Copyright by

Melissa Anne Vera 2019

The Thesis Committee for Melissa Anne Vera Certifies that this is the approved version of the following Thesis:

Queer Eye for the Straight Guy: Exploring Abject Performances of Masculinity

APPROVED BY SUPERVISING COMMITTEE:

Julie Minich, Supervisor

Laura Gutierrez

Queer Eye for the Straight Guy: Exploring Abject Performances of Masculinity

by

Melissa Anne Vera

Thesis

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

Master of Arts

The University of Texas at Austin May 2019

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my girlfriend, Trinica, my cats, and my pup for their unending support. I would like to thank my thesis supervisor, Dr. Julie Minich for her understanding and encouragement. I would also like to thank Dr. Laura Gutierrez for her feedback and for great conversation.

iv Abstract

Queer Eye for the Straight Guy: Exploring Abject Performances of Masculinity

Melissa Anne Vera, M.A. The University of Texas at Austin, 2019

Supervisor: Julie Minich

My analysis of Justin Baldoni and his online series Man Enough and will talk about the ways in which the men in the series attempt to hold themselves accountable to what they consider to be new standards of manhood. They get vulnerable with each other, talk about body image, and talk about the ways in which the #metoo movement has affected their lives. They talk about male privilege and the ways in which they are trying to combat gender inequality, through keeping fellow men accountable.

I will examine the character of Rogelio in the CW show Jane the Virgin. I will talk about the ways in which his camp aesthetics and performance of excess lead to his unique queering of masculinity. I will explore the ways in which his self-fashioning as a diva works to make his character less traditionally masculine. I will engage with the ways in which his race and body are separated from colonization. I will be reading his body language and gestures, and the ways in which these devices add to his melodramatic flare. I will also be speaking to the privilege that comes from his status as a man, v specifically the ways in which his gender expression is queer but still gets to be a sort of playboy.

I will focus on Jewish rapper George Watsky and three of his pieces entitled “S for Lisp,” “All Like Whatever,” and “Going Down.” I will talk about the ways in which

George Watsky fails at what is typically expected of a white man and his masculinity.

That is to say that he rejects certain aspects of hegemonic masculinity. In the same vein, he also fails to overcome his privilege as a straight, white man. This is where the running theme of accountability comes into play. He acknowledges this privilege and attempts to rectify the ways in which he profits from a system that prioritizes his needs over the needs of others.

vi Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION ...... 01

Masculinity, Gender Roles, and the Binary ...... 02

Queer ...... 05

Cancel/Call-Out Culture ...... 06

Transformative Justice ...... 07

Failure and the Refusal of Mastery ...... 08

Privilege ...... 09

A Note on Style ...... 10

Overview ...... 11

Chapter 1: Man Enough to Count on Women ...... 13

Episode 1 and 2: "Why Don't Men Talk?" and "Let's Get Vulnerable" ...... 17

Episode 3: "The Ugliness of Body Image" ...... 21

Episode 4: "#METOO" ...... 24

Chapter 2: Rogelio and Queering Masculinity in Jane the Virgin...... 32

Latino Stereotypes ...... 34

The Performance of Fatherhood ...... 36

Michael Cordero: The Ultimate Brogelio ...... 40

Beauty, Narcicissm, and Fame ...... 45

Chapter 3: Watsky and the Performance of Failure ...... 49

Hegemonic Masculinity and a Brief History of Rap ...... 54

Pieces and Performances ...... 58 vii S for Lisp...... 58

All Like Whatever...... 60

Going Down ...... 62

CONCLUSION ...... 66

Queering Masculinity: What's Next? ...... 70

Bibliography ...... 72

viii INTRODUCTION

“I can and do aspire to be greater than the sum of my experiences, but I accept my

limitations.” -Sonia Sotomayor

This work initially started as an examination of and inevitably critique of toxic masculinity. Through the process of writing this, I found it best to work outside of the binary of what “good” and “bad” masculinity are. That isn’t the point of this project. I am trying, instead, to understand what goes into the formation of certain kinds of masculinity and how men work against these ideas. This project is about the process of unlearning and relearning, about making mistakes and growing from them, and doing so in the public eye.

I think it important to talk about these issues at a time in our society when accountability is so important. Considering the racist and sexist attitude of current

President Trump and the growing popularity in movements like #metoo and #muterkelly, it is time we consider what these things have in common and what has led us to a culture that is so vocally intolerant of hate and discrimination. While progress is being made in bringing attention to the importance of bringing race and feminism to the forefront of conversations, with it also comes the recent cancel culture phenomenon. To cancel someone means to dismiss them on the basis of one or more problematic actions. Kanye

West in all his controversy comes to mind as a victim (?) of this phenomenon.

For the purposes of this project, I offer up actor Justin Baldoni, rapper Watsky, and fictional character Rogelio de la Vega, as examples of men who, while fallible, also hold themselves accountable for their mistakes and the mistakes of other men. As 1 adrienne maree brown, prominent transformative justice advocate would say, “there is always something to be learned from a mistake.” Rather than denying their wrongdoings, these men apologize and reflect and grow. Not to say that these men are exceptional and should be treated as such, but that their behavior be a model for the average man attempting to grapple with their privilege as men in ways that support women. Their behavior, though not entirely revolutionary, is what should come to be expected of men in a society that gives them so much power.

MASCULINITY, GENDER ROLES, AND THE BINARY I find it important to talk about the utility of binaries in this work seeing as this work is attempting to complicate those binaries. In this work, I am attempting to move away from the good/bad dichotomy, instead I intend to have a more nuanced conversation. What is in between good and bad, and what do those blurred lines mean for understanding of the world as black and white?

Though this is my intention, I still expect to slip up. I’ll talk about moving outside of the binary in the same paragraph where talk about men in comparison to women, as if that binary is inclusive. Even though I want to move past these binaries, they inform my understanding of gender and power now. For my purposes, I hope to complicate different kinds of binaries outside of gender. This includes moving beyond binaries such as, healthy and unhealthy or toxic and non-toxic masculinity. I would like to move away from idealizing and romanticizing masculinity and focusing on the negation rather than

2 the formation of the woman. I take on the queer project of moving past binaries in questioning their utility.

When we think of masculinity, we automatically assume that it is equated to manhood. Jack Halberstam states: “Masculinity and maleness are profoundly difficult to pry apart” (2). Though we know when we see masculinity, it is difficult to define it outside of the male body. This is where the men are coming to an impasse. How are they to define a word that has become intrinsically related to maleness. It is true that “we seem to have a difficult time defining masculinity, as a society [but] have little trouble in recognizing it” (Halberstam 1). Masculinity as it pertains to men at least, “represents the power of inheritance… and the promise of social privilege” (Halberstam 2). Men are allowed opportunities that aren’t always afforded to women and gender nonconforming people. How then do we separate that inherent privilege from masculinity?

The way in which our society has functioned and been conditioned is to be believe that gender expression should coincide with anatomy. In Communicating

Marginalized Masculinities, Jackson writes, “people with penises are expected to act one way, because masculinity [is] attached to sex, rather than to performance” (Jackson 3).

Hegemonic masculinity frames masculinity and femininity as opposite. We “generally attribute traits such as strength, power and control to men. Feminine traits, more commonly associated with women, work in opposition to masculine norms and include attributes such as frailty, passiveness and weakness” (Jackson 175-6). Women are most often associated with perceptions of domesticity and the private sphere of the home instead of the public spheres of life. They are regarded for their ability to be nurturing 3 caregivers who provide and maintain a positive, comfortable atmosphere for their husbands, and children. Although women are most active and visible in the private sphere, this space is still dominated by the desires of men. Under the notion of patriarchy,

“fathers are considered the ultimate authority of their families and control family values and descent, such as the practice of naming” (Jackson 175-6).

I am using Judith Butler’s concept of gender as performance to further my argument. She says that through our own repetitive performance of gender, we create an image of ourselves. This is not always necessarily constructed by oneself but can be placed on others by outside perspectives. Performance of gender can be subversive in its repetition, imitation, or miming of acts designated for a specific gender.

Chicano Nationalism encourages pride in Chicanx culture through support of the patriarch. This model is reproduced in Chicanx homes through the support of the male head of the household. For white men, specifically in American society, this sort of reproduction of masculinity can seem “archaic” or “primitive” which can be coded as racist. They attempt to reappropriate masculinity by taking the “excessive” masculinities of color and making them digestible for white men. This allows for them to feel better about themselves. They begin to believe that they are better than men of color because they are more “progressive” and have left behind old gender stereotypes, though in reality, they are perpetuating hegemonic masculinity in other ways.

I would like to begin to use the tools of the dominant culture to do something different, to misidentify with white masculinity, to move to the gay of center, and in this way be able to clash, even in subtle ways, with dominant ideology. 4 A common theme throughout this project is homosociality. I shine light on moments of homosocial comfort and intimacy and the ways in which the bromances that blossom in these examples make for a more meaningful and more queer reading. I find it important to make the distinction between inclusivity and independence. I will talk about the idea of the one against the many, the lone man, the solitary hero, as it is typical that a man has to fight alone to be honorable. This will allow me to talk about how homosociality breaks with this tradition in a way that queers relationships between men.

QUEER My work focuses on making figures that aren’t technically “gay,” in the sexuality sense of the term, gay in other sense. I like the idea of being able to reproduce the queer narrative in seemingly straight spaces. I use Molina-Guzman’s definition of queer in this project. That is to say, “I invoke the term queer as more than a word used to identify gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people.” (Molina-Guzman 142) I use queer as a political project that looks at subtle, everyday performances of resistance, dissonance, and rebellion.

Survival means making do with what you have and living on the margins. Queer and trans people of color must make revisions for their own survival. In “true camp fashion, the queer artist works with rather than against failure and inhabits the darkness”

(Halberstam 96). What is helping queer teenagers survive? What are the cultural forms and reading strategies that make it possible? What does it mean to be a queer woman of

5 color consuming art that isn’t made for you? How do you queer it to make it applicable in a world that isn’t reflective of your life?

CANCEL/CALL-OUT CULTURE I will be using cancel culture and call-out culture interchangeably. Call-out culture calls for refusal, a refusal of mistreatment, a refusal of visibility, and most importantly, a refusal to add to problematic people’s financial well-being. In conversation with cancel culture, I will also talk about “problematic faves,” a concept that speaks to addressing the problematic nature of, in most cases, celebrities. “Problematic faves” are always at risk of being “cancelled” depending on how problematic they are.

Cancel culture is a valid form of protest. It is a legitimate form of boycott, a way for people to make their morals known in a way that is accessible for social media. While the hashtags call for the dismissal of a person, product, or company, they also call for a recognition of the importance of social justice and marketing and consumerism. For some, “cancellation is an act of catharsis, of rebellion” (The Devolution of Kanye West and the Case for Cancel Culture).

With roots in Black Twitter, cancel culture or call-out culture is the practice of trying to hold people, mostly men, accountable for the mistakes that they have made against women, usually. The article “Kanye West vs Cancel Culture: Yeezy wins” states that to cancel means “to destroy the force, effectiveness, or validity of.” When a celebrity has a difference in opinion or believes in something that has been culturally agreed upon is unacceptable, the tendency is for the culture to call that person out and then to “cancel”

6 them. This means to stop supporting them, to ignore them, or to critique them. American culture is conducive for creating mass hero worship that quickly turns into mass criticism.

In “Cancelled, Not Cured – The Issue with Cancel Culture,” Armon Sadler likens cancel culture to the prison system saying that “people agree someone is bad or has done bad things, so they dismiss them” (Cancelled, Not Cured – The Issue with Cancel Culture).

This dismissal is swift and most times irreversible.

Cancel Culture is hard to define in that “it’s fueled by standards that are capricious or hard to define” (Zadie Smith on Kanye West and Cancel Culture), which is to say that Cancel Culture is malleable though a majority can agree upon when someone should be cancelled. Smith says, “Being a misogynist is a good enough reason for… anyone… to say, ‘Not interested.’ But it gets trickier for those of us on the fence.” The hope is that we be seen as good people who don’t compromise morals because it might be easier (Zadie Smith on Kanye West and Cancel Culture). This begs the question; can we separate the art from the artist?

