dustyology_glbfans

Dustyology - Dusty’s Gay and Lesbian Fans

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I Only Want to Be With You:
The Meaning of Dusty Springfield for her Gay and Lesbian Fans
Nancy J. Young
Presentation at International Association for the Study of Popular Music
27 April 2008

Introduction

Who was Dusty Springfield?

Neil Tennant: “The greatest female singer Britain has ever produced”

Elvis Costello: “The voice is.. one of the greatest voices in pop music, without a doubt.”

Carole King: “There is a hole in music where Dusty Springfield used to be.”

Rob Hoerburger, The New York Times:“{W]hile other pop singers were still wondering who wrote the book of love, Springfield was teaching a course in comparative literature."

. . . .

One of the most fascinating aspects of Dusty Springfield is the diversity of fans drawn to her, both straight and queer. Dusty’s gay male fans have always attracted more public and the scholarly attention than their female counterparts, however (Patrick, 2001). The analysis of Dusty fan surveys in this paper begins to explore the similarities and differences between both groups, as well as, to some degree, bisexual and heterosexual fans.

My analysis will draw upon the work of Richard Dyer, specifically his essay on the meaning of Judy Garland for gay men. I also rely upon Stacy Wolf’s concepts of lesbian readings of Broadway musicals from A Problem Like Maria: Gender and sexuality in the American musical. Concepts from affirmative gay and lesbian psychology as well as constructs of identification are also tested in these studies. The overarching idea of semiotic fan productivity comes from Bourdieu via Fiske.

Survey 1: Background

In “The Cultural Economy of Fandom,” Fiske (1992) uses French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s cultural theories to describe three types of fan productivity: textual, enunciative, and semiotic. Textual productivity refers to fans creating products, such as newsletters or web pages, or rewriting television episodes. Enunciative productivity refers to fans’ declarations of allegiance to the fan object, for example, through talk or dress. Semiotic productivity refers to fans creating their own interior meaning about a fan object or fan text. In the spring of 2007 I conducted a brief survey of Dusty Springfield fans via SurveyMonkey to test these and other ideas. Of sixty-five participants, 78% identified as homosexual, lesbian, bisexual or celibate and 22% as heterosexual. The largest groups represented were lesbians (33%) and gay men (22 %).

Survey 1: Results

The survey listed a number of fan activities, and the participants checked off those they participated in. Most of the findings were fairly predictable: fans collected records, watched DVDs, and, of course, listened to music. About one quarter of the fans had seen Dusty in person or in concert or seen a play about Dusty. More than one third had visited at least one place where Dusty lived and/or had attended the annual Dusty Day celebration in England. A large percentage—over two-thirds—displayed one or more photographs of Dusty in their home. More than three-fourths said they knew a lot of trivia about Dusty, and a similar number had influenced others to listen to Dusty.

Textual productivity was demonstrated by fans who said they had written creatively about Dusty (15%) and created artwork related to Dusty (23%). Twenty percent of fans even reported having a Dusty shrine or altar in their homes!   Enunciative productivity was seen in the large percentage of participants who were members of an online Dusty community. Seventy percent also related that they had made friends through being a Dusty fan.

Most interesting were the responses revealing Dusty fans’ semiotic productivity. Forty percent reported they had dreams about Dusty, almost half agreed they often found themselves thinking about Dusty, and nearly 70% agreed with the statement “My life would be seriously diminished without Dusty in it.” This last statement prompted me to run a second survey to explore how fans believed Dusty enhanced their lives.

Survey 2: Background and Description

The second survey was conducted in March, 2008. Of the 58 participants, ten identified as heterosexual, five as bisexual or queer, twenty as homosexual or gay male, and 23 as lesbian, gay woman, or bent girl.

I have analyzed the middle part of the survey for this paper. Each of its four sections consisted of 14 statements with which the participant could strongly agree, agree, neither agree nor disagree (neutral), disagree, or strongly disagree.

