Single Review on past events

We invited you to our public Jour fixe on 16 May 2023.

Jacob Bloomfield (Postdoctoral Fellow / Literature) gave a talk entitled “Wilde’s Heirs: Queer Icons, Queer Culture, and the Nation in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries” in the framework of the International Day Against Homophobia on 17 May.
 

Abstract:

Wilde’s Heirs: Queer Icons, Queer Culture, and the Nation in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries constitutes a critical historical investigation of ‘queer icons’ in the arts and popular culture; ‘queer’ meaning same-sex desiring and/or overtly gender nonconforming. Although this abstract employs the term queer as shorthand, the presentation took care to use culturally and historically specific labels concerning gender and sexual identities where appropriate.

Drawing partially from historian Geoffrey Cubitt’s (2000) definition of heroes, Jacob defined a queer icon as a cultural figure who has not only achieved fame among queer observers, but a figure whom queer observers have endowed with an extraordinary, symbolic significance marked by collective emotional investment. The presentation examined an international cohort of well-known figures who are seen as queer icons today, such as musician Little Richard, Turkish singers Zeki Müren and Bülent Ersoy, Japanese actor Akihiro Miwa, Finnish artist Tom of Finland, and Chinese dancer Jin Xing. A critical commonality among the queer icons investigated in Wilde’s Heirs is that, like Anglo-Irish writer Oscar Wilde in the British context, they have all been embraced as nationally significant figures. This process has occurred in spite of – or sometimes because of – their gender and/or sexual nonconformity. For example, Müren received a state funeral, Finnish postage stamps have honoured Tom of Finland, and Miwa has featured in a Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare anti-tobacco campaign.

Drawing from these case studies, Wilde’s Heirs addresses the following questions: what makes someone a queer icon in the first place?; have queer icons who have achieved national acclaim done so because of or in spite of their sexual and gender identities?; and when queer icons have achieved national acclaim, has that helped the wider queer community?

Suggestions for further reading:

Bartlett, Neil. Who Was That Man? A Present for Mr Oscar Wilde. London: Serpent’s Tail, 1988.

Bronski, Michael. Culture Clash: The Making of Gay Sensibility. Boston: South End Press, 1984.

Dyer, Richard. ‘Judy Garland and Gay Men.’ In Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986.

Dyer, Richard. ‘Rock: The Last Guy You’d Have Figured?’ In The Culture of Queers. London: Routledge, 2001.

Stokes, Martin. ‘Zeki Müren: Sun of Art, Ideal Citizen.’ In The Republic of Love: Cultural Intimacy in Turkish Popular Music. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2010.