Mapping subversion

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Mapping subversion:Queercore music's playful discourse of resistance
D. Robert DeChaine a
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Doctoral student in Cultural Studies, Claremont Graduate University,
Online Publication Date: 01 December 1997
To cite this Article DeChaine, D. Robert(1997)'Mapping subversion:Queercore music's playful discourse of resistance',Popular Music
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Mapping Subversion:
Queercore Music's Playful Discourse of Resistance
D. Robert DeChaine
People have to make do with what they have ... there is a certain art
of placing one's blows, a pleasure in getting around the rules of constraining
space.
—Michel de Certeau (18)
Since the dawn of human history, social arrangements have tended
to assume agonistic relations between the dominant and the subordinated.
Long before terms like "culture," "folk," and "subculture" were
coined, societies—guided specifically by those "on top"—were busy
delineating structures of power, rule, and labor. From the ancient Egyptians
to the Greeks to modern societies, one can track such cultural histories.
Yet, only since the nineteenth century have scholars paid much
critical attention to the ways in which culture "speaks"—that is, the
ways that human social organizations define the lives and experiences of
those who live them. In Culture and Anarchy, Matthew Arnold's description
of culture as "the best which has been thought and said in the
world" provoked a wave of early theories and critiques of culture—from
Leavis's theory of mass civilization 1 to modem theories of marginality
and mass culture. Meanwhile, Marx and Engels's critique of the ruling
class spurred numerous critical responses to cultural forms of domination
and oppression, such as those from the "Frankfurt scholars," critical
theorists, and poststructuralists. Currently, there is an abundance of cultural
theory and criticism from which to draw, spanning fields of sociology,
cultural studies, rhetoric, and philosophy, to name a few.
For modern scholars, the legacy of this rather recent turn to culture
is a shared interest in understanding how marginalized groups—that is,
counter- and subcultures—live both in and against the dominant culture,
while at the same time maintaining some type of identities for themselves.
In many ways, these "subaltern" groups lead double lives. Usually
they must function in some fashion within dominant culture (one
has to eat and have shelter, for instance); at the same time, their struggle
becomes that of resisting forces of control which threaten to silence their
7.

8 • Popular Music and Society
values, attitudes, and beliefs. Such subaltern groups traverse lines of
race, religion, gender, sexual preference, and even artistic expression,
often challenging or shattering those lines in the process. That there are
so many such groups in existence attests to the vibrancy of their discourses.
My intention in this discussion is not to make a particular case for
this or that group. Rather, I wish to suggest that by tracing discursive
formations of subaltern groups—borrowing from Grossberg's terminology,
by mapping "sensibilities"—one can uncover tactical choices which
bring to light a subaltern group's motives. Following Grossberg, a "sensibility"
signifies a subculture's dominant organization of effects, and it
describes the various intersections or "articulations" of actions which
account for that organization. This is not to say, however, that all actions
are intentional in a particular subculture, nor that they are all neatly
ordered or even "sensible." Discursive sensibilities are not monolithic
structures—rather, they signify groupings of overlapping and interrelated
possibilities for responding to situations. In this way, discursive
sensibilities represent ever-shifting networks of time- and history-bound
effects. By analyzing discourse in terms of sensibilities, one can not only
chart particular group actions, but also tendencies, trajectories, and problematic
implications of those actions.
Specifically, I intend to explore one particular aesthetic discourse—
the "queercore" musical movement—in order to attempt to uncover a
"sensibility of play" which grounds its actions. Queercore above all represents
a confluence of punk rock music and queer politics, although
such a description oversimplifies the relationship. Queercore music
exhibits many of punk rock's reactions to a rock formation now perceived
as bloated and hopelessly corporate. The music is fast, loud, and
often quite raw in form and production; a "do it yourself ethic often
guides artistic and business choices. Queercore lyrics are often sexually
explicit and, by popular standards, vulgar. They can be comic and playful,
although some deal with serious themes as well. Queercore artists
are ultimately political, since they often express a cultural "lifestyle" that
rubs up against mainstream social norms. Queercore performances stress
interaction; while they sometimes spectacularize and mock conventional
rock stage behaviors, they also encourage spectators to "stage dive" and
physically participate in the performance.
These features of queercore allow the artists to share a kind of cultural
identity or solidarity with their fans. While identity politics certainly
plays an important role in their attitudes and behaviors, I am
specifically interested in the signifying play which undergirds the discourse.
Play endows queercore participants with a space in which to

Mapping Subversion • 9
resist and subvert the materials of the dominant culture. It is a way of
appropriating and turning against—of working within the system in
order to sabotage and undermine the cultural values which it holds up as
normative and "correct." A sensibility of play enables queercore participants
the "semiotic guerrilla warfare" which Eco (103-24) speaks of; it
signifies a "way of making" (de Certeau), a politics of the everyday
which deconstructs (or at least problematizes) the inside/outside binary.
Above all, play empowers. It offers for its participants a liberation, however
temporary, from the ideological oppression of the dominant culture.
Robert Walser argues this point in his discussion of signifying play with
regard to heavy metal and gender politics:
There is nothing superficial about such play; fans and musicians do their most
important "identity work" when they participate in the formations of gender and
power that constitute heavy metal. Metal is a fantastic genre, but it is one in
which real social needs and desires are addressed and temporarily resolved in
unreal ways. These unreal solutions are attractive and effective precisely
because they seem to step outside the normal social categories that construct the
conflicts in the first place. (133-34)
Play in queercore functions in much the same capacity. Though queercore
may ultimately aspire to "mere aesthetics," its ludic politics stress
its symbolic defiance; thus, a playful sensibility can wage a powerful
assault on "serious" cultural normativity.
A variety of starting points and openings for this study are provided
by the current breadth of scholarship in popular music and popular culture.
For instance, one of the immediate difficulties of exploring connections
between queer and punk discourses is the traditionally silent/
silenced history of homosexuality in modern music. In his book Queer
Noises, John Gill begins to trace such a history as a perpetuated "code of
silence" controlled by the cultural elite, enforced by the music industry
and ultimately manifested as a fear of public disclosure. Gill argues that
traces of queerness have been evident in queer artists' music and in their
often ambiguous lyrics. Queer listeners have always known this and
have, as has Gill himself, reveled in the discovery of such "queer
noises." Other scholars have come to similar conclusions. McClary has
noted the academic impoverishment of studies linking music to issues of
sexuality and gender, noting that it "is an intimidating task to try to
unlock a medium that has been so securely sequestered for so long" (20).
Her work uncovers a variety of musical, musicological, and power relations
which have occluded one another throughout the twentieth century.
Scholars have also traditionally ignored questions regarding music's dis-

10 • Popular Music and Society
cursive inscriptions. With rare exception—Dave Laing's discourse on
punk rock 2 and Dick Hebdige's Subculture: The Meaning of Style immediately
come to mind—scholars have only recently turned their attention
toward this significant dimension of culture. Pioneering work by Cagle
and Walser and the collection of essays in the book Queering the Pitch
(Brett, Wood, and Thomas) point toward new and important directions in
popular music studies. Even so, recent scholarship continues to mark
queer absences. For example, in The Sex Revolts Reynolds and Press
devote nearly 400 pages to "a kind of psychoanalysis of rebellion" (xiv)
in rock music; one wonders where, in all of their analysis of male and
female strategies of rebellion, any space for queer discourse could even
exist. Such absences call for continued attention to the "queer noises"
that contribute to the discourse of popular culture.
Several recent studies have argued for regarding popular music as
dialogic, an argument which the present study aims to further advance.
Lipsitz, for example, relates the "dialogic criticism" of Russian literary
theorist and critic Mikhail Bakhtin to explain how popular music functions
historically: "[P]opular music is nothing if not dialogic, the product
of an ongoing historical conversation in which no one has the first or last
word" (99). Lipsitz goes on to relate Bakhtin's notion of popular carnival
traditions and their "polysémie" forms of representation, forms which he
argues pervade the discourse of popular music. Lipsitz's dialogic critical
approach allows for a reflexive view of culture as it avoids the trappings
of formalism and essentialism. Shank, in his study of the Austin, Texas,
music scene, also draws upon Bakhtin to further elucidate the temporality
and polysemy of popular music in his description of the honky-tonk as a
site for the prolongation and perpetuation of the liminality of the carnival
scene. He argues that honky-tonks "were magical places where promises
were made and new possibilities of life could be imagined in the free
recombination of repressed elements of the human" (35). In much the
same sense, I will argue, queercore participants imagine a liminal space
in which such "repressed elements" are "played out" in carnivalesque
ways. The work of scholars such as those noted above constitutes many
of the trajectories of thought from which this study draws.
In this discussion I wish, then, to ground the queercore discourse in
a sensibility of play. First I consider play's carnivalesque atmosphere,
elucidated by Bakhtin, as I argue that carnival signifies the space in
which play circulates. From and within the playful sensibility, particular
tactical operations will be seen to derive—namely, parody, pastiche, and
bricolage. I next identify particular musical, lyrical, and performative
examples of these playful tactics which exist specifically in the queercore
discourse. In my subsequent analysis, I examine the music of the

