The Queer" Third Species": Tragicomedy in Contemporary
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The Queer “Third Species”: Tragicomedy in Contemporary LGBTQ American Literature and Television A dissertation submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Cincinnati in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department English and Comparative Literature of the College of Arts and Sciences by Lindsey Kurz, B.A., M.A. March 2018 Committee Chair: Dr. Beth Ash Committee Members: Dr. Lisa Hogeland, Dr. Deborah Meem Abstract This dissertation focuses on the recent popularity of the tragicomedy as a genre for representing queer lives in late-twentieth and twenty-first century America. I argue that the tragicomedy allows for a nuanced portrayal of queer identity because it recognizes the systemic and personal “tragedies” faced by LGBTQ people (discrimination, inadequate legal protection, familial exile, the AIDS epidemic, et cetera), but also acknowledges that even in struggle, in real life and in art, there is humor and comedy. I contend that the contemporary tragicomedy works to depart from the dominant late-nineteenth and twentieth-century trope of queer people as either tragic figures (sick, suicidal, self-loathing) or comedic relief characters by showing complex characters that experience both tragedy and comedy and are themselves both serious and humorous. Building off Verna A. Foster’s 2004 book The Name and Nature of Tragicomedy, I argue that contemporary examples of the tragicomedy share generic characteristics with tragicomedies from previous eras (most notably the Renaissance and modern period), but have also evolved in important ways to work for queer authors. The contemporary tragicomedy, as used by queer authors, mixes comedy and tragedy throughout the text but ultimately ends in “comedy” (meaning the characters survive the tragedies in the text and are optimistic for the future). Through a close reading of Armistead Maupin’s series Tales of the City (1978-2014), Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (2006), and Jill Soloway’s television show Transparent, I demonstrate how these contemporary writers disrupt the tragic/comic binary in order to create a text that is closer to lived experience. ii Copyright 2018 iii Acknowledgements I am grateful to many people for their guidance, support, and encouragement throughout the process of writing this dissertation. Firstly, I’d like to thank my dissertation adviser Beth Ash. I’ve worked with and admired Dr. Ash since my first semester at the University of Cincinnati, and her feedback, guidance, and ability to challenge me has been invaluable to my development as a writer and critical thinker. I am also thankful for the opportunity to work with Lisa Hogeland and Deb Meem, both of whom provided generous feedback and encouragement on this project. It has been a huge privilege to work with these three professors whose scholarship and commitment to education have inspired me so much. I am appreciative of several other professors at UC. Thank you to Laura Micciche for showing me how to tackle a large writing project; I might still be trying to compose the perfect first sentence if it wasn’t for her dissertation-writing workshop. Thank you to Christine Mok who read an early draft of my first chapter and provided helpful suggestions. Thank you to Jim Schiff, Joyce Malek and Michelle Holley for their teaching guidance. Thank you to the University of Cincinnati Research Council and the English department for generously providing funding for my time at UC. I am grateful to many friends for their support and camaraderie. Thank you to Kelly Blewett, Joseph Cunningham, Josh Finnell Dan Groves, Niven Herro, Rochelle Hurt, Sammie Marita, Janine Morris, Bhumika Patel, Holbrook Sample, Carla Sarr, Jacqui Simmons, Ryan Smith, Steven Stanley, Lisa Summe, Anne Valente, and Sara Watson. Thank you, also, to my friend Laura Frank -- I called Laura the day I had the idea for this project, and she has provided insight and encouragement ever since. iv The author Armistead Maupin distinguishes between biological family and logical family – those you are born into and those you choose. I consider myself infinitely lucky that my family is both. Mom, Dad, Danny, Lindsay, and Emma – I look up to you (Emma, you’re only as old as the amount of time I’ve been working on this dissertation, but you’re already an inspiration), and I am thankful for you every day. Although they can’t read this (as far as I know!), I’d be remiss if I didn’t thank Dolores and Humphrey. Their endless enthusiasm and capacity for love (and naps) is nothing short of aspirational. Lastly, thank you to Julia Koets. Julia has read everything I’ve written during my Ph.D. – from my application letter to this dissertation. In fact, the only thing she hasn’t read is this acknowledgments page, so if there are errors or unintentional omissions that is probably why. v Table of Contents Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………………. ii Copyright Notice…………………………………………………………………………….. iii Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………………. iv Table of Contents……………………………………………………………………………. vi Chapter One: Introduction…………………………………………………................... 