If the Words Sound Queer and Funny to Your Ear
June 2016 archive
In order to talk about the history of queer podcasting, one must first look at the history of podcasting itself; sprouting from the breath of radio programming and known originally as "audioblogging", podcasts started around late 2004, with the rise of the iPod technologies. Quickly the new form of information dispersion spread throughout the internet and surely, in February of 2005, the first LGBT podcast aired its first episode. Chicago's media power couple Fausto Fernós and Marc Felion took a chance on the up-and-coming medium, and decided to embrace the new technology and created their own queer podcast called Feast of Fools.
Renamed Feast of Fun in 2009, their podcast is one of the earliest podcasts produced, and is recognized as a pioneer in the podcasting industry. Entering their twelfth season on the air, Feast Of Fun is one of the most well known LGBT podcasts in the world (and will be an item in the archive).
Given that queer podcasting (and podcasting in general) has been around for a little over a decade, there have been great strides in the socio-political world for LGBTQ people. With the worldwide slew of marriage equality (within the Western world, of course) and the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, the queer podcasts have been able to celebrate many momentous achievements for LGBTQ people and celebrate the rich history the queer community has to offer. Many of these podcasts look back at the climates of yesteryear and teach young listeners of pioneering queer people and events that have lead to the advancement of the queer community in the last decade. These podcasters also discuss the current atrocities that beguile the queer community and are able to engage in discourse in order to change the still temperamental tides of the modern LGBT landscape.
One may think that podcasts–those whose sole purpose isn't politics–are generally not political. And that maybe true, but there is an inherent political component to LGBTQ podcasts; even if they do not specifically discuss politics, the fact that queer podcasts discuss queer lives and queer theory is political. The reality of the queer community cannot be divorced from its political implications; the LGBTQ community was forged in response to systematic socio-political discrimination and maltreatment. Queer people have had to make themselves heard and seen politically to advance socially. Being queer itself is political because being queer used to be illegal. The ability for queer discourse itself is political because it influences the political landscape for LGBTQ people.
Every podcast in this archive discusses politics in some form or another; some seriously discuss the political climate in regard to LGBTQ people, and other regard it more in jest. Each one has covered real-time political issues such as marriage equality throughout the United States and abroad, the banning of conversion therapy, the new bathroom laws in North Carolina and Mississippi as well as the newly formed Trans Rights Movement.
I don't think their is just one political issue that can be threaded throughout the podcasts in this archive because they each deal with a multitude of political issues at once. This archive is not about same-sex marriage or sodomy laws or any singular political issue, this is an archive about queer podcasts, meaning queer people having conversations about queer things which included, heavily, the political standing of queer people worldwide. None of these podcasts are created in a vacuum, so of course they are influenced by the continued struggles and triumphs of their LGBTQ brethren.
Pop culture is the cornerstone of any entertainment-based outlet today and podcasts are not exempt from that rule. Many, if not all, of the queer podcasts react to, redefine or reflect on moments of current pop culture and elements of pop culture from the past. Pop culture sets the mainstream narrative in which we all exist; queer narratives are now finally being woven into the mainstream fabric and podcasters are tasked with filtering in pop culture and critique it. Pop culture will play more of a role in some of the queer podcasts that I will use as part of my podcast than others, like with Straight Talk with Ross or Throwing Shade.
In accessing pop culture and media, as well as accessing podcasts, the internet is pivotal and essential. The internet is the information highway, where news, media, art, opinions, etc. are at your fingertips. The internet is where podcasts live, their episodes downloaded from the web onto phones and whatnot for the user's listening pleasure. Podcasters also use the internet to educate themselves and relay information to their listeners. With a quick Google search you can be presented with a variety of voices and experiences and through the medium of long and short-form audio files (podcasts) you can listen in and participate in the conversation and discourse happening, especially within the LGBTQ community.
The idea of making my archive about queer podcasts does come with a few obstacles, mainly in finding diversity among the podcasters in my archive. The most widely available–and best funded–podcasts are usually sport gay men on the helm, most queer podcasts are considered "fringe" is hosted by queer people of color or gender nonconformists. This leads to a lot of fringe queer podcasts to be rather infrequent in production or scarcely known. As a gay man I have to admit that most of the queer podcasts I listen to are about other gay men, though the topics that are discussed and the guests interviewed in these podcasts are from all walks of queer life. I'll do my best to include as much diversity as I can, though I foresee a hard road in that endeavor.
The availability of LGBTQ podcasts lends itself to a tradition of creating spaces in with queer people can congregate and participate in discourse. From the physical migration to queer 'meccas' outlined by Carl Wittman, I believe my archive presents the more intellectual migration and striations of contemporary queer ideologies. The idea that queer people are meeting and taking control of the discourse falls in line with Berlant and Warner's idea of "queer world making." The creation of these "queer publics" allow different voices to shift the meaning of language and idea, to forge for themselves a new form of queerness. That is what these podcasts do; they allow the podcasters, their guests and the listener a space to masticate the world around them and form new shapes of identity, experience and language. In this way queer is not a label or an identity, but it is a force that disrupts and creates, which is the point of discussion and conversation on podcasts.
My archive is called Queer In Your Ear because podcasts are enjoyed in the privacy of your headphones and the content is directly dispensed into your ears and it is an archive about LGBTQ podcasts. I thought that the rhyme of queer and ear was enjoyable to, well, the ear, and figured it was a catchy title for an archive about alternative narratives.
As a background image I chose the above image in a field of black for an easier reading experience. I searched for an image of headphones with a rainbow aesthetic and found the above image. I wanted it in the original white, but the image was too big and made reading the text impossible. So I chose to have it in black and as a fixed image in the background. I also originally had the title of the site in purple text, an homage to the use of purple on Spirit Day, but again, because of readability, I have to change it to bright yellow.
I decided it would look best to have the front page of the website be a static page that showed only the blog entries and then add pages (tabs) for each item in my archive. I chose to do this because I wanted separation between the two streams of information; I wanted the archive items to have their own moments within their own pages as a sculpture would have on a pedestal in an art museum. I also chose to have the blog posts as the home page in order to not only have easy access for everyone, but also the portray that this, after all, is a blog and that having the blog posts (in which I'll also incorporate images and videos) as the front page will add heft to the website as a whole.
***Edit: I had to rework the background again and was able to make my original plan work.***
Source: https://sites.psu.edu/queerinyourear/2016/06/
0 Response to "If the Words Sound Queer and Funny to Your Ear"
Post a Comment