TRANSFORMATIVE JUSTICE adrienne maree brown gives us an alternative to cancel culture. She says that what we do now is “find out someone or some group has done (or may have done) something out of alignment with our values” (What is/isn’t transformative justice?). She says that

“as soon as there is a difference in political opinion, there’s this attitude of, you know, we cancel this person, we’re throwing them away” (Trauma Makes Weapons of Us All).

Next comes the inevitable tearing down of a person or group “to shreds in a way that

7 affirms our values.” She says that only “when we are satisfied that that person or group is destroyed, we move on.” This practice isn’t sustainable, and it also begs the question, “is this what we’re here for? To cultivate a fear-based adherence to reductive common values?” (What is/isn’t transformative justice?) brown suggests instead a way to hold people accountable in a way that does not ruin their reputation. She feels that the act of canceling people “isn’t abolitionist, or transformative” (Trauma Makes Weapons of Us

All). But calling someone into “accountability as opposed to calling them out would be the more transformative or abolitionist modality” (Trauma Makes Weapons of Us All).

Individualism is an important aspect of masculinity. The lone man thrives in solitude, does not need any emotional support from others, and is totally self-sufficient.

This masculine value perpetuates the idea that men don’t need to talk to each other. They don’t need to be vulnerable, and they certainly don’t have to worry about the things that other men do that may affect women. They are not expected to keep other men accountable for their actions. This is where I believe call-out culture is necessary, but not in the way that it exists now. I call here for transformative justice in the vein of adrienne maree brown. We need a call-out culture that doesn’t seek to punish those who make mistakes. Transformative justice means giving people room to grow while continuing to hold themselves accountable. Perhaps this is the way that we reach a queer utopia.

FAILURE AND THE REFUSAL OF MASTERY The failure of identification with the majority culture allows for an alternative space outside of the mainstream. This disidentification makes room for the art of

8 demastery. Amateurism is the refusal of mastery. It is the insistence on process and becoming. This is something that is continually happening and there are instances in which the subject continues to fail.

Throughout this work, I look at artists who find pleasure, purposeful or not, in abject performances. They find joy in participating in performance that are considered to be “wrong” or non-typical. There is unrealized queer potential inside these abject performances. These performances work towards a queer utopia, a process or model to work through masculinity. They refuse to participate in the nation by avoiding the reproduction of gendered stereotypes. This points to Jose Munoz’s idea of queer futures as more than a place where we hope to arrive. It is a more concrete imagining of a utopic future, where the here and now become the then and there. In this case, that means moving past binaries and gendered stereotypes to come away with new ways of being and performing that aren’t restricted to and by gender. Just as queer studies, gender studies, and race studies point to, the way the world is now, isn’t good enough. There’s room for improvement. Through the messiness of process, we can arrive at a point of insight.

PRIVILEGE I suggest a sort of collaborative process, similar to what Watsky does with his music. There needs to be a collaboration happening between men and women (femmes?), so that men aren’t profiting off of the pain of women and are finding ways to hold themselves accountable, not out of fear that their reputation be ruined or that their

9 sister/mother/daughter/wife/niece be assaulted, but out of an understanding that women deserve the same safeties as men.

And while they are doing great things in terms of exposure and process, there are other things happening inadvertently. The men of Man Enough, for example, are relying on women’s emotional labor to help better themselves. Watsky, while queering hegemonic masculinity, also relies on his white privilege to experiment with his music in ways that aren’t afforded to black rappers of his celebrity. Rogelio takes pride in himself and his appearance and he’s not shy about it, but his flamboyance wouldn’t be possible without his very real male privilege and his economic status.

A NOTE ON STYLE I seek to come to a confrontation with the norms of academic writing, in particular, I’m concerned with whether the typical form of academic writing undercuts the political, social, and cultural aims of its content.

In Unmasking Masculinities, Morris says that “social theorists frequently write about their theories in academically inaccessible language” (Morris 38). I hope to make this work as accessible as possible, to write in a way that allows for audiences of all kinds to understand and engage with the claims I’m making.

I find the norms of academic language and structure to be counter intuitive to this is kind of project. I point to Jose Munoz’s idea of disidentification. I find solace in being able to disidentify with theory and the ways in which it is typically written. This disidentification aids in my survival in academia. I realize that in referencing Munoz I am

10 in some ways contradicting myself, but this entire work is about contradictions, and so I found it to be appropriate.

I will use “low theory and popular knowledge to explore alternatives and to look for a way out of the usual traps and impasses of binary formulations. Low theory tries to locate all the in-between spaces that save us from being snared by the hooks of hegemony” (Halberstam 2). Low theory will allow me to move beyond constraints and to make discoveries that might not otherwise be possible.

OVERVIEW In chapter 1, I will focus on Justin Baldoni and his online series Man Enough. I will talk about the ways in which the men in the series attempt to hold themselves accountable to what they consider to be new standards of manhood. They get vulnerable with each other, talk about body image, and talk about the ways in which the #metoo movement has affected their lives. They talk about male privilege and the ways in which they are trying to combat gender inequality, through keeping fellow men accountable. By making small changes, they hope to make widespread progress.

In chapter 2, I will focus on the character of Rogelio in the CW show Jane the

Virgin. I will examine his growth over the course of the show’s available four seasons. I will talk about the ways in which his camp aesthetics and his performance of excess lead to his unique queering of masculinity. I will explore the ways in which his self-fashioning as a diva works to make his character less traditionally masculine. His obsession with famous people, his own fame and narcissism point to a person who is at once very aware

11 of the dominant structures of American society while also refusing to totally adhere to them. I will engage with the ways in which his race and body are separated from colonization. I will be reading his body language and gestures, and the ways in which these devices add to his melodramatic flare. I will also be speaking to the privilege that comes from his status as a man, specifically the ways in which his gender expression is queer but still gets to be a sort of playboy.

In chapter 3, I will focus on Jewish rapper George Watsky and three of his pieces entitled “S for Lisp,” “All Like Whatever,” and “Going Down.” In this chapter, I will talk about the ways in which George Watsky fails at what is typically expected of a white man and his masculinity. That is to say that he rejects certain aspects of hegemonic masculinity. In the same vein, he also fails to overcome his privilege as a straight, white man. This is where the running theme of accountability comes into play. He acknowledges this privilege and attempts to rectify the ways in which he profits from a system that prioritizes his needs over the needs of others.

12 Chapter 1: Man Enough to Count on Women

The mission of Justin Baldoni’s online series Man Enough is to challenge men to explore the unspoken rules of traditional masculinity that have caused men “to disconnect from one another, created the foundation of men’s violence against women, and prevented us from taking the long journey from our heads to our hearts,” but every episode while making strides also has its shortcomings. Man Enough attempts to change the conversation around masculinity. While the men make great strides towards change, they also fall short of what is needed to make a real difference. The process is what is most important.

Baldoni is a Jewish-Italian actor, producer, and director who is best known for portraying Rafael on Jane the Virgin. Baldoni is passionate about creating social change through innovative and inspiring content. Baldoni also hosts the Skid Row Carnival of

Love, an event that takes places yearly in LA and is designed to provide resources and attention, ranging from carnival games to legal advice, to the homeless community.

Baldoni says his mission with the carnival is to create one day where “there is no us or them. No rich or poor. It’s simply about unconditional love and coming together as a community.” He said for those three or four hours, he would like it if those attending could not tell who was black or who was white. He would like it if they could all just see each other as part of the human race for the duration of the carnival. This gets to the heart of what is problematic about Baldoni and his work. He seems to believe he is living in a post-racial world where it’s fathomable to forget about skin color for a few hours. This statement comes from a place of privilege as he never had to experience the 13 discrimination that his black and brown friends endure. His show is informed by this way of thinking.

Man Enough is a male-centric online talk show on Wayfarer Entertainment,

Baldoni’s production company. The Man Enough website says that Man Enough is a

“disruptive social movement ignited by a dinner conversation series that explores the heart of traditional masculinity in America.” The website boasts that Man Enough is “a unique space where men, no matter their race, creed, sexual orientation and identity, political stance or socioeconomic status can come together to express their thoughts and feelings freely- something men have been socialized to cut off in America.” Baldoni hosts Man Enough around a dinner table in his backyard. He sits around the table with other moderately famous men to discuss masculinity. As of now, there are four episodes in which men of different backgrounds gather together to talk about vulnerability, body image, and the Me Too movement. In a 2017 Huffpost article written by Sara Boboltz, the author likens Baldoni’s show to “The View for Men.”

Baldoni gave a TED talk in January 2018 entitled “Why I’m Done Trying to Be

Man Enough.” In an interview with Glamour, Baldoni said he hired a female friend to make sure he wasn’t mansplaining during his talk. This process shows Baldoni’s efforts to be aware of power and gender dynamics, while also requiring emotional labor from women, a contradiction he struggles with throughout the Man Enough series. Baldoni calls on men to listen to expressions of femininity, to examine traditionally lauded masculine traits such as strength, bravery, and toughness and to redefine them to explore emotions. He encourages men to “dive headfirst into [shame],” then immediately asks 14 women to forgive men. Baldoni’s assertion that men are inherently bumbling, offensive, ignorant, and unwilling to accept help cements societally agreed-upon traits of masculinity. His request for women to be patient and to help men puts the onus to fix a broken system, as usual, on women, partners, mothers, and daughters. This is not the first or last time Baldoni’s efforts to reveal the hypocrisies in masculinity also reveal his own hypocrisies; he admits to unconsciously hurting women and unintentionally silencing his wife, and his choice to speak in the binary and participate in harmful gendered activities like gender reveals shows he still has a lot to learn.

Baldoni is well aware of what performing gender entails. He understands that if he presents himself as “a girly man,” men will not listen to him. As a child, he says, he felt forced to take on a “disgusted view of the feminine,” to reject it or risk being rejected. To him, masculinity is “pretending to be strong when I felt weak, confident when I felt insecure, and tough when really I was hurting.” Despite his intentions,

Baldoni’s noble declarations do more to maintain gender norms than dismantle them. He continues to ask patience of women, stating, “We are men. We’re going to mess up.

We’re going to say the wrong thing. We’re going to be tone-deaf. We’re more than likely, probably, going to offend you. But don’t lose hope.” However, his admission that men are privileged and that they “are the problem” shows he is willing to learn.

Man Enough, then, stems from a desire to stop performing, an admitted weariness of traditional gender presentation. Still, the choice of roles Baldoni sets out are firmly set in the gender binary, casting away what he calls “the broken definition of masculinity” but not acknowledging any options other than the feminine. 15 Baldoni scoffed at the comparison to The View. “Instead of a shiny floor, we’re creating an intimate dining experience where cast members can take part in real conversations that flow back and forth across the table naturally.” Perhaps most importantly, a representative for Baldoni said “the conversation will not stray into politics,” a decidedly loaded statement and an untrue one as the last episode of the series is on the very political Me Too Movement.

At the time of the article’s publication Baldoni did not know what the actual format of the show would be, but he envisioned the show as a “weekly discussion where a rotating cast of men gathers ’round for an intimate discussion of modern-day masculinity, including topics on marriage, fatherhood, sex and porn ― subject matter that is typically the purview of daytime talk shows hosted by women, like ‘The Ellen

DeGeneres Show,’ ‘The Talk’ or ‘The View.’”

Boboltz says the original title for Baldoni’s show was “The Men’s Room” with

Baldoni serving as a moderator to a panel of five men. When asked why such a show hadn’t existed yet, Baldoni said: “I think that one of the main reasons the talk show space hasn’t previously seen an all-male show is simply because our culture has taught men that they need to be strong, confident, and stoic and that emotions are a sign of weakness.

Men in our society have been socialized to suppress their feelings. We want to challenge men to open up and be okay talking to each other, and more importantly, form deep and meaningful relationships.”

16 EPISODES 1 AND 2: “WHY DON’T MEN TALK?” AND “LET’S GET VULNERABLE” The first episode of Man Enough is broken into two parts: “Why Don’t Men

Talk?” and “Let’s Get Vulnerable.” Justin Baldoni, poet and rapper Prince Ea, professional ballroom dancer Derek Hough, actor and Broadway star Javier Munoz,

Egyptian comedian Bassem Youssef, and actor Matt McGorry, star in the first and second episodes. The series opens with relaxed jazz music floating among an intimate, cozy gathering of six men. The twinkle lights in the bushes on the fences behind them illuminate their easygoing, cheerful demeanors. The set-up is decidedly queer, a performance in homosociality with the men dressed up in button-down shirts, vests, jackets, and nice watches. Small feminine touches litter the scene. The men sit around a table, a bowl of succulents as the centerpiece. There are sleek wooden salt and pepper shakers and small candles on the table, a fire in the background.

