‘This is why mainstream America votes against gays, Adam Lambert’: contemporary outness and gay celebrity

Abstract

This article utilises Adam Lambert in an analysis of the politics of contemporary gay celebrity. It positions Lambert within a media context in which displays of same-sex attraction are increasing, even as the attachment of those displays to identity is rendered increasingly problematic. Through an analysis of two key media events – Lambert's appearance on the cover of Out magazine, and his performance at the 2009 American Music Awards – the article demonstrates that Lambert's troubling of the imperatives of identity that accompany ‘coming out’ is at odds with the way the contemporary conditions of visibility are repeatedly imagined. Within that context, it argues, Lambert is both an example of contemporary ‘outness’, and a celebrity figure who complicates the discursive imperatives of what that ‘outness’ means.

Keywords:

• Adam Lambert
• gay
• queer theory
• American Idol

Notes

1. See Holmes and Redmond (2010) for a discussion of this.

2. I use ‘lesbian and gay’, rather than ‘lesbian, gay and bisexual’ deliberately. Bisexual celebrities are rarely vested with the same kinds of imagined political responsibilities as those who identify themselves, or are identified, as lesbian or gay. Given the vexed ongoing and historical relationship between bisexuals, and the dominant voices of lesbian and gay politics, this is hardly surprising, and it seems likely that this is connected, in part, to the lack of legitimacy with which bisexuals are repeatedly received (see Tucker 1995; Hutchins and Kaahumanu 1991).

3. Gay liberation was a loosely aligned political network committed to unleashing the radical potential for all people to be ‘freed’ from the alleged constraints of sexual identities. In a key text of the liberation movement, Dennis Altman (1972) articulates the gay liberation hope for the end of ‘the homosexual’ through a radical transformation of sexual identity that would render ‘the homo/hetero distinction irrelevant’ (p. 229).

4. It is worth pointing out that, in addition to the problematic normativity that I discuss, there is an implicit misogyny in Hicklin's remarks. As well as being patronising to both Lambert and women, ‘So are kittens, Adam, but it doesn't mean you have to make out with them’ seems a sentiment not too far removed from the ‘gay guys that gag and go “eww” at the thought of having sex with a girl’ that Lambert refers to in his interview in Out (Krochmal 2009a).

5. Britney Spears and Madonna (along with Christina Aguilera and Madonna) kissed in a performance at the 2003 MTV Music Video Awards; Sandra Bullock kissed Scarlett Johansson at the 2010 MTV Movie Awards, and Meryl Streep at the 2010 Critic's Choice Awards.

6. In Tendencies Sedgwick suggests:

7. While the examples cited in relation to Lambert are primarily examples of his performance of ‘boundary crossing’ as a troubling of sexual identity, I am nonetheless mindful of Biddy Martin's (1994) critique of the tendency within queer theory to privilege ‘crossing’ as the epitome of queer. I agree with Martin, and boundary crossing is utilised here as an example, rather than a paradigm, of queerness. On this final note, it is worth acknowledging that Hicklin and Vanasco's opinions are now accompanied by hundreds of messages and opinions that appear courtesy of the ‘comment’ function below each piece's publication on the web. Some are supportive, many more are critical, and they all now form part of the record of discursive management of Adam Lambert as media event. Useful further work might be done on the significance of this, particularly in relation to Butler's invocation of context.