Messy queer rhetorics: homonationalism and gay Asian American triad in Fire Island

ABSTRACT

Fire Island (2022) represents how three gay Asian American men (Noah, Howie, and Will) navigate tensions of whiteness, homonationalism, classism, and gay sexual desirability while on vacation with their friends. What begins as a narrative of gay Asian American men’s queer friendships becomes an intraracial romance of sticky rice – an Asian man dating another Asian man. Through use of a queer, Asian American rhetorical methodology informed by a queer of color critique, which challenges reliance upon citizenship, we analyze the messiness inherent in Fire Island. Our queer rhetorical analysis locates two themes present in Fire Island. First, Fire Island portrays an Asian American triad (or a narrative centering on three Asian American men) which ultimately succumbs to whiteness. Not without its shortcomings, homonationalism impacts both Fire Island and the film’s namesake. Second, the representation of three gay Asian American leading men comes with a cost, as an invisibility of romantic relations between Black, Indigenous, Latine, and Asian American men, that reify the white-Asian binary. Simultaneously influenced by and disrupting homonationalism, Fire Island demonstrates the queer (im)possibilities of optimism, pessimism, and failure.

KEYWORDS:

• Queer rhetoric
• queerness
• sticky rice
• Asian American rhetoric

Acknowledgments

Both authors sincerely thank Dr. Stacey Sowards, the Quarterly Journal of Speech editorial team, and the amazing anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback on this essay. An earlier version of this manuscript has been presented in the Asian/Pacific American Communication Studies Division at the 2023 National Communication Association.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Jack Parlett, Fire Island: A Century in the Life of an American Paradise (Hanover Square Press, 2022); Eguchi, Shinsuke and Calafell, Bernadette M, “Queer Relationalities, Impossible: The Politics of Homonationalism and Failure in LOGO’s Fire Island,” Journal of Homosexuality 70, no. 1 (2023): 149–67. https://doi.org/10.1080/00918369.2022.2103873.

2 “Stream TV and Movies Live and Online,” Hulu. Accessed March 26, 2023. https://www.hulu.com/welcome?orig_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F.

3 Aymar Jean Christian, Open TV: Innovation beyond Hollywood and the Rise of Web Television (New York, NY: New York University Press, 2018).

4 See the detail discussion on homonationalism in David L Eng, The Feeling of Kinship: Queer Liberalism and the Racialization of Intimacy (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010); Puar, Jasmir, Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007).

5 Rachel A. Griffin, “Problematic Representations of Strategic Whiteness and 'Post-Racial' Pedagogy: A Critical Intercultural Reading of The Help.” Journal of International and Intercultural Communication 8, no. 2 (2015): 149.

6 Eguchi and Calafell, “Queer Relationalities”, 150.

7 We are inspired by bell hooks’s articulation of “imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy” in our naming of interlocking systems of domination, or a white cisheteronormative patriarchal capitalist system.

8 See, for example, David C. Oh, Whitewashing the Movies: Asian Erasure and White Subjectivity in U.S. Film Culture (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2021).

9 Cynthia Wu, Sticky Rice a Politics of Intraracial Desire (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2018), 8–12.

10 Lisa Duggin, “The New Homonormativity: The Sexual Politics of Neoliberalism,” in Materializing Democracy: Toward a Revitalized Cultural Politics, ed. Russ Castronovo and Dana D. Nelson (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), 175–75.

11 Rendy Jones, “‘Anything's Possible’ Gives Us the Trans Rom-Com Heroine We've Been Waiting For,” Them. Them., July 28, 2022. https://www.them.us/story/anythings-possible-eva-reign-trans-rom-com-heroine; Chance Morgan, “10 Of the Best Gay Rom-Coms to Get You Ready for 'Bros',” Collider, September 26, 2022. https://collider.com/10-gay-rom-coms-to-get-you-ready-for-bros/.

12 Cady Lang, “Hate Crimes against Asian Americans Are on the Rise. Many Say More Policing Isn’t the Answer,” TIME, February 18, 2021. https://time.com/5938482/asian-american-attacks/; Eric Nam, “If You’re Surprised by the Anti-Asian Violence in Atlanta, You Haven’t Been Listening. It’s Time to Hear Our Voices,” TIME, March 19, 2021. https://time.com/5948226/eric-nam-anti-asian-racism-atlanta/.

