The Queer '80s // Season 3, Episode 2
Culture Club and other 1980s New Wave artists like Duran Duran and Adam Ant ushered in a new era of gender-bending pop stars.
On this episode of Swerve South, Jaime and Theresa follow up the last episode’s discussion of proto-feminist 1970s television with a conversation about the surprising outpouring of queer representation in 1980s pop culture. While the ’80s—a decade defined by the conservatism of the Reagan administration and the devastation of the AIDS crisis—is typically viewed as a low point for LGBTQ acceptance, this episode celebrates the many expressions of queerness in 1980s music, film, television, sports, and more. From mainstream offerings like Personal Best (1982) and Culture Club to more underground, alternative fare like Atlanta’s public access variety show The American Music Show, this episode chips away at the conservative veneer of the ’80s and anticipates the explosion of queer culture to come in the 1990s.
Show Notes & Extras
The Conservative ‘80s
LGBTQ History Month: The early days of America's AIDS crisis, Tim Fitzsimons
And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic, Randy Shilts
The Queer Underground
Disasterama!: Adventures in the Queer Underground 1977 to 1997, Alvin Orloff
Symbolic Capital and the Production Discourse of ‘The American Music Show’: A Microhistory of Atlanta Cable Access, Charlotte E. Howell
The Ballroom Revolution, Arkee Escalera
Into the Mainstream
Personal Best: Lesbian/Feminist Audience, Chris Straayer
Watching “Personal Best” Was the Main Way to Become a Lesbian in the ’80s and ’90s, Heather Hogan
Before ‘Brokeback Mountain,’ there was ‘Making Love’, Christopher MacNeil
Taming Transgression: Gender Bending in Hairspray (John Waters, 1988) and Its Remake, Suzanne Woodward
Queer Music in the 1980s
Pop Music Could Use Another Decade as “Gay” as the ‘80s, Jeremy Helligar
53 Miles West of Venus: The Enduringly Queer Legacy of the B-52s, T. Cole Rachel