The camera cuts back and forth between the men meeting each other and the food being prepared. A nearby oven opens and it is full of food. The men introduce themselves to each other, shaking hands and holding each other’s arms. We see avocados being picked from a bin, then, through movie magic, transformed into guacamole in a bowl.

The premise of the miniseries is to give these men an intimate space to voice their feelings and innermost thoughts. However, the very nature of a television show with the cast, crew, and production teams that go along with one, are the antithesis to intimacy.

The whole concept of production further adds to the performative nature of having a discussion on television made for a specific audience. Despite the air of forced camaraderie, the audience is encouraged to suspend their disbelief, ignore the touches of

17 production, and applaud these six men who have dressed up to sit around a table and talk about what masculinity means to them.

Baldoni says, “We are really in my backyard. Why don’t we sit?” By pointing out the authenticity of the setting, he brings attention to the fact that we are watching a carefully cultivated scene, one where men speak openly and hug. This, then, is considered healthy masculinity, or at least a redefinition of masculinity. Baldoni leads the toast. “To being good men and to being man enough,” he states, his eyebrow furrowed as if the phrase is ridiculous, as if the toast isn’t already contrived enough.

Men often avoid intimacy and close male friendships for fear of “being labelled homosexual, by society in general and by other men in particular” (Feasey 27).

Homophobia, as the men discuss, is an issue that must be considered in the community.

The general consensus is that if something doesn’t fit into stereotypical masculinity, it must be gay. It becomes important for them to be able to go out or do things with each other in order for men to feel a sense of loyalty or camaraderie with other men. These situations are painted out to be devoid of any real intimacy. Even though these activities encourage men to spend time in male company, “they do not encourage men to let down their emotional barriers and express their ‘innermost thoughts and feelings” (Feasey 22).

Men are not encouraged to develop close friendships with other men because of the hegemonic hierarchy which demands that they “can and should be self-sufficient.” The point here is that if men are to develop in-depth male friendships they would have to “risk rejection and vulnerability by opening up to friends and by expressing emotions and feelings which they are, society tells us, ill-equipped to do” (Feasey 22). 18 The men discuss the idea that being alone, suffering alone, and presenting strength in the face of hardship is masculine. We are told that men are only ready to share themselves in the most “desperate or extreme situations” which points to Baldoni having to take his friends on a trip outside of the country, or in deliberately staged settings, in order to be able to start opening up to them. Men are raised to believe the myth that

“security is not found in close relationships, but in solitude and that because of this, men purposefully work to distance themselves from their emotional needs.” It is easier, then, for men to have friendships if they hide their “social, familial and sexual problems from other men.” This practice makes these sorts of conversations uncomfortable for men, because society says they aren’t supposed to talk that way in the first place. This idea that vulnerability is weakness is echoed in Baldoni’s series. Existing work on the representation of male friendship on television informs us that “most entertainment limits friendship to a bunch of guys hanging out together, going to the bar, or watching a game”

(Feasey, 24). These are the kinds of interactions that Dr. Michael Kimmel, gender studies researcher, points out during the second episode. This suggests that such images fail to depict homosociality as anything other than “superficial interaction” (Feasey 22-24). Men drink to remove inhibitions in order to open up to other men while women talk without any cost to their femininity. Dr. Kimmel says that men think: “If anyone knew what I really felt, the world would explode,” which makes it seem like first, the world revolves around the men and second, that the world could not continue to exist if they were to have feelings outside of the norm.

19 The men discuss what “healthy” masculinity looks like and touch on the importance of redefining the term, even going so far as discussing the possibility of getting rid of the term altogether. This idea seems revolutionary and points to Jose

Munoz’s idea of queer futures in that they are imagining a future which is not yet here. In having this conversation, the men are refusing to stay stagnant and complacent in using masculinity as the be all end all for gender performance. There is always space for improvement meaning that looking forward to a time when there won’t be a need for the term masculinity means thinking of the future as somehow utopic enough to be free of such often gendered labels.

The men have agreed on the sentiment that being masculine is good and not being masculine is bad. But what if we removed the labels? As Halberstam says in The Queer

Art of Failure, “There is something powerful in being wrong, in losing, in failing, and that all our failures combined might just be enough, if we practice them well, to bring down the winner” (Halberstam 120). This seems to be at the heart of this conversation.

These men, in participating in these conversations are refusing to be confined to traditional ideas of masculinity but are also addressing the fact that this sort of rebellion takes practice. They would like to think that they are in the process of redefining masculinity, but they also ask why there is a need for a definition at all. The men, who often attribute their knowledge to the women in their lives, should then think of the ways in which women are asked to succeed and fail in their femininity. Halberstam says,

“Where feminine success is always measured by male standards, and gender failure often means being relieved of the pressure to measure up to patriarchal ideals, not succeeding 20 at womanhood can offer unexpected pleasures” (Halberstam 4). Perhaps men can use this idea to imagine what it would be like to not live up to patriarchal standards of masculinity. The thought can be frightening but also liberating. Their masculinities depend on each other to thrive. What would it be like, then, if they didn’t hold each other to any standards? If instead, they let themselves and others fail at masculinity? This is at the heart of the conversations. They are trying to reach a queer utopian future in which they don’t have to be a certain way, but their social conditioning gets in the way of that.

There’s hypocrisy in their conversations, how they wish they didn’t have to worry about body image

EPISODE 3: “THE UGLINESS OF BODY IMAGE” Justin Baldoni, Prince Ea, Matt McGorry, former UFC Middleweight Champion

Anderson Silva, and trans activist, Aydian Dowling star in the third episode of the series.

In his home gym, Justin sits down with Roberto Olivardia, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist at Harvard Medical school, in hopes of getting some insight into his own body image insecurities. Justin also visits with Dr. Marc Mani, a world renowned Plastic Surgeon, to get his professional opinion on a part of Justin’s body that he's always been insecure about, his nose.

Baldoni says to Munoz: “Can I ask an ignorant question?” This is the sort of space where those kinds of questions can be asked. But still, in asking Munoz about his experience as a gay Latino man, he is asserting his privilege in having Javier do the labor

21 of explaining that privilege to Baldoni instead of doing that work on his own before or after filming.

In Gaga Feminism, Halberstam says, “You cannot win in a world where the game is fixed, so resign yourself to losing” (Halberstam 147). The men feel this way in some regard. They don’t like the current definition of masculinity but don’t know what they would replace it with. I point then, to Munoz’s idea of disidentification. There is importance in not identifying with hegemonic masculinity. It is a place to start, to define what masculinity is not.

Javier Munoz talks about what a hypermasculine body means for gay men. It is more than the vanity that drives bodybuilders. Having muscles means having access to safety. In Unmasking Masculinities, Connell found that gay men finding safety in hypermasculinity had “less to do with cultural subversion and more to do with safety and gender identification” (Morris 380). Gay men have been viewed as less for so long, and so the desire for muscles come not only from wanting to have the body of a man but also from a concern for wellbeing. Being a “strong man” means homophobic people think twice about whether or not they want to fight. As a gay man with HIV and AIDS, Munoz, just like men in the past, has had to endure discrimination in his own community as well.

The weight loss is telling of his HIV status and this in turn makes it harder for him to be able to find a partner. David Greven says: “to whatever extent masculinity remains the embodiment of national power, queerness threatens the cultural stability of hegemonic manhood” (Greven 5). In this context that means that not only is Munoz queering the landscape of masculinity in being gay but also in being an HIV positive man. 22 Baldoni called on Aydian Dowling to take part in the conversation as the sole trans man featured in the series. This speaks to whether or not Baldoni sees diversity as a priority in this discussion. While he has included men of color, a gay man, and a trans man, there is little to no overlap. That is to say that he finds the diversity in his guests to be important but not necessarily a priority. Hopefully this is something he can correct in the coming episodes he has started to film in 2019.

Aydian Dowling discusses what it was like for him to be insecure while on the cover of Men’s Health. Dowling says that he battles with what it means to have the perfect body. “If I’m not perfect, they can point to the flaw and say that’s why I’m not a man.” Whether it be that his hip size is too big, or that he’ll never be able to have the infamous taper that has made many Instagram models famous, he feels he has to be twice as good as other men. He says having to prove his manliness to other people has forced him to question himself.

Baldoni says: “The worth of a man is lessened because you haven’t reached a certain goal weight.” They call attention to the fact that we have to think about the ways in which we are socialized always, in order to unlearn behaviors that are not serving us.

There are things that are normalized that we can’t even know are normalized, like racism, sexism, and ableism.

Men are at least partially responsible for perpetuating stereotypical gender roles, but they too are suffering from standards that seem unattainable. This system that values men over women is serving them in most ways but is working against them in some ways. This,

Baldoni points out, is why men feel they need to have the perfect body, because the 23 media shows the exemplary man as a man with muscles. This leads to men competing with each other over their bodies. There is a real culture of comparison happening within their community.

EPISODE 4: “#METOO” The Me Too episode is the longest of the series with a run time of 1 hour and 10 minutes. Because of the length and depth of this episode, I have chosen to focus my analysis on the comments made by Tony Porter throughout the discussion. I chose Porter because of his wide breadth of experience with masculinities and because as a black man, his view of masculinity is inevitably different from that of Baldoni. The episode opens with Justin and his wife, Emily giving viewers a content warning for talk of child sexual abuse. They inform us there will be a PSA after the episode. This episode starts seriously.

The men are already sitting around the table.

Tony Porter is an author, activist, and Chief Executive Officer of A Call To Men, a violence prevention organization. His work is centered around the advancement of social justice issues. He leads workshops in violence prevention and healthy manhood training with the NFL, NBA, and MLB. Porter has experience in speaking on masculinity and violence against women, presumably why Baldoni asked him to take part in the conversation. He begins talking about the ways in which women are reliving their trauma when talking about their assault. He reminds the men that the women are doing this for the greater good of the Me Too movement. He acknowledges the emotional labor women make at the expense of their mental wellbeing. This is decidedly a departure from what a

24 lot of the men bring to the table. Baldoni brought diversity to the table in terms of race in his guests but not necessarily in terms of sexuality and specialization. Baldoni talks to mostly white specialists but only in spaces outside of the group. Perhaps because his intention is not to educate the men who are taking part in the conversation but to educate the potential audience of men watching at home. I think, however, that bringing in a specialist like Porter into the group conversation makes for much more fruitful conversation. Porter points to the internalized misogyny in the things that the other men say. Because he has done the work, he knows what the common missteps are. He asks the men: “How much of your craft is built upon the objectification of women?” because he had to and has to continue to ask himself the same question.

The episode description for episode four, which stars Justin Baldoni, Matt

McGorry, Scooter Braun, founder of SB Projects, an entertainment and media company that combines music, film, culture, and social good as well as manages top pop culture icons, Lewis Howes, a lifestyle entrepreneur, business coach, and former professional football player, Tony Porter, and Jamey Heath, a songwriter, musician, and producer.

This is the first and only episode in which there is a special segment where “three courageous female survivors come forward with harrowing stories of sexual assault and harassment that changed their lives.” The series calls on these “courageous” survivors to repeat their stories in order to make the viewer feeling something. Purposeful or not, this exploits their pain in order to serve the higher purpose of educating men, which explicitly goes against Porter’s comments about emotional labor. This is a theme not unfamiliar to the series. 25 These three women are Yazmin Monét Watkins, a spoken word poet, activist, author, and actress, Alma Gonzalez, a mental health therapist to helping marginalized individuals use internal strength to move forward and heal from tragic experiences, and

Karen Alston, the Founder and CEO of an innovative women’s empowerment and professional educational leadership development platform, The Spectrum Circle. Baldoni also talks to “renowned Professor of Philosophy,” Dr. Susan Brison, to learn about the reality of sexual violence in America and steps men can take to empower and support survivors. The episode shares space with women but also asks the women, including Dr.

