Judith ‘Jack’ Halberstam’s The Queer Art of Failure sets itself the task of ‘dismantl[ing] the logics of success and failure with which we currently live’ (2011: 2). To do so it constructs what Halberstam calls a ‘silly archive’, which ranges from the animated cartoon SpongeBob SquarePants to Yoko Ono and Marina Abramović’s performance art to Elfride Jelinek’s The Piano Teacher. Failure, for Halberstam, is not to be avoided, as it offers insights, ways of being, forms of politics and paradigms of resistance to current hegemonies. Working within the realm of queer theory and cultural studies, the book strangely echoes the 1970s sentiments of punk refusal as well as the global gay liberationists’ call for the invention of revolutionary sexualities outside of familial relations. Its dismantling of failure aims to show how winning is currently predicated upon losers. The inequitable neo-liberal ideologies that constitute today’s winners and losers relies on a basic assumption: those who lose did not work hard enough and thus deserve their fate. Halberstam asks us to consider the justice in winning in a global economy whose winners – the 1 per cent – do take all, leave very little for the rest of us, and next to nothing for those at the bottom end of the economic hierarchy. With ‘low theory’, an approach adapted from Stuart Hall’s reading of Antonio Gramsci, Halberstam brings together an eccentric array of sources. Low theory, for Halberstam, aims broadly and looks to arrive at counter-hegemonic options that are widely accessible. He defines low theory as less beholden to a particular telos and, again citing Hall, sees it ‘not as an end onto itself but “a detour en route to something else”’ (Halberstam 2011: 15). In a book about failure, it follows that Halberstam envisions low theory as a means to eschew goal-oriented politics and social theories. It is ‘open’ to ‘unpredictable outcomes’ and is ‘adaptable, shifting, and flexible’ (2011: 16). Halberstam predicates his low theory on what Hall describes as Gramsci’s ‘open’ Marxism. According to Hall, Gramsci’s theories were derived from the application of Marxist ideas to the real political problems that he faced in life, not from a deterministic application of theory in service of a teleological political project. Halberstam inserts himself into this logic by envisioning an ‘open pedagogy’ that is similarly amenable to questioning, that is bottom-up in its perspective and that ‘detaches itself from prescriptive methods, fixed logics, and epistemes’; instead, it ‘orients us toward problem-solving knowledge or social visions of radical justice’ (2011: 16–17). A large part of Halberstam’s silly archive is animated and stopmotion movies of the past decade, designed, made and marketed for mass audiences, mainly comprising children. Halberstam calls these movies ‘Pixarvolt’, finding in the works of Pixar and DreamWorks recipes for collective rebellion against capitalist economies and power and, in short, a ‘revolt’ against the status quos of neo-liberal humanism. These films, Halberstam argues, are made for children, who he sees as kinds of failed subjects, people for whom the world is not designed, who are clumsy and frustrated with various forms of authority, who are ready and willing to view the world in new ways, and for whom a revolution is a promising option. In these films, Halberstam sees ‘a rich technological field for rethinking collectivities, transformation, identification, animality, and posthumanity’ (2011: 174). He notes that Pixarvolt’s plots usually revolve around a struggle between human and non-human creatures in relationships that ‘resemble what used to be called “class struggle,” and they offer numerous scenarios of revolt and alternatives to grim, mechanical, industrial cycles of production and consumption’ (Halberstam 2011: 29). Pixarvolt films also focus on escapes from captivity that culminate in utopian dreams of freedom, elements in which he finds neither childishness nor a trajectory towards adult freedom but the dreams and means of social transformation. Key to Halberstam’s analysis is the counter-intuitive connections he argues the films create between communitarian revolt and queer forms of embodiment. Pixarvolt films, Halberstam argues, can provide new modes of thinking and new models of family, parenting and sociality. ‘While many Marxist scholars have characterized and dismissed queer politics as “body politics,”’ Halberstam argues, ‘these films recognize that alternative forms of embodiment and desire are central to the struggle against corporate domination’ (2011: 29). Halberstam concedes that there are no guarantees that animated

The Queer Art of Failure

Review(s) of: The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture and Social Change, by McRobbie, Angela, Sage, London, 2009, ISBN 9 7807 6197 0620, vi + 184 pp., A$49.95, Distributor: Footprint Books.

The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture and Social Change [Book Review]

CONTENTS: Introduction: Bad Girls and Working Girls in the 'New Hollywood' PART ONE: Chapter One: Crossdressing, Aspiration and Transformation Chapter Two: Cowgirl Tales Chapter Three: Action Women: Muscles, Mothers and Others Chapter Four: Investigating Women: Work, Criminality and Sexuality Chapter Five: New Hollywood, New Film Noir and the Female Fatale Chapter Six: Female Friendship: Melodrama, Romance, Feminism PART TWO: PERFORMANCE AND PRODUCTION Chapter Seven: Comedy and Authority Chapter Eight: Music, Video, Cinema: Singers and Movie Stars Chapter Nine: Performers and Producers Notes and References Filmography Bibliography

. [Review of: Y. Tasker (1999) High contrast: Race and Gender in Contemporary Hollywood Film & Working girls: Gender and Sexuality in Popular Cinema]

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Pictorial Metaphor In Advertising

Existing research into the depiction of female athletes has indicated that while they remain under-represented across traditional and online media outlets, social media is a potential tool for fema...

Female athletes' self-representation on social media: A feminist analysis of neoliberal marketing strategies in “economies of visibility”:

Fallon Fox became the first openly transgender fighter in professional mixed-martial arts (MMA) in 2013. Her outing elicited fervent responses from the MMA community, reflecting the barriers many t...

