The gilded closet : media, privacy, and power in unequal times

Abstract

This thesis broadly interrogates the way three media technologies in the history of the United States have been used in relationship to wealth, sexuality, and the emergence of "the right to privacy" in the late 19th century. This includes photography in the First Gilded Age, cable television in the 1970s and the beginnings of the neoliberal economy, and networked media in the 2010s with the rise of surveillance capitalism and what some refer to as a Second Gilded Age. Drawing on Marxist and Queer theorists to analyze the inherent power structures across media, privacy, sexuality, and wealth, this text exposes new media environments as consistent sites of conflict between various classes of people and forms the theoretical and conceptual basis of my artistic practice.