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Balirano, G. 2020. Of Rainbow Unicorns: The Role of Bonding Queer Icons in Contemporary LGBTIQ+ Re-Positionings

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Over the years, queer icons have in the main displayed a dual yet conflicting function: that of cautiously dissimulating reality, while blatantly representing it. This ambiguous play, with its geographical limits and contextual caveats, has provided LGBTIQ+ communities with spaces for the re-appropriation and abrogation of a number of male hegemonic imperatives. This line of action has, however, led to an idiosyncratic positioning since such a political practice may merely represent another marginal stance due to the persisting relation to the hegemonic itself. This paper, while analysing the proliferation of so-called queer iconic objects, will discuss the emerging concept of “bonding icons” and their inscription within an affiliation system as the active community enhancers of the new queer political agenda. The resulting resemiotised discourses seem to re-construct the queer “other” in various ways by reifying it into a similar and relatable “other” whose iconicity is able to provide reassurance and validation while evoking universal empathetic alignment.
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46
Occhio semiotico sui media | Semiotic eye on media
www.ocula.it • ISSN 1724-7810 • Vol 21, No 22 (April 2020) • DOI: 10.12977/ocula2020-7
Be cool: come nasce un’icona culturale
a cura di Andrea Bernardelli ed Eduardo Grillo
Of Rainbow Unicorns
The Role of Bonding Queer Icons in Contemporary
LGBTIQ+ Re-Positionings
Giuseppe Balirano
Dipartimento di Studi Letterari, Linguistici e Comparati,
Università degli Studi di Napoli “L’Orientale”
gbalirano@unior.it
<http://docenti2.unior.it/index2.php?user_id=gbalirano&content_id_start=1>
Abstract
Over the years, queer icons have in the main displayed a dual yet conicting function:
that of cautiously dissimulating reality, while blatantly representing it. This ambigu-
ous play, with its geographical limits and contextual caveats, has provided LGBTIQ+
communities with spaces for the re-appropriation and abrogation of a number of male
hegemonic imperatives. This line of action has, however, led to an idiosyncratic posi-
tioning since such a political practice may merely represent another marginal stance
due to the persisting relation to the hegemonic itself. This paper, while analysing the
proliferation of so-called queer iconic objects, will discuss the emerging concept of
“bonding icons” and their inscription within an aliation system as the active commu-
nity enhancers of the new queer political agenda. The resulting resemiotised discours-
es seem to re-construct the queer “other” in various ways by reifying it into a similar
and relatable “other” whose iconicity is able to provide reassurance and validation
while evoking universal empathetic alignment.
Keywords
Bonding queer icons; Aliation systems; Systemic functional linguistics; Coupling
Sommario/Content
1. Introduction
2. Queer iconicity
3. Bonding queer icons and the negotiation of coupling
4. Discussion
5. Conclusion
References
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Giuseppe Balirano | Of Rainbow Unicorns. The Role of Bonding Queer Icons
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1. Introduction
Social semiotic scholars have often investigated the role played by trans-
national media in disseminating Western values and goods with the purpose
of fashioning, moulding or re-constructing global and homogeneous identities
(cf. Machin and Van Leeuwen 2003, 2004, 2005; Machin 2004). The tie-in
between global consumerism and the widespread reproduction of invariant
ideas and signs, often conveying covert forms of subjugation, inevitably le-
ads to a systematic uniformity in identity construction. Moreover, the rapid
contemporary advances in digital connectivity are increasingly facilitating
the spread of unifying signs, such as Internet memes, which inevitably attain
viral circulation. A vast array of consumer goods and services, from beauty
products, home security systems, designer clothing, to exotic perfumes, sex
toys, and sex apps, to name but a few, are now part of the worldwide dome-
stic economy and consequently contribute to the shaping of our present-day
globalised body of knowledge (cf. Milani 2018). The ads promoting the use of
such commodities, and the real or virtual places where they can be purcha-
sed or used from shopping centres to digital websites have also become
ever more pervasive. However, given the nature of the items, the discourses
they produce and around which they revolve within capitalistic and consume-
ristic practice, they may also emerge as potential sites of resistance and, more
specically, the discursive loci where the Foucauldian notion of ‘subjugated
knowledges’ (cf. Foucault 1980b, 1987a) can easily be observed. French phi-
losopher Michel Foucault claimed in a number of lectures and interviews that
certain bodies of knowledge can become subjugated by more powerful actors.
