Pink Dollar Monsters: Why Queers are Gaggin’ at GaGa and Glee

Tuesday, April 19
7 to 9 pm

The last Counterpublic Collective session of the spring season will look at pop artist Lady Gaga and hit TV show Glee through the relationship between capitalism and queer identity. Both Lady Gaga and Glee have been praised for their impact on and promotion of gay culture and politics: Gaga advocates for issues like the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell; Glee features gay and lesbian actors, same-sex storylines, and has tackled imminent topics like bullying in high schools. What happens when we look at Lady Gaga and Glee as a part of what Ann Pellegrini calls “commodity capitalism”?
Gaga throughout her career has referenced the continuum of queerness (bisexuality in Poker Face, trans/intersex references and voguing in Telephone, the origins of same-sex desire in Born This Way) while Glee depends on representing the panoply of “the Other” (the overweight Black girl, pregnant cheerleader, boy in a wheelchair, boy with a single mother, Asian girl with a stutter, girl with two gay dads, Jewish boy with an afro, etc.) to market and expand its viewership.
According to Forbes magazine, Lady Gaga is the 7th most powerful woman in the world, and just recently, Glee broke the record of most singles on the Billboard music charts with 113, a record previously held by the Beatles. Do Lady Gaga and Glee represent cultural and political progress or evidence of a depoliticized and commodified gay movement?
Facilitator: Juanes Hellman, Counterpublic Collective
Moderator: Jules Marx, Pride in Practice
NYU Silver School of Social Work
1 Washington Square North, Parlor
NYC
Required Readings:
Pellegrini, Ann. “Consuming Lifestyle: Commodity Capitalism and Transformations in Gay Identity” in Queer Globalizations: Citizenship and the Afterlife of Colonialism p.134-145
Suggested Readings:
Has Lady GaGa Redefined What it Takes to be a Gay Icon?” from Gay.com Daily.
Glee: A Money Making Machine”.
Presented by the Counterpublic Collective and the NYU Silver School of Social Work Pride in Practice; co-sponsored by the NYU Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality.
Facebook event page:  http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/event.php?eid=137190839688136

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