If They Put Me on the Screen, Ergo I exist

© All rights reserved to Amit Kama

Kama, A. (3002). Negation and Validation of Self via the Media: Israeli Gay Men's (Dis)Engagement Patterns with Their Representations. The Communication Review, 6(1), 71-94.

EXCLUSION FROM THE PUBLIC SPHERE According to Habermas (1989[1962]) the media have emancipatory potential because they afford and sustain public dialogues in matters civic and/or social. The public sphere is allegedly accessible for all members of the democratic citizenry thanks to the media (Croteau, Hoynes & Carragee, 1996; Dahlgren, 1993). Ideally, the public sphere is supposed to enable the participation of actors from the entire social and political spectra. However, those who enjoy dominant positions preserve their secure place on the top of the power hierarchy. They prevail by shunning members of less powerful echelons from participation in the public discourse lest they contribute to decentralization of power relations and threaten the hegemonic status quo (Fraser, 1992). Muted group members are allotted limited access to the public sphere. Consequently, the overall discursive space is demarcated and defined by dominant group members' perspectives whereby other groups are subjugated to the invisible and unheard periphery. Hall (1982) contends that pluralism in mediated discourse is a thin shell over the powerful echelons' discriminatory interests that are based on the subordination of the powerless. Consensus is a product of social construction on which the powerful toil for their own apotheosis. The media produce and reproduce conformity: They are the mechanism by which hegemony is kept alive. They replicate definitions of reality that bestow seemingly natural superiority to the existing social order. Reality is therefore not a given set of 'natural facts', but the creation of processes supervised by the powerful. Hegemonic ideology triumphs by eliminating its own stamp from the mediated messages, thereby the latter seem to be natural, real, or spontaneous manifestations of reality. This system excels in manufacturing the impression that it is 'natural' or 'normal': Social construction of reality is an art form of deception (Gamson, Croteau, Hoynes & Sasson, 1992). One of the ways of constructing symbolic reality is excluding co-cultures1 from the public sphere. Gerbner and Gross (1976) argue that representation in the fictional world symbolizes 1


existence in the social reality, while absence means symbolic annihilation. Gross (1998) maintains that representation constitutes a resource of power. Lack of representations of groups without political, social, and/or economic power works to safeguard their inferiority and marginality in the 'real' world. The hierarchy of power relations is maintained, inter alia, by the cultivation of the visibility of the powerful on the expense of others. The latter's position is kept at bay both in the 'real' and symbolic worlds. Greenberg and Brand (1994) conducted a literature review regarding minority representations on American TV and found out that their absence in various genres is rather stable across the years. Annihilation can be implemented by elimination of the less powerful from the symbolic world. This can be conceptualized quantitatively; however, it is also achieved by sophisticated, covert, and cunning means. Qualitative symbolic annihilation refers to the ways the 'weak' are portrayed when they do appear on the public stage, particularly as grotesque, pathetic, or otherwise deformed stereotypes (Dyer, 1993; Perkins, 1979). Symbolic annihilation occurs not only in conservative environments, but thrives within liberal arenas that, at best, pay lip service to the muted (Bhabha, 1992). For the past thirty years the academic debate and empirical research on the power relations between dominant and disenfranchised segments of society have been burgeoning. The literature on the question of media representations of the 'weak' delineates three main chronological phases: quantitative absence; infiltration of negative images that are based on prejudice and folkloristic stereotypes; and, finally, integration of actors whose minority identity is irrelevant (Dines & Humez, 1995; Greenberg, 1980). Patterns of gay men's representations have also been systematically charted during the past twenty-five years. Similar trajectories were found in various media: printed journalism (Alwood, 1996; Pearce, 1973), TV (Gross, 1995[1989]; Kielwasser & Wolf, 1992; Nardi, 1997), cinema (Russo, 1987), theater (Clum, 1994), and advertising (Fejes & Petrich, 1993). The only exploration into the Israeli setting was carried out by me (Author, 2000a, 2000b). I argued that two rather distinct eras distinguish the Israeli case: the Era of Silence and the present period of increasing visibility. Whereas until the late 1980s the Israeli public sphere was devoid of gay men unless they were convicted of sexual 2


molesting of boys, as of the early 1990s growing numbers of non-stereotypical fictional as well as public gays play on the public stage.

CO-CULTURE MEMBERS' RECEPTION OF THEIR REPRESENTATIONS How do co-culture members experience and make sense of these (mis)presentations of their identity? While media consumers who belong to the powerful echelons see their images in the metaphorical mirror of the media on a regular basis, marginalized consumers are enforced to see their images as they were produced by and for the majority. Members of muted groups, in a sense, are outsiders-within: They belong and identify with one culture but must survive in the dominant one (Hill-Collins, 1986). In order to survive in the oppressive environment they need to develop a double vision of the worlds between which they are forever oscillating (Swigonski, 1994). Many studies have analyzed media representations of various co-cultures. They attempted to uncover and isolate the components that, for instance, constitute stereotypes in order to achieve a political objective: If we can identify the ways images are constructed, we may contribute to their change and eventual demise. This field of research has gained momentum in the past two decades thanks to the empowerment of the feminist movement within the academic community. Nevertheless, the debate over representations should be qualified. Many of these studies evolved out of the theoretical premise, which presupposes that meaning is inherent in the text (Jensen, 1991). Cultural studies are lately changing the focal argument in favor of perspectives that claim that meaning is manufactured via continuous negotiations among cultural institutions, texts, and audiences situated in socio-historical circumstances (Radway, 1984). In other words, whereas 'traditional' researchers were mainly interested in the images per se, more and more voices are heard that call for research to examine how 'real' people and images interact. Instead of merely looking at texts, we should be focusing on the social work that is actually being made by the consumers (Geraghty, 1996; Modleski, 1984). Ang (1996) also claims that media consumers interpret texts in modes that correlate with their life situations, and these are affected by the products of the interpretive practices. Indeed, there is a correspondence between media 3