Indeed, commodication practices, by standardising specic worldviews, may
also cause the formation of spaces where the less powerful – those not inclu-
ded in mainstream culture – can be relegated (cf. Foucault 1980b, 1987a). The
dissenting views of those with alternative life experiences are thus actively
excluded from mainstream discourses since they are never really taken into
consideration by the media, and as a result, they become “subjugated”. Fou-
cault (1980b: 81-82) maintains that such forms of subjugation represent the
expression of (a) «the historical contents that have been buried and disguised
in a functionalist coherence of formal systematisation», allowing the under-
standing of «the ruptural eects of conict and struggle» that are masked by
the order of «functionalist or systematising thought»; and (b) the «whole set
of knowledges that have been disqualied as inadequate to their task or insuf-
ciently elaborated: naive knowledges, located low down on the hierarchy».
Both features of subjugated knowledges are inexorably connected to power
and, more importantly, to «a historical knowledge of struggles» (Foucault
1980b: 82).
As such, subjugated knowledges always represent, at a specic time and in
a given culture, an expression of resistance that is typically embodied by cer-
tain objects. The body itself, for instance, or, as Foucault (1980a, 1987b) has
repeatedly highlighted, the quintessential expression of power and knowledge,
stands for a prime manifestation of subjugated knowledges. As a potential site
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of pleasure and resistance, the body and the vast constellation of attributes
referred to it, must, however, not be solely understood as the mere physical
display of personhood, but also as the place around which given discourses
and counter-discourses are built. Such a body (of knowledge) thus represents
a site for practices to be shaped and construed. The body or, more broadly, the
specic signs that are expressive of such a physical frame, may be regarded as
repositories and, at the same time, producers of knowledge through the acqui-
sition and reproduction of practices (Foucault 1980a). This is particularly true
when it comes to gay bodies and gay objects that channel and enhance the rep-
resentations of a specic community (Lahti 1998). Indeed, as Dyer (1992: 169)
maintains, «many aspects of gay culture are a body culture, discovering and
constructing new possibilities for the body», thus creating and engendering
potentiality for new forms of knowledge. In this way, the body within gay cul-
ture and the discourses that elect it as an object of knowledge may become the
basis for the creation of counter-discourses and, thus, potential sites of resist-
ance where «an amorphous atmospheric continuum» (Deleuze and Guattari
1987: 112) can easily materialise. Indeed, as Foucault (1987a: 101-102) argues,
«there is not, on the one side, a discourse of power, and opposite it, another
discourse that runs counter to it […]. […] [Discourses] can circulate without
changing their form from one strategy to another, opposing strategy». That
is, power must never be regarded from a holistic perspective since it always
creates fractures, where potential resistance may be engendered: «[p]ower, af-
ter investing itself in the body, nds itself exposed to a counter-attack in that
same body» (Foucault 1980a: 56). Therefore, once power has found an object
through which it can be exercised, that locus becomes a site for struggle or
emancipation. At the same time, however, once such a form of counter-dis-
course has progressively lost its charge and been appropriated by mainstream
culture, it may then in turn become a locus for the reproduction of other forms
of power. Hence, the circularity of the discursive construction and exercise of
power vs counter-power is maintained.
In line with the observations provided in the previous paragraphs, the
following paper investigates how subjugated gay identities embodied in/by
queer icons, as specic forms of counter-discourse, may travel across cultures,
space and gender to construct and/or mix with other identities to eventually
become other social and cultural sites (Orlando 2006). Gay pride parades, for
instance, ignited by the Stonewall riots, have fostered the insurrection of yet
another form of subjugated knowledge and the ocial depathologisation of
homosexuality in a common ght against homophobia. Against this backdrop,
I will introduce the novel concept of “bonding queer icons”, to nally delve
into the analysis of some queer iconic representations.
