Vincent L. Stephens
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780252042805
- eISBN:
- 9780252051661
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252042805.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Popular
Rocking the Closet: How Little Richard, Johnnie Ray, Liberace, and Johnny Mathias Queered Pop Music examines the way four popular male musicians who emerged in the 1950s, Johnnie Ray, Little Richard, ...
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Rocking the Closet: How Little Richard, Johnnie Ray, Liberace, and Johnny Mathias Queered Pop Music examines the way four popular male musicians who emerged in the 1950s, Johnnie Ray, Little Richard, Johnny Mathis, and Liberace challenged post-World War II masculine conventions. Rocking is a critical close reading that fuses queer literary theory, musicology, and popular music studies frameworks to develop its argument. Recent scholarship in queer theory and literary history constitutes a key strand of the book’s discussion of queer ambivalence regarding identity. Notably, the book explores how the four artists challenged male gender and sexual conventions without overtly identifying their respective sexual orientations or necessarily affiliating with gay activism, identity politics, or community tropes. The book outlines the emergence of postwar social expectations of male figures and employs these expectations to define a unique a set of five “queering” tools the four musicians employed in various combinations, to develop their public personae and build audiences. These tools include self-neutering, self-domesticating, spectacularizing, playing the “freak,” and playing the race card. Despite the prevalence of postwar gender norms, their deft use of these tools enabled each artist to develop sexually ambiguous personae and capitalize on the postwar audiences’ attraction to novelty and difference. These “queering” tools endure among contemporary musicians who challenge masculine conventions in popular music.Less
Rocking the Closet: How Little Richard, Johnnie Ray, Liberace, and Johnny Mathias Queered Pop Music examines the way four popular male musicians who emerged in the 1950s, Johnnie Ray, Little Richard, Johnny Mathis, and Liberace challenged post-World War II masculine conventions. Rocking is a critical close reading that fuses queer literary theory, musicology, and popular music studies frameworks to develop its argument. Recent scholarship in queer theory and literary history constitutes a key strand of the book’s discussion of queer ambivalence regarding identity. Notably, the book explores how the four artists challenged male gender and sexual conventions without overtly identifying their respective sexual orientations or necessarily affiliating with gay activism, identity politics, or community tropes. The book outlines the emergence of postwar social expectations of male figures and employs these expectations to define a unique a set of five “queering” tools the four musicians employed in various combinations, to develop their public personae and build audiences. These tools include self-neutering, self-domesticating, spectacularizing, playing the “freak,” and playing the race card. Despite the prevalence of postwar gender norms, their deft use of these tools enabled each artist to develop sexually ambiguous personae and capitalize on the postwar audiences’ attraction to novelty and difference. These “queering” tools endure among contemporary musicians who challenge masculine conventions in popular music.
Vincent L. Stephens
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780252042805
- eISBN:
- 9780252051661
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252042805.003.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Popular
Johnnie Ray, Little Richard, Johnny Mathis, and Liberace are symbols of a hidden history of postwar queer masculinity. The chapter explores how queerness defied gender expectations of white men and ...
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Johnnie Ray, Little Richard, Johnny Mathis, and Liberace are symbols of a hidden history of postwar queer masculinity. The chapter explores how queerness defied gender expectations of white men and black men, who were also expected to be “race men.” After outlining the enduring presence of queer masculinities in U.S. popular culture, especially film, the chapter outlines five discernible queering tools the musicians employ in various ways to convey their sexually elusive personae. The chapter situates the artists and tools in Christopher Nealon and Heather Love’s anti-teleological theories of queer history combined with musicological arguments by Phillip Brett and Nadine Hubbs about the unique relationship between queerness and musical expression.Less
Johnnie Ray, Little Richard, Johnny Mathis, and Liberace are symbols of a hidden history of postwar queer masculinity. The chapter explores how queerness defied gender expectations of white men and black men, who were also expected to be “race men.” After outlining the enduring presence of queer masculinities in U.S. popular culture, especially film, the chapter outlines five discernible queering tools the musicians employ in various ways to convey their sexually elusive personae. The chapter situates the artists and tools in Christopher Nealon and Heather Love’s anti-teleological theories of queer history combined with musicological arguments by Phillip Brett and Nadine Hubbs about the unique relationship between queerness and musical expression.
