Aysen Gerlach

Just Lookin’ Issue 3 & 4 set

Aysen Gerlach

Just Lookin’ Issue 3 & 4 set

Dimensions

11 × 8 × 1 in

$ 20.00

Unavailable


Just Lookin’ Issue 3: Formative Gay Icons, 2018, Aysen Gerlach. 20 Pages, 8.5in x 5.5in, staple bound.

Just Lookin’ Issue 4: Is This Sufjan Stevens Song Gay Or Just About God?, 2018, Aysen Gerlach. 20 Pages, 8.5in x 5.5in, staple bound.

Aysen Gerlach harnesses several levels of queer experience from her own and others’ lives in her Just Lookin’ publications. Strategically designed to celebrate alternative and queer-leaning subtexts in popular culture, Just Lookin’ humorously engages with media archetypes that are overlooked by some and heralded as icons by others.

The third issue of Just Lookin’ develops its thesis through a presentation of several nontraditional cartoon femmes, each one subverting heteronormative themes through an entertaining and accessible mixture of style and behavioral cues. In the Editor’s Note, Gerlach expressed her frustration at the lack of blatant LGBTQ representation throughout the characters in the cartoons of the early 2000’s. She credits this absence for positioning viewers at various levels of queer awakening to project theories and compatibilities unto the characters for which we had developed a vested interest.

Issue four of Just Lookin’ centers on the curious case of Sufjan Stevens, a figure within the contemporary music industry whose presentation of his identity and penchant for symbolic lyricism provides fodder for speculation by queer fans everywhere. Influenced by a popular meme group on Facebook with the same title, Is This Sufjan Stevens Song Gay or Just About God? fleshes out the arguments for and against Stevens’ proposed orientation. The truth is secondary to the fight itself; Gerlach includes statements from both sides of the discussion to ascertain the levels of microaggression, self-aggrandizement, and internalized homophobia that leads certain participants to dismiss Stevens’ subtextual hints.