I’ve been flipping through a book called Curiouser: on the queerness of children (Bruhm and Hurley, eds.) for the last few days and my writing about it is minimal, just a few sticky notes and book marks. Maybe because it’s the end of the semester but my brain has kind of checked out of this whole school deal weeks ago. Still, I’m aiming for this post to be what I don’t do a lot of, regurgitation of someone’s arguments more than writing about their work. Not a fan of doing this... but it was kind of hinted at in the last meeting I had about this directed study that I should do a little more of that. By which I mean A told me “do more of this” and gave me a reading list. My god I love that she’s not subtle about her expectations of work. I swear some profs speak in code and laugh when you don’t figure it out in time. Like Jigsaw, but worse. It’s not just your life on the line; it’s your university grades. Now that I’ve gone drastically off topic because I’m typing while my mind is in 80 directions at once, I should probably just start.
Richard D Mohr writes an article called “The Pedophilia of Everyday Life”, which is about the representation of drugs and queer children in America. He argues that when they are presented together, they represent a message to the public and to smaller communities. The ad in question was that of a 12-14 year old boy with a very gender neutral appearance, his hair falling close to his eyes, one of which stares at the viewer, the other shadowed and distorted from the audience. He is about to do several lines of cocaine despite his young, almost pure image. The caption below his face says “It used to be, at 13, little boys became interested in little girls”, implying several things according to our author. He views the ad with a perspective that drugs and queerness are new, distorted practices that children become “involved with”. He also suggests that by having them in the same ad, they are somehow connected in terms of social deviance and unacceptability. I can’t find the actual ad online, so I will put up a picture if it scans well.
It’s no secret that many Canadians generally believe that cocaine is dangerous and perhaps destructive to one’s social, physical, economical, psychological, etc. lives. Ultimately, being on coke, crack-cocaine or whatever this kid is about to do will make one’s life worse after they come down from his unbelievably fantastic high. I would say that this is a fairly reasonable and accepted statement. Perhaps due to our desire to view children as innocent and pure, we assume street drugs should have nothing to do with children. I’m not advocating pre-schoolers to have 17 bags of crack in their shoes, but why cocaine and homosexuality? What do they have to do with each other? We’re given few statements in this ad. This child is probably queer. This child is about to do a few lines of cocaine. Queerness and street drugs are related, because they are not what they used to be. Did the makers of this ad expect us to get sentimental and nostalgic about the good old days when people didn’t do drugs and kids were supposedly always and inherently heterosexual, heteronormative or even just “not queer”? Mohr argues that the representation of sexuality, gender and drug use in this advertisement are used to mutually demonize each other, making us question the practices of children and all gender-queer people. They are no longer just queer, but are a threat to what we see as “normal” and “healthy” as they become involved with drugs.
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