The first of these sections was designed to test whether gay male (and/or other Dusty fan groups) would describe their attraction to her similarly to how cultural critic Richard Dyer theorized gay men’s attraction to Judy Garland. In the second section I devised questions to address whether lesbians (and/or other populations) would describe their attraction to Dusty similarly to Stacy Wolf’s ‘lesbian’ readings of Broadway star performances, spelled out in her book A problem like Maria: The next section looked at what kind of relationship or connection Dusty fans feel toward Dusty: for example, as a family member or role model, or someone with whom they identified because of sexual orientation or personality traits. The fourth section questioned whether GLB Dusty fans would describe her effect on them in ways similar to those described as affirmative gay and lesbian therapy.

Survey 2: Results and Analysis

I have not performed any descriptive or inferential statistical analysis of the survey responses. My method was to add the percentages of those in each group—homosexual, lesbian, bisexual, or heterosexual—who strongly agreed or agreed with each item, and compare the results of different groups. While reasonable conclusions can likely be drawn from samples of 20 and 23 gay men and lesbians respectively, keep in mind that a heterosexual sample of only half that size (ten) and a bisexual sample of only five people, makes the generalizability of their responses a much riskier venture.

Dyer and Gay Male Fandom

“To call Judy Garland an icon of the gay community is a massive understatement. Garland's fragile but indomitable persona and emotion-packed singing voice are undeniably linked to gay culture and identity” (Gianoulis, 2006). Richard Dyer’s oft-cited essay is the foundational analysis of Garland’s gay male fandom. I designed this section of the survey primarily to test whether Dyer’s (1986) description of gay male Judy Garland fandom also applied to gay male Dusty Springfield fandom today. He explains that the gay reading of Garland is not essentialist:

There is nothing arbitrary about the gay reading of Garland: it is a product of the
way homosexuality is socially constructed, without and within the gay subculture
itself. It does not tell us what gay men are inevitably and naturally drawn to from some in-built disposition granted by their sexuality, but it does tell us of the way that a social-sexual identity has been understood and felt in a certain period of time (p. 194).

To construct the items for this section, I changed some of Dyer’s descriptive statements about Garland into statements about Dusty with which the fan could strongly agree, agree, be neutral, disagree, or strongly disagree. (See Handout 1 for Dyer survey questions.) Like Springfield, Garland had wide appeal to mainstream audiences. However, unlike with Springfield, Garland’s appeal was primarily to gay men, not gay women. Nonetheless, some “lesbians also are drawn to identify with Garland's plucky toughness and vulnerability” (Gianoulis, 2006).

The parts of Garland’s image Dyer identifies relate to the urban white gay male subculture from 1950 to the mid 1980’s. In 1950, Judy Garland was fired by MGM studios and attempted suicide. According to Dyer, this altered and complicated her image and “made possible a reading of Garland as having a special relationship to suffering, ordinariness, [and] normality . . . that structures much of the gay reading” (p. 143). He also cites camp, androgyny, resilience, “intense authentic feelings,” and “strength and suffering” as additional qualities that complicated her image. Although his analysis of Garland is grounded in a particular time and culture, I was curious to see if elements were still applicable to gay fans today, in part because there are a number of similarities between Garland and Dusty, for example, alcohol and drug abuse, self-harm and/or suicide attempts, unique and powerful voices, and a marked disparity between the stage persona and the individual who created them.

In the survey results, four items were especially popular with all of the respondents, as seen in Figure 1. Almost identical percentages of lesbians and gay men agreed with these four statements, and the percentages for gay, lesbian, and bisexual fans are often quite similar. A very high percentage of all Dusty fans associate the singer with “intense authentic feelings” and “strength and suffering.” Between 85 and 90% of all fans also agreed that “there is a hurt in Dusty’s voice other singers don’t have.” Each of these items points to the strong emotive quality of singers like Garland and Springfield, and its connection to pain and suffering, but also a hint of resilience.

The other item that had a fairly high rating, especially with gays and lesbians was “Dusty had a sense of both inadequacy and inferiority.” With Garland, this was played out in the “ugly duckling” comparisons with glamour girl stars, like Lana Turner (Dyer, p. 165). Mary O’Brien herself famously proclaimed about her early adolescent self, “This person was going nowhere” and transformed herself into the glamorous Dusty Springfield (Cross, 1999). Dusty’s sense of inadequacy and inferiority persisted, though: She had no problem with her singing career; “it was Mary O’Brien I had trouble with” she said (Quotable Dusty, 2008).

