Music, Subculture, and Intertextuality

Like Jennifer, Sedgwick’s interest “in the formation of a specifically homosexual (not just homosocial) male intertextuality” was an aspect of the text I was drawn to, in part because of the ways in which Sedgwick frames intertextuality as part of subcultural identification and materiality. Sedgwick continues, “Whitman—visiting Whitman, liking Whitman, giving gifts of “Whitman”—was of course a Victorian homosexual shibboleth, and much more than that, a step in the consciousness and self-formation of many members of that new Victorian class, the bourgeois homosexual” (28).  

I realize that I run the risk of academic piggy-backing, but Jennifer’s mention of “intertextuality” gave me a more… grad school-y means of talking about the ideas that have been rumbling in my head in regard to the ways in which material culture comes to signify identity in various ways. The ways in which, for example, reading Leaves of Grass or Dorian Gray (I’ll expand on Dorian Gray, and Sedgwick’s mention of it, in a moment) might lead to particular queer identifications; the ways in which the mohawk, the leather jacket, the army boots might lead people to identify the wearers of such styles as punks; or how listening to say… Tori Amos and Ani DiFranco might lead to stereotypical identifications of the listeners as gay or lesbian, etc…  To a certain extent, I’m interested in the ways in which particular types of music are said to signify queerness, not only based upon elements such as style (specifically in regard to fashion… think 70s glam… or as Ian Svenonious has suggested [perhaps rightly so, perhaps not], the links between punk and gay leather culture) but also in regard to musical form and voice.

I’ll slip into an anecdote briefly here: about five or six years ago, I had a conversation with my younger brother after picking him up from his high school. He mentioned that his attempts to introduce some of his male friends to Jeff Buckley (introducing his female friends was significantly less difficult) had resulted in particularly homophobic responses: “Are you gay?” The emphasis placed on “gay” was not meant to mark their curiosity so much as their own attempts to insult him and his particular musical tastes. 

I’d never really thought of Buckley’s music as “gay” before then, though the notion that he would be heard as “queer” wasn’t necessarily a shock. His five/seven (critics and biographers seem to go back and forth on this point) octave voice, the falsetto, his movement away from the sonic dissonance and angst of 90s grunge (although I am aware that queer examinations of music have identified sonic dissonance itself as “queer”), a certain gender and sexual ambiguity in both his lyrics and voice, his vocal homage to singers such as Edith Piaf, Billie Holiday, and Nina Simone, might be cause for people to identify listeners/fans as somehow queer (his vocal and lyrical “femininity” mistakenly translated as gay). Which brings me to Sedgwick’s chapter on “Terrorism and Homosexual Panic” wherein she notes the ways in which intertextuality and gay identification by an/the o/Other becomes part of a system of control that results in “a structural residue of terrorist potential, of blackmailability, of Western maleness through the leverage of homophobia” (89). Because “Not only must homosexual men be unable to ascertain whether they are to be the objects of ‘random’ homophobic violence, but no man must be able to ascertain that he is not (that his bonds are not) homosexual” (88-89). These “bonds,” as Sedgwick’s “intertextuality” suggests, are not only between men, but between men and cultural material: books, music, film, art, etc… that can and have resulted in various forms of homophobic response and violence. To what extent does the threat of homophobia prevent some individuals from particular forms of cultural consumption (I realize that the ability to consume is not available to all subjects, too)?

Sedgwick mentions a particular case involving Beverley Nichols and a copy of Dorian Gray, where upon discovering his son reading a copy of Gray: “The father nearly choked. He hurled the book at his son. He spat on it over and over, frothing at the mouth. Finally he began ripping the book to shreds—with his teeth” (95).

To what extent does this bring to our attention not only the ways in which cultural material comes to signify racial, class, gender, and sexual identity, and in what ways does the notion of intertextuality raise questions regarding the ambiguity of the signifier and the ways in which signification itself becomes yet another form of control rather than a shibboleth (which I’ve always taken as a form of inclusive identification)?

Sorry if the paragraphs seem a bit odd… WordPress doesn’t seem to want to let me make breaks where I want them (insert awkward emoticon here).