Queer Theory

Orange is the new black

Simpsons

South Park

Eastenders

Skins

Glee

Game of Thrones

Stereotype of Gay men is often exaggerated (magnification)

“Butch Dykes” & “Screaming Queens” – Andy Medhurst (1997)

“Films and television comedies images of are full of gay men as effeminate screaming queens…it chooses that aspect of gay male behavior (SELECTION), inflates it into the defining male characteristic of male homosexuality (MAGNIFICATION), then establish it as the most easily recognizable image (REDUCTION).”

“Stereotyping becomes ideological the moment it stops being simply a method of description and becomes a vehicle for values: the image of the screaming queen does not just mean ‘all gay men are like that’, it means ‘all gay men are like that and aren’t they awful’, which in turn means ‘and they are awful because the are not like us.”

“This is why stereotypes of sexuality strive so vigorously to create two, polarized sexualities, hetero and straight, and to insist with such obsessive reductiveness that people who belong to those poles are easily identifiable – hence the recurring presence across media texts of the screaming queen and his female equivalent the butch dyke.”

Magnification – exaggerating a particular part of the stereotype (Michael Foucalt)

Sexuality is invisible but the media exploits this and magnifies this.