UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA Los Angeles LGBT Film Distribution
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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles LGBT Film Distribution Companies and the Gay Media Niche, 1985 to Present A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Film and Television by Bryan Wuest 2017 © Copyright by Bryan Wuest 2017 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION LGBT Film Distribution Companies and the Gay Media Niche, 1985 to Present by Bryan Wuest Doctor of Philosophy in Film and Television University of California, Los Angeles, 2017 Professor Kathleen A. McHugh, Chair This dissertation examines the history and operations of niche LGBT media distribution companies in the past three decades. Since the rise of gay and lesbian film festivals in the 1970s, several distribution companies specifically devoted to LGBT media have made over a thousand titles available in theaters, on home video, or via digital streaming. By focusing on five companies (Ariztical Entertainment, Here Media, Strand Releasing, TLA Entertainment, and Wolfe Video), my research breaks new ground as a large-scale analysis of a sector of media largely unexplored by queer media studies. The texts produced by LGBT distributors are often perceived as conventional and uninteresting formally and politically. However, my project takes these “bad objects” seriously, recognizing their economic, cultural, and historical significance for a minority group and their larger impact on mainstream understandings of LGBT identity and politics. Partly an industrial history, this project deprioritizes textual and representational ii analysis of the niche media itself, attending instead to the industrial and discursive circumstances surrounding these media and treating distribution as a collection of meaning-making practices revealing insights impossible through textual analysis alone. Each chapter demonstrates how LGBT texts circulate and activate differently in different contexts, focusing on the contingency of a text’s categorization as LGBT, the signification of business practices with liberal LGBT politics, and the complexity of evaluating LGBT media based on differing expectations about what LGBT media should do and what LGBT viewers need. This project provides an untold history of a minority group’s cultural production, and in doing so raises larger questions about LGBT media’s contemporary and future relationship to categorization, identity, politics, economics, value, and affect. iii The dissertation of Bryan Wuest is approved. John T. Caldwell Chon A. Noriega Lucas Hilderbrand Kathleen A. McHugh, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2017 iv For my parents, who gave me the space. And for everyone who ever sat down and watched a gay movie with me. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ...................................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................ viii Vita ........................................................................................................................................... xii Introduction | Distributing Meaning in LGBT Media .......................................................... 1 “What Makes Queerness Most?”: Categorization and Meaning in Queer Media Studies ................................................................................................................... 8 “The Invisible, or Taken-for-Granted, Link”: Media Industry Studies and Distribution ......................................................................................................... 16 “Policing Reading Strategies”: Frames, Identity, and Meaning in “LGBT Media” ..... 21 “Cloying and Conformist Manifestations”: Taking Niche LGBT Media Seriously and Generously ................................................................................................... 29 Scope and Method......................................................................................................... 34 Chapter Breakdown ...................................................................................................... 39 Chapter One | A Shelf of One’s Own: Category and Genre in Niche LGBT Media ........ 42 “This Simple But Important Distinction”: Mainstreaming, Categorizing, and Promoting Film as LGBT ................................................................................... 53 Company History: Wolfe Video .............................................................................. 53 Making Shelf Space ................................................................................................. 56 Company History: Ariztical Entertainment ............................................................. 67 Cover Art and Automatic Promotion ....................................................................... 69 “You Don’t Have to Ghettoize Everything”: Rejecting and Negotiating LGBT as a Category ....................................................................................................... 76 Strand Releasing, a “Gay-Friendly Distributor” ...................................................... 76 TLA Entertainment’s “Gay-ish” Film Festival ........................................................ 83 “A Gay Movie, But Not Just a Gay Movie”: LGBT Genre Films at Here Media ........ 92 Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 102 Chapter Two | Capital and Conscience: Politics and Business in Niche LGBT Media .. 106 “Play Your Part!”: Community, Politics, and Business at Wolfe Video .................... 112 LGBT Consumer Responsibility............................................................................ 115 Lesbian Consumer Citizenship: A Niche Within a Niche ..................................... 123 “An Empire of Gay Media”: Conglomeration and Authenticity at Here Media ........ 127 Company History: Regent Releasing / Here Media ............................................... 127 Building the Business ............................................................................................ 133 Theater Ownership ............................................................................................ 138 Here TV ............................................................................................................ 140 PlanetOut Acquisition ....................................................................................... 144 “A Different Kind of Commitment”: Signifying Professional Work in LGBT Media Industries................................................................................................ 153 Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 157 vi Chapter Three | The Good, the Bad, and the Sexy: Discourses of Quality, Progress and Pleasure in Niche LGBT Media .............................................................................. 162 “First and Foremost, It’s Gotta Be a Great Movie”: Art and Quality at Strand ......... 176 Company History: Strand Releasing ...................................................................... 176 Avoiding Gaysploitation ........................................................................................ 181 So Bad It’s Good, So Good It’s Bad: Representational Parity at Ariztical ................ 186 Signifying Sex ............................................................................................................. 195 Company History: TLA Entertainment ................................................................. 202 How TLA and Here Media Sell Sex ...................................................................... 210 Having Your Beefcake and Eating It Too: Guilty Pleasures at TLA and Here Media ................................................................................................. 224 Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 231 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................. 234 Bibliography .......................................................................................................................... 238 vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Getting a doctorate is a long, difficult journey, and I’m indebted to the many people who were part of this process. First, I thank my brilliant, generous, and patient committee. Kathleen McHugh was an idea-bouncing-board, a cheerleader, an advocate, and the most rigorous editor my work has ever seen. John Caldwell’s mentorship was formative in my growth as a scholar, and in his classes I saw my first model of the kind of professor I’d like to be. Chon Noriega played an essential role in my development of the dissertation project, and regularly posed questions that went beyond what I had already considered. And Lucas Hilderbrand, with his casually-expansive knowledge of this dissertation’s topic, readily offered his expertise as I worked to identify the questions I could ask and answer with this project. Denise Mann taught me most everything I know about human subject research and navigating the tricky task of winning access to the sources you need. L.S. Kim, during her brief time at UCLA, helped me develop a more nuanced understanding of the nature and use of identity and identity politics. Ross Melnick may have played a