An essay that I co-authored with a graduate student Tyler Everett Adams (Interdisciplinary Arts, Ohio University) has just been published in the performance studies journal Liminalities (Vol. 20, No. 4): http://liminalities.net/20-4/ (PDF available). The essay is titled “‘That’s Because They’re Dream Houses, Mother******!’: Barbie, Utopian Camp, and a Conversation Between Two Allans” and considers the following:
Drawing on José Esteban Muñoz’s formulations of queer utopia, disidentification, and queer performance, this essay, which takes the form of a campy conversation and collaborative exploration, interrogates the humorous, theatrical, and pop cultural possibilities of Greta Gerwig’s 2023 film Barbie to define utopian camp. According to Muñoz, camp is “understood not only as a strategy of representation, but also as a mode of enacting self against the pressures of the dominant culture’s identity-denying protocols” (Disidentifications 120). This essay builds on this idea to offer against the grain readings of Barbie, particularly in the ways the film thinks about gender, race, and alternative ways of being, doing, and performing even under the constraints of whiteness, capitalism, and heteronormativity. In other words, this essay finds the critical fun, play, chaos, subtexts, and subversions in the film that generate and reveal utopian camp as strategies of and for life, living, survival, desire, and even love.
Tyler and I had originally submitted it to a different journal’s special issue on José Esteban Muñoz’s work, but they turned it down in favor of more traditional scholarly essays. We think it would have been a great addition to the special issue and that Muñoz would have enjoyed the campy, conversational, alternative format. Luckily, we shopped the piece to Liminalities, which accepted it and sped it through review to publication. For that, they have our deepest thanks and appreciation.
And many thanks to Tyler for their ideas, close readings, contributions, and for making the collaboration fun and seamless. I look forward to the essay getting cited all over the place!