Dangerous and (In)Vulnerable

The chapter investigates how The Weeknd’s aestheticization of sex, drug use, and violence contributes to positioning him as a credible outsider within the pop mainstream. Presenting analyses of three of his music videos—Pretty (2013), Heartless (2019), and Blinding Lights (2020)—the chapter revolves around two questions that emerge from this part of his oeuvre. First, in what ways do graphic displays of violence shape a representation of masculinity that panders to a broad cultural fascination with violent men? Then, how does The Weeknd’s embrace of vulnerability simultaneously place his masculinity at risk and affirm it? In an attempt to provide answers to such questions, the chapter addresses issues pertaining to the cultural disarmament of women; how notions of place frame performances of gender; the anti-hero trope of masculinity; the gendered, sexual, and racialized connotations of dance; and the blurred boundaries between pop artists’ public personae and private lives.

“The Path of the Comedian is Always Going to be a Lonely One”: Comedians’ Mediation Between Family Humour and Public Performance

The article* presents a study of the use of family humour in public comedy and the mutual influence of family humour and public humour on comedians’ performances and everyday life. The interrelations between these domains lie at the level of the content of humour, its format, its performance and the interaction between humour producers and their audience. Family and public humour often overlap and interweave in various ways, especially in the experience of those who engage in humour production both in public and in private spheres.The study is informed by interviews with UK-based comedians on their family humorous folklore and its interrelation with their public humour performances. The interconnection between public and family humour was identified on several levels: textual, communicative, personal and conceptual.This multidimensional interplay indicates that family humour is contingent on the context, but at the same time is often conditioned by comedians’ public personae and cannot be fully separated from the humour they perform publicly. The study illustrates the vagueness of the dichotomy between public comic performances and family humour and points to multiple ways in which the boundaries between these domains can become blurry.

Conclusion

This chapter argues that the Queering Toolkit remains relevant for understanding contemporary performers and describes the emergence of new tools. The chapter briefly explores enfreakment and spectacle in the careers of Michael Jackson and Prince and the intentional self-neutering and domestication of Clay Aiken. It also examines the straight-queer gestures of Justin Timberlake’s career. Queer aspects of musical performers’ public personae remain legible to contemporary audiences. Even with the rise of LGBTQ politics and greater acceptance of sexual and gender diversity, elements of shame and ambivalence color the experiences of queer people. Queerness remains a process of becoming. The chapter suggests how the toolkit could affect readings of female-identified and nonbinary performers, as well as other genres such as jazz, in the future.

GAGA: NOTES ON THE MANAGEMENT OF PUBLIC IDENTITY

Lady Gaga distinctively exemplifies the contemporary celebrity in popular culture because of the extent of her fame as well as because of the peculiar persona she presents to her audience of both fans and onlookers. In this paper, I discuss how the persona of the person born as Stefani Germanotta was created and subsequently maintained in a variety of ways related to her naming as Lady Gaga. Invoking the work of Erving Goffman, my discussion extends beyond an analysis of the effectiveness and fame of Lady Gaga’s presentation of self to the ensuing essence of her persona itself, that is, of Lady Gaga as Gaga rather than gaga. Not merely a brand, Lady Gaga is in more ways than only economic also what Lady Gaga has become to herself and to others. As the performer slips in and out of the many public personae she has created in her name, I argue, she has become Gaga to the public at large and, with only minimal qualification, among her once personal friends as well as in the privacy of her socially constituted self. The truth that has to be acknowledged today is that Lady Gaga has indeed become Lady Gaga.

Ostap Vyshnia in Ukrainian Culture of Remembrance: ‘King of Sales’, ‘People’s Satirist’, a Public Institution, a Propaganda Tool, a National Martyr

The article offers a study of the evolution of cultural representations, ways of reception and critical interpretations of the work and personality of the prominent Ukrainian satirist Ostap Vyshnia (1889‒1956) in Ukraine’s culture of remembrance and in Ukrainian society in general. Despite the existence of dozens of books and hundreds of articles about Vyshnia, both academic and popular, published in Ukraine and elsewhere since the late 1920s, the subject is still waiting for a comprehensive, unbiased, systemic and interdisciplinary scholarly study. The article is an attempt at such a study, focused on cultural representations of the personality of Ostap Vyshnia and on the reception of some of his important works. Also, it deals with social and political uses and abuses of Vyshnia’s enormous popularity and of the symbolic capital of his public persona as ‘the people’s satirist’. The article argues that, apart from the mentioned one, there has been a variety of public personae of the popular satirist. They have been shaping and functioning in Ukrainian culture and society since the 1920s, and include, among others, the personae of Ostap Vyshnia as a ‘king of Ukrainian book sales’, as peasants’ trickster hero, as ‘enemy of the people’, as ‘nation’s master of laughter’, and, since the 1990s, as a national martyr and a key figure of Ukrainian ‘Executed Renaissance’ of the 1920s.