I just finished re-reading Lee Edelman's "The Future is Kid Stuff" and I couldn't resist posting this brief clip from the movie musical Annie:
What does Edelman have to say about (or to?) Annie and her vision of tomorrow? How does he queer this (Hint: see 24 and 29)? What other ways can you think of queering it?
Note: In your blog worksheet, you can list your response to this entry as either Queer This or Query comments.
Tomorrow, tomorrow, I'll see you tomorrow
Re mem ber to bring your blogs...
(Have I embarrassed myself yet?)
Poor Annie -- she's all set to pursue her aspirations for tomorrow, to build a bright beautiful future -- unless the apocalypse happens. Which it does. In the form of queerness (?) : "For the cult of the child permits no shrines to the queerness of boys or girls, since queerness, for the culture at large ... is understood as bringing children and childhood to an end" (25). Poor Annie -- even if she survives the queer apocalypse, she's still in constant threat of violation, the possibility of being "subjected to physical or intellectual molestation; the child who might witness lewd or inappropriately intimate behavior; the child who might discover information about queer sexualities on the internet; the child who might choose a provocative book from the shelves of the public library; the child, in short, who might find an enjoyment that would nullify the figural value invested by the force of adult desire in the child as unmarked by the adult's adulterating implication in desire itself; the child..........." the list of threats against poor Annie goes on and on an on. And the world is asked to mold and conduct its behavior to cater to the poor little Annies who are oh so innocent, and apparently always threatened with or violated by inappropriate, horrors in the form of "otherness." (Remember how Adam Lambert was asked to apologize to the children who were unwittingly exposed to his "profane" behaviors)...
Of course, little Annie is not innocent. Children are not innocent. Children are the queerest of the queers -- they love all of the abject grotesqueries of the body and what-not. Children have a natural tendency to love what's unknown, unrecognizable or unintelligible. Children embrace the abject -- and normative society condemns and threatens them for doing so, telling their parents that good parenting is policing natural curiosities and tendencies of acceptance.
Annie is one of the idyllic figure of The Child because she embodies the goal of the future as an improvement upon the present. She improved her status by being adopted by a wealthy man and in turn improves his life by transforming his values so that he becomes a kinder and more benevolent figure. Annie has become a symbol of hope and redemption from the failing morality of those around her.
Edelman goes on to say "...fuck Annie...fuck the whole network of symbolic relations and the future that serves as its prop" because society has rejected the queers' attempts to claim a bit of this future for themselves by not validating the families they try to create (29). This debilitates queers because it excludes them from creating a future with their own child figures. Queers are pushed further and further from normativity despite efforts made to conform to its demands.