Brison, to relive trauma in ways that the men don’t have to.

The men feel they have to be “real men” at the expense of being good men. This means that the priority is first to put forth a masculine image and second to be as Baldoni puts it, “a good human.” This points to the discussion of how they as men and us as a society view femininity. There is something to be said about their desire to so desperately assert their masculinity as the antithesis to femininity. It seems the men feel the need to talk about women in order to better understand themselves. While I understand the ways in which this can be helpful, I can also understand the ways in which this practice can be harmful. The men feel they must be empathetic in order to relate to women and that they must be able to relate in order to find importance in other people’s feelings. Because what accountability do they have to women really? As Scooter Braun said, he likes to make sure that he isn’t read the wrong way, not out of fear for the safety of women, but of fear of the tarnishing of his name. The men admit that they have more of a desire to protect themselves than to protect women, even when they are in positions of power, which is 26 practically all the time. Baldoni says, “this show is being created by and for men, first and foremost, but we also know that women will find it interesting to have this insight into men ― and to know that not all of us want to be a part of ‘locker room talk.’”

The key here is being mindful of the ways in which their masculinity or their maintenance of masculinity affects the people around them. The men agree upon the idea that they need to be responsible for themselves. They need to hold themselves and other men accountable for the violences that occur on behalf of the system of patriarchal masculinity. They address the fact that women carved the path for these sorts of conversation citing the existence of gender studies in universities as a point of reference.

This means that the men are capable of doing the necessary work to educate themselves and be accountable. Broaching this topic has allowed the men to come to acceptance.

While they have been agreeing and laughing with each other over the ridiculousness of masculinity, they’ve also been asking how to make change. The first step towards this, as

Baldoni has said so many times over, is acceptance. He has accepted that he is flawed, that he has hurt women in the past and will probably continue to do so.

Baldoni wants to give men permission to talk the way they did. He ends with a toast: “to helping each other stay good men and good humans.” The toast is followed by a group hug. They clap for the crew, and we get a glimpse at just how many people it takes to produce the show. There are admittedly a lot of people in a fairly small space, who have been watching the men talk for what must have been hours. As soon as the crew is shown on camera, the illusion of intimacy is gone. We’re reminded that these honest

27 conversations are curated as a performance for the viewer. They get their last hugs in, the lights fade, and the PSA we were promised at the beginning of the episode starts.

The PSA is on child sexual abuse and in it, victims of abuse are telling strangers, who happen to be parents, what happened to them. The parents cry, and the victims comfort them. This is a noble effort and important to include with so much talk of child sexual abuse in the episode, but again, the onus is put on the victim to comfort the audience, the privileged. They are reliving their traumas to teach other people a lesson, as if the pathos of this argument is the only way to guarantee full understanding and sympathy.

Masculinity extends outward into patriarchy or the public sphere and inward into the family or private sphere. Masculinity “represents the power of inheritance, the consequences of the traffic in women, and the promise of social privilege.” (Halberstam

2) This means that men are inherently promised dominance over women. They are born with that privilege. Halberstam says that “the suppression of female masculinities allows for male masculinity to stand unchallenged as the bearer of gender stability and gender deviance.” (Halberstam 41) To link masculinity to women would be to discredit the whole concept as a measure of worth for men.

The most important point Porter makes is the fact that the men being accused of sexual harassment in this moment of Me Too are not necessarily doing things that are deemed “illegal” by law, like rape or murder, but those things, those microaggressions that eventually lead to rape or murder could not happen without the permission of the rest of the men in their communities. Their complacency in not calling out sexism and in not 28 facing their own masculinities perpetuates the idea that women are not worthy of thought or compassion. In order to fight a society that allows men to be rapists, men must hold each other accountable for the small things as well as the big. As Porter says, “We create the collective socialism of manhood.” He notes that individualism gives men the space to still be “good men.” Because they aren’t doing illegal acts, they feel like they can claim to be different than the men who are being accused of sexual harassment. They use the bad apple excuse and say that one man doesn’t represent all. This gives them the opportunity to remove the responsibility from themselves. Men who see awful things happening and do nothing to stop them are still committing violence against women.

Porter asserts that these men are more at fault than the ones who commit more physical acts of violence against women. His work on masculinity and perhaps the goal for

Baldoni in this series is to shake men out of their complacency, to force them to reckon with the fact that their idea of masculinity has allowed for abuse to happen.

Porter then asks the audience, “What are we teaching boys about girls if it destroys them to be likened to girls?” Something must be wrong if boys think the worst thing they can be is a girl. There is a flaw in the way children are being socialized. This is a theme that comes up in the me too episode as well. In his book, Gaga Feminism,

Halberstam asks, “What if we actually let up on the training of children and allow ourselves, as adults, to be retrained instead?” (xxv) This is at the heart of what Porter and the other men are getting at. They can see that there is something wrong with the ways in which gender is constructed and reinforced in American society, but they don’t know

29 how to rectify this. Perhaps if we, as Halberstam says, allow ourselves to be retrained then some change can happen.

Porter reminds the men that the women in their lives love them, but they also have to protect themselves from them at the same time. He brings a different sort of awareness to the group that includes being self-aware in terms of masculinity and its effects on women. Not only is he trying to reimagine a masculinity that suits him better, but he is thinking about his privilege as a man and reckoning with what his masculinity has done to the women in his life in the past and what that means moving forward.

The Man Enough series, while earnest and vulnerable is also self-congratulatory.

The men give themselves a pat on the back for being bold enough to have these conversations while still relying on the labor of women to make their episodes more compelling. The first season ends with Justin crying and saying that he has a son and that he wants him to grow up in a different world. For Baldoni, his stake in reforming masculinity is personal rather than inclusive in the way that Tony Porter’s stake is. He says, “My liberation as a man is tied to your liberation as a woman,” a lesson Baldoni can stand to learn.

For all the work that he’s doing to redefine masculinity, Baldoni seems to forget the ways in which intersectionality affect black and brown masculinities differently than that of white men. It is important, too, to think about the ways in which race play roles in the formation of specific kinds of masculinity. Because white masculinity is considered to be the norm, Female Masculinity argues that “arguments about excessive masculinity tend to focus on black bodies (male and female), Latino/a bodies, or working-class 30 bodies, and insufficient masculinity is all too often figured by Asian bodies or upper-class bodies...” (Halberstam 2)

31 Chapter 2: Rogelio and Queering Masculinity in Jane the Virgin

“Figure out who you are and do it on purpose.” -Dolly Parton

Jane the Virgin is an American satirical romantic dramedy developed by Jennie

Snyder Urman. It is a loose adaptation of the Venezuelan telenovela Juana la Virgen created by Perla Farías. Set in Miami, Jane the Virgin follows Jane Villanueva, a Latina virgin who becomes pregnant unintentionally after being accidentally artificially inseminated. Over the course of the show, Jane deals with the drama her pregnancy (and subsequent love interests) bring to her life with the help of her tight-knit family. This family consists of her impetuous mother Xiomara, her strictly religious and solely

Spanish-speaking grandmother, Alba, and her Mexican telenovela star father, Rogelio, who comes into her life for the first time at the beginning of the show when she is twenty-three years old.

I will analyze the different ways in which Rogelio performs and queers masculinity. Molina-Guzman’s definition of queer, “as more than a word used to identify gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people” will be used as a way to problematize “identity politics by looking at the intersections of ethnicity, race, gender, and sexuality in ways that challenge dominant assumptions about identity” (142). Race, class, and ethnicity will undoubtedly play a big part in what masculinity means and looks like for Rogelio. He is a rich Mexican soap opera star who also deals with money troubles at certain points throughout the series. I will argue that his performance of excess, as a character produced to be overly dramatic, leads to his unique queering of masculinity and how his divahood works to make his character less traditionally 32 masculine. His obsession with famous people as well as his own fame and narcissism point to a person who is at once very aware of the dominant structures of American society while also refusing to totally adhere to them. Lastly, this work also speaks to the privilege that comes from his status as a man, specifically the ways in which his gender expression is queer, but he is nonetheless portrayed and perceived as a playboy.

Here I employ Rudolph’s term Masculatinidad to explain the ways in which

Rogelio’s performance of fatherhood can be explained. She says, “Masculatinidad encompasses both the deployment of masculinities in search of equality, power, and capital for Latino/as as a group as well as instances of subordination of women and men not considered heterosexual in the name of Latino/a unity” (Rudolph 2-3). According to

Masculatinidad, straight Latinx men have the most privilege and power, followed by

Latinx women and gay Latinx men. This concept takes into account racial, gender, and sexual preferences to make clear the hierarchy of power in the Latinx community.

Jane the Virgin has been lauded for covering a variety of issues like race, sexuality, and immigration. The show does not shy away from acknowledging the fact that it is absurd and excessive, and this self-awareness helps it play with familiar tropes without coming off as cheesy. As is typical of a telenovela, there are major plot twists in every episode. Love triangles, murder, and mystery are important to the story, as is the show’s “Latin Lover” narrator. I will examine Rogelio, Jane’s father. Jane’s mother,

Xiomara, kept Jane a secret from Rogelio, which explains their delayed meeting. Among other things, the show explores the ways in which they are building a relationship as father and daughter now that Jane is already an adult. 33 The show hasn’t been widely studied in terms of masculinity. What happens to male characters in Jane the Virgin who get to explore their nuanced masculinities? What does masculinity look like in telenovelas and American soap operas? How does the show engage with and depart from hegemonic masculinity? This chapter will look at the ways in which Rogelio de la Vega’s masculinity intersects with other aspects of his life.

LATINO STEREOTYPES There are three Latino stereotypes that film scholar, Ramirez-Berg points to in his novel Latino Images in Film that are relevant to Rogelio and his character development throughout the series.

El bandido is described as “dirty and unkempt, usually displaying an unshaven face, missing teeth, and disheveled, oily hair,” the opposite of Rogelio who takes care to look his best at all times. El bandido is “behaviorally… vicious, cruel, treacherous, shifty, and dishonest; psychologically, he is irrational, overly emotional, and quick to resort to violence” (Ramirez-Berg 68). Rogelio is not cruel or dishonest, though it can be argued that he is overly emotional, at least in a white context. Most important to Rogelio is the bandido’s “inability to speak English or his speaking English with a heavy Spanish accent.” This is “Hollywood’s way of signaling his feeble intellect,” and “a lack of brain power that makes it impossible for him to plan or strategize successfully” (Ramirez-Berg

68). Rogelio’s English is heavily accented, and he is often known for hatching and acting on ideas that are not thought all the way through. It seems that he is often unable to plan things successfully, at least in the ways he imagines.

34 The male buffoon serves as “second-banana” and as comic relief to the protagonist. Rogelio, though he would never describe himself as a secondary character, does serve as comic relief for the series. What makes the male buffoon stereotype comical to American audiences is his marked non whiteness. The male buffoon is

“simple minded. He cannot master standard English, and he childishly regresses into emotionality.” (Ramirez-Berg 71-72). The series at times makes Rogelio out to be a vapid character who can certainly be described as “simple minded” and the show often pokes fun at him for having childish tantrums when things don’t go as planned.

Though the stereotype originated with an Italian actor, the Latin lover has been a continual screen character, played by a number of Latinx actors. In these roles, the actors reiterate an “erotic combination of characteristics: eroticism, exoticism, tenderness tinged with violence and danger, all adding up to the romantic promise that, sexually, things could very well get out of control” (Ramirez-Berg 76). Rogelio can certainly be likened to the Latin Lover at the beginning of the series. He is a famous telenovela star that the

Villanueva family has fallen in love with while watching his show. His sweeps Xiomara off her feet for the second time, after having Jane, with his sexual prowess. The show often makes it seem like Xiomara and Rogelio can’t keep their hands off each other.

Rogelio starts out as the Latin Lover then moves back and forth between el bandido and the male buffoon throughout the development of the show, though he never truly quite fits into any of these categories perfectly. The show could have very well played into these stereotypes in regard to his character, but they decide instead to queer these stereotypes in a way that seems both realistic and fitting for a telenovela star. The 35 show side steps these stereotypes by allowing Rogelio to have some of these characteristics while also giving him traits that challenge them. He is thoughtful, funny, handsome, emotional, and level-headed. He makes the kinds of choices that wouldn’t otherwise be afforded to these stereotypical characters. Rogelio queers white spaces, with his accent and flamboyant gestures which shows potential for non-normativity. Rogelio acts as a parody of Latino stereotypes, in that he is queering those stereotypes by not conforming to them.

