Tinker Belles and Evil Queens: The Walt Disney Company From the Inside Out (42 page)

As the above quotes point out, the discourse of late capitalism affects conservative Christians just as strongly as it addresses homosexuals. Even those who voted for the measure seemed aware that the boycott would be impossible, due to both the extensiveness of Disney’s E P I L O G U E

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holdings by 1997 and the commercial strength that Disney still holds over family pocketbooks.13 This is no more apparent than when boycott supporter Marie Caulkins was interviewed by the
Los Angeles Times
just as the vote was being taken in Dallas. Caulkins stated, “I’m pleased they took a stand and sent a message. I have boycotted Disney’s movies,” while standing at a Disney Store in Northridge, California to buy a video copy of
Sleeping Beauty.
14 Caulkins explained “I support the things I like,” not recognizing that the Walt Disney Company still profits whether she’s buying a video of a film made during Walt’s lifetime or of a film made during Eisner’s tenure. Even the American Family Association, which had encouraged the Southern Baptist Convention to take up the boycott, seemed to not notice this contradiction, as evidenced by its approval of Disney’s
Toy Story.
As if to stress the economic bottom line that has made the company more “gay-friendly,” Disney’s stock actually went up 87 cents after the announcement of the boycott.

The boycotters were cheered by the cancellation of
Ellen,
and the 1998 announcement by Odyssey Adventures that its annual “Gay Night” at Disneyland had been canceled might also have seemed a sign of changing attitudes at the studio. On the other hand, the release of the animated feature
Mulan
in 1998 seemed to revel in confounding gender conventions, as it told the legend of a young Chinese woman who disguised herself as a man to fight in a medieval war. The Walt Disney Company has officially refused to alter either its EEO policy or its domestic-partner benefits plan. In November of 1997, Michael Eisner said in a
60 Minutes
interview that the boycott “hasn’t had a financial effect.”

The following April, Eisner was on
Today
to promote the opening of Walt Disney World’s new Animal Kingdom and asserted that Disney’s profits “have been going up substantially.”

Criticism of the boycott often pointed out the seeming lack of Christian understanding by the Southern Baptists. “By criticizing Disney for extending health benefits to same-sex partners,” wrote one man in a letter to
USA Today,
“the Southern Baptists are promoting a value that is hardly Christian—intolerance.”15 Another wrote, “Baptists say such

[domestic-partner] coverage encourages ‘immoral’ gay relationships, but denying benefits wouldn’t result in fewer gay couples. The only result would be more American citizens without access to health-care protection. I see no morality in that.”16 As pointed as these criticisms may be, evidence supports the view taken by Ann G. Sjoredsma, editorial columnist for
The Virginian-Pilot,
who wrote that Disney’s morality 224

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had nothing to do with the company’s actions: “It has no interest in gay lifestyles, much less gay rights. . . . Disney doesn’t give a Mighty Duck about anything but the almighty buck.”17

With this in mind, it may seem ironic that, by and large, the gay and lesbian community (and its supporters) were encouraged to take action against the boycott using precisely the same weapon—the pocketbook.

In a number of instances, non-straight individuals were told to
spend
in order to show their support for Disney. In 1998, Operation Rescue (ostensibly an anti-abortion group) planned to protest outside Walt Disney World during that summer’s annual Lesbian/Gay Weekend at the park.

During the same period, the American Family Association announced plans to picket Disney Stores around the country. In response to this, a counter-event was organized under the title “Stand Our Ground.”

Alana Hommel, the organizer of the project, explained that, “On June 6

our participants will be making purchases in the Disney Stores using $2.00 bills or by writing SOG on checks or credit slips.” In the same announcement, she declared that “Our goal is to prove to corporate America that a boycott by the Religious Right can be overcome.”18

Consequently, early June showed concerted efforts by many individuals consuming their way to freedom and equality. At the Disney World complex, estimated thousands of non-straight people arrived throughout the weekend. In order to fully participate in the Lesbian/Gay Weekend, one had to book through a specific travel arranger and pay for certain special events and a red T-shirt proclaiming participation in the event. One participant reported in the gay ’zine
4Front,

