Queer Resonances

: How Popular Music Alter Egos Perform Gender Queerness

Abstract

This thesis looks at the performance of queer popular music alter egos as queer resonances. I investigate the theoretical background behind the conception of queer resonances and examine three queer pop music alter egos; David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust, Prince’s Camille, and Janelle Monáe’s Cindi Mayweather. I chose these case studies as these alter egos all exist as both queer and as outside of the human: Ziggy Stardust was an ‘alien messiah’, Camille was a genderless disembodied voice, and Cindi Mayweather was a futuristic android. These characters all existed as separated from the performer by either name, voice, presentation, or storyline, and they were all temporary. But most importantly, these performers utilised the alter ego character in order to perform an Other, or alternate version of Otherness, in a temporary manner.
Overall, I explore the differing ways in which queerness can exist in musical performance via the queer alter ego. Through performing queer alter ego characters, my three case studies enacted a queerness that was consciously separated from their performance selves. In doing so, these performers created queer echoic versions of their performance which exist as temporally fixed, when these artists continued their careers afterwards sometimes refuting or disavowing queerness entirely. I term this queer echoing ‘queer resonance’; the resonance of queerness temporally, musically, technologically and emotionally. I show here the similarities and crucial differences between these temporary enactments of gender queerness and the embodiment of queer gender by trans and nonbinary people offstage. In looking at queer pop alter egos as queer resonances, then, I aim to showcase the complexities of their relationships to trans and non-binary enactments of gender. Through these analyses, I show that these characters may be rare and temporary, but their enactments of queerness exist as queer resonances, continue to resonate indefinitely into the future.

Date of Award	1 Oct 2024
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Bristol
Supervisor	Justin A Williams (Supervisor) & Shaun Cole (Supervisor)