November 21st is the Monday before Thanksgiving and the day of the second RQ, argument, and data summary.

I was not able to access the Booth reading for this week, I tried searching the library website as well as using the library proxy but I couldn’t get access. This blog will be about the other reading called “Setting David Fisher Straight: Homophobia and Heterosexism in Six Feet Under Online Fan Culture” by Rhiannon Bury. The paper talked about what textual poaching is and how it is used in discussion and interpretations of TV shows, especially in topics about heterosexuality and homosexuality.

The research question that the author based her paper about was how was textual poaching used to discuss homosexuality and if that discussion proved that visibility meant legitimacy.

Argument 1: The response to homosexuality was generally positive and people even defended some of it but most of the support occurred when the gay characters were doing more heterosexual acts. Data: In the show SFU, in season four the character was acting gay there was a lot of homophobia and insults but in season five once the gay character started to have more hetero characteristics like being monogamous, the forum audience was more responsive and positive.

Argument 2: Readers were not able to accept that gay people have different characteristics than straight people, like they couldn’t accept that they didn’t act in the typical masculine hero way. Data: In the episode “That’s My Dog” the character David got kidnapped and tortured. The audience on the forum wanted a more masculine hero like action from David, and when they didn’t get what they wanted they ended up insulting David.

Argument 3: They blamed the character’s gayness as the reason to why he was victimized. Data: Again in the episode “That’s My Dog” the forum audience said that the reason that David was put into the situation was because he was gay, that if he was straight he would have never picked up the man who attacked him.

Data: Poaching vs. gatekeeping, poaching is using someone’s work and putting your ideology towards it, and gatekeeping is similar to poaching but it is more willing to accept the original work.

References:

Bury, Rhiannon. 2008. “Setting David Fisher Straight: Homophobia and Heterosexism in Six Feet Under Online Fan Culture.” Critical Studies in Television: An International Journal of Television Studies 3 (2): 59–79. doi:10.7227/CST.3.2.6