Mapping Subversion • 11
group Pansy Division, considered by many to be the foremost representatives
of queercore. In analyzing Pansy Division's music, lyrics, and
live performances, and personal narratives by band members, I intend to
bring to light a sensibility of play in practice. Finally, I consider the
implications of treating sensibilities as sites for discursive analysis, and
draw some conclusions regarding the efficacy of play for queercore participants.
In all, I hope to bring to light in the queercore discourse a
sense of what Lipsitz eloquently captures in his discussion of postmodernism
and popular music in ethnic minority cultures:
Postmodern culture places ethnic minorities in an important role. Their exclusion
from political power and cultural recognition has allowed aggrieved populations
to cultivate sophisticated capacities for ambiguity, juxtaposition, and
irony—all key qualities in the postmodern aesthetic. The imperatives of adapting
to dominant cultures while not being allowed full entry into them leads to
complex and creative cultural negotiations that foreground marginal and alienated
states of consciousness. Unable to experience either simple assimilation or
complete separation from dominant groups, ethnic cultures accustom themselves
to a bifocality reflective of both the ways that they view themselves and
the ways that they are viewed by others. (135)
Mapping a Sensibility of Play
The queercore movement, as I have suggested, signifies intersections
between two complex and highly developed discursive formations.
More importantly, though, queercore describes a sensibility, that is, it
articulates specific conditions in which the postmodern aesthetics of
punk rock and the anti/identity dynamics of a queer politics give rise to
a subversive and potentially liberatory "emergent" discourse. In attempting
to locate this space, I shall map a "sensibility of play" which will be
shown to derive from a carnivalesque view of culture. "Carnival," as
elucidated by Bakhtin, describes conditions in which social and cultural
hierarchies are inverted and/or debased, if only temporarily. Within such
a carnival atmosphere, I will argue, particular resources are made available
to participating subaltern groups, which they may in turn employ
tactically to subvert forces of ideological oppression wielded by the
dominant (mainstream) culture. Such tactics of resistance define a ludic
politics—a playful yet tactical response to perceived conditions of
oppression. By mapping out a sensibility of play, then, my intention is to
ground subaltern discursive tactics such as those of the queercore movement
in a practical theoretical matrix.
I want to begin by tracing a dominant organization of a particular
series of effects which operate in a given culture—what Grossberg terms

12 • Popular Music and Society
a "sensibility" 3 —and grounding it in a discourse of signifying play. Recognizing
that "play" carries a number of connotative meanings, my
intention is to consider ways in which play can function tactically. Johan
Huizinga's pathbreaking study of play and its bearing on culture provides
a profitable starting point. Huizinga argues that play is one of the
most fundamental characteristics of the human condition; indeed, he
argues that "civilization arises and unfolds in and as play" (ix). Huizinga
attempts to define some of play's formal characteristics thus: "play is a
voluntary activity or occupation executed within certain fixed limits of
time and place, according to rules freely accepted but absolutely binding,
having its aim in itself and accompanied by a feeling of tension, joy and
the consciousness that it is 'different' from 'ordinary life'" (28).
Huizinga's definition, though problematic on some accounts, 4 highlights
the significance of rules and "fixed limits," of tactical moves and negotiations
and an omnipresent consciousness of difference. Other studies,
such as in the work of John Fiske, have described playful tactics as
rooted in orientations either of evasion or resistance. 5 Still others have
situated signifying play as a postmodern strategy (Manuel) or as "disruptive"
or "troublesome" performative acts (Butler, Gender Trouble;
Berube and Escoffier; Hennessy). Rather than conflating or delineating
definitions, or attempting to derive an embodied "meaning" for play, I
wish at this point to examine the specific conditions in which play surfaces
for particular subaltern groups as a strategy for locating gaps in the
cultural fabric, and to specify ways in which play offers the possibility to
step outside of the traditional, oppressive power structure. In light of
such an objective, the following discussion considers Mikhail Bakhtin's
concept of the camivalesque as a theoretical ground for an understanding
of subaltern discursive practices and the social conditions in which they
are given rise.
Conditions for Play: Bakhtin and the Carnival Scene
Bakhtin's notion of the carnival, originally worked out in his 1940
thesis and elucidated in his book Rabelais and his World, has been recurrently
studied in theoretical and critical scholarship (Stamm; Thompson;
Clark and Holquist; Stallybrass and White). Bakhtin, a literary critic,
compares Rabelais's treatment of the novel to the medieval carnival,
arguing that particular "camivalesque" features allow Rabelais to endow
the novelic hero with an open generic quality, and an openness to the
dialogue between author and hero (Morris). These camivalesque features
include: an inversion of social hierarchies and structures of power; an
emphasis on bodily excesses and pleasures; comic debasements and parodie
treatment of particular scapegoated individuals; uses of profanity,

Mapping Subversion • 13
vulgarity, and degradation; and a generally festive atmosphere of spectacle
and laughter. All of these "forms of protocol and ritual based on
laughter and consecrated by tradition" (Bakhtin 5) served to offer:
a completely different, nonofficial, extraecclesiastical and extrapolitical aspect
of the world, of man, and of human relations; they built a second world and a
second life outside officialdom, a world in which all medieval people participated
more or less, in which they lived during a given time of the year. (6)
Carnival in Bakhtin's view thus represented another reality, one in which
the oppressions of the everyday were flip-flopped, and within which was
provided a potential escape from one's inhibitions, one's socially
imposed standards of normalcy, at least temporarily.
Yet, at the same time that carnival offered an escape from societal
norms of behavior, it was also sanctioned by those in power. It was
regarded as a kind of cultural pressure valve—a way of regulating normativity
by allowing it to periodically run loose in a ritual form. As
such, persons in power often participated in the rituals, allowing themselves
to be subjected to scapegoating and other acts of ridicule: "Carnival
is not a spectacle seen by the people; they live in it, and everyone
participates because its very idea embraces all the people" (Bakhtin 7).
Carnival rituals stressed laughter, a focus on sensual pleasures and a
"strong element of play" (Bakhtin 7); thus, the Clown and the Fool were
often celebrated as comic characters. Moreover, carnival laughter signifies
an essential difference from modern satire:
The satirist whose laughter is negative places himself above the object of his
mockery, he is opposed to it. The wholeness of the world's comic aspect is
destroyed, and that which appears comic becomes a private reaction. The
people's ambivalent laughter, on the other hand, expresses the point of view of
the whole world; he who is laughing also belongs to it. (12)
As political, hierarchical, and ecclesiastical distinctions were dissolved,
all were welcome to participate in the laughter. "In fact, carnival does
not know footlights, in the sense that it does not acknowledge any distinction
between actors and spectators" (Bakhtin 7).
The result of this dissolution of space between actors and spectators
was an emphasis on physical contact and physical excess, evidenced in a
host of bodily inscriptions. Carnival politics as such were politics of the
body, temporarily emptied of privilege beyond immediate meanings and
pleasures. Bodies were displayed in all their excessive vulgarity;
medieval carnival emphasized a "grotesque realism" (Bakhtin 18) in an

