A Seminar led by Tony Whitfield at School of Visual Arts (January through April 2024)
SEMINAR DESCRIPTION
This course will surface the ways in which LGBTQ+ people and communities have impacted the ways in which mainstream American culture has been shaped by cultural production derived from thinking that challenges heteronormativity in post-World War II America until the validation of same sex marriage in 2014 Through the lenses of queer theory, evolving queer history, Since the emergence of “homosexuality” and “transsexuality” as identities in the late 19th century, queer culture has been presumed to develop in the margins of American life, ancillary to and shaped by heterosexual norms. Yet, the vast majority of queer people in the last hundred years have lived (to at least some degree) in the closet, allowing them to exist in the mainstream while maintaining a distinctly non-normative identity. Thus, to quote bell hooks, allowing them "to bring the margin into the center." In 15 meetings over the course of the semester, through lectures, discussions, texts, slides, films and video, we will explore the ways in which transformative integration of queer designs for living have occurred. Highlighting pivotal events and shifts in American cultural, political, and creative history this course will provide food for thought about the ways in queerness is integral to American notions of progress and freedom.
In the work of inscribing our history onto our city, LGBTQ+ people have long played a vital role—that work Muschamp described in theTimes of plucking “a discarded ornament out of the town dump” and putting it on a pedestal. One of the early High Line supporters who most embodied this spirit was Florent Morellet. A pillar of the Meatpacking District, he ran his restaurant on Gansevoort St., Florent, for decades as a sanctuary for gay and transgender people. Opened in 1985, Florent was an exercise in preservation and love. Hammond described the restaurant: “You stepped through the meat scraps and fatty slime on the sidewalk to this 1940s diner that Florent had lovingly restored, with Formica tables, a red leather banquette that ran the length of the room, and framed maps of cities… It was democratic and welcoming—a great New York City scene.” Morellet was a key figure in the High Line’s preservation, introducing Hammond and David to fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg and other early supporters of Friends of the High Line. Morellet also hosted fundraisers, including one where he dressed in a drag costume that was both Marie Antoinette—his long-running traditional anniversary outfit—and the High Line. Morellet was fully committed to preservation; he was also co-founder, with Jo Hamilton, of Save Gansevoort Market, which won a historic landmark designation in 2003. So many pillars of gay history in New York City helped shape the High Line. Former New York City Councilmember and Speaker Christine Quinn represented our district and was an early champion; watching her become the city’s first openly gay Council Speaker was a joyful moment. “I was so proud of Christine and so proud to live in New York City,” David remembers. Former council member and Speaker of the New York City Council, Corey Johnson, is equally supportive, along with the LGBTQ Caucus of the City Council. Other gay government leaders who have played or continue to play roles in helping the High Line include former New York State Senator Tom Duane and current New York State Senator Brad Hoylman. But Pride Month isn’t just about the luminaries of history—it’s about all of us who make and shape our city every day. Many of the most influential activists and representatives of the gay rights movement have worked behind the scenes, and we too rarely recognize the work of those who start from difficult places. As the High Line continues our work as not just a landmark but a living part of a changing city, we hope to serve as a safe, open, and welcoming public space where everyone can see themselves reflected.
