Gay identity: just another product to buy or sell
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Dr Vicki Crowley, senior lecturer in communications at the University of South Australia, is not surprised that the game of queer-spotting has become prime-time fare.
The greedy absorption by popular media of gay male culture was, quite simply, inevitable. “Popular media is just taking its time to catch up to street culture,” says Crowley.
Further, she explains, pop culture audiences are beginning to find sexual identities a lot more interesting than other commodities.
“What else can we consume but identities now?” she asks.
“The commodities that one can buy are so relentless with such marginal differences between them. The difference in a commodity might be simply coral pink or salmon.”
Implicitly charged with difference, queer life is this season’s must-have consumable. Gay is the new black.