14 • Popular Music and Society
extreme exaggeration of the "normal" bodily image. Vulgarity was also a
prominent feature of carnival language and discourse. Profanities and
abusive language, used in "isolation from context and intrinsic character"
(Bakhtin 17), was prevalent; that is, language was emptied of its traditional
relevance and meaning. It was a language of surfaces, of
exaggerated tone and graphic offensiveness. Bakhtin argues that since "a
new type of communication always creates new forms of speech or a
new meaning given to the old forms," profane and abusive language created
for participants of the carnival a "new type of carnival familiarity"
(16), one in which meaning and, particularly, sincerity was made mockery.
Within the carnival atmosphere profane language thus "acquired the
nature of laughter and became ambivalent" (17). Finally, Bakhtin
stresses such carnival ambivalence as endowing the participant with an
open, incomplete subjectivity. He points out that in Rabelais's depictions
of bodily and linguistic excess, "the grotesque images preserve their
peculiar nature, entirely different from ready-made, completed being"
(25), defying "classic" aesthetic sensibilities. Thus, one's image, behavior,
and actions were open, undecidable, never complete.
These five characteristics—the participatory status of subjects, the
spectacularizing of ritual, the emphasis on the body and bodily excesses,
the milieu of laughter and mockery of the conventional, and the openendedness
of the subject—signify, then, both the actions and behaviors of
the participants, and describe the conditions which bring about the scene
of the carnivalesque. It is an atmosphere at once disconnected from the
normal, the traditional, the "proper," but at the same time interwoven
with and entirely dependent upon the larger sociocultural structure. It
inverts, reorients, parodies, and debunks traditional sensibilities, even as
its "players" recognize their roles in the "game." It reorganizes power
both temporally and spatially, even as its spectacles offer only fleeting
and temporary reconfigurations. It is at once aesthetic and base, political
and depoliticized, structured and "wild." It is offensive, vulgar, and abusive,
and its discourse resists depth and meaning. It signifies resistance to
dominance, yet recognizes its own complicity in the game. It allows for
both subversion and evasion, and invests its participants with a self-consciousness
of their conditions and their actions. Ultimately, carnival signifies
"a gap in the fabric of society . . . [SJince the dominant ideology
seeks to author the social order as a unified text, fixed, complete, and forever,
carnival is a threat" (Clark and Holquist 301).
Tactics of Play
A discourse grounded in a carnivalesque, playful sensibility provides
the subaltern participant opportunities for various tactical deploy-

Mapping Subversion • 15
ments. These moves, which I will term "tactics of play," signify the practical
"tools" for a playful subculture. Within the purview of subcultural
and postmodern theory, much work has been done to identify and elucidate
tactics of resistance and subversion. In this section I wish to highlight
four particular terms which will prove vital to this discussion:
appropriation, parody, pastiche, and bricolage. The functional variations
which these terms embody characterize a discourse operating within a
sensibility of play. An understanding of how these four strategies inform
a ludic politics will make clear the political implications of a playful aesthetic.
Hebdige's study of subculture provides an insightful view of how
appropriation becomes a strategic operation. He posits subcultures such
as punk rockers as complex subordinate groups whose discourses often
manifest themselves in their stylistic codes. Within such codes, struggles
over symbols, both material and verbal, serve as a primary agency for
signification and identity. Expanding upon Hall and Jefferson's study of
youth subcultures in postwar Britain, Hebdige describes a process in
which seemingly insignificant objects can be appropriated by a subculture
in order to ideologically reverse or reorder existing meanings. This
"double inflection" of illegitimating, while at the same time legitimating,
uses and use values serves a subversive function: "These 'humble
objects' can be magically appropriated; 'stolen' by subordinate groups
and made to carry 'secret' meanings: meanings which express, in code, a
form of resistance to the order which guarantees their continued subordination"
(18). In the punk subculture, an object such as a safety pin
becomes a statement of fashion, but also one of defiance; it symbolizes a
transformation of what was once an object used to repair clothing, for
instance, into a tool for self-mutilation. The object's (re)significance is
thus ascribed by its appropriation, but also gauged by the reaction it generates
from those against whom its use is directed.
As symbols can be appropriated and stripped of their original meaning
and significance by subcultural groups, so there are different modes
of re/signification. Three important and related elements in this process
merit discussion. The first, parody, operates in more or less a straightforward
and linear manner. Parody marks the presence of carnival laughter:
it pokes fun, it mocks the original meaning, but in a way such that its
motives and devices are plain, recognizable to those it mocks. In parody,
therefore, the form remains relatively stable with regard to the original
form it parodies. The joke may be vicious, it may be subversive, but it is
always recognized as such by the subject of the parody: "So there
remains somewhere behind all parody the feeling that there is a linguistic
norm" (Jameson, "Postmodernism and" 113-14).

16 • Popular Music and Society
Pastiche, on the other hand, performs quite a different operation. In
his seminal discussion of postmodernity, Jameson has described pastiche
as a "blanking" of parody, a marker of an oncoming postmodernity:
Pastiche is, like parody, the imitation of a peculiar mask, speech in a dead language:
but it is a neutral practice of such mimicry, without any of parody's ulterior
motives, amputated of the satiric impulse, devoid of laughter and of any
conviction that alongside the abnormal tongue you have momentarily borrowed,
some healthy linguistic normality still exists. ("Postmodernism, or" 65)
This distinction between parody and pastiche illustrates well the way in
which contemporary forms of aesthetic communication, for example,
still operating within "modernist" frames of irony and satire, often dare
to fracture themselves across their own lines. Artists working within various
forms of postmodern and avant-garde art employ a "cut and paste"
pastiche technique in order to disrupt linearity and "completeness."
Modern dancers and performance artists incorporate moves which disorganize
and reorganize traditional performance styles. New journalism,
postmodern literature, and poststructuralist criticism use pastiche to
undercut modernist literary forms. Much avant-garde music, including
rap, hip-hop, and punk, also employs techniques of pastiche, enabled by
time- and space-altering instruments such as tape loops and the sampling
machine. Scholars such as Beadle have argued that the incorporation of
the sampler in pop music indeed signals its postmodern character.
Another useful term is bricolage, which describes the process by
which objects and musical forms are appropriated and reconstructed in
punk. Following Levi-Strauss's characterization of bricolage as a "science
of the concrete," Hebdige characterizes subcultures such as the
mods and the punks as engaging in such actions, insofar as they "appropriated
another range of commodities by placing them in a symbolic
ensemble which served to erase or subvert their original straight meanings"
(104). Hebdige goes on to evoke Eco's "semiotic guerrilla warfare"
in reference to the subaltern fashion ensemble, which he describes
as stripped of meaning and fetishized (105). Another example of bricolage
can be seen in punk's incorporation of diverse stylistic musical
forms such as reggae, industrial, and electronic music. Punk in its parodie
frame often mocks and playfully mimics other musical genres; many
punk groups use both parody and pastiche in their music, lyrics, and artwork,
epitomizing a bricolage of form and genre. These three stylistic
elements—parody, pastiche, and bricolage—together with the appropriation
and excorporation of symbols in order to reposition semiotic control,
thus signify playful tactics of resistance.