New York nativeStanley Stellar, the first artist featured in theArtifacts film series, contributed a colour Xerox of his photographMen Standing on the Street with me on Sunday, July 1, 1979 in Front of the Cock Ring Disco, NYC to the project. The image is particularly poignant in light of the passage of time; soon after the photograph was made the Cock Ring Disco would close and become an AIDS hospice. But all this was in a future no one working onArtifactscould imagine at that time, least of all Stellar himself. Growing up in Brooklyn in the 1950s and 60s, Stellar remembers the way the mainstream media portrayed the LGBTQ+ community in the years before Stonewall, casting a dark shadow over his childhood. “As a 10-year-old, the media let me know that I was terrible and I would be lucky if I wasn’t killed when someone found out who I was,” he says. “We almost didn’t exist, but inside me I knew that there was a queer history in New York.” “As soon as I started taking pictures, I know I was photographing a special time in the history of homosexuality” – Stanley Stellar After Stellar came out, he began traveling to the West Village, then the city’s fabled bohemian quarter. “Back then, there was nowhere for us to sit. We’d sit on the steps of a building or lean against a parked car – the only other place for us was in a mob-run bar,” Stellar recalls. “There would always be two patrolmen on foot moving us along. On one of my trips around the block I found Christopher Street. It was a dark, one way street that led to the Hudson River. At the end of it there were a couple of seedy leather bars that scared the shit out of me. The police didn’t care what was happening down there.” Stellar began to feel at home in this new world, knowing that he wasn’t going to be seen by his parents’ friends passing by in cars. One night in the early 1970s, he had a revelation while walking down Christopher Street with an older man. “This was our first date. I thought this was the world of love and romance,” he says, smiling back on his youthful naïveté. “He took me to an apartment to have sex. I remember he was carrying a chain full of keys to different buildings around the city and I suddenly realised, oh wow! There are all these gay lives going on behind closed doors. That stayed with me my whole life, even now in my old age: What does it mean to have a gay life?”“Brian Michaels in a cowboy hat with a friend, West Side Highway NYC” (1981)For Stellar, photography is a way to explore this question in depth, one that he never fails to carry when he steps out of the house ever since he purchased his first professional camera in 1976. “So many people who don’t fit in develop a place to go within themselves. Some go to sports, some to music, and I went to the image,” says Stellar, who went on to study graphic design in school. “I liked it because images could be reproduced and influence society. People could see themselves or things they didn’t see in ordinary life. This was always my impetus in my personal life and as an artist.” Documenting the vibrant LGBTQ+ scene began when Stellar recognised he was living in truly extraordinary times. “Christopher Street was a haven,” he says. “I realised I was a part of history, that there was finally a place for us. I would go in the afternoon, sit by the river, and hang out with my friends. It made you feel like a human being, that being queer wasn’t based on having sex in dark corners. As soon as I started taking pictures, I know I was photographing a special time in the history of homosexuality.”
Although homosexuality in Japan was never criminalized to the extent it was in countries such as the USA or the United Kingdom, members of the LGBTQ+ community still face discrimination on a cultural and social level with very limited legal protection.
However, this has not stopped queer writers and artists from producing queer works of art, nor has it stopped readers from consuming it. Japanese author Yoshiya Nobuko wrote novels about female same-sex love and relationships during the 1920s. Her work was very popular and directly influenced the development of both shōjo and yuri manga in the decades that followed.
Shōjo refers to manga developed specifically for female readers. With its heavy focus on romance and drama, shōjo manga focus more on interpersonal relationships, drama, and emotions. Internal conflicts take precedence over big action, so the struggles faced by queer characters over their own gender and sexual identities fit perfectly into this setup. Moto Hagio's The Heart of Thomas is an excellent example of this as it features lush artwork, lyrical prose, and primarily focuses on the relationships between young male students.
Starting in the 1970s, manga featuring same sex or queer relationships began to see mainstream, commercial success within shojo manga. Female manga artists began producing a new type of shōjo manga that featured beautiful artwork, complicated storylines, romances between same-sex couples, characters who challenged their gender or sexual identity, and other narratives that had a powerful and long-lasting influence over many burgeoning manga creators and readers.
Some of the most popular shōjo manga of the era were produced by a group of female manga artists that would later be called the Year 24 Group. Although these mangaka (manga creators) worked on and produced their manga separately, they were referred to as the Year 24 Group because they were all born around the same time period and were thus around the same age (early 20s). These young women revolutionized shōjo manga, and their influence can still be felt to this day.
In 1978, Riyoko Ikeda, a member of the unoffical group, produced one of the first commerically successful manga to feature an explicitly transgendered protagonist, Claudine. While early LGBTQ+ manga were groundbreaking, they were not without their flaws. Although these titles featured queer couples, they almost always ended tragically or featured instances of excessive abuse, such as Ikeda’s Claudine and The Heart of Thomas. Modern LGBTQ+ manga have made a significant move away from its tragic roots, but these early works have had a longlasting influence.
Progress is steady! Since last week I've added pages, made some edits, made it look pretty, and started putting data in the data section. (and fixed the html mistakes lol.) There will be text on the pie chart pages, I'm just compiling the data first.
Amongst Andy Warhol’s crew in his Factory scene was a trans woman named Candy Darling. Candy was one of the many trans people on the Warhol production line, probably sharing the same experiences and struggles that any trans person would’ve faced at that time in the 60’s-70’s. Yet, she took the time to document her feelings and hardships in her personalized diary called “My Face for the World to See: The Diaries of Candy Darling''.
