ABSTRACT
How do queers—lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and other nonstraight people—make sense of, and take pleasure in, a mass culture that we have been told time and again is made by and for straight people (especially men)? 1 While our queer pleasures in film, television, music, videos and other forms are many and varied, they are almost always rooted in the tensions between understanding ourselves as members of a subculture, which subversively or secretly reinterprets products not made with us in mind, and seeing our readings and pleasures as standing alongside (rather than as being alternatives to) those of straight people. This complicated positioning—simultaneously feeling within, outside and alongside mass, straight culture—is evident in the relationship of queers to comedy production and interpretation.