Mapping Subversion • 17
Thus far I have examined the carnival conditions and the resultant
tactical operations which signify a playful sensibility operating at once
against and within mainstream cultural politics. This condition of
(re)acting both within and without the cultural mainstream presents tensions
which both empower and limit participants. In the section that follows,
I situate the queercore musical movement as a site in which a
sensibility of play can be seen to operate. Queercore brings many significant
and unique social and aesthetic dynamics to the fore. I hope to
demonstrate how such factors can contribute to a better understanding of
subculture as a site of constant struggle, and how such struggle rubs up
against the temporal strategies of play. Thus, a thorough examination of
queercore music, and specifically of the group Pansy Division, will highlight
particular questions which a sensibility of play must ultimately confront.
Mapping Queercore
In the simplest of terms, queercore music might best be thought of
as a queer(ed) punk rock. However, as one begins to peel back its layers,
queercore equally demonstrates a queer identity politics with punk rock
as its vehicle. In this section I examine each of these angles and follow
out their trajectories in an effort to arrive at some understanding, at the
least, of what a queercore discourse would look like from a critical vantage
point. By highlighting some important dynamics which queer
theory and queer identity bring to bear, I want to suggest that queercore
represents a self-reflexive subculture which grounds its identity in a politics
of difference, and which, through its playful tactics, enlists punk
rock as its mode of communication. I first provide a general history of
queercore which will foreground the discussion. Next I briefly sketch
out some features of punk rock which signify queercore's aesthetic sensibility.
I then demonstrate how issues of queer identity provide tactical
points of intersection with punk, points which tear open a space for
queers to rant a playful yet political resistance. Mapping a general terrain
for queercore will allow for an analysis which takes into account not
only its music and lyrical manifestations but also its larger discursive
formation—its playful sensibility.
A Brief History of Queercore
The term "queercore," as I have suggested, describes a musical subformation
which combines much of the aesthetic of punk rock music
with radicalized perspectives on gay and lesbian politics and identity. It
has been described in the media as "radical" and "in your face" (Sullivan
9), explicit and amusing (Kot). At the same time, persons who align

Iß • Popular Music and Society
themselves with the term are less apt to categorize its parameters. As
Matt Wobensmith, editor of Outpunk, a queercore '"zine," has suggested:
"I can't tell you what it means, because I don't know, and ultimately
the definition starts with you. What do you want it to be? What
do you want out of life? Please don't let what you see and hear be your
only defining tools" (8). Wobensmith thus suggests that queercore participants
take it upon themselves to "make" the discourse into something
which has direct bearing upon their lives, rather than be limited by
imposed labels and boundaries. This difference between the ways in
which the (mainstream) media describe queercore and how queercore
participants describe themselves highlights a significant tension. It
shows an outward tendency to encapsulate and categorize a "movement,"
and an internal struggle to define an inclusive and noncategorical
identity marker. This tension signifies a major thematic marker which
plays out in punk aesthetics and queer identity, the subjects of the following
sections. It also sets the stage for queercore's playful sensibility
and tactics which characterize the discourse.
As a musical "movement," queercore can be traced back to the mideighties.
Bruce LaBruce, a gay man who also happened to enjoy punk
rock, felt disenfranchised by both scenes in his city of Toronto. He felt
that the two movements had much in common as potentially empowering
voices, so he launched JD's, a magazine which he dubbed "homocore."
As his movement grew, LaBruce eventually released Homocore
Hit Parade, a recorded collection of queer punk artists from Canada and
America (Sullivan 9). Over the next few years, queercore continued to
grow in popularity and media exposure, with dozens of new bands and
hundreds of amateur 'zines emerging. In 1994, the Outpunk record label,
headed by 'zine editor Wobensmith, released Outpunk Dance Party, "an
eleven band queer punk compilation" which highlighted many of the
premier queercore artists. These include Pansy Division, Tribe 8, Sister
George, and the Mukilteo Fairies. Also in 1994, Pansy Division was
asked to support Green Day, a popular punk rock band, on a worldwide
tour. This exposed them to a massively expanded audience of both
straights and queers and heightened queercore's media exposure. At present,
queercore continues to attract a growing and more diverse audience
of participants, both solidifying the discourse as a movement and heightening
the participants' struggle against mainstream co-optation. I now
turn to an examination of how this internal struggle is negotiated in and
through the aesthetics of punk rock and through issues of queer politics
and identity.

Mapping Subversion • 19
An Aesthetic of Punk Rock
As mentioned earlier, the queercore discourse is fashioned from two
primary wellsprings of ideological resistance: punk rock music and radical
gay politics. Queercore as a musical form takes as its primary inspiration
a path blazed by a second wave of punks, emerging in response to
the "alternative" rock of the 1980s. These new punks decry what they
view as the corporate tainting and co-optation of punk and call for a
return to a more localized, independent grassroots movement. Aligned
with the "new" punk, queercore music favors an ethic of raw, "do it
yourself performance and production hearkening to the original punk
rock sound of the late 1970s. In addition to its fiercely anticorporate
musical attitude, queercore borrows from punk's artistic forms of subversion.
Henry compares punk rock to avant-garde art, citing similarities
between punk and earlier twentieth-century artistic movements such as
futurism, surrealism, and dadaism in their "unusual fashions, the blurring
of boundaries between art and everyday life, juxtapositions of seemingly
disparate objects and behaviors, intentional provocation of the audience,
use of untrained artists or transcendence of technical expertise, and drastic
reorganization (or disorganization) of accepted performative styles
and procedures" (30). These hallmarks of punk can be said to describe
much of queercore's musical discourse as well. Indeed, queercore is considered
by many to be, at least musically, an offshoot of early punk
rock—although such a description will be shown to be problematic.
Following the cue of punk rock's raw subversion of conventional,
"straight" rock, production values are often subverted in queercore
recordings as well. In contrast to the slick commercial production prevalent
in much rock music, queercore production celebrates a "do it yourself
attitude meant to capture or emulate a live performance. Frith's
claim that "punk demystified the production process itself—its message
was that anyone could do it" (159) is readily applicable to queercore. As
with punk, queercore often revels in its defects, its intentional "mistakes"
which designate it as angry, emotional, frustrated, and, above all,
authentic. Gow has posited a "pseudo-reflexive" strategy in the production
of alternative music videos, in which some, but not all, aspects of
the production process are deliberately "left in" the production, bolstering
credibility and authenticity. These same aspects can be seen at work
in punk and queercore records, in the form of "studio chatter," noises of
strings breaking, and the trademark cry of "one, two, three, four!" which
precedes some of the songs. In sum, queercore can be said to share many
of (early) punk rock's aesthetic sensibilities. Its anticorporate, antiproduction
attitude positions it as a voice of musical subversion in relation
to commercial popular music.

20 • Popular Music and Society
Queercore and Queer (Anti)identity
As much as queercore resonates with the punk rock aesthetic, it is
also informed by issues of queer identity and the tensions which a queer
politics brings to traditional lesbian and gay subjectivities. Queercore is
not just about the music—it is about the lives and values of the people
who participate in it. First and foremost, being queer (or calling oneself a
queer) signals a conscious move away from totalizing concepts of
gender and sexuality. Sedgwick suggests that queerness can connote "the
open mesh of possibilities, gaps, overlaps, dissonances and resonances,
lapses and excesses of meaning when the constituent elements of
anyone's gender, of anyone's sexuality aren't made (or can't be made) to
signify monolithically" (8). In this conception, Sedgwick leaves open the
prospect of an inclusive yet open category: an epistemological move
away from oppositional binaries in which Western societies have
become locked. Penn, alluding to the oppressive tendency to totalize categories
like sexuality and normality, argues that queers "aim to destabilize
the boundaries that divide the normal from the deviant and to
organize against heteronormativity" (31). She also cites an aesthetic and
political motive of queers to defy assimilation into the sociocultural
mainstream, a traditional pursuit of many lesbian and gay individuals
and groups. Pointing to Berube and Escoffier's claim that "queer" refers
to a more confrontational challenge and the embracing of categories of
the marginalized and the disempowered, Penn underlines both the antiassimilationist
strategic aims and the embracing and valuing of difference
which characterize a queer politics and aesthetics.
These anti/categorical features of queerness, however, present a
problematic view of the concept of categories themselves. That is, by
assigning a category of "queer," the term seems to impose the very limitations
it would seek to diminish. As Butler points out:
As much as identity terms must be used, as much as "outness" is to be affirmed,
these same notions must become subject to a critique of the exclusionary operations
of their own production: For whom is outness a historically available and
affordable option? Is there an unmarked class character to the demand for universal
"outness"? (Bodies 277)
Butler's problem is not with outness or queerness; rather, it lies in the
totalizing and exclusionary implications inherent in the terms themselves.
As a response to such categorical tyranny, Sedgwick argues that
"queer" signifies not so much a category as a collection of "performative
acts of experimental self-perception and filiation" (9), highlighting a
processual radicalization and contestation of traditional, empirical cate-

