ABSTRACT
Besides camp and the sociopolitical (or combined with them), comic texts and performers have been queerly understood through many other academic and nonacademic reading strategies: star cults, auteurism, gossip and other forms of extratextuality, and various types of emotional-erotic connections between characters, actors, and audiences. Within queer cultures, fandoms develop around certain performers whose star image is appreciated for containing qualities important to individual queers and particular queer communities. Major queer star cults have formed around comedy (and musical-comedy) performers such as Doris Day, Judy Garland, Lily Tomlin, Bette Midler, Sandra Bernhard, Cary Grant, Lucille Ball, Carmen Miranda, Pee-wee Herman (Paul Reubens), Roseanne, Reno, Lypsinka, Charles Busch, Divine, and Mary Tyler Moore. Often, queer comedy readings will bring in star cult material related to performers not generally considered comic actors: Greta Garbo (Ninotchka, Two-Faced Woman) and Katharine Hepburn (The Philadelphia Story, Pat and Mike, Adam’s Rib), for example.1 Of course, whether considering comic or dramatic actors, many queer star cults include erotic fantasies about performers.