Vincent L. Stephens
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780252042805
- eISBN:
- 9780252051661
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252042805.003.0006
- Subject:
- Music, Popular
This chapter explores Liberace’s ability to attract audiences through a clever and spectacular masculinity that distracted them from his sexuality. Tracing his evolution into an international ...
More
This chapter explores Liberace’s ability to attract audiences through a clever and spectacular masculinity that distracted them from his sexuality. Tracing his evolution into an international performer, it outlines his ability to create musical and visual spectacles and to carefully manage his image. As he became a multimedia celebrity, critics and tabloids maligned his queer masculinity. Through self-neutering and counterdomesticating, he reframed himself as an exemplar of normalcy. These tools helped him triumph through during a 1959 libel suit that threatened to expose his sexuality. He then spectacularized his image exhibiting an unmarked transvestism that endeared him even more. During his final years, when a former lover attempted to expose him and he was dying of HIV/AIDS, he maintained a conspiracy of blindness with his audience.Less
This chapter explores Liberace’s ability to attract audiences through a clever and spectacular masculinity that distracted them from his sexuality. Tracing his evolution into an international performer, it outlines his ability to create musical and visual spectacles and to carefully manage his image. As he became a multimedia celebrity, critics and tabloids maligned his queer masculinity. Through self-neutering and counterdomesticating, he reframed himself as an exemplar of normalcy. These tools helped him triumph through during a 1959 libel suit that threatened to expose his sexuality. He then spectacularized his image exhibiting an unmarked transvestism that endeared him even more. During his final years, when a former lover attempted to expose him and he was dying of HIV/AIDS, he maintained a conspiracy of blindness with his audience.
Kelly Kessler
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- August 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780190674014
- eISBN:
- 9780190674052
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190674014.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
By the late sixties, television was America’s medium and, just as it had with stage and film musicals in the decades prior, it embraced the increasingly legitimized musical style of Vegas. Whether ...
More
By the late sixties, television was America’s medium and, just as it had with stage and film musicals in the decades prior, it embraced the increasingly legitimized musical style of Vegas. Whether through Mitzi Gaynor’s string of television specials; the repackaging of Sonny and Cher’s Vegas shtick, glitz, and musical tributes; or The Carol Burnett Show’s Bob Mackie–clad musical extravaganzas, Vegas/Broadway hybrids filled the small screen. This fusion of old-school and, to a lesser degree, contemporary musicals with the popularized pizzazz and glamour of Vegas brought the television musical comfortably in line with the cheeky sexiness of 1970s network programming. Highlighting the ongoing symbiosis among various musical platforms, this chapter explores the rise of a hybridized Broadway-Vegas style on television, or what the author terms “BroadVegas,” in the context of changing generic norms across stages and screens, heightened inter-network competition and branding, and emergent visual, generic, and promotional styles.Less
By the late sixties, television was America’s medium and, just as it had with stage and film musicals in the decades prior, it embraced the increasingly legitimized musical style of Vegas. Whether through Mitzi Gaynor’s string of television specials; the repackaging of Sonny and Cher’s Vegas shtick, glitz, and musical tributes; or The Carol Burnett Show’s Bob Mackie–clad musical extravaganzas, Vegas/Broadway hybrids filled the small screen. This fusion of old-school and, to a lesser degree, contemporary musicals with the popularized pizzazz and glamour of Vegas brought the television musical comfortably in line with the cheeky sexiness of 1970s network programming. Highlighting the ongoing symbiosis among various musical platforms, this chapter explores the rise of a hybridized Broadway-Vegas style on television, or what the author terms “BroadVegas,” in the context of changing generic norms across stages and screens, heightened inter-network competition and branding, and emergent visual, generic, and promotional styles.
