The L Word 9780814338254, 9780814338247

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“Margaret McFadden’s book is thoroughly enjoyable to read and sizzling with insights that help us better understand the historical quandaries of lesbian (mis)representation, the reflexive pleasures of The L Word, and the perennial debate over lesbian visibility and politics that has kept L Word fans talking long after the series’ conclusion.”

“McFadden’s thoughtful, well-written take on The L Word synthesizes previous readings with her own fresh and insightful interpretations of the program—particularly regarding its reflexivity. McFadden’s own solid knowledge of the show shines with her frequent and particularly well chosen examples from it; The L Word fans will respond to these many examples intensely, while readers new to the show will follow and enjoy them easily.”

THE L WORD

T h e L Wo rd

—Dana Heller, Old Dominion University Eminent Scholar and editor of Loving the L Word: The Complete Series in Focus

McFadden

CINEMA AND TELEVISION STUDIES

—Virginia Bonner, associate professor of film and media studies at Clayton State University

Margaret T. McFadden is Christian A. Johnson Associate Professor of Integrated Liberal Learning at Colby College, where she teaches in the American studies program and directs the integrated studies program.

TV Milestones Series

Margaret T. McFadden

Cover image © 001abacus / iStockphoto.com Cover design by Maya Whelan

Wayne State University Press Detroit, Michigan 48201-1309

TV

MILESTONES SERIES

The L Word

TV Milestones Series Editors Barry Keith Grant Brock University

Jeannette Sloniowski Brock University

TV Milestones is part of the Contemporary Approaches to Film and Media Series. A complete listing of the books in this series can be found online at wsupress.wayne.edu General Editor Barry Keith Grant Brock University Advisory Editors Robert J. Burgoyne University of St. Andrews

Frances Gateward California State University, Northridge

Caren J. Deming University of Arizona

Tom Gunning University of Chicago

Patricia B. Erens School of the Art Institute of Chicago

Thomas Leitch University of Delaware

Peter X. Feng University of Delaware

Walter Metz Southern Illinois University

Lucy Fischer University of Pittsburgh

TV Milestones Series Editors Barry Keith Grant Brock University

tHe l woRd

Jeannette Sloniowski Brock University TV Milestones is part of the Contemporary Approaches to Film and Media Series A complete listing of the books in this series can be found online at wsupress.wayne.edu General Editor Barry Keith Grant Brock University Advisory Editors Robert J. Burgoyne University of St. Andrews Caren J. Deming University of Arizona margaret t. mcFadden Patricia B. Erens School of the Art Institute of Chicago Peter X.tV Feng m I l e s t o n e s University of Delaware Lucy Fischer University ofWayne Pittsburgh State University Press

seRIes

Detroit

© 2014 by Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan 48201. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without formal permission. Manufactured in the United States of America. 18 17 16 15 14

54321

ISBN 978-0-8143-3824-7 (paperback: alk. paper) Library of Congress Control Number: 2013952397 ISBN 978-0-8143-3825-4 (e-book)

For Suzanne

Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction: Histories of Representation and Misrepresentation 1 1. The Problem of Representation 15 2. The L Word’s Reflexivity 43 3. The L Word’s Complicitous Critique of Hollywood 65 4. Genre: Soap-drama and Politics 87 5. Lesbian Cultures and Communities 99 Notes 131 Works Cited 133 Index 139

vii

Acknowledgments

In some ways, this book began when my dear friend and colleague Daniel Contreras said, in his inimitable way, “Madge, if you don’t write that book, someone else will!” Right he was, and I am grateful to him for his wisdom and his wonderful humor. Many other friends and colleagues contributed enormously to the project: by reading drafts, asking important questions, and helping me to sharpen my thinking and writing. I thank Chandra Bhimull, Sharon Corwin, Emma Garcia, Ben Lisle, Carleen Mandolfo, Katherine Stubbs, and Steve Wurtzler for their tremendous generosity, warm friendship, and massive brainpower. Special thanks are due to Lisa Arellano, whose brilliant suggestions are all over this book. I am also very grateful to my generous and patient editor Kristina Stonehill, who has been most supportive throughout the process; to the series editors, Barry Keith Grant and Jeannette Sloniowski; and to the anonymous readers for the press, all of whom offered many helpful and insightful suggestions that have measurably improved the book. The expert members of the production team at Wayne State University Press, including Robin DuBlanc, Kristin Harpster, and Maya Whelan, were also a pleasure to work with and I thank them for their help.

