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Academics Debate Whether New Media Helps, Hurts GLBT Cultureby Kilian MelloyThursday Jan 15, 2009 Academics are divided on the question of whether or not so-called "New Media" like Reality TV and the Internet are a help or a hindrance when it comes to full social and legal equality for America’s GLBT citizens.
Part of the divergence in opinion are differing views of what constitutes gay culture, versus that of the "hetero-normative."
A Jan. 14 article at Campus Report Online.net details that two conflicting points of view were aired on the subject at the recent annual convention of the Modern Language Association.
Kent State University Ph.D. candidate Robin Bellinson offered the view that while so-called "Reality TV" might be fostering acceptance in America of GLBT people, that might come at the expense of the GLBT community losing its unique cultural characteristics, rather than acting to alter "the cultural and economic landscape of the reality it purports to represent," in Bellinson’s words.
Said Bellinson, "Reality Television presents the real world in "a way that indicates that it "is acceptable and ordinary to be lesbian or gay and perhaps to some extent bisexual or even transsexual."
Added Bellinson, "The truth effects of perceived reality hold a real sway to social aspects of the public sphere," with a potential to "change mainstream social perceptions" about gays and lesbians, "and thus theoretically open a door for juridical and political changes in the public sphere as well."
So-called "Reality TV" is often subject to manipulation from producers, as well as inevitably being affected by the on-camera self-consciousness of its subjects and the fact that the footage used in the finished program has to be edited for time and for content.
Bellinson seemed to concede as much, saying, "I certainly do not claim that reality programming actually represents reality," adding that, "unscripted, queer individuals in reality television are certainly less than the full truth."
Bellinson used the controversial series "Welcome to the Neighborhood" to illustrate her point, the article said.
In that series, which drew condemnation for "pitting" various families against one another, including an African American family, a Korean family, a Hispanic family, and a White same-sex couple with a Black adopted son, in a contest where the prize was a new home in a white, exclusive Austin, Texas neighborhood, the eventual winner was the same-sex family.
According to a Wikipedia article on the show, one of the judges for the contest had voiced opposition to having a gay couple move into the enclave. But after the win, one of the men, as quoted by Bellinson, said that, "we proved to the judges we’re a regular family.
As quoted by Bellinson, the winning family member added, "We can raise a child and we know the Bible as well as they do. We’re as normal as normal can be.
"We’re soccer dads in suburbia."
Bellinson viewed those statements as indicating that the same-sex family had given up gay culture, saying, "These examples lean strongly toward a hetero-normative moral standard," the article reported.
Meantime, am English professor, Matt Bell, sat on the conference’s "Queer Uses of New Media" panel, and decried the loss of gay "ghettoes" in the wake of the Internet having become the venue of choice for gay activism and even gay relationships.
Said Bell, "The notion associated with the gay ghetto that appears to be still more forcefully repeated in the internet age is the notion of flight, of flight from this place, from this skin, from an intolerable here and now."
Bell, an assistant professor at Bridgewater State College, referred to the book "Gay Men: The Sociology of Male Homosexuality," by Martin Levine.
Levine, noted Bell, had defined the "gay ghetto" as possessing four crucial attributes, including "institutional concentration in gathering places and commercial establishments which, in the case of the gay ghetto, take the forms of bars, restaurants, bath-houses, bookstores, and movie-houses," as well as "a cultured area with distinct language, clothing, customs, which for Levine means... gay fashion, and the customs of gay cruising for sexual contacts," in addition to being "socially isolated, segregated from the larger community," and a demographic mix in which the gay ghetto "must contain a substantial minority residential population."
Added Bell, "It is not enough that gay users congregate in a certain space and share a certain culture--they must live there."
Bell denied that the Internet was a true successor to the physical place within a city for gays to call their own, saying, "For my purposes, according to this definition, internet simulations of gay space cannot in any literal way be understood to function as a gay ghetto."
Even so, gays are treating the Internet as a substitute for the gay ghetto, said Bell, noting that, "Nowadays, people looking for information about gay politics, for example, instead of obtaining it through flyers distributed on street corners or by word of mouth, can access it through forums such as Independent Gay Forum or blogs such as [Towle] Road."
Added Bell, "The sexual contacts once made in bath-houses, parks, and streets now often take place through online dating services and chat rooms, where whole sexual relationships can be conducted virtually, from the casual wink through the refusal to accept messages the next day."
Bell called the Internet use of gays "A kind of non sequitur, the shift of gay space onto the internet marks both a radical departure from the social form of gay liberation and a strange repetition of it."
Added Bell, "If the decline of the gay ghetto inspires in us a pang of regret or mourning or frustration or rage, then the news it tells us is not that the work of gay liberation has been stalled with the decline of the gay ghetto, but that the work of gay liberation has never properly begun."
Kilian Melloy reviews media, conducts interviews, and writes commentary for EDGEBoston, where he also serves as Assistant Arts Editor.
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