Berto_Tony_201307_PhD .pdf - University of Guelph

254
. . . today a gay male can turn to the gay media for information and role
models . . . .The advertising saturated gay media would instruct the young
male that to be a gay male in today's world one would be young, white,
Caucasian, preferably with a well muscled, smooth body, handsome face,
good education, professional job, and a high income. Indeed, there is very
little difference between ads the mainstream advertisers aimed at
heterosexual males and those aimed at gay males. (114)
Sarah Schulman believes that this kind of practice allows for the both the creation of a gay
market for goods, but also to “sell . . . a palatable image of homosexuality to heterosexual
consumers” (146). In response to, and perhaps fear of, a potential slippage between
heterosexual and homosexual imagery, Fejes finds that “the heterosexual system . . . has
developed new ways of regulating same-sex desire and practices” in popular media (114).
He outlines how social forces of capitalism and heteronormativity tend to obliterate
references to sexual desires in contemporary images of gay men.
. . . [T]oday representations of gay males in the media often separate same
sex desire from the males who practice it, representing the latter in a
positive, masculine, and upbeat manner while making the former invisible.
Mainstream media gay masculinity is a curiously de-sexed, de-eroticized
phenomenon. A number of common strategies are employed . . . to show gay
males as non-sexual . . . . In many ways, this construction of a gay media
masculinity reflects the fact that the growing visibility of lesbians and gay
males is occurring during a very conservative period . . . and thus presents a
representation of gay males that in no way challenges the heteronormativity