LGBT Transnational Identity and the Media Also by Christopher Pullen

DOCUMENTING GAY MEN: Identity and Performance in Reality Television and Documentary Film GAY IDENTITY, NEW STORYTELLING AND THE MEDIA LGBT IDENTITY AND ONLINE NEW MEDIA ( co-edited with Margaret Cooper ) LGBT Transnational Identity and the Media

Edited by

Christopher Pullen Senior Lecturer in Media Studies, Bournemouth University, UK

Introduction, selection and editorial matter © Christopher Pullen 2012 Individual chapters © Contributors 2012 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2012 978-0-230-30106-1 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2012 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-33674-6 ISBN 978-0-230-37331-0 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230373310 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12

For LGBT citizens worldwide, especially for those living in conditions of abject oppression. Also in memory of Mahmoud Asgari, Ayaz Marhoni, and David Kato.1

1. In 2005 after being held in prison for 14 months, where they were allegedly tortured, Mahmoud Asgari (17 years old) and Ayaz Marhoni (18 years old) were found guilty of homosexual acts and publicly hanged in the Edalat (Justice) Square in the town of Mashhad in northeast Iran. The iconic images of the two young men blindfolded, with ropes around their necks just before execu- tion, and then of their bodies swinging from the rope at the end of a crane, were published worldwide through the Internet by human rights activists (see Gay Identity, New Storytelling and the Media, Pullen 2009). David Kato was murdered in Uganda in 2011, after public involvement in gay rights, addressing advancing oppression there at that time (see the introduction, plus Chapters 1, 4 and 5).

Contents

List of Figures ix Acknowledgements x Preface xii Notes on Contributors xiv

Introduction 1 Christopher Pullen

Part I Politics and Citizenship

1 LGBT Transnational Documentary “Becoming” 23 Christopher Pullen 2 Trauma and Triumph: Documenting Middle Eastern Gender and Sexual Minorities in Film and Television 41 Rebecca Beirne and Samar Habib 3 Transsexual in Iran: A Fatwa for Freedom? 59 Sahar Bluck 4 Sub-Saharan African Sexualities, Transnational HIV/AIDS Educational Film and the Question of Queerness 67 David Oscar Harvey 5 The Floating/Fleeting Spectacle of Transformation: Queer Carnival, Gay Pride and the Renegotiation of Postapartheid Identities 84 Ernst van der Wal 6 The Argentinean Movement for Same-Sex Marriage 102 Margaret Cooper 7 The Politics of Reclaiming Identity: Representing the Mak Nyahs in Bukak Api 114 Andrew Hock Soon Ng

vii viii Contents

Part II Adaptation and Postcolonial Transitions 8 Queer (Im)possibilities: Alaa Al-Aswany’s and Wahid Hamed’s The Yacoubian Building 131 Stephanie Selvick 9 Andrew Salkey, James Baldwin and the Case of the “Leading Aberrant”: Early Gay Narratives in the British Media 146 Kate Houlden 10 The Exotic Erotic: Queer Representations in the Context of Postcolonial Ethnicity on British TV 161 Peri Bradley 11 Documenting the Queer Indian: The Question of Queer Identification in Khush and Happy Hookers 181 Bryce J. Renninger 12 Screening Queer India in Pratibha Parmar’s Khush 197 Daniel Farr and Jennifer Gauthier

Part III Performance and Subjectivity 13 Gay Pornography as Latin American Queer Historiography 213 Gustavo Subero 14 Quo Vadis, Queer Vato? Queer and Loathing in Latino Cinema 231 Richard Reitsma 15 Queer Art of Parallaxed Document: Visual Discourse of Docudrag in Kutluğ Ataman’s Never My Soul! (2001) 242 Cüneyt Çakirlar 16 The Drag Queers the S/He Binary: Subversion of Heteronormativity in Turkish Context 259 Serkan Ertin 17 If Art Imitated Reality: George Takei, Coming Out, and the Insufferably Straight Star Trek Universe 273 Bruce E. Drushel 18 A Chinese Queer Discourse: Camp and Alternative Desires in the Films of Yon Fan and Lou Ye 290 Jason Ho Ka-Hang