2. Queer iconicity
Throughout this study, I will use the term “icon” exclusively to denote
those images, logos, pictures, places, famous people, particular events or situ-
ations, or other ensuing items or ideas that have had a long-lasting incidence
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on wide and distinct communities. In particular, the icons under scrutiny
here are cultural artefacts that are immediately familiar to a large number of
people since they exemplify a concept or an idea that has signicant cultural
implications for the construction of a collective identity. “Cultural icons”, as
Fiorentino (2009: 9) denes them, tend to become part of a symbolic and cul-
tural heritage which language and discourses draw upon. They represent com-
munity symbols, collective stories, societal discourses or even social practices
which, displaced from their original contexts, may be re-inscribed and operate
independently in a variety of other settings giving rise to other stories while
acquiring new life. Cultural icons can, in fact, travel easily from one place to
another, gradually taking on new meanings through a lengthy process of re-
vitalisation. Through complex practices of resemiotisation and remediation,
without ever changing their form though, they represent forms of knowledge
and embody denite discourses that can circulate widely as both societal and
media processes unfold. The image of the handsome Christian saint, Sebas-
tian, for instance, has frequently been resemiotised as a prototypical gay icon.
Although throughout the history of Sebastian’s martyrdom, there was nothing
that might have hinted at the saint’s homosexuality, Saint Sebastian has al-
ways been portrayed as a desirable, half-naked, smooth-chested young man
whose ephebic body has been pierced by several arrows. Sebastian’s alleged
homosexuality, therefore, is a clear example of the way iconogenesis can be
triggered by other signs while insinuating further narratives devoid of origin
or end. The Italian Renaissance painters shunned the adult and hirsute saint
of medieval iconography, and emphasised one single detail of the young saint’s
body: his pierced torso which eventually gave rise to other forms of knowledge
where new narratives could be created and particular discursive practices en-
hanced. Subsequently, several modern writers remediated the queer religious
icon by employing the name Sebastian to slyly ascribe an ambiguous sexuality
to some of their characters, such as Sebastian in Brideshead Revisited by Eve-
lyn Waugh (1945), or his namesake in Suddenly, Last Summer by Tennessee
Williams (1958). Likewise, Oscar Wilde chose the name Sebastian as his pseu-
donym after being released from prison. Yet another interesting form of iconic
remediation is to be found in the biographical lm Sebastiane (1976) directed
by the independent British lm-director Derek Jarman (see Vigo and Rimini
2018). Consequently, the slow but steady image-construction of this queered
icon has spread into mainstream milieus, and while possibly detracting from
an understanding of what “normal” gay identities are, it has oered a support-
ive representation of queerness through the saint’s legitimating role.
While originally the term “icon” designated a religious image, generally
painted or carved on wood, and used for worshipping deities, over the last two
centuries, icons have slowly come to be associated with the multiple and inter-
woven signs of profane global culture. The function of global contemporary sec-
ular iconicity is to construct or represent a collective identity by appropriating
and renovating the pre-existent ideas, beliefs, and interests of a given commu-
nity. This appropriation technique has often provided the LGBTIQ+ commu-
nity, in particular, with «challenging, even confrontational, ways of subverting
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mainstream culture and inserting their own odd, even perverse perspectives on
a largely unsuspecting and often unsuspicious public» (Cooper 1996: 14). Ac-
cording to Mathieu, this practice of destabilising mainstream culture via gay
iconography is expected to queer society as a whole:
[T]his “queerness” is not only based on content (gay iconography, sexual innuen-
does, phallic forms, etc.) although at times it is one of the strategies employed. But it
also, and more importantly, makes use of queer concepts, such as humour and camp,
inversion, and reversal, excess and extremes, in an irreverent attitude to conventions
and social prescriptions, a subversive approach to systems. (Mathieu 2003: 93)
Traditionally, LGBTIQ+ people used to misidentify exclusively with popu-
lar straight female artists, or divas, in order to have a room of their own in pop
culture where, as subjugated objects, they had never been fully represented.
