queerqueen

From the twins Osugi and Peeco to longstanding icon Miwa Akihiro, Claire Maree traces the figure of the Japanese queerqueen, showing how a diversity of gender identifications, sexual orientations, and discursive styles are commodified and packaged together to form this character. Representations of gay men's speech have changed in tandem with gender norms, increasingly crossing over into popular media via the body of the "authentic" gay male up to and including the current "LGBT boom" in Japan. In this context, queerqueen demonstrates how commercial practices of recording, transcribing, and editing spoken interactions and use of on-screen text encode queerqueen speech as inherently excessive and in need of containment. Tackling questions of authenticity, self-censorship, and the restrictions of heteronormativity within this perception of queer excess, Maree shows how queerqueen styles reproduce stereotypes of gender, sexuality, and desire that are essential to the business of mainstream entertainment.

What linguistic anthropologist Miyako Inoue did for Japanese women's language, Maree has done for on?-kotoba and on?-kyara?the language of queerqueen personalities. While Maree draws on examples from Japanese media, the book is a must-read for anyone working on media of any sort. Maree lays bare the manipulations at play and the heteronormative norms that undergird social media today.

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