Mapping Subversion • 21
gorfes like "lesbian" or "gay." Sedgwick's attention to the performative
aspects of queerness also stresses the individual, self-perceptive, and
self-reflexive aspects of being queer. Queer identity is thus both
reflected in individual pursuit of self-identity and problematized by constraints
which a queer category may implicitly or explicitly embody.
Queers, and specifically queer activist groups, attempt to explode
what they view as oppressive social normativities by exposing or transgressing
the binary divisions of the categories upon which they rest. This
deconstructive impulse is seen in Sedgwick's argument, and is evidenced
throughout much of queer theory and scholarship. There remains, however,
a tension if not a contradiction between functions of power and
one's social identity, be it individual or collective. By naming oneself as
"queer," one strives for self-perception—an identity—yet at the same
time resists a totalizing concept of what that perception would entail. In
thwarting the oppressive forces of social (heteronormative) power, one
attempts to regain control, yet that control—that power—is never fixed.
By celebrating difference, in other words, the category of queer seems to
be at odds with itself.
Struggles over issues of identity politics—that is, struggles over
what exactly can/must constitute an identity—lead some scholars to
envision or theorize a lesbian, gay, or queer postidentity politics based
upon difference (Patton; De Lauretis; Seidman, "Identity and Politics";
Slagle) rather than essences. Slagle, for example, cites the queer activist
group Queer Nation as largely transcending the confínes of identity politics
and essentialist exclusionary practices by instead focusing their
efforts on difference, thus subverting "the dominant structure by refusing
to use its terms" (93). Others, such as Bersani, call for a kind of "gay
specificity," which would signify "an anticommunal mode of connectedness
we might all share, or a new way of coming together" (10). Such a
specificity would denounce sexual preference as the sole criterion for
sexual identity; rather, it would encourage the ways in which we might
theorize past categories like identity and difference and instead focus on
an ever-shifting "we," or, in Bersani's words, toward an "adventure in
bringing out, and celebrating, 'the homo' in all of us" (10). Seidman suggests
that queer interventions signify a shift toward a "cultural politics of
knowledge" ("Deconstructing" 128) in which queer critics must be willing
to lay out an ethical foundation for its postidentity if it is to effectively
subvert notions of identity and difference. What seems clear in the
demands of queer theory and queer politics is a shift away from identity
itself toward a less confining and more open social empowerment.
Whether by confrontational acts or strategies of visibility, or in the theoretical
call by Fuss for a "politics of cultural subversion" (qtd. in Seid-

.22 • Popular Music and Society
man, "Deconstructing" 131), issues raised by queer theorists are evidenced
in the (anti)identity politics and subversive practices of activist
groups like Queer Nation and ACT-UP, demonstrating a pragmatic cultural
relevance in the everyday lives of queers.
These focuses of queer theory and identity politics—of deconstructing
oppositional binaries and social categories of gender, sexuality, and
heteronormativity; and of undercutting identity politics by instead focusing
on the permeability and openings allowed by difference—underpin
the strategies of subversion and resistance which queers employ in their
everyday lives. These "postmodern" discursive practices—appropriation,
camp, genderfuck, visibility actions, and signifying play—
empower queers in a forum which, at least ideally, avoids the trappings
of embodied identity and instead promotes an inclusive, empowering
voice of resistance. Queercore takes many of these foci as starting points
for political and aesthetic subversion against both heteronormativity and
musico-normativity. Therefore, these musicians rebel on two separate
though related fronts, since homosexuality has traditionally been a silent
(and silenced) force in both mainstream music and in punk rock.
I have attempted to foreground an argument that queercore is more
than simply punk rock which happens to be performed by queers. A
recent San Francisco Chronicle article defines queercore as a term
describing "punk rock bands formed by gays and lesbians whose politically
charged music explores aspects of being gay with a defiant mixture
of humor and anger" (Gina Arnold 25). Though I agree with this description
generally, I hope to have underscored the point that queer issues are
not limited to categories of sexuality and sexual preference, and that
"anger" and "humor" are but discursive tactics "played out," as it were,
yet anchored in real issues which impact the lives of human beings. An
analysis of the music of Pansy Division, one of queercore's foremost
groups, will demonstrate how a playful sensibility grounds queercore's
tactical subversion and resistance to dominant and oppressive mainstream
ideologies. In the analysis, I also intend to demonstrate some of
the inherent tensions of a playful strategy—that the struggle for identity
from within a playful discourse problematizes an outward political
impact.
A Sensibility of Play in the Music of Pansy Division
Although it is problematic to attempt to "symbolize" queercore in
one particular band, the San Francisco-based group Pansy Division signifies
many of queercore's most prominent discursive features. First, as
one of the original bands on the scene, Pansy Division has had a formidable
impact on queercore participants, including fans and other artists,

Mapping Subversion • 23
as evidenced in numerous articles in both the mainstream and queercore
press. Second, their wide media exposure has thrust them (like it or not)
into the mainstream musical spotlight, including a 1995 MTV special on
queercore which featured the group. Their (relatively) high profile has
thus placed a burden of "speaking for the movement" upon them. Jon
Ginoli, Pansy Division's vocalist and principal songwriter, has stated
that queercore as a term and a movement "is something that I embrace
now" (Interview with author), which signals his support for queercore as
a musical marker. Along with continued media visibility, it seems reasonable
to anticipate Pansy Division's continued position as a prominent
voice for queercore.
In addition, as will be demonstrated in this analysis, Pansy Division's
music and lyrics exhibit the most important characteristics of a
sensibility of play. Since I am arguing that an explication of a playful
sensibility and its representative tactical deployments can provide an
important avenue for determining a subaltern group's motivations, I feel
that a responsible discussion must provide concrete examples of play in
practice. Future studies, it is hoped, may benefit from and expand upon
discursive analyses of sensibilities, and can further develop the themes
which I am exploring. Pansy Division provides an exemplary site for a
preliminary examination of such themes and promises to uncover ways
in which play might promote an empowering and potentially liberatory
discourse for its participants. In this analysis I examine Pansy Division's
music, lyrics, and nonmusical artistic expression (such as album.art and
fashion) and aspects of their live concert performances which bear upon
the discourse. As additional data to supplement my analysis, I consider
opinions and commentary from vocalist and principal songwriter Jon
Ginoli, including narratives gathered from a personal telephone interview
with him which I conducted in January of 1996. Together, these
investigations should provide a rigorous analysis of queercore's playful
sensibility.
Pansy Division's Musical Play
Musically, Pansy Division exhibits many of the playfully subversive
tendencies of early punk rock. The music is typically fast and raw,
with an emphasis on distorted guitars and prominent percussive rhythms.
For example, "I Can't Sleep," from the 1994 Outpunk Dance Party compilation,
begins with a high-speed, scratchy staccato rhythm introduction
which explodes into a raw, distorted three-chord arrangement. The musical
performance is intentionally loose and even sloppy, with sour notes
and other imperfections allowed to remain in the final recording. Vocals
are out of tune and, at times, out of rhythm with the rest of the music,

