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Abstract
In this essay, we argue that man-on-man kissing, and its representations, have been insufficiently mobilized within apolitical, incremental, and assimilationist pro-gay logics of visibility. In response, we call for a perspective that understands man-on-man kissing as a political imperative and kairotic. After a critical analysis of man-on-man kissing's relation to such politics, we discuss how it can be utilized as a juggernaut in a broader project of queer world making, and investigate ideological, political, and economic barriers to the creation of this queer kissing “visual mass.” We conclude with relevant implications regarding same-sex kissing and the politics of visible pleasure.
The authors thank all those who inspired, engaged, and enhanced this project, including the anonymous reviewers, Avram Finkelstein, Alex Hivoltze, Joan Faber McAlister, John Lucaites, Kyra Pearson, and Jeff Sens. Chuck dedicates his work on this essay to Scott Rose.
Notes
Earlier versions of the essay were presented at the 2003 NCA/AFA Argumentation Conference and at the 2004 NCA convention.
1. Edna St. Vincent Millay, “What Lips My Lips Have Kissed,” The Harp-Weaver and Other Poems (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1923), 71; Anonymous, Weekly Visitor or Ladies Miscellany, April 1803, 203, http://www.bartleby.com/66/98/3598.html (accessed 9 June 2003).
2. Bruce LaBruce, “Dudes’ Smootch Leads the Way,” Eye Weekly [Toronto], 21 February 2001, www.eye.net/eye/issue_02.01.01/columns/feelings.html (accessed 15 July 2004). For an alternative reading of LaBruce's review, see Judith Halberstam, “Dude, Where's My Gender? or, Is There Life on Uranus?” GLQ 10.2 (2004): 308–12.
3. Robert Knight, “Iraq Scandal is ‘Perfect Storm’ of American Culture,” WorldNetDaily, 12 May 2004, reprinted by Concerned Women for America, http://www.cwfa.org/articles/5663/CWA/misc/index.htm (accessed 15 July 2004).
4. For our purposes here, we understand “public culture” via those mass-mediated texts with the largest audiences; as such, texts—television, newspapers, film—must necessarily reflect the “common sense” understandings of large audiences. See Kent A. Ono and John M. Sloop, Shifting Borders: Rhetoric, Immigration, and California's Proposition 187 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2002), 1–25.
5. We recognize that the meaning of a public kiss is far more complex than hetero or homosexual. Change the age, race, physical attractiveness, type of kissing, or number of people involved, and of course the meaning of the kiss changes. Regardless of the combinations of people involved in “public kissing,” however, it functions as a nodal point that illustrates the parameters of heteronormativity.
6. Frank Rich, “Gay Kiss: Business as Usual,” New York Times, 22 June 2003, Section 2, p. 1.
7. Otis Stuart, “No Tongues, Please—We're Queer: The Same-Sex Kiss on the New York Stage,” The Village Voice 2 February 1993, 90.
8. Butler's theses have become sufficiently widespread and familiar to most readers that we offer only a brief rehearsal here. For Butler, to say that gender is “performative” is to suggest that—regardless of the physicality of gender—it is understood, or has meaning, through discourse or culturally accepted practices, including appearance, manners of speaking, occupational roles, choices of sexual partners, and so forth. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, 10th Anniversary Edition (New York: Routledge, 1999), 139. Moreover, given how heavily policed gender norms are in popular culture, Butler observes, bigender heterosexual behaviors become materialized, naturalized, as if they were essential rather than contingent. Performativity, then, cannot be understood outside of a process of iterability, a regularized and constrained repetition of norms: “This iterability implies that ‘performance’ is not a singular ‘act’ or event, but a ritualized production, a ritual reiterated under and through constraint, under and through the force of prohibition and taboo, with the threat of ostracism and even death controlling and compelling the shape of production.” Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex (New York: Routledge, 1993), 95.
9. Butler, Gender Trouble, 139. Two points seem important here: first, to clarify that what we, and Butler, are discussing is the appearance of heterosexuality, not its essence. It does not matter if an “actual” male and female are kissing, as long as the kissing bodies appear to be a male and female. Second, we acknowledge that there are numerous male–female kisses that exist outside of normative expectations, that even within heteronormative culture there are marked and unmarked behaviors.
10. Butler, Bodies That Matter, 95.
11. Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner, “Sex in Public,” in Intimacy, ed. Laurent Berlant, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 318.
