Review of Stage Struck, Theatre, AIDS, and the Marketing of Gay America

[consciousgulp]

"We are in a very tender moment when society is making a transition in its understanding of AIDS from a lived experience to packaged image... when Rent is selected over a novel with the same characters, events, and dynamics that does not lie about the power differentials between heterosexuals and homosexuals. As we have shown, the existence of homosexuality is no longer being denied. Instead, a fake public homosexuality has been constructed to facilitate a double marketing strategy: selling products to gay consumers that address their emotional need to be accepted while selling a palatable image of homosexuality to heterosexual consumers that meets their need to have their dominance obscured. Rather than elevating the centuries-old underground gay and lesbian culture to the level of mainstream visibility, straight people have invented their own homosexual culture and placed it front and center." Sarah Schulman

http://people.ucsc.edu/~rosewood/writing/essays/stagestruckreview.htm