consumers' social situation, their interpretive practices and their implementation in their life fabric. Greenberg and Brand (1994) deduced from their review that there is a dire want of research on the ramifications of the textual analyses. Does the reservoir of data regarding minority representations have any impact on co-culture members? Tuchman (1979) voiced a similar concern years before. So far, few studies responded to these challenges, the majority of which concentrated on the functions of the media in the socialization of ethnic or racial minorities (McDermot & Greenberg, 1984; Storman, 1986) or gender role development (Lemish, 1998). A unique co-culture in the present context is a group demarcated by the sexual orientation of its members: gay men2. Whereas mediated messages are but one component of a complex structure of unmediated messages within an ethnic, racial, or gender co-culture, the gay individual is never born into his own minority. Until he is re-socialized into the gay world and becomes an initiated member of this co-culture (Dank, 1979; Hooker, 1965), his sources of unmediated knowledge are limited. The neophyte gay man (Troiden, 1993) is embedded in a social matrix in which other gay men are usually not accessible. Unlike other co-culture members who have easy access to primary socialization agents similar to themselves, gay neophytes need to heavily rely on the public discourse in their struggles to construct an identity (Kielwasser & Wolf, 1992). The gay individual may adopt the mediated image—if this exists at all—because he lacks direct contact with other gay men before he enters their world (Fejes & Petrich, 1993). Notwithstanding the accumulation of knowledge derived from textual analyses (Creekmur & Doty, 1995; Gross & Woods, 1999), there seems to be a lack of reception studies in the context of gay audiences, as well. Gross (1994) accentuates the vital need to keep track of gay representations, yet researchers must endeavor to analyze audience members' patterns of reception and engagement with these images. The challenge to understand gay readers' standpoint remains rather unanswered to date except for a few studies (e.g., O'Neil, 1981). The present research aims at covering this empirical gap and is motivated by two goals: 1. Examination of gay co-culture members as media consumers. Do and how socio-historical 4


and psychological positionings of gay men shape their media engagement patterns? The research is meant to look into the complex relationships among the cultural construction of homosexuality and its impact on the individual formation of identity, on the one hand, and, patterns of media consumption, on the other hand. 2. Integration of the human totality of the media consumer. Since existing audience work illustrates the pervasiveness of media in our lives and culture, media researchers should start engage the whole life of their subjects (Lotz, 2000). The trend in media studies is nevertheless to minimize allegedly unnecessary dimensions and focus solely on media consumption patterns, as if the audience can be conceptualized as a mere aggregate of socio-demographic variables and a cluster of media behaviors. The complex human whole is ignored (Livingstone, 1998). Instead of asking what the meanings of texts are or what their readers 'do' with them, researchers should ask how the products of the processes of sense making are positioned and understood as integral parts of humans' routine practices. In order to achieve this goal, a novel methodology was applied3.

LIFE STORIES Life stories are a product of a social practice of a meaningful rendering of the self to other/s. They consist of events and experiences through which a person has become who s/he is. They offer a coherent sense of identity by which the narrator communicates how s/he is to be judged and evaluated (Linde, 1993). The object of study is a narrator, who conducts a dialogue not only with the researcher, but mostly with her/himself, her/his past experiences, current positionality and identity, and so on. Some memories are remembered and reported; others are relinquished (Plummer, 1990). Remembrance of things past is a reconstruction of ‘real’ events based on present perspectives (Nardi, Sanders & Marmor, 1994). In the center of every life story stands a protagonist who subjectively classifies his/her experiences according to his/her needs at the time of its unfolding. Life stories are not a mere cluster of dates, facts, or incidents, but a selective unfolding of a narrative that reflects personal attributes. Events and experiences are integrated into the narrative when they have played a crucial or meaningful role in the narrator's life or 5


when they are perceived to constitute a critical part in the construction of his/her identity (Atkinson, 1998; Corradi, 1991; Finnegan, 1997; Plummer, 1983). Life stories also contain information about the social and material realities outside one's personal life (Alasuutari, 1997) and reflect socio-historical developments that took place during the narrator's life. The employment of life stories as a social scientific method emerged in the 1930s at the Chicago School where they had a brief flurry of use, then disappeared until the late 1980s, when they were implemented in sociological researches (Bertaux & Kohli, 1984; Laslett, 1999). In the field of media studies except for a handful of studies (Barnhurst, 1998; Barnhurst & Wartella, 1998; Bourdon, 1992) it is far from being prevalent.

THE SAMPLE Forty-five Israeli, Jewish men who label themselves as 'gay' volunteered to unfold their life stories. Following the epistemic paradigm, they were not randomly sampled but 'recruited' via ads in newspapers, the Internet, gay venues and public events, and through snowballing. Among them were public gays and activists in lesbigay organizations as well as men who shun the gay world and refrain from 'coming out4' in non-gay situations. The age, educational, and occupational distributions were relatively wide: The youngest were 16-year old high-school students, the oldest a 72-year old retiree. A caveat is in order here: The following findings and conclusions emanate from the distinct ways gay men are socially positioned in present-day Israeli circumstances and should not be generalized unto a distinct social group. The forty-five informants cannot stand for or represent a solid or unequivocal "gay community". Not only were they not randomly sampled but any such generalization may be wrongly construed as expressing universal, a-historical and/or essentialist homosexual entity.