12. In searching for articles over the last decade on LexisNexis and other databases, we not only found hundreds of articles focusing on different types of public kisses, but encountered numerous discussions of the history of kissing worldwide [e.g., Frank Whelan, “Historically Speaking, A Kiss in Not Just a Kiss,” Los Angeles Times 12 February 1989, 24, and “Did You Know?,” Sunday Telegraph 27 April 1997, Local 3], expectations about future alterations in the meaning of kisses [Peter Johnson, “When a Man Greets a Man with a Kiss,” USA Today 18 July 1989, 1D], the absence of public kissing in China [Anthony Blass, “Culture: Goodbye to Prudery,” Far Eastern Economic Review 6 May 1993, 34], and Japan [Tim Easton, “A Scandalous Trend,” The Gazette 2 October 1994, B5, T.R. Reid, “The Puckering Stops Here,” Washington Post 8 November 1994, A1, “Modest Japanese Begin Kissing Off Public Prudery,” Toronto Star 23 December 1994, B7, Miki Tanikawa, “Japanese Young Couples Discover the Kiss,” New York Times 28 May 1995, 139, Cameron W. Barr, “Japan Teens Pucker Up in Public Bowing's Out,” Christian Science Monitor 17 February 1998, 1], the difference between public kissing in the US and in the UK [Candida Crewe, “Kissing in Public,” The Times 21 February 1998, Vicky Allan, “No Public Sex Please, We're British,” Scotland on Sunday 9 April 2000, 19] or Mexico [“Kissing is a Very Public Sign of the Times in Mexico City,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch 12 April 1998, D5]. For an historical overview of the meanings of kissing, see Adrianne Blue, On Kissing: From the Metaphysical to the Erotic (London: Victor Gollancz, 1996).
13. Nicholas Fonseca, “They're Here! They're Queer! And They Don't Like Your End Tables!” Entertainment Weekly 8 August 2003, 26.
14. Carina Chocano, “Sharper Image: Bravo's Queer Eye Gives the Makeover-Show Genre an Edge,” Entertainment Weekly 8 August 2003, 62.
15. As Gross chronicles, there were unprecedented media representations of gays and lesbians during the 1990s, but displays of same-sex kissing were noteworthy in their absence, the camera angles that displaced and diminished them, and the contorted rationalizations offered by the executives forced to account for them. Larry Gross, Up From Invisibility: Lesbians, Gay Men, and the Media in America (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 85–93. See also Suzanna Danuta Walters, All the Rage: The Story of Gay Visibility in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001); Steven Capsuto, Alternate Channels: The Uncensored Story of Gay and Lesbian Images on Radio and Television (New York: Ballantine, 2000).
16. Stuart, “No Tongues, Please—We're Queer,” 90.
17. Frank Bruni, “Culture Stays Screen-Shy of Showing the Gay Kiss,” Detroit Free Press 11 February 1994, reprinted in The Columbia Reader on Lesbians & Gay Men in Media, Society, and Politics, ed. Larry Gross & James D. Woods (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999, 327; Lynn Smith, “More than Just a Kiss,” Los Angeles Times 10 November 2002, E1; Gary Morris, “When is a Kiss Not a Kiss?,” Bright Lights Film Journal, http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/20/20_queerkiss.html (accessed 11 June 2003); Gary Morris, “Billy's Hollywood Screen Kiss,” Bright Lights Film Journal http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/22/billyskiss.html (accessed 11 June 2003).
18. “Fox … Censorship is Un-American,” GLAAD, 10 May 1994, http://www.glaad.org/publications/archive_detail.php?id = 267& (accessed 9 June 2003); “Another Censored Kiss,” GLAAD, 16 May 1994, http://www.glaad.org/publications/archive_detail.php?id = 265& (accessed 9 June 2003).
19. “Man is Dismissed Over a Game's Gay Images,” New York Times, 8 December 1996, Sec. 1, 46. The game manufacturer who fired the programmer claimed to have done so due to the “insertion of unauthorized material” in the game rather than because of the content of that material. However, such “unauthorized content,” or Easter Eggs, are routinely inserted by programmers and expected by manufacturers.
20. Robert Bianco, “USA's Gay ‘Tastes’ Run to Rape, But Not Kissing,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 20 January 1997, D6.
21. “The Kiss that Rocked the World”, 10 October 1997, http://www.glaad.org/action/al_archive_detail.php?id = 1977 (accessed 9 June 2003).
