In this edition of Lattes with Ladies we are celebrating Pride with the effervescent Jessica Needham! Jess shares her thoughts on queer books versus queering books and her fascinating research into queer media studies.
HPL: First and foremost, what are you reading right now?
JN: Ooh, what am I reading right now? At the moment, I am reading-slash-listening to Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner. I’m listening to the audio book though, which Neil Gaiman produced, and actually it’s Ellen Kushner who is the one reading it. And I kinda wanted to pick out queer books, so in this one the main character is, I believe, bisexual but has a boyfriend in it which is great. Also, I’m not reading it right now but I just, just finished it: The House in the Cerulean Sea and that’s by T. J. Klune. Like the balm on my quarantine heart — it’s so sweet! It’s about found family. It’s two middle aged men falling in love. I read T. J. Klune’s other stuff, and one of the works he’s better known for is called Wolfsong, and it’s just like, it’s some good trashy gay stuff. So it was really nice to see him do a proper Tor-approved, “oh now it’s literature, now it’s not trash,” book. I just finished reading that one and very much recommend it.
HPL: For the people in the back, what exactly are “queer books”?
JN: Oh, I’m so glad you asked! So I think there are kinda two ways to look at it; probably more. And let me preface, I think anything with queer theory, queer media it is something entagled with a community of lived experiences so people’s definitions of things are always going to be different and varied and me saying it’s one way, it doesn’t mean it’s 100% the rule of law. It’s interesting because there’s two ways of thinking about it: it’s stuff that is done by a queer author. The one that I think of is–actually another book that I am reading right now but didn’t include for that very reason–is by V.E. Schwab, it’s called Vicious. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of it. So V. E. Schwab is as far as I know, a lesbian. This book is not queer. It has a bunch of straight characters and one may be asexual in the book that comes after but I’m not there yet. And when I read that, knowing that the author is queer and knowing that that colours and informs what they write, does that make it a queer book? Or, the other way is: is it queer characters? Which I think is the most recognizable way of saying that something is queer. So in that case you have books where it’s whether they’re trans or pan or ace or any others within the alphabet soup of letters. If you have people who are represented that way in a book, and overtly so, that could also be a queer book.
But I think one of the reasons it is difficult to define is: being out and having characters that are explicitly gay, explicitly lesbians that is not something that we have had traditionally. It’s kinda something that has happened more recently. Not to get too into academics but then we get things like subtext. Is it a queer book if there’s subtext? Like is it?
For example, if I’m reading Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray that one it’s pretty, more explicitly queer, but still when there is subtext in something can you consider that as a queer work? Maybe it’s the audience–if there is a big queer following maybe that makes it queer? I think in summary there’s a lot of ways you can define a queer story. For the ones that I’m talking about I stuck mostly to ones that had someone who is queer in it, just because it’s 2020 and at this point we have enough that are explicit that I don’t need to pull from subtext to make a point.
HPL: You mean we don’t need to have an argument about whether or not the Babadook is gay? Instead, just be straight up, here’s a list of a bunch of books?
JN: Oh my god! Ok, this is off topic but just real quick though but my friend sent me a link to a tweet that said: “Joe Biden is a Femme Queer Icon.” I was like, “No, no, no. See, I draw the line. I draw the line. I’m sorry, no.” I remember even in one of my queer [media] classes we talked about “queering” something versus something being queer. And one of the things was straight couples that don’t have children, it’s queering the norm but that’s not queer as an identifier. Lots of nuance and lots of stuff could fall under “queer”.
HPL: Let’s get back to a little bit more about you. What was the story or the book that led you to this career dedicated to English lit and media studies?
JN: Mine is not a fun answer but it is the most honest answer. It was in Grade 9, and we read The Chrysalids. It wasn’t so much about the book. I couldn’t give a shit about the book. I really couldn’t. But it was the fact that our teacher at the time ended up setting up the class in a way that we were all competing against each other. And at the end of it whoever had the most points from these trivia games whatever activities we were doing. I don’t remember if it was worth a 10% add on to your final or he would bump your grade up 5% at the end, something ridiculous like that. I have never combed over a book more than I did The Chrysalids. For some reason, I have forgotten every single piece of it now, but at the time I was sitting at home going over it like, ‘This passage is an example of such and such thing’ and, ‘I’m going to write down all about the characters so I’m ready going in.’ And our team fucking annihilated everyone else because I would say, “Um, actually on page 152…” I was so dedicated to it! I think after that I realized it’s actually really interesting and exciting when you’re able to pick something apart. And look at more than just “I like this” but being able to articulate why I like this, why don’t I like it and that was something that carried me through high school, it carried me through university into my Master’s. I write for a living now and part of that is I just like getting my little raccoon hands into writing and prying it apart.
HPL: Like a raccoon digging through the trash?
JN: Precisely.
HPL: There could not be a more beautiful metaphor to describe an English major.
JN: Just a dirty raccoon, pilfering.
HPL: Of course, we have to talk about The Femspec Game of Thrones piece. But while you were doing your Master’s at Wilfrid Laurier you did a lovely paper on queerbaiting in video games as well. Comparing books to other media, what is your personal favourite?