Harris (1997: 10), indeed, explains that «at the very heart of gay diva worship
is not the diva herself but the almost universal homosexual experience of os-
tracism and insecurity». The gay community, therefore, iconises heterosexual
female performers such as Judy Garland, May West, Liza Minnelli, Cher, Ma-
donna, Britney Spears, Whitney Houston, Amy Winehouse, Lady Gaga, etc.,
only because there has been so little community representation in the greater
mediascape through which a fully-edged gay identity could have been built.
Some of these iconic women are elected as testimonials of a subjugated cul-
ture since they themselves have suered, been exploited, damaged or, in the
worst cases, destroyed by stardom power struggles. Georges-Claude Guilbert
in his seminal book Gay Icons: The (Mostly) Female Entertainers Gay Men
Love oers a clear account of female gay icons:
The gay icon tends to be heterosexual. Sometimes she is a ghter, sometimes a
long-suering victim; in any case, she’s a strong personality, who often ends tragically.
She is a star, and no one becomes a star without encountering some pitfalls on the
way. The ghter gay icon has learned to defend herself, to ght for her rights and her
freedom. (Guilbert 2018: 6)
Whenever queer forms of expression have been limited and subjugated by
the power struggles pertaining to heteronormative discourses, these straight
gay-icons have come to embody forms of counter-discourse. The fact that they
have been singled out to represent and, more importantly, embody projected
subjugated knowledges has led to the creation of other forms of resistance.
These icons, therefore, are not only considered the expression of queerness
per se but can also be seen as the projection of a queer political agenda that
mainstream tradition has enabled.
Queer historian Halperin (quoted in Staples 2019, n.p.) aptly describes the
attitude of the gay world towards prominent mainstream gay men as being
«highly critical, if not contemptuous, of their own artists, writers and lm-
makers». He maintains, for instance, that gay communities have often reject-
ed gay characters since they «don’t often like the representations of gay men
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that gay men produce» (Halperin as quoted in Staples 2019, n.p.). He further
species that this is mainly due to the fact that most mainstream representa-
tions of gay men tend to produce and reproduce normative heterosexual prac-
tices. Halperin, therefore, identies, on the one hand, a conventional gay cul-
ture, where white gay men are dominant; and on the other, a gay subculture,
where women, drag queens, black and trans people tend to have more visibil-
ity. In other words, the embodiment in an icon of given discourses and prac-
tices generates fractures and dichotomies related to the ways in which such a
symbol epitomises certain values and forms of representation. This distinc-
tion triggers the refusal, by the gay community, of gay cultural icons identied
as normative heterosexual representations, and grants credence to the idea
that the community’s increased visibility now allows it to shed these straight
cultural gures as community icons. The enduring prominence the LGBTIQ+
community, however, shows that there is still a lot to be done.
A number of scholarly publications have investigated the role of female
divas as queer icons (see Guilbert 2018, for a detailed account), mainly high-
lighting the function and attributes of these diva performers in the gay world.
The types of queer icons this study intends to investigate pertain to the cat-
egory of objects, concepts and events which seem to have travelled far and
wide and crossed distant cultures. These cultural icons work in two dierent
directions: (1) they strengthen and spread queer discourses of belonging and
community building, while (2) crossing the borders of gendered representa-
tions to be employed and re-used by everybody, irrespective of their sexual
orientation.1 The queer icons under scrutiny here are associated with the rep-
resentation of the gay body and its ability to reproduce both power and coun-
ter-power. These icons are, in fact, primarily made to grant pleasure to the
body, to make it aware of its intrinsic power and to popularise its multifaceted
discourse(s). Philosophical, feminist and poststructuralist debates around the
body (Foucault 1980a, 1987a; Bartky 1988; Bordo 1989; Grosz 1994) have es-
tablished that our knowledge of the body and, indeed, the body itself are root-
ed in specic cultural and historical conditions and in the context of particu-
lar relations of power. As observed in the introductory section of this paper,
it is the gay body which has met with an unparalleled proliferation of iconic
attributes, a reection and, sometimes, a projection of its materiality that may
then be associated with the (re)production of power, to forms of counter-pow-
er or even to novel “subjugated knowledges”. In other words, the interest of
this paper is mainly related to «how the person who is disabled through one
set of oppressions may by the same positioning be enabled through others»
(Sedgwick 1993: 328).
