The insane pendantry of "queer studies"


This is about as bad as it gets. Please keep a barf bag by your side as you read the following.

If you want some awful reading on this matter, try the following, the
unedited version of the Grove entry:

http://www.rem.ufpr.br/REMv7/Brett_Wood/Brett_and_Wood.html

Including such gems as :

'Here, context exerts so powerful an influence as to overthrow conventional
associations: even the opening of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, that
quintessential model of heroic masculinity, met its gay destiny when,
tricked out with a heavy beat and other accoutrements, it hit the Disco
scene in the 1970s as 'A Fifth of Beethoven'. '

and

'Homosexual or pederastic composers from Saint-Saëns onwards were at one
time particularly susceptible to the attractions of Orientalism, perhaps
because of the projection of illicit sex discerned by Said's critique
(1978), perhaps, as Lou Harrison has suggested, because of an identification
with the Other, or even (as in the case of Cage) because of dissatisfaction
with available resources: this topic remains problematic and interesting in
relation to lesbian and gay music. '

and

'Furthermore, since sexual orthodoxy can never be assumed, especially among
musicians, the constant parade of heroism and masculinity in the repertory
from Beethoven to Strauss, and its representation in criticism and
scholarship, begins to look more and more like a ruse to divert attention
from an endemic queerness so firmly repressed that even to suggest it is an
unpardonable error of taste and judgment (as in the cases of Beethoven,
Schumann, and Brahms).'

Posted: Tue - April 11, 2006 at 03:09 PM          

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