Hiram Pérez
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781479818655
- eISBN:
- 9781479846757
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479818655.003.0005
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gay and Lesbian Studies
Expanding on the notion of the primal “brown body” mediating gay modernity, this chapter argues that this brown body (frequently, though not exclusively, embodied as “Latino”) mediates gay male ...
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Expanding on the notion of the primal “brown body” mediating gay modernity, this chapter argues that this brown body (frequently, though not exclusively, embodied as “Latino”) mediates gay male shame. Andy Warhol’s film, Screen Test #2, Douglas Crimp’s essay on that film, “Mario Montez, For Shame,” and the “Gay Shame” conference held at the University of Michigan in 2003, which opened with a showing of the Warhol film, provide the primary texts for analysis. Crimp (and “Gay Shame” by extension) deploys monolithic constructions of “Puerto Rican” and “Catholic” in order to project and universalize (the urbane, white gay man’s) shame onto Montez’s othered (or browned) body. The chapter argues that Montez, rather than merely providing the passive object of Warhol’s experiments in camera-technique and exposure, skillfully pirates the film’s authority in ways that remain illegible to Crimp’s construction of gay shame.Less
Expanding on the notion of the primal “brown body” mediating gay modernity, this chapter argues that this brown body (frequently, though not exclusively, embodied as “Latino”) mediates gay male shame. Andy Warhol’s film, Screen Test #2, Douglas Crimp’s essay on that film, “Mario Montez, For Shame,” and the “Gay Shame” conference held at the University of Michigan in 2003, which opened with a showing of the Warhol film, provide the primary texts for analysis. Crimp (and “Gay Shame” by extension) deploys monolithic constructions of “Puerto Rican” and “Catholic” in order to project and universalize (the urbane, white gay man’s) shame onto Montez’s othered (or browned) body. The chapter argues that Montez, rather than merely providing the passive object of Warhol’s experiments in camera-technique and exposure, skillfully pirates the film’s authority in ways that remain illegible to Crimp’s construction of gay shame.
Hiram Perez
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781479818655
- eISBN:
- 9781479846757
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479818655.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gay and Lesbian Studies
A Taste for Brown Bodies asks what difference race makes in the emergence of gay modernity. The book examines how the romanticization of the “brown body” continues to shape modern gay sensibilities, ...
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A Taste for Brown Bodies asks what difference race makes in the emergence of gay modernity. The book examines how the romanticization of the “brown body” continues to shape modern gay sensibilities, tracing that brown body to the nostalgic imagination of gay cosmopolitanism. In so doing, the book looks in particular to the queer masculinities of three figures: the sailor, the soldier, and the cowboy, themselves proletariat cosmopolitans of sorts. All three of these figures have functioned, officially and unofficially, as cosmopolitan extensions of the US nation-state and as agents for the expansion of its borders and neocolonial zones of influence. The book considers not only how US imperialist expansion was realized but also how it was visualized for and through gay men. US empire not only makes possible certain articulations of gay modernity but also instrumentalizes them. The book argues that certain practices and subjectivities understood historically as forms of homosexuality are regulated and normalized in their service to US empire. By means of an analysis of literature, film, and photographs from the 19th to the 21st centuries—including Herman Melville’s Billy Budd, Annie Proulx’s “Brokeback Mountain,” and photos of abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison—the book proposes that modern gay male identity, often traced to late Victorian constructions of “invert” and “homosexual,” occupies not the periphery of the nation but rather a cosmopolitan position, instrumental to projects of war, colonialism, and neoliberalism.Less
A Taste for Brown Bodies asks what difference race makes in the emergence of gay modernity. The book examines how the romanticization of the “brown body” continues to shape modern gay sensibilities, tracing that brown body to the nostalgic imagination of gay cosmopolitanism. In so doing, the book looks in particular to the queer masculinities of three figures: the sailor, the soldier, and the cowboy, themselves proletariat cosmopolitans of sorts. All three of these figures have functioned, officially and unofficially, as cosmopolitan extensions of the US nation-state and as agents for the expansion of its borders and neocolonial zones of influence. The book considers not only how US imperialist expansion was realized but also how it was visualized for and through gay men. US empire not only makes possible certain articulations of gay modernity but also instrumentalizes them. The book argues that certain practices and subjectivities understood historically as forms of homosexuality are regulated and normalized in their service to US empire. By means of an analysis of literature, film, and photographs from the 19th to the 21st centuries—including Herman Melville’s Billy Budd, Annie Proulx’s “Brokeback Mountain,” and photos of abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison—the book proposes that modern gay male identity, often traced to late Victorian constructions of “invert” and “homosexual,” occupies not the periphery of the nation but rather a cosmopolitan position, instrumental to projects of war, colonialism, and neoliberalism.
Christian McWhirter
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- July 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780807835500
- eISBN:
- 9781469601861
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/9780807882627_mcwhirter.6
- Subject:
- History, American History: Civil War
Civil War soldiers were highly musical. In fact, soldiers created one of the Union's national hymn, “John Brown's Body.” This chapter discusses the two leading patriotic songs of the Union. During ...