THE INTERVIEW The interviews took place between September 1998, and September 1999. All commenced with a standard request: "Tell me your life story". My intention was to elicit spontaneous 6


autobiographies (Bruner, 1990); therefore the informant was not assisted with any structural scheme. My plan was to draw conclusions about the informant's various communication patterns according to their perceived, subjective, and relative importance. It was essential for the study to obtain details as they were processed and conceptualized independently of the research. Focused questions were asked when relevant issues were spontaneously brought up. I elaborated elsewhere (Author, 2000c) on the various advantages inherent in an interviewing situation where both parties are gay men. I wish to stress here the proclivity of my informants to be frank and open up and discuss intimate details of their sexual desires and behavior that do not regularly constitute an accepted subject matter for conversations. Indeed, the erotic is shunned in most social interactions as well as the public sphere. Thus the opportunity to discuss this aspect of their life with me is a valuable methodological practice, which responds to Honeychurch's (1996) challenges to the dominant view of what may be known in the heterosexual production of knowledge.

STORY ANALYSIS Interviews were recorded and then transcribed. The main ideas were then 'distilled' in a process known as thematization (Strauss & Corbin, 1994). The intention was to see what parts of the informants' lives were of relevant importance to the study. During this process the researcher does not know towards what ends s/he is driving and what the possible themes may be. They 'reveal themselves' to the analyst whose reflexivity is crucial at this point (Nelson, 1989). The next step was to aggregate related themes into wider categories of meaning. Finally, I looked at all these categories and themes in order to produce general conclusions. In this paper three themes will be discussed, namely: eras of absence and presence, disengagement from the media, and intentional consumption.

ERAS OF ABSENCE AND PRESENCE One of the basic premises of this work was that media consumption is, among other things, a derivative of the audience member self-identity and not pre-determined by the texts (Brundson, 7


1981). Social embeddedness in social, historical, and political spaces profoundly affects the ways readers interpret texts (Moores, 1990). The cultural construction of homosexuality as a transgression, and aberration is manifested in many phenomena on the micro and macro levels. It is, for example, conducive to the construction of a social group whose members share similar patterns of engagement with the social and symbolic realities. It was found that these sociohistorical circumstances facilitate the creation of an interpretive community. The common denominators among gay men—that are largely the product of heteronormative ideology and practices—produce shared reading mechanisms that demarcate them as an interpretive community (Lindlof, 1988; Radway, 1984). My textual analysis of the changes in the public sphere in Israel for the past thirty years yielded a distinction between two eras that differ in the amount and nature of gay representations. I argued that the Era of Presence as of the late 1980s could be characterized as more tolerant and less homophobic in comparison to the past. Several informants concurred (without being aware of this analysis):5 Adam, a 23 y.o. farmer, claimed that there has been a great improvement in comparison to what was a couple of years ago . This progress was

manifested in changing gay men's public image: While in the past they used to bring a drag queen for the rating, and spoke about it in the way of a scoop; today they speak in the style that I like better. In the normal, natural style. Adam expressed an ideological stance according to

which the differences between gays and non-gays in the social and symbolic realities should be abolished. The correct media image, according to Adam and many other informants', is the normal, natural style.

Many other informants argued that it was impossible to distinguish between historical periods on the basis of rigid criteria of presence/visibility in the media. They refuted the contention that historical, chronological, or quantitative parameters are applicable and reported gay invisibility even today. According to this group of informants, the Era of Absences is palpably ubiquitous today as it was in the past. They claim that in spite of the great strides of the recent past, gay images are still too few and far between. The historical eras are analytical constructs not necessarily perceived by the social actors. As such, the distinction between the 8


eras is of theoretical benefit but not empirically grounded in the subjective ways the public discourse is construed by audience members. In other words, many informants demonstrated that symbolic annihilation is a subjective construct, which does not lend itself unproblematically to 'objective' judgments based on pre-conceived criteria, such as frequency and/or regularity of appearances of images in the media. Conceptualizations of textual phenomena carried out by 'objective' scholars employing 'objective' analytical criteria may lead to a fallacy. It seems that there are no 'objective' criteria with which media discourse can be assessed to be inclusive or exclusive of co-cultures. These are phenomena that do not lend themselves to be quantified by a researcher, but need to be judged solely on the basis of the social actors' subjective perceptions and actions. So far I presented textual analyses spontaneously offered by the informants. Now I wish to delve into the ways their outcome was manifested in their lives. It was found that there exists a schism between the interpretation modes of the current discourse and realization of these insights in the informants' routine lives. Even when they employ less conservative codes of interpretation and claim that there is a new symbolic atmosphere in regards to gays, these changes have little bearing on their actual experiences. The so-called Era of Presence (when it is acknowledged) is perceived to be nothing more than lip service on the part of some vague elite or media institutions. The sudden blooming of the present day is usually not being implemented in their daily behavior: neither in their media consumption patterns, nor in their interpersonal communications and identity formation processes. Yitzxak's words attest to this schism: Although the Israeli media is [sic] more open to homosexuality, it is not enough for me to feel safe, because, generally, in the centers of the United States, London, France, or Tokyo, or Chicago the openness is much more felt.

Yitzxak, a 68 y.o. retired psychologist who was married to a woman for many years, finds a gap between the current media openness and the prevalent opinion climate. He assesses that there is still a looming threat over Israeli gays. The tolerant and relatively sympathetic media coverage does not imply a corresponding change in the social reality. The bleak note in Yitzxak's words that reverberated in other informants' as well indicates that any attempt to 9


extrapolate from the media reality onto the 'real' life is doomed to failure: Even when symbolic reality is perceived to be more tolerant and lenient, it is far from being a safe haven.