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x

Great thanks are also due to the wonderful people who make Colby College such a stimulating and fun place to work. My colleagues in American studies and integrated studies, including Cedric Bryant, Sarah Keller, Benjamin Lisle, Laura Saltz, and Robert Weisbrot, are splendid teachers and scholars and great people; I feel so fortunate to have landed among them. Two Colby student researchers also contributed enormously to this project. The very talented Noah Balazs did research on feminist and queer artists and taught me a lot about the first season of The L Word. Later, the brilliant Nicole Sintetos worked with me for four years and did so much, in so many ways, to make this book possible, and she did it while excelling academically and leading important efforts to make Colby a better place. I am very grateful to them both. I must also thank the delightful students in AM 275, the January term course on The L Word, for their very hard work, lively and intelligent conversations, cheering solidarity, and, of course, for making boob cupcakes with “multiracial” icing for our concluding “Heckle the sixth season” party! I am particularly grateful for the sustaining solidarity and deep friendship of the members of Colby’s Interdisciplinary Feminist Council: Catherine Besteman, Lynne Conner, Jill Gordon, Mary Beth Mills, Andrea Tilden, and Ankeney Weitz. Special thanks to Lynne for our book-finishing pact and the many wonderful conversations it led us to. I am fortunate indeed to have such remarkable and inspiring women as my dear friends and comrades. Closer to home, I thank Tom Renckens and Sarah Fagg for the great gift of their friendship and for the many delightful meals and outings we have shared over the years. I am in awe of their matchless generosity and kindness and so grateful for their love. Many a tough writing day has been saved by the pleasure and stimulation of their company. I also thank my wonderful sisters, Moira McFadden Lanyi and Nancy McFadden Wadin,

Acknowledgments

for their morale-boosting faith in me and for their constant love and support. But my greatest debt is to my partner, Suzanne Cusick, whose brilliance, wit, integrity, and courage inspire me every day. Her remarkable love and care have made my life a joy for more than thirty years, and for this I am more grateful than I can possibly express. When I think of our life together, a line of Ira Gershwin’s comes to mind: Who could ask for anything more?

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Introduction

Histories of Representation and Misrepresentation

I

n January 2004, Showtime launched The L Word, the first prime-time commercial television drama to focus on the lives of lesbian and bisexual women. Over the course of six seasons, the program explored the deep bonds that linked the members of an evolving lesbian friendship circle, whose members live in affluent West Hollywood, California, and congregate at a café called the Planet. Given its path-breaking subject matter, The L Word was greeted with an extensive and diverse critical reception, and was reviewed and analyzed in a wide range of media outlets, from newspapers and magazines to radio and television talk shows. Building on this generally positive critical attention, the program quickly developed a large and enthusiastic audience, reigning as Showtime’s most popular show for its first three seasons. The L Word also attracted considerable attention from scholars, who have created an ever-expanding body of articles and books that analyze and interpret the show and its cultural significance. The conversation about the program has been continued online, where an enormous and active fan community has gathered at a broad array of websites to discuss and debate every aspect of the show, to create and share fan art,

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videos, and fiction, and to explore what The L Word might tell us about the lives of queer women in contemporary society. If, as Stuart Hall (1992) has argued, popular culture is a central site for the struggle to establish cultural meanings, then The L Word is important because it has had an enormous impact on the conversation about what it means to be a lesbian and on questions of lesbian visibility and representation in a highly mediated and heteronormative world. To understand the power of The L Word’s intervention in our national cultural discourse, it is necessary to begin with cultural history. Like most other minority groups, lesbians have either not been represented in popular culture at all, or they have been represented in stereotypical, dishonest, and demeaning ways that, for lack of a better word, I will characterize as “misrepresentation.” Invisibility and misrepresentation have had profound personal and political consequences for many queer women because they help to sustain and reinforce a culture in which discrimination and inequality are still common. The creators of The L Word were well aware of this history and its effects. As they developed the program, they had to navigate between the legitimate desires of a diverse group for honest and appealing representations of their lives, and the need to attract a large enough mainstream audience to keep the show commercially viable. In other words, the show’s creators understood the expectations and assumptions—shaped by a history of stereotypical representations—that different viewers would bring to the program. In this book, I argue that the program’s creators, led by executive producer Ilene Chaiken, responded to this cultural context by making the question of lesbian representation a central theme throughout The L Word’s six-year run. Indeed, the show is obsessed with representation, and over the course of the series, we see many examples of image making of all sorts, including the production of documentary, art, pornographic, and Hollywood feature films; music videos; television programs; radio

Introduction

shows; advertising campaigns; websites; podcasts; and works of art like paintings, sculptures, and photographs. In virtually every case, the production process is exposed and demystified, and the myriad ways that lesbians are misrepresented are made explicit. By making visible the process of creating images and by deploying a variety of reflexive strategies, the program offers a sophisticated feminist critique of the history of misrepresentations of lesbians, and encourages viewers to attend critically to what they are watching. At the same time, it offers new modes of storytelling and new ways of seeing to its viewers, thereby rewriting many forms of misrepresentation and providing a compelling alternative vision of lesbian lives and cultures. In order to offer this new vision to a broad audience, however, The L Word had to participate in precisely the Hollywood production system that it criticizes so effectively. It offers a damning account of Hollywood and the people who have power in media industries, and provides a detailed analysis of why it is so difficult to change problematic and biased representations of queer women within the structures of commercial media. At the same time, however, the program confronted its own complicity with the very structures that made it possible, and acknowledged the compromises with Hollywood conventions that the creators had to make to get and keep the show on the air. The writers accomplished this important cultural work within the familiar genre of a soapy serial drama. This conventional and accessible frame allowed the show to present a feminist vision of a lesbian community, one in which love and friendship between women is central, and in which characters participate in a rich cultural life that is structured by its own values, ideologies, and ethics. The L Word is unapologetically lesbian centered, unafraid to explore issues of sexuality and unconcerned with presenting “positive” images of lesbians to a mainstream audience. The program also uses the conventions of serial drama to present a detailed account of the ways that

