We have been to three girl-focused cons this summer and fall: LeakyCon, DashCon and GeekGirlCon. These cons are non-profit, largely run by volunteers, and provide alternative geeky spaces to male-dominated cons. These cons extend the work of social media such as Tumbr by providing safe public spaces where feminist, feminine, and queer young people can gather to create communities that validate and encourage creative play, fannish passion, and critical thinking. The cons devote a great deal of attention to social inequalities faced by women, intersecting issues of sexism with racism, homophobia, classism, and related biases regarding ability, religion, educational level, and cultural capital. The socially critical content of these cons have demonstrated to me that we need to redefine what we mean by  “public” education. The organizers and participants of these cons are fashioning their own liberal arts education spaces. Many of the young panelists at GeekGirlCon made the point that they learned about feminist criticism, intersectionality, and social inequities from social media and at cons, not from the traditional public education system.

The role of social media and these types of cons as sites of critical thinking, community building, and social justice training for women has become increasingly urgent, most recently demonstrated by the nationally publicized attacks on Anita Sarkeesian, a feminist critic of video games on social media. Sarkeesian represents this new kind of public educator who seeks to make her work democratically accessible, and she was GeekGirlCon’s opening speaker. GGC hired extra security for the death threats that immediately followed the announcement of her appearance, but the attacks against her, like the more recent threats surrounding her at the Utah State University, were not only leveled at Sarkeesian but at her audiences. The GeekGirlCon hashtag (#GGC14) on Twitter was taken over by Sarkeesian trolls, and any attendee who tweeted in support of Sarkeesian or used the #GGC14 hashtag also received threatening messages directed at them, individually. As numerous panelists and attendees made clear, anyone with a feminine-perceived username is the recipient of hate on many social media platforms.

It is vital, therefore, that we view Sarkeesian’s work and the hostility directed at her as not an anomaly, but part of the greater structural misogyny and inequity embedded in and perpetuated by American public institutions. Public education largely does not address social inequalities and erases many identity categories (LGBTQA and transgender most obviously in k-12). There is virtually no sex or rape culture education in schools. Humanities and creative arts programs are increasingly marginalized at both k-12 and college-levels. Career counseling, networking, leadership training – particularly for women and social minorities seeking to enter fields dominated by white men – is generally unavailable.  It is not surprising that feminized spaces such as these cons and select social media sites have become so important to young people; we have heard countless testimonials to this fact from young women at every con.

This was GeekGirlCon’s fourth year, and it has grown in both programming and attendance, with an estimated 7,000 participants this year. GGC is distinguished by its localism. Like other cons, GGC has a robust year-round social media presence but unlike them, GGC is based in Seattle and is able to foster relationships with local schools, industries and businesses and maintain a community presence throughout the year; in this way, the convention itself can be viewed as a catalyst that brings the local community together but also facilitates an extension of its female-centered space.

Used with permission

The age range of attendees at GGC was broad, from pre-teens to women in their 20s and 30s; many children were accompanied by their parents, and thus there were more men than at other Cons. In addition, although GGC encouraged cosplay and devoted panels to fangirl topics such as feminist media criticism and slash, GGC addressed other aspects of the term “geek.” For example, GGC highlighted women’s role in the sciences and offered a DIY “Science Zone,” where attendees were guided through experiments by female science educators. GGC also offered several workshops, booths, and panels that addressed professional career and networking strategies and opportunities for women and girls, particularly those seeking to enter technology, engineering, and science fields. Local industries and educators who support GGC’s mission offered career advice and support.

Panelists continually noted the importance of “finding a support group of other women” for any career pursuit. Indeed, some of the most interesting career discussion came from a new generation of female media journalists. They spoke of their experiences negotiating a media landscape in which their feminist critical perspectives and knowledge of fan cultures were not always welcome by editors and their published work often provoked gender-based hate. At the same time, these fangirls emphasized the importance of the fan community as a resource and support, and they encouraged attendees to draw on the skills they have learned as fans –writing, editing, graphic design, media analysis – in building their careers. One particularly popular and insightful panel on this topic is linked below.