22. “Sandler's Big Daddy is Gay-Friendly,” GLAAD, 17 June 1999, http//:glaad.org/action/al_archive_detail.php?id = 1535 (accessed 9 June 2003).
23. Paul Brownfield, “When a Kiss is Just a Kiss,” Los Angeles Times 22 February 2000, F1.
24. Stephen Tropiano, “More Than Just a Kiss,” AlterNet.Org, 3 June 2003, http://www.alternet.org/ story.html?StoryID = 16075 (accessed 9 June 2003); Rich, “Gay Kiss.”
25. Mike Wilke, “Commercial Closet: Gay Ads Promote MTV”, 9 November 1999, http://www.gfn.com/archives/story.phtml?sid = 3621 (accessed 16 July 2003); “Language of Love,” Commercial Closet (2000), http://www.commercialcloset.org/cgi-bin/iowa/portrayals.html?record = 474 (accessed 6 June 2003); Richard Tate, “MTV Takes a Stand,” Advocate 9 October 2001, p. 16; Rodger Streitmatter, “Real World Depicts the Real Gay World,” Gay Today (2002), http://gaytoday.com/garchive/entertain/052002en.htm (accessed 9 June 2003); Tropiano, “More Than Just a Kiss”; Lynn Elber, “Solid Crossover Appeal Bolsters ‘Queer As Folk,’” The Los Angeles Times, 4 January 2002, F38; “Christina Aguilera to be Honored at 14th Annual GLAAD Media Awards,” GLAAD, 28 February 2003, http://www.glaad.org/media/release_detail.php?id = 3283 (accessed 9 June 2003); Steve Freiss, “Cirque du So Gay,” Advocate, 11 November 2003, 49.
26. Rich, “Gay Kiss: Business as Usual,” 2.
27. Steven Seidman, Beyond the Closet: The Transformation of Gay and Lesbian Life (New York: Routledge, 2002), 17.
28. Richard Goldstein, “Get Back! The Gathering Storm Over Gay Rights,” The Village Voice 6–12 August 2003, http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0332/Goldstein.php (accessed 15 July 2004).
29. Walters, All the Rage, 15.
30. Jeffrey Epstein, “Gay Themes in Television,” The Hollywood Reporter 26 March 2004, http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr/television/feature_display.jsp?vnu_content_id = 1000473838 (accessed 15 July 2004).
31. Patrick Pacheco, “The Sound of Two Men Kissing Outlandish,” Los Angeles Times 30 July 1995, 24.
32. For an argument concerning the benefits of remaining “unmarked,” see Peggy Phelan, Unmarked (New York: Routledge, 1993).
33. Walters, All the Rage, 24.
34. John Fiske and John Hartley, Reading Television (New York: Methuen, 1978); Celeste Michelle Condit, “The Rhetorical Limits of Polysemy,” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 6 (1989): 112.
35. Helene A. Shugart, “Reinventing Privilege: The New (Gay) Man in Contemporary Popular Media,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 20 (March 2003): 67–91. For further discussion of heteronormative dilution, displacement, and distortion of queer mediated representation, see Kathleen Battles and Wendy Hilton-Morrow, “Gay Characters in Conventional Spaces: Will and Grace and the Situation Comedy Genre,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 19 (2002): 87–105; Robert Alan Brookey and Robert Westerfelhaus, “Pistols and Petticoats, Piety and Purity: To Wong Foo, the Queering of the American Monomyth, and the Marginalizing Discourse of Deification,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 18 (2001): 141–56; Bonnie J. Dow, “Ellen, television, and the Politics of Gay and Lesbian Visibility,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 18 (2001): 123–40; John M. Sloop, Disciplining Gender: Rhetorics of Sex Identity in Contemporary U.S. Culture (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2004).
36. Hemal Jhaveri, “Searching for a Real Gay Man,” PopPolitics 22 October 2003, http://www.poppolitics.com/articles/2003-10-22-gaytv.shtml (accessed 15 July 2004).
37. Eric O. Clarke, Virtuous Vice: Homoeroticism and the Public Sphere (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000), 29. Michael Wilke, executive director of Commercial Closet Association, similarly observes, “I call it the ‘Coors Effect.’ On top of everything, you have to consider the political concerns of the gay community, which historically has not only been ignored but a maligned group.” See Shelly Leachman, “Show Us the Love: Cable Company Ad's Same-Sex Smooch Reflects a Trend Among Businesses Chasing the Pink Buck,” Frontiers Newsmagazine 19 July 2004, http://www.frontiersnewsmagazine.com/page.cfm?typeofsite = article§ion = 4&id = 1149§ionid = 4 (accessed 30 July 2004).
