[June 10th would have been Judy Garland’s 100th birthday. So this week I’ve AmericanStudied a handful of Garland’s performances, leading up to this special weekend post on Garland and a few other LGBTQ icons.]
On
AmericanStudies takeaways from how and why Garland and other artists became
LGBTQ icons.
1)
Garland: There are undoubtedly lots of factors
that have combined to make Garland “The
Elvis of homosexuals” (per The
Advocate), and as with all of today’s subjects, I don’t have the space to
get into them at length. Instead, I wanted to note one particular and very
telling detail: that for many decades (dating back at least to the World War II
era), gay men in particular would refer to themselves as “Friends
of Dorothy” in order to secretly connect with other gay men. Which is to
say, icons like Garland don’t just become part of the cultural landscape for
oppressed communities—they can also and perhaps especially serve as a means of
navigation and survival within an all-too hostile society.
2)
Cher: Cher has become particularly linked to the
21st century LGBTQ rights movement through her evolving
relationship with and support for her son Chaz Bono, a transgender man; but
as this
interview reflects, she’s felt connected to the movement and LGBTQ
identities throughout her life. What’s most telling for me in that interview is
the idea of a shared experience of not quite fitting in—a perspective on
themselves and the world that many artists share, often from a young age, and
might explain all five of today’s subjects among many others.
3)
Diana
Ross: That hyperlinked article highlights a handful of reasons for the legendary
singer’s status as an LGBTQ icon, but to my mind it all boils down to one: her
1980 song “I’m Coming Out.”
That song’s co-writers, Chic bandmates Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards, fully intended
the song to serve as an LGBTQ anthem, with Rodgers noting in
a recent video that they believed the song could have “the same power as
James Brown’s ‘Say It Loud—I’m Black and I’m Proud.’” But it took more than the
writing to make the song happen and a hit—it took the participation and immense
talent of Ross, one of the towering figures in 20th century
American popular culture. That was no small thing in 1980, and worth icon
status to be sure.
4)
Madonna:
Again, that hyperlinked article traces many stages of Madonna’s career, both
overall and as an LGBTQ icon, including the way in which her connection to and
celebration of a longstanding trend like “Voguing”
helped bring musical and dance counter-cultures into mainstream spaces. But
what stands out most to me is her friendship with and support for artist and activist
Keith Haring, during a time when (as Madonna herself notes in the first
post in that series of memories) far too many people refused even to touch
doorknobs after an HIV-infected person like Haring used them. It takes cultural
figures to help move the needle, and in that and many other ways Madonna helped
do so when it came to AIDS.
5)
Elizabeth Taylor: But no one, and I mean no one,
did more for the early fight against both the stigmas and the horrific
realities of AIDS than did legendary actress Elizabeth Taylor. Taylor started her AIDS
Foundation in 1991, and she spent much of the remaining two decades of her
life fundraising, supporting efforts and activisms of all kinds, and giving
interviews like the one featured in this 1992
Vanity Fair profile. Those twenty
years of work led to the honorary title “The
Joan of Arc of AIDS”; and without taking a single thing away from Garland’s
own relationship with the LGBTQ community, I think Joan of Arc is an even more
powerful symbol than Elvis, making Taylor perhaps the most influential of all
five of these inspiring subjects.
Beach Reads
series starts Monday,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other icons or allies you’d highlight?
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