Queer(y)ing the Sydney Star Observer: Queer Representation in 'Queer' Media

Queerying the Sydney Star Observer: Queer Representation in 'Queer' Media

Bachelor of Communication (Honours)

Acknowledgements

I acknowledge the sovereignty of the Ngunnawal people, the traditional owners of the land that I live on.

Thankyou to Belinda Cooper, my inspiration. Thankyou to Belinda Morrissey for your wisdom, guidance and brilliant mind. Thankyou to Mum, Gran, Pop, Adam and Andrew for your love, patience and support.

Abstract

Australians of minority sexes, genders and sexualities have little, if any, access to widely distributed media. The Sydney Star Observer (SSO) is Australia’s leading gay and lesbian newspaper. The SSO aims to provide news and information to a range of minority sexes, genders and sexualities. However this is not the case. Instead, the majority of the queer community is ignored in the SSO, which focuses on and markets to mainly a white, affluent, gay audience, thus contributing little to the plight of minority sexes, genders and sexualities across Australia.

This thesis investigates queer representation in the SSO. It aims to determine who is represented in the SSO, how they are represented and why they are represented as such. The thesis provides an alternative model to the way the SSO community and the SSO citizen are currently represented in order to better meet its aims.

The work of Michel Foucault and Judith Butler is used to understand what queer is and the possibilities that queer enables. Research into the lives of people of minority sexes, genders and sexualities provide evidence as to why representation of a range of minority sexes, gender and sexualities is important. An overview on ‘queer’ media provides an insight into the form ‘queer’ media tends to adopt and assists in explaining why the SSO takes its current form.

The research employs Foucauldian discourse analysis to explore the complexities of queer theory and identity in an attempt to understand how these impact on queer representation in the SSO. Content analysis is used to prove the relevancy of the thesis statement and assists in identifying themes for discourse analysis.

The analysis of the SSO community reveals a community founded on caring ideals that touts equality, however, equality is not truly achieved due to the limited focus on the rights and care of the gay, white male. This community is essentialist, enabling participation for a limited few.

An examination of citizenship and the SSO citizen, using Alan McKee’s frame of a gay consumer citizenship, reveals that the SSO produces a consumer citizenship and a gay, white male citizen. This SSO citizen must possess a number of qualities, all closely associated with consumerism, in order to participate in the SSO’s citizenship.

Due to the limited community model, the limited ideas of the citizen and of citizenship, adopted by the SSO, the paper produces an exclusionary formulation of community and citizenship which undermines ideals of equality touted by the paper. These limitations also result in the failure of the SSO to meet its stated aims and do little to represent and provide news and information for others of minority sexes, genders and sexualities.