THE PERFORMANCE OF FATHERHOOD Rogelio enters the show as what Jane deems to be the missing piece of her puzzle.

She had spent her whole life wondering who her father was and wishing that he could have been there to see her grow up. This does not change the fact, however, that the

Villanueva women built a strong matriarchy. Rogelio, then, must find his place in the already established family and cannot becomes the stereotypical dominant patriarch because the family dynamic simply won’t allow for it. Rogelio tries to overcompensate for this lack in other ways that can seem excessive.

It is worth noting that there is a reversal in typical gender power in the series, specifically in terms of family. The soap opera as a genre, “draws on issues of paternity can be seen to challenge the importance of the fatherly role” (Feasey 16). The genre’s commitment to issues of paternity can be understood as one more way in which the contemporary soap opera is challenging “traditional definitions of masculinity, and as one more way in which the genre has tried to be socially responsible and dramatically

36 relevant by addressing social concerns of the day” (Feasey 17). Xiomara is placed in a position of control in the soap opera genre, because only she has “the power to name, or to misname the father” (Feasey 18). Xiomara has the right to do what she wants in this situation and that isn’t common for women, especially over men.

The connection between family, Mexican American men, and the centrality of the father figure is connected to construction of his masculinity, though Rudolph says that,

“men of color do not benefit from the privileges of patriarchal, heterosexual masculinity as a result of white racism (2-3). Mexican-American fathers are usually considered “the traditional breadwinner and authoritarian versus a more engaged and involved nurturer,” but because of the circumstances and because of Rogelio’s inherently queer nature, he seems to be a mixture of both (Podnieks 1). Rogelio, had he been part of the family from the time that Jane was born, could have placed himself as the family’s center of power. In the queer nature of family, and especially this family, Rogelio must find a way to be at peace with not being the “protector” he always wished he could be.

Society has long been accustomed to the designation of certain duties and places to women and men. The “gendering of the public and private spheres, and the hegemonic model of masculinity remains dependent on the demarcation of such gendered spaces”

(Feasey 153-4). The public sphere can be thought of as the work place, while the private sphere can be thought of as the home. In traditional Mexican-American culture, the man is in charge of one and a woman is in charge of the other. Rogelio seems to blur these lines.

37 Rogelio officially meets Jane for the first time when she is trying on wedding dresses in Chapter Four. He is clearly nervous, and the meeting does not go well, mostly because Jane is mad at Xiomara, her mother, for keeping her father’s identity a secret.

From this point on, Rogelio begins to (over)compensate for twenty-three years of lost time. He feels he must look the part of the doting father who takes care of the family. He worries about what he should wear to his first dinner with Jane, focusing on his image rather than on what he will talk to Jane about when they sit down together. He makes their meeting about himself, even saying that he had dreamed of this moment since he found out he had a daughter- which, of course, had not been long ago. He gives her his autobiography so that she can learn more about him and, as a result, Jane thinks that he is shallow and vain.

As becomes common practice throughout the series, Rogelio apologizes to Jane at the end of the episode, saying that he realized he went too far and that he was trying to make up for all the lost time in two hours. He says in chapter five for example, “in retrospect it was a little over the top” (Ch. 5). Both apologizing and being “over the top” become themes for Rogelio. These are themes that are usually ascribed to women. His flair for drama and obsession with beauty paint him as an excessive character, one who doesn’t fit into what is considered acceptable masculinity. He continues to “go overboard” for Jane in the next chapter. He goes so far as to move his telenovela production from Mexico to Miami to be closer to Jane. Again, Jane tells him that he’s doing too much and that all of these gestures he’s making are “meaningless.” He tells her that his gesture was “a little misguided, yes. But it wasn’t meaningless” (Ch. 6). Rogelio 38 explains to her that he is upset that he missed all the big milestones in her life and that he wanted to be able to do something for her as a traditional Latino father would.

When Jane got engaged for the second time, she wanted to have the wedding reception at her house, though it had just experienced flooding. Rogelio, as a self- proclaimed super dad, insists on taking care of everything by having the crew of his telenovela recreate the house as a set. In chapter seventy, it is revealed that it cost Rogelio fifty thousand dollars to recreate the house for Jane’s wedding. He explains this number to Xiomara by saying, “it’s my duty as a father to make Jane happy.” He still feels this insecurity even after years of being part of the family. He is still unsure of his position in the family and feels he has to go above and beyond for the women in the family to be deemed valuable.

Xiomara and Alba walk Jane down the aisle, a fitting moment for a series that revolves around the lives of those three women. Rogelio takes her the last quarter of the way to Michael, a transition and decision that hadn’t been previously addressed before the ceremony. This works to be the perfect representation of the family they have worked to create together. Their family is queer in that it is not traditional, and that is something that the Villanueva family- I include Rogelio here- has come to embrace. Just like Ugly

Betty, Jane the Virgin, “introduces us to alternative family structures by releasing a focus on heteronormative and nuclear family paradigms, pointing instead to alternative models of kinship as organizing principles” (Gonzalez 27). This is made clear by the use of the name Villanueva instead of De la Vega. The power in this show lies with the matriarchy.

The patriarch must adjust himself to what has already been established (Ch. 44). 39 MICHAEL CORDERO: THE ULTIMATE BROGELIO Perhaps one of the most important relationships in Jane the Virgin is the one between Rogelio and Michael, Jane’s eventual husband, who happens to be a police officer. Michael and Rogelio’s bromance starts with a ride along in chapter sixteen, the perfect setting for a blossoming friendship between men. The “buddy comedy” is a common trope in media and is deployed here when Rogelio and Michael essentially fall in love over the course of one episode. Rogelio wants to research for a potential role as a police officer and volunteers Michael to take him along on a day of work. Michael, who he later refers to as his brogelio (as a combination of the word “bro” and Rogelio’s name) agrees hesitantly. This is an unusual pairing, one that has not been seen before in the series.

The buddy film has been an object of analysis for film scholars specifically when speaking of interracial friendships, not unlike the one between Michael and Rogelio.

These buddy movies are usually less intimate and more comical than anything else. The relationship that Michael and Rogelio form while on the ride along then denotes a shift from the original form. Their relationship is “explicitly characterized as of high interpersonal value and… more significant than the casual pairing of characters” (Lotz

153). This is what Lotz calls “a dyadic hetero intimacy.” Michael and Rogelio form a bond that defies what is expected of them in the police car, and in the larger context of the soap opera. Though they do bond over “surface level” things, like their love of impressions, we see that their relationship grows to be much deeper throughout the series.

40 When we consider Rogelio, a rich, Mexican, middle-aged soap opera star and

Michael, a young, broke, white, police officer, there seems to be some obvious places for disagreement. The interracial friendship, for one, makes this pairing interesting in that there is little cultural overlap in their experiences. This does not keep them apart, however. The beginning of this relationship, in fact, demonstrates Rogelio’s tendency to latch on to people dramatically. We see him love quickly and totally, both in his family life and in his social life.

Soap operas can often be seen as a challenge to the power of hegemonic masculinity in that they encourage men to talk to other men. Soap opera characters tend to conduct their most “private and intimate conversations in a wide range of communal locations, and as such, there is little privacy for the men and women of the genre.” There is no “private sphere in the soap opera community because there is no privacy” (Feasey

14). We, as the audience, get to see almost everything that happens in the characters’ lives, meaning that what is meant to be private isn’t so for us. We are to know what the characters’ innermost thoughts are as a way to make ourselves feel invested in the show’s narrative.

Although Michael appears to be uncomfortable when talking about his emotions and uneasy when revealing his vulnerabilities and disappointments to Rogelio, the very fact that they are trying to “convey their intimate thoughts and feelings goes some way towards negotiating existing cultural stereotypes and breaking down long standing distinctions concerning male and female communications” (Feasey 13). This serves as a challenge to earlier sex role stereotyping and helps to “negotiate the emotional reserve of 41 the hegemonic male” (Feasey 13). Rogelio refuses to be made to feel like he is not normal or extraordinary. He, in turn, makes Michael feel uncomfortable, like he’s the weird one for not being able to express his emotions so openly.

In the chapter seventeen recap, the narrator literally says that a bromance was born between Michael and Rogelio on their ride along. Jane has to ask Rogelio to tone down his love for Michael because Jane and Michael, at this point in the series, are broken up. By way of consolation, for not being able to be excessive in his friendship with Michael due to the restrictions set on him by Jane, Rogelio plans surprise mani- pedis for them. When Michael, while getting his feet massaged, seems to be uncomfortable with the idea, Rogelio says, “It’s 2015. Men get pedicures. Or what was all this equality talk about.” It seems Rogelio has missed the point in terms of what equality means. The show often does this to Rogelio’s character, making it seem like he is ignorant, and Michael is just sort of placating him in their friendship, a racially questionable thing to do as it begins to paint Rogelio as the male buffoon, but the dynamic doesn’t stop there. Rogelio, who sometimes seems to be vapid in comparison to

Michael, also seems to be the person who is encouraging him to open up and be more comfortable in spaces that he wasn’t before. In this context, Rogelio seems to be the more emotionally mature of the two.

The dominant cultural ideology about friendship informs us that “women are more intimate and talk in their friendships, whereas men engage in activities and do not share feelings” (Feasey 22). Then it becomes important for men to be able to go out or do things with each other in order for men to feel a sense of loyalty or camaraderie with 42 other men. These situations are painted out to be devoid of any real intimacy. Even though these activities encourage men to spend time in male company, “they do not encourage men to let down their emotional barriers and express their ‘innermost thoughts and feelings” (Feasey 22). We are told that men are only ready to share themselves in the most “desperate or extreme situations.” Men are raised to believe the myth that “security is not found in close relationships, but in solitude and that because of this, men purposefully work to distance themselves from their emotional needs” (Feasey 23).

Xiomara and Rogelio get into an argument. Michael and Rogelio dissect the conversation to try and find a solution together. He says of Michael, “He’s so smart.” His eyes get dreamy when he talks about him. He is openly admiring Michael, something we don’t often see in friendships between men (Ch. 17).

Rogelio overhears Jane talking about how she liked when Michael was tough and so he tells Michael to protect and enhance his masculine image. In the same episode, both men keep journals full of feelings. They refuse to call them diaries. Rogelio reads his journal to Xiomara for two hours, like the men in Man Enough, again putting the emotional burden on his partner. He cries, compliments himself by saying that he has a way with words, and acknowledges that Luciana, his ex-wife, destroyed him. In the next scene, Rogelio asks Michael, “How’s playing macho-macho man going anyway?”

Michael says that it is difficult for him to not talk to Jane, but Rogelio advises him to continue to lock his feelings away in his journal. He then invites Michael over for a spray tan and tells Jane that Michael seems extreme manly. Both men put on performances of what they think masculinity should be before eventually putting those societal 43 expectations aside and talking about their feelings in the way we have come to know of them. This one episode focuses on the men's’ struggle with gendered conditioning, but we are then reminded in later episodes that Jane the Virgin allows men to otherwise be nuanced and to have depth beyond stereotypical depictions of masculinity.

This suggests that such images fail to depict homosociality as anything other than

“superficial interaction.” The sitcom is said to treat male friendship as “facile and superficial, which in turn invites society as a whole to give up on the expectation that male friendships can ever be more than emotionally detached bravado” (Feasey 24). This thought may have entered Michael’s mind at some point in the beginning of his relationship with Rogelio, but Rogelio, confident in his masculinity and sexuality, loves

Michael openly. He queers what is expected of most male friendships on and off television.

Later on in the series, in chapter fifty-four, Michael dies of heart failure. The focus in the aftermath of this is Jane. How will she move on without her husband? The series, for a few episodes at least, doesn’t show us the way in which Rogelio mourns his best friend. We finally get that moment in chapter sixty when Jane’s new love interest invites Rogelio to get a mani-pedi with him. Rogelio declines later telling Xiomara: “It’s just hard thinking about Jane dating someone new.” He doesn’t want to replace Michael as his best friend even though more than a few years have passed since his death. He says through tears, “I really loved him, and I still think about him every single day.” We see

Rogelio’s vulnerability and attachment to Michael, even after all this time, proof that

44 their friendship was much more than a superficial relationship like those between most men on television.

