Ellen is framed in our public imaginary as the inaugural ‘television gay’. Her sitcom featured the first ‘coming out episode’; episodes which have proliferated in the 18 years since. ‘Coming out’ has become an important component of LGBTQ+ politics and has become a sort of performative act that has a culturally embedded script. To ‘come out’ is to assert a ‘deviant’ sexual orientation or gender identity in a public forum; “to be anything but heterosexual, one must explicitly claim it” (Reed 18). Ellen provided a ‘coming out’ framework which has, at least partially, informed what it means to ‘come out’ in the present. Television is politically and culturally significant in the way it “teaches the formation of identity and citizenship in a society characterized by the unknowability of its nevertheless sovereign populations” (Reed 11).

In 2012 ABC broadcast a problematic segment which ‘reflects’upon Ellen’s coming out. This clip begins by presenting Modern Family and Glee as emblematic of our postgay society. In her article “The Three Phases of Ellen: From Queer to Gay to Postgay,” Reed characterizes the postgay era by the rhetoric of “I’m gay but it doesn’t matter” (Reeed 19). While LGBTQ+ representation in popular television shows is essential to the continuing fight for equality, it all too often obfuscates the persistent need to fight for equality due to the illusion that equality has been achieved. Through watching shows such as Modern Family and Glee, “a liberal straight audience gets the satisfaction of knowing that they are open minded and accepting of lesbians [LGBTQ+ persons], at the same time that they do not have to be bothered with any of the real differences that lesbian [LGBTQ+] identity can present, or with their own homophobia” (Reed 23). Watching popular television shows which feature sanitized representations of the LGBTQ+ community can serve as an opt out clause for interrogating your own discrimination, in much the same way that ‘having a gay friend’ precludes one from homophobic sentiments.

This ABC news anchor perpetuates postgay ideology by stating, “Gay or not gay, we’re all part of the big American family.” Through this statement there is a paternalistic and nationalistic silencing of the continuing discrimination, hatred, and violence faced by members of the LGBTQ+ community every single day. This ideology is not benign. As Reed explains, “Liberals fear for their place in the world true pluralism would create. And so, the bargain they set requires us to deny our difference, thereby affirming the bedrock principle of liberalism: that all people are fundamentally the same” (Reed 23). The assimilationist logic of sameness is a barrier to confronting the heteronormative basis of our ‘liberal’ society. To insist upon the current state of ‘sameness’ rejects the existence of instances of discrimination based on difference. Since we are postgay, we must also be post gay discrimination.

This clip concludes with the determination of Ellen’s success by the most blatant neoliberal capitalist indicators. We are instructed to “look at Ellen DeGeneres today.” Her success is made apparent by her #31 ranking on Forbes’ ‘Most Powerful Celebrities’ list and her $45 million net worth. Her personal success is calibrated by the dollar value of her public persona. In a strange applauding of “a classic assimilationist move,” Ellen’s involvement with JC Penney is framed as vindication and retribution (Reed 20). Even though JC Penney pulls their advertisements from Ellen’s sitcom following her character coming out in 1997, Ellen agrees to be their spokesperson years later. While I cannot understand the complexities of corporate endorsement, I would think a stern rejection and a fuck you to JC Penney would be in order instead of the signing of contracts. The JC Penney ‘gay support’ arc is emblematic of many instances of corporate involvement in LGBTQ+ issues and the ways in which they are profiting off aligning themselves with the “gay or not gay, we’re all part of the big American family” ideology. In our postgay society, all past discrimination is forgiven and all past guilt assuaged.

The theoretical concept of the posthuman has been instrumental in the creation of cyberfeminism. The posthuman represents the radical possibility of existence without identity markers. To eradicate identity markers is to eradicate discrimination based on identity. The liberatory potential of the posthuman machine is recognized by current society and this recognition has manifested itself in fear.

Chappie is a 2015 Hollywood film which is emblematic of the societal fear of the posthuman. Machines’ ability to liberate is prominently evoked in the film’s tagline: “Humanity’s last hope isn’t human.” Salvation is attainable through the posthuman. This film chronicles a Johannesburg in which the human police force has been almost entirely replaced by a robotic force. These robots are created by a weapons manufacturer for the sole purpose of providing security and protection; they are machines of pure utility. When an engineer discovers a way to equip these robots with the ability to feel emotions and possess opinions, he is informed that these characteristics are superfluous to the utility of these machines. As Toffoletti explains, “the characteristics that are commonly defined as essential to being human, such as emotion and intuition, are the qualities computers are supposedly unable to emulate” (Toffoletti 28). This engineer embarks on an unauthorized project and is successful in creating an emotive robot which is named Chappie. There is a public outcry when Chappie is witnessed acting of his own agency and there is the realization that “machines can no longer be conceptualized as neutral tools that are appropriated by human beings to control and master their environment” (Toffoletti 11).