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Civil War soldiers were highly musical. In fact, soldiers created one of the Union's national hymn, “John Brown's Body.” This chapter discusses the two leading patriotic songs of the Union. During the Civil War, “John Brown's Body” was the most beloved song in the Army of the Potomac. Its only competitor in the western armies was George Frederick Root's “The Battle Cry of Freedom.”Less
Civil War soldiers were highly musical. In fact, soldiers created one of the Union's national hymn, “John Brown's Body.” This chapter discusses the two leading patriotic songs of the Union. During the Civil War, “John Brown's Body” was the most beloved song in the Army of the Potomac. Its only competitor in the western armies was George Frederick Root's “The Battle Cry of Freedom.”
Hiram Pérez
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781479818655
- eISBN:
- 9781479846757
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479818655.003.0004
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gay and Lesbian Studies
This chapter situates Tomas Gutiérrez Alea’s film Fresa y chocolate (1993) next to José Martí’s essay, “Nuestra America” (1891), in order to explore the entanglements of race and sexuality in each ...
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This chapter situates Tomas Gutiérrez Alea’s film Fresa y chocolate (1993) next to José Martí’s essay, “Nuestra America” (1891), in order to explore the entanglements of race and sexuality in each text. Considering how gay male spectatorship in the US projects a problematic variety of cosmopolitanism onto the film; alternatively, the chapter insists on reading the film within its more local context, situating it as a contemporary expression of Martí’s foundational yet anxious nationalism. The theme of seduction in Fresa y chocolate (Strawberry and Chocolate)—the gay Diego’s seduction of the communist youth David—mirrors both the project of reconciliation to which the Cuban state deployed the film internationally as well as the Anglo American projection of erotic desire onto a fetishized Cuba. The global taste for queer cinema (Gabilondo) then directs us back to modern gay male identity’s need for and production of the brown body.Less
This chapter situates Tomas Gutiérrez Alea’s film Fresa y chocolate (1993) next to José Martí’s essay, “Nuestra America” (1891), in order to explore the entanglements of race and sexuality in each text. Considering how gay male spectatorship in the US projects a problematic variety of cosmopolitanism onto the film; alternatively, the chapter insists on reading the film within its more local context, situating it as a contemporary expression of Martí’s foundational yet anxious nationalism. The theme of seduction in Fresa y chocolate (Strawberry and Chocolate)—the gay Diego’s seduction of the communist youth David—mirrors both the project of reconciliation to which the Cuban state deployed the film internationally as well as the Anglo American projection of erotic desire onto a fetishized Cuba. The global taste for queer cinema (Gabilondo) then directs us back to modern gay male identity’s need for and production of the brown body.
R. Blakeslee Gilpin
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- July 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780807835012
- eISBN:
- 9781469602608
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/9780807869277_gilpin.10
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
This chapter focuses on Vincent Benet's epic poem, John Brown's Body, which unpredictably swallowed the marketplace whole in a matter of weeks. In its structure, content, and message, the poem ...
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This chapter focuses on Vincent Benet's epic poem, John Brown's Body, which unpredictably swallowed the marketplace whole in a matter of weeks. In its structure, content, and message, the poem mediated long-standing divisions, not just those that had raged between W. E. B. Du Bois and Oswald Garrison Villard, but even the conflict that had consumed the Union and the Confederacy some seventy years before. While Benet's choice of protagonist might indicate another hagiography, John Brown's Body situated the infamous abolitionist in a broader narrative of reunion and patriotic destiny. Just as Du Bois and Villard urged readers of The Crisis to wrestle with John Brown's meaning, Benet snatched Brown from their hands and gave him a symbolic role in a triumphal story of American progress.Less
This chapter focuses on Vincent Benet's epic poem, John Brown's Body, which unpredictably swallowed the marketplace whole in a matter of weeks. In its structure, content, and message, the poem mediated long-standing divisions, not just those that had raged between W. E. B. Du Bois and Oswald Garrison Villard, but even the conflict that had consumed the Union and the Confederacy some seventy years before. While Benet's choice of protagonist might indicate another hagiography, John Brown's Body situated the infamous abolitionist in a broader narrative of reunion and patriotic destiny. Just as Du Bois and Villard urged readers of The Crisis to wrestle with John Brown's meaning, Benet snatched Brown from their hands and gave him a symbolic role in a triumphal story of American progress.
Christian McWhirter
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- July 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780807835500
- eISBN:
- 9781469601861
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/9780807882627_mcwhirter.13
- Subject:
- History, American History: Civil War
This conclusion discusses Alfred E. Williams' attempts to discern why songs such as “Dixie,” “John Brown's Body, ” “Just before the Battle”, “Mother, ” and “When This Cruel War Is Over” provided more ...
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This conclusion discusses Alfred E. Williams' attempts to discern why songs such as “Dixie,” “John Brown's Body, ” “Just before the Battle”, “Mother, ” and “When This Cruel War Is Over” provided more resonance and meaning during the Civil War. Whitman concluded that there was something about them that can only be described as the “singing element”, setting these songs apart from other literary and artistic forms.Less
This conclusion discusses Alfred E. Williams' attempts to discern why songs such as “Dixie,” “John Brown's Body, ” “Just before the Battle”, “Mother, ” and “When This Cruel War Is Over” provided more resonance and meaning during the Civil War. Whitman concluded that there was something about them that can only be described as the “singing element”, setting these songs apart from other literary and artistic forms.