1 This is the reason why I shall be referring to them throughout this paper as
queer icons. By using the term “queer” I am not indeed referring to all those people
who self-identify as “queer” and, therefore, I am not linking such icons as forms of
expression only related to them. I am using the term to refer to all those “objects”
denoting or relating in a specic way to sexual or gender identities that do not
necessarily correspond to established heteronormative ideas of sexuality and gender
representation.
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3. Bonding queer icons and the negotiation of coupling
In this section, I will briey outline the concept of “bonding queer icons”
and the way it relates to the previously introduced notion of “cultural icons”
by distancing my research from what has been extensively studied, in semiotic
investigation, by Charles Sanders Peirce, since the 1860s.
A preliminary denition of “bonding icons” sees them as evocative ob-
jects, symbols or places of social belonging that draw people into shared or
imagined communities. More specically, according to Stenglin (2004, 2009,
2011, 2012), icons are signs, multi-dimensional in nature, which can consti-
tute a range of dierent things. In the case of queer icons, the range is exten-
sive and may include:
a) OBJECTS, certain items have become queer icons such as the colourful Aus-
sieBum or Andrew Christian underwear, or Dorothy’s ruby slippers from
The Wizard of Oz (1939), etc.;
b) SYMBOLS, like the rainbow ag or the pink triangle, the latter being a sym-
bol for various LGBTIQ+ identities, initially intended as a badge of shame,
but later reclaimed as a positive symbol of self-identity;
c) PLACES or EVENT, such as Stonewall, the Greenwich Village in New York,
or more broadly gay pride parades, and more recently RuPaul’s Drag Race
and DragCon.
All bonding icons are able to symbiotically combine M.A.K. Halliday’s ide-
ational and interpersonal metafunctions (Halliday 1978). In linguistics, in
fact, we explore ideational meanings taking into account the register varia-
ble of eld (Halliday 1978, 1985; Martin 1992). This variable consists of two
experientially distinct dimensions: “activity sequences” and the “things” they
contain. Therefore, in adopting a social semiotic approach to queer icons, I
will consider how interpersonal meaning combines with ideational meaning
in a specic queer icon: the rainbow or pink, glitter unicorn. I will consider
the ideational meaning of this icon, which openly discloses the instability of
today’s societies by challenging heteronormative power and values, while at
the same time providing a marginal status for LGBTIQ+ individuals.
The theoretical basis of this approach is the linguistic concept of “coupling”
introduced by Martin (2000) and then further developed by Zappavigna,
Dwyer and Martin (2008) and Zhao (2010, 2011) in order to look at textual
relations. In Zhao’s words, coupling involves the association of dierent semi-
otic elements in the construction of the meaning-making process:
Coupling concerns the temporal relation of ‘with’: variable x comes with variable y.
To put it another way, it is the relation formed between two semiotic elements at one
given point in time within the logogenetic timeframe. Coupling can be formed between
metafunctional variables (e.g. ideational and interpersonal), between dierent semio-
tic resources (e.g. image and verbiage) and across strata (e.g. semantics and phonolo-
gy). (Zhao 2011: 144)
Such a notion may thus easily be applied to the investigation of cultur-
al icons by looking at the types of relations they enact in society; that is, how
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communities build through their own icons other semiotic and discursive loci
where their members can commune, negotiate or reject the value sets they con-
strue. According to Knight (2010: 43), «we discursively negotiate our commu-
nal identities through bonds that we can share, and these bonds make up the
value sets of our communities and culture, but they are not stable and xed». In
other words, in order to align (or disalign) ourselves with a specic set of values
or evaluative stances towards given discursive representations, attitudes about
people, places, things, etc. must be construed (Zappavigna 2014, 2019). Such
a fundamental concept can therefore be used to explore how values are discur-
sively construed and enhanced in combination with expressions of evaluation.
