Dissertation
\"Discourses of Distinction\" as Conspicuous Consumption: An Interdisciplinary Analysis Of Race and Queer Desire on HBO's The Wire and True Blood
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
01/2013
Handle:
https://hdl.handle.net/2376/118160
Abstract
This research critically investigates two, award winning HBO telenarrative series - The Wire and True Blood - in order assess, interpret and theorize about the costs, benefits and consequences of consumption of messages communicated by queer characters of color within these series. HBO employs "discourses of distinction" that unambiguously communicates ideals of luxury and conspicuous consumption of avant-garde content featuring queer characters of color, whose recognizability proves culturally indispensible to perceptions of social progressiveness for heterosexual audiences. Moreover, HBO generates its profit while maintaining its strategic position as an award winning, industry leader amidst a historical legacy of sporadic social inclusion towards same sex desire and homosexuality. This research argues that the inclusion of queer characters of color has become the next step in the perpetuation of HBO's appearance of social progressiveness. The network's appearance of inclusivity actually operates as a deliberately obfuscated containment system that regulates those appearances via their exclusively heterosexual, white, male creators. I contend that these carefully choreographed, characters are interpellated by their creators in distinct, racially pathologized ways that parallel contemporary post-racial political discourses embedded in neoliberal logics of commodification and consumerism adopted and encouraged by HBO.
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Details
- Title
- \"Discourses of Distinction\" as Conspicuous Consumption: An Interdisciplinary Analysis Of Race and Queer Desire on HBO's The Wire and True Blood
- Creators
- Michael Johnson Jr
- Contributors
- Carmen R. Lugo-Lugo (Advisor)Jeff Chaichana Peterson (Committee Member)Nishant Shahani (Committee Member)
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- Languages, Cultures, and Race, School of
- Theses and Dissertations
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
- Number of pages
- 229
- Identifiers
- 99900581860501842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Dissertation