Index 309 Figures

I.1 A collage of images of some of contributors to the “It Gets Better Project”, created by David Sullivan. At the time of writing, over 350,000 people have supported this project. Barak Obama’s contribution to this may be considered as central; in advocating transnational citizenship ideals for gay youth. Image © David Sullivan. www.flickr.com/davidnewengland 2 I.2 Jeffrey Crowley, Director of National AIDS Policy at the Whitehouse, depicted in Whitehouse staff It Get Better Project, personal video contribution. Image Courtesy of the Office of National AIDS Policy 3 I.3 David Kato, who was murdered in Uganda in 2010. Image courtesy of Gay Rights Uganda. Image © 2010 Current TV, produced and owned by Current TV 4 1.1 Mariana van Zeller in a scene from the documentary Vanguard: Missionaries of Hate. Mariana is in conversation with “Long John”, who is oppressed in Uganda, as an openly gay man. Image © 2010 Current TV, produced and owned by Current TV 24

1.2 “Long John” in a scene from the documentary Vanguard: Missionaries of Hate. Long John, in conversation with Mariana van Zeller, on a journey through town to his home, where he feels vulnerable from increasing oppression in Uganda 34 5.1 Untitled. Photograph © Ernst van der Wal 89 5.2 Untitled. Photograph © Ernst van der Wal 90 5.3 Raped as a “cure” to my sexuality – Image courtesy of Lindsay Nel 94

15.1 Kutluğ Ataman (2001) Never My Soul! Six-screen or single-screen video installation. Reproduced with permission of the artist.Courtesy of Lehman Maupin Gallery, New York, and Thomas Dane Gallery,London. 247

ix Acknowledgements

There have been a number of influential people, and events that have taken place, which have stimulated the progress of this project since its initial inception in 2005 as part of a lecture series at Bournemouth University, UK. I would like to note the impact of John Scagliotti’s Dangerous Living: Coming Out in the Developing World (2003), Sandi Simcha Dubowksi’s Trembling before G-d (2004) and Parvez Sharma’s Jihad for Love (2007) as landmark documentaries which I found inspirational in commencing research within this area, and which resulted in earlier writing on the subject area in my first two authored books (Pullen 2007, 2009). Also, presenting a paper at the Visible Evidence conference (in Lincoln, UK, in 2008) and reviewing the work of co-panel contributors on non-Western LGBT identity, additionally proved to be stimulating in advancing ideas. At Bournemouth University, Sahar Bluck’s graduate dissertation on transsexual identity in Iran offered thoughtfulness to the subject area. (Sahar also contributes to this book.) The Dissident Citizenship conference held by the University of Sussex (in Brighton, UK, in 2010) offered me a deeper cultural focus, and particularly witnessing the keynote contributions of Sara Ahmed, William J. Spurlin and Sally Munt offered inspiration. In addition, I found David V. Ruffolo’s recent work on Post Queer Politics highly stimulating in helping theorize the potential of LGBT transnational identity. However, my deepest gratitude is reserved for the contributors to this book, who ultimately have produced the essential groundwork and constitution. Also, it is important to note their wider academic, and human, context. I am inspired by their independent commitment, personal reserve, thoughtfulness and innovation, which often occurs outside, and in excess, of their academic faculty research expectations. Felicity Plester at Palgrave Macmillan made this project possible in commissioning LGBT Transnational and the Media , and expressed great enthusiasm for the work. Additionally, the contribution of Ian Davies, my life partner, is central. He remains the inspiration for my work, and as usual he has offered valuable support to this project in helping me work through ideas. In addition, I would like to note the contribution of Roberto Ang, Brian Bantugan, Hollis Griffin, Jacqueline Maingard, Dirk Naguschewski, Gary Needham, Sarah Paget, Ebraham Pournazaree, Wemar Strydom

x Acknowledgements xi and Xavier Tam, who were involved in the project in the early stages of its development, but for various reasons were unable to contribute. Also I would like to thank Current Media, Gay Rights Uganda, Mark Gillingham, Lehman Maupin Gallery, Lindsay Nel, David Sullivan, and Ernst van der Wal for the provision of valuable media and permissions in the formation of this book. I would also like to thank various friends and colleagues (including many at Bournemouth University) who have inspired and supported my research: Craig Batty, Richard Berger, Peri Bradley, Matthew Byrnie (previously of Routledge), Hugh Chignell, the editors of Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies , Margaret Cooper, Fiona Cownie, Dimple Godiwala, Robin Griffiths, Graeme Harper, Su Holmes, Alex Hunt, Andrew Ireland, Deborah Jermyn, Stephen Jukes, James R. Keller, Shaun Kimber, the editors of Media, Culture and Society , Barry Richards, Christabel Scaife (previously of Palgrave Macmillan), Leslie Strayner, Sarah Street, Sean Street, Steve Wilson (of McFarland) and Brian Winston. Finally I would like to mention Mum and Dad, who, in memorial, remain an inspiration to me, not only through their warmth of person- ality and humour, but also in their non-judgemental attitudes to differ- ence, and to the outsider.