BEAUTY, NARCISSISM, AND FAME To understand Rogelio is to understand him as a diva on and off the telenovela screen. He demands attention when he’s filming a scene for one of his telenovelas or even when he is simply sitting down for dinner with the family. Queer camp, which is applicable to Rogelio’s everyday persona, “engages in humor based on irony, melodrama, exaggeration, and bad taste. It takes what is perceived as ‘normal’ and makes it self- referentially funny and strange and sometimes tragically sad” (Molina-Guzman 143).

This process then “symbolically rupture[s] the deracialized homogenization of Latinidad,

Latina/o family, and Latina identity” (Molina-Guzman 143). Rogelio isn’t made out to be a stereotypically masculine man; rather, he takes on qualities that queer him from those standards. Like its predecessor Ugly Betty, Jane the Virgin “symbolically ruptures pre- existing media representations of Latina/o lives through its queerness and sensitive portrayal of Latina loss, grief, and motherhood” an amalgamation of perhaps the three most important themes in the series (Molina-Guzman 150). This section will analyze instances of Rogelio’s engagement with vanity and beauty and the ways in which these concepts are deployed to queer him.

Rogelio loses all of his money investing in a show that he believed in but ultimately didn’t work out. Xiomara and Jane attempt to help him with money management, but he refuses to live small. He swallows his pride and asks the network for

45 a job that he had previously passed on. He explains his decision, saying that he has worked too hard to go back to living in a one bedroom apartment eating ramen. We see that importance lies in image for Rogelio. He does not often talk about his life before becoming a celebrity. He is ashamed of the fact that he was once poor, and he now must uphold the image of luxury and excess as has become essential to his persona. While

Rogelio is willing to take chances on things he believes in, he is not willing to give up the life and image he has so carefully curated for himself (Ch.29).

On Jane’s wedding day to Michael, Rogelio becomes a sort of bridezilla. He has made himself the wedding planner and takes it upon himself to make sure that everything is perfect for his daughter’s special day. He even goes so far as to get a Rolls Royce to take Jane to the church in. Like it must, the car ends up breaking down before the wedding. He says to Jane, “maybe a sixty year old Rolls Royce wasn’t the best idea,” a reflection that makes Rogelio both infuriating and endearing (Ch. 44).

They have to run from the bus stop to the church, during which Rogelio yells to

Jane, “This is your big day! Please stop running! I’ll carry you. Your makeup will melt!”

To which she responds, “No way! Then your makeup will melt!” He says, “You’re right.

We’ll re-apply when we get there.” There is a mutual understanding between the two on the importance of makeup, especially on an occasion like this. Rogelio’s appreciation and reliance on makeup is something that is never questioned. It just is. There is something to be said about the queerness of this. Rogelio loves makeup, and no one questions that. It is just another quality that makes him all the more likeable.

46 When Xiomara proposes to Rogelio, he responds by saying, “oh my god, oh my god. I’m going to faint.” He then unabashedly says to her, “I had Botox this morning, so the tears are struggling to fall, but I feel them.” Rogelio puts his hand out, so she can put the ring on his finger. He has no problem with being proposed to instead of being the one proposing. This is not common on television and especially on a soap opera where men are depicted as dominant and overbearing. Jane the Virgin allows for Rogelio to exist just as he is, a man who got Botox the morning he was proposed to. This is a seemingly queer act that does nothing to question his sexuality (Ch.61).

On the day he is to be married to Xiomara, Rogelio finds out that Darcy, the woman he was seeing after his break up with Xiomara, is pregnant. Rogelio’s first thought is of Xiomara and how she will react when she finds out. His second thought, when he finds out the baby is a girl, is to name her Rogeliana. He works to keep himself relevant in interesting ways, even in the company of his family. We see that Rogelio cares about the ones he loves first and about himself second. Despite the pregnancy,

Xiomara agrees to marry Rogelio that same day as they had planned. Mateo, Jane’s son and Rogelio’s grandson, acting as a sort of assistant, runs between Xiomara and

Rogelio’s rooms to help them share makeup before the wedding again showing that

Rogelio cares just as much, if not more, about his appearance than any of the other women on the show (Ch. 64).

Male beauty and self-regard now indicate a “borderline-teasing fascination with the increasing openness and visibility of queer desire, a kind of mutual gaze between the narcissistically self-fascinated heterosexual male and the appraising, emboldened queer 47 male subject.” (Greven 3). Rogelio’s fascination with both himself (his dressing room is full of pictures of himself) and with beauty point to a queering of traditional masculine values.

To whatever extent masculinity remains the embodiment of national power,

“queerness threatens the cultural stability of hegemonic manhood” (Greven 6). The threat that queerness poses lies in its perceived challenge to the “integrity, resolve, and coherence of a masculinity that understands itself as white and heterosexual, not feminine, not gay, not queer, not other. We can argue that gayness, queerness, and non- whiteness pose analogous threats” (Greven 6). Rogelio’s gender expression is queer in its excessiveness and still the show allows him to pull off the playboy image at the same time. He gets to be emotional and dramatic, and he also gets to be aggressively heterosexual. Rogelio embraces the aspects of “femininity and masculinity which he prefers – without a care about which gender they are traditionally ‘assigned’ to.” This is not to say that Rogelio doesn’t come with his own shortcomings. He centers himself in conversations of women’s issues. He has the privilege, as a man, to be flamboyant without fear of retaliation, and he often counts on the emotional labor of women to serve him, but like Justin Baldoni, Rogelio is doing something that is necessary for the continual queering of masculinity. Though he lacks the ability to be as self-reflective as

Baldoni, he makes choices that free him of traditional gender roles without having to adhere to societal expectations. Like white, rapper Watsky, in the following chapter,

Rogelio is purposeful in his gender performance of an atypical masculinity. The term queer, then is used here, not as a reference to sexuality but instead to deviance. 48 Chapter 3: Watsky and the Performance of Failure

“And perhaps, if you truly aspire to ruin everything, it’s best you stop reading now. For I came to a troubling conclusion as I neared this book’s completion: The only good way to

ruin everything is by accident- if you make an effort to do it you’ve tried, and sadly,

trying is its own success… It occurred to me that at least I’d succeeded in failing to

deliver on the promise of the title. And that may not be ‘everything,’ but hey, nobody’s

perfect” (Watsky, 2).

For this chapter, I will be focusing on the ways in which George Watsky, a white,

Jewish writer and musician originally from San Francisco, queers heteronormative masculinity through his performance of music and his music videos. Three of his pieces in particular are most indicative of the ways in which he queers masculinity as points of analysis. What is most important to Watsky’s work, I posit, is his flair for failure. He is only mildly famous by design, writing songs about race and sexuality that aren’t appealing to all audiences. He continually fails, continually processes, in order to become a better artist. This is part of his craft. In The Queer Art of Failure Halberstam states: “the queer art of failure...quietly loses, and in losing, it imagines other goals for love, for art, and for being. Queer studies offer us one method for imagining, not some fantasy of an elsewhere, but existing alternatives to hegemonic systems” (Halberstam, 88-89).

Watsky’s songs give us an alternative imaging to hegemonic systems while simultaneously working within them. He is using his privilege to speak to the ways in which we can imagine alternative futures, free of gender and societal expectations.

49 Watsky attended Emerson College, a performing arts school in Boston. After rising to the top of the Brave New Voices National Poetry Slam in 2006 and appearing on the final season of HBO’s Def Poetry Slam, he was able to gain popularity doing spoken- word poetry at small college shows. When a video he released of him rapping quickly titled “Pale Kid Raps Fast” gained viral attention in 21011, he earned a much-coveted slot on the Ellen DeGeneres Show. A few years and four albums later, Watsky has shied away from the gimmick of quick bars and released four albums spanning multiple genres and styles, as well as a New York Times bestselling book of essays. His level of fame, although perhaps lacking a truly global awareness, is nonetheless far-reaching, as is evidenced by his inclusion in the Hamilton mixtape by Tony award-winning playwright

Lin-Manuel Miranda and by famous actress Kristen Bell’s reference to him during a game segment on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon.

The first piece, a spoken-word poem called “S for Lisp” from a 2010 performance at his alma-mater, Emerson. The poem is about his reaction to a stranger telling him he had a lisp. “All Like Whatever,” was the second song released as a single from his latest album Complaint. According to Watsky, the song is “not quite about indifference; it’s about feigned indifference,” a distinction that is clearly important for him to make.

Feigned indifference serves to reinforce gender norms in heterosexual dating. The concept of “playing hard to get” serves to reinforce the idea that men don’t need women, that they don’t have to engage with their emotions, and that they don’t get excited for the future because to do these things would be to liken themselves with femininity. The song and music video both play on a satire of outdated gender norms in a dating scenario. 50 Watsky and an unnamed woman go on a date where their respective subconscious personas, manifested as faceless beings in green and blue Morph Suits, control their every move. The third song and music video I will be examining is “Going Down” from his 2016 X Infinity album, Watsky gleefully and blissfully explores oral sex. The video shows him hang-gliding through what appear to be giant women’s and men’s bodies as he literally “goes down” on them.

In a time when callout culture, as mentioned in the introduction, is the norm,

Watsky is the first to acknowledge his privilege. While he does not hide the fact that he admires Eminem, he feels he is part of a new white rapper tradition, one that takes itself less seriously in order to translate messages into a medium it might otherwise disappear into. "I've always been political, but nobody wants to have that forced on them, so I try to use humor to subvert the message, so I can go in deeper," Watsky notes. Watsky is subtle but purposeful in his resistance. He is using the tools of the system to begin to dismantle it. In an interview Long Hair Does Care, he notes feeling more of an urge to “express my politics and my values a little bit more in terms of what I think is the antidote to

‘Trumpworld.’” Watsky casually, almost dismissively references the tools he calls upon to achieve this effect. “I keep just coming back to... kindness and compassion and, as a man, just being able to embrace sensitivity alongside your masculinity.” He addresses the importance of vulnerability in a world that looks down on men for that kind of sensitivity.

This self-awareness is something Watsky acknowledges as factoring into much of his work. He states that it is important to him to try “to have a general awareness of my privilege, of the ways that I’m lucky, and the ways I got to skip the line and … got 51 opportunities that other people might not have gotten. . .. My personal history plays a part in the larger context that I fit into.” Part of this is expressed through musings on relationships and love on his upcoming album. Watsky claims one goal of his latest work,

Complaint, is “trying to counteract what I see as toxic energy coming from positions of power in our country and the presidency, and saying, “OK, what do I see as the antidote for that energy?” I think it’s compassion; I think it’s vulnerability and love, and that’s what I want to explore.

To be so outspoken on non-traditionally masculine themes and feelings is a trait that is not unfamiliar to Watsky. Masculinity is a subject upon which he ponders often in his work. He is uncomfortable with aligning himself as part of the patriarchy, even within his own “family” of touring musicians. He said in an interview: “I wrestle with [that]. I consider myself a socialist. At the same time, I suppose there is a certain leadership structure, and it’s my name on the bill at the end of the night. But I do try to empower the people I’m playing with as much as possible.” This sense of family and empowerment is a recurring theme in Watsky’s music, most notably in the first single off of his Complaint album called “Welcome to the Family” a song in which he tells those that feel like outsiders that they are loved.

It makes sense that he extends this same thoughtfulness to his tour family, encouraging them to come and go as part of his family with no sense of patriarchal guilt looming over them. Part of Watsky’s politics are to incorporate other makers in his works. He shares his stages, albums, and videos with other lesser known artists, usually artists of color, in order to give them a platform. “I only want people to be part of this 52 group, this operation, as long as it makes sense for their lives,” he mentions in Watsky

Finds the Beauty and the Flaws in his Family on Next LP. “Musicians come and go. In a best-case scenario for me, my group could be a stepping stone for somebody else to get to where they want to get, and everybody who’s in my band [is] fully capable and talented enough to be front people on their own. I hope that’s what they get if that’s what they want to do.” The performance and success of others are important to Watsky and his performance politics. He is holding himself accountable for their progress and cheering for the artists he works with and in doing this, he is building a found family much like the ones that are crucial to queer stories.

