[lbo-talk] Queer Eye

Kelley the-squeeze at pulpculture.org
Wed Jul 16 06:34:35 PDT 2003


I am annoyed that the "culture queen" was, so far, represented by a black man or Latino. I mean, it's great that they tried to have a little diversity but I find the tendency to find "culture" in people of color a kind of racializing erasure of the whiteness against which people of color have this "culture." It doesn't come off this way in the show, though. I think, though, that it was so fast-paced, so chaotic--hopping from closet organization, to bathroom filth, to kitchen organization, and quick let's go shopping, too--that it was like a Bugs Bunny cartoon.

They didn't really do all that work by themselves and in one day, right? That closet alone would have taken me an entire weekend.

Of course, I loved the smutty humor from Conrad was it? "I just love designer meat." "Show us on the doll all the places where the bad man touched you."

This show did not have the flagellation/redemption theme going on. Obviously, this is, in part, because the gaze of the Queer Eye was invited, not thrust upon them by family and friends as in What Not to Wear. Even so, in Faking It, the flagellation/redemption theme is quite evident, even though the subject has invited the experience and is aware, hostilely so, that s/he is not a cheerleader or sommelier. In Faking It, the narrative is about breaking down an individual's pathology. She has built an identity on hating "cheerleaders" (signifying sexy women who wear make up and are probably not very smart); he is Mr Beer, in part, because he resists wine snobbery (signifying cultural snobbery more generally). IOW, the implicit claim in these shows is that they each embrace an identity built on unfairly reviling an Other--a sentiment borne out of jealousy. (Reminds me of claims that critiques of class society are really about jealousy.)

By contrast, it wasn't like the Fab 5 could storm into these two guy's homes and tell them something that they didn't already know. They knew they were slobs already. But there was no blaming of the individual from the Fab 5, no confessionals behind the scenes of the student shaking her fist at the unloving and unforgiving Fashion Deities.

In Queer Eye there was no critical distance that Liza describes in the BBC make over shows. No rejection of the advice as "just not me" or the wacky ideas of a fashion diva. Queer Eye was all about accepting the criticism and advice toward the goal of, in one case, launching a career and, in the other, helping this guy win the love of a woman who, I dunno, doesn't seem at all interested in him as anything but a boy an ice queen can ridicule, even after the make over.

It was interesting that some of the commentary suggested an uncritical acceptance of style and beauty as about making other men jealous because women think you're hot.

Surprise!

Kelley



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