Preface

This book offers a critical introduction into LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisex- ual and transgender) transnational identity in the media. Including the work of twenty international academic authors, an interdiscipli- nary and intercultural approach is offered through the examination of performances and media representations, in documentary and fiction oriented texts. This includes the focus on many diverse issues, including increasing oppression towards gay men and lesbians in Uganda; transsexual identity in Iran and Malaysia; AIDS education and political performances in South Africa; citizenship in South America; documentary representations of India and the Middle East; gender performances within Turkey; Latino cinema, pornography and issues of history; literary contexts relating to Egypt and the Caribbean; celebrity identity and transnational potential within the science fiction genre; and Chinese cinema and the potential for queer desire. The discussions contribute to new understandings of globalization, which Steven Vertovec (2010) tells us with regard to transnationalism, offers “sustained cross border relationships, [new] patterns of exchange, [productive] affiliations and [proactive] social formations spanning nation states” (p. 2). Such a focus for LGBT identity offers new strategies of engagement, challenging historical powerbases, which originate in the Empire, the Commonwealth, and the Anglocentric. This enables the potential for new productive transnational conversations in the formation of new political, social and cultural bonds. Whilst LGBT identity has historically been connected to the West, and the developing world, this book foregrounds the East, the non-Western, and the Third World, alongside, and in communion with the historical “queer” West. In this sense, LGBT Transnational Identity and the Media is a project of new experience, and a coming of age with relation to the non-Western. Through exploring LGBT transnational identity as mul- tiple and different, yet connected through sharing a common sense of identity as LGBT citizens, we consider new identity constructions and emerging alliances, offering new readings of queer potential. LGBT Transnational Identity and the Media reveals not an expansion, redefinition or reimagining of Western queer agency, but it offers an inclusive matrix of multinational queer possibility, foregrounding the

xii Preface xiii potential of voices previously unheard. While these voices are often singular and seemingly disconnected – evident in the variety of diverse contributors, performers and social agents presented in this book – it is through the shared experience of identifying as LGBT or queer that “connective” strands work within a transnational flow. This, I argue, offers a constant state of mobility – in social agency, and cultural reading. Through this, I propose, we experience a shift from “being” to “becoming” (see the Introduction and Chapter 1). In this sense, the historic subjectivity of the “other”, and the sense of “being” outside, are increasingly replaced with mobility and fluidity, offering a sense of “becoming” a transnational citizen. Citizens of LGBT transnational identity may be concerned with history and oppression, involving themselves within strategies of resist- ance, and revolution, but also, I would argue as transnational citizens they increasingly are involved in mobility, hybridization and reinven- tion. The contributions in this book focus as much on the energy of imagination, and the borderless frame, as on the histories and oppres- sions which potentially confine.

Reference

Vertovec, S. 2010. Transnationalism. Abingdon: Routledge. Contributors

Rebecca Beirne is Lecturer in Film, Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Newcastle, Australia. Her current research monograph is a comparative history of the representation of lesbianism in world cinema. She is the author of Lesbians in Television and Text after the Millennium and the editor of Televising Queer Women: A Reader .

Sahar Bluck works in production for a creative advertising agency. She holds an honours degree in TV production at Bournemouth University, UK. Prior to working in advertising, Sahar used her studies as an oppor- tunity to visit Iran for the first time. Conversing with Iranians helped her to learn the norms, attitudes and incentives by which Iranians operate, particularly with regards to sexuality. Sahar is now learning to speak fluent Farsi with the hope that one day she can travel through Iran and help in breaking the stereotype that perceives Iranian women as voiceless and powerless.