38. Clarke, Virtuous Vice, 31.
39. Clarke, Virtuous Vice, 49.
40. Clarke, Virtuous Vice, 59.
41. A. William Merrell, vice-president on the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, quoted in Bernard Weinraub and Jim Rutenberg, “Gay-Themed TV Gains a Wider Audience,” New York Times 29 July 2003, A1.
42. Clarke, Virtuous Vice, 59.
43. Rosen, “The Kiss That Isn't Just a Kiss,” 28.
44. Terry McDermott, “All Smiles After the Kiss Commotion,” The Los Angeles Times 24 August 2000, B1; Monte Whaley, “Protesters Lock Lips at Boulder Kiss-In,” The Denver Post 24 May 2001, A1.
45. We emphasize that any imprimatur currently bestowed upon a kiss between women constitutes a patriarchal, sexist gesture that has nothing to do with the pleasure and desire they might experience. Such “tolerance” is, in this manifestation, perfectly compatible with homophobia and should not be misperceived as a sign of the deterioration of heteronormativity or embrace of queerness. Controversy surrounding an Atlanta radio station's recent billboard advertisement depicting this kiss offers good evidence of our claim. See Sean Westmoreland, “From the Hub to Hollywood; Britney–Madonna Kiss Rocks VMA,” The Boston Herald 29 April 2003, 15; Jeanette Walls, “Atlanta Just Says No to ‘The Kiss,’” MSNBC.Com 20 October 2003, http://www.msnbc.com/news/970601.asp?0cv = CB20 (accessed 15 July 2004).
46. Lynn Smith, “More Than Just a Kiss,” The Los Angeles Times 10 November 2002, E1.
47. For those unfamiliar with the term kairos, which refers to rhetorical—i.e., situationally contingent as well as strategically opportune and urgent—time and timing, see Phillip Sipiora and James S. Baumlin, ed., Rhetoric and Kairos: Essays in History, Theory, and Praxis (Albany: SUNY Press, 2002).
48. Here, we extrapolate from arguments of Berlant and Warner. They suggest the importance of having geographic spaces—neighborhoods—with such a visible queer presence that a “critical mass” develops, hence giving the neighborhood a viable force as an economic and voting bloc. We are arguing that a “representational critical mass” of mediated scenes of man-on-man kissing would help provide similar argumentative force. Berlant and Warner, “Sex in Public,” 326. For earlier discussion of this issue, see Scott Tucker, “Our Right to the World: Beyond the Right to Privacy,” Body Politic (July/August 1982) in The Columbia Reader on Lesbians & Gay Men in Media, Society, & Politics, ed. Larry Gross & James D. Woods (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 575–83.
49. Alfred P. Kielwasser and Michelle A. Wolf, “Mainstream Television, Adolescent Homosexuality, and Significant Silence,” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 9 (1992): 350–73.
50. Pat Califia, Public Sex: The Culture of Radical Sex, 2nd ed. (San Francisco: Cleis Press, 2000), 224.
51. William L. Leap, ed., Public Sex/Gay Space (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999).
52. Ira Tattelman, “Speaking to the Gay Bathhouse: Communicating in Sexually Charged Spaces,” in Public Sex/Gay Space, ed. William L. Leap (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 73.
53. Califia, Public Sex, 7.
54. Richard Meyer, “This is to Enrage You: Gran Fury and the Graphics of AIDS Activism,” But is it Art? The Spirit of Art as Activism, ed. Nina Felshin (Seattle: Bay Press, 1995): 51–83. For other discussions of “Kissing Doesn't Kill,” see Paul Nonnekes, “Kiss-In at the Heterosexual Bar as Dialectical Image,” Dianoia (Spring 1992), 76–78; Kevin Michael Deluca, “Unruly Arguments: The Body Rhetoric of Earth First!, ACT UP, and Queer Nation,” Argumentation and Advocacy (1999): 9–21.
55. Bruni, “Culture Stays Screen-Shy,” 328.
56. Meyer, “This Is to Enrage You,” 66–69; Douglas Crimp and Adam Rolston, AIDS Demo Graphics (Seattle: Bay Press, 1990), 53–69.