Coupling is, therefore, seminal to understanding how these processes of
association among entities, values and stances interact to create bonds. Ac-
cording to Martin (2008: 39), coupling refers to «the ways in which meanings
combine, as pairs, triplets, quadruplets or any number of coordinated choices
from system networks». This way, specic linguistic and, more generally, se-
miotic patterns can be highlighted in dierent texts and discourses that can
be used to combine interpersonal and experiential meanings as associations
of ideation and attitude (Zappavigna 2019). Such forms of co-selection may
engender the creation of interactive social bonds, that is, discursive entities
whose recurrent associations to given types of evaluation lead to specic inter-
personal and experiential meanings that individuals see themselves aligning
with, or distancing from. Such a discursive process may, of course, be con-
veyed both textually and through other forms of semiotic communication. Ad-
ditionally, once the coupling between these dierent levels has been enacted,
aliation is then enabled. Aliation means that people can commune around
something with very explicit stances, be they negative or positive. Aliation
can occur both when individuals interact and commune directly (in this case,
it is usually referred to as “dialogic aliation”), but also when people com-
mune around a specic discursive item, but do not interact directly (in this
case, it is known as “communing aliation”; see Zappavigna and Martin 2018;
Zappavigna 2018). In the latter case, in order for this to occur, individuals
need specic engagement systems represented by given entities which, in our
specic case, can indeed be represented by cultural icons. Much like in social
media, where hashtags become aliation systems thanks to which people can
commune around given discursive representations, icons may be seen as the
embodiment of discursive representations that allow people to interact with
one another without necessarily engaging in a direct encounter. They become
instruments of negotiation and, sometimes, of discursive resistance towards
dominant ideologies. In the next section, I will analyse a particular bonding
icon relating specically to the LGBTIQ+ community.
4. Discussion
The bonding queer icon under scrutiny in this paper is the legendary uni-
corn. Why the unicorn should become a bonding queer icon is easy to un-
derstand. Unicorns have represented otherness, freedom and transformative
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power since the 16th and 17th centuries (see Hamilton 2005). Thanks to their
gender uidity, alongside other mythical creatures, unicorns have been se-
cretly representing bisexual people as far back as Queen Elizabeth I; they were
also directly involved in the creation of the so-called Victorian unicorn porn,
as part of the process of elaborating class identity. Moreover, unicorns gained
a reputation for being elusive since nobody could ever quite see or catch them
as if they led dierent lives simultaneously situated in parallel worlds. In a
similar manner, LGBTIQ+ individuals have always felt as if they only par-
tially belonged to the society they live in since their very existence has often
blurred, with several diculties, the heteronormative boundaries. The uni-
corns’ mystical powers and their innate representation of “otherness”, have
recently attracted the queer gaze. Fantastic creatures imbued with mystical
powers whose bodies that simultaneously incarnate the real and unreal can-
not but instantly become iconic in representing the shared feelings of commu-
nity members.
As regards aliation, in order to claim unicorns as a representation of the
LGBTIQ+ community, other semiotic systems of representation need to be
called into play. The queer unicorn mane, for instance, bears the multi-hued
colours of the rainbow ag, thus underlining the connection and appropriation
of the icon by the LGBTIQ+ community. The rainbow ag, created by Amer-
ican artist Gilbert Baker in 1978 as a symbol of the diversity of the LGBTIQ+
community, became well known during the gay rights protests of the 1970s and
1980s. Rainbows and unicorns frequently bond together especially on banners
at Gay Pride Parades around the world, where slogans such as “Gender is Im-
aginary” or “Totally Straight” are accompanied by sparkling rainbow unicorns
(Fisher 2017).