Perhaps gay men and lesbians are more familiar with feelings of inadequacy and inferiority because of their own sense of not fitting in, of being an outsider. Perhaps they identify with the internalized homophobia Dusty seemed to struggle with. As Patricia Juliana Smith (2006) notes, “gay and lesbian audiences, given their all-too-frequent rejection by society, are drawn to divas because these extraordinary . . . figures perform a cathartic function by embodying, whether in their performances or in their own lives, all the heartache, grief, humiliation, and suffering that almost inevitably play a large role in queer life” (p. 2).

The one statement that gay men ranked dramatically higher than did other groups was “Dusty embodied both neurosis and hysteria.” (See Figure 2.) These are stereotypical Garland traits, especially in the comeback years Dyer describes in his essay. Gay men were twice as likely to attribute this description to Dusty as were lesbians, and three times as likely as were bisexuals and heterosexuals. Is this a thread of gay male interpretation-as-identification that runs from Garland to Springfield? Or is it a strategy to separate themselves from characterizations of gay men as self-hating Boys in the Band by having Dusty hold their “neurosis and hysteria” along with her own? Could the stereotype of women as emotional and men as rational be at play here as well?

Two additional items illustrate interesting differences between lesbian and gay male associations to Dusty. (See Figure 3.) Lesbians scored close to 20 points higher on the item “Dusty embodied both vulnerability and strength,” and more than 30 points higher on the item “Dusty represents resilience in the face of oppression” than did gay men. That one hundred percent of lesbians agreed with the first statement and 87 percent with the second suggests that for this population Dusty’s strength and resilience are as important in describing her as are her vulnerability and pain. This also provides an interesting contrast to the gay men’s high ranking of the “neurotic hysteria” item discussed previously.

One might speculate that this population—lesbians who identify with Dusty’s sexual orientation and value women’s strength—need to see Dusty in this way, to mirror their perseverance in the face of their own struggles with sexual identity. The Garlandesque appeal as a star who “takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin,’” as the old Timex commercial put it, has perhaps become outdated for gay men (Wilson, 2007). Gay pride replaced such contradictory icons of “suffering and strength” with more predictable, undimensional, and seemingly healthy representation, such as The Macho Man (Newton 1979), or even Cher.

Overall, this section of the survey did not validate the hypothesis that gay men read Dusty in the same way that Dyer describes them as interpreting Garland, at least no more so that other populations. In fact, of the 14 items in this section of the survey, lesbians ranked lower than gay men on only one, similarly to gay men on seven, and higher than gay men on six. One might argue that lesbians see Dusty as gayer than gay men do, at least in a Dyer-Garland mode. These coincide with Mary Wilson’s (2007) “The Queer(y)ing of Judy Garland” in which she describes how in the past few decades, as gays have become more assimilated into mainstream culture, Garland has lost her valence as a gay icon. Today Garland may work better as a dykon—lesbian icon.

Wolf and Lesbian Readings

In A Problem like Maria, Stacy Wolf (2002) argues that mid-century American musical theatre can “offer connections to its . . . socially marginalized spectators, who often interpret performances in surprising, unconventional ways” (p. viii). Scholarship has traditionally affirmed the musical as the domain of the gay male (Clum 1999), but Wolf aims to “model feminist and lesbian readings of musicals”

[i]n consciously accounting for the importance of spectators’ identifications and desires; in not taking for granted heterosexual narratives; in seeing the lesbian in the straight character; in recontextualizing, replacing, [and] re-viewing how straight performances of stage musicals may be read as lesbian. . . . (p. 8)

For the second section of the survey, I rewrote some of Wolf’s descriptions of Broadway stars, such as Julie Andrews and Ethel Merman, to apply to Dusty, to determine if lesbians (or others) performed these kinds of “lesbian readings” of Dusty and her music. (See Wolf survey items on Handout 2.)