24 • Popular Music and Society
adding to the song's unpolished sound and feel. The song clocks in at
1:30, which is typical of punk rock's intention of radically speeding up
and shortening traditional conventions of pop arrangement. Over half of
the twenty songs on Pansy Division's Pile Up album (a 1995 compilation
of songs taken from their single releases, originally recorded
between 1991 and 1995) display all of these fast, raw, and percussive
musical characteristics.
Other punk characteristics can be seen in Pansy Division's music as
well. "Fuck Buddy" (1995) begins with an off-microphone shout of
"one, two, three, four!" reminiscent of punk's send-up of early rock and
roll conventions such as those employed by the Beatles. Other musical
genres are parodied, such as in the song "Cowboys Are Frequently
Secretly Fond of Each Other," which mocks conventions of country
music. Often, songs are left to collapse into a cacophony of percussion
and guitar feedback, adding dissonance and disrhythmia to the sound.
Musical form itself thus becomes the terrain for parody and debasement
of traditional popular musical conventions in much of Pansy Division's
music.
Such appropriations and excorporations, as it can be argued of early
punk rock in general, are intended to disturb and mock the popular mainstream—as
a mosquito on popular music's arm, so to speak. Ginoli
states that his initial impetus for forming Pansy Division came from his
association with punk rock in the late seventies and was largely a reaction
to the perceived overblown, stagnant state of rock at the time:
Promo photo of Pansy Division from their latest album, Wish I'd Taken
Pictures. Courtesy of Lookout! Records.

Mapping Subversion • 25
For me, punk was really good music.... I wanted something fast and exciting.
At the time—the late seventies—the radio was just so bad. Everything was,
like, REO Speed wagon/Foghat boogie rock or disco or really bad crappy pop.
(Interview with author)
In another interview, Ginoli states that Pansy Division is both a punk and
a pop band, circulating between both categories (Vavra 14). Indeed, pop
music sensibilities can be heard in some of their music, particularly
taking into account the current and ongoing co-optation of punk rock
into the popular mainstream. In any case, Pansy Division exhibits a predominant
punk rock aesthetic in their musical form, arrangement, production
values, and attitude.
Pansy Division's Lyrical Play
Pansy Division's song lyrics provide perhaps the most obvious evidence
of a playful discursive sensibility. They display many of the carnivalesque
characteristics which ground a playful sensibility. One of the
most prevalent examples of carnival play can be seen in Pansy Division's
lyrical emphasis on explicit subject matter—specifically, on the
body and physical pleasures. For example, in the song "Ring of Joy," an
explicit sexual reference to the body is made:
Take a good long look at a buried treasure
There between your cheeks, a hidden source of pleasure
It's an orifice for elimination
It's an orifice for exploration
The song prescribes a pleasure to be derived from such self-exploration,
playfully using "treasure" as a metaphor for the origin of bodily pleasure.
In "Homo Christmas," another sexual exploit is suggested, again
using a play of metaphor:
We 'II push the packages
Out of the way
And after you 've unwrapped me
Naked on the floor we'll play
Here, the narrator seems to be engaged in a dialogue with his/her partner,
or possibly is offering a proposition to him/her. In either case, the
song vividly lays out an explicit scenario of potential sexual pleasure,
described in terms of "play" (!).

26 • Popular Music and Society
Finally, in a particularly explicit lyrical passage from "Fuck
Buddy," a first-person narrative of a sexual encounter is described:
Down and dirty, hot and squirty
It's almost poetry
The way his hair hangs down
When he's on top of me
This passage uses vivid language to describe a sexual encounter (or
series of encounters) between the narrator and his/her partner. The word
"buddy" in the song title seems to denote a friend as much as a partner—
a casual relationship. This theme of casual and incidental sexual relations
is evidenced in the lyrics of other Pansy Division songs as well,
including "Strip U Down" and "I Can't Sleep." In using vivid language
and linguistic tropes to explicitly describe various engagements in bodily
pleasures and bodily acts, and in their depiction of such acts as offhanded
and playfully hedonistic, Pansy Division's lyrics can thus be seen to
embody the "grotesque realism" characteristic of the carnival scene.
Another example of carnival play, some of which I have already
demonstrated, can be seen in Pansy Division's extensive use of vulgarity
and profanity in their lyrics. Profanity is used in many of the group's
songs, including "Ring of Joy," "Denny (Naked)," "Jack U Off,"
"Smells Like Queer Spirit," and "C.S.F." Profanity serves to intensify
many of the explicit sexual themes in the songs, and it is undoubtedly
meant to shock and annoy mainstream, straight sensibilities. But it also
represents two other aspects of Pansy Division's music which help to
explain the group's discursive motivations. Ginoli states that one of his
intentions is to lyrically uncover the .base sexuality which drives all
humans;
Pop music, so much, deals with romance. The problem with a lot of pop music
is that you hear all these romantic sentiments in songs, and really all they are is
a sort of rationalization for sex. Like, "We're so romantically involved, now
we're gonna have this wonderful business relationship." What we try. to do is
sort of deconstruct that sort of thing and say, "Look, let's face it—sex is what
it's about." You may couch it in all these romantic terms—and it's not like there
isn't such a thing as romance to a certain extent—but I just wanted to get at the
bare truth, which is that we're driven by sexuality. (Interview with author)
He thus desires, through music, to express sexuality, viewing it as a
repressed category of social behavior. But Ginoli also states that freedom
of expression is an important aspect of his motivations. Referring to per-

Mapping Subversion • 27
formance artist Karen Finley's influence on his attitude, he offers that
"Just the idea to say things that were taboo inspired me to find whatever
it was that I could say, instead of censoring yourself because you're
afraid people don't want to hear it or hear about it, or how badly they'll
react to it" (Interview with author). Thus, the freedom to express ideas
publicly is also a motivation for Ginoli's often explicit and profane lyrical
discourse.
Clearly, Pansy Division's lyrics are explicit and sometimes vulgar.
But it must be noted that there is an air of laughter and comic mockery
evident in them, underscoring a comic and playful, rather than negative,
tone. This point is crucial to a playful sensibility since, as I have shown,
the carnivalesque atmosphere which grounds play stresses an antithetical
counterpoint to negative laughter. Carnival profanity is ambivalent; its
goal is not to hurt or destroy, but rather, to mock as a participant in the
human comedy. This important difference between modern (negative)
satire and carnival laughter is seen throughout Pansy Division's lyrics—
evident even in song titles like "Touch My Joe Camel," a spoof on
covert sexual imagery in modern advertising, and "Bill & Ted's Homosexual
Adventure," a parody of the popular (and silly) early-nineties
comedy movie. An objection can be raised that any communication,
whether intentionally or unintentionally directed, may offend or degrade
persons on any number of levels. I am also not arguing that much of
Pansy Division's lyrical content is not intended to shock and upset—
indeed, much of it undoubtedly serves exactly this function. However, I
wish to stress that a sensibility of play signifies the distinction between
an ambivalent self-reflexivity and a transcendent, self-serving negativity.
Pansy Division's lyrics also demonstrate carnival play's intention of
temporary escape from oppressive circumstances. Such an intention is
seen in two lines from the final verse of "Smells Like Queer Spirit":
The world's a mess, but for awhile
We lick and suck and feel fine
These lyrics allude to a temporary retreat (into a sexual encounter) from
the "mess" of the world. There is a self-awareness in these lines, one
which suggests that sex is only a temporary avoidance of "reality." In
"Homo Christmas," another "temporal" solution is offered:
Yourfamily
Won't give you encouragement
But let me give you
Sexual nourishment

