Arts
Come Out, Come Out: M. Signorile's Queer in America
COME
OUT, COME OUT Signorile's ten-year-old message still resonates |
 |
by David Hinz
| Queer
in America: Sex, the Media, and the Closets of Power Michelangelo Signorile University of Wisconsin Press, 2003 |
If
visibility is a legitimate standard by which progress can be measured,
then the gay and lesbian community has much to be thankful for. At present,
the issue of gay marriage garners a great deal of attention in the mainstream
media, openly-gay members of Congress such as Barney Frank and Tammy Baldwin
enjoy the support of a wide constituency, and television shows such as
Will & Grace, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, and The Ellen DeGeneres
Show have become immensely popular among a diverse audience.
However, even most casual observers
admit that such examples of gay visibility captivate our attention precisely
because we have grown accustomed to well-nigh total invisibility in every
aspect of American culture, from media to politics to entertainment. We
may find ourselves wondering why, for example, the media have largely
failed to explore the underlying causes and consequences of blatantly
anti-gay legislation such as the Defense of Marriage Act, what underlying
assumptions and prejudices are fueling the reactionary winds blowing in
Washington at this time, and why Hollywood's portrayal of gays and lesbians
remains so woefully inadequate.
It is in this atmosphere of heady optimism
and profound disappointment that Michelangelo Signorile's 1993 classic
Queer in America: Sex, the Media, and the Closets of Power was
edited and re-published in 2003, offering readers a sobering reminder
that the dialectic of progress and reaction is rooted in the closet and
our ability to overcome it. Signorile, some readers may recall, first
brought the issue of outing to the forefront of public debate more than
a decade ago with a cover story on Malcolm Forbes in OutWeek,
a now-defunct magazine he helped to found. He recounts that event in Queer
in America, and offers a thorough analysis of gay invisibility, focusing
on what he dubs the "Trinity of the Closet": the corporate media
establishment, the political system, and the entertainment industry, each
of which conspires to keep homosexuality a shameful, dirty secret.
In part one, "Queer in New York,"
Signorile traces his own evolution from column planter to gay activist.
Central to his development was the realization that gay invisibility fuels
homophobia, which serves, in turn, to justify continued invisibility.
This vicious cycle can only be broken when the homosexuality of public
figures is openly disclosed. If public figures lack the courage to make
such disclosures willingly, he argues at length, then it is the role of
responsible journalists to do so on their behalf - especially, though
not exclusively, when the actions of these closeted figures directly or
indirectly harm the gay and lesbian community.
Although many liberals - both gay
and straight - object that the outing of public officials is an invasion
of privacy, Signorile plants gayness squarely in the public sphere. Being
gay, he writes, is not about sex acts or what we do in our bedrooms but
is a much larger matter regarding identity and culture and community.
Maintaining the closet under the guise of privacy sends a clear message
to the American public: homosexuality is so utterly grotesque that it
should never be discussed.
In part two, "Queer in Washington,"
Signorile recounts in exhaustive detail his outing of Pete Williams, Assistant
Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs in the first Bush Administration,
and examines the implications of gay invisibility inside the Beltway.
Many lobbyists, congressional staffers, campaign strategists, White House
staffers, legislators, and high-ranking appointed officials such as Williams
treat homosexuality as a dirty secret that must be guarded at all costs.
In this atmosphere, some closeted gay men use their positions of power
to sexually assault and abuse young gay staffers, who, to protect their
own careers, remain silent. Others, to dispel rumors of their homosexuality,
promote an ardent anti-gay agenda. Caught up in this system of power and
oppression, they all live pathetic lives of hypocrisy, self-loathing,
and fear.
Like Washington, Hollywood is a magnet for
gay men and lesbians in search of power and influence in American society.
Here too, Signorile argues in part 3, closeted gays wield tremendous influence,
often to the detriment of the gay and lesbian community. Because gays
in Hollywood, like Jews before them, are victims of society's prejudices,
they can be easily manipulated by conservative forces from Washington
such as the Christian right.
Despite its liberal image, and that
of many individual actors such as Jane Fonda and Ed Asner, Hollywood the
industry fosters its own brand of conservatism, rooted in the profit motive
and a notion that the American television and film audience is essentially
conservative and homophobic. Most Hollywood power brokers and actors kowtow
to these conservative forces by remaining deeply closeted - even after
their careers and lives have ended. The result is a system of self-censorship
that preserves Tinsel Town's heterosexual image, thus robbing American
society of gay and lesbian role models and perpetuating the very homophobia
that gave rise to the Hollywood closet in the first place.
Signorile follows up this forceful
analysis with a rather diffuse epilogue, "Gay Manifesto," and
Afterword. He concludes his book with a new chapter, "Queer in America
2003." While recognizing the increased visibility of gay men and
lesbians, he argues that the closet survives as an institution in 2003,
proving itself quite resilient, responding to challenges by remaking and
redefining itself.
Although he is forced to admit that
the outing of public officials is no longer a hotly-debated topic in the
gay and lesbian press, the concept behind it has been taken up by mainstream
journalism in recent years, as the shroud of secrecy around the homosexuality
of public figures has begun to erode. Nonetheless, many public figures
continue to live in what he dubs a "Glass Closet," fighting
public disclosure of their homosexuality.
And he scolds the gay community for
becoming complacent in the face of reactionary forces. The concluding
lines of his book's 1993 edition ring equally true more than a decade
later: "Abolishing the closet will do more to disarm our enemies
and win us our rights than any heterosexual pro-gay politician - or even
an army of them - will ever do. When it comes to our liberation, the only
people who will save us are ourselves." This exhortation to visibility,
more than any defense of outing, is this book's real contribution.
David Hinz works at Seventh Generation and lives in South Burlington.