All four groups had similar scores on items that described Dusty’s singing and personality in ways that don’t directly reference sexual identity. (See Figure 4.) All 58 fans surveyed agreed or strongly agreed that “Dusty's voice is distinctive--immediately recognizable.” Between 90 and 100% concurred that “Dusty could sing in many different styles” and that “the focus is on Dusty when she sings: she owns the song.” Between 80 and 100% of all fans surveyed also agreed that “listening to Dusty, one can hear sounds not heard before.” These items focus on the range or unique quality of her voice, style, and performance.

In statements more subject to interpretation (Figure 5), the rankings among all groups were still relatively high (65% or over), but as with some of the Dyer items, lesbians ranked higher than gay men, and sometimes higher than other groups too. That “Dusty's music and performance can be interpreted very differently now compared to how it was in the 1960's” was agreed upon by 90% of the heterosexuals, 80% of the bisexuals, 78.2 % of the lesbians and 65% of the homosexuals. And while only 20% of bisexuals believed that “Dusty's music can be interpreted as challenging the status quo,” 65% of both hetero- and homosexuals concurred, as did 78.2% of lesbians for whom the personal may be more political than for other groups.

The strong differences were seen, predictably, in how the participants rated items most overtly related to lesbian readings. As seen in Figure 7, 56 % of lesbians thought that “the heterosexual lyrics of Dusty's songs are a cover for her true feelings,” compared to only 35% of gay men, 10% of heterosexuals, and no bisexuals. “When I hear Dusty singing about a man I think she's really singing about a woman” was a statement nearly 70% of lesbians agreed with, compared to only 30% of gay men, and no heterosexuals and bisexuals. Finally, close to 80% of lesbians expressed a belief that “Dusty's music expresses connections to women,” compared to 45% of gay men and 20% of both heterosexuals and bisexuals.

What these survey results suggest is that the lesbian participants are reading Dusty in a way in which they can identify with her sexual identity, fantasize about a romantic or sexual relationship with her, and imagine she feels a connection to them as women, just as they do to her. Likewise, other populations resist interpretations that complicate or interfere with their own identities, fantasies, and connections. Perhaps “listeners’ endless capacity to ‘hear what they wanted to hear,’” (Adams, p. 15) allowed Dusty to be visible to her gay and lesbian followers without alienating her more traditional or mainstream fan base. One could argue that Dusty encouraged her diverse fans to project onto herself what mattered most to them, even at the expense of integrating her own identity.

Relationship/Connection

In the next major section of the survey fans were asked to rate their agreement/ disagreement with fourteen descriptions of kinship/relationship/connection they might feel with Dusty. A Problem like Maria Wolf (2002) offers some ideas about how fans might engage in semiotic production with a performer or a role: through identification—“I like her; therefore I want to be like her” or desire—“I like her; therefore I desire her” (p. 24). In a third type of semiotic productivity, which I’ve labeled “I like her; therefore, I want her to help me,” fans see stars as iconic figures to whom they turn for healing, guidance, support, or understanding, a phenomenon Hinderman (1992) has described in Elvis fans. Finally, based upon my experience and observations, I have hypothesized a fourth relationship that fans may feel toward the fan object: “I like her; therefore, I want to help her.” This section of the survey asked fans about these possible relationships as well as many others, such as personality traits of Dusty’s they might identify with, and other ways to describe their relationship with her, e.g., like a sister, like a parent, or like a friend. (See Relationship/Connection items on Handout 3.)

Few of the Dusty fans surveyed viewed Dusty as a role model or connected with her as a sisterly or parental figure. They were more likely to see her as a friend than not, but their strongest agreement was with the statement “I feel protective toward Dusty.” (See Figure 8.) This may be related to her emotional fragility, and the many media intrusions into her “private life” both during her life and after her death.