“M from Feels to Skills panel”

GeekGirlCon also distinguished itself by holding two panels explicitly devoted to fat identity and resources. The “Fatness & Fandom” panelists represented a range of fat body types and was also the most racially diverse panel that I (Jen) attended at GGC. Fat fans spoke of being snubbed and erased by manufacturers of geeky clothing, a hot topic within plus-size communities because of the lack of availability of well-made, fashionable plus-size clothes. This panel was a great example of the local presence at GGC, composed of members of PNW Fattitude, a meetup group for fat women in the Pacific Northwest. Taking part in this panel allowed the group to leverage the larger voice of GGC to spread awareness of issues that fat fans face and to allow more people to learn about the group itself. Following the event, panelists invited attendees to an in-person meetup across the street. PNW Fattitude thus allowed attendees to see successful example of sustainable community at GGC.

This article by Allison McCracken was research and written with the help of Jen Kelly.

This is the sixth of a seven-part seven about the 4^th LeakyCon Fan Convention held in Portland, Oregon, June 27-30, 2013

Men were the minority at LeakyCon among fan attendees but they represented about half of the invited performers. I was especially intrigued by the way masculine norms were altered to suit the desires of LeakyCon’s primarily young, female audience. As I discussed in my last post, attendees value the con so much in part because it provides a public space for them in which they are not primarily defined by their sexuality or treated as sexual objects. Normative, phallic masculinity is the one identity category that is not welcome at LeakyCon. Male-identified performers modeled more open, inclusive, and genderqueer versions of both straight and gay masculinity. They embraced “feminine”-coded genre practices, featured feminist and gay/queer narrative content in their shows, celebrated fans’ active participation, and enthusiastically addressed the romantic/erotic interests and concerns of this particular audience. While male performers popular with adoring young female audiences are often characterized (condescendingly) as sexually non-threatening, this dismissal disguises the larger threat they represent: while such masculine performances are indeed unthreatening to young women, they are deeply threatening to gender/sexual social norms and hierarchies. Many of LeakyCon’s performers have substantial followings; they have largely developed distinct personas outside the con in a variety of arenas: social media, fiction, theatre, and television. Their commonalities were put into relief when they were gathered together at LeakyCon, and these shared characteristics suggested an alternative, genderqueer masculine brand that – although largely subcultural – is clearly making a significant impact on millennial culture.

I first noted this type of masculine performance two years ago when I described Glee’s straight-identified star Darren Criss as modeling a kind of genderqueerness in his own star persona, one that reinforced Glee’s “radically fluid adolescent masculinites.” Part of my reason for attending LeakyCon, initially, was to see whether the theatrical troupe The Starkids, which Criss co-founded, shared his gender-blurring, playful performance style. Indeed they did, but so did the other male performers at LeakyCon. In addition to the Starkids, these included, most prominently, Rent star Anthony Rapp; some of the actors who play Glee’s Dalton Academy Warblers, who hosted wildly popular sing-a-longs; Tom Lenk,  (Buffy’s “Andrew”), who performed his show, “Nerdgasm;” and LeakyCon regular and favorite Hank Green, who this year combined “wizardrock” performing, Nerdfighter gatherings, web-advice panels, and Lizzie Bennett Diaries discussions (Green co-created LBD).

Of these, social media personality and web-series producer Green represents the public intellectual division of LeakyCon’s masculine brand.  His video blogs (“vlogs”) with his brother, Young Adult author and frequent LeakyCon participant John Green, inspired their Nerdfighter fans  to proudly assert their own identity as a nerd community (“DFTBA”!). In this popular vlog, “Human Sexuality is Complicated,” Green subverts masculine norms by presenting a non-binary, queer-theory-friendly explanation of human sexuality in a remarkably compact and accessible manner, notably situating himself along a gender/sexuality continuum in which he acknowledges the “womanly parts of me”:

The physical experience of being in a LeaykCon audience feels like a reimagining of populist theatre without the sexism, insularity, and surveillance that has often limited the value of such public spaces for women and queer people. Feminism and gender/sex non-normativity are explicitly a part of LeakyCon’s definition of egalitarian community, and hence become part of the performance aesthetics as well. Audience participation in total or in part is expected and encouraged. Performers emphasize the shared emotional experience of the players and the audience rather than the celebration of an individual performer. These fangirl popular aesthetics are genderqueer, but they are not camp; they require a sincere performance style. This distinction was evident in the Closing Ceremonies of the Con, which featured the “slash” (non-canon) wedding of two Harry Potter characters (performed by Dumbledore), Sirius and Remus, the couple who fans had voted that they most wanted to see wed. Even in this light-hearted sketch, the actors knew to perform their vows earnestly; their performance tied romantic and erotic behavior together, very like much of the fanfic this audience both reads and writes (vows begin at 6:17):

At LeakyCon, the primary generic frame is the musical. The ubiquitous sing-a-longs — both scheduled and spontaneous – are the most intensely emotionally involving entertainments, and the Starkids musical parodies provide the songbook that everyone knows. Of all LeakyCon’s players, the Starkids’ large troupe and devoted following have done the most to establish and sustain the con’s neo-masculine brand and community feel. As a popular genre, the musical has a democratic appeal, but Starkid shows further that potential by combining accessible songs, non-gendered (primarily group) dancing, and sincere emotional affect (“heart”), with feminist narrative content and the decentering of the heterosexual couple in favor of an inclusive group of friends. Although their shows feature every kind of drag as well as explicitly gay characters, these are never used as simply comic devices; rather, Starkid shows are character-driven and focus on emotional growth through loving companionship. Traits associated with dominant masculinity (grandstanding, bullying, desiring power and control, rigidity, exploitation of others, narcissism) are critiqued while desirable manhood is defined, by contrast, as the attainment of maturity through love. Falling in love is thus presented as more difficult and dangerous for male characters than battling their enemies because it forces them to break with masculine norms and open themselves up to emotional vulnerability. In the fan-favorite, canon-queering song “Granger Danger” from AVPM (2009) both Ron (Joey Richter) and Draco (brilliantly played, in drag, by Lauren Lopez) realize, fearfully, that they are falling love with Hermione: (skip to 1:38):

“Granger Danger” sets Ron on the road to mature manhood, but he doesn’t attain it until the third musical, VPSY (2012), in ‘I’m Just a Sidekick”:

While it is impossible to know how much of LeakyCon’s revised masculine brand will persevere or how it may be changed in the process of mainstreaming (Darren Criss’s career remains intriguing in this regard), it has been an undeniably affecting and inspiring model for thousands – if not millions — of fangirls (and fanboys), who are able to celebrate it through their own performances of masculinity at LeakyCon, such as this Starkid flashmob:

For more on LeakyCon 2013, read:

– Part one (“Where the Fangirls Are“)
– Part two (“On Wearing Two Badges“)
– Part three (“Fans and Stars and Starkids“)
– Part four (“From LGBT to GSM: Gender and Sexual Identity among LeakyCon’s Queer Youth“)
– Part five (“Inspiring Fans at LeakyCon Portland“)
– Part seven (“Embracing Fan Creativity in Transmedia Storytelling“)

This is the fourth of a seven-part series about the 4^th LeakyCon convention held in Portland Oregon June 27-30, 2013.

For me, one of the most valuable aspects of LeakyCon was the way it provided a supportive, generative environment for adolescent identity development. LeakyCon’s oft-repeated message to attendees is that they should “feel free to be themselves,” but the authentic self of the LeakyCon attendee is clearly not meant to be a fixed or singular entity. Multiple fandoms allow for multiple, changing sites of identification, and fans are likewise encouraged to explore and perform various aspects of their selves that they largely cannot at home. At an “LGBT”-defined “meet-up,” for example, fans testified eloquently about how LeakyCon’s fandom community (and the Tumblr fan community at large) have provided accepting, inclusive spaces for them to develop and affirm their non-normative gender and sexual identities. These fans also emphasized, more surprisingly, the critical importance of fan communities as sites for thinking through the limitations of dominant cultural formations regarding sex and gender, as well as providing invaluable opportunities for them to be perceived as something other, and more complex, than their gender/sexual affiliation.