Transgender Athletes and the Queer Art of Athletic Failure

This article employs a feminist approach to audience research and examines the interviews of women who regularly watch and enjoy action heroine films. I argue that participants in this study draw from ambivalent post-feminist discourses to negotiate the contradictions they find embedded in the representation of powerful women in action. The women interviewed are reluctant to believe that the female bodies onscreen are physically capable of the action they perform when compared with action heroes. Instead of viewing the action of the feminine body as literal, they interpret action heroines as visual metaphors for career and academic success and take pleasure in seeing women succeed despite adversity. Consequently, this study reveals that post-feminist sensibilities promote action heroines as successful in intellectual arenas, yet, simultaneously discipline action heroine bodies to render them unbelievable as physically powerful women. By analyzing participant interpretations of action heroines as visual me...

Unbelievable bodies: audience readings of action heroines as a post-feminist visual metaphor

This article investigates the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s (UFC’s) increasing efforts to market difference (including race, gender, sexuality, and nationality) across its mixed martial arts transmedia empire. More specifically, I examine the UFC’s The Ultimate Fighter reality television show as an innovative transmedia marketing strategy to promote diverse fighters and attract fans from previously overlooked audience demographics. The UFC has used numerous methods of transmedia marketing to fold difference into various media ventures over the past several years. I highlight The Ultimate Fighter as an exemplary case study in the development of a “we are all different” discourse in UFC marketing. The UFC’s deployment of reality television to market fighters produces a discourse that ambivalently homogenizes and essentializes difference—a phenomenon that girds gender, race, sexuality, and nationality to affective economies of cultural production.

“We Are All Fighters”: The Transmedia Marketing of Difference in the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC)

Dude Looks Like a Lady bellowed throughout the arena as Fallon Fox waited to enter the ring for her professional mixed-martial arts (MMA) fight against Allana Jones. Jones chose the Aerosmith song to accompany her walkout before the fight as a particularly poignant stab at her opponent. Fox had gained notoriety a few months earlier in March 2013 after being forced out of the closet as a trans woman in a sex-segregated combat sport.1 A reporter seeking to sensationalise her story ambushed her for the exclusive, but Fox curtailed the involuntary outing by contacting Cyd Zeigler of Outsports to write her story instead. Despite coming out on her own terms, she no longer possessed anonymity and reluctantly became professional MMA's first openly trans athlete. As a result of the revelation, Fox's MMA licensing organisations subjected her to medical review to verify that she met the medical requirements to fight as a trans woman. Even though she received the medical clearance to fight Jones, she endured transphobic jeers and epithets throughout the fight and since. Fox went on to win her match against Jones; yet, her victory was bittersweet. She continues to endure a relentless battle for the right to participate in women's MMA in the court of popular opinion. Heated debates in sports media about the fairness and morality of a 'former man' competing against women ensures Fox's presence in the spotlight for some time to come.Fallon Fox's fight for inclusion comes at a time in U.S. cultural politics when trans people are experiencing increased visibility in the media and laws around transgender rights are beginning to gain momentum. The Obama administration has signed legislation against hate crimes based on gender identity, encouraged the application of Title IX2 to transgender students, and removed barriers for trans people to update their official government documents.3 A new California law now allows students to choose bathrooms and sports teams based on their gender identity.4 In each case, these laws seek to protect the individual's right to identify as a gender other than the one they were assigned a birth. Cultural visibility has also increased and trans male-to-female (MTF) activists and fictional characters, in particular, have achieved increased visibility within U.S. media.5 For example, Laverne Cox graced a 2014 cover of Time magazine as both a transgender activist and popular character on Netflix's Orange is the New Black. Concurrently, Janet Mock has been featured on numerous television news programs after her memoir, Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More, became a New York Times Bestseller. In the sports world, former Olympic champion Caitlyn Jenner received the Arthur Ashe Award for Courage at the 2015 ESPY Awards after publically coming out as transgender. These women have become icons of the trans movement within the U.S. and advocate for the individual's right to express one's gender identity in a variety of fashions and without fear of violence or retaliation.6 The discourses of transgender acceptance have entered a mainstream conversation and taken root in progressive politics and popular culture.The increasing visibility of trans people in the media and the legal measures to ensure their inclusion in society is certainly noteworthy; however, Fox's struggles in the MMA community demonstrates a key area of concern for trans inclusion. In this article, I scrutinise the discourses surrounding Fallon Fox's participation in MMA by both her supporters and opponents. More specifically, I examine the interplay between notions of gender identity, individual trans rights, and fixed sexual difference in MMA blogs, radio shows, and in sports and entertainment magazines that comment on Fox. On one hand, naysayers object to Fox's participation in MMA under the auspice of protecting cis women from the presumed immutable advantages of being born male. On the other, proponents for Fox's right to fight employ sexist understandings of female physicality to advocate on her behalf. …

The Paradox of Fallon's Fight: Interlocking Discourses of Sexism and Cissexism in Mixed Martial Arts Fighting

Feminist scholarship on sports media has long examined how women negotiate femininity and athleticism, how they contend with sexism in their professions, and how sports media trivializes, sexualize...

Jennifer McClearen

Papers

Transgender Athletes and the Queer Art of Athletic Failure

Unbelievable bodies: audience readings of action heroines as a post-feminist visual metaphor

“We Are All Fighters”: The Transmedia Marketing of Difference in the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC)

The Paradox of Fallon's Fight: Interlocking Discourses of Sexism and Cissexism in Mixed Martial Arts Fighting

Introduction: women in sports media: new scholarly engagements