“Unofficially, Mannequins [one of several nightclubs at Pleasure Island]

is gay every Thursday, although on this particular Thursday, I can’t imagine how things could have been any more official. . . . [Another]

party . . . at Disney/MGM, featured a huge dance floor, replete with go-go boys, in front of the Mann’s Chinese replica.”19

Meanwhile, Alana Hommel reported that “Disney Stores in every state had Stand Our Ground participants. There were participants from every state and many countries overseas. . . . Almost every Disney Store in the country received $2.00 bills, payments marked SOG, or supportive phone calls. Some stores had one or two supporters while others were overwhelmed.” In her press release, Hommel further sees the success of the action on the estimated amount spent by “Stand Our Ground” supporters: “From those that reported dollar amounts spent, the average was $150.”20 Even the author of the article on the Les-E P I L O G U E

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bian/Gay Weekend continually returns to the economic base of the event. In describing the Operation Rescue protests, the reporter mentions an unsuccessful proposal to chart a private airplane to circle the park with a banner reading “Jesus saves.” He then jokes that “maybe he has a coupon”!21

Such tactics as the Lesbian/Gay Weekend at Disney World and the

“Stand Our Ground” action at the Disney Stores may help to stem the tide of the Southern Baptists’ boycott. With that in mind, such events have their purpose. Yet, as I have discussed in the second half of this book, such actions implicitly acquiesce to capitalist discourse and its preferred regulation of how sexualities are conceived and defined. The weekends at Disney World, for example, are specifically labeled “Lesbian/Gay,” thus narrowing the diversity of non-straight identities and desires. Granted, the businesses involved in the event (travel agencies, hotels, etc.) most likely wanted a quick easy name for the event—and

“Lesbian/Gay/Bi/Transgender/Queer Weekend” just wouldn’t fit onto a T-shirt. Yet, this excuse only underlines the point that the marketing of the event determined a less inclusive title. “Stand Our Ground” seems like a textbook example of minority groups being encouraged to consume rather than engage in overt political action. In a reworking of the Reagan era trickle-down theory, rights for homosexuals (and other non-straight individuals) will be furthered if Disney stays economically flush—so one should conceivably buy a knick-knack at a Disney Store instead of working to ban employment discrimination against non-straights or to get hate crime legislation passed. In other words, the latest skirmish over Disney has not radically altered the terms of the relationship between Disney and lesbian/gay culture. By seeing economic support as political action, homosexual consumers seem to literally “buy into” a capitalist conception of being “gay” or

“lesbian.”

Seemingly in reaction to restrictions placed on individuals by the strict categories of “gay” and “lesbian,” the late 1990s have seen the rise of the term “post-gay.” According to James Collard, who became editor-in-chief of
Out
in 1998, the term was “coined by gay British journalist and activist Paul Burston in 1994.”22 Journalist Jonathan Van Meter seems to have brought the concept to the United States in an article for
Esquire,
titled “The Post-Gay Man.”23 So far, “post-gay” seems to mean slightly different things to different people. Some see the term as a critique of the marketing of “gayness,” and that being “post-gay” means 226

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moving beyond the white, middle-class, young buffed male image promoted by gay target marketing (as described in chapter 5).24 Others seem to use the term to critique radical gay activism. Collard writes that

“Post-gay is . . . a critique of gay politics . . . by gay people, for gay people. . . . There’s a pressure to conform within gay-activist politics, one that ultimately weakens its fighting strength by excluding the many gay people who no longer see their lives solely in terms of struggle.”25

Under this definition, “post-gay” is a critique not of capitalist discourse’s regulation of homosexual identity but of
activist
discourse’s regulation.

Because of the amorphous meaning of the term, it potentially speaks to both radical progressive thinkers and to Log Cabin Republicans alike. Elise Harris notes that the concept “draws me, a lefty dyke, into the same orbit as, say, an apolitical guy who feels there’s nothing to fight for merely to justify the sad fact that he’s never fought for anything but a Prada sweater at a Barneys warehouse sale.”26 In answer to its critique (whether of capitalism or of activism), “post-gay” advocates propose a shift away from an emphasis on sexual identity and suggest that one’s sexual orientation is only a part of one’s identity, and possibly not the most important part. Labeling one’s self as “gay” is seen as limiting and confining, and “post-gay” individuals want to move on (whether they are dykes with boyfriends or homosexual men living a quiet life in the suburbs).

