Queer Contestation in Western Pop Diva Worship Among Taiwanese Gays

• Main Authors: Lien,Po-Han, 連柏翰
• Other Authors: Hung,Ling-Ling
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2016
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/29526153637762823928

碩士 === 世新大學 === 性別研究所 === 104 === Every diva in Western popular music has their own groups of gay fans in Taiwan. For example, Mariah Carey, Christina Aguilera, Beyoncé, and Lady Gaga—all of them are the center of worship for their Taiwanese gay fans. The close-knit relationship between gay fans and their divas is not a phenomenon limited to Taiwan. As a matter of fact, at the end of the 20th century, female opera singers already had adoring fans who place them as the center of worship. Opera has many elements that resonate with gay fans, including gender crossing, sexual fluidity and camp esthetics. Judy Garland, an iconic diva of popular music, was also a gay idol. Her story of rising from suffering to success, her struggles through the denial of what makes her abnormal, and her androgynous performance that crossed the limitation of sexes—these all deeply affected the gay fans. However, the worship of divas by gay fans has changed along with the Gay Rights movement. Before de-stigmatization of gay identities, divas played the role of the shoulder to cry on for their gay fans. After the movement had raised awareness, participants started to emphasize the healthy, positive identity and claim that they no longer need diva. On the other hand, some gay fans still held on to their worship, but this sense of worship has grown different from the one in the past. Nowadays, gay fans start to favor those divas who emphasize identity politics and gay pride. Owing to the changing discourses of gay identities, the dynamic between gay subjects and divas shows that the relationship between gay fans and divas should be read as an eliminative system of the “gay fans-divas” relationship: a targeted exclusion of certain gay identities. This thesis analyzes Taiwanese gay fans’ worship of Western popular music divas politically, from the aspects of subjective identities and culture hierarchy. In terms of subject formation, gay fans find themselves becoming various different gay subjects, which are refracted from the multi-layered sexual identification of the divas. This formation, however, does not happen easily, for Taiwanese contemporary discourses on gay identities is actually blocking the process from happening. Furthermore, the formational process will involve other cultural aspects apart from sexuality. For example, gay fans appropriate the graceful feminine qualities of divas to show their disdain towards the vulgar culture of masculinity or take the stand of the marginalized subjects to attack those who claim to be civilized and progressive. Despite the theory of “natural” gay identities in recent diva texts, Taiwanese gay fans can still avoid following the forming route of the fixed gay subject and find their subjectivity refracted out of the narratives and subjectivities in popular texts. Occasionally, they can even strategically use essentialist discourses to face the anti-gay religious powers in Taiwan. As for the discourse of gay pride, the celebratory tone of divas that praises the stigmatized despite the despair they face and the self-hatred that comes from being marginalized are all still being produced in their texts. This sets it apart from the binary opposition between the marginalized and the mainstream gay identities in Taiwan, which help to put the mainstream discourses of gay pride in doubt. In terms of culture hierarchy, the binary opposition between the graceful femininity and the vulgar masculinity is destabilized by the relationship between the unsecured gay fan subjects and diva subjects. From the aspect of the sexual hierarchy, Taiwanese gay fans after the local Women’s Rights Movement in the 90s used local political discourses and narratives to identify and celebrate the ideology of sexual liberation from Western popular music divas. However, this partnership of sexual liberation between gay fans and divas is challenged by the ideologies of sex negativity and gendered vulnerability. This thesis thus hopes to use the strategies of camp and celebrating sexual stigma to break the ice. As for the hierarchies within gay communities, since the gay pride and progressive politics of the Western popular music divas correspond to contemporary Taiwanese gay discourses, non-mainstream gay identities are excluded. Nevertheless, the self-hatred and sexual stigma still exist in divas’ songs, which resonate with marginalized gay fans in Taiwan and overthrow the canonical hierarchy out of progressive politics in gay communities. The new diva texts have started to call for gay fans to celebrate the discourses of freedom and equality among different subjects. However, this multiculturalism is exactly the current predicament of sexuality politics in Taiwan. It has become a way for the government to incorporate NGOs into its governing of people, to absorb social classes that have upward mobility, and to exclude deviated subjects. To face the problems of multiculturalism in the discourses of gay identities, this thesis looks for an alternative route of non-Western knowledge production to break through the existing limitation of gay subjectivities in its exploration of the relationship between music and gay sexualities, and by doing so, to break through the barriers of contemporary Taiwanese sexual politics.