In 2013, an incident that took place at a show in London changed Watsky’s relationship with his fans and with his own art in a drastic way. While closing out his set at the Vans Warped Tour, he scaled a 40-foot lighting rig and jumped off into the crowd, landing badly on two fans and breaking one of their arms (George Watsky Sorry for 'Not

Ballsy' Stage Dive That Broke Fan's Arm). While Watsky suffered some bruising from the dive, his fans ended up in the hospital, and as Watsky later quotes on his album All

You Can Do, one girl who was “in school to do tattoos” ended up injured badly enough that she “might have had nerve damage,” a potentially career-ending injury for an artist in training. Wasky, who denied being under the influence of substances during the show, says his decision to jump was made to counter his "early timidity" as a performer. This timidity is well documented in one of his early spoken word poems, “Go Big Young

Friends,” in which he calls stage diving when age 15 “terrifying” and describes the emasculation he feels while taking “the walk of shame” away from his opportunity to 53 dive into the crowd. His London incident years later, then, could easily be chalked up to overcompensation. Watsky went on to write a long apology post about the incident on

Facebook, saying, “The jump was not awesome, it was not badass, and it was not ballsy.

It turned what should have been a great day for the people who got hurt into a nightmare.

It was stupid and wildly irresponsible, plain and simple.” He immediately took full responsibility for what he had done and took some space away from the spotlight to reflect on what had happened and what that meant for the future, leaving fans unsure of whether he would return to music and performing at all.

HEGEMONIC MASCULINITY AND A BRIEF HISTORY OF RAP In the United States, “manliness” is thought to be a heterosexual man’s dominance over other males and females. This hegemonic masculinity can also look like

“hyper-competitiveness, and the appearance of strength and independence” (Oware 40).

Labels like protector and breadwinner epitomize this notion. Hegemonic masculinity prescribes that males provide for their families and defend their space from outsiders.

Additionally, men must overpower and dominate weaker opponents in their professional and social lives, meaning men who perform a masculinity different than the hegemonic one they prescribe to. The concept of hegemonic masculinity primarily applies to white heterosexual men who have the necessary resources to achieve these goals. Many black people, then, are led to believe that manliness means demonstrating extreme toughness, invulnerability, violence, and domination. This type of manhood engenders a “strong black man” archetype. This specific self-presentation emerges due to the limited power of

54 black people, born from the overlapping effects of slavery, violence, and continued economic exploitation. Their masculinity comes as a response to years of oppression, violence, and obstacles. In the early years of rap music, sociologist Joseph Ewoodzie argues that “hip-hop became a masculinized space because it helped the male participants onstage to perform their masculinity, especially their heterosexual desires” (Oware 41).

Many black and white male rap artists, hoping to make it big, perform an exaggerated form of black masculinity. They over-emphasize aggressive behavior and become parodies of blackness.

Richard Rodriguez would say that a history of rap would be incomplete without the inclusion of Latinx rap. “Chicano and Latino rap remain, on the whole, largely invisible despite the existence of ‘forefathers,’’ like Fat Joe and Baby Bash, who have produced a new generation of Chicano and Latino hip hop talent. (Rodriguez 95) This phenomenon that I describe refers to other non-black masculinities of color as well.

Rodriguez says that there is “selective amnesia” regarding Chicano rap’s roots

(Rodriguez 99). There is an absence of this history from the general narrative. Black artists, in fact, helped Chicano artists get signed and helped them cultivate space for

“brown power” in the rap community.

Rodriguez says that the idea that “the expressive form is strictly for, by, and about

African Americans” is flawed. The movement, though often thought as such, is not essentially black. Although Chicano rap is hardly as “popular” to the white or black public eye, perhaps because there is no “Chicano equivalent to Ice Cube, Snoop Dogg, 50

55 Cent, Eminem, or the Tupac Shakur” does not mean that its racialized history can be left out of the rap narrative (Rodriguez 101).

Rodriguez explains that we “cannot strictly focus on what is popular in the

‘mainstream’ but must consider practices and productions that resist or fall outside the realm of mass produced and mass accepted popular culture (Rodriguez 104). This means thinking about rap as existent and even belonging to those outside of black communities.

When Chicano rappers rap about “Chicanismo and being brown and proud, not everybody wants to hear that.” Unfortunately, this means that by doing this, they segregate themselves and limit their audience. These men “feel the need to hold on to the

Aztec past that would at once help them retain, via ‘cultural memory,’ a sense of historical being while countering the positions of powerlessness they and their listeners are frequently placed in.” In other words, rap may provide the soundtrack for struggle against the oppressive forces inhibiting Chicano and Latino lives (Rodriguez 132).

Hip hop’s African American identification must be contextualized in the simultaneous vilification and romanticization of black people in U.S. popular culture and the profitability of its commercial packaging. Watsky benefits from this packaging in that his music is easily digestible and recognizable as rap. He also subverts it in that he is insistence in not being culturally appropriative, going so far as to collaborate on a song entitled “Color Lines” with black rapper, Catch Wreck in which they talk about the question of who owns Rap music. One of the hottest selling points of hip hop has been its association with “a raw, outlaw, ghetto-based, black—particularly male—experience and image” (Rivera 82). Rap’s appeal lies in “a long-established romanticization of the Black 56 urban male as a temple of authentic cool, at home with risk, with sex, with struggle”

(Rivera 82).

The majority of white artists evade topics related to race, perhaps to focus on musical skill or wordplay or simply because of their belief in a post-racial society. Some rappers of color, however, “argue that white artists culturally appropriate black [and brown] music without consequence” (Oware 140). Cultural appropriation means the borrowing or stealing of a marginalized groups’ culture or traditions. Too often, white artists who culturally appropriate reap the benefits not afforded to people of color. There is an admiration for black and brown culture but not for black and brown people and so rap coming from the mouth of a white person is more palpable and less threatening.

I say all of this to say that rap, like many other concepts in this project, doesn’t fit inside a neat binary. I wanted to complicate the ways in which with think about rap as a purely black phenomenon or a phenomenon that has been culturally appropriated by white rappers. What does it mean for a non-black body to move like a black body?

Though Watsky is a white rapper, he doesn’t try to emulate Black rappers in the way that someone like Lin-Manuel Miranda does. Watsky claims white rap as a space for himself and speaks to the ways in which this can be problematic but he isn’t performing this pseudo blackness in order to fit into the genre the way that Eminem does. He is thoughtful in the way that he refuses to adhere to the strictures set before him. His background in poetry can begin to explain this as he says, he is a poet first and a rapper second.

57 PIECES AND PERFORMANCES

S for Lisp I like to think of the ways in which Watsky helped me subtly accept my queerness through subversion before I could accept it outright. I question the utility of reading a straight white man as even a tiny bit queer. I think the purpose it serves here is that

Watsky helps to introduce the concept that everything is queer, even the things that present as decidedly non-queer. There is a refusal that is happening in his work that reminds me of the refusal of queer culture, not to say that he is taking the same risks, as

I’ve mentioned before, he is coming from a place of privilege and is only risking the difference between alternative and mainstream fame.

Watsky performed “S for Lisp” at the 2010 Collegiate National Poetry Slam

Finals Cutler Majestic Theater in Boston. This poem embraces failure as a strategy and

“quietly loses, and in losing, it imagines other goals for love, for art, and for being”

(Halberstam 88). It is unbecoming in that it leans into the lisp instead of shying away from it. He is redefining stereotypes with his lisp. For this piece, I want to talk about the ways in which disability also functions as a queering of masculinity because of the ways in which normative masculinity is so aligned with physical and mental ability. The concept of disability is important in Watsky’s work. He has written songs about his seizures, epilepsy, and mental illness.

He introduces the performance by saying, “this next poem is for anyone who’s been made fun of for the way they talk.” It is immediately made clear that this poem is addressing speech impediments and their association with disability. The poem starts:

58 “So someone said to me the other day I've got a lisp / A stranger, you know, they said I've got a subtle lisp / And I should know I sound a little stupid doing spoken word / When all my words with "S" in them are spoken so absurd / And I'm not upset, okay it just sucks.”

He motions that he might be a little upset. He scrunches his eye and puts him thumb and index finger close together. Watsky sets the scene here and lets us know that he was, at least a little, upset by what the stranger had to say to him. This makes this next section all the more powerful.

He clears his throat before he starts this stanza and says, “My subtle lisp is not sinful / I'm not sorry Saturday, I'm not sorry Sunday; / I'm spiritual and when I speak / I celebrate the Sabbath seven days a week.” He focuses on the “S” sound, a blatant refusal to ignore the lisp but rather he emphasizes it. His continued in-your-face embrace of the letter is reminiscent of the ways in which queer communities and communities of color practice excessive performances of gender. He refuses to apologize for his speech and instead embraces the queerness of his language.

Watsky puts the onus on the stranger. “And if you suppose your speech is normal

/ Its 'cause your impediment is listening.” This is where I originally thought the poem would end. Watsky takes it a step further. He refuses to end his poem to talk back to those who criticize but rather continues in his quest for literary excess by including other speech “impediments.”

Watsky embraces his speech and that of others who don’t or can’t conform to traditional speaking saying, “Speak for those of us with something special / Something that sets us aside from my— / Accent havers, my... stammerers / My southerners, my st- 59 st-stutterers / Yes, I will spit it sick and stick to never skipping ‘S.’” Watsky is practicing failure here which prompts him and us as his audience “to discover our inner dweeb, to be underachievers, to fall short, to get distracted, to take a detour, to find a limit, to lose our way, to forget, to avoid mastery” (Halberstam 120-1).

He ends his poem by saying, “I was— / Suckin' on a soup spoon and I suckled it to sterling silver / Simple, supple, super soaker / Staying watching Sister Sister / Scenage syllables coming esophagus / You should see that I will not desist / I'm sorry! / CUSPI, if you don't like a subtle lisp / Then you can simply suck on thissssssss.” There is literary excess happening here. Watsky is using his words in such a way that makes his performance queer, in the sense that it doesn’t follow the typical rules set for a spoken word poem. He is using literary devices such as consonance and alliteration and playing with words in such a way as to make a point about the absurdity of language rules.

All Like Whatever All Like Whatever is the second single from Watsky’s latest album, Complaint.

The second verse says, “Fuck, am I crazy just for dreaming of you all night? / I scroll through every picture that you took, so what? / I picture how our kids would look, so what? / I drew a picture of us in my notebook, so what?” Watsky details the extent of his obsession but also tries to play it off as not a big deal. He is talking about all of these intimate moments he’s had thinking about this woman, but then is almost gaslighting her by saying, “so what I wrote a song about you, let’s not go nuts.” He is making it seem like the woman is the one who is making a big deal out of the relationship while Watsky

60 is the one saying these romantic things about and towards her. This lyric demonstrates the ways in which men, as the typically “emotionally unavailable” partner in a heterosexual relationship can lead to women feeling manipulated at best and gaslighted at worst. We can safely assume that Watsky has dreamed about the way their relationship would look according to him: “And each night you call me and we talk on the phone and be all like whatever/ Yeah, dreamin’ of you is an all-night endeavor / Yeah, it'd be chill to spend our lives together.” By indulging in this practice, he is critiquing the ways in which men emotionally manipulate women for their benefit. His feigned indifference is too obvious to not be some sort of commentary on the nature of the way that men talk to women.

In the video, Watsky and a woman go out on a date. They are essentially robots being moved by morph people. They help them walk, move, eat, and get dressed. They seem to be a sort of extension of the people. I interpret this as a metaphor for social gender roles. Just like American society, Watsky and the woman literally can’t move without them. It could also be, by extension, that the suits are playing out societal expectations of dating. Later, when the suits fall in love with each other, it seems to be a representation of them being free of heteronormativity. In this space, they are exempt from reproducing pre-established models.

The song plays at an aloof coyness that in actuality is sincere. It shows the ways in which we are socialized to like someone but don’t want to admit it out of fear of rejection. The suits are doing what Watsky and his dates innermost desires ask of them without risking the vulnerability of playing that out between the actual human beings.

Also important to note, the green suit, a traditionally gender neutral color, which handles 61 Watsky, goes down on the blue suit, a traditionally masculine color, which handles the woman, a sort of nod to his song “Going Down.”

