Larry King: "Are you a non-practicing bisexual?"
Anna Paquin: "Well, I mean, I'm married to my husband, and we are happily monogamously married."
LK: "But you were bisexual?"
AP: "No... Well, I don't think it's a past tense thing. Are you still straight if you are with somebody? If you were to break up with them or if they were to die, it doesn't prevent your sexuality from existing. It doesn't really work like that.
(Article and accompanying video)
Anna Paquin: "Well, I mean, I'm married to my husband, and we are happily monogamously married."
LK: "But you were bisexual?"
AP: "No... Well, I don't think it's a past tense thing. Are you still straight if you are with somebody? If you were to break up with them or if they were to die, it doesn't prevent your sexuality from existing. It doesn't really work like that.
(Article and accompanying video)
CONTEXT:
This article, published by CBS News entitled "Anna Paquin explains her bisexuality to Larry King," is a short summary of an interview Larry King conducted of actress Anna Paquin. The video is embedded at the end of the article, which covers a multitude of topics about Paquin's professional and personal life in 27 minutes. The part of the interview that gained the most media attention was King's questioning of Paquin's sexuality and his confusion about her orientation. This exchange is highlighted above.
Course Reading:
...[I]n some political and theoretical contexts, “queer” is used in a seemingly contradictory way: as a term that calls into question the stability of any categories of identity based on sexual orientation.... To “queer” becomes a way to denaturalize categories such as “lesbian” and “gay” (not to mention “straight” and “heterosexual”), revealing them as socially and historically constructed identities that have often worked to establish and police the line between the “normal” and the “abnormal" (Somerville, Keywords in American Cultural Studies, 187).
Analysis:
Somerville describes the history and modern uses of the word “queer” and argues that its use “calls into question the stability of any categories of identity,” in this case the straight/gay binary. While “queer” is not exactly used in the transcript of the interview between King and Paquin, it could be said that Paquin herself is “queering,” and forcing King to reconstruct his own notions of what it means to be in a category other than the ones neatly outlined in American society. King asks Paquin if she is a “non-practicing bisexual,” implying that her sexual orientation is one that can be turned on and off. This question also implies that bisexuality is highly situational—Paquin is bisexual when not in a relationship, lesbian when in a relationship with a woman, and straight when in a relationship with a man. However, Paquin points out that “it doesn’t really work like that,” and that her sexuality depends on how she identifies, and not whom she is with. In this way, she reveals terms like “straight” and “gay” as ones that are, as Somerville states, “constructed identities that… establish and police the line between the ‘normal’ and the ‘abnormal.’” While heterosexuals have typically been thought of as the dominant identity, the “normal,” and homosexuals were thought of as lesser, the “abnormal,” bisexuality brings about a whole new aspect to this construction. This state of being “neither/both” inherently resists easy classification into one end of the binary over the other, which results in people, like King, who think of bisexuality as situational and a “phase” that one passes (e.g. “But you were bisexual?”). Eventually, a person will choose to be straight or gay by marrying someone of the opposite or same sex, which in turn undermines his or her bisexual orientation. However, through her “queering” of this idea, Paquin allows for a break in this ideology and brings to light those like her who live between the binary, validating the sexuality that is often misconstrued and erased by the media and other forms of pop culture.