JN: This is where I am going to ramble. I definitely have a preference, and despite me writing about video games, that preference is TV. That has always been my favourite, and I think that comes down to the blighted show that is BBC’s Sherlock. Stuff before that as well but I think that was when I started to understand what queerbaiting was, and it was in university. It was a thread that obviously followed me into my Master’s as well. It’s this idea that when you have not only text but also a visual mode that you’re working with there’s so much more queer stuff that can start to happen. There’s a lot more that can be played with if you have dialogue saying one thing but the visual saying another.
You can have characters going through a really amazing, empowering story arc but if they’re having that arc while their tits are out for the sake of the audience, it’s not as empowering. It’s the words versus what you’re showing; there can be a disconnect between them.
Jessica Needham
That’s something I talked about even in the Game of Thrones article. In that case, it was the idea that you can have characters going through a really amazing, empowering story arc but if they’re having that arc while their tits are out for the sake of the audience, it’s not as empowering. It’s the words versus what you’re showing; there can be a disconnect between them. I think there is just a lot more room to play with that in a visual medium. For me, TV shows, even more than movies, are really interesting to me because you are having this story that is being told over years! With streaming that’s kind of changing, but this idea that you have a show that would come out every week or so and in between that time, between the episodes, you are able to pick apart the scenes, fandoms are able to grow and to speculate. Let’s say I watched an episode of Supernatural—I hate to admit that I ever watched it and I hate to admit that I was a part of its fandom.
HPL: We were all young once, Jess.
JN: Oh god, I know! But I would watch an episode that had just come out and for the whole week I could spend time picking it apart, reading the meta-analysis. In between seasons, you’re consuming what are called para-texts, which is one of the things I talk about in my thesis. Which are all of the surrounding things, the interviews with people, the commercials, a lot of stuff that goes into making a TV show that can be included in a queer reading and, again, it can span years. So there’s just so much more in it to pick a part which is really exciting for me.
Going off of that, about video games what interests me and why I ended up doing that. This is one of my favourite pieces of media, period: I finished the Life is Strange game and there are so many parts of that game that are really great and really frustrating to me as a queer person. In the first game, spoilers, but you basically get a kiss if you decide to kill off the queer character. You don’t really get that if you decide, “Actually, I want them to live. We spent this whole time trying to keep her alive. I don’t really want her to die.” And what you get is kind of like a, “Ok cool, I guess we’ll just be friends and we’ll drive off together.” While the other [ending] is: “I love you! I wanna make out!” It’s just upsetting and very strange. The game that came afterward was also very queer.
Unlike TV shows, where you’re trying to have a conversation with a person, especially through social media, asking them, “Please make these characters queer!” It’s like shouting into the void hoping someone hears you. With video games, there’s a very active role in what you’re doing, especially in video games that have choices. And when you have video games that are allowing you to make certain choices but not others and are allowing you to shape your own queer narratives, I think it feels almost more painful when it doesn’t live up to [expectations]. Because you feel like, “Man, this is my own story. I got to make this.”
HPL: Are you noticing any trends in which types of media are producing more queer content than the others?
JN: Well, the definition of queer content is—who knows? But I can tell you who is not doing it: movies. I think that comes down to the way that movies are produced. You have millions of dollars going into this. You are hoping and praying that in a dying industry where people are streaming they are going to go see this movie. You have Disney and all these other companies that are producing movies right now are not going to be taking risks. So because of that it kinda makes sense that they say, “You know what? I invested how much money in Avengers? I’m not going to put a gay in there otherwise it might not do well in certain areas and I might not make back my investment.” Which is shitty, and why movies, in particular, have this interesting trend that has emerged which is… I mean I’m pulling from Avengers a lot because I was just watching it. Valkyrie’s character, for example, they’re changing it now, Taika Waititi, god bless him, is changing it in the new Thor. But before that, it was Tessa Thompson going into interviews saying, “Yeah, Valkyrie is totally bi!” I think there was another one in the franchise that also swore up and down it was a gay character but you don’t see it in the actual movie, so it’s again that paratext of: “Yeah, it’s queer. Don’t worry, we got you! Watch the movie. But also we don’t want to put it in because we don’t want to scare off the markets.”
I think there’s been a big change in specifically kids media, in cartoons. Obviously to show more representation and I think that is particularly because there are a lot more queer artists now in that space because it is an “allowed” space that queer people can go because it’s “soft.” Like, “Kids’ media! Yeah, you can go over there!” Now you see Princess Bubblegum and Marceline from Adventure Time, The Legend of Korra, She-Ra. I find that it’s really interesting too because it’s almost always women. I think that comes down to the fact that as a culture we are still really uncomfortable with seeing men being affectionate so it’s an easier sell that if it’s women.
Whereas conversely, I had a very hard time when I was going through the books that I wanted to recommend finding lesbian stuff I could pull, even the gender-queer stuff. I have Left Hand of Darkness over here, Ursula K. Le Guin. It’s required reading, kinda boring but at least it’s got people of colour and is kinda ambiguous? But I think it’s just interesting that in books you then kinda have the opposite [trend]. Just a lot of white twinks… When I was trying to come up with examples where characters aren’t white, two come to mind. One is Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz where he is writing about two men of Mexican descent. You have The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue and the sequel that came after it. In it, you got a person of colour who also has a disability and is gay. So there are some but you gotta dig. No bears either. Not a lot of bears.