Going Down In Watsky’s song “Going Down” off his X Infinity album, he talks about oral sex.

There are two substantive queerings of masculinity happening in this song. First, he talks about performing oral sex on his female partner as an effeminizing act of jubilation in taking a position that is sexually submissive. He dives into the queerness of it in that he positions himself as the giver, a role traditionally assigned to the woman, instead of the receiver, a role traditionally assigned to the man. Second, the song’s hook is a reflection on what Watsky seems to think is inevitable: going down on a man.

Watsky says that he has “more lung capacity than Freddie Mercury’s vocal numbers,” which is to say that he can go for a long time. His mention of Mercury, a queer icon, also seems like foreshadowing for the second half of the song. He starts the song in a way that is at least a bit manageable and heteronormative, to make the audience comfortable and receptive, to use the tools that they’re used to pull them in, then he surprises them with the second half of the song.

He sings: “Hold up, wait (Hold up, wait) / Cause I really gotta set one thing straight / I'm not chowing on the chocha so that you'll reciprocate / I just go in (go in) /

No strings (no strings) / Tastes great (tastes great) / Fun times (vitamins!)” He talks about oral sex in ways that haven’t really been done before. He is both playful and serious

62 about it in a way that makes the reader comfortable and open to listening to a song that would otherwise be jarring for a mainstream audience.

Watsky is thorough in his analysis of oral sex: “Given our planet's gender ratio /

It'd be a mockery glossing over fellatio (there he go) / Meaning that really fucking quick /

I gotta touch on sucking dick / Many guys visualize giving BJs And say "eww" / But can we just please give smoking pole a calm objective view? / I'm pretty straight, but I'll state: sexuality's an arc / Maybe I can suck a flashlight so my soul will not be dark” He explains that sexuality is an arc and that he believes in that fluidity. He is trying to have a conversation with himself where he can think about what it would be like to go down on another man, keeping in mind that he has been conditioned to think that the idea is repulsive.

I do find some issue in his equation of sex with a man and sex with an inanimate object. He says: “Why couldn't I get sexual with a man at all? / At thirteen I was in my bedroom fucking stuffed animals / If I can bang an inanimate object can't I jam the crotch of a man in my jaw and softly massage it?” But then, as Watsky usually does, he turns the lyric on its head by using the phrase “softly massage it.” The image it paints is tender and full of love or at least appreciation. The phrase makes it so “jam[ming] the crotch of a man in [his] jaw” is a much more intimate act than any he could have performed with a stuffed animal.

Watsky is aware of the ways in which he has conditioned in heteronormative ways. He says at the end of the song: “If I could get with it I'd have a wider ocean I'm fishing in / But I'm inhibited by my social conditioning / So where my head's at present 63 the odds are gloomy / That I would agree to feast on a D that's presented to me / But I'm not officially ruling out / That at some point in my life I'll have a ding-a-ling in my mouth” He leaves the door open for queer oral sex, a statement he made both so casually and so boldly in his rap, a place not usually known for this kind of exploration.

The video has been described as a “a sci-fi epic about oral.” It is part of a larger visual album project. Porn star Riley Reid stars in the video which premiered on Pornhub.

In the video, Watsky hang glides around Reid’s body in appreciation. He realizes there are other bodies around. He sees a woman touching herself through binoculars and nods in awe. There are brown bodies and pubic hair. Watsky splashes into a vagina, and the person’s eye, mouth, and hand tell us that they had an orgasm. Then the camera pans to a body with a penis. Watsky is excited, though a little scared. He flies through a storm to reveal an erect penis shining in the sunlight. Watsky looks thrilled. The video is done tastefully with some fans commenting that is didn’t deserve to be released on Pornhub, a website that can carry connotations of shame. Watsky likes to blur the lines between what is polite and what is pornographic. He refuses to be confined to the binary of social mores that keep him from writing a song, much less a music video, about oral sex.

The video is thoughtful. It doesn’t show faces. The audience can’t assume to know anything about these bodies other than that they are naked. Like the song, the bodies show the realities of human bodies, full of color and body hair, though I do think it’s important to point out that there was a lack in body diversity. As if to say that only thin people are to be sexually desired. Like with all of these examples, there are places in which the video exceeds expectations and places where it falls short. Above all, despite 64 resistance from some, Watsky refused to keep song off the album because he feels that going down on someone is a poetic act. He felt like he needed to make this statement about oral sex in a way that no one else had before, and he followed that idea to fruition.

Watsky queers heteronormative masculinity through his performance of music and his music videos. The pieces I examined worked to show the depth of Watsky’s work and his intent to dismantle a system from within. Watsky’s work, though it occasionally fails, shows the ways in which failure can lead to utopia. He writes works about race and sexuality knowing full well that those topics aren’t appealing to all audiences. He continually strives to do better and continually fails, and that failure may be the queerest thing about him. Like Justin Baldoni and Rogelio, Watsky refuses to deny his failures rather, he sees them as a mode of learning.

65 CONCLUSION

The men I chose to focus on throughout this project have in some way addressed the idea of solitude and the lone man that Octavio Paz and America Paredes talk about in their works on masculinity and individualism while also rupturing this idea at the same time. Rogelio relies on his family and on Michael for support. Although he does try to be the strong man who takes care of everyone once in a while, he is also not afraid to ask for help. He realizes that he is successful when he works with others and this doesn’t bring his masculinity into question, as it has with other figures in the past. Justin Baldoni needs the other men in his show and in his life to help keep him accountable for the way he wants to exist in the world. Without these other men, and perhaps most importantly women, he cannot succeed. And so even though the men talk about their fear of reaching out to each other, the ultimately conclude that the only way to improve, to alter their masculinity in a way that benefits everyone is to talk to and rely on each other.

They are all essentially working towards a feminist masculinity where men and women can find equality in their gender performance. They are working towards a masculinity that respects women and believes in promoting their work alongside their own.

An important aspect of this project to me was accessibility. This idea, for me, goes hand in hand with the work of process and failure. To write this in accessible language meant to make it so that it could reach the masses. Having conversations means being able to discuss the things that are complicated in ways that are manageable. To overcome the impossibilities of creating a new future by making small changes just as I 66 have done in writing this project. I hope I have made it so the language I used didn’t belittle or idealize my subjects through condescending language.

My choice of texts also come from consideration of accessibility. I chose to write about mass media texts that are widely available and widely consumed. These texts are not only accessible in terms of consumption but in terms of reach. This project asks: Can media help disrupt harmful masculinities? How do messages in the media impact our day-to-day behavior and our self-image? What does it mean for messages of masculinity to be discussed in popular culture?

Though masculinity, as Halberstam says, may be difficult to define, it is easy to recognize. We would be doing masculinity a disservice to simply liken it to maleness, for masculinity can be expressed across all genders. To think of masculinity this way is to begin to deconstruct it. This is how we can begin to question what purpose masculinity serves and how we can critique it and continue to change it as deemed necessary by changing societal expectations. This is the way in which we are able to remove ourselves from the faults of hypermasculinity and the continued perpetuation of hegemonic masculinity. By being purposeful and asking questions, not only are we becoming vulnerable, we are also move away from structures that we find constrictive.

I find Molina-Guzman’s definition of queer, “as more than a word used to identify gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people,” to be applicable in this context (Molina-

Guzman 142). When I talk about the ways in which these men queer masculinity, I am proposing something outside of sexuality, though it is related. To queer masculinity means to work towards an alternative future in which gender stereotypes are obsolete. 67 Queer Studies, Gender studies, and Critical Race Studies were instrumental tools in putting this project together. Their imaginings of better futures allowed me to imagine my own. One in which we are all striving for better, where representation becomes commonplace. To theorize masculinity in a way that felt progressive and timely, I looked to people of color. To understand the oppressive nature of gender stereotypes we must also understand the oppressive nature of racial structures. This work had to be intersectional in order to make it worthwhile. I looked especially to black and Latinx masculinity studies as a means for imagining a queer future.

We have come to accept cancel culture and as tool to measure someone’s worth.

Are they problematic but still redeemable? Or do we get to critique them and dismiss them and never talk about them again? We agree to cancel culture out of fear that we’ll be the next person accused of being complicit in homophobia, racism, or sexism. Cancel culture shows our desire for perfection. We are holding people to impossible standards just like the gender stereotypes we’re trying to break. The expectation in American society is always perfection and this to me serves as the antithesis to Jose Munoz’s queer utopia. The goal for the future, in this context, is perfection, but how do we come by this?

We aren’t imagining a new way of doing things but rather upholding and recreating the systems that oppress us. In order reach the queer utopia, we must devise new ways to hold people accountable that aren’t doomed to replicate the systems that have failed us for so long.

I came to this project through my love of all things messy. There is a complexity to these men and these issues that isn’t just cut and dry. Again, I point to a term coined by 68 black Twitter. These men are some of my “problematic faves.” That is to say that I know that they are flawed but I chose to love them anyway. They still have redeeming qualities through their problematic behavior and perhaps most importantly I can relate to the ways in which they are flawed. I can see myself reflected in them and forgive them and admire them for their humanity. If I held every single person in my life to the highest standard, I wouldn’t have anyone to learn from or grow with. By acknowledging these men and their imperfections, like them, I agreeing to the importance of process. Yes, they forget their privilege. Yes, they fail to unhinge gender norms. Yes, they need to do better. And they know this and my admiration of them signals a commitment to follow along in their journey as they become better, as they make mistakes, as they continue to fail and as they continue to succeed.

Rogelio, perhaps, is not conscious of the ways in which he is queering masculinity. He just is. I don’t know whether I prefer Watsky or Baldoni’s conscious choice to rewrite masculinity in their own image is better and I don’t know that I need to have a preference. They are all trying to reimagine gender roles just the same through conversation, performance, and action. They are taking steps to consider a world outside of a binarized world. Just as Halberstam suggests, the men are questioning the utility of reinforcing the role of the woman as the caretaker and the man as the breadwinner. How does this system serve us now and how can we adjust it to fit our needs as we continue to change?

I would be remiss if I didn’t ask, what is happening inadvertently in this process of growth and reclamation of masculinity? I could have decided to write about women of 69 color instead of white men because those are the voices I’m interested in amplifying, but

I didn’t because I am fascinated with the ways in which people in positions of power learn and grow in a culture that coddles them. How do they get to the point of questioning themselves? Of asking how they can do better? What has to happen in their lives for them to want to be better and how can we make it so that men see humanity in women without having to make things personal? I chose these men because they exist at the same time as cancel culture and instead of shying away from making mistakes, they chose to make them publicly. And they apologize for the things they have done wrong during a time when men don’t want to admit to their mistakes, at a time when men are in denial, at a time when men are defensive, these men are owning their mistakes and choosing to grow from them. I don’t want to shine light on them because this is an extraordinary feat but rather because this should be the norm because this is an absolutely average thing to expect from men. I was careful here not to idealize these men but to question them. What are their goals? How are they reaching these goals? Who are they forgetting about along the way? What issues can they not see because of their privilege and which issues should they especially being seeing because of their privilege? These men benefit from the privileges of being men, being, white, and being of a certain socioeconomic status.

Rogelio is queer in his gender performance. Watsky is queer in his failure. Man

Enough is queer in its homosociality.

Queering Masculinity: What’s Next?

The process of putting this project together has ultimately and inevitably been leading to the concept of queer futures, utopias, and potential. adrienne maree brown’s 70 Emergent Strategy calls for small changes to be made in order to create a better future.

Being accountable for those small changes means being accountable for bigger things when the time comes. Is it about asking people to be intentional in their actions. Just as brown suggests, Munoz speaks of a queer future not yet here but somewhere ahead.

There is an acceptance of the fact that this future will never be reached, that this process will last lifetimes and there will always be room for improvement, but by using these strategies, we get better every day. We improve the ways in which we treat each other.

Our longing for something different, for a better future doesn’t seem as urgent if we all continue to make small intentional changes. Emergent Strategy and Queer Utopias suggest a system outside of punitivity. As is made clear by everything from cancel culture to the prison industrial complex, we as a society find comfort in total rejection or dismissal of a person or people. But what if we generate new ways of being with each other where we don’t punish each other but instead talk about ways to learn? Explore other methods of learning that aren’t so severe. So that the discourse isn’t us versus them anymore.

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