{"id":910,"date":"2025-11-24T01:03:46","date_gmt":"2025-11-24T08:03:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/?p=910"},"modified":"2025-11-24T15:33:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-24T22:33:11","slug":"embracing-failure-and-negativity-a-critical-review-of-the-queer-art-of-failure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/archives\/910","title":{"rendered":"Embracing Failure and Negativity\u2014 A Critical Review of ‘The Queer Art of Failure’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\u201cIf at first you don\u2019t succeed, failure may be your style.\u201d – Quentin Crisp<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

People fail more often than they succeed; in any competition, there are inevitably more losers than winners. Yet failure is still widely treated as embarrassing or shameful, something to be hidden or quickly overcome. Even optimistic narratives that claim to celebrate failure tend to frame it only as a necessary step on the road to eventual success. In The Queer Art of Failure, Judith\/Jack Halberstam challenges this assumption, exploring forgetfulness, stupidity, masochism, and rejection to propose failure as a mode for imagining queer histories and resisting heteronormative social structures. Drawing on \u201clow theory\u201d, (cultural texts such as television shows, children\u2019s films, and other forms of popular media) Halberstam explores the radical potential of failure in shaping queer culture and identities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overview and Summary<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The book starts off by introducing \u2018Pixarvolt\u2019, a genre of films produced by Pixar with overt or covert messages of rebellion. Halberstam claims that the inherent queerness of the child and their dependability on the adults in their lives makes them the perfect audience for narratives about rebellion and revolution.  Moreover, such themes are typically not explored within adult media which tends to veer towards gritty realism, rather than idealist fantasies of revolution. This preference for realism extends to animation as a medium, which is typically relegated to the realm of children\u2019s media due to its exaggerated, anthropomorphic portrayal of fictional characters, and idealist themes of community and self-actualization. He also talks about \u2018The March of the Penguins\u2019<\/em>, a documentary about penguins, and how it views animals through a heternormative lens which eventually leads to bias and misreporting. Thus, heteronormativity becomes the mediational means through which these scientists view the world. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He builds a case for embracing, instead of rejecting, failure, negativity, and darkness as active elements of the \u2018queer aesthetic\u2019<\/em>.  For queer and other  marginalized groups, forgetting normative societal structures and expectations can be a method to create new identities. It can also be a method of survival for many oppressed groups; to forget the past and move on ahead to live in the present. Furthermore, he discusses how incompetence and failure can be \u2018weapons of the weak<\/em>\u2019; modes of resistance to rise up against their oppressors and critique dominant ideas of power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Halberstam also examines alternative forms of femininity and feminism.  He talks about the limits of Western feminism in dealing with varied forms of womanhood, especially when their material conditions and politics diverge from conventional feminist concerns. She suggests an ‘anti-social feminism’<\/em>, a type of feminism \u2018preoccupied by negation and negativity<\/em>\u2019 which does not place its activism within the same normative structure as that of the oppressor. Through an exploration of Yoko Ono and Marina Abramovic\u2019s performance art, he suggests that radical passivity and masochism can be elements of subversive forms of feminism where dramatizing your own submission makes it seem more like performance than an inherent function of the female body (333). Halberstam also implores the queer community to reconcile with the more unsavoury parts of the history, in order to understand how queer history affects current manifestations of queerness She encourages critical engement with probematic elements of queer history, and to acknowledge that radical identities are not necessarily equanimous with radical politics (399). Finally, she ties her argument back to animated films, and how despite being produced by massive conglomerates for the sake of profit, these movies can serve a valuable function as sites of identity formation for the child.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

