Build Me an Arc as Fast as You Can!

The reading I do for my classes are like a double-edged sword: sometimes, there's so much that I become overwhelmed. Plato + gay things = WHAT? But other times, the readings I do resonate with me, simply because I was not expecting to take away much from it.

Hence is the case for the primary reading I had this week. Pulling from Queer Popular Culture, I selected Chapter 2, "Queering/Quaring Blackness in Noah's Arc" and was pleasantly surprised. It's hard, I think, to read (and subsequently) write about shows you have never seen, and I was cautious. I chose to read this particular chapter early on because I feel that the bulk of my studies do NOT take into account the racial dimension to queer studies and I felt that I owed it to myself to expand beyond what I already knew.

Way to go, Logo!

Written by Gust A. Yep and John P. Elia, the article explores Noah's Arc, a series that was "dubbed as the black Queer as Folk, and the black gay Sex and the City" (p. 28), and I already knew that I was into something good here. Although I was unfamiliar with the series, I knew that I was heading into the right territory to figure it out. They begin by using the word quare quite a bit, and I was instantly confused... so much, in fact that I wrote "quare???" at the top of the page. And you may be wondering, "does this have anything to do with queer" and the answer is a hearty YES! In fact, when pinpointing the relationship between the two, they argue that to "queer" something (a text, for example), one attempts to make the familiar unfamiliar, to subvert expectations about what we have come to expect from the media we consume. On the other hand, to quare is calling attention to the whiteness that permeates throughout queer theory. Essentially, it attempts to queer... queer. To find the quareness of a text means to examine the underlying intersections between sexuality with race, class, etc. Interesting, right?

Yep and Elia dive into the series, critiquing how it quares class, gender, and sexuality. What is especially important here is to understand that they offer the lens of quare to analyze how this text, Noah's Arc, functions differently than most texts-- primarily because the series adds on race to conversations-- conversations that would be commonplace from within the cannon of queer literature. They offer individual case studies from the series, circumstances that allow the readers to really see how/why such a discussion is important. By combining the queer identity with the black identity, we are in turn deconstructing how race can be talked about through mediated texts.

Ultimately, texts that focus on the racialized body tend to center on the heterosexual male body, thus ignoring the woman or the gay black man. On the count of three, say it with me: 1... 2... 3 PROBLEMATIC. But what's even more fascinating is that, even though Noah's Arc was picked up by Logo, it was inevitably cancelled after two seasons. Logo, you guys, the GAY CHANNEL. While they do not note this anywhere in their article, it is critical to note what this says about texts that are queering what we already think of as queer. I know, it gets kind of trips after a while, but reading this article made me think critically about the texts that I tend to ignore in the first place. I'm part of the problem, this is true, but beyond that... how do we find a place for queer texts that subvert what we already think of as queer? This is certainly a question I won't be able to answer right now, or even in the coming weeks, but perhaps I can come to some conclusion near the end of the semester.

But while we're at it, I have one more query. I want to watch Noah's Arc. This article really solidified it, what with discussions surrounding HIV, class, and sexual imbalances. But... where can I watch it without paying $60+ to buy the DVD's? If you have any suggestions, let me know.