Susan Burgess, "LGBT Inclusion in American Life: Pop Culture, Political Imagination, and Civil Rights" (NYU Press, 2023)
LGBT Inclusion in American Life: Pop Culture, Political Imaginations, and Civil Rights\xa0(NYU Press, 2023)\xa0is a tour de force that weaves together the various narratives about the transformation of a counter public, in this case, LBGT citizens, into rights bearing citizenship, and the transformation of mainstream political and cultural narratives, incorporating shifting conceptions that open up space for this integration. As Political Scientist Susan Burgess explains throughout the book, a basic exploration of public opinion data reflects the substantial shift that many Americans have had in their thinking about individuals who are part of the LGBT community, and about the community itself. But the public opinion data only goes so far in telling the story of this rapid transformation. Using the American political development framework of\xa0political time, Burgess sees profound political transformation, but through what she describes as queered political time, noting that substantive ideas in this context are vitally important. Thus, the focus of\xa0LGBT Inclusion in American Life\xa0is on the space where narratives and imagination are able to project new ideas that can then open up our thinking and provide opportunities to re-imagine fundamental social and political concepts.\nPolitical imagination gives us a chance to consider alternatives; we can see new or different worlds that provide us with different ways to think about institutions and power, about families, about gender and sexuality. This space also provides us with paths into thinking about the future. Burgess focuses on worlds that have been created in popular culture that construct different situations, or that deconstruct our ideas and we can imagine what might come out of that deconstruction. Through plays, television shows, and movies, as are the focus here, we can see power\u2014which is at the heart of politics\u2014differently conceived, implemented, constructed, wielded. Burgess integrates nuanced and important analyses of popular culture artifacts like Bond films, war movies, and family-focused television series to tease apart the shifting ideas of individual and community moral standards (movies about military service), masculinity (Bond films), and the family (Leave It to Beaver,\xa030something,\xa0The Americans). Each section of the book examines the particular theme that is connected to the \u201ccentral pillars of LBGT freedoms\u201d like the right to marry legally, the right to serve openly in the U.S. military, and the right to have consensual adult sex without fear of criminal penalty. The legality of these rights shifted rather quickly over the past twenty years, and Burgess\u2019 research dives into the connection between popular culture\u2019s imagined spaces and the demand and reality of lived experiences.\xa0LGBT Inclusion in American Life: Pop Culture, Political Imaginations, and Civil Rights\xa0essentially provides the \u201crest of the story\u201d \u2013 analyzing how these spaces of political imagination supplemented Americans\u2019 understandings of the LBGT community and the individuals within that community, not necessarily through representation, but through changing narratives and expansive storytelling and world building.\nLilly J. Goren\xa0is a professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-editor of\xa0The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe\xa0(University Press of Kansas, 2022), as well as co-editor of the award winning book,\xa0Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics\xa0(University Press of Kentucky, 2012), Email her comments at lgoren@carrollu.edu or tweet to\xa0@gorenlj.\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices\nSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law