Marc Siegel

Doing it for Andy

When American fags are gossiping amongst ourselves and we want to confirm that someone is one of us, we might say, “She goes to our church.” If, for instance, our best friends younger male cousin is visiting us in the big city for the first time, we might playfully ask, “Does she go to our church?” We would never, however, ask such a question about Andy Warhol. In terms of Andy, our accounts were settled long ago: not only did she go to our church, but shes one of our most famous members. Indeed, Andy Warhols life and work, which spanned the homophobic 1960s and the sexual liberation of the 1960s and 1970s and continued through the post-Stonewall era, play a major role in just about any significant account of twentieth-century queer history.

The Secret Lives of Images

In this reflection on star images in queer counterpublics, Siegel introduces a theory of gossip as an intimate and indiscreet means of circulating images. This essay, excerpted from Siegel’s forthcoming book A Gossip of Images, unites Gilles Deleuze’s observations on the privileged role of rumor in cinema with Douglas Crimp’s perspectives on the function of gossip for queer communities, to argue for the forward movement of cinematic images beyond the moment of spectatorship and into the fantasies fostered by queer counterpublics. AIDS activism, camp spectatorship, and activist “outing” campaigns provide context for Siegel’s conceptualization of a gossip of images.