Heterosexuals and bisexuals looked up to Dusty more as an idol than did homosexual and lesbian fans. Heterosexuals and bisexuals also tended to view Dusty as an angelic or protective force while gays and lesbians did not. However, more than twice the percentage of bisexuals, homosexuals, and lesbians stated they related to Dusty’s emotional troubles than did heterosexuals. (See Figure 9.) Perhaps they are identifying with issues of sexual identity—such as the tension between coming out and dangers to one’s career, or what is termed “developmental lag” in GLB developmental psychology. O’Neill and Ritter, have documented how typical issues in identity formation have resulted in vocational development delay in gays and lesbians, for example (Ritter and Terndrup, 2002).

No homosexuals or heterosexuals related any sexual attraction toward Dusty, and only 20% of bisexuals (primarily women) relayed such feelings. In contrast, 83% of lesbians/gay women claimed a physical or sexual attraction to Dusty (Figure 10). They also rated higher than bisexuals and homosexuals in the connection they felt with Dusty because of her sexual orientation (Figure 11). Dusty’s sexual identity is more important to lesbians than gay men. Their strongest connection to her lies in other areas. Gay men related more to Dusty’s “artistic temperament” and “emotional troubles.” Despite these variations, two-thirds of the GLB population and nine out of ten heterosexuals agreed that being connected to Dusty is a therapeutic process.

Affirmational GLB Therapy

The final major section of the survey concerned whether GLB fans see their Dusty connection as therapeutic. I took descriptions from Kathleen Ritter and Anthony Terndrup’s Handbook of Affirmative Psychotherapy with Lesbians and Gay Men (2002) and recast them with Dusty in the role of therapy or therapist. (See Handout 4 for GLB Affirmative therapy survey items.)

A substantial majority of heterosexuals did not agree with any of the GLB affirmative therapy statements on the survey; they rated at 60% only two items, the same two items ranked highest by gay men. One hundred percent of the gay men agreed with the statement: “I prefer Dusty to a singer with a more ‘perfect’ voice and life” and 65% with the statement “Dusty has helped me grieve what I have lost.”

Lesbians also preferred Dusty to a singer with a more “perfect” voice and life (86.9%), but their other higher ranking items again connect the personal to the political:
More than two thirds said “Dusty has helped me find a community of people like myself ,” (Figure 12) seven out of ten agreed that “Dusty helps dispel myths and stereotypes about gays, lesbians, and bisexuals” and (Figure 13) almost three out of four concurred that “Dusty helps give me the courage to be who I am.” These are all important tasks in gay and lesbian sexual identity development, and Dusty seems to play a more important role here for lesbians than gay men.

Recall that in the first survey 69% of fans agreed with the statement “My life would be seriously diminished without Dusty in it.” I half-expected and wished for such a response to the equally dramatic statement in this survey: “Dusty has inspired me to transform my life in profound and meaningful ways.” However, only 15% of homosexuals agreed with this statement, while 40% of heterosexuals, 52% of lesbians and 60% of bisexuals concurred. Some gender differences may be at play here as well.

To analyze the survey data in a more global way, I looked at the averages of each group’s responses to the fourteen questions in each section (see Figure 15). On average, lesbians ranked the items of each section higher than did the other groups. Not only were they most likely to perform “lesbian readings” of Dusty, but to appreciate her as a Dyer-style Garland fan. They also ranked considerably higher than other groups on the relationship/connection and gay and lesbian affirmational therapy series of questions. It appears this group engages in more semiotic productivity than the other Dusty, regardless of the theory being tested. Figure 15 also shows that overall, gay men ranked higher than the other two groups, suggesting that the survey captures something important about both gay and lesbian Dusty fandom.

I plan to follow up on these surveys by conducting qualitative research to probe the meaning of the GLB participants’ responses. I would also like to understand why certain Dusty songs may be the favorites of each group, and whether these explanations correlate to any of the theories tested in my second survey. I hope you will share with me your impressions of my preliminary research and suggestions for building upon it.

Bibliography

Adam, M. (2008). Remembering Dusty and her ‘Beautiful Soul.’ The Dusty

Springfield Bulletin. (64), 15.

Cross, S. (Producer and Director). (1999). Dusty Definitely. BBC. Co-Production NVC

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Dyer. R. Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society. New York: St. Martin’s Press,

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Newton, E. (1979). Mother camp: Female impersonators in America. Chicago:

University of Chicago Press.