28 • Popular Music and Society
Again, a sexual exploit is suggested as a temporary escape, this time
from the oppression (or at least lack of encouragement) of one's family.
These songs do not attempt to forecast or prescribe any "solutions" to
society's ills—in this case, the oppressiveness of heteronormativity—but
rather offer diversions and subversions from the circumstances. In each
of the examples above, the narrator of the song is situated as a participant
within the circumstance. S/he is not above it, as an omniscient
observer. In this way, Pansy Division's lyrics offer reflections on the
human comedy—that is, the comedy in which we are all participants.
Lyrics such as these thus attempt to negotiate an identity for queercore
participants which also acknowledges their implication in the larger
sociocultural milieu. Theirs is not a proposal for radical change. Rather,
it is a tactical form of evasion and resistance. Such resistance can be
therapeutic: Ginoli states that, though he recognizes that politics necessarily
pervades their music and represents a motivation for their art, the
band's major impetus was "the idea to do something that was really fun,
and really funny, partly because so much gay art, or gay media, is sort of
down and sad about all these terrible things that we've suffered in our
lives. We wanted to show that it's not so bad" (Interview with author).
Finally, Pansy Division's tactical appropriations and debasements
of songs by popular artists playfully invert social hierarchies and thereby
spectacularize their performances. Ginoli has claimed such practice as an
important tactic for the group: "We're sort of seizing back the issue and
saying, 'You're not going to use this song against us—we're going to
use it against you' " (Interview with author). He cites two examples from
the group's repertoire: Bob Mould's "The Biggest Lie" and a yet-unreleased
version of the Police's song "On Any Other Day," in which certain
words or phrases are strategically changed or modified to reflect a
more queer interpretation. He adds that "other songs, just by the virtue of
[our] doing them, take on a different context" (Interview with author).
Thus, by inverting meanings in songs, Pansy Division succeeds in
inverting straight/queer musical hierarchies as well, at least on an artistic
level. Such temporal symbolic inversions are yet another hallmark of
carnival play—one which celebrates an empowering voice for the
oppressed. Spectacularizing or "queering" pop songs presents the popular
musical mainstream with an uncomfortable twist. At the same time, it
allows queercore participants, living simultaneously within and outside
of the movement, to enjoy the irony in the joke.
Pansy Division's Nonmusical Artistic Play
Thus far I have examined playful elements within Pansy Division's
musical discourse. There are other significant factors, however, which

Mapping Subversion • 29
contribute to a playful sensibility. One important aspect of Pansy Division's
discourse is their approach to art, as seen on their album, compact
disc, and 7-inch record covers and in their liner notes. The artwork often
depicts explicit sexual situations, and the group sometimes uses gay
pornographic photographs on their record covers. Their records are usually
relegated to a handful of independent record stores—most retail
chains and many larger music stores choose not to stock them. Consequently,
sales (as well as production) of the more explicitly adorned
records are usually quite limited compared to that of other punk recordings.
Here Pansy Division emphasizes the body and other features that
would appear vulgar to straight and/ or conservative sensibilities. Again,
Ginoli stresses his motivation in terms of freedom of expression:
It's like, these bands that worry about what people are gonna think of their
album cover, I just really have to wonder where they're coming from. We have
the freedom to do these kinds of things, and maybe they'll get us in trouble. But
it's just a matter of self-expression. Putting out sex as we have on our album
covers as a male conventional sort of thing. '.. it's just a natural and normal sort
of thing. If people find them titillating or obscene, ... I mean, I think Jesse
Helms is obscene! (Interview with author)
Emphasis on vulgarity and on bodily excesses and pleasures for Ginoli
thus signifies his tactical artistic expression—another type of ambivalent
laughter.
Also present in Pansy Division's art is the use of photocollage, an
effect of superimposed or "taped on" lettering, and other types of pastiche.
This adds to the unprofessional, "do it yourself look which many
punk rock groups employ in response to the slick packaging of most
commercial album art. Especially evident in their 7-inch record art is a
very plain, two-tone color motif, with offset, pastiched or handwritten
lettering. The overall effect is akin to an impromptu flyer. Seven-inch
artwork also frequently includes some type of caricature or cartoon art—
again, a style employed in much punk rock 'zine and album art. Tactically,
then, Pansy Division generally coheres with a punk rock aesthetic
vis-à-vis artistic practices.
Fashion also plays a role in Pansy Division's playful tactics.
Though one cannot distinguish a particular, defining "look" for a Pansy
Division fan, many traditional punk fashion characteristics are evident in
fans' attire. At live concert performances, for example, an array of punk
styles are apparent, including hair dyed in fluorescent colors and
"mohawk"-style haircuts, ripped or disheveled clothing, body piercings
(now a thoroughly co-opted practice, especially in youth culture), and

30 • Popular Music and Society
accoutrements such as skull rings and safety pins. In punk, the body
becomes a site for bricolage, giving an unfinishedness and openendedness
to one's look. This carnivalesque tactic helps to dissolve
the straight/queer binary among Pansy Division audiences, with punk
pastiche serving as the deconstructive. Along with the various punk
appropriations, one also sees queer appropriations of symbols of commodity
culture. For example, on the back of the Pile Up album, Ginoli
and bassist Chris Freeman are highlighted in close-up photographs
wearing T-shirts. Freeman's shirt features a giant penis covering the
entire front, while Ginoli's shirt is emblazoned with the words "Long
Haired Fag." Such a term, traditionally used pejoratively against homosexuals
(as is the term "queer" itself), is hence turned back against the
mainstream, now transformed into a defiant identification badge. The
giant penis is undoubtedly meant to shock but is also a way of turning
the tables on culture through its own products, a way of saying, "I
bought this T-shirt—how do you like it?" In this move, de Certeau's tactics
of "making do" with the materials at one's disposal become apparent.
The group members often perform in these and similar thematic
shirts as well, as evidenced in photographs published in mainstream
articles and 'zines. Thus, both fashion and artistic practices contribute
tactically to Pansy Division's playful sensibility.
Pansy Division's Performative Play
Pansy Division's live concert performances represent an important
dimension of queercore's often carnivalesque scene. To begin with, the
group promotes a participatory experience between themselves and their
audience. This is accomplished in three ways. The first can be readily
seen as a ritual in which audience members climb up onto the stage and
hurl themselves out into the audience, who (hopefully) catch them or at
least break their fall. Originating in the formative years of punk rock,
stagediving is a fairly common ritual among the current punk movement
and other punk-influenced movements such as grunge and ska-core. In
this way, Pansy Division can again be seen to align themselves with the
aesthetics of punk ritual. However, as is not always the case with other
bands and musical formations, Pansy Division actually encourages this
behavior (much to the consternation of the concert security staff) and
occasionally flail themselves into the audience, even in the middle of
songs. There is a blurring between performer and audience which occurs
in this ritual—a sense of unity and a deconstruction of power relations
which invites the audience to participate in the spectacle's enactment;
the audience, in effect, becomes not only a performer but part of the
overall performance. Indeed, such behavior serves to spectacularize ritu-

Mapping Subversion • 31
als such as traditional dancing and concert viewing, which are now
replaced by stagediving and "moshing," a practice in which a group or
groups of audience members create a circular mass of physical nudging
and colliding off of one another.
A second form of participation occurs as a result of Pansy Division's
stage antics. Between songs, the group often playfully provokes
its audience with "queer" jokes as well as "straight" jokes. This ironic
behavior inserts laughter into occasionally shaky circumstances. For
example, during a concert in 1994 in Winnipeg, Canada, Ginoli (playfully)
recounts the way in which the group dealt with hecklers: "I could
see the culprits, and one of them was so fucking cute it almost made me
cry. But they were witless dopes, and gave us some perfect set-ups, like
"you suck!" Our response? "Of course we suck—that's the point!"
(Ginoli 12). Another incident in Cleveland, Ohio, in the same year was
met with similar antics:
A few dozen people were there for us, and really into it. But one guy, the kind
of guy who turns up for these free shows, was having none of it. He nastily
berated us and the supportive audience members: Chris and I just blew him
kisses, which the crowd cheered. (Ginoli 14)
In both circumstances above, the band rallied participation from the
audience as a "coming together" against the hecklers. This ritualized
form of scapegoating is another prevalent theme in carnival; while the
hecklers were no.doubt upset by this action and were by all accounts
unwilling participants, they were nonetheless integral players in a ritual
enactment of carnival play. Other stage antics, such as campy mocking
of "het" fashion, and the use of artificial sex organs and other props in
this mockery, contribute to the playful atmosphere. Throughout Pansy
Division's performances there is a high degree of interaction between the
group and the audience, and between the audience members themselves.
It is a dialogue ripe with mockery of both straights and queers, an inversion
of traditional hierarchies, an emphasis on the body, and, above all, a
spectacularizing of "normal" concert ritual.
Pansy Division's complex and unique tactics—as seen in their
music, lyrics, nonmusical art, and performances—clearly demonstrate
that their motivations arise from and are shaped by the playful sensibility
within which they operate. Musically, play affords an avenue of resistance
to the normative categories imposed by the popular musical mainstream.
Through queercore, Pansy Division is able to forge a musical
relationship with their audience and, in so doing, create moments of solidarity
against an oppressor who would consign their aesthetic sensibility