Attending the LGBT meet-up seemed especially important at this moment of national change, and I was struck by the way in which these particular LGBT youth represented a generation in transition regarding this identity category. Indeed, the very term “LGBT” was often either qualified by attendees (“I’m bisexual, but I don’t believe in the gender binary”) or explicitly rejected; many attendees preferred to identify themselves by a term I was unfamiliar with, “GSM” (“Gender/Sexual Minority”), because they felt it was both more inclusive and less fixed. These attendees described fan communities as supportive, progressive spaces for renegotiating their identities and developing alternative concepts of sexual difference. Fan-focused social media sites were their primary informational sources and Tumblr, specifically, was repeatedly cited by fans as providing the vital space for in-depth, supportive discussions on the topic of their own sexual and gender identities. As one attendee explained, “I got into the fandoms [on Tumblr] and I started to meet people who said that you don’t have to be L,G,B, or T, you can be anything in between—and I really liked that idea because I didn’t feel like I belonged to any of them.”

There was also clearly a desire among many fans for the larger cultural focus on adolescent gender/sexual identity to broaden and include other aspects of their identities they viewed as equally important. Fans spoke about having parents who were so intent on being supportive of their potential sexual non-normativity (“I think [my dad] really wanted me to be a lesbian because he’s a feminist,” noted one) that they felt pressured to declare themselves early; one adolescent was embarrassed when her sexual identity changed twice during her formative years and felt she couldn’t “come out again” anywhere but on Tumblr and at LeakyCon. Another attendee strongly valued her identity as a Ravenclaw, the Harry Potter “house” defined by intellectual work and creativity, but noted that since she has come out to her friends, “it’s kind of become the only thing I am, just that ‘bi-girl’.” Her voice rose as she continued, tearing-up: “That’s why I like LeakyCon so much, because I’m not just bisexual. Yes, I am bisexual, but I’m also a Ravenclaw and I’m a Whovian! I’m a Pokemaster! A Starkid! And so my name is —— and I’m a FANGIRL! And I am bisexual.” Like Harry Potter, the boy who lived to become something more than only that, LGBT and GSM attendees at Leakycon have the opportunity to develop multiple aspects of their identities-in-process and to be valued for all of them.

Addendum: It is impossible to know how Tumblr’s recent purchase by Yahoo may threaten the very culture I’m discussing here, although recent structural changes regarding “adult content” are cause for concern, and they drive home how much these kinds of thoughtful, nuanced conversations about sex/sexuality are currently dependent on technological and industrial infrastructure. As someone who regularly teaches classes in the history of sex, my experience at LeakyCon reinforced the importance of social media as an informational and exploratory tool for young people, especially in the United States, where access to the most basic sex education remains uneven at best.

For more on LeakyCon 2013, read:

– Part one (“Where the Fangirls Are“)
– Part two (“On Wearing Two Badges“)
– Part three (“Fans and Stars and Starkids“)
– Part five (“Inspiring Fans at LeakyCon Portland“)
– Part six (“Redefining the Performance of Masculinity“)
– Part seven (“Embracing Fan Creativity in Transmedia Storytelling“)

I was just as invested in hating Ellis, however, as in following the show’s treatment of his sexuality. In contrast with its matter-of-fact presentation of everyone else’s sexual identity, Smash began to draw curious attention to Ellis’s sexuality in the pilot when Bombshell songwriters Julia and Tom debated whether he was gay or straight. She thought Ellis was straight; he believed Ellis’s kitchen-organizing skills and interest in Monroe indicated otherwise. When viewers learned a few episodes later that Ellis was in a relationship with a woman, the information was presented like something of a “big reveal” intended to surprise viewers who assumed he was gay. (Unlike the show’s other couples, he and his girlfriend Cynthia hadn’t previously mentioned their relationship and were only shown hanging out like friends.)