DISENGAGEMENT FROM THE MEDIA One of the recurrent themes in the collected life stories was that the gay individual gazes at the world around him from a distanced standpoint. He frequently cannot position himself as an integral part of his social surroundings either at specific moments or throughout his life course. When the majority of those around him are non-gay, his alienation and estrangement are obtrusive. He usually does not want to take an active and involved part in the transactions in this world. The metaphor that best describes the gay individual's ontological positioning is the life in the borderland, where he is a nomad wandering between territories in none of which he feels completely at home (Anzaldua, 1987). Furthermore, he always needs to pay careful attention to a regulated and controlled presentation of his self while negotiating input from the material, social, and symbolic environs. Following these assertions, we can start discussing the informants' reported disengagement from the public sphere. Generally speaking, mediated discourse was absent from many spontaneous autobiographies. Whenever I made an effort to examine the informants' attitudes toward public events and/or figures disseminated by the media, many arrived at impassable memory junctions. Countless black holes, as Joe, a 34 y.o. interior designer, called them, were present in their memories as

far as activities that were outside their immediate experiences were involved. Informants who enthusiastically and meticulously reconstructed episodes of their personal past, were quite speechless when requested and prompted to recall what transpired in the 'outside' world during these times. Several informants expressed disappointment of the media. They said that at various phases during their lives they turned to newspapers to seek information about homosexuality, that is, about themselves. They believed that the papers would readily supply relevant information. Barak, a 30 y.o. graduate student, said that since the seventh grade he loved very much to read things that are relevant to gays […] this was my place to get information. Nonetheless, the 11


information that was offered was frequently distorted and heavily biased. Yosi, a 38 y.o. programmer, complained that everything he learned about Independence Park6 was loaded with misconceptions. When he was still a neophyte he grappled with practical questions: Where can he meet others like himself? Where and how to meet companions for love, sex, and friendship? The main option in this country is public parks, which are depicted in the public discourse as well as in the received folklore as the epitome of awful homosexuality: These are forbidden places where unspeakable deeds are performed and pose a menace for the Israeli society. The message for the uninitiated gay man constitutes a risky obstacle on his endeavors to join his peers. In the same vein of disappointment, a few informants reported a crisis back when they were adolescents. Some mentioned a teenage magazine, in whose readers' questions section there were questions such as: "My best friend rubbed my cock, what should I do?" (Tal). The respected medical doctor's response was intended to pacify the troubled youth by saying that that was just a temporary phase. Under the guise of an enlightened stance as if homosexuality was not wrong in itself, this authority figure tried to convince the readers that the 'phenomenon' would 'pass away'. The purportedly positive and encouraging message is found to be quite detrimental when the young man realizes that the 'phase' is not transitory at all. A basic mistrust evolves when the reader grows up realizing that the media supplied him with invalid, false information. Amnon, a 25 y.o. student, spoke about the homophobic conflation of sexual orientation and gender identity into one identity category. He bemoaned this all too prevalent discourse because it affected his own self-perception. He highlighted his discomfort and confusion emanating from the gap between his feelings about being a man and the powerful stereotype of the effeminate homosexual7. Amnon complained how this image gravely influenced his understanding of his own position in the world: I am… enjoy and feel good with the fact that I am a man, and I do see myself as a man who is attracted to men, and not some… woman who is imprisoned in a man's body. Something that I hear. Not personally, but in interviews and such.

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Bo'az, a 34 y.o. management consultant, offered another explanation for the theme of disengagement. He claimed that the cognitive efforts to translate non-gay experiences into his frame of reference were too taxing and exhausting. One needs to be culturally bilingual in order to incorporate non-gay texts into his own frame of experience. Since this process is cumbersome, one would rather disengage himself altogether: When I see a heterosexual movie, I automatically must make these transformations. My identifications are sometimes not relevant. The handsome man is not the protagonist, and what shall I do? The 'hunk' is the one who is important for me. […] We gay men have to be skilled in transformations.

Aside from the widespread tendency to alienate oneself from the mainstream media at large, several informants expressed intriguing patterns of dealing with texts containing references to gay issues/figures. Erez's story is a complex example. He explained that although he was an avid consumer of news when he was a teenager (he is now twenty), his awareness was blocked by a covert mechanism that directed all problematic contents (i.e., dealing with homosexuality) outside of his conscious reach. Retroactively, he does find ample references to gay issues, but as a boy this fact escaped him altogether. For the adolescent Erez, the first half of the 1990s was perceived as if the public sphere were devoid of anything gay. Just as it was for earlier cohort members. When I asked him to explain this, he was initially at a loss, and then he suggested that socialization processes attributed so many negative facets to homosexuality that he erected a bulwark against the infiltration of elements that might have threatened his identity. Blindness was a solution of sorts. Indeed, the interaction between the gay individual and the mediated discourse is affected no only by its contents and messages, but also by his biases, which are rooted in the culture into which he was born. Unlike Erez who is now a leading gay activist, Aharon, a 35 y.o. hairdresser, is adamant in keeping his homosexuality an unqualified secret. He intentionally avoids consuming media contents that are perceived to threaten his identity and portray his being by an inappropriate and unjust image. Aharon's expectations are for a decent and fair discourse that should reflect only 'positive' aspects of life. In the current state of affairs, the media are seen as hostile. Like other 12