32 • Popular Music and Society
to the margins. Indeed, Pansy Division is undoubtedly happy to remain
on the margins of popular music, for it is there that their playful tactics
can be most effectively deployed. For queers, play enables a negotiation
of the rough waters of identity and difference. Queercore enables Pansy
Division to form an alliance with their audience based upon unqualified
audience participation. Thus, being queer and part of queercore is
marked by its inclusivity, its celebration of difference at the same time
that it rallies its solidarity. Queercore participants use their discourse to
subvert categories of heteronormativity: their playful visibility actions
and tactics of appropriation and pastiche help to deconstruct binaries
such as straight/queer and, at least fleetingly, dominant/oppressed. In
queercore, play becomes a politico-artistic voice. Its language is music,
but also much more—it draws from, then circulates within and around,
the symbols which come to pattern our ways of living together—our culture.
For its participants, queercore offers precious moments of liberation
and empowerment, caught and wielded "on the fly" by a group of
people who can do nothing more than to musically and queerly celebrate
the practices of everyday life.
Implications
This preliminary investigation into the workings of discursive sensibilities
has been necessarily limited to one group within one discourse,
operating within one sensibility. Obviously, given such a narrow focus,
aspects of the theoretical and analytical framework remain underdeveloped.
Further work is needed to account for ways in which sensibilities
may (and undoubtedly do) overlap, and for ways in which discourses
undoubtedly jump between sensibilities in their tactical deployments.
Additionally, though Bakhtin's notion of carnival has been remarkably
adaptable to my elucidation of play, future studies should explore ways
in which play operates around, and possibly against, the carnivalesque.
In this way, a more nuanced explanation of the sensibility may come to
light and enhance further analyses. At any rate, I have hoped (and knew
that I could only hope) to provide an entry into a methodology which,
given the needed development, demands much rigor, both theoretically
and analytically.
I also realize that I have been somewhat ambiguous in my various
labelings of queercore as a subaltern, a subculture, a discourse, and a
movement. This has been partially intentional, as I have done my best to
discourage viewing queercore from any one privileged vantage point.
Whether one calls queercore a subculture or a musical movement is not
so important as recognizing that the agonistic forces which characterize
culture(s) are grounded in discourse, and that discursive analysis offers a

Mapping Subversion • 33
potential key to unlocking the mysteries of how humans treat one
another. Queercore has offered itself up in this discussion as a vibrant
and unique discourse, one which is constantly (and appropriately) shifting
and eluding any categorical description. It remains to be seen if its
twists and curls might reconfigure it into new and yet-unimagined discourses
employing entirely different sensibilities.
Some important conclusions can be drawn from this study regarding
the efficacy of a playful sensibility in queercore, and regarding sensibilities
in general. First, play has been shown to offer a potential tactical
resistance to, and subversion of, ideological forces of oppression which
circulate in culture. As empowering and liberatory as such practices may
be, however, they fail to provide more than temporary and ambivalent
empowerment and liberation. Engaging the dominant culture playfully
may in fact succeed in strengthening the polarity between queercore and
popular and mainstream culture, since its mocking and laughter is
largely ambivalent. It may be that play will prompt mainstream culture
to dismiss queercore as trivial and its practices as merely antics. The use
of "shock" tactics may serve to further estrange the participants from the
popular mainstream, both as queers and as musicians. Then again, this
may be an intended effect; as Queer Nation's slogan of "We're here,
we're queer, get used to it!" shows, queers are not as interested in assimilation
as in acknowledgment. In other words, it may be that queercore,
operating through its playful sensibility, ultimately upholds many of the
same categories which queer theory and identity politics, for instance,
would claim to deconstruct.
Further, this study has advanced an argument that queercore's playful
resistances and subversions are intentionally deployed, and that
queercore participants are more or less "in control" of the tactical
choices they make. However, just as subcultures engage in active ideological
resistance, it must be pointed out that not all cultural resistances
and reactions are tactical, purposive and/or within one's control. In his
book Mythologies, Roland Barthes explains how myth operates in discourse
as a "second-order semiological system" (114). For Barthes,
myths are class-based structures which disguise themselves as a part of
nature. Dominant culture uses myth as a way of making certain conditions
seem natural, a part of history. Therefore, myths reinforce cultural
norms as "given": "In fact, what allows the reader to consume myth
innocently is that he does not see it as a semiological system but as an
inductive one" (131). The transformation of history into nature through
myth affects not only the dominant culture but all forms of culture
because, according to Barthes, myth is so well disguised. Its function is
to make things seem pure and innocent; myth provides "a clarity which

34 • Popular Music and Society
is not that of an explanation but that of a statement of fact" (143). Not
every reaction by a subculture is deliberate, and any reading of a particular
subculture or discourse, including queercore, must be tempered by an
understanding of the naturalizing function of cultural myths.
Having made these observations concerning the efficacy of play
vis-à-vis queercore, and having offered a caveat regarding the overdetermination
of agency within sensibilities, I hope to have demonstrated
that discourse analysis using sensibilities as units or nodes holds
much promise for scholars of language, rhetoric, and culture. Sensibilities
provide insightful glimpses into the lives and motivations of human
subjects. They suggest possibilities for action for a group, and they map
the trajectories of those possibilities. For theorists and critics, such an
analytical method provides an adjustable aperture for viewing within and
across sensibilities and should provide ample space for consideration of
a group's artistic, linguistic, and political motivations, to name only a
few. Further development and clarification will add yet more width and
depth to the methodology, as it brings us to a more full and profound
appreciation of the discursive formations of culture.
Notes
Portions of this paper are excerpted from the author's 1996 master's thesis
entitled Are We "Queer Enough for You?": Mapping Subversion and Resistance
in the "Play" of Queercore Music (M.A. Communication, California State University,
Los Angeles). The author wishes to thank David S. Olsen, Gary Burns,
and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable insights.
1. Leavis's argument is most clearly elucidated in Mass Civilization and
Minority Culture.
2. In particular, see Laing's One Chord Wonders, "Interpreting Punk
Rock," and "The Grain of Punk: An Analysis of the Lyrics."
3. For a more thorough discussion of sensibilities, see Grossberg's We
Gotta Get Out of This Place, 69-74.
4. Anthropologist Victor Turner, for example, has noted that Huizinga's
definition of play and its connection with "the secret and mysterious" does not
or "cannot account for the fact that play is often spectacular, even ostentatious"
(125). Turner additionally notes that Huizinga "is surely wrong when he sees
play as divested of all material interest" (125). The present study of queercore
music's playful sensibility, as will be seen, amply supports Turner's critique.
5. In Particular, see Fiske's Reading the Popular and Understanding Popular
Culture.

Mapping Subversion • 35
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Discography
Pansy Division. Pile Up. Lookout Records, 110-12, 1995.
Various Artists. Homocore Hit Parade. Name of manufacturer unknown, 1989.
Various Artists. Outpunk Dance Party. Outpunk Records, OUT12CD, 1995.
D. Robert DeChaine is a doctoral student in Cultural Studies at The Claremont
Graduate University. His current research focuses on theorizing rhetorical and
cultural dimensions of play in discourse.