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sexism and homophobia affect the lives of queer women. Numerous story arcs make visible how these forms of discrimination operate, and these narratives solicit the audience’s empathy for the victims and its anger at the injustices. The show thus presents a powerful moral argument against the widespread sexism and antigay prejudice in mainstream society. I argue that The L Word appeals most to audiences when it gets these aspects of the affective experience of lesbian cultures right. The creators of The L Word knew that queer women, so long made invisible in popular culture, were desperate for visibility and for images of their lives. So they made the question of lesbian representation a key theme of their show, knowing that the choices they made about how to represent their characters would generate a lively debate among their viewers. Indeed, the audience response to the show has been vigorous and contentious, as fans (and detractors) have created an enormous community in which participants struggle to establish their varied and competing interpretations of the show and, by extension, their different conceptions of what constitutes lesbian identity or the lesbian community. Along the way, however, The L Word gave many viewers images of themselves that were—however Hollywoodized—affirming, consoling, inspiring, and empowering. They loved it, even as they worried (a lot) about what it all meant. Engaging the Debate

As the first show on a mainstream network to represent a lesbian community, The L Word was initially regarded with considerable suspicion and skepticism by viewers familiar with the commercial media’s history of misrepresenting queer women. These critics had good reason to fear that in order to attract a broad mainstream audience that included men, the program would offer stereotypical and exploitative depictions of lesbian characters. It makes sense that viewers looking at a cast that

Introduction

was so conventionally beautiful, gender normative, thin, and expensively attired would worry that these “lipstick lesbians” were characterized in ways designed to appeal more to straight men than to lesbian viewers. And these viewers’ fears that lesbian sexuality would be represented in an exploitative and pornographic way to appeal to those same men were also quite reasonable (McCroy 2003; Stanley 2004). Other critics argued that the cast was so unrepresentative of the gender, racial, and class diversity of the lesbian world as to be a terrible misrepresentation itself. The absence of the spectrum of lesbian gender identities, including forms of female masculinity, seemed to erase a large part of the community and promote a very normative vision that was arguably designed to appeal to heterosexual viewers (Moore and Schilt 2006). The exploration of one character’s biracial identity was appreciated by many viewers, but the absence of a substantial number of characters of color also struck many as problematically unrepresentative of the community (Warn 2006). When more characters of color were added to the cast, critics also expressed legitimate concern about the ways that they embodied familiar racial stereotypes (Schwartz 2006; Lo 2006b; Martin 2007). And the show’s setting in an affluent community meant that the characters’ upscale and glamorous lifestyles seemed quite far from the realities of most queer women’s lives. If representation helps to shape our perceptions of reality, then The L Word’s very limited portrayal of lesbian women risked just replacing an older stereotype of lesbians as unattractively mannish with a more straight male–friendly, predominately white, excessively glamorous, high-femme caricature. Similarly, many viewers expressed concern about the show’s presentation of bisexual and transgender characters. The inclusion of a central character as a proudly self-affirming bisexual was widely appreciated, but that aspect of her character was gradually de-emphasized, while other characters’ bisexual attractions seemed to reinforce negative stereotypes

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of bisexuality as just a phase or as a practice associated with dishonesty and cheating, rather than as a coherent identity (Lo 2005; Moorman 2008). The show’s exploration of a transman’s gender transition, while a welcome and important story arc to many, was perceived by some critics as reinforcing widespread misconceptions of transmen and the process of transition (Lo 2006a).1 Because attending to representations of gender and sexuality in popular culture has long been a practice in feminist and queer cultures, many potential audience members were well equipped to analyze the show and consider its potential cultural and political effects. Of course, what any viewer sees will be shaped by her or his preconceptions and expectations. And when many critics watched The L Word, they found plenty of evidence to confirm their worst fears. This kind of skeptical stance toward the show—this “hermeneutic of suspicion”—has been characterized by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick as a very strong analytical position, one that can demystify or expose the problematic ideas or logics that support misrepresentations in cultural texts. But it is also, she argues, a “paranoid” theory, one that expects the worst from mainstream cultural productions, and always finds it. Since this debunking critical stance has so much explanatory power, it has long been the dominant approach to cultural criticism (2003, 134–36). Yet Sedgwick also suggests that the dominance of this approach forecloses the possibility of weaker, more contingent, “reparative” readings of texts, readings that explore the ways that particular texts help to sustain queