MAKING OUT ON THE INTERNET: INTERPRETING POPULAR PHOTOGRAPHS ON AFTERELLEN.COM CAITLIN J. MCKINNEY A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER'S OF ARTS GRADUATE PROGRAM IN COMMUNICATION AND CULTURE, JOINT PROGRAM WITH RYERSON UNIVERSITY YORK UNIVERSITY TORONTO, ONTARIO SEPTEMBER 2010 Library and Archives Bibliotheque et 1*1 Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de I'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington OttawaONK1A0N4 Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-80628-9 Our file Notre r6f$rence ISBN: 978-0-494-80628-9 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non­ L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library and permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par I'lnternet, preter, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans le loan, distribute and sell theses monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, sur worldwide, for commercial or non­ support microforme, papier, electronique et/ou commercial purposes, in microform, autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in this et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. Ni thesis. Neither the thesis nor la these ni des extraits substantiels de celle-ci substantial extracts from it may be ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement printed or otherwise reproduced reproduits sans son autorisation. without the author's permission. In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne sur la Privacy Act some supporting forms protection de la vie privee, quelques may have been removed from this formulaires secondaires ont ete enleves de thesis. cette these. While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires aient inclus dans in the document page count, their la pagination, il n'y aura aucun contenu removal does not represent any loss manquant. of content from the thesis. 1*1 Canada PLACEHOLDER FOR CERTIFICATE PAGE Abstract This thesis considers how staged magazine photographs of the actresses Ellen Page and Drew Barrymore kissing are interpreted by users ofAfiterEllen.com, a popular website aimed at lesbian and bisexual women. Using methods of critical discourse analysis, the text-based comments of users are analyzed to demonstrate that online dialogue is a critical process through which queer women receive media representations that they consider appropriations of marginal sexuality as style. Drawing on work by Teresa de Lauretis, Amy Villarejo, Jose Esteban Munoz and Rosemary Hennessey, the author advances a theory of disidentificatory interpretation, in which users articulate psychic pleasure in seeing same-sex desire represented in the mass-mediated public sphere, despite the inherent problems they find in these representations. This mode of reception is situated in the political moment of queer liberalism, where the promise of media presence as an entry to rights-based social and political gains is troubled by user critique. IV Acknowledgements Thank you to the users ofAfterEllen.com for sharing their thoughtful words and ideas with me for this project. My friends, colleagues and mentors in the Communication and Culture program and at York University have provided a community in which to learn and take intellectual risks, both in the classroom and in the grad pub. Thank you to my supervisor, Susan Driver, who has offered thoughtful, critical and challenging questions, always delivered with care, respect and honesty. I am incredibly grateful for her support and intellectual generosity. My committee members, Sarah Parsons and Anne MacLennan, have asked questions of my research that have helped me push my work in new directions, and given invaluable kindness and practical advice. Thank you to Steve Bailey and Chloe Brushwood-Rose for their helpful insights during my defense. This thesis, not to mention graduate school, would not have been possible without the care and humour of my friends and family, especially Kim McKinney, David McKinney, Jessica McKinney and Devon McKinney, Karl Moser, Wendy Johnson, Bridget Moser, Dylan Mulvin, Laura McKinley and Elaisha Stokes. Gabrielle Moser is everything anyone could ask for in love. She is also a fierce intellect, a critical ear, and a tireless cheerleader. Thank you for everything. V Table of Contents Abstract IV Acknowledgements V List of Figures VIII Introduction 1 One: Consumer culture, media images and the idea of "after queer" 12 After queer online 16 Freedom to consume 18 Lesbian visibility politics 20 Two: The Pleasure and politics of interpreting lesbian images 27 Part 1: Seeing and being seen in pictures 30 Part 2: Disidentification as interpretive work 37 Three: Situating AfterEllen.com: Exceeding the affinity portal 43 After Ellen as affinity portal 45 Negotiating the registration process 