13 Nam, “If You’re Surprised by the Anti-Asian Violence in Atlanta,” March 19, 2021.

14 Kimmy Yam, “Anti-Asian Hate Crimes Increased 339 Percent Nationwide Last Year, Report Says,” NBC News, January 31, 2022. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/anti-asian-hate-crimes-increased-339-percent-nationwide-last-year-repo-rcna14282.

15 Stop AAPI Hate, “Key Findings of 2020–2022,” Stop AAPI Hate, November, 2023. https://stopaapihate.org/key-findings-2023/.

16 Margreth Lünenborg, and Elfriede Fürsich, “Media and the Intersectional Other: The Complex Negotiation of Migration, Gender, and Class on German Television,” Feminist Media Studies 14, no. 6 (2014): 959–75. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2014.882857; Reed, “Reading Gender Politics on the L Word: The Moira/Max Transitions,” Journal of Popular Film & Television 37, no. 4 (2009): 169–78.

17 Herman Gray, “Race, Media, and the Cultivation of Concern,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 10, nos. 2–3 (2013): 253–58. https://doi.org/10.1080/14791420.2013.821641.

18 See, for example, Shinsuke Eguchi, Nicole Files-Thompson, and Bernadette Marie Calafell, “Queer (of Color) Aesthetics: Fleeting Moments of Transgression in VH1’s Love & Hip-Hop: Hollywood Season 2,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 35, no. 2 (2018): 180–93. https://doi.org/10.1080/15295036.2017.1385822; Lori Kido Lopez, “Excessively Asian: Crying, Crazy Rich Asians, and the Construction of Asian American Audiences,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 38, no. 2 (2021): 141–54. https://doi.org/10.1080/15295036.2021.1883193; Loretta LeMaster, and Michael Tristano, “Performing (Asian American Trans) Femme on RuPaul’s Drag Race: Dis/Orienting Racialized Gender, or, Performing Trans Femme of Color, Regardless,” Journal of International and Intercultural Communication 16, no. 1 (2023): 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/17513057.2021.1955143.

19 Kenneth Jones, and Tema Okun, “White Supremacy Culture,” in Dismantling Racism: A Workbook for Social Change Groups (Saint Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 2001), 5.

20 Shinsuke Eguchi, “Cultural Productions of Queer Asia,” Essay, in Oxford Research Encyclopedias of Communication, 1–22 (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2022).

21 See the detail discussion on sticky rice theorizing in Shinsuke Eguchi, Asians Loving Asians: Sticky Rice Homoeroticism and Queer Politics (New York, NY: Peter Lang, 2022); Tan Hoang Nguyen, A View from the Bottom: Asian American Masculinity and Sexual Representation (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014); Cynthia Wu, Sticky Rice a Politics of Intraracial Desire (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2018).

22 See, for example, Karma R. Chávez, “Beyond Inclusion: Rethinking Rhetoric’s Historical Narrative,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 101, no. 1 (2015): 162–72. https://doi.org/10.1080/00335630.2015.994908.

23 Stacey K. Sowards, “Rhetorical Agency as Haciendo Caras and Differential Consciousness through Lens of Gender, Race, Ethnicity, and Class: An Examination of Dolores Huerta's Rhetoric,” Communication Theory 20, no. 2 (2010): 223–47. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2885.2010.01361.x.

24 See, Chávez, “Beyond Inclusion.”

25 Ibid, 162.

26 Jacqueline Rhodes, and Jonathan Alexander, “Introduction” in The Routledge Handbook of Queer Rhetoric, ed. Jacqueline Rhodes, and Jonathan Alexander (New York, NY: Routledge, 2022) 1–4.

27 See the detail discussion on the theorizing of disidentification in José Esteban Muñoz, Disidentifications Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2015); José Esteban Muñoz, Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity (New York, NY: New York University Press, 2019).

28 See, for example, Cathy J. Cohen, “Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens: The Radical Potential of Queer Politics?” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 3, no. 4 (1997): 437–65. https://doi.org/10.1215/10642684-3-4-437; Patrick E. Johnson, “‘Quare’ Studies, or (Almost) Everything I Know about Queer Studies I Learned from My Grandmother,” Text and Performance Quarterly 21, no. 1 (2001): 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1080/10462930128119; Roderick A. Ferguson, Aberrations in Black: Toward a Queer of Color Critique (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2004).