Peri Bradley is Associate Lecturer in Film and Television at Southampton Solent University and University of Southampton. She was part of the 1970s British Film project group at University of Portsmouth and co-organizer with Professor Graeme Harper of the conference in July 2008. She has chapters included in Dark Reflections, Monstrous Reflections: Essays on the Monster in Culture , Making Up Bodies: The Intercorporeal Mind , and Don’t Look Now? British Cinema in the 1970s. She is also contributing a significant piece of archive research to the 1970s British Cinema book resulting from the AHRC project and the edited book from the University of Portsmouth’s conference, British Culture and Society in the 1970s.

Cüneyt Çakirlar is Research Associate in the Centre for Intercultural Studies at University College London. He worked as an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Research Fellow at UCL. His research focuses on queer ethics/aesthetics in Leo Bersani and Ulysse Dutoit, the art practice of Kutluğ Ataman and Erinç Seymen, modes of translation/transpo- sition of queer practice into Turkish culture and history. He is currently working on a book project entitled Queer Depth .

Margaret Cooper is a sociologist at Southern Illinois University. Her current interests regard gay and lesbian rural issues, social constructionism

xiv Notes on Contributors xv and gender identity. She has been involved with the LGBT movement, the women’s rights movement and inner city activism. Her work has been published internationally in academic journals, textbooks and collections. Bruce E. Drushel is Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at Miami University, Ohio. He received his PhD from Ohio University in 1991. His teaching and research interests are in the areas of media economics, media audiences, media policy, and queer representation in electronic media and film. He currently chairs the Gay, Lesbian and Queer Studies interest group for Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association. He is co-editor (with Kathy German) of the books Queer Identities/Political Realities and The Ethics of Emerging Media . His work has appeared in Journal of Homosexuality, Journal of Media Economics, Journal of the Broadcast/Cable Financial Management Association , and FemSpec , and in books addressing popular culture, free speech and 9/11, media in the Caribbean, C-SPAN as a pedagogical tool, LGBT persons and on-line media, and AIDS and culture. Serkan Ertin is currently teaching in the Western Languages and Literatures Department, Kocaeli University, Turkey. In his dissertation, he explores and problematizes the use of camp and closet in Alan Hollinghurst’s work. His main area of research is the intersections of queer theory, sexualities, race and power. His recent publications and presentations address various aspects of masculinities and their deploy- ment in relation to the marginalization of the queer. Daniel Farr is an independent scholar living and working in Lynchburg, Virginia. He is pursuing a PhD at the University of Albany, with a dissertation exploring parental aspirations among young gay men. His primary areas of research explore the intersections of masculinities, sexualities and families. His recent publications have addressed various aspects of queer culture and media, including transgender personal ads, gay and lesbian commercial content, bear identities and queer families in the media. He is currently guest-editing a special issue of Men and Masculinities on Fat Masculinities, as well as co-guest editing a special issue of the Journal of Lesbian Studies on Global Lesbian Cinema. Jennifer Gauthier is Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Randolph College in Virginia (founded as Randolph-Macon Woman ’s College in 1891). She teaches courses in communication, cultural studies and film studies. Her research on film and cultural policy has been published in The American Review of Canadian Studies , The International xvi Notes on Contributors

Journal of Cultural Studies , The Canadian Journal of Film Studies , The Quarterly Review of Film and Video and Post Script: Essays in Film and the Humanities . She is also co-guest editing a special issue of the Journal of Lesbian Studies on Global Lesbian Cinema. Recently she has been researching indigenous cinema in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United States. A Fulbright award-winner, she is currently working on a book project examining the First Nations films of the National Film Board of Canada. Samar Habib is an affiliated scholar at UC Berkeley’s Beatrice Bain Research Group and a visiting professor at San Francisco State, in the department of Women and Gender Studies. Habib is the author of sev- eral academic works, including Female Homosexuality in the Middle East (2007 and 2009) and Arabo-Islamic Texts on Female Homosexuality (2009). She is the translator of I Am You ( 2008) and the editor of Islam and Homosexuality , in two volumes ( 2010). She is an editorial board mem- ber of Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature ; the chief editor of Nebula: A Journal of Multidisciplinary Scholarship ; and the co-founder and publisher of African Nebula and nebu(lab). Her creative works include the novel A Tree Like Rain and the chapbook Islands in Space . Habib’s most recent work, a ficto-historical lesbian novel, set in ninth-century Baghdad, Rughum and Najda, is forthcoming from Oracle Releasing in West Hollywood. David Oscar Harvey is a PhD candidate in the Department of Cinema and Comparative Literature, University of Iowa. His primary research interests include documentary and experimental film and video as well as issues pertaining to sexuality and gender. He has publications forthcoming in Discourse , GLQ and SubStance and has recently completed an essay film, Red Red Red , that explores HIV criminalization laws in the United States Jason Ho Ka-Hang teaches in the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Hong Kong. His areas of interest in teaching and research include Asian cinema, film and cultural studies, popular culture, gender and sexuality, and queer studies. He is currently working and researching on contemporary East Asian films and their circula- tions, and cinematic regionalism. Kate Houlden has completed an AHRC-funded PhD in the English Department of Queen Mary, University of London. She works prima- rily on questions of gender and sexuality in postwar Caribbean literature, although she also has an interest in postwar British literature and Notes on Contributors xvii

