Roger and Me: A Foucauldian Love Story

This week in class I shared my encounter with the enchanting and mysterious Roger. Pure boredom and a 4-hour drive led me down the path to 855-FOR-TRUTH, but the resulting hour long conversation was truly heaven ordained.  Run by GospelBillboards.org (do yourself a favor and listen to a few of their audio clips explaining the billboards, they're hilarious), the call service gives you the option to talk to a representative about any questions you may have and be told you're going to Hell free of charge! Obviously I wasn't about to let that opportunity pass me by, and soon enough I was on the line with someone who was soon to become a friend and confidant.

Roger was immediately charming - in his thick southern drawl, within the first 10 minutes he had compared my lifestyle to beastiality (I just looked that word up to see if I was spelling it correctly, which was INCREDIBLY dumb and I highly advise against EVER doing) and pedophilia. I posed (only occasionally sarcastic) questions for Roger about his beliefs and received increasingly outlandish and offensive answers. By the time I hung up, I was feeling amused but vaguely nauseous. Nothing he'd said was anything I hadn't heard before, but that didn't make it much better. Driving down I-75 you're barraged by these same messages over and over by billboard after billboard, but these messages certainly aren't limited to antiquated forms of media exposure. Scrolling through Facebook or surfing through channels on TV, it's never too hard to find some good ole' religious fundamentalism, almost always of the Christian variety.

Screencap from the Gospelbillboards website

Foucault's concept of surveillance is directly tied to our exposure to these messages everyday. In his words, “THE GAZE is alert everywhere.” Foucault believes that we're trapped in an ideological relationship with power, and I'd have to agree with him. So many of the ways we're entrenched in the power dynamics of ideology aren't as obvious as a 40 foot billboard along the highway - the way that ideology is conveyed is often much more insidious. Religious ideology has occupied and even guided our national rhetoric for so long, it has become essential to understanding how we perceive normalcy. I articulated in a previous blog post that were are being constantly scrutinized both by media and by each other to make sure we adhere to societal norms. Those that are seen as 'Other' are perceived as deviant and dangerous, and for years the solution to this danger has been to lock it out of sight, whether in a prison or mental institution.

Roger consistently referred to homosexuality as an illness throughout our conversation, something to be cured. In the context of today's more liberal media views, this might be shocking to some, but the correlation between queerness and mental illness still exists in our society. It has too much history to be shed so easily; homosexuality wasn't even declassified as a mental illness by the APA until 1973. People were still institutionalized (and frequently administered electroconvulsive therapy) less than 45 years ago - not nearly long enough time for the stigma to disappear. People like Roger act as vessels for the stigma to carry on and continue to be inscribed in expectations of behavior and of the body. As Foucault states, “Our society is one not of spectacle, but of surveillance.” Although blatant
homophobic media spectacles have become less common in recent years , surveillance on the basis of normative performances of sexuality and gender (among many other things) remain interactive and pervasive throughout society.

Roger just checkin up. What a sweetie.