HPL: You mentioned “required readings”. What would you say are those required readings for Pride month? Let’s say for people who are not necessarily queer but in celebration of all those who are queer for Pride.
JN: I’m not pulling out Judith Butler then! [laughs] I’ll fully admit one of my weak points is up until recently I’ve never really read a whole lot of non-fiction. That’s never really been the thing that gets me up in the morning… Left Hand of Darkness is just a good example of taking a genre that was really male at the time, and frankly kinda gross, and trying something pretty revolutionary which is trying to remove gender. It’s debatable how successfully, but that one is really interesting. I wanna say Mary Renault’s books like The Charioteer or her Alexander series. Those ones I think are more interesting because of who writes them. She was writing in the 1950s, she was a lesbian who moved to South Africa because she knew she would never get published in the States. Was super popular amongst gay men, but was kinda iffy about Pride as an actual thing—so I hesitate to recommend that as an example of Pride, even though it’s great. Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of Salt, it’s Carol. I think it’s a really good one and is also more accessible to people because Carol is also a movie. Plus, it came out during the ’50s and ’60s when suddenly we have these lesbian pulp fiction books: hilarious titles, weird-looking art… Suddenly it was, “Yeah, sure you can write gay stuff! Sure you can write it. They gotta die at the end. They gotta die at the end or go to a mental institution but you go ahead and write it.” And The Price of Salt was one of the first instances where it was actually a happy ending for queer people. It was really refreshing at the time, kind of unheard of. Those are some of the older ones. Newer ones: Fingersmith and Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters.
HPL: I’m a big believer that there’s no such thing as guilty consumption of media. There is just consuming media. Who are your favourite authors or characters that you just adore?
JN: I already mentioned his stuff but: T. J. Klune. He’s a gay man himself. It’s just really good work! As I was saying earlier, “Where are the bears? Where are the bears in media?!” Well, T. J. Klune’s got the bears. He has a series, Wolfsong is the first one, it’s all about found family, there are werewolves in it. Finally, I would say Rainbow Rowell’s Carry On series. I love them, it’s like gay Harry Potter. Is it going to change the world? Is it literature with beautiful writing? No! But it fills this hole in my soul that Harry Potter kind of left but in a much more inclusive way. I love trash. I think the divide between, “This is high literature and this is what we care about” and trash is a strange one, especially with queer literature. This is an interesting thing with the rise of the queer beach read. We are getting to a point now where we don’t need to sit here and intellectualize about what it means to be queer, where the book is always moody and sad. It’s just really refreshing that now we have a lot of lighter reads where being gay is a part of it but it doesn’t have to make it the only purpose of the book.
Can I also say, there is this interesting trend now with queer media where because we’ve had so many shit stories about us in the past, that there’s almost—we’re not quite there yet—but a shift to the “good gay.” The gay that can’t do any wrong and is a perfect, precious baby angel. We cannot have queer villains, we can only have heroes. They need to be politically correct at all times. They cannot make mistakes. It’s this situation of needing to be super, super loud about people being queer and we can’t really do subtext as much anymore because, until we don’t assume that everyone is straight at all times, you have to announce it. I think queer media right now is in an interesting space because they have to be loud about it but they have to be good. They can’t be villains, and I love a good gay villain! There’s nothing I love more than a gay villain. The difference is you cannot have them be a villain just because they are gay. But there are shitty people from all walks of life and I like to see that diversity of shitty people also being represented as queer.
HPL: While we have more and more queer media which is so exciting, we still do have people “queering media”. What do you think makes media so exciting to queer and why do you think it’s still happening?
JN: This is a recommendation that will funnel into what I’m saying, and once you watch it you will see I steal almost everything that I’m talking about right now from it. The Celluloid Closet is a fantastic thing to go watch. It talks about the transition of different archetypes: from the pansy, to the murderous gay, to the sort of sympathetic one who kills himself, into the 80s where there are again murderesses. Just different tropes that we have gone through. One of the things it highlights really well is this woman who talks about how you would tell all your friends that they need to watch an entire video just for this little scene where a woman comes out in a cowboy outfit. I think it’s because queer people have historically had to really pick through things to find yourself, especially because we for the most part are an invisible minority. And the reason why I studied semiotics when it comes to queerness and queer codes is so much of how we identify each other in public is by coding certain things, wearing certain things, going certain places. I think it comes naturally to us now, even the entire concept of a “gaydar.” So I think as a community we are primed to pick through things and see things that are similar to us—and it is this quest to see yourself in media.
The whole point of media is to try to show the different experiences that human beings go through. When you’re not represented in that—when you don’t see your stories and your journeys—you just try and find it in things. You try to find places that you feel are similar and speak to yourself in a certain way. Sometimes it’s not explicit but you find yourself there and it’s kind of intoxicating. You enjoy it! It’s also a bit of resistance because it can be super straight and you can say, “…It’s always going to be gay in my head!”