Rain Sparks
A resounding theme within LGBTQ+ media is the effects that family has on the queer individual. This mirrors the real-life fear that members of the community face when coming out to their families. Queer media also deals with social and cultural anxieties about whether or not queer people should want to build families of their own, or if that desire means ascribing to heteronormative societal norms they have been conditioned by. Queer literature, in particular, can showcase the complicated relationship that queer people oftentimes face in relation to their desire for a family unit of their own. It seems no matter the choice that a queer person makes in relation to familial units, they will fail the expectations of a group of opinionated individuals both in and out of the LGBTQ+ community. This failure to commit to the expectations of society and their own communities ties back to theoretical concepts in Jack Halberstam’s The Queer Art of Failure, in which he describes queer failure as rebelling against the dominant hegemony by refusing to participate in the lifestyles of heteronormative capitalism (8).
The basis of the argument of queer failure is the rejection of heteronormative capitalist society, it is important to establish what a heteronormative society is. In Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner’s essay “Sex in Public” they define heteronormativity as follows:
A complex cluster of sexual practices gets confused, in heterosexual culture, with the love plot of intimacy and familialism that signifies belonging to society in a deep and normal way. Community is imagined through scenes of intimacy, coupling, and kinship; a historical relation to futurity is restricted to generational narrative and reproduction. A whole field of social relations becomes intelligible as heterosexuality, and this privatized sexual culture bestows on its sexual practices a tacit sense of rightness and normalcy. This sense of rightness-embedded in things and not just in sex-is what we call heteronormativity. (554)
In layman’s terms, heterosexual intimacy shapes what society views as normal, and impacts every societal institution’s functionality. Berlant and Warner go on to state examples of institutions and culture that are impacted by heteronormativity, “…it is produced in almost every aspect of the forms and arrangements of social life: nationality, the state, and the law; commerce; medicine; and education; as well as in the conventions and affects of narrative, romance, and other protected spaces of culture” (554-555). Since heteronormativity has shaped every aspect of a culture, deviating from its rules is an act of queerness in itself.
On top of these heteropatriarchal norms there is also the overarching pressure of the capitalistic machine hanging over every participant within said society. Parental figures hope to work hard enough that their children are able to go further than them and move up the social class ladder. In Elizabeth Freeman’s Time Binds she explains the concepts of chronormativity and chronobiopolitics which are means of social control. She explains that chrononormativity is the use of time- as a concept- to manipulate humans into being as productive as possible. She lists examples of chrononormativity are, but not limited to schedules, calendars, time zones, and watches (Freeman 3). Whereas chronobiopolitics are the institutions that bind people together on both the micro-levels of personal relationships and the macro-levels of society. The institutions that she offers that represent chronobiopolitics are marriage, accumulations of health and wealth for the future, reproduction, child rearing, and death (Freeman 4). Berlant and Warner state that heterosexual intimacy infects all aspects of society, and Elizabeth Freeman informs her audience of two ideals that exist to control members of a society. Therefore, if one does not sacrifice their time, chronormativity, for the prizes offered in exchange by the social institutes, chronobiopolitics, then they are rejecting heteronormativity. Berlant and Warner’s definition of heteronormativity and Freeman’s concepts of chrononormativity and chronobiopolitics help to provide some context to Halberstam’s idea of queer failure, by showing what norms are being violated when one participates in queer failing.
For queer people there are two major family dynamics that are points of contention in their lives. The first is the pre-existing family unit. This is the family that one is born into, and risks losing when rejecting heteronormativity. The second is the family unit that queer people create on their own. This may include marriage, children, or found-families in relation to their friends and communities. A novel that excellently showcases the impact of queer failure on the pre-existing family is Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. The novel is a semi-autobiographical that examines the protagonist Little Dog’s relationship with his mother, society as a child immigrant, and his sexuality. Throughout the novel there seems to be pressure on top of him from family, his mother in particular, to assimilate into a society that is not completely welcoming to him. The audience learns early in the novel that Little Dog does not give into these expectations of him completely. “In a previous draft of this letter, one I’ve since deleted, I told you how I came to be a writer. How I, the first in our family to go to college, squandered it on a degree in English” (Vuong 15). Little Dog believes that studying English instead of a more lucrative major in the eyes of society is a failure, one that needs to be justified to his mother. However, he quickly retracts from this idea, instead focusing on where his love for telling stories came from: his grandmother. It is a strong statement. Little Dog implies that pursuing a job in writing may not be what a capitalist society wants from him, it is a passion that he inherited from Grandma Lan. This gift from her is more important to his story than justifying the career that he chose. Little Dog’s perspective calls back to an earlier point in this essay, in relation to Berlant and Warner’s idea of heteronormativity, because him refusing to defend his choice of career and its validity in a capitalistic society is an act of denial to the norm. His rejections to the norms of a heteronormative society is an act of queer failure by the definition that was established previously.
One of the most striking examples the effects of queerness and the pre-existing family on each other in On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is the contrasting existence of Little Dog and his childhood sweetheart Trevor.
“Is it true though?” His swing kept creaking. “You think you’ll be really gay, like, forever? I mean,” the swing stopped, “I think me . . . I’ll be good in a few years, you know?”
I couldn’t tell if by “really” he meant very gay or truly gay.
“I think so,” I said, not knowing what I meant.” (Vuong 188)
This scene from the novel perfectly encapsulates the two characters and their relation to being queer. Trevor believes this is just a phase that he is going through, but Little Dog is aware of his own queerness. This could be influenced by their upbringings. While Rose was not always the best mother to Little Dog, she stood up for him in ways she could. When neighborhood children vandalized the bike she bought for Little Dog, she stayed up late to fix it with her pink nail polish. On the same page Little Dog states, “That was the day I learned how dangerous a color can be” (Vuong 134). While that may be true in relation to the outside world, his mother’s actions showed him that he was safe to love any color in the safety of her home.
