A ‘rebelli[on] against an alternate version of masculinity and being homophobic’
A University of Tulsa professor of media studies claimed recently that hatred for the character Barney the Dinosaur derives from a “rebelli[on] against an alternate version of masculinity and being homophobic.”
According to The Daily Wire, Emily Contois made the assertion on the podcast “Generation Barney,” which discusses the classic kids show and its impact.
There’s long been speculation about the purple dinosaur’s sexuality; just Google “Barney gay dinosaur” or something similar and see what turns up.
“Generation Barney” alleged that while Barney’s appearance seems innocuous enough (it “made him approachable to kids”), some saw it as a “trick” — a way to confuse kids about notions of “traditional masculinity,” People reports.
Podcast host Sabrina Herrera claimed most of the “high-profile” disdain for Barney comes from adult men, which “reveals a lot about gender and power in our current society.”
For her part, Professor Contois said Barney’s messages about “love,” “nurturing,” and caring about others “offered up a different model for masculinity” … one which our society deems “sort of feminine and feminizing.”
“Barney could be understood as resisting that, pushing back against that, offering a different model of sexuality and gender and size all coming together,” Contois said. “And so for some of these men who reacted very poorly to him, that could be a piece of their reaction.”
MORE: Feminist scholar slams hot-wing-eating show for ‘inequitable gender hierarchies’
Contois (pictured) also injected race into her argument, claiming a “part of th[e] white masculine sort of set of authorities is this incredible resistance to homosexuality.”
A year ago, Dazed, which claimed Barney is, if not outright gay, at least queer (according to “many of his right-wing adversaries,” that is), pointed to academic Elizabeth Tucker’s claims that the perception of the purple dinosaur’s sexuality led to homophobic parodies of his songs (“I hate you, you hate me, Barney died from HIV, We called the doctor, And this is what he said: ‘Sorry, kids, Barney’s dead'”).
According to her faculty page, Professor Contois “researches media within consumer culture, focusing on how identities are formed at the vital intersection of food, the body, and ideas about health.”
In 2018, Contois wrote an article for Feminist Media Studies in which she lamented the paucity of women on the celebrity chicken wing-eating YouTube show “Hot Ones,” hosted by the “white, heterosexual, cisgendered, everyman brand of masculin[e]” Sean Evans.
“[O]nly eleven women had been solo guests on the show, a stark underrepresentation that piqued my academic interest,” Contois wrote. “[‘Hot Ones’] creates, maintains, and manipulates inequitable gender hierarchies through the interrelated performances of gender, food consumption, and celebrity.”
She subsequently blogged about the (right-wing) reaction to the article, noting she wanted to “assure” her students that “food studies and media studies are not frivolous […] nor an easy ‘A,'” but are “worthwhile, challenging, and engaging.”
MORE: Fresno State should consider Barney the dinosaur as its mascot, professor writes
IMAGES: Buzzfeed/X; Univ. of Tulsa
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