For Your Oral-tainment or Not?: The Politics of Adam Lambert’s AMA Performance

Rachel Schneider — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 00:39:58 +0000

Image Credit: Towleroad

H/T: Noel Radley

While usually I’m good at keeping up on my pop culture news, I’m grateful to Noel for giving me a tip about American Idol star Adam Lambert’s performance at the American Music Awards of his new song “For Your Entertainment.” As can be seen in the above image, Lambert aggressively performed his homosexuality in the number, including simulated oral sex, men on leashes, and an unplanned make-out session with one of the members of his band.

(I’m including a link to the video, with apologies if it’s pulled from YouTube before you can view it.)

While Lambert denied any explicit political intent in an interview with CNN after the performance, he did describe “a double standard in the entertainment community … I feel like women performers have been pushing the envelope sexually for the past 20 years. And all of the sudden a male does it and everybody goes, ‘Oh, we can't show that on TV.’ For me, that's a form of discrimination and a double standard.” Certainly a brief search on Google provides evidence for this argument: artists like Janet Jackson and Madonna have engaged in sexy performances of the same kind as Lambert’s. While I’m not trying to suggest that the Madonna-Britney kiss wasn’t controversial—far from it—part of the negative reaction surrounding Lambert’s performance is in all likelihood related to the fact that he is a gay man simulating homosexual acts on broadcast television, where Glee’s Kurt hasn’t even managed to get a boyfriend.

Image Credit: Towleroad

What I find particularly interesting about the performance in terms of defining Lambert as sexual is that it occurs within a larger controversy about how Lambert has not represented his homosexuality. The controversy surrounding his recent photo shoot in Details and his inclusion in the OUT100 have both centered around what has been seen as Lambert’s refusal to be “too gay” in the media. Lambert is involved in constructing a sexualized image for himself, but one whose orientation is unclear. However, as a popular media figure and as a gay man, what is Lambert’s responsibility to perform his sexuality in the public sphere? Does he have the right to claim privacy for his sexuality at the same time as he flaunts sex? Perhaps the AMA performance can be read as a rhetorical reaction to OUT Magazine editor Aaron Hicklin who asked Lambert to follow “a path that’s honest and true” as a gay pioneer—or maybe it’s just only for our entertainment.

viz. - Adam Lambert

For Your Oral-tainment or Not?: The Politics of Adam Lambert’s AMA Performance