Morrissey

BEING WILD(E) ABOUT MORRISSEYdisappearing or have gone altogether. At a more generallevel, he expresses feelings of loss, alienation and anomie,which may explain his transnational appeal.Side by side with this, is a consistent gay and campdiscourse. Stan Hawkins notes that the ambiguity inevidence in his songs and associated imagery means thatboth gay and heterosexual fans are allowed to ‘address thecomplexity of their own sexualities and desires’. 10 Morrisseymanages to sing from a range of viewpoints that addressboth male and female subjects. Sometimes it is notaltogether clear whom exactly he is addressing. Inrecognising this ambiguity, Nadine Hubbs stresses thevariety of ways in which Morrissey’s audience can read hissongs and points out that whilst gay fans have no difficultyin decoding the gay discourse inscribed in Morrissey’s work,many heterosexual fans do not adopt a so-called queerreading of his texts. 11 The fluidity of Morrissey’s ownidentity may help us understand his appeal. Mediasociologists, when attempting to understand how audiencesengage with widely circulated media texts such as popularmusic, are interested in the degree to which audiencemembers from diverse cultural backgrounds make sense ortake meaning from these texts. Morrissey’s music and thelarger Morrissey phenomenon manage to combine bothauthenticity and ambiguity at once.Irish Morrissey fans are participating in a transnationalphenomenon which has specific Irish resonances. TheDublin concert upon which this ethnography is largelybased is an example of where the newfound complexities ofmale identities are played out. Morrissey’s texts are cleverlyconstructed so that all fans can see something of themselvesin his songs.10 S. Hawkins, Settling the Pop Score, Aldershot: Ashgate, [see chapterentitled ‘Anti-Rebel, Lonesome Boy: Morrissey in Crisis?’], p. 75.11 N. Hubbs, ‘Music of the ‘Fourth Gender’: Morrissey and the SexualPolitics of Melodic Contour’, in T. Foster, C. Stiegel, E. E. Berry(eds.), Bodies of Writing, Bodies in Performance, New York: New YorkUniversity Press, 1996, pp. 266–296.245