[On Sept. 23-24, 2004, Yale University's Larry Kramer
Initiative for Lesbian and Gay Studies co-sponsored, with the
university's Department of African American Studies, an
interdisciplinary conference titled "Regarding Michael Jackson:
Performing Racial, Gender, and Sexual Difference Center
Stage."]
With a two-day scholarly conference on Michael Jackson, Yale has
taken one more step into the depths of academic nihilism.
While I am hesitant to agree with the Yale Daily News' laudatory
editorial asserting "scholarship shouldn't be deemed irrelevant
or unimportant solely because its subject is contemporary culture,"
I can at the very least understand a seminar on Michael Jackson
sponsored by the African-American Studies Department, touching on
issues of racial identity. But what I cannot countenance is the
leadership of the Larry Kramer Initiative for Lesbian & Gay
Studies in hosting this celebratory conference on a man who is
widely, and rightly, viewed by society as a disturbed individual
who engages in questionable sexual activity.
The Larry Kramer Initiative (LKI) was founded in 2002 in honor
of Larry Kramer, the noted author, playwright and AIDS activist.
Meant to foster research and learning about gay issues historical,
conceptual and political, LKI has increasingly drifted off into
academic irrelevance due to its hosting of outrageously esoteric
lectures and its heavy reliance on "Queer Theory," which thrives on
themes of marginalization, segregation and oppression.
Modern LGBT-studies is a mish-mash of "social construction,"
essentially arguing that gender and sexuality are merely
"performed" behavior and that homosexuality is not a biological
condition. Queer Theory relies heavily on equal doses of Marxism
and post-modernism, ranting on about oppression and the need to
erase all forms of sexual limitation. It's a revolutionary
doctrine, regardless if you want to be a part of the fight or not.
As Hunter College art history professor Wayne R. Dynes put it:
For those opposed to "hierarchy," the concept of a core identity
is unacceptable simply because it privileges the center over the
margins, and is therefore a trope of domination.
Queer Theory thrives on the emphasis of sexual peculiarities and
social marginalization, and there is no better representation of
these two features than Michael Jackson. Attending the symposium
last week, I sensed a general attitude of smug triumphalism amongst
the conferees. There was a sensed mutual understanding, and
appreciation, for the absurdity of this event. It was an act of
academic resistance, and to Queer Theory enthusiasts, life as a
queer person is just that, one big act of resistance. Queer Theory
posits that the role of gays in society is to be subversive. By
embracing the gender and sexuality-bending figure of Michael
Jackson, then, queer studies advocates relish in their sexual
deviancy.
If one were to randomly walk into a class at Yale, the thinkers
that he might hear referred to by a professor would be individuals
like Plato, Hegel and Kant, just to name a few. Yet in his opening
remarks last Thursday, visiting LKI Professor Seth Clark Silberman
cited such intellectual luminaries as the "E! True Hollywood
Story," New York Magazine dilettante Simon Dumenco, Steven
Spielberg and Moonwalk, the King of Pop's
autobiography.
One of the conference organizers was introduced as having an
interest in, among other rigorous academic pursuits, "Whiteness
Studies." Todd Gray, Jackson's personal photographer from 1979-1983
and a professor at California State University, made a half-hearted
attempt at academic legitimacy by citing Hegel's dialectic and
Foucault's theories on colonialism in his presentation on the
gloved one.
The papers presented at the conference, two of which were, "The
Interface as Hieroglyph: Michael Jackson between Peter Pan and the
'Man in the Mirror'" and "Michael Jackson, the King of Melodrama:
Innocent until Proven Guilty," demonstrated the arrogance of this
whole pursuit as the assembled academics disguised the lack of
intellectual worth inherent in the subject with an overdose of
academic jargon.
Professors of queer studies might be surprised to find that most
of their gay brethren do not view themselves as comprising an
oppressed yet sexually rebellious vanguard. Most gay people, at
least the ones I know, do not define themselves first and foremost
as gay, and certainly not as "queer." We want to be viewed as
normal Americans. We want to marry, maybe even have kids, heck,
even live in the suburbs with a nice back yard and a golden
retriever. Being gay is just a part, one of many parts, of who we
are.
But to the academic queer theorists, who are still stuck in
1970s gay liberation mode, this desire to join the mainstream is
the greatest threat to their existence on the margins. Gays who
seek acceptance by straight people are suckers for
"heteronormativity," you see, and criticism of the excesses of gay
culture - multiple and anonymous sexual partners, the constant use
of victimization rhetoric, an obsession with sex and the body in
general - is oppressive.
Every straight friend of mine who heard about LKI's sponsorship
of this conference plaintively asked me why any gay person in his
right mind would ever want to be associated with Michael Jackson, a
man who, in his disturbing relations with young boys, represents
the worst and oldest smear against gay men - that of the pedophile.
Gays just want to be part of the American family, but queer
theorists are unwittingly doing the homophobe's work in trying keep
homosexuals in the irrevocable position of social outcast.
What is most outrageous about this conference is not the fact
that it happened, but that LKI spent resources that could have been
used to host events exploring the social effects of gay marriage,
gay child rearing, or gays in the military. Those issues, not
hopeless theorizing about a serially alleged pederast, are of
actual concern to gay people and, more importantly, are worthy of
intellectual inquiry.
Imagine that. Gay people who do not want to be defined by their
difference, but by their similarities. How queer.