The Queen Art of Failure: Hope/lessness, Re/productivity and Desire in Perfume Genius’s Too Bright & No Shape

Abstract

Pursuing the line of bold indie/pop music, Perfume Genius is shining on Too Bright and shapeshifting on No Shape. Borrowing from Duggan's, Muñoz's and Halberstam’s explorations on embracing queer negativity and hopelessness, this article maps out works of Perfume Genius, or Mike Hadreas, in the form of a journey towards crafting the queen(r) art of failure. Disturbing the heteronormative desire for coherence reflected in the media’s sanitized queer image and the productive disciplined subject in general, such art is integral to queer praxis. It is addressed both as a way of life and in its potential to be the fine line between trying to inscribe every abject into the category of intelligible and simply refusing to be, through engaging in queer negativity.

Keywords

• queer music; failure; sadomasochistic desire; queer negativity; jouissance