informants, Aharon expects the media to operate on a modus operandi I term "imaginary mimesis": Public discourse is expected to reflect a reality devoid of any homophobic bias and to portray only 'positive' facets of gay life. A reality that probably exists only in the regions of these informants' imagination. Moreover, these men are inclined to define an optimal, good, and proper gay image as if it were a 'natural', taken-for-granted given. 'Positive', in their eyes, is an essential characteristic that needs no further explication. Until the imaginary mimesis is achieved, disengagement is the preferred mode of action. Xagay's disengagement pattern can be explained by selective perception (Vidmar & Rokeach, 1974). Until recently, he was married to a woman and with their family spent several years abroad. Amit: Do you remember anything else from this period (i.e., when they returned to Israel)? Xagay: [silence] Look, it was…[…] I was not aware of these events. […] I was not aware of anything you just mentioned. […] I was not aware. May be there were things in the papers. I can't recall.

Later, Xagay, a 48 y.o. administrator, spoke of a profound turmoil in his life and its impact on his former pattern of disengagement: When I left my home for the first time, and even before that, for about two years, three years, I remember that there were nearly… Many appearances in the media. Lots of items concerning homosexuality. At some point it seemed like a bombing, yes? […] I mean the media was [sic] rather full with this. But this is something of recent years, the last two-three years.

A parallel line between an individual's media reception patterns and his biography can evidently be drawn. As long as Xagay led a heterosexual life arrangement, any media coverage of gay issues was eschewed from his reading. As far as he was concerned, the media underwent a momentous change out of the blue, so to speak. The Era of Absence, according to Xagay's observation, terminated simultaneously with his personal change (i.e., leaving his wife). Was it indeed? Or, perhaps when he began having a new life arrangement, he could no longer afford ignoring the media discourse on gays. Allocation of cognitive resources to the coverage of gays in the media constituted an existential threat until he decided to make a personal change. As 13


long as the reader alienates himself from his gay identity and refuses to acknowledge it, the very act of reading such texts is hazardous to his efforts at constructing an identity. Selfacceptance—whether it is manifested in a life arrangement and/or identity formation—enables the individual to perceive and read gay-themed texts in a less apprehensive manner. Tal, a 30 y.o. journalist, associated the consumption of gay themed texts with the level of labeling himself as gay. He, too, chose for many years to relegate his homosexual desire into the recesses of his identity, and refrained from constructing an identity on this basis. He deliberately disengaged himself from consumption of gay things until lately when he 'came out' and began to be an active member of the gay community. He believed that such distancing behavior would ultimately contribute to a construction of heterosexual identity. I distanced myself from this subject. […] All kinds of things that interest me today, I was not close to them at all then. […] You have to understand that this was something I didn't want in me. […] When you are in such a position, so […] when you see a gay character in a movie, you try to forget that you saw it. When you see things about gays, you don't read them. It did not interest me, and it wasn't important for me to enter this world. On the contrary. I think that part of the mechanism to keep on surviving as 'straight' was to repress it into such a place that it would not even…

The following are the main explanations for the disengagement pattern: 1. In spite of the current trend of inclusion, there still is a perceived lack of representations that are expected to be fair and right. Disinterestedness in the media is a result of a frustrating, vexing, and enduring subjective experience of symbolic annihilation. Mediated information is perceived to be largely unworthy of consumption for it has been either distorted or exclusionary. Disengagement derives from the cyclical phenomenon that if one, as a gay man, is 'transparent'; he is not interested in playing any part in this communication, even as a spectator. 2. Negative messages are habitually perceived and remembered on the expense, so to speak, of other images. The gay reader makes sense primarily of texts that match his schema of "hostile media". Other messages are ignored and not processed. One would rather disengage from the media than confront their perceived homophobic management. 14


3. One's friends supply sufficient information and data, leaving the media quite superfluous. All informants reported a heavy reliance on the guidance, tutoring, and supply of necessary information by their gay peers, hence relegating the media to a negligible part of their lives. Webs of interpersonal flow of communication replace many gay men's needs to consume mediated texts because the former are perceived to be unbiased by heterosexist mechanisms. 4. Allocation of such enormous amounts of cognitive and emotional resources for the formation of one's gay identity that he is unable to handle external input. Intensive work on the self exhausts too many mental resources, hence leaving the individual incapable and unwilling to be curious or involved in the 'outside' world. 5. Anxiety from acknowledging one's homosexuality before he is ready to attribute the stigma to himself. Consumption of texts that deal with gay issues is sensed to accelerate labeling processes that threaten the individual. Thus, he disengages himself from any sources of such anxiety. 6. Anxiety lest any interest in gay issues would automatically mark one as gay. Many informants reported a deep unease at consuming texts as if this act per se may be construed by other/s as an unmistakable sign of being gay.

