Ryan Murphy's Queer America

Description

Ryan Murphy is a self-described gay boy from Indiana, who has grown up to forge a media empire. With an extraordinary list of credits and successful television shows, movies, and documentaries to his name, Murphy can now boast one of the broadest and most successful careers in Hollywood. Serving as writer, producer, and director, his creative output includes limited-run dramas (such as Feud, Ratched, and Halston), procedural dramas (such as 9-1-1 and 9-1-1 Lonestar), anthology series (such as American Crime Story, American Horror Story, and American Horror Stories), sit-coms (such as The New Normal) and long-running serial narratives (such as Glee, Nip/Tuck, and Pose). Each of these is infused in different ways with a distinctive form of queer energy and erotics, animating their narratives with both campy excess and poignant longing and giving new meaning to the American story. This collection takes up Murphy as auteur and showrunner, considering the gendered and sexual politics of Murphy's wide body of work. Using an intersectional framework throughout, an impressive list of well-known and emerging scholars engages with Murphy's diverse output, while also making the case for Murphy's version of a queer sensibility, a revised notion of queer time, cultural memory, and the contributions his own production company makes to a politics of LGBTQ+ representation and evolving gender identities. This book is suitable for students of Gender and Media, LGBTQ+ Studies, Media Studies, and Communication Studies. Cover Endorsement Page Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Table of Contents List of Figures Ryan Murphy Media as of March 2022 Acknowledgments List of Contributors Introduction: Touching Queerness: Ryan Murphy’s Queer America Murphy’s House of Abundance Queer Theory, Transgender Theory, Intersectionality, and Queer of Color Critique Camping with Ryan: The Queer Baroque Ryan Murphy’s Queer America : An Overview Concluding Considerations Notes Part I: Queer Sensibilities Chapter 1: Posing as Normal?: The Televisual and the Queer, The New Normal and Pose Currents, Flows, and (Main) Streams, or, the Making and Unmaking of Queer TV and TV Studies Normal Television? Posing an Alternative Notes Chapter 2: “You’re Sexual, Right?”: Ryan Murphy and the Eroticization of Straight Masculinity Theorizing the Contemporary Politics of Masculinity A Separate Piece: Nip/Tuck Redpilling American Masculinity Story: Mostly Straights and White Nationalists Notes Chapter 3: Hagsploitation: Or the Queer Sublimity of Feud: Bette and Joan Introduction: Dateline, Hollywood Hagsploitation Camp Wars Mamacita, Dearest Conclusion: “All That Pain Will Finally Amount to Something?” Notes Chapter 4: American Twink Story That Touch of Twink Celestial Criminality: Darren Criss as Andrew Cunanan Radiant Rage: Finn Wittrock as Dandy Mott Lights Out! Notes Part II: What Was, Is, and Might Be Chapter 5: Remediating the 1990s with Ryan Murphy: Gender, Race and (Inter)Generational Cultural Politics in The People Vs. OJ Simpson Ryan Murphy and The People Vs. OJ Simpson : Forms, Contexts, and Modes of Address Generational Identities and the 1990s Ryan Murphy as Gen-X Media Producer Category Is … Bronco Chase Realness: Queered Historical Verisimilitude in “The Run of His Life” “I Did It for Farrah and I’m Gonna Do It for You”: Pastiche-ing Millennial Makeover Culture in “Marcia, Marcia, Marcia” Conclusion Notes Chapter 6: What If Golden Age Hollywood Had Been Inclusive?: Ryan Murphy’s Hollywood as Queer Utopian Uchronia A Uchronia Anchored in Reality Hollywood: Murphy’s Script Rewrite Out with the Old, in with the New: The Necessary Downfall of White Heteronormativity Notes Chapter 7: The Weight of Queer Emptiness: The Politician and Twenty-First-Century Queerness Authenticity: “Does It matter?” Post-Queerness: Fluidity and Throuples Social Class: Weaponizing Normativity Conclusion: The Weight of “Queer Emptiness” Notes Chapter 8: Rescuing Paternity: Masculinity, the Child, and Queer Futurity in 9-1-1 Does Annihilation of the Mother Queer the Child? Birthing the Father: Eddie and Redemptive Paternity Black Mothers/White Rescues: Diversity on the Clock Do You Know What Can Go Wrong in Thirteen Minutes?: Risk Management, Heteromasculinity, and Fetal Emergency Notes Chapter 9: Into the Gleetocracy: The Contours and Contradictions of a Queered American Dream “Just Own the Night, Like the Fourth of July” “Don’t Stop Believing”: Meritocracy “Mister Cellophane”: Visibility “Defying Gravity”: Concluding with “Dreams Come True” Notes Part III: Remembering Those Lost: HIV/AIDS and Cultural Memory Chapter 10: Normal?: The Normal Heart in Abnormal Times The Normal Heart From Stage to Screen The Normal and the Pathological Stigma and Stigmata Melodrama Coda Notes Chapter 11: “I Always Knew I Wasn’t Gonna Be Long on This Earth”: Pose and the AIDS Crisis Memory/History Suture and Rupture Past and Present Notes Chapter 12: Memorial Acts: Remembering Mart Crowley and The Boys in the Band A Portrait of Mart Crowley: The Boys in the Band (2020) Crowley’s Signature in Friedkin’s Cruising Crowley’s Self-Portraits Notes Part IV: Ryan Murphy Productions Chapter 13: The End of the “Best Actor” Discourse?: Pose and the Queer of Color Politics of Casting Trans Roles Casting as Industrial Practice, Queer Labor, and Defensive Truth Searching for and Finding Trans Actors Authenticity and Defensive Truths in Casting Category Is Casting Realness Notes Chapter 14: Fused Muse: Sarah Paulson as Ryan Murphy’s Partner in (American) Crime Making Change by Changing Marcia Murphy’s Redemption of the Older Actress The Half Initiative: Remaking Hollywood Collaborative Auteurism in the Murphy-verse Conclusion Notes Chapter 15: Showrunning Activism: Embodying Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Work of Ryan Murphy Toward More Inclusive Television Labor Practices Ryan Murphy’s Television Histories Casting Queerness on Television Showrunning Advocacy and Pose Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index