José Esteban Muñoz presented a witty, colorful lecture, titled "Brown Feelings, Queer Lives" on Oct. 8 as part of this year's Kirkland Project series. The lecture, which was originally scheduled as part of the 2002-2003 Kirkland Project Series "Masculinities," discussed various types of emotion and how, currently, in American culture, excessive or extreme emotions, in particular emotions expressed by Latin culture and homosexual culture, are oftentimes replaced by watered down, domesticated emotions and ideas. Muñoz believes that emotion, the way one experiences emotion, and the way in which emotions are conveyed, can be used in various ways to examine one's identity.
Muñoz began by discussing the recent pop-culture boom of both Latino and gay culture in the United States; the recent Latin music boom, and the gaining popularity of gay-themed television shows obviously display some elements of these minority cultures, and bring different cultures into the limelight. However, certain raw emotions and various cultural styles are lost as these cultures Americanize and move more towards mainstream media. Muñoz argues that the image of minorities within mainstream culture, including television, movies, music, and print media, domesticates these groups and flattens out the difference. Although by showing similarities between a sub-culture and dominant culture can help both cultures in some ways, it can also, as Muñoz argues, be detrimental to sub-cultures revolving particularly around sexuality and ethnicity. Cultures attempt to mainstream themselves occasionally for the equality, economic expansion, and social gain that mainstreaming promises; however, these promises are, according to Muñoz, ultimately false, and different cultures do not reap many benefits by becoming more mainstream.
Muñoz utilized the works of two different minority-culture figures: Bola Nieve, a homosexual Cuban musician who was censored during the 1950s for his anti-machismo ways, and contemporary comedian Marta Gomez, whose underground comedy routines highlight both Latin and homosexual cultures. These two artists, according to Muñoz, operate outside of popular, dominant society, and maintain their unrefined emotion, and remain true to their identity. Unfortunately, these performers, or artists like Bola or Gomez, are not currently part of popular culture because of their extreme passions and the unusual ways in which they display their feelings.
José Esteban Muñoz is associate professor of performance studies at NYU where he teaches Latin/o American performance, gender studies, the history of performance art and visual culture, and critical theory. He is the author of Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics and the editor of Everynight Life: Culture and Dance in Latin/o America and Pop Out: Queer Warhol, as well as special issues of the journals Social Text and Women and Performance. He is currently finishing a book titled Feeling Brown: Ethnicity, Affect and Performance.
The lecture was sponsored by the Kirkland Project, and co-sponsored by the departments of comparative literature, Spanish, and theatre and dance.
Written by Emily Lemanczyk '05