INTENTIONAL CONSUMPTION A contradictory theme was 'distilled' from some of the life stories (including those that were cited above). Some of the informants employ a deliberate policy of intentional consumption of media texts that deal with gay men and/or homosexuality. Actually, this is not a conflicting theme but a derivative of the disengagement from a discourse, which almost exclusively concentrates on the non-gay world. Because gay men's representations were perceived by the majority of the informants to be unworthy, some of them expressed a fierce desire to find a worthy confirmation for themselves. By doing so they strive to overcome a sense of selfnegation. Both patterns of consumption complement each other: While the disengagement pattern is rooted in the consumers' aversion to texts that symbolically annihilate them and negate their self and social identities; the premeditated consumption pattern is grounded in 15


struggles to find expressions that may validate their existence. The disengagers either actively or inadvertently refrain from an exasperating and tedious exclusion; the intentional consumers invest various resources in order to locate signs that would enhance their ontological (in)security and ascribe meaning to their marginalized existence. It should go without saying that these two patterns are neither dichotomous nor do they characterize two distinct types of individuals. In many cases, one informant reported two patterns of media consumption either consecutively (i.e., during different stages of his life course or development of gay identity) or concurrently (i.e., in different media contexts). Yoram, a 29 y.o. physician, is a self-aware media consumer: Of course, if there is something [about gays], we [he and his life partner] will buy all newspapers… to see exactly what 8

happened. Shlomi and Ziv , a 37 y.o. lawyer and a 27 undergraduate student, respectively, are

community leaders. They reported a consumption pattern of deliberate, calculated, and attentive behavior that is motivated by various goals, such as: enhancement of a sense of pride, construction of social identity, and self validation. Shlomi: We do make an effort to watch Florentin [an Israeli TV series whose two protagonists are gay] together […] also the gay movies. […] Undoubtedly it is part of the reasons we choose which films to watch. Okay, because it deals with the subject matter. […] I think that is one of the considerations when I gaze through the paper and there is something about homosexuality […] so I read it. […] I don't read any article about Jews, even though I am Jewish. I mean, I don't read any article about Israelis. But, yes, I will read any article about homosexuality. Ziv: […] You say in some place: "If they put me on the screen". I mean, I become a part of something. Some very central part of my identity, which was until a few years ago something that you would never believe it would be on prime time TV.

Avi, a 49 y.o. physician, who strictly safeguards his homosexuality as an absolute secret9, is, too, careful not to miss gay-themed movies for two reasons: (1) To see that you're not the only one in the world. That is, first of all, to overcome the feeling of negation. Secondly, to enhance

the feeling of social belonging. Since he commonly feels excluded from his social environs, the gay man seeks to embed himself in a social context via consumption of particular texts. Thanks 16


to a deliberate utilization of gay-themed texts he can vicariously identify with a social group, which he is anxious to be a part of. This is especially acute for someone like Avi who is apprehensive about the possible threats on his professional career lest rumors about his homosexuality uncontrollably leak outside the gay world. (2) An effort to see what's going on with others. This means to use the texts as sources of information or re-socialization agents.

When the gay individual conducts little unmediated communication with the gay world or other co-culture members, he needs to rely on mediated texts as if they reproduce or reflect 'real' reality. Avi believes that the movie characters are others, with whom he conducts para-social relationships (Horton & Wohl, 1979[1956]). He expressed a definite expectation from the gaythemed movies: Through the understanding I will be able to achieve a better quality of living with myself. But, he is apparently unable to overcome internalized mechanisms of oppression and

cannot put what he learned from the symbolic world into practice: Probably this way is not that easy. The implementation of acquired insights in his daily survival is severely hindered. In spite

of all of this, Avi claims: It gives me some sort of a feeling of relief. Amnon suggested that the yearning to be and feel part of a collective gay body is grounded in a violent sense of negation. Consumption of texts that offer representations of gay men produced by and for gay men (Gross, 1998) constitutes a symbolic umbilical cord that supplies vitality to the isolated gay individual: I think that it is some kind of a substitute. A kind of connection to being gay. Let's say that I have the Gay Times [a British magazine], therefore I am gay.

Tal underwent a radical transformation in the development of his identity. He is now trying to compensate himself for the alienation and disengagement pattern that he employed until recently in order to construct and present a false heterosexual front. After he had labeled himself as gay, he went on a quest for self-validation with the aid of various media texts: I watched the TV program about this gay couple and was very interested in their story. […] When there is an item on the news I watched. I mean, really, since then, I always go to gay exhibitions, any movie that is connected to this, every play, every newspaper article. […] To read everything that is concerned with gays. 17


On the background of perceived symbolic annihilation, each and every reference to gay 'things' is perceived as potentially having great value. Unlike the men who felt threatened by these references, a few informants reported that these references are made into material, collectible objects. Newspaper clippings in which gay men are mentioned are perceived to validate the individual's existence and are hence collected and cherished. Because these references are rare, each one becomes something beyond a mere written text, that is, a ceremonial fetish. Doron, a 20 y.o. soldier, said: I have a collection of many-many newspaper articles about gays […] That was after I achieved full self-awareness. I knew that I was gay, but I didn't understand the whole concept, how to live on. […] And, simply at that time I saw an article, I don't remember which, my first reaction was some kind of a trigger, I said: "this I want to keep". And since then I've been keeping all articles.

The collection of clippings is seen as a symbolic device that enables gay men to fight against the negating forces. It is a source of support and comfort and is elevated into a status of a therapeutic means. Another source of validation was found in pornographic texts consumed via the Internet, magazines, or pre-recorded videos. Pornography is certainly one of the major mass mediated resources for pleasure. In spite of the fiery objections pronounced by various feminists 10, it is considered to be politically and ethically neutral in the gay context (Dyer, 1985; Waugh, 1995). Unlike heterosexual pornography that depicts acts one can encounter virtually anywhere nowadays – whether in TV series or on the street, that is, in the public sphere as well as public spaces – gay porn represents acts that constitute a taboo even today. This is particularly relevant for neophyte gay men who are not exposed to any kind of intimacy between men in their everyday life. Whereas any non-gay adolescent can learn how to behave in sexual situations just by looking around, the pre-gay teenager needs to actively pursue such representations. Gay porn is thus not only a site of masturbatory pleasure, but serves as an indispensable educational tool. Porn 'stars' are role models who help bridge this void.

