[lbo-talk] Queer Eye

[Kelley]

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