Garland's 1950 Was Britney's 2007: Last Core Post

In Dyer’s chapter on Judy Garland and the gay community’s interest in her and love for her, there are several extremely interesting points of analysis that I think apply to other, more modern musical stars and their LGBT following. As Dyer pointed out, the gay community enamored with Garland was a primarily white, male gay community, and I think this remains true when we look at the demographic of LGBT-identified people who also identify as deeply loving certain pop icons (for the purposes of this post, I will be focusing mainly on Britney Spears). However, though there are several potent similarities in terms of the types of cultural moments that these stars’ gay following reacts to, I am also interested in assessing the ways in which the behavior and expression of the gay community is different post-gay liberation movement.

            I want to focus on the aspect of Garland’s career that Dyer assesses in the reading as ordinariness. When referring to “ordinariness”, Dyer specifically addresses the idea that MGM crafted and imaged Garland in a way that implied a spectacular ordinariness, the quintessential “girl-next-door”. However, it was her split from MGM in 1950 and the subsequent media blast coverage of her woes that ultimately connected her to the gay community in such a strong and lasting way. Essentially, the implication is that Garland “came out” as non-ordinary after being “raised” to be the most ordinary, which relates to the gay narrative in a very clear way.

            This narrative also reminded me of the infamous 2007 breakdown of Britney Spears, especially because of the way that the gay community cherishes that cultural moment to this day. I also think it’s super important to mention one of the first truly viral videos that I can remember, which was made by a white gay male in defense of Britney at this time: Chris Crocker’s video entitled “Leave Britney Alone”. This video features Crocker in full-blown hysteria crying about all that Britney had been through up until her breakdown, with poignant lines in the video such as, “All you people care about is making money off of her, she is a HUMAN!” He is obviously referring to the way that the public and media outlets had a field day with photos of Britney shaving her head and (seemingly) hitting a car with an umbrella.

When Dyer talked about the way that gay writing about Garland changed throughout the gay liberation movement, he mentioned that the emphasis changed “from Garland representing gay men’s neurosis and hysteria to her representing gay men’s resilience in the face of oppression.” While this video is clearly an exhibition of hysteria, I think it is an example of the gay linking of theatricality and authenticity. It is camp in that it balances on a line between parody and earnest plea. I think the clear point to take away is that this gay man is so invested in specifically defending Britney’s humanity, and I don’t think he would have been this invested had her “ordinariness” that was so intentionally crafted by her management and labels hadn’t been so completely obliterated.