communities are depicted in the media. This collection focuses on how the LGBT community has been silenced or given voice through the media. Through a study of queer media images, this book scrutinizes LGBT media representations and how these representations contribute to a dialogue about civil rights for this marginalized community. While the communication discipline has been open to the LGBT community, there has been an absence of published research and a marginalizing or tokenizing of the queer voice. Through a study of media representations, this unique collection provides a snapshot into the issues surrounding LGBT identity during a time when the Defense of Marriage Act is called into question and explores what it means to study images through a queer lens.