‘The L Word’<\/em> – The Problem with Representation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Through a case study of the television show, \u2018The L word\u2019<\/em>, Halberstam presents an argument against queer representations in mainstream media (240). Despite being a story about lesbians, it presented a version of lesbianism stripped of most of its queerness, with masculine-presenting, butch lesbians being denigrated in favour of the androgynous, yet distinctly feminine lesbian protagonist Shane. Despite its promise of representation, the narrative still views lesbians through the heteropatriarchal gaze, in order to make them palatable to mainstream, heterosexual audiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is in line with Bollmer\u2019s ideas about how representations \u2018perpetuate the interests of dominant classes\u2019<\/em> (26).\u00a0He posits that changes in society and media representation come about through demands of the audiences (34). Though queer audiences might gain a sense of empowerment through it, this sort of representation serves to <\/em>disarm them, all while propagating an exclusionary image of lesbianism which can be easily absorbed into the mainstream. This leads to an \u2018unbearably positivist and progressive image of lesbianism\u2019, <\/em>one that is divorced from queerness and flattens queer representation down to fit a criteria of mainstream acceptability. Both Halberstam and Bollmer are instead in favour of anger, unhappiness, and dissatisfaction as conduits for change (Bollmer 32). These \u2018negative\u2019 <\/em>emotions provide avenues for questioning normative ideas about queerness and other marginalized identities as perpetuated by the\u00a0 media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Queer Temporalities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Halberstam talks about the Oedipal family structure based in normative<\/em> temporality\u2014a temporality grounded in repetitiveness and regularity that prioritizes permanence and longevity. In a hterosexual family, the figure of the child acts as the link connecting the past to the present and eventually, to the future. The child, according to Kathryn Bond Stockton, is already queer; a blank slate upon whom \u201cproto-heterosexual(ity)<\/em>\u201d must be projected lest they disrupt the temporality of the heterosexual family (192). Meanwhile the queer community, through a rejection of heterosexual family ideals of succession and lineage, constructs a system of ‘sideways relations’<\/em>, in which kinship ties grow parallelly, at the same time, rather than continuing onwards towards the future (Halberstam 192). For the queer community, \u201cqueer temporality constructs queer futurity as a break with heteronormative notions of time and history\u201d <\/em>(214). Thus, forgetfulness becomes particularly crucial in the construction of new queer relations and temporalities through a disruption of the normative order.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She uses \u2018Finding Nemo\u2019 as an example to emphasize how Dory\u2019s forgetfulness allowed for the formation of a new, vaguely queer relation to be formed between her and the family unit of Martin and Nemo. At no point was she a stand-in mother for Nemo, or wife for Marlin. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Halbserstam also opens up the conversation about the historical relations between homosexuality and Nazism. Many queer scholars might steer clear of such contentious subjects, in fear of feeding into homophobia, but Halberstam claims that it is essential for the queer community to grapple with the more problematic elements of their history.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Drawing upon Michel Foucault\u2019s idea of archives, which is \u2018a system that groups and orders the past in a way that materializes it in the present\u2019 <\/em>she claims that the queer archive sanitizes queer history by focusing mainly on the oppression of gay men in Nazi Germany, while ignoring the ways in which masculine homosexuality collaborated with and overlapped with Nazism (Bollmer 65).  She claims that an essential part of queer negativity is to also acknowledge these unsavoury parts of queer history, which often get relegated to the margins, to better understand how these elements of queer history shape current queer relations and culture (Halberstam 350).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

\u2018The Queer Art of Failure\u2019<\/em> was very much a product of its time. Many of Halberstam\u2019s references now feel obscure or heavily US-centric, which can make the arguments difficult to follow though the point of using \u201clow theory\u201d was to draw from accessible popular media. The book was written before the large-scale rise of social media, yet many of its insights are still relevant today. It is fascinating to observe how the texts Halberstam analyzes have held up in modern pop culture. Many have stood the test of time and have become permanent structures of the current pop culture archive while others have been relegated to the margins. Halberstam\u2019s focus on low-brow digital media is in line with our class discussions about  power of media in shaping narratives. Their ability to inscribe and document <\/span><\/span>have direct effects on how the archives of queerness are built, and how queer representation is transformed over time.<\/span> <\/p>\n\n\n\n


Works cited<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  1. Bollmer, Grant. Materialist Media Theory An Introduction grant bollmer<\/em>. London, England: Zed Books, 2021. <\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. Halberstam, Jack. The Queer Art of Failure<\/em>. Durham: Duke University Press, 2011. <\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    \u201cIf at first you don\u2019t succeed, failure may be your style.\u201d – Quentin Crisp People fail more often than they succeed; in any competition, there are inevitably more losers than winners. Yet failure is still widely treated as embarrassing or shameful, something to be hidden or quickly overcome. Even optimistic narratives that claim to celebrate … Continue reading Embracing Failure and Negativity\u2014 A Critical Review of ‘The Queer Art of Failure’<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92382,"featured_media":923,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-other"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/92382"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=910"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/910\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":942,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/910\/revisions\/942"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}