57. Meyer, “This Is to Enrage You,” 68.
58. Crimp and Rolston, AIDS Demo Graphics, 55. Insofar as we focus broadly on representation of queer kissing, the distinction between the image “Read My Lips” and a local, performative spectacle of the kiss-in is negligible here. However, we would argue for the necessity of discursive and visual, ideographic and performative, national and local, circulation of the queer kiss.
59. DeLuca, “Unruly Arguments,” 18.
60. Lauren Berlant and Elizabeth Freeman, “Queer Nationality,” in Fear of a Queer Planet: Queer Politics and Social Theory, ed. Michael Warner (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1993), 195.
61. Berlant and Freeman, “Queer Nationality,” 195.
62. Berlant and Warner, “Sex in Public,” 326.
63. Weinraub and Rutenberg, “Gay-Themed TV,” A1; Dennis Hensley, “Messiah Complex,” The Advocate 16 September 2003, 50. Queer as Folk in Britain offers a worthy model of the queer world-making project we describe. See Precious Williams, “MUM, I'VE SOMETHING TO TELL YOU … ” The Independent 23 January 2000, 4; Libby Brooks, “Without Prejudice,” The Guardian 12 December 2003, 2. Whatever its shortcomings, the American version also fuses the cultural and political in largely unadulterated representation of non-normative sexuality. A key difference, of course, is that unlike with the British version, one must afford Showtime to encounter its man-on-man kissing. We also consider MTV noteworthy in this regard, invaluable in constituting queerness for a generation with its unflinching depictions of sexuality generally and kissing specifically. At the same time, we see it as reaching a limited audience, necessary but insufficient to achieve queer world making in its fullest sense.
64. Phillip Brian Harper, Private Affairs: Critical Ventures in the Culture of Social Relations (New York: New York University Press, 1999), 22.
65. Goran Therborn, What Does the Ruling Class Do When It Rules? (London: Verso, 1978), 174. We could of course discuss cultural discipline from a variety of perspectives. Utilizing the works of Michel Foucault or Judith Butler, for example, would have helped us provide a similar reading.
66. “Debate Over Gay Pride Event, Irvine Ordiance,” Los Angeles Times 28 May 1989, A11.
67. “Debate” A11.
68. Lou Gelfand, “For Some, Story on TV Kissing Crossed the Line,” Star Tribune 16 February 2003, 5A.
69. David Olson, “Read Their Lips,” The Village Voice 24 July 1990, 14.
70. We want to highlight that amfAR wanted the text removed because, as worded, it would hurt their corporate sponsorship. Hence, this very request was a form of “financial discipline.” The text read: “Corporate Greed, Government Inaction, and Public Indifference Make AIDS a Political Crisis.” Meyer, “This Is to Enrage You,” 52–53.
71. Meyer, “This Is to Enrage You,” 57.
72. Stuart, “No Tongues, Please,” 90.
73. Gross, Up From Visibility, 91. Economic pressures have long worked against representations of same-sex kisses on television. CBS did not show a gay couple kissing at their wedding ceremony on Northern Exposure due to such pressures. HBO cut a kissing scene between Ian McKellan and B. D. Wong in And the Band Played On. McKellan was told by an executive that “he personally had no problem with the kiss, but it was his responsibility to see to it that viewers … not be grossed out.” Craig Zadan has noted that “But today, you can't make a drama on ABC, NBC (or) CBS with a story about a gay character in a TV movie—they won't buy them.” “Northern Exposure to Air a Wedding Without a Kiss,” GLAAD, 29 April 1994, http://www.glaad.org/media/archive_detail.php?id = 269& (accessed 9 June 2003). Gross, Up From Visibility, 192; Epstein, “Gay Themes in Television.”
74. “Newspaper Refuses to Run Ad of Two Men Kissing,” The Advocate 29 June 2004, http://www.advocate.com/new_news.asp?id = 12930&sd = 06/29/04 (accessed 15 July 2004).
75. Katherine Sender, “Sex Sells: Sex, Class, and Taste in Commercial Gay and Lesbian Media” GLQ 9.3 (2003): 355. Sender's notion of the “charmed circle” of sex is derived from Rubin: “According to this system, sexuality is ‘good,’ ‘normal,’ and ‘natural’ should ideally be heterosexual, marital, monogamous, reproductive, and non-commercial. It should be coupled, relational, within the same generation, and occur at home. It should not involve pornography, fetish objects, sex toys of any sort, or roles other than male or female. Any sex that violates these rules is ‘bad,’ ‘abnormal,’ or ‘unnatural.’” Gayle Rubin, “Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality,” in The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader, ed. Henry Abelove, Michèle Aina Barale, and David M. Halperin (New York: Routledge, 1993), 13–14.
