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- All Subjects: LGBT
- Creators: Bryant, Jason
Description
Animation is a medium that is not taken as seriously as live-action television and film. This thesis focuses on the representation of LGBT characters in American animation and attempts to give a rigorous analysis on a medium that should be taken seriously. Analysis is done on the stereotypes and coding from various animated shows, such as South Park, Family Guy, and Steven Universe. The shows are further divided into adult and children's animation, in which the analysis will track how LGBT characters are represented and have progressed in both. The thesis describes how problematic these characters may potentially be and how the images may project certain cultural and social attitudes towards the LGBT community. The thesis also considers the future of queer visibility and representation in other mediums, other than just in broadcast television. It was found that representation begins in the early 90s in adult comedy animation with Big Gay Al in South Park. In adult animation, the focus is usually more on the use of stereotypes and how these stereotypes are used for comedy. These stereotypes are sometimes enforced or subverted, depending on the show. It was also found that in adult animation, there has been a shift towards normalizing queer characters to fit a heteronormative framework. For children's animation, the sexuality of a character is subtler and coded with context clues. Some children and teen shows have decided to reveal the sexuality of certain characters in the last episode of the series. Children's animation also follows a similar trend that adult animation has taken with the normalization of queer characters.
ContributorsVuong, Hansen (Author) / Dove-Viebahn, Aviva (Thesis director) / Bryant, Jason (Committee member) / Chemical Engineering Program (Contributor) / School of Film, Dance and Theatre (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
In the mid-twentieth century, a number of vital and quietly revolutionary gay male writers, including Christopher Isherwood, Gore Vidal, James Baldwin, and John Rechy, increasingly wrote about explicitly homosexual experiences and culture despite social and legal opposition. Both individually and collectively, these four authors ultimately merged disjointed identities to establish a tradition of visibility and resistance in the United States. Divided into four main sections, this thesis examines each author’s portrayal of homosexual experiences and culture through his distinct approach with a close literary analysis of various works. The first section considers Christopher Isherwood and how milieu affects his depictions of homosexuality in The Berlin Stories (1945), Down There on a Visit (1962), and A Single Man (1964). The second examines Gore Vidal’s The City and the Pillar (1948) and the relationship between homosexuality and masculinity. The third section looks at how James Baldwin writes about the intersection of homosexuality, race, nationality, and class in both Giovanni’s Room (1956) and Another Country (1962). Finally, the fourth section considers the emergence of queer communities built around resistance in John Rechy’s City of Night (1963). In addition to these literary texts, original reviews of each novel published in The New York Times capture their reception and acceptance into a mainstream American readership. Through their distinct approaches, these four authors collectively present a varied, although somewhat limited, look at the homosexual experience in postwar, pre-Stonewall America.
ContributorsBramlett, Charles Paul (Author) / Sturges, Robert (Thesis director) / Bryant, Jason (Committee member) / Department of English (Contributor) / Walter Cronkite School of Journalism & Mass Comm (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05