Copyright by Curran Jacob Nault 2013 The Dissertation Committee for Curran Jacob Nault Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: QUEER AS PUNK: QUEERCORE AND THE PRODUCTION OF AN ANTI-NORMATIVE MEDIA SUBCULTURE Committee: Mary Celeste Kearney, Supervisor Ann Cvetkovich Jill Dolan Jennifer Fuller Janet Staiger QUEER AS PUNK: QUEERCORE AND THE PRODUCTION OF AN ANTI-NORMATIVE MEDIA SUBCULTURE by Curran Jacob Nault, B.A.; M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin August 2013 Acknowledgements This is a dissertation that has been powered by love and faith: my love of queercore and my faith that, in spite of all obstacles, “This dissertation will be done and I will be a Ph.D., gosh-darn-it!” Even more importantly, this dissertation has been powered by the love and faith of others: the affectionate encouragement that I have received from the remarkable people in my life and their unconditional, and absolutely sustaining, belief in me. My research and sanity are forever indebted to the individuals mentioned below (as well as to many who I have undoubtedly neglected to mention). I thank them for their camaraderie, encouragement and generosity of spirit that has carried me through the dark days of dissertation writing and into the light on the other side. First and foremost I want to thank my mentor, teacher and friend, Mary Celeste Kearney. Her passionate enthusiasm for my project, insightful feedback and honest, heartfelt advice throughout this process has been invaluable. She has pushed me to think evermore critically, to dig deeper and to never lose sight of my political convictions. A scholar of the highest order, she is not only a brilliant thinker and fantastic teacher, but also a kind and compassionate human being whose deep convictions and unwavering commitment to social justice continue to inspire. It has been a privilege and an honor to work with her and I hope that our paths will cross again (many times) in the future. I also want to express my gratitude to my dissertation committee for their thoughtful comments and attentive guidance throughout the dissertation process. Before iv I came to UT, I was in complete awe of Janet Staiger, one of the most renowned and respected figures in the field of Media Studies. But, I can honestly say that I leave this program in even greater awe of her, as she is indeed an accomplished and unparalleled scholar, but is also entirely approachable, supportive and dedicated to nurturing the next generation of media scholars. I have benefited immeasurably from her keen knowledge and patient reassurance and hope that she realizes just how crucial she has been to my academic development. Perhaps no one has challenged me to interrogate my unquestioned assumptions more than Jennifer Fuller. An incisive intellectual, she has provided a model of how to create change in the world through stellar teaching that gently prods students to engage ideas and topics that others find too volatile to approach. As her recent speech at Queerbomb attests, she is also an impassioned activist whose commitment to coalition politics I greatly admire. Jill Dolan is responsible for introducing me to a fuller diversity of queer scholarship and her class on queer theory and performance become a spark that ignited this dissertation. I thank her for continuing to support me, and my work, from afar and for her always sharp and generative critiques. Finally, Ann Cvetkovich is an academic whose work I hold in high regard and whose intellectual acumen and energetic spirit radiates infectiously. Her on-target feedback will continue to greatly influence this project and I look forward to future dinner party conversations on Robinson Ave. In addition to my committee, I want to thank the other faculty members who have provided advice and food for thought along the way. Lalitha Gopalan, Linda Williams and Maureen Brownsey have all been instrumental in furthering my intellectual growth v and academic progress. Likewise, my RTF colleagues deserve much love for their intellectual fellowship over the years, including, but not limited to, Caitlin Collins, Kristen Lambert, Marlene Costa, Kevin Sanson, Katherine Haenschen, Matt Payne, Courtney Brannon Donoghue, Manuel Aviles-Santiago, Andy Scahill, Kristen Warner, Bo Baker, Peter Alilunas, Alex Cho, Laura Dixon, Amanda Landa, Candice Haddad, Tiff Henning and Jean Lauer. Alyx Vesey and Leigh Goldstein are owed extra special thanks for being two of my biggest cheerleaders, which has meant more to me than they will ever know. My family has motivated me long-distance and my lovely, crazy friends Paul Soileau, Erin Kim, Del Ray Cross, Otto Chan, Christina Thompson, Gilbert Lopez, Jr., James