LGBT Marriage Literature Final Paper

Chang Moon
On the early afternoon of June 23rd 2013, a clamor of ecstasy rang
throughout the steps of the Supreme Court. A throng of rainbowstriped activists with their brightly colored picket-signs basked in their
pride and their hard-earned freedom as their defeated opponents
cloaked in their Puritan black descended the steps in bitterness. It was
a landmark momenta moment that would anchor the victory of LGBT
activism in the stream of American history. Yet beyond creating a tick
mark in the Timeline of LGBT History in the history textbooks of the
future, it was also a symbolic culmination to the grand drama that is
LGBT identity. After countless dramatics of the court and histrionics of
the public, we have finally won the battle. The momentum of history
or more correctly, the momentum of dramawas now on our side.
Twenty-two months later, we have witnessed the rapidity of such
momentum. Ever since the announcement of Windsor vs. United
States and Hollingsworth vs. Perry, the number of states legalizing
same-sex marriages have ballooned from thirteen to thirty seven (26%
to 74%) and the Supreme Court seems ready to put a period to the
tidal drama of same-sex marriage in the coming months.
Reflecting such a swift change of tides in the legal domain (or
increasing cultural attention to LGBT issues), the popular media has
begun its rainbow metamorphosis. GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance
Against Defamation)s Where We Are on TV Report for 2014-2015, for
instance, reported an increase in LGBT characters across all primetime
broadcast TV channels (FOX, NBC, CBS and ABC). Although the level of
representation of LGBT characters in broadcast TV and in web series is
still not equal to the proportion of LGBT demographic in US population,
their presence in popular TV shows seems more palpable than ever. For
instance, one only needs to recall the season 4 finale of Modern Family
(ABC) for the popular medias normalization of gay marriage or more
recently the pilot episode of How to Get Away with Murder (ABC) for a
gay sex scene that was later labeled as racy.
Considering the recent spew of gay representation in popular
media, it is tempting to analyze the change in gay aesthetics (as
embodied in such popular representations) post-Windsorspecifically
how the dramatics of the Windsor or Perry Court became manifested
within the aesthetics (or dramatics) of gay representation in artistic
medium. For this paper, however, I hesitate to establish such
manifestations (which would be another intellectual project on its own)
without first constructing the aesthetic relation between the court and
the theatre that is enabled by their own unique spatial dramatics.
Furthermore, I seek to analyze how the dramatic form inherent to
either space of the theatre or of the court delimits the aesthetic
expression of gay identity.

LGBT Marriage Literature Final Paper

Chang Moon
In order to investigate the aforementioned relations, I have picked
Federico Garcia Lorcas undervalued play The Public1 and Moiss
Kaufmans The Laramie Projectboth of which portray the tragic
drama of gay identity unfold within their respective spaces (one in a
theatre and another in a courtroom). Both plays are excellent literary
works to study these relations as they both struggle with the questions
of 1) what part of ones queer identity must be public vs. private and 2)
how does the dramatic form inherent to the space of the play force or
hinder the revelation of certain aspects of gay identity?
I. The Theatre Beneath the Sands: the theatre of love, death and
gayness

1 The play in Spanish is titled as El Pblico which has two meanings: 1) the public
and 2) the audience