Core Response #3

I was frustrated while reading Cvetkovich's article this week.  It may be due to exhaustion, but I resented the fact that Madonna can't just be the Madonna I danced to while it played on my sister's hot pink tape deck (an academic sin, I know).  I suppose the point that struck me the most in Cvetkovich's article was the line that stated "Paris is Burning suggests that pleasure, fantasy, and sexuality are not separate from the supposedly more urgent concerns of race and class." Immediately the series premiere of Showtime's "Tracy Ullman's State of the Union" came to mind.  After having watched the show in TV Symposium, I found myself disturbed and depressed by the frighteningly accurate (though exaggerated) depiction of America she presents to her audience.  Ullman's America is full of absurd, wealthy characters and struggling, poor characters.  She juxtaposes the high-powered New York executive having passionate, adulterous sex on a conference table with her boss with a scene of a very low-income immigrant woman coming home after working three shifts only to tell her husband to wake up and begin his day of work while she climbs into an empty bed.  In Ullman's America only the rich have time for sex.  All of her "higher class" characters are depicted getting Botox injections or doing pilates, whereas her "lower class" characters are seen as overweight, wrinkled chain-smokers.  In Ullman's America only the rich have time for pleasure.  Though one would think that sex and physical pleasure would not be exclusive to those with material wealth ("can't buy me love"), in contemporary American society, they are.  Gossip magazines fly off the stands and provide viewers with images of beautiful celebrities "enjoying" an extravagant lifestyle that few in this country could afford.  We read about their scandalous sex lives, their glamorous vacations, and their latest beauty treatments.  No one depicted in those magazines (or on E! television or Perezhilton.com) is struggling economically in the way that millions of Americans are today.  Obsessing over and discussing the lives of celebrities give Americans who could never afford those lifestyles a time to fantasize or a way to buy the latest ABS knock-off Oscar dress or offers for all-expense paid, "VIP" trips to Las Vegas.  Today, celebrities define beauty (which is closely tied to sexuality) as another highly-priced commodity.  This strips those without the means to Botox their faces, hire personal trainers, or purchase spa packages of their sexuality.  The American stereotype of prom night comes to mind.  In its tradition, it is a night where many young women try to look like movie stars and (in many cases) hope for sexual gratification.