Trevor’s homelife lacks any of the warmth that Little Dog finds in Rose, Grandma Lan, or his grandfather. Little Dog clues the audience into certain aspects of Trevor’s life through the narrative, like the fact his mother abandoned him five years ago with his abusive father (Vuong 123, 143). His father’s abusive tendencies mixed with his bigoted opinions influence Trevor’s unwillingness to accept his queerness. He tries to eliminate any part of him that his father views as soft, but Little Dog still finds it in him like when he comforted Little Dog in the river when he defecated on himself after their first time or his refusal to eat veal when he learned it was baby cows (Vuong 215). However, sadly for Trevor, while Little Dog accepts the parts of himself that do not align with heteronormative society, accepting his queerness and his desire to be an author, Trevor begins to drown in it. The last time that Little Dog and Trevor speak before Little Dog goes to college a notable line is, “The whole point of us meeting was to say goodbye, or rather, just to be side by side, a farewell of presence, of proximity, the way men are supposed to do” (Vuong 168). Trevor is still performing heterosexuality; their final meeting is tainted by the fact Trevor has not accepted himself, but Little Dog has.
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous explores queer failure in a multitude of ways. Through the novel Little Dog goes on a journey from a child discovering his sexuality, to accepting it, and deciding to pursue a career that is not seen as productive in the eyes of hetero-patriarchal capitalistic society. All of these decisions are influenced by his pre-existing family. His grandmother gave him his love of stories. His mother accepted him when he came out even if she feared the backlash he would receive from society (Vuong 130). While a character like Trevor was socialized in a violent environment where his mother abandoned him with an abusive father who would attack him at any sign of softness. Trevor failed in a different way than Little Dog. He did not obey his father’s wishes for a strong heterosexual son, by performing heterosexuality deeper than surface level. Instead of performing well in school and finding a girl his father would approve of, he dived deep into drugs (Vuong 174-75). While this was destructive and the cause of his death, he could be described as “quietly losing” which is a phrase Halberstam uses to describe queer failure.
In Maggie Nelson’s memoir The Argonauts she writes about the conception of both her blended family with her partner Harry, who is nonbinary, and the conception of their son Iggy. An idea that seems to stick with Nelson as she writes is both heteronormative society’s and certain members of queer communities’ opinion that queer people should not create families. Queer families oftentimes showcase a step away from the nuclear family, with blended families and other non-traditional dynamics. However, these dynamics can be quite frightening to the mainstream, and as a result strike conversations on the well-being of children within these dynamics. Nelson mentions that the Fall that her family moved in together Proposition 8 was a huge discussion point and, on her commute, to work she saw lots of signs that read “Protect California Children!” (Nelson 10). At that point in her life there was a debate from the general public on whether or not her family should be allowed to exist. On the opposite end of the spectrum, “Lee Edelman argues that “queerness names the side of those not ‘fighting for the children,’ the side outside the consensus by which all politics confirms the absolute value of reproductive futurism” (Nelson 75). Certain queer people believe that the desire to create a family is rooted in heteronormative values, and that the queer community should not participate in it.
Nelson’s memoir fights against both of those positions by showcasing both the mundane and uniqueness of creating a non-nuclear family. What was striking about Nelson’s introduction to the family is how she describes bonding with her partner’s son by playing a game of fallen soldier with him (Nelson 10). With a lot of blended families there is an adjustment period, a time where every member must get used to cohabitating with the others now in their home. Nelson’s description of her developing relationship is both heartwarming and can be relatable past a purely queer audience. Later in the novel she describes the happiness her stepson gets from being an older brother and being able to roughhouse with Iggy, but also her own worries about the safety of both children (Nelson 142). Nelson and her family are not the typical nuclear family, representing a failure on their part. She combats the heteronormative idea that children must be protected from the perverted queers by writing the normal, boring, everyday parts of her family dynamic. However, they are also not conforming to “homonormative” values, so also failing in a way. Nelson shows defiance towards what a “normal” family is, reclaiming the word and shifting it to fit her family’s lifestyle.
Halberstam’s idea of queer failure can be used to analyze the dynamics between pre-existing families, like in On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, and to queer people starting families of their own, such as The Argonuats. This examination helps readers to see that a warmer family dynamic may allow one to “fail” in healthier ways, like Little Dog who is able to live as both an openly queer man and author. In contrast the lack of a supportive family dynamic can lead to one failing to their detriment, like Trevor’s addiction that led to his overdose. Lastly, queer failure in relation to the queer formation of families acknowledges the fact that one must fail both the heteronormative culture and some members of the queer community to embark on that endeavor. Overall, while queer people may constantly fail in relation to what is considered normal, queer media attempts to illustrate the bravery and beauty it takes to allow oneself not to succeed.
Works Cited
Berlant, Lauren, and Michael Warner. “Sex in Public.” Critical Inquiry, vol. 24, no. 2, 1998, pp. 547–66. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1344178. Accessed 21 Apr. 2024.
Freeman, Elizabeth. Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer Histories. Duke University Press, 2011.
Halberstam, Jack. The Queer Art of Failure. Duke University Press, 2011.
Nelson, Maggie. The Argonauts. Graywolf Press, 2016.
Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri de. The Kiss. 1892, Château Malromé, Langon
Vuong, Ocean. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. Penguin Books, 2021.