Fiske, J. (1992). The culture economy of fandom. In L.A. Lewis (Ed.) The adoring

             audience: Fan culture and popular media (pp. 30-49). London: Routledge.

Gianoulis, T. (2006). Garland, Judy (1922-1969). glbtq: An Encyclopedia of gay,

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Hinderman, S. (1992). ‘I’ll be here with you’: Fans, fantasy and the figure of Elvis. In

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Jenson, J. (1992). Fandom as pathology: The consequences of characterization. In L. A.

Lewis (Ed.), The adoring audience: Fan culture and popular media (pp. 9-29).

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Let’s Talk Dusty! www.dustyspringfield.info/forum

Patrick, A. (2001). Defiantly Dusty: A (re)figuring of ‘feminine excess.’ Feminist

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Ritter, K. and Ritter and Terndrup, A. (2002). Handbook of affirmative psychotherapy

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Handout 1: Dyer Survey Items

•         Dusty embodied both neurosis and hysteria

•         Dusty represents resilience in the face of oppression

•         I associate intense authentic feelings with Dusty

•         I associate both strength and suffering with Dusty.

•         There is a hurt in Dusty's voice other singers don't have

•         Dusty embodied both vulnerability and strength

•         Dusty had both a sense of inadequacy and inferiority

•         Dusty was not naturally glamorous.

•         Dusty embodied camp.

•         Dusty had a histrionic/overly dramatic style.

•         In her life, Dusty had a dramatic loss of innocence.

•         I associate disguise and impersonation with Dusty.

•         Dusty was an androgynous figure.

•         Dusty came from a normal background but didn't turn out normal

Handout 2: Wolf Survey Items

•         When I hear Dusty singing about a man I think she's really singing about a woman

•         The heterosexual lyrics of Dusty's songs are a cover for her true   feelings.

•         The focus is on Dusty when she sings: she owns the song.

•         Dusty expressed some qualities traditionally associated with men.

•         Dusty's voice is distinctive--immediately recognizable.

•         Dusty had some stereotypically masculine qualities about her.

•         Dusty was not a passive love object.

•         Dusty's music can be interpreted as challenging the status quo

•         Power is a trait I associate with Dusty.

•         Charm is a trait I associate with Dusty.

•         Dusty could sing in many different style

•         Listening to Dusty, one can hear sounds not heard before.

•         Dusty's music expresses connections to women.

•         Dusty's music and performance can be interpreted very differently

            now compared to how it was in the 1960's.

Handout 3: Kinship/Relationship/Connection Survey Items

•         I don't feel any relationship/connection/kinship with

•         I feel physically/sexually attracted to Dusty.

•         I see Dusty as a role model: I want to be like Dusty.

•         I look up to Dusty as an idol.

•         Dusty is an angelic or protective presence in my life.

•         I feel protective toward Dusty.

•         I think of Dusty as a friend.

•         Dusty is like a sister to me.

•         Dusty is a parental figure to me.

•         I feel connected to Dusty because of my sexual orientation.

•         I relate to Dusty’s artistic temperament.

•         I relate to Dusty’s emotional troubles.

•         Being connected to Dusty is a therapeutic process.

•         I relate to Dusty’s camp qualities.

Handout 4: GLB Affirmative Therapy Survey Items

•         Dusty understands my pain in being "different”

•         Dusty has helped me heal from painful experiences

•         Dusty helps me feel good about myself

•         Dusty is empathetic toward my troubles

•         Dusty has helped me find a community of people like myself

•         Dusty helps give me the courage to be who I am

•         Dusty supports and validates my inner experience

•         Dusty helps me replace negative thoughts about myself with positive ones

•         Dusty helps me understand why I behave the way I do

•         Dusty embodies my hopes and nightmares

•         Dusty helps dispel myths and stereotypes about gays, lesbians, and bisexuals

•         I prefer Dusty to a singer with a more "perfect" voice and life.

•         Dusty has inspired me to transform my life in profound and meaningful ways.