The following lecture was posted for my Queering Desire class on November 9, 2012. Earlier that fall, Dan Savage’s “It Gets Better” video had been posted and was generating a lot of awareness, conversations and actions about teens (especially, but not exclusively GLBTQ teens) and harassment. We decided to frame our discussion about the future around this video. For our class session, we did the following readings:
NO FUTURE?
- “The Anti-Social Thesis in Queer Theory”
- Selections from Jose Esteban Muñoz:
- from Cruising Utopia. “Introduction” (OPTIONAL) and “After Jack” (REQUIRED)
- about Cruising Utopia. Social Text: Periscope: Cruising Utopia (READ ALL 4 ENTRIES)
- from Disidentifications. “Introduction” (for DIABLOG DISCUSSION)
This week the focus of our discussion is on the question, No future? While there are many ways in which we could critically reflect on the question of the future, I want to spend some time today thinking about these readings beside/against/through the claim, as it is articulated in the Dan Savage video, that “it gets better.” What sort of future does this “better” suggest? Is it too tied to Edelman’s reproductive futurism? Or, can we imagine it as an utopian horizon of potentiality that opens up spaces for creating new worlds outside of straight time?
In order to think about the “future” and no future?, let’s look at a few different “mainstream” visions of it. These visions, all expressed through song, were produced between 1961-1982.
1. Annie: Tomorrow (1982)
In No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive, Lee Edelman has some harsh words for Annie , both her optimistic vision of the future and her figuring as the (only) Future. Note: These harsh words can also be found in Edelman’s 2nd footnote in “The Anti-social thesis in queer theory”:
Edelman is particularly critical of the image of the Child and its reinforcing of a narrow vision of the future as reproductive futurism (exemplified by Annie in her song). Tim Dean offers the following definition of reproductive futurism: “dominant ideology of the social, which sees it in terms of a future requiring not only reproduction but protection and that therefore represents futurity in the image of the innocent child” (827).
Michael Snediker discusses Edelman and Annie in an essay on queer optimism, writing:
If Edelman opines that all forms of optimism eventually lead to Little Orphan Annie singing “Tomorrow,” and therefore that all forms of optimism must be met with queer death-driven irony’s “always explosive force” (31), I oppositely insist that optimism’s limited cultural and theoretical intelligibility might not call for optimism to be rethought along non-futural lines (26).
How does optimism function in this song? Can we imagine an idea of optimism that does not rely on a futural promise in the ways that Annie does? Must a belief in (the possibility of) better futures always look like this? Is this what is meant by the project, “it gets better”?
Check out the lyrics for “Tomorrow.” What do you make of the line, “I love ya tomorrow”? How can we think about Annie’s song in relation to Munoz and his claim that queerness is “not yet here” and that “we must dream and enact new and better pleasures, other ways of being in the world, and ultimately new worlds” (Introduction, 1)? Is Annie’s desiring of tomorrow a form of utopia–maybe as abstract, banal optimism instead of the concrete hopes of a collective or a solitary oddball (Introduction, 3)?
2. Jackson/Flack: You Don’t have to Change at All (1974)
Here’s another vision of optimism, from the Micheal Jackson/Roberta Flack song in Free to be…You and Me. [For more on this song and its connections to hope and troublemaking, check out my blog entry, Michael Jackson, the 1970s version (pre-MTV, pre-surgery, pre-loss of hope, pre-spectacle)]
What vision of hope and/or optimism is present in this video? What similarities/differences do you see between this vision and Annie’s vision? How does the future work? How does Jackson’s/Flack’s vision of past/present/future fit or fail to fit with the “it gets better” project? Does this vision offer up a nostalgia for past/lost innocence? A defiant rejection of “growing up” (and a queering of straight time)?
3. West Side Story: Somewhere (1961)
Towards the end of his “it gets better” video, Dan Savage invokes, “Somewhere” and the idea that there is a place for gay youth. Starting at 6 mins 47 sec in, he says:
If my adult self could talk to my 14 year old self and tell him anything, I would tell him to really believe the lyrics to “Somewhere” from West Side Story. There really is a place for us. There really is a place for you. And one day you will have friends who love and support you. You will find love. You will find a community. And that life gets better.
What do we make of this song and Savage’s invoking of it, in relation to Muñoz and his vision of utopia: Is this “place for us” a horizon of hope? What tensions do you see between the present and the future in Savage’s words?
On page 3 of his introduction, Muñoz distinguishes between abstract (perhaps naive, merely affirmative?) utopia and concrete utopia. What sort of concrete vision of a better future does Savage and his partner offer in this video?
Now, let’s watch the “It Gets Better” video:
On page 25 of his intro to Disidentifications, Muñoz argues for the need to “risk utopianism if we are to engage in the labor of making a queer world” (Gopinath cites this in their discussion of Munoz). What does it mean to “risk utopianism”–the utopianism of the everyday? He also writes: “The critical work that utopian thought does, in its most concise and lucid formulation, allows us to see different worls and realities. And this conjured reality instructs us that the “here and now” is simply not enough” (171).
Think about the idea of “it gets better” in relation to JHalb and their discussion of expanding the gay archive of negative affects:
FCKH8.com Straight Talk About Gay Marriage from FCKH8.com on Vimeo.