Don Loves Roger

by Elisa Kreisinger    |   Issue 3 (2014), Queer the Noise

ABSTRACT     Elisa Kreisinger's clever reworking of the dialogue from "Mad Men" introduces to the show's portrayal of 1950s corporate and advertising culture a queer noise that makes audible the homoerotic desires and potentialities that are always already embedded in these spaces. Sound and silence are crucial to this intervention, for the desires that are otherwise unspeakable in this space are articulated in and through silences. By making silences not only speak, but speak queerly, Kreisinger inverts the pattern of silencing that has historically been used to render queer desires publicly unspeakable.

Artist Statement

Don Loves Roger mashes up every episode of Mad Men, re-editing it into a story about two men who once preserved concepts of manhood and masculinity but then found relief and happiness in each other, becoming a threat to the very same patriarchal system on which their power and privilege was based. Don Loves Roger gives Don an opportunity to subvert rather than sell traditional masculinity.

As artists and critical thinkers, we are so accustom to negotiating that fine line between being a fan of popular culture and being a critic of it. My practice stems from a desire to create new narratives that bridge the gap between fan and critic while simultaneously queering concepts of copyright, challenging the author/reader and owner/user binaries on which it is based.

Don Loves Roger

[This article was originally published at http://lateral.culturalstudiesassociation.org/issue3/queer-the-noise/kreisinger. A PDF the original version has been archived at https://archive.org/details/Lateral3.]

Author Information

Elisa Kreisinger

\Elisa Kreisinger is a Brooklyn-based video artist remixing pop culture, whose work can be found at Pop Culture Pirate. Her latest work includes mashing up Mad Men into feminists and The Real Housewives into lesbians. Elisa’s 2012 US Copyright Office testimony helped win crucial exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, decriminalizing DVD ripping for artistic statements. She is a contributor to The Book of Jezebel and the forthcoming The Routledge Companion to Remix Studies. She is currently an artist-in-residence at Public Knowledge and Eyebeam Art and Technology Center. Elisa speaks around the world on the power of remix and remaking pop culture.\