The first season continued to toy with expectations about Ellis’ sexuality, most notably when he slept with a man to advance his career. Prior to that storyline, E! revealed Ellis would soon have a “same-sex hookup,” concluding: “So for all of you who were shocked Ellis had a girlfriend in the first place, this might end up to be the least shocking TV twist of all time. And solid proof your gaydar is not broken. Congrats!” While E! believed this sexual encounter proved Ellis was gay, many viewers contested this interpretation by arguing online that he seemed motivated by professional ambitions rather than hidden gay desire. It’s the type of fan response I’d hoped for given that Smash didn’t seem concerned with defining Ellis: he never bothered to clarify his sexual identity and didn’t express confusion, discomfort, shame, or defensiveness about it. Such a depiction seemed capable of prompting viewers to think beyond binaries and stereotypes to accept that Ellis wasn’t necessarily gay simply because he slept with a man, a point that actor Jaime Cepero similarly emphasized when talking about his character.

I was disappointed, then, that Smash went on to fix Ellis as gay after Cepero exited the cast following season one. Early in the second season Cynthia randomly reappeared to declare that she and Ellis parted ways: “Turns out he was kind of a psychopath. Also gay.” Because this information served no purpose for plot development, it seemed solely intended as a wink to viewers who felt they had the savvy to read Ellis’s “real” sexuality as gay. In turn it functioned to shut down the possibility that he wasn’t gay, closing off much of the first season’s interesting cultural work regarding sexuality.

The show’s decision to make Ellis gay fits Ron Becker’s characterization of “post-closet TV,” wherein the ubiquity of openly gay men on television has led to the notion that all gay men are out and, if they’re not, they must be outed in order to maintain clarity in the distinction between gay and straight. It’s particularly frustrating that Smash imposed a post-closet narrative on Ellis considering the different approach of season one. Taking advantage of gay men’s expected presence in musical theater, the show featured more gay characters — and featured them more effortlessly — than any network series I’ve seen. Ellis’s disruption to hegemonic thinking about sexuality was a welcome addition to a cast that was otherwise overwhelmingly normative with regards to both hetero- and homosexuality. The subsequent categorization of him as gay, then, was a disappointing reminder that even shows with significant gay inclusion rarely embrace queer sexualities and often demand just as much gay/straight clarity as shows that aren’t so gay-friendly.

I should note that my opening comments weren’t intended to dismiss concern over the dwindling numbers of gay and lesbian characters on television. But it’s worth remembering that these numbers tend to fluctuate between seasons and that, though less true for lesbian representations, departing gay characters are often quickly replaced with new ones. (For instance, NBC just canceled the affluent gay white dads comedy The New Normal but picked up the affluent gay white dad comedy Sean Saves the World.) As a result, I worry more when television loses — or otherwise works to contain, as with Ellis — the rare characters that call for viewers to think past conventional categorizations of sexuality altogether.

From Oz the Great and Powerful – Kansas once again represented monochromatically

A small Kansas carnival, 1905: From the four corners of the earth, acts to delight, to thrill, and to mystify. There’s a fire breather, a strong man, a stilt walker. A mammoth hot-air balloon looms in the distance and beyond that clouds promise a wicked storm. A magician cowers in his wagon after a young paralyzed girl begs him to walk again. She naively believed in his powers, as did her parents and all the good, simple-minded Kansans in attendance.

A knock on the door reveals the magician’s sometimes-love, Annie, who has come to tell him of her engagement–to see if he wants her back.

“You could do a lot worse than John Gale, he’s a good man,” Oz explains. “I’m not. I’m many things, but a good man is not one of them. See, Kansas is full of good men: church-going men that get married and raise families. Men like John Gale; men like my father, who spent his whole life tilling the dirt, just to die face down in it. I don’t want that Annie; I don’t want to be a good man. I want to be a great one.”

So begins the story of Disney’s Oz the Great and Powerful, but its tale isn’t new. Everyone is trying to get out of Kansas, to get the heck out of Dodge [City, Kansas]; to get over the rainbow. And it’s no wonder, really, given what the pictures show.

Hollywood is baffled by Kansas and represents it as a simultaneously old-timey homeland as well as a sideshow of rural curiosities. Audiences watch their screens with wonder as Kansans willingly endure the plight of their harsh geography. These voyeurs know their visit to the prairie will be brief, and they’ll delight in retelling its banal but bewildering splendor: men tilling dirt just to die face down in it.

Kansas has become a carnival unto itself.

