Performatywne identyfikacje
Performative Identifications

Summary/Abstract: Gays through the years referred to texts, subjects and symbols belonging to the dominant culture, giving them alternative and subcultural meanings. These texts provided them, especially in the pre-emancipation era, with the language which enabled them to express their experiences. Jagielski in his article focuses on the relations between the homosexual viewer and female stars (divas): he analyses the reasons for which gay viewers are so eager to follow film images, he considers the genealogy of gays’ fascination with divas, and doubts raised by this affiliation. He illustrates his argument with the image of Violetta Villas, a woman-monster, who by connoisseurs of good taste was rejected as rubbish. Her body was a carnival masquerade, an excess which it was impossible to accept. But this body appeared monstrous only when it clashed with the context of the socialist period in Poland. The star combined in her image that which is abjectal with camp, which through parodistic hyperbolization undermines the dominant models of gender and sexuality. Villas and “fagots” share in common the place in which they find themselves – they are beyond any boundaries.

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