The American singer, songwriter, actor, director, choreographer and
YouTuber Todrick Hall, for instance, in his music video Dem Beats (2018),
appears in full unicorn drag prancing around the stage half-naked. More spe-
cically, in the very rst frame of the video, he queers the scene by sporting
very high heels in the shape of unicorn hooves. The queer body of the human
unicorn brings into being a novel multiform sign which can be gazed at as both
the new repository and the producer of knowledge by means of the reproduc-
tion of separate pre-existing discourses. In the video, the camera moves up
quickly to reveal that the represented participant – that is, Todrick Hall in drag
– is wearing clothes and accessories that allow him to look like a living human
unicorn. The cosplay outt contests heteronormative boundaries and binaries
to an even greater extent and the resulting new queer icon is employed to chal-
lenge and question the binary opposition between masculinity and femininity,
reclaiming a space of self-expression and freedom. The drag unicorn is semiot-
ically construed as a gender-uid social actor who, through the criticising lyrics
of the song (they don’t make dem beats like they used to), denounces the way
gay music is negatively changing by gradually going mainstream. In the video,
both the representation of the experiential world (i.e. representational mean-
ing) and the interaction between the participants who form a choreographed
visual design and the viewers (i.e. interactive meaning) are simultaneously at
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in Contemporary LGBTIQ+ Re-Positionings
play: the represented participant’s direct gaze engages with the audience and
s/he is always situated above the audience, in a position of privilege and supe-
riority. The video projects a strong image of power which, despite the phallic
horn on the head of the represented participant, succeeds in playing with gen-
der uidity in an interesting non-binary and intersectional manner.
In recent years, unicorns have progressively become mainstream rep-
resentations bestowing agency onto their audiences and rmly situating their
creative output within the logics of commodity culture. In summertime, we
can now observe inatable pink or rainbow-hued unicorns riding the waves or
drifting across swimming pools. Instagram posts, stories and videos, depict-
ing these inatable creatures are trending, and the audience does not neces-
sarily belong to the LGBTIQ+ community. Teacups and other accessories now
display iconic representations of unicorns. Two years ago, Starbucks launched
the Unicorn frappuccino and rainbow-hued unicorn toast and cakes have be-
Figure 1. Todrick Hall’s Drag Unicorn.
Figure 2. Examples of the unicorn icon as consumer good.
56
Vol 21, No 22 (April 2020) • DOI: 10.12977/ocula2020-7
Giuseppe Balirano | Of Rainbow Unicorns. The Role of Bonding Queer Icons
in Contemporary LGBTIQ+ Re-Positionings
come a major food trend. In the beauty community, unicorn hair, unicorn
nails and glittery body gel known as Unicorn Snot are all the rage. The unicorn
icon, across time and space, has clearly taken up other signs to form a network
of signs of signs in a limitlessness of signicance which projects its shadow
onto an amorphous atmospheric continuum.
5. Conclusion
As discussed, the LGBTIQ+ community has identied in elected queer
icons a way to allow its members to increase their visibility by participating
in processes of shared identity construction that challenge the very notion of
subjugated knowledges. Some of these icons, however, have gradually become
mainstream, thus forfeiting the global political charge which enabled them to
resist specic forms of the hegemonic. Aliation systems that elect bonding
icons as their main discursive tool to challenge the traditional relegation of the
community to a separate or marginal space, originally claimed a space for the
re-appropriation and abrogation of a number of male hegemonic imperatives
leading to an idiosyncratic positioning. However, this practice may be seen to
merely represent another marginal stance in relation to the hegemonic itself.
For if, on the one hand, it is true that the proliferation of so-called queer icons
has provided a space for the creation of aliation systems as active community
enhancers of the new queer political agenda, on the other hand, queer icons
have also been appropriated by mainstream culture, often within a neoliberal
framework. This has favoured an iconic functional shift, from artefacts laying
claim to cultural rights, to icons that have become an easy expedient to pro-
mote gadgets, sponsor goods and, overall, obtain full participation in the com-
modication process; and, as is often the case, consumerist culture seems to
erase or, at least, mitigate their original counter-discursive nature. This way,
subjugated knowledges become part of the capitalistic economic system, re-
producing and enhancing commodied values that were initially only relegated
to a group minority. This could generate a continuous reversal process where
cultural and iconic re-appropriation seems to be a common practice. A new
CBS sitcom, for instance, titled The Unicorn (2019), features a heterosexual
male who becomes the eligible bachelor due to his widowed father status. Or,
the recent lm Unicorn Store (2017) on Netix, which seems to have a similar
heterosexual vibe suggesting a sort of heteronormative re-appropriation of the
analysed bonding icon.