Within these diaries, we can come to learn more about her own personal experiences with being trans. The community as a whole can relate with one another with the similar stigmas and discriminations they face on a day to day basis, but each person is still different on their own parts and could experience something different from one another. With these diaries, we can get a better personal understanding of Candy Darling's own experiences and no one else’s.
We get to see the inner turmoils she has faced with coming to terms with who she truly was as a person and how coming out to express the way she was was difficult at the time. Of course, the times were obviously not at all lenient to people like Candy and she felt the full force of it. Regardless, she does not only document her hardships, but also her accomplishments as she demonstrates the successes she has had in achieving her dreams.
We get to see her relationships with not only herself, but with lovers and friends as well. Seeing how her change in identity has affected previous and new relationships in her life. These relationships also include those within the trans circles of New York. It all gives a better glimpse into the human experience and how we deal with love and heartbreak regardless of the place we are in in our lives.
We can also see her dreams and artistic ambitions in the creative industry. She was not only a performer, but also a writer and artist. We see and feel her struggles in tying in her own experiences with her artistic expression and how to go about it. Seeing how she first struggled to express herself authentically at first before making it her whole purpose to challenge societal norms through her works.
All in all, we got the opportunity to get a deeper glance into Candy Darling’s personal experience with being a trans woman in the production and artistic industry. How she has dealt with personal experiences, work related experiences, and her own self journey to discovery. Her diaries serve as historical documentation on transgender visibility. She encourages others to take the chance to make their own self discoveries and to not fear the retaliation of societal norms just for expressing yourself for who you truly are as a person.
Andy Warhol, known for being a renowned artist, director, and producer for making conventional pieces about certain subjects on the established norms of society has made a mark in not only cinema history, but also queer history. As a gay man himself, he sought to push the boundaries placed around him and others and test what he was able to artistically produce to send a message to society as a whole. He has done this through artistic paintings as well as films that he would direct and produce.
Amongst the large catalog of films he produced, has also came along a cast of people that would be ingrained within Warhol production history and go on to make a name for themselves. Such names include Candy Darling, Jackie Curtis, Holly Woodlawn, etc. These people were all part of the “outcasts'' of society, either being trans, queer, or a crossdresser. Anyone who would not be deemed worthy to be hired by Hollywood themselves would find a place in cinema history through Warhols personal productions known as the Andy Warhol Factory Scene in New York.
It’s because of these productions and people like Candy Darling, Jackie Curtis, and Holly Woodlawn, who helped give the queer community, especially the trans community, a voice to be heard. We see that these actresses accomplished so much and enjoyed doing it all while being true to themselves. They have set an example of who they are as people and brought a spotlight to the queer community to tell society that we do indeed exist and we are proud of it.
The film “Glen or Glenda” was directed by Ed Wood on the subject of transvestism and crossdressing. We follow the story of a man named Glen and see his struggles with his inner desire to crossdress as a woman. This is considered as a self reflection of Ed Woods himself as he was also a man who struggled with containing his inner desires to crossdress as a woman and explore his gender identity openly. This film portrays these feelings remarkably with dream-like sequences portrayed in an disjointed yet abstract imagery and editing.
This adds on to the subject of tackling the ideas of social norms on gender expression during these unprecedented times. The time this film was released was in the 1950’s, a clear time in history where dealing with such topics was considered taboo. Regardless, the film challenges conventional nodes of masculinity and femininity with a clear objective of giving a voice to people like Glen. Thus, Glen became a sole example of challenging these norms in such a way that the film's overall influence became a relic in queer history.
Extraño: In mainstream comics, a character named Extraño is often considered the first openly gay character, introduced by DC Comics in "Millennium" #2 in 1988. However, Extraño's portrayal was full of stereotypes, reflecting the societal prejudices and misunderstandings of the LGBTQ+ community at the time.Being considered one of the first openly gay characters in mainstream comics, This reflects the initial steps towards LGBTQ+ visibility in comics, albeit with a need for a deeper, more nuanced representation.
Northstar (Jean-Paul Beaubier): On the other hand, Marvel's Northstar (Jean-Paul Beaubier), who first appeared in "Alpha Flight" #1 in 1979, didn't have his homosexuality revealed until "Alpha Flight" #106 in 1992. Northstar's coming out is seen as a significant moment in comic history, marking the beginning of more authentic and positive representations of LGBTQ+ characters in mainstream comics. This shift towards authenticity in depicting LGBTQ+ stories and characters indicates a broader acceptance and understanding within both the comic industry and its audience, moving beyond stereotypes to embrace more complex and diverse narratives.
