Subtext and Shipping: The Lesbian Community Online
Jo and Blair on Facts of Life; Cagney & Lacey; Marlene Dietrich and any woman she shared the screen with. Before lesbians were allowed to be part of mainstream pop culture, gay women lived for subtext. As visibility increases, queer women dominate blogs, forums and social media sites like Twitter and Tumblr, “shipping” or “slashing” these fictional female couples (and the actresses who play them). The result is a whole new kind of relationship between online content and users. AfterEllen.com editor Trish Bendix and video remixer Elisa Kreisinger will discuss how cultivating these female-heavy fandoms though editorial and video has encouraged a consistent demand for new content for this active and ever growing niche audience.
Presenters
Elisa is a feminist video remix artist creating more stories about women that don’t revolve around men (or babies). Her most recent work includes the Queer Housewives of New York City, Sex and the Remix: QueerCarrie and the forthcoming MadWomen/MadMen remix series. Elisa speaks about the importance of women talking back to pop-culture throughout the US and Europe, most recently at Eileen Fisher, National Conference for Media Reform, Museum for Film and Television, Berlin and SxSW. You can find Elisa’s work on BravoTV.com, the front page of the Boston Globe, in BitchMag, on Salon.com and Jezebel as well as in festivals and galleries throughout the US. She’s contributing blogger to BlogHer, National Alliance on Media Arts and Culture, The Grindstone and is the founder and co-editor of PoliticalRemixVideo.com. Her remix tools and resources can be found in the new book, “Reality Bites Back: The Troubling Truth About Guilty Pleasure TV.”
Trish Bendix a writer, living in Portland with her wife, pug and two cats. She writes about the intersection of queer women and pop culture/media as managing editor of AfterEllen.com and is the Girl on Girl columnist for The Frisky.
Trish has written on queer life & art, music, pop culture, media and feminist issues for publications such as The Village Voice, Time Out Chicago, Out, Punk Planet, Planet Out/Gay.com, Rockpile, The Chicago Tribune's ChicagoNow and Bitch. Her fiction has appeared in The Q Review, CellStories and she has an essay in the 2010 Seal Press anthology, Dear John, I Love Jane. She was also the co-host of a regular podcast on lesbian and queer women in music called Chick Habit.
Trish was a founder of Queer Fest Midwest, an all-day music and arts festival in 2007. She has been interviewed by the Chicago Reader, Time Out Chicago, the Windy City Times’ Nightspots, Venus Zine, Bitch, Feast of Fun, the Austin Chronicle, The Huffington Post and Feministing about her work and opinions on queer lifestyle
Monday, March 12
