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From Queer Reading to Queerbaiting

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From Queer Reading to Queerbaiting From Queer Reading to Queerbaiting The battle over the polysemic text and the power of hermeneutics Emma Nordin Department of Media Studies Degree 30 HE credits Cinema Studies Master’s Programme in Cinema Studies (120 credits) Spring term 2015 Supervisor: Mariah Larsson Title: From Queer reading to Queerbaiting: the battle over the polysemic text and the power of hermeneutics From Queer Reading to Queerbaiting The battle over the polysemic text and the power of hermeneutics Emma Nordin Abstract This thesis focuses on an example of fan activity where fans in internet communities are voicing their concern over a practice they have named queerbaiting. The term is used to describe the practice of enticing and luring an audience with the promise of queer content without any intention of acting on it. Fan communities’ increasing use of the internet has changed fans’ practices and has made it easier for fans to cooperate, communicate and debate, not only with each other, but also with the people in charge and creators of what the fan community focuses on. Through studying internet fan communities, this thesis, with the focus on TV shows, analyses what is meant with the term queerbaiting and how it works as an example of fan activism. Findings suggest that despite a heated debate over definition, the practice itself and whether it exists or not, there is a general idea of what queerbaiting means and the differences within the debate are mostly due to differences in hermeneutical strategies. Thus this thesis shows how uses of different hermeneutical strategies and discussions on power in fan communities affect each other and how social media’s fan participation has affected the way representation, interpretation and ownership are discussed. Keywords Queerbaiting, queer baiting, queer theory, queer studies, hermeneutics, interpretation, representation, TV studies, audience, reception studies, queer, lesbian, bisexual, homosexual, gay Table of Contents Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 1 Queerbaiting: without fixed definition ................................................................................... 2 History of the word ............................................................................................................. 4 Wikipedia and Urban Dictionary ........................................................................................ 4 Queer ................................................................................................................................... 5 Baiting ................................................................................................................................. 8 Methodology ........................................................................................................................... 8 Theory ................................................................................................................................... 11 Overview ............................................................................................................................... 14 Queerbaiting, the internet discussion: we know there is a queer character in there. ................ 15 Criticising the criticism of queerbaiting ............................................................................... 18 Queer reading and its critics ................................................................................................. 20 Before there was queerbaiting there was . .? ...................................................................... 25 Scholars discussing the possibilities of (queer) readings and fans’ queering .......................... 32 The producer’s meaning ....................................................................................................... 40 Fanfiction and slash fiction ................................................................................................... 46 The word fanon and the world of canon ............................................................................... 47 The discussion of queerbaiting in search for representation and the question of visibility ..... 51 The power of representation ................................................................................................. 52 The power to affect status quo and the attempt to affect the product ...................................... 56 How does one affect? ............................................................................................................... 60 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 63 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................. 67 Fan discussion and empirical material .................................................................................. 67 Literature ............................................................................................................................... 71 TV shows and films .............................................................................................................. 76 Introduction The internet and social media have changed the way audiences receive, analyse and discuss films and TV shows. This has affected the positions and theories that have been developed regarding fans’ and audiences’ power over the products and the producers. One side is often being represented by scholars such as John Fiske and Henry Jenkins, arguing the audience’s power over the product and the audience’s ability to affect the producers, though these two do not necessarily mean the same thing. The other side consists of scholars such as Mark Andrejevic, challenging Fiske and Jenkins by claiming that audiences and fans might very well be active and attempt to take control over the product, but the real power still resides with the producers. One example of fans arguing with producers over the product and the product’s meaning is queerbaiting. This term and its definition have been and are being developed and debated by fans and internet communities claiming that producers are intentionally trying to lure an audience to watch something under the false pretence that it will have queer content. Queerbaiting is about an audience claiming to know the producers’ preferred meaning and accusing them of lying about it or not standing for it. That this is an issue for that audience, suggests that even if the producers are not the only ones who can create meaning, they seem to be given the power to deny and correct wrong meanings/false meanings. Queerbaiting can be considered to explore/play with/exploit (depending on point of view) the grey area between the visible and the invisible, what is and what is not in the text. Despite the wealth of studies focusing on queer reading, polysemic texts and fan activity, few scholars have analysed this recent fan-developed term. For example, Judith Fathallah has discussed queerbaiting, a concept suggesting fans’ awareness of the producer’s knowledge of what they want. One could say that the fans are reflecting over producers’ awareness of fan activity and of what fans wish to see. Fathallah’s article focuses on whether the object for her case study, BBC’s Sherlock (2010-), can count as queerbaiting or not, drawing on scholars such as Richard Dyer and Judith Butler. The purpose of this thesis is not to judge which producers use queerbaiting and which do not. Instead this thesis will analyse the concept of queerbaiting, what it means and how the term is used. The debate on queerbaiting will, in this thesis, illustrate how fans and audiences express themselves regarding their power over a developing product. Accordingly, this thesis will look at how a concept such as queerbaiting is created by fans and how such a concept fits into scholars’ theoretical framework of queering, queer reading and the power of the audience. 1 Queerbaiting: without fixed definition One of the challenges of this thesis is that the concept of queerbaiting has emerged from fan discussions and LGBTQ-activism and as with many concepts, the definition changes from user to user. There is no definition to find in any traditional dictionary, like for instance Oxford Dictionary, although there are definitions to be found in user-generated lexicons such as Urban Dictionary and Wikipedia, which will be explored in this thesis. Since I am not going to analyse the discourse of one person, but several people, communities and scholars, this thesis does not aim to find THE definition to the term or decide who uses the term correctly and who does not, but rather analyse how it has been used by different players. Since few scholars have analysed the concept of queerbaiting there is very little scholarly discussion on its definition. Fathallah focuses on the practice rather than the term, but I am going to start off with her definition of queerbaiting where she defines it as “a strategy by which writers and networks attempt to gain the attention of queer viewers via hints, jokes, gestures, and symbolism suggesting a queer relationship between two characters, and then emphatically denying and laughing off the possibility”.1 This is an excerpt from the TV show Once Upon a Time (ABC, 2011-), a TV show that on several occasions has been accused of queerbaiting. Elsa: “So why did you let Regina just walk away?”
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