18


The present interviewees corroborated this argument: The pornographic text is not only a purveyor of fantasies, but also serves as a reservoir of information that is not available elsewhere. Moreover, it helps overcome internalized misconceptions about homosexuals' 'deviant' practices. When Amnon was serving in the military, he watched a video and this was the first time that I like saw sex between men. Like I got an idea what it is all about. And it was very important for me. […] Until then, my idea of sex between men was summed up by them fucking from behind, you know. And this added some more information. […] It opened a window… like from the positions point of view.

Naftali, a 41-y.o accountant who has not come out to anyone but his sexual partners, said: There are [in pornographic magazines] all sorts of positions. […] They helped in a later stage.

The crucial importance of pornography as an agent of education, socialization, and validation was asserted by several interviewees who complained about its shortcomings: These texts, they claimed, offered nothing but explicit penetration. The total lack of public expression of affection is regrettably noticeable in these texts just as well. The anal or oral act is not a satisfying substitution for the coveted kiss, hugs, and other non-sexual manifestations of intimacy. Ya'akov, an 18-y.o. high-school student, expressed his disappointment: I prefer pornography with sexual tension, but that does not show everything. I mean, that does not show the acts themselves. But more emotional. Movies on gays that are emotional are more interesting than pornographic movies that show everything.

Finally, just as some men collect newspaper clippings, others collect and cherish pornographic images that are not generally employed for masturbation, but whose benefit lies in its very existence per se. These images are collected for their own sake, perhaps as a compensation for early deprivation. Bo'az declared that he downloads thousands of photos from the Internet: I have a huge quantity. […] I have an ordered collection of photos. They are catalogued like a stamp collection. I cultivate these photos.

The schism between the 'normal' and 'abnormal' realms of existence that characterizes gay men's daily life is intensified by their perceptions of symbolic annihilation and invisibility in their social reality. The absence or presence of gay figures in the public sphere negates or 19


validates the co-culture member's sense of self, respectively. There is a distinctive correlation between feelings of loneliness and disengagement from the public discourse, and vice versa: Unproblematic (i.e., non stereotypical) representations motivate consumption of specific texts because they reverse the sense of self-negation. The gay man who looks at the public discourse as if it were a mirror reflecting social reality, yet, sees that his image is not reflected or distorted, feels utter insignificance. In contrast, when he sees an undistorted reflected image, it enables him to realize that his identity is validated. Borrowing from Ziv's words I would like to phrase the following aphorism: If they put me on the screen, I exist.

THE DREADFUL THREAT OF NEGATION The present study explored various models by which muted co-culture members are engaged with the symbolic reality. Forty-five spontaneous autobiographies generated several insights into the lived experiences of gay men in the context of media reception. Socio-historical processes that have positioned gay men at the inferior pole of the binary opposition "heterohomo" coerce them to view themselves from a problematic standpoint, that is, from the everdifficult place of a pariah or 'Other'. Gay men reside at an ontological borderland even at this day and age of relative tolerance and a growing presence in the public sphere. It seems that during every moment of his life, the gay individual looks at himself and his material, social, and symbolic environs through a schema that is a product of social pressures and that affects his dialogues with various systems. The macro processes have far-reaching ramifications on the micro level. Indeed, the anxiety one feels about labeling himself as gay and the apprehension lest this fact be known to others shape his media consumption patterns and interpretation modes of the public discourse. Two attributes were found to complement each other in the case of Israeli gay men: disengagement and intentional consumption. A prevalent trend in cultural studies tends to romanticize subordinated and muted cocultures' daily life as heroic struggles of resistance to oppression (Handler, 1993). It seems that since Hall's (1980) oft-cited conceptualizations, the field of media theory and research is saturated with variations on the motifs of resistance or subversion. Murphy (1999) maintains 21


that the force behind these is de Certeau's cultural criticism, which situated cultural production in everyday practices and defined a polar model of social power relations. Many scholars have since begun to understand social relations in terms of power struggles wherein the disenfranchised can undermine the status quo by mechanisms of symbolic resistance. Furthermore, it is widely recognized that popular culture embodies a site of struggle in which the powerless employ discursive and symbolic tactics in order to resist the dominant, exclusionary powers. The findings of the present study demonstrate a wholly different approach among Israeli gay interpretive community: Its members prefer to disengage themselves from the discourse that annihilates them instead of struggling with it. Instead of utilizing resistance tactics, these men rather alienate themselves from the texts that either ignore them or portrays them as wicked, pathetic, or grotesque stereotypes. Annihilation within symbolic reality is perceived to be the reasonable extension of invisibility in the social reality, and both collaborate to reduce the gay man: From a total human being he is reduced to a mere manifestation of a deviant sexuality, that is, reductio ad absurdum. As a result of routinized interpretation processes that more often than not yield similar conclusions, gay men develop a "hostile media" schema, which grows to be so dominant that they tend to overlook less stereotypical or less negative representations. This research, then, suggests that the processes of exclusion of gay men, in spite of recent encouraging and positive developments, are fully successful when gay men exclude themselves from the pubic discourse. Their disengagement from the activities in the public sphere indirectly substantiates the heteronormative system, thereby ensuring its victory. Oppressive discursive practices that categorically situate the homosexual as an eternal 'Other' (Foucault, 1978) attain their goal when their objects encapsulate and insulate themselves in their private, personal spaces. As we have learned, disengagement is also derived from psychological causes. Even when there exist fair and decent gay images that may be considered to counteract the symbolic annihilation mechanism, many gay men prefer to ignore them because of anxiety, fear, and apprehension. This individual phenomenon is grounded in a wider context of societal 21