In the West, LGBT comics grew differently from Japan, mainly after 1954 when the Comics Code Authority (CCA) started. This made showing LGBTQ+ stories in US comics hard. The CCA aimed to keep young readers safe and stop "immoral" content, like gay hints. So, LGBTQ+ characters and themes were often left out or just hinted at.
Back in 1954, US comics almost died out. The panic about comics, fueled by Fredric Wertham’s book The Seduction of the Innocent, led to government hearings on if comics were bad for kids. Big publishers like DC and Marvel faced the threat of government rules. They chose to follow the CCA's self-rules. This meant not just banning LGBT and sexual content but also rules like villains can't win and cops must not be shown as weak.
The situation of BL in Asian countries. In China, although BL comics and novels are very popular, scenes of intimacy between men cannot be performed in live-action dramas adapted from comics and novels. Instead, it became a "brotherly" work depicting a strong bond between men. The presentation of the love feelings between the two parties remains at an imaginative level.
In South Korea, BL comics are also very popular, but sexual descriptions are strictly controlled. Fujimoto said that in reality, "it is more difficult for gay men and LGBT groups in South Korea to survive in society than in Japan." But on the other hand, Taiwan became the first region in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage in 2019. It is said that comic fans who came to the doujinshi sales also actively participated in the march to promote this law.
Thai BL has become mainstream in recent years. Thailand creates a wide range of comics and series that serve as a bridge between those who enjoy watching them and gay people in the real world. In addition to showing the issues of discrimination and coming out to parents, the way the drama is presented makes people naturally root for the people in the drama. In addition, it also triggered the phenomenon of real-life gay couples becoming idols. Although there may be an increase in the influence of stereotypes, generally speaking, more people can accept LGBT culture and their existence.
Perhaps the most obvious change is in Japan.There’s no denying the enormous popularity of manga – an industry valuedat $5 billion in annual Japanese sales. The fact that it’s read widely at every level of Japanese society and that people have respect for their manga heroes makes it a really effective vehicle for delivering positive messages and giving LGBT issues substance and respect. In fact, manga and anime provide such accessible media for young people to explore an alternative world free of society’s prejudices that the Human Rights Watch has created its own manga series. Released this June, the stories are based directly on testimony from students and reflect the experiences of real people – not fictitious characters. The stories address things like the ignorance of teachers regarding LGBT issues and the bullying and isolation that LGBT kids face. The HRW series was illustrated by Taiji Utagawa, a gay cartoonist, and aims to give both LGBT and straight kids a truthful account of what it’s like to be a queer student in Japan.
The changes that are taking place in manga’s portrayal of LGBT characters seem to be a reflection of a general shift in Japanese society’s attitudes to the queer community. While social and cultural attitudes might seem to be evolving at a glacier-like pace, the last few years have seen a number of very real, groundbreaking changes for LGBT people in Japan. For example, in March 2015, Shibuya ward, a district of Tokyo, became the first municipality in Japan to recognise same-sex partnerships and increasing numbers of LGBT friendly spaces are springing up across Japan. Alongside this, popular media outlets are starting to talk more positively about LGBT issues, helping to further the changes in society’s perceptions of queer people, explains Yakushi. While the more true-to-life, LGBT friendly manga books might not yet be widespread as of yet, they represent a shift in paradigm and (hopefully) a starting point for a new future.
The value of LGBT characters in manga has been highlighted in a number of recent Human Rights Watch reports explaining how kids are having to turn to manga because they’ve been let down by the state and by schools, which haven’t really, until very recently, acknowledged the reality of LGBT kids in the classroom. In Japanese schools, as in wider society, high levels of conformity are expected from young people and children who are different can be deemed ‘damaging’ to group harmony, in fact one of the HRW reports was called “The Nail That Sticks Out Gets Hammered Down”. Bullying, isolation and misunderstanding are endemic in schools, leading to alarmingly high levels of self-harm and suicide amongst LGBT youth – around 30 percent of LGBT kids contemplate suicide.
To put it bluntly, neither Japanese schools nor the country’s wider society acknowledge LGBT issues, a silence that forces children to seek information from other sources. We spoke with Mika Yakushi, a trans man who runs the non-profit Tokyo-based LGBT support group ReBit, to talk about the situation for LGBT kids in Japan. Yakushi explained that the degree of ambiguity and lack of information surrounding LGBT issues is extreme.