All black and white photography is abstract. Likewise, when Kansas is represented, monochromatic or not, it’s always an abstraction from an urban reality, and one saddled with disaster:

It could be something like a tornado (The Wizard of Oz, Oz the Great and Powerful, Greensburg), or a meteor shower (Superman, Man of Steel [upcoming]) that destroys your town and leaves you battling an unending parade of hybrid alien “supers”(Smallville). Maybe you’re attacked by nomadic American vampires (Near Dark), renegade Indians (Custer, Four Feather Falls), or just good old-fashioned aliens (Mars Attacks!).

If you’re lucky, you might only have to face down the occasional bandit (Gunsmoke, Winchester ’73, Dodge City, The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, etc.), or mobster (Prime Cut, The Ice Harvest), or time traveler (Looper), or errant supernatural being (The Ghost and Mr. Chicken, Courage the Cowardly Dog).

If you’re not so lucky, you’ll be confronted with domestic homicide (In Cold Blood, Murder Ordained) the American Civil War (Dark Command, Touched by Fire: Bleeding Kansas), the Great Depression (Paper Moon), racial segregation (The Learning Tree; Good Luck, Miss Wyckoff), nuclear catastrophe (The Day After), or the subsequent post-apocalyptic world (Jericho).

But more often than not, yours will be a crisis of identity. Dorothy, Superman, Oz: As queer figures unable to assimilate, they struggled through the exceedingly mechanical, zombie-esque homogeneity of Hollywood’s Great Plains, where idle-minded Kansans are born and die without living–a spectacle so unspectacular, it’s a kind of curious queer rurality. But Hollywood’s representations of Kansas go far beyond the mere trope of the rural vs. the urban. Kansas is at once more sinister as it is more sympathetic.

In the pictures, Kansas’ story is one of Bildungsroman, where a character completes a coming-of-age moment, a transition from naiveté to maturity that often involves leaving the state in one capacity or another.

It is only in so doing that they too will learn of Kansas’ banal allure. Superman doesn’t become the Man of Steel until he leaves his small farming community to help those who really need him in Metropolis. Oz doesn’t understand the power of goodness and the 2.35:1 widescreen aspect ratio until he crash lands in his future kingdom. And, sure, Dorothy heads back to Kansas, but does so knowing that on the other side of the rainbow is a splendid world of technicolor with yellow brick roads, giant lollipops, and a wicked witch who skywrites.

Dorothy’s unyielding pursuit to return to banality only proves Hollywood’s rule: Something’s the matter with Kansas. Its bearded ladies and conjoined twins, its dog boys and elephant men, all dressed over to appear as paeans to normativity. But their queer particularity shows at the seams, and queerer still is that they’re all willing participants in their own spectacularization. They all want to be in Kansas where they could be meteored, bombed, abducted, or tornadoed at any moment, and “isn’t that queer?!”

Wax figures at the Oz Museum in Wamego, Kansas, home of the creepiest Glinda ever made. Wamego also hosts Kansas’ annual Oztober Fest with special guests: the remaining munchkins.

As a gay Kansan (and I’m talkin’ tumbleweed Kansas) with a weakness for Judy Garland, few people can identify with Dorothy’s journey more than me. Given the nature of the film, I should think it would surprise some of you to hear that The Wizard of Oz is a highly cherished icon-cum-commodity for the Sunflower State. We have regarded it as a great love story to Kansas. But it’s not really, is it?

It isn’t Oz, the munchkins, the witches, or even the eccentric Emerald City dwellers that are queer to the “mass audience” of the film. Not really. The world they know is in color; it’s filled with good and evil, and often draws those lines based on appearance. The world of wonder, then–the queerness of The Wizard of Oz–was always in the telling of Kansas–it was always on this side of the rainbow. There really is no place like home!

So, let’s examine the evidence – the moments of coded meaning and excess that indicate a queer longing for acceptance and love. The first part of our story introduces us two queered misfits, Rudolph and Hermey, both struggling with forms of difference.  Born to the Donners, young buck Rudolph is a source of pride until Mr. Donner sees his son’s bright, shiny red nose.  While generally a benevolent figure of myth, this Santa does not offer a moment of Lady Gaga acceptance for little monster, Rudolph. Faced with the possibility that Rudolph will not ascend as a member of Santa’s sled team, Donner decides to make him a “normal little buck,” hiding his “nonconformity” with an uncomfortable nose cap; i.e. Rudolph is closeted.