1 Chapter Two: Tales of the City…………………………………………………………. 25 Chapter Three: Fun Home……………………………………………………………….. 55 Chapter Five: Transparent………………………………………………………………. 91 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………... 130 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………………... 132 vi Chapter One: Introduction “‘Merry’ and ‘tragical’? / … How shall we find concord of this discord?” – A Midsummer Night’s Dream (5.1.52-54)1 This dissertation explores how contemporary queer2 literature and television use the genre of the tragicomedy to represent nuanced queer characters and the complexity and multiplicity of queer lives in late twentieth and early-twenty-first century America. While widespread representation and theorizing of queerness may be a relatively new cultural phenomena, the theory and use of the tragicomedy dates back to sixteenth-century Europe when Italian playwright Giovanni Battista Guarini first argued that the genre was most fit for representing the complexities of life. Life, as he and many others have argued since, does not adhere to a tragic/comic binary. This deconstruction of the binary reflects the reality that life is both tragic and comic. Verna A. Foster, author of The Name and Nature of Tragicomedy, writes, “the tragicomedy’s central requirement” is “to offer a more comprehensive and complex understanding of human experience than either tragedy or comedy” (Name and Nature 1). This complexity was not often present in texts about queer people prior to the contemporary period. Gay men, lesbians, and trans people, when represented at all, were often either solely tragic figures (suicidal, sickly, sad), or comic 1 Theseus, who is describing the contradictions of the play-within-the-play, speaks this line. He goes on to say that he had tears of laughter during the “tragical” scene when Pyramus commits suicide (5.1.60-64). 2 Throughout this dissertation I will use the term queer as “an umbrella term for the non- heteronormative, including lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, and transgender people and behaviors” (to borrow Judith Kegan Gardiner’s definition in “Queering Genre”). 1 relief. But queer people’s lives, just like their heterosexual counterparts, are complex,3 and the tragicomedy is used to reflect this complexity. Through a close reading of Armistead Maupin’s series Tales of the City (1978-2014), Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (2006), and Jill Soloway’s television show Transparent, I demonstrate how these contemporary writers disrupt the tragic/comic binary in order to create a text that is closer to lived experience. This ability to disrupt binaries makes tragicomedy an optimal genre for representing the queer disruption of male/female, homosexual/heterosexual binaries, and showing how life is, as Armistead Maupin says, “an intense mixture of laughter and tears." The trend of queer tragicomedy is particularly important to explore because of the essential role texts play in the lives of queer people. Queer people, Valerie Rohy states, “are liable to an intense library cathexis.” She continues, “What sort of people, after all, must research who they are? Those whose difference is antifamilial, somatically unmarked, culturally veiled, and potentially shaming are drawn to lonely stacks and secret research, where the archive enables self-definition” (355). It is significant that queer representation in texts is changing, and understanding this shift and the larger cultural implications is one part of the queer archival tradition. In In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives J. Jack Halberstam explains, “The archive is not simply a repository; it is also a theory of cultural relevance, a construction of collective memory, and a complex 3 This is not to discount the importance of these texts; Sara Ahmed’s book The Promise of Happiness demonstrates “unhappy queers as a crucial aspect of queer genealogy” (“Unhappy Queers”) and Heather Love in Feeling Backwards: Loss the Politics of Queer History cautions against ignoring representations of shame and sorrow in queer lives. I am not arguing for the erasure of these histories, but rather exploring the shift from primarily comic or tragic genres to the tragicomedy genre. 2 record of queer activity. In order for the archive to function, it requires users, interpreters, and cultural historians to wade through the material and piece together the jigsaw puzzle of queer history in the making” (169-70). This dissertation is a piece of the puzzle. Section I: A Chronological Overview of Tragicomedy in Western Literature The Instability of Genre Classifications In the introduction to the essay collection Modern Genre Theory, David Duff writes, “In modern literary theory, few concepts have proved more problematic and unstable than that of genre” (1).4 Despite this, genre (“A recurring type of category of text, as defined by structural, thematic and/or functional criteria”) is important because it informs how text is understood (Duff xiii). John Frow argues that genre matters because, “[I]t is central to human meaning-making and to the social struggle over meanings.