homophobia and cultural heterosexism. This pattern of media consumption reveals the routine hardships with which gay men must deal even in the present day, and emanates from subjective interpretations of the world that are quite independent of what the media offer, yet fundamentally and inexorably reflect heteronormative practices. In other words, the media per se do not play any significant role in these cases, but it is culture at large that affects consumption and other behaviors. The other side of the coin is purposeful utilization. Fiske (1991) argues that modern media research, which examines the practices of socially situated readers, refutes post-modern theories. The post-modern assertions seem to be remote from many co-cultures' media reception patterns. Muted co-cultures look for images that may be relevant to the material conditions of their existence. Within this framework a materialistic theory of images is workable: Images are not amorphous simulacra, but constitute concrete resources for many audiences. The gay individual, who faces a sense of negation that is ever present in both social and symbolic realities, deems any representation that can validate his being as if he has found an invaluable treasure. Thanks to the burgeoning inclusionary trend of the past decade, more and more public gays and fictional characters inhabit the public sphere, thereby allowing a budding sense of belonging that may eventually reverse the sense of total exclusion and negation. Intentional usage of the media may give the wrong impression that it counters the disengagement pattern; however, they do complement each other. If it were deduced that the media do not play any role in the gay interpretive community's life, the findings regarding the former pattern emphasize the complex relationships between public discourse and audiences: Perceived symbolic annihilation means negation of the self, perceived presence means validation of the self. Therefore, in the face of perceived symbolic annihilation many gay men disengage themselves from the public sphere; and in the face of perceived presence they express interest and invest a lot of energy in consumption. In other words, reduction of his total humanity alienates the gay individual while recognition motivates media use. The drawer of newspaper clippings is the par excellence manifestation: Storing gay-themed articles enables the collector to reaffirm his being. It is an act of material validation through symbolic means. 22


Additionally, watching a movie or reading a book about others (albeit fictional characters) who undergo similar experiences eases the heavy burden to construct an identity in an unwelcoming world, not to say hostile. These two models of consumption attest to the dialectical relations among the individual and himself and the society in which he lives. Finally, an overriding theme that was salient throughout the lion's share of the forty-five autobiographies was the informants' mighty need to normalize their positioning in the social and symbolic worlds. It was either explicitly or implicitly expressed that their ultimate goal was to be embraced within 'normal11' society. In the same vein, in the context of these men's media reception the theoretical concept of "resistance" is not applicable. Their objective was not undermining or toppling the pillars of the dominant, heteronormative ideology with the aid of radical representations or oppositional codes of interpretations. On the contrary: They were in favor of fortifying normative aspects of their existence. The pubic discourse was viewed as a symbolic lever to assist them to overcome their coerced positionality in an ontological borderland. Most of the informants declared their entrenched wish to attain an idyllic situation where media representations of 'good', 'normal', or 'worthy' homosexuals would improve their individual lives as well as advance society at large. In other words, social change on both the micro and macro levels will be attainable, inter alia, when normative gay images are plentiful. The yearning to construct a gay image that is not radically different from non-gay images attests to the overall inclination to be incorporated by the general social fabric, not enlarging its boundaries. Although the current conclusions refer to a social group demarcated by a single variable, i.e., sexual orientation, I assume that it may be pertinent to other social contexts. There is no obvious reason to believe that they characterize only one interpretive community. I hence call for further research in other muted co-cultures. I believe that other groups that experience social subordination, cultural exclusion, and symbolic annihilation are likely to employ similar patterns of media usage. The question whether stigmata that contaminate identities actually affect patterns of engagement with the public sphere remains an empirical challenge.

23


NOTES 1

The term "co-culture", which signifies the notion that no one group or culture in society is inherently superior to other coexisting ones, is advantageous because it avoids the negative connotations of past descriptions (e.g., subculture, minority) (Orbe, 1998).

2

I deliberately chose to research gay men due to epistemic and ontological rationales (Author, 2000c). Still, it does not mean that all or none of the statements made about gay men are valid or invalid for lesbians.

3

In this paper I report only a few of the findings of the much broader research. The overall holistic analyses yielded a rich array of communicative behaviors that complement media reception, such as 'coming out' processes.

4

'Coming out' is a complex interpersonal communication act that depends on the individual's psychological makeup, social situation, cultural/historical circumstances, interaction with the addressee, and foreseeable ramifications of the disclosure of his gay identity (Davies, 1992; Harry, 1993; Sedgwick, 1990).

5

All citations from the interviews are typed in a different font. […] signifies omission. Three dots mark a pause. Translations adhere as closely to the spoken Hebrew as was achievable. All names are fictitious. The letter "x" stands for a glottal stop similar to the Greek X.

6

Independence Parks in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and other towns in Israel serve as unofficial meeting places for gay men, some of whom practice anonymous sexual activities there (Sumakai-Fink & Press, 1999).

7

The belief that gay men are feminine is as old as homosexual practice itself and is a mechanism by which society excludes men who dare collapse the division of genders (Coxon, 1996).

8

The couple was interviewed together, and unfolded their life stories in tandem.

9

Some of the informants were inclined to not disclosing their homosexuality. I was in several cases the first and only person with whom they have ever discussed intimate details.

10

The Anti-Porn versus Anti-Anti-Porn debate is too vast to get into here.

11

Due to brevity constraints I am not delving into the complex conceptualizations of what constitutes "normal" (Cf. Warner, 1999). Let it suffice that the term was repeatedly employed by the informants.

24


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