In the pages of manga comics you can be anything you like – a superhero, a master villain, a supernatural being. It’s an imaginary world where gender and sexuality are often very fluid and so many LGBT kids are turning to the pages of comics books for a sympathetic portrayal of queer characters In an interview with the HRW, Aiko from Osaka describes how important coming across a trans character in a manga book at 17 was for coming to terms with being transgender herself. “Before reading that comic book, I thought that I was different and I tried to hide it,” she explains, “but once I read the comic book I started to think it’s OK to be different and it completely changed how I thought about myself”.
Ain’t Me Babe Comix comic wasn’t the only instance in which Robbins helped shape the development of comic books and the way we perceive women in them. Just two years later,
Trina Robbins helped launch the longest-running comics series created and edited entirely by women,Wimmen’s Comix. On top of that, in its first issue, she wrote and drew a short story called “Sandy Comes Out,” which starred the first extant lesbian comic-book character outside of pornography. Later, she became the premier historian of female comics creators, penning one prose book after another on the topic. The women she writes about managed to carve out niches in the boys’ club that is the American comics industry — an achievement she shares with them.
If you haven’t heard of Robbins, it’s in no small part due to the fact that the comics ecosystem has historically been uninterested in feminist rhetoric and female achievement. That’s changed to a significant degree in the past decade, which has seen more and more outspoken women creators rising in the ranks. But Robbins was their distant forerunner.Her time in the underground was rarely a smooth ride, and the bumps along the way were sometimes created by her tendency to advance a version of feminism that both inspired and rankled those around her in that underground.
Throughout it all, she has remained a firebrand. “Any time there was talk about integrating the industry more or getting comics to girls, that was Trina’s crusade,” says comics journalist and editor Heidi MacDonald. She would speak out on behalf of women creators past and present and help organize campaigns to promote them. As MacDonald puts it, “She didn’t want to be alone, didn’t want to be the only woman in the room.” She stopped drawing comics in the early 1990s due to a bout of depression and, according to her, the fact that people ceased inviting her to draw. But she has continued to write comics and prose. Just last year, in addition to publishing Last Girl Standing, she also put out an adaptation of a Yiddish short-story collection her father wrote in the late 1930s, illustrated by 15 different artists. At one point in our conversation, she draws a comparison between herself and Hilda Terry, a cartoonist she’s written about, who died at her computer at the age of 93: “That’s how I want to go,” she says.
The GLAAD Outstanding Comic Book Media Award is an annual award recognizing comic books that excel in depicting LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) characters and themes. It's one of the categories of the yearly GLAAD Media Awards, held by the American non-governmental media monitoring organization GLAAD during ceremonies in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco from March to June.
Introduced in 1992 as a non-competitive category at the 3rd Annual GLAAD Media Awards, the first winner was "The Flash" vol. 2, a series written by William Messner-Loebs and published by DC Comics. No awards were given from 1993 to 1995, but a comic has been selected annually since 1996. The Outstanding Comic Book became a competitive category in 1997. Originally covering all types of comics, such as comic books, strips, and graphic novels—GLAAD split the category into two from the 33rd awards ceremony in 2022: Outstanding Comic Book and Outstanding Original Graphic Novel/Anthology.
To qualify, a comic must be aimed at a general audience and sold in comic retail stores nationwide. Additionally, it must be published by one of the four major mainstream comic publishers—Dark Horse Comics, DC Comics, Image Comics, or Marvel Comics—or their subsidiaries. GLAAD may decide if works from other publishers qualify if they achieve similar renown and impact as one of the major publishers.
GLAAD evaluates nominated comics based on four criteria: "fair, accurate, and inclusive representation" of the LGBT community, the project's "boldness and originality", significant "impact" on mainstream culture, and the overall "quality" of the project. GLAAD monitors mainstream media to decide on nominations and also calls for submissions, encouraging media outlets to submit works for consideration. Comics created by and for the LGBT audience must be submitted to be considered for nomination, as GLAAD does not monitor such works for defamation. Winners are determined by a majority vote from GLAAD staff and board, stakeholders, and volunteers and allies.
Since its inception, the award has been given to 27 comics. "Green Lantern," "Young Avengers," "Strangers in Paradise," and "Doctor Aphra" are the only comics to win the award twice, with only "Green Lantern" winning consecutively in 2002 and 2003. Judd Winick, who has been nominated four times and won three, twice for "Green Lantern," holds the record for the most wins. "Strangers in Paradise" also holds the record for the most nominations, with seven.