“Post-gay” takes a number of concepts from the early ’90s use of the term “queer”—looking at sexuality in its diversity and fluidity. Van Meter even seems to equate the two terms. At the end of his
Esquire
article, he writes of his admiration of basketball star and cross-dresser Dennis Rodman. While plainly holding up Rodman as a model of “the Post-Gay Man,” the last sentence of the article refers to Rodman as

“queer,” i.e., outside of the rigid parameters of either “heterosexual” or

“homosexual.”27 In acknowledging that non-straight individuals negotiate their sexual identity in concert with their racial/ethnic, gender and class identities, “post-gay” further draws connections with “queer theory.”

Yet, “post-gay” diverges from “queer” in its often apolitical attitude. Succinctly, Elise Harris writes that “Post-gay is less a movement than a mood.” As the above quote from Collard mentions, many “post-gay” adherents feel that the struggle for acceptance and equality is over for them. The idea of “post-gay” for them means an end to political E P I L O G U E

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protest, because the battle has been won. Thinking that non-straight sexualities have won general acceptance seems willfully blind when the U.S. Congress has passed a “Defense of Marriage” Act, designed to dis-allow same-sex marriages, signed by a President who is supposedly

“gay-friendly”; when full page ads in major U.S. newspapers announce that being homosexual is a disease that can be cured; and when the Southern Baptists are boycotting Disney for extending domestic-partner benefits. Harris points out that “Post-gay critics are loath to admit our fairly abject political position. . . . Yes, many of us are bored of being angry and having to react to homophobia. But being exhausted doesn’t make it go away.”28 Similarly, Michelangelo Signorile advises that “As long as the religious Right is breathing down our necks, we don’t have the luxury of being post-gay.”29

Whereas “queer” acknowledged the diversity of sexual desire in order to bond individuals together against a shared oppression, “post-gay” seems to acknowledge the diversity only to propose that there is

“no” oppression. The previous pages have conscientiously critiqued the limitations of contemporary concepts of “gay” and “lesbian.” But announcing that suddenly one is “post-gay” is a simplistic solution to a complex and heavily imbricated problem. Even if homosexual individuals were able to somehow fully divest themselves from the discourses about sexuality that surround them (a highly unlikely possibility), those discourses would still control and regulate the conceptions of the rest of Western society. You may consider yourself “post-gay”; the gang with the baseball bats coming after you probably will not. Hate crimes against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people increased nationally by 2 percent in 1997. In high schools and colleges, violence against gays and lesbian youth increased 34 percent, according to the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs. A 1998 University of Washington study wrote that one in ten community college students admitted to committing hate crimes against homosexuals.30

Underlining that a “post-gay” society is yet to exist is the tragic death of Matthew Shepard. A twenty-one-year-old University of Wyoming student, Shepard was savagely beaten with a pistol butt after being robbed, tied to a fence outside of Laramie and left to die (which he did a few days after being found by a bicyclist who at first thought Shepard was a scarecrow). The father of one of the men charged with the murder said “his son told him he committed the crime because he was embarrassed when Shepard flirted with him in front of his 228

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friends.”31 “Queer” acknowledges the violence and discrimination practiced against any and all non-straight individuals; “post-gay”

seems to ignore that such hatred is still prevalent.

Reading Disney through a queer perspective similarly acknowledges the various factors involved in regulating and controlling societal conceptions of sexuality. In surveying the annual Lesbian/Gay Weekend at Walt Disney World, for example, queer theory analyzes how economic concerns attempt to place constraints on how sexual identity is expressed. Yet, queer theory also creates a space to notice the wealth and diversity of sexual desires—and to see how numerous and interlacing discourses often fail to fully manage and encircle how people feel in their day-to-day lives. As Judith Butler points out, the overlap, contradictions and complications of these multiple discourses create spaces for individuals to find loopholes in the hegemonic conceptions of sexual identity. Further, de Certeau and his adherents point out that concrete material individuals do not always fully accept the rules and regulations handed down to them from official institutions.