His outing comes while playing reindeer games. When young doe Clarisse winks and flirtatiously tells him he is cute, Rudolph flies, falls, and loses his nose cover. While his male peers and authority figures mercilessly tease him, Clarisse is pleased to meet the real Rudolph and assures him he is wonderful as is. Lest we assume that Clarisse somehow secures Rudolph’s heterosexuality, the song to encourage him, “There’s Always Tomorrow,” is an obvious riff on the queer camp classic, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”

“There’s Always Tomorrow”

Then there is Hermey, the elf who wants to be a dentist.  If Rudolph is forced to hide his difference, Hermey is determined to embrace his, despite an elf boss who berates and belittles him for his strange desire. It would take someone with more fluency in psychoanalysis to make sense of the aural fixation at work , but his blonde swoosh of hair, red lips, and indeterminate voice,  at once childish and fey, put him somewhere in the vicinity of the sissy stereotype. While his fellow elves sing their elf jingles dressed up in gender appropriate pink and blue, Hermey practices his craft. This misfit runs away in search of his own better tomorrow.

In the background is the Abominable Snow Creature, more often heard than seen, with a ferocious growl and imposing appearance. He hates everything about Christmas.  The Abominable functions less as a character than as a placeholder.  If Christmas stands in for a heteronormative world order, he is the necessary remainder, the excess that secures the center of this Christmas world.

Hermey and Rudolph meet and the young queer pair of misfits find themselves in a cold, hostile world, under constant threat by the Abominable, who finds them thanks to Rudolph’s shiny nose.  It is on the road that they meet gold prospector, Yukon Cornelius.  With his handlebar mustache and general macho tendencies, he too carries coded signifiers of gayness.  But unlike our young friends, Yukon seems entirely unfazed by this, indicated both by his relationship with his pickaxe, and casual dismissal of the Abominable as a mere “Bumble.”  Fleeing the Abominable, our newly queer trio ends up on the Island of Misfit Toys, greeted by the lisping, depressed Charlie in a Box who explains that they are toys with a difference, shunned by children and gathered into their own community of comfort. Here our trio is granted brief asylum, but not permanent residence in their newfound queer community.

Island of Misfit Toys

It is then that Rudolph decides to go it alone in order to protect his friends from the danger he brings them.  He heads off to face his greatest fear – the Abominable, i.e. the reality of his difference.  In a scene that terrified me as a child and still rings with a sense of despair, young Rudolph stands alone on a sheet of ice and heads back to the mainland while the Abominable roars in the background.

As we reach the climax of the story, a grown up Rudolph returns home only to find that the Donners and Clarisse have been taken captive by the Abominable.  While Rudolph tries his best, it is actually Hermey and Yukon who come to the rescue.  The latter’s utter disregard for the “Bumble,” combined with Hermey’s newfound talents as a dentist, spell his end. It is telling that the Abominable loses his power to inspire fear at the moment that our queer pair make peace with their own differences and return to Christmas town. To my mind the end can be read in a couple of ways. On one hand, we can see that the Abominable simply ceases to be monstrous as queerness itself loses its negative purchase.  As our queer trio returns as heroes who have vanquished the horror of queerness by finding first self, then group acceptance, it ends with a message akin to It Get’s Better. On the other hand, I sometimes wonder why our queer trio have so much invested in Christmas. Our queer denizens find acceptance as useful citizens reproducing Santa’s patriarchal, authoritarian, gender normative world order, leaving aside their bonds with each other in order to assimilate back into normal.

See, easy. Indeed, a quick web search yields a number of pop culture stories and web sites wondering if Rudolph is gay, especially since the mid 2000s. If in 1964, Rudolph could only whisper its queer longing for acceptance through subtext, today, Rudolph and Hermey’s queer tale of acceptance could easily be a story arc on Glee or any ABC Family show. Now the subtext (if it ever was) is simply text.