Australian fiction. She has written previously for the journal Memory Studies and reviewed for New Formations , the Journal of Postcolonial Writing , and H-Net . She has essays forthcoming in Interventions (special issue: Postcolonial Intimacies) and Beyond Windrush (eds. Leah Reade Rosenberg and J. Dillon Brown). She is also a co-founder of the Postgraduate Feminist Reading Group at the Institute of English Studies, University of London. Andrew Hock Soon Ng is Senior Lecturer in Literary Studies at Monash University, Malaysia. He is the author of Dimensions of Monstrosity in Contemporary Narratives (2004), Interrogating Interstices (2007) and the forthcoming Intimating the Sacred (2011). His scholarly articles have appeared in journals such as Symploke , Contemporary Fiction , and Women Studies. Christopher Pullen teaches Media Studies at Bournemouth University, UK. He is widely published in the area of sexuality and contemporary media, and is involved in public political agency regarding the representation of LGBTs in the media. He is the author of Documenting Gay Men: Identity and Performance in Reality Television and Documentary Film (2007), Gay Identity, New Storytelling and the Media (2009). Also he is the co-editor of LGBT Identity and Online New Media (2010). His general research interests relate to the representation and performance of minority identity and contexts of gender and sexuality, evident within contemporary new media, documentary and fiction-based media forms. Stephanie Selvick is Lecturer and PhD candidate at the University of Miami, Florida, whose work is positioned at the intersection of African literature and queer theory. Her primary research interests include depictions of sexual violence in literature, the negotiation of “correc- tive rape” by online and print media, as well as queer constructions of South African citizenship. Stephanie currently teaches courses on queer popular culture and queer activism. Gustavo Subero is Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies at Coventry University, where he teaches courses on Latin American cultural studies and Hispanic cinema, as well as courses on global media and representation(s) to undergraduate students. His main areas of research are queer masculinity in film and media in Latin America, queer authorship in Latin America, queer literatures in Latin American and the Caribbean and HIV/AIDS representations in contemporary Latin American and world culture. xviii Notes on Contributors

Richard Reitsma is Assistant Professor of Spanish and Latin American Studies at Canisius College in Buffalo, New York. He received his MA from Purdue University and PhD in Comparative Literature from Washington University in St. Louis. His doctoral research focused on issues of gender, sexuality and race in plantation literature of the American South, Cuba and Puerto Rico. His current research concen- trates on gender and minority representation in literature and film of the American South, U.S. Latinos and Latin America. He is currently co- editing, along with Townes Coates, an anthology of essays entitled No Perfect Witness: Being Gay, Talking God, and Fighting Back . Recent research and publications include an examination of messages of diversity and tolerance in children’s animated movies, an exploration of the tensions between sexuality and ethnic identity in Latino film, and homosexuality and the death drive in Latin American cinema. Bryce J. Renninger is a PhD candidate in the Media Studies program at Rutgers University, and teaches in the Digital Communication, Information and Media program. He is a contributing writer for film website indieWIRE and the Director of Programming for Newfest: New York’s LGBT Film Festival. He is currently working on his dissertation, “Single Together: Resisting Marriage-as-Ideal in the Information Age”. Ernst van der Wal is Lecturer in Visual Studies at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa. He is currently busy with his doctorate in Visual Studies. His field of specialization is queer identity within the postcolonial/postapartheid context.