This paper has analysed the formation of so-called queer icons by probing
the linguistic theory of “bonding icons” applied to semiotic studies. It has then
investigated the unicorn as a queer icon and its initial inscription within the
aliation system of the new queer political agenda. The case of the unicorn
as a bonding queer icon is symptomatic of the manner in which a value-laden
object representing a community’s subjugated knowledges can be exploited by
the capitalistic apparatus system and turned into a mere gadget devoid of any
political signicance. As societies and value systems change, what was once
appreciated and worshipped can progressively become redundant, or even
57
Vol 21, No 22 (April 2020) • DOI: 10.12977/ocula2020-7
Giuseppe Balirano | Of Rainbow Unicorns. The Role of Bonding Queer Icons
in Contemporary LGBTIQ+ Re-Positionings
embarrassing for a community’s collective self-image. For the LGBTIQ+ com-
munity, such a change in attitude very often seems to occur on a generational
basis and, thus, it needs to be accepted.
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Giuseppe Balirano | Of Rainbow Unicorns. The Role of Bonding Queer Icons
in Contemporary LGBTIQ+ Re-Positionings
2011 Learning Through Multimedia Interaction: The Construal of Primary Social
Science Knowledge in Web-Based Digital Learning Materials, Unpublished
Doctoral Dissertation, Sydney, University of Sydney.
Giuseppe Balirano, PhD in English Linguistics, is Professor of English Linguisti-
cs and Translation at the University of Naples “L’Orientale” and member of the PhD
board in Language and Communication at the University of Catania. His research in-
terests and publications lie in the elds of multimodal critical discourse analysis, hu-
mour, masculinity and queer studies, the discursive representation of organised crime
and audio-visual translation. He is the Director of the interuniversity research centre,
I-LanD, for the linguistic investigation of identity and diversity in discourse. He is the
BeTwiXt series director, publishing original works in the eld of linguistics and com-
munication studies. His most recent publications include: Food Across Cultures: Lin-
guistic Insights in Transcultural Tastes (2019, co-edited with S. Guzzo); Miss Man:
Languaging the Gendered Body (2018, co-edited with O. Palusci); Self-Narratives in
Organizations: Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming Experiences (2018, co-e-
dited with P. Valerio and L.M. Sicca); Queering Masculinities in Language and Cultu-
re (2018, co-edited with P. Baker); Gardaí & Badfellas: The Discursive Construction of
Organised Crime in the Irish Media (2017); Humosexually Speaking: Laughter and
the Intersections of Gender (2016, co-edited with D. Chiaro); Languaging Diversity
(2015, co-edited with M.C. Nisco); and Masculinity and Representation: A Multimo-
dal Critical Approach to Male Identity Constructions (2014).
... A study of gay icons can also be found in Balirano (2020). fore inspired by Harvey's category of citationality, and includes direct mentions of cultural artefacts noticed in the extracts examined. ...
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... Öte yandan günümüzde unicorn, LGBT+ (lezbiyen, gey, biseksüel, transgender, queer) hareketiyle ilişkilendirilerek bu topluluğun renkliliğini, çeşitliliğini ve farklılıklarını temsil etmek için kullanılan bir semboldür. Böylece unicornun, cinsel yönelimleri veya cinsiyet kimliklerini ifade eden insanları destekleyen bir sembol haline geldiğini görmekteyiz (Balirano, 2020). Son yıllarda unicorn, girişimcilik dünyasında da kullanılan önemli bir terim haline gelmiştir. ...
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