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/9780252042805.003.0004
- Subject:
- Music, Popular
This chapter defines Little Richard as a strategic performer who employed multiple queering tools during different phases of his career to adapt to social expectations. His initial persona was ...
More
This chapter defines Little Richard as a strategic performer who employed multiple queering tools during different phases of his career to adapt to social expectations. His initial persona was resonant enough to adhere to expectations of “race men” performers of the 1950s, yet he stood apart. As he gained fame, he emphasized spectacle to avoid appearing sexually threatening to whites. After his initial success, he briefly retreated to religion and marriage. He followed this phase with an even more flamboyance from the mid-1960s to the late 1970s, becoming a popular draw and TV personality. By the early 1980s, he disavowed his past and embraced religiosity. Queer signifiers endured in his persona throughout these phases; he gradually integrated spirituality with queerness in the mid-1980s onward.Less
This chapter defines Little Richard as a strategic performer who employed multiple queering tools during different phases of his career to adapt to social expectations. His initial persona was resonant enough to adhere to expectations of “race men” performers of the 1950s, yet he stood apart. As he gained fame, he emphasized spectacle to avoid appearing sexually threatening to whites. After his initial success, he briefly retreated to religion and marriage. He followed this phase with an even more flamboyance from the mid-1960s to the late 1970s, becoming a popular draw and TV personality. By the early 1980s, he disavowed his past and embraced religiosity. Queer signifiers endured in his persona throughout these phases; he gradually integrated spirituality with queerness in the mid-1980s onward.