76. Wilke and Applebaum, “Peering Out of the Closet.”
77. Sender concludes, “The dominant voices of gay and lesbian media argue that the fundamental goals of the gay rights movement should be fought within Rubin's charmed circle. … Gay men and lesbians stepping outside that circle into the realm of dangerous, commercial, sleazy sexuality—whether in magazines, in stores, in theaters, or on the streets—are on their own, since the legitimate goals and principles of gay communities lie elsewhere.” Sender, “Sex Sells,” 359.
78. Jeffrey Epstein, “Review of Murder By Numbers,” Out, http://www.out.com/filmreviews2.asp?ID = 1192 (accessed 15 July 2004).
79. Peter Gehrke, “Physical Attraction,” OUT, September 2002, 83.
80. Lynn Smith, “More Than Just a Kiss,” E1.
81. Steve Hochman, “Peppers’ Peck Stirs Bushels of Controversy,” Los Angeles Times 7 September 1995, A1.
82. Hochman, “Peppers’ Peck,” A1.
83. Will O'Bryan, “The Plane Truth: Airlines Take Note of a Community,” The Washington Blade 31 (2000): 59–60.
84. Barbara Dozetos, “Teacher Sues Over Censorship of Gay Image,” PlanetOut.Com 10 July 2001, http://www.planetout.com/news/article.html?2001/07/10/3 (accessed 16 September 2003).
85. As in each episode during the first season, an opening death scene shapes a theme or plot line. Some are absurd, this one wrenching: twenty-something boyfriends stand at a Los Angeles ATM at night, playfully bantering; one boy clasps his arms around Marcus Foster's waist, sweetly kissing his neck. Loud music announces the arrival of car, out of which two similarly aged men leap and aggressively approach the couple. One of the men yells, “What the fuck is that shit?” The other screams, “Do you think you can do that kind of offensive shit like that in public?” Fearful apologies ensue, as does an attempt by the gay couple to escape the beating that has begun. Marcus Foster stumbles, falls, and is beaten to death in an empty lot. Throughout this and the following episode, Foster's violent death haunts (bodily, in some scenes) his parents and especially protagonist David, for whom the very legitimacy of his sexuality is shaken to its core. “A Private Life” (Episode 12, 2001), Six Feet Under, http://www.hbo.com/sixfeetunder/episode/season1/sea1_eps12.shtml (accessed 15 July 2004).
86. The caption under the photograph explained the context.
87. M. Eliza Harris, “Letter to the Editor,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch 7 June 2000, B6.
88. Gene Carton, “Letter to the Editor,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch 7 June 2000, B6.
89. Frank Baxendale, “Letter to the Editor,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch 7 June 2000, B6.
90. Anthony Galuska, “Letter to the Editor,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch 10 June 2000, B5.
91. Bob Hawkins, “Letter to the Editor,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch 7 June 2000, B6.
92. Galuska, “Letter to the Editor,” B5.
93. Thomas V. Wright, “Letter to the Editor,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch 7 June 2000, B5.
94. Hawkins, “Letter to the Editor,” B6.
95. Cited in Carolyn Kingcade, “The Complete Picture Sometimes Can Be More Than Readers Want,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 11 June 2000, B4.
96. See, for example, Carole Blair, “Reflections on Criticism and Bodies: Parables from Public Places,” Western Journal of Communication 65 (2001): 271–94; Gerard A. Hauser, “Body Rhetoric: Conflicted Reporting of Bodies in Pain,” in Deliberation, Democracy, and the Media, ed. Simone Chambers and Anne Costain (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000), 135–153; Raymie E. McKerrow, “Corporeality and Cultural Rhetoric: A Site for Rhetoric's Future,” Southern Communication Journal 63 (1998): 315–29; Jack Selzer and Sharon Crowley, ed., Rhetorical Bodies (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1999).
97. Hauser, “Body Rhetoric,” 135.
98. Hauser, “Body Rhetoric,” 135.
99. Berlant and Freeman, “Queer Nationality,” 205.
100. Berlant and Warner, “Sex in Public,” 325.
101. Berlant and Warner, “Sex in Public,” 326.
102. Michel Foucault, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” in The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow (New York: Pantheon, 1984), 88.