Fennessey, Bruce Wiest, Victoria Chalk, Mike Simpson, Brett Hornsby, and Stephen Williams have all provided companionship and diversion when I have needed it most. Hugs and kisses. I also want to convey a huge thanks to two of the most important men in my life. Masashi Niwano has been an essential part of my entire graduate school journey and this dissertation would be in no way possible without his tremendous emotional and financial support. He is the kindest and most generous person I have ever had the privilege of knowing and I cannot imagine what my life would be like without him in it. He is the best friend a person could possibly have and has put up with me at my worst and never given up. He will always have a large piece of my heart and a place on my couch to watch Golden Girls, any day of the week. PJ Raval has been my rock through the final stages of this dissertation. His understanding and confidence have kept me focused and out of the loony bin. He is an obscenely talented, tenacious and galvanizing man, and for vi these reasons he is not only my lover, but also my hero and inspiration on a daily basis. I look forward to our future years together, which I know sure will be filled with much love, laughter and pinot grigio. Wine not? Finally, I thank all of my interviewees for sharing their extraordinary stories and for keeping the dream of queer punk rebellion alive. Rock on! vii QUEER AS PUNK: QUEERCORE AND THE PRODUCTION OF AN ANTI-NORMATIVE MEDIA SUBCULTURE Curran Jacob Nault, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2013 Supervisor: Mary Celeste Kearney This dissertation examines the historical contexts, major themes, and archival practices of queercore, an anti-normative queer and punk subculture comprised of music, zines, film, art, literature and new media that was instigated in 1985 by Bruce LaBruce and G.B. Jones in Toronto, Ontario. Via their fanzine J.D.s., LaBruce and Jones declared “civil war” on the punk and gay and lesbian mainstreams and conjured queercore as a multimedia subculture situated in pointed opposition to the homophobia of mainline punk and the lifeless sexual politics and assimilationist tendencies of dominant gay and lesbian society. In the pages that follow, I engage wider histories of radical queer politics and punk aesthetics and values to reveal the generative and long-standing symbiosis between these two energies – a symbiosis that informs queercore, but that also extends beyond its temporal and material boundaries. Through close analysis of queercore films (e.g. No Skin Off My Ass, The Lollipop Generation, The Living End, By Hook or By Crook), music (e.g., Pansy Division, Tribe 8, Beth Ditto/The Gossip, Nomy Lamm) and zines (e.g., J.D.s, SCAB, Bimbox, Bamboo Girl, i’m so fucking beautiful), I establish queercore’s primary themes: explicit sexuality (the use of risky, erotic queer punk images and viii performances to undermine heteronormativity and confront accepted notions of gay and punk identity); imagined violence (the deployment of a threatened, as opposed to actualized, violence in the hopes of frightening and, thus, destabilizing powerful white, bourgeois, heterosexual masculinity); and bodily difference (the circulation of affirmative representations of marginalized queer bodies, and specifically those that are fat, disabled and/or gender non-normative). Finally, I conclude with an exploration of the institutions and individuals currently involved in queercore archival efforts, thus placing my project within a crucial lineage of subcultural preservation. Taken as a whole, this study asserts that queercore articulates and disseminates a set of alternative identities, aesthetics, politics and representations for queer folks to occupy and engage within social space, providing a dynamic anti-normative, anti-corporate, D.I.Y. (do-it-yourself) alternative to a consumer-capitalist hetero- and homo-normative mainstream. ix Table of Contents Introduction ..........................................................................................................................1 Inspiration ........................................................................................................................6 A Word (About )Queer ..................................................................................................10 Queer Theory .................................................................................................................13 Subculture ......................................................................................................................22 Punk Aesthetics and Values ...........................................................................................32