Second class

First of all, some references for you, re: Top Gun and homoeroticism. This is the monologue from Sleep With Me, as performed by Quentin Tarantino (written by Roger Avary, his frequent co-writer). Here is a YouTube link to it as well. Furthermore, here is an Australian article on "An Ideological Analysis of Top Gun". Just type "homoeroticism of top gun" into Google and you will get 406,000 references.

The point (inasmuch as there is one) is that texts which are creations of a marketing apparatus, created for mass-appeal and thus typically crafted to be interpreted in a way to appeal to the broadest spectrum of the population, can be reinterpreted by audiences in whatever manner appeals to them. Did Simpson and Bruckheimer set out to create a homoerotic film? Unlikely, but it has been embraced by two complementary subcultures: those who ironically self-identify with it and those who merely revel in the ironic interpretation, in addition to the (presumably larger) population who interpret it more or less as it was meant to be interpreted.

This is not a unique phenomenon: certainly, in this day and age, the process of adopting and re-interpreting the products of popular culture at the folk level can be demonstrated virtually everywhere. Think of how you may employ Simpsons references in everyday speech, going beyond quoting and performing tracts of dialogue therefrom (which is a similar activity) but using a word or catchphrase in a parallel context to act as a linguistic shorthand: by using, for example, Homer's "D'oh" or Burns' "Excellent", one hopes to evoke for the listener aspects of those respective characters and the Springfield worldview. It is a form of insider speech, using a shared known text: it is no different from using Shakespearean references or - dare I say it - folklore, both of which build on an assumed shared cultural background. We ascribe greater gravitas to Shakespeare (it is a sign of being 'lettered'), or greater 'authenticity' to folklore (it is a sign of immersion in a community's customs and traditions), but the process is identical.

One final example, blissfully obscure. If I can track down the precise episode name, I will supply it, but in an episode of BBC's Yes, Minister (it could have been Yes, Prime Minister, but something tells me no), Bernard tells Hacker that a certain protocol was "more honoured in the breach than the observance." Hacker chastises him for using such an ugly and cliched phrase, reminding him that English is "the language of Shakespeare," which forces Bernard to gently remind Hacker that he was, in fact, quoting Shakespeare directly.

And hilarity ensues.

Read the Statement of the American Folklore Society On Research with Human Subjects for Monday.