Despite the theoretical value of the film’s premise, the film’s conclusion is problematic and serves to undermine the radical possibility of the posthuman. When Chappie’s human ‘mommy’ dies, he transfers her consciousness to a robot body. This act of transference “complicate[s] the idea of ‘human essence'” (Toffoletti 13). However, unlike the previous transfer of a male consciousness into a gender neutral machine, ‘Mommy’ is transferred into a pink machine with the blatantly feminine human features of large eyelashes and pouty lips. Although this machine does “act as a projection of the self,” it is not “a mirror of the mind,” rather a mirror of the female body (Toffoletti 28). ‘Mommy’ illustrates that “the machine is equated with the feminine while remaining the exclusive domain of the masculine” (Toffoletti 20). While the male protagonist is capable of being transferred to a gender neutral posthuman body, the female protagonist is incapable of divesting her identity markers. Even in the posthuman, the female is marked as the Other.

The term ‘revolution’ carries with it connotations of formal state politics and the overthrowing of a political regime.  A revolution can  be categorized as such if it is carried out by armed insurgents who seek formal recognition as that state’s governing body. Foucault attempts to disrupt this conception of revolution by arguing that it is “not just a political project; it [is] also a form of life” (Cornell & Seely 10). For Foucault, a revolution does not require formal regime change, rather it involves the reconceptualization of the self. Revolution is a process instead of an end-goal; “revolution is not just fighting for another world, but for how to be a different subject in this one” (Cornell & Seely 10). Revolution cannot be understood linearly as being comprised of a beginning and an end, for it is about the promise of the future and “unremitting restlessness” (Cornell & Seely 11). Foucault understands ‘the very heart of politics’ to be “a search for new practices of governing oneself and others through a way of dividing true and false that has not been with us before” (Cornell & Seely 15). Through this conceptualization, revolution can have no end since the search for new practices is never-ending.

The Arab Spring is a recent example of revolutionary protests which captivated the entire world. As a result of these mass protests, leaders were forced from power in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen. The unprecedented nature of these uprisings created an extreme optimism regarding the promise of the future and a successful transition to democratic regimes. Almost four years after the Arab Awakening, many political analysts have considered it to be a failure. The barometer for failure used in this case is the absence of a fully realized democratic state. When applying Foucault’s conceptualization of revolution, the designation of failure is not so easily made. Revolution is a continual process involving an “unremitting restlessness” in “a search for new practices” (Cornell & Seely 11, 15). The Arab Spring was utterly successful in creating “a different subject” who challenged the practices of their dictators (Cornell & Seely 10). The reconceptualization of the self occurred through interrogating the relation of citizen to state, and the relation of citizen to citizen through social media. Participants of the Arab Spring demanded “the messianic and emancipatory promise” (Cornell & Seely 6).

Zombies have come to saturate our public imaginary. While they tend to be represented as nothing more than horror-inducing monsters, these creatures have great political significance, as they have become “an allegory for the larger societal self” (Kee 23). The Haitian heritage of the zombie gives it a racial element which must be acknowledged. As Chera Kee explains, zombies “operate within a discourse that maintain[s] whiteness as the norm and construct[s] those of colour as monstrous”  (14). Zombies serve as social commentary, highlighting the anxieties of xenophobia and the fear of contagion by the racialized Other. A method of representation, which is mirrored in the current refugee crisis, is the use of “faceless masses: a new means of robbing the Other of its individuality in order to keep it as the Other” (14). Zombies can be used to critique many instances of power asymmetry. A particularly noteworthy critique has been that of the capitalist system and its inherent exploitation. When these creatures are robbed of their humanity, they can be forced to work endless hours for their masters without repercussion. A similar dehumanizing technique is used to justify the deplorable working conditions of migrant workers.

A new phenomenon which has emerged in zombie culture has been the use of humour. The ‘zombie comedy’ is a new genre which has proven successful, occupying cultural space beyond that of the horror genre. Shaun of the Dead, a 2004 British film, markets itself as ‘romantic comedy with zombies’. Adhering to the typical zombie apocalypse plot devices, this zombie comedy also contains some elements of social commentary. A prevalent theme throughout the film is all-encompassing individualism — the protagonist does not even notice the initial presence of zombies because he is nursing a hangover and preoccupied with a breakup.  Another theme is the apathy of the capitalist working class, which makes their new zombie form comparable to their original state. At the film’s conclusion, the zombie outbreak has been controlled through the exploitation of these creatures for the benefit of the rest of society, as cheap labour and entertainment. This conclusion reveals that “while the zombie could thus be seen as a critique of empire, zombie films also [replay] a fantasy of empire” (17).

While humour can be an effective social justice tool, the rhetoric of ‘it’s just a joke’ can also undermine the political significance of representation. The insidious character of humour is the way it can be perceived as incompatible with political analysis. Zombie comedies  are an intriguing new genre, which can either provide a compelling critique of modern culture or can silence the racial and classed implications inherent in the use of the zombie.