Quare(-in) the Mainstream: Deconstructing New Media in Lil Nas X’s MONTERO

Abstract

This video essay explores how Lil Nas X's debut album MONTERO (2021) uses the intertextual, post-media possibilities of new media platforms to produce a daring intervention into the dynamics of gender fluidity and race. Contributing to research on New Queer Cinema (NQC), it critiques B. Ruby Rich's assertion that NQC's shift from outsider to mainstream cinema has resulted in the demise of its boundary-pushing elements. Instead, it suggests that with MONTERO, Lil Nas X has collated NQC's practices across new media platforms to enable new, radical expressions of gender and race to arise. This project considers Lil Nas X's work through the lens of "quare theory," a theory coined by E. Patrick Johnson which specifically centres the lived experiences of black LGBTQIA+ people. 1 Following an examination of the theoretical and historical context surrounding Lil Nas X, MONTERO, and NQC, I argue that the theorisations underpinning MONTERO, such as the media swirl, transmedia and remediation amplify the album's NQC characteristics. I also consider the myriad ways by which Lil Nas X is feeding into a bigger cultural rupture, wherein other mainstream artists are cultivating quare spaces and assimilating NQC's ideologies into popular culture. The video essay concludes by suggesting Rich's stance on NQC's position in the mainstream ought to be reconsidered, due to the exemplary "quare-ing" of the mainstream exhibited in Lil Nas X's MONTERO.