Emily Huang Post #4 – Identification with stars in gay culture

In her essay, “Feminine Fascinations: Forms of identification in star-audience relations”, Jackie Stacey dissects the ways in which audiences, especially female viewers, connect to the stars they are watching. Stacey discusses the concept of identification and how it functions as the main venue through which identities are produced. She critiques the theories that have thus far been used to explain the processes of identification through a psychoanalytic lens, and then recognizes the wider definitions of identification as through connecting to a character’s point of view or by empathizing or sympathizing with a character. Stacey then goes on to examine these theories in real life by looking at firsthand accounts of female viewers of their favorite stars, and assesses them to glean a number of common themes.

While I found this to be interesting, I also wondered what it would be like if the letters referenced had come from non-normative perspectives, specifically from queer female perspectives. Queer individuals face an extra layer of complexity when navigating same-gender friendships and relationships, especially within the context of the highly interconnected queer community. One of the mentioned requirements for identification was that the viewer did not view a connection with the star in the context of sexual attraction. My question is, if stars provide examples for audiences to look up to, how might the aspects of identification change when the contexts of connection are different?

Ellen DeGeneres - TV host, comedian, actress

Angel Haze - rapper, singer

Ruby Rose - DJ, actress, model

Ellen Page - actress

Queer women look up to openly queer stars for a variety of reasons. Through her examination of the letters she gathered from female viewers for analysis, Stacey discusses the themes she saw in her respondents’ experiences as being devotion and worship, the desire to become, pleasure in feminine power, identification and escapism, pretending, resembling, imitating, copying, and how copying intersects with consumption. As reflected on websites like Autostraddle or AfterEllen that focus on queer female culture, queer women also look to their stars for everything from style to inspiration, but also as visible examples of representation for their identities. However, the difference is that queer women are also navigating the way they view stars as possible objects of desire, and this becomes even more complicated when there are so few openly queer female celebrities. How might theories of identification change when the question becomes, “Do I want to be her, or do I want to be with her?”