55 Re-thinking political speech on the affinity portal 61 Four: Reading the Page-Barrymore thread 65 Methodology: Doing critical discourse analysis online 68 Variations on (dis) pleasure 73 "i finally snapped out of it and scrapped my jaw off the floor." Cheap Girl Kisses 77 "Madonna and Britney called, they want their stunt back." Setting the terms for interpretation 82 "Just look at the signifiers" Authenticity 86 "yeah, she's a total lesbian, looks like we were all right after all!" Conclusion: The photographs's address 96 "I like to think they did it for us girls - it's not like Marie Claire is a lad's mag after all..." Epilogue 99 VI Appendix A: Photographs 104 Works Cited 106 VII List of Figures Figure 1. Von Unwerth, Ellen. Drew Barrymore and Ellen Page photographed for Vs. magazine. FallAVinter 2009/10. Figure 2. Sirota, Peggy. Drew Barrymore and Ellen Page photographed for Marie Claire magazine. October 2009. VIII Introduction If talk, gossip and hearsay are measures of the significance of a particular media event to queer women's communities, then the online reaction to photographs of Ellen Page and Drew Barrymore kissing, published in promotion of their 2009 film Whip It, situate these images as a veritable big deal. Depicted in the two most notable photographs is Barrymore straddling Page in full Roller Derby gear (the film is set in Austin's women's roller derby circuit) (Fig. 1) and a made-up, sequined, hyper-feminine Page and Barrymore kissing (Fig. 2). No shock and awe or significant ripples about the photographs emerged in the mainstream press, though it was covered by blogs like The Huffington Post, albeit with limited fanfare or user engagement. And why would there be? After all, audiences have gotten used to otherwise heterosexual celebrity women kissing other women for the camera.1 But in queer women's online communities, the publication and reception of the photographs was significant. AfterEllen.com, one of the largest online media portals targeting lesbian and bisexual women, posted the photographs in a blog entry by Dorothy Snarker.2 In the days that followed, After Ellen users posted almost 250 unique comments in response to the photographs. Users asked and answered questions like, What do the images mean? How should we feel about them? And especially, how might pleasure felt looking at the images be reconciled with political concerns about the co-opting of lesbian sexualities as style by mainstream media outlets? In other words, they talked it out, in an online dialogue that foregrounds the 1 Madonna, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Megan Fox, Katy Perry, and so on. 2 Snarker, Dorothy. "Ellen Page and Drew Barrymore kiss and tell about "Whip It." After Ellen. 09 Sept 2009. <http://www.afterellenxom/blog/dorothysnarker/ellen-page-and-drew-barrymore-kiss-and-tell- about-whip-it>. Accessed 18 Feb 2010. 1 queer reading practices and ongoing interpretive work that goes in to negotiating an always tenuous relationship to visual media.3 Media studies professor Danae Clark has argued, "Gossip, hearsay and confessions are activities that reside at the centre of lesbian interpretive communities and add an important discursive dimension to lesbians' pleasure in looking" (191). Pointing also to the centrality of dialogue in queer women's conversations about media, film scholars Janet McCabe and Kim Akass write their paper about the television show The L Word in the form of a dialogue, so that it might "capture the energy" of their theorizing. They write, "Endless days followed spent in animated discussion and intense debate. Starting from the same place, diverging in opinion, asking separate questions, coming to different conclusions, found us deciding to use our conversation as the way forward..." (143). Talking, it would seem, is more than just talk: it is strategic and purposeful; a means through which queer women negotiate their places in social collectives, think about the connections between pleasure, media and politics, and consider, together, the possibilities and problematics of a collective critique based on looking. Online dialogue is more and more often the locale where this talk takes place, as well as a rich field for 3 A note on terminology: I most often use the word "Queer" to describe a situated reading practice or fraught interpretive community that insists on non-normative social positions in relation to media despite the fierce normativizing forces this media can produce. As a reading practice, queer also points to a refusal of easy resolution as the end-game of interpretation. In this respect, my use of queer is as a "political metaphor without a fixed referent" (Eng, Halberstam and Munoz) but it is also not arbitrary or necessarily unfixed or detached from the social life worlds of some After Ellen members.