Rocking the ClosetPub Date : 2019-10-01DOI: 10.5622/illinois/9780252042805.003.0006
Vincent L. Stephens
{"title":"Building an Empire of Illusion","authors":"Vincent L. Stephens","doi":"10.5622/illinois/9780252042805.003.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5622/illinois/9780252042805.003.0006","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter explores Liberace’s ability to attract audiences through a clever and spectacular masculinity that distracted them from his sexuality. Tracing his evolution into an international performer, it outlines his ability to create musical and visual spectacles and to carefully manage his image. As he became a multimedia celebrity, critics and tabloids maligned his queer masculinity. Through self-neutering and counterdomesticating, he reframed himself as an exemplar of normalcy. These tools helped him triumph through during a 1959 libel suit that threatened to expose his sexuality. He then spectacularized his image exhibiting an unmarked transvestism that endeared him even more. During his final years, when a former lover attempted to expose him and he was dying of HIV/AIDS, he maintained a conspiracy of blindness with his audience.","PeriodicalId":443090,"journal":{"name":"Rocking the Closet","volume":"19 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121151765","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Rocking the ClosetPub Date : 2019-10-01DOI: 10.5622/illinois/9780252042805.003.0002
Vincent L. Stephens
{"title":"Visibly Hidden","authors":"Vincent L. Stephens","doi":"10.5622/illinois/9780252042805.003.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5622/illinois/9780252042805.003.0002","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter illuminates how Johnnie Ray, Little Richard, Johnny Mathis, and Liberace achieved mainstream commercial success by discussing the dynamic gender norms of the postwar era. Drawing on Wini Breines, the chapter frames the era as one of “disorientation”--notably, the outgrowth of gender conformity was pervasive alienation. These tensions generated spaces of gender rebellion that were stigmatized in mainstream media exposés and publicized simultaneously. This visibility reflected a public interest in deviance and helped gay men and lesbians develop an awareness of a community that catalyzed the Homophile and Gay Liberation movements. Parallel to these political movements was a subcultural movement among queer artists in film, literature, and popular music that is discernibly queer yet trafficked in sexual ambiguity at the time.","PeriodicalId":443090,"journal":{"name":"Rocking the Closet","volume":"163 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115580113","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Rocking the ClosetPub Date : 2019-10-01DOI: 10.5622/illinois/9780252042805.003.0003
Vincent L. Stephens
{"title":"A Freak Deferred","authors":"Vincent L. Stephens","doi":"10.5622/illinois/9780252042805.003.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5622/illinois/9780252042805.003.0003","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter argues that the deaf, bisexual, and racially progressive white crooner Johnnie Ray was successful in the early 1950s because his “freak” persona endeared him to audiences fascinated by his queer masculinity. Ray was one of the first white singers to incorporate black R&B phrasing into his style. Rather than capitalizing on this and transitioning successfully into rock and roll, he retreated by recording blander pop material and consciously “self-domesticating” his image. Though tabloids coyly spread rumors regarding his sexuality and focused on his arrests for public sex and disorderly conduct, these did not deter his audiences. Instead, his struggle with his sexuality, inability to modernize his sound, and retreat toward blandness stifled the unique qualities that made him interesting initially.","PeriodicalId":443090,"journal":{"name":"Rocking the Closet","volume":"74 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114844206","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Rocking the ClosetPub Date : 2019-10-01DOI: 10.5622/illinois/9780252042805.003.0004
Vincent L. Stephens
{"title":"Spectacular Vacillations","authors":"Vincent L. Stephens","doi":"10.5622/illinois/9780252042805.003.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5622/illinois/9780252042805.003.0004","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter defines Little Richard as a strategic performer who employed multiple queering tools during different phases of his career to adapt to social expectations. His initial persona was resonant enough to adhere to expectations of “race men” performers of the 1950s, yet he stood apart. As he gained fame, he emphasized spectacle to avoid appearing sexually threatening to whites. After his initial success, he briefly retreated to religion and marriage. He followed this phase with an even more flamboyance from the mid-1960s to the late 1970s, becoming a popular draw and TV personality. By the early 1980s, he disavowed his past and embraced religiosity. Queer signifiers endured in his persona throughout these phases; he gradually integrated spirituality with queerness in the mid-1980s onward.","PeriodicalId":443090,"journal":{"name":"Rocking the Closet","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124390748","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Fine and Dandy:","authors":"Kay Swift, P. James","doi":"10.5406/j.ctvswx82r.9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/j.ctvswx82r.9","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":443090,"journal":{"name":"Rocking the Closet","volume":"62 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-04-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130667735","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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