29 Muñoz, Disidentifications, 11.

30 See, for example, Joshua Chambers-Letson, After the Party a Manifesto for Queer of Color Life (New York, NY: New York University Press, 2018); Kara Keeling, Queer Times, Black Futures (New York, NY: New York University Press, 2019); Muñoz, Cruising Utopia.

31 See, Cohen, “Punks,”; Johnson, “Quare,”; Ferguson, Aberrations.

32 David L. Eng, and Alice Y. Horn, eds. Q&A: Queer in Asian America (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1998), 9.

33 See, for example, David L. Eng, Racial Castration: Managing Masculinity in Asian America (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007); V. Jo Hsu, Constellating Home: Trans and Queer Asian American Rhetorics (Columbus OH: The Ohio State University Press, 2022); Celine Parreñas Simizu, Straightjacket Sexualities: Unbinding Asian American Manhoods in the Movies (Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012).

34 See, Eng, Racial Castration; C. Winter Han, Geisha of a Different Kind: Race and Sexuality in Gaysian America (New York, NY: New York University Press, 2015); Wu. Sticky Rice.

35 See, Han, Geisha.

36 See, Wu, Sticky Rice.

37 See, for example, Leilani Nishime, Undercover Asian: Multiracial Asian Americans in Visual Culture (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2014); Erika Lee, The Making of Asian America: A History (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2015).

38 See, Oh, Whitewashing the Movies.

39 Wu, Sticky Rice; Nguyen. A View from the Bottom; Eguchi, Asians Loving Asians.

40 Ibid.

41 Halberstam, Judith, The Queer Art of Failure (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011), 3.

42 Eguchi and Calafell, “Queer Relationalities.”

43 Oh. Whitewashing the Movies.

44 Wu, Sticky Rice, 1–4.

45 Wu, Sticky Rice; Eguchi and Calafell, “Queer Relationalities.”

46 Muñoz, Disidentifications; Austin Miller, and Shinsuke Eguchi, “Fuck (Gay) Racism,” Essay. in The Routledge Handbook of Queer Rhetoric, ed. Jacqueline Rhodes and Jonathan Alexander (New York: Routledge, 2022), 252.

47 David Yi, “How K-Pop Changed the Meaning of Masculinity in South Korea,” Allure, April 15, 2020. https://www.allure.com/story/k-pop-and-masculinity.

48 Yi, “How K-Pop”; Nam, “If You’re Surprised.”

49 See, Eguchi and Calafell, “Queer Relationalities.”

50 See, Chávez, “Beyond Inclusion.”

51 See, Oh, Whitewashing the Movies.

52 Miller and Eguchi, “Fuck (Gay) Racism.”

53 See, Eng, Racial Castration; Han, Geisha; Wu, Sticky Rice.

54 See, Nam, “If You’re Surprised.”

55 Eguchi and Calafell, Queer Relationalities, 150.

56 Wu, Sticky Rice, 4–8.

57 See, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang (Hosts) (2022, June 1). HEY! You famous? [Audio podcast episode]. In Las Culturistas, Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio. https://open.spotify.com/episode/7sfQcXPMzN90RhxdAhV3wL?si=h3QjC7b6QYCuHW9ESl4o9A.

58 Eguchi, Asians Loving Asians; Shinsuke Eguchi, “Queer Intercultural Relationality: An Autoethnography of Asian–Black (Dis)Connections in White Gay America,” Journal of International and Intercultural Communication 8, no. 1 (2014): 27–43. https://doi.org/10.1080/17513057.2015.991077.

59 See, for example, Shinsuke Eguchi, and Zhao Ding, “‘Uncultural’ Asian Americans in ABC’s Dr. Ken,” Popular Communication 15, no. 4 (2017): 296–310. https://doi.org/10.1080/15405702.2017.1326604.; Susan Kray, “Orientalization of an ‘Almost White’ Woman: The Interlocking Effects of Race, Class, Gender, and Ethnicity in American Mass Media,” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 10, no. 4 (1993): 349–66. https://doi.org/10.1080/15295039309366876.

60 See, Miller and Eguchi, “Fuck (Gay) Racism.”

61 See, Wu, Sticky Rice; Nguyen, A View from the Bottom; Eguchi, Asians Loving.

62 See, Halberstam, The Queer Art.

63 Ibid, 186.

64 See, Eguchi and Calafell, Queer Relationalities.

65 Ibid; Muñoz, Disidentifications.

66 Hsu, Constellating Home, 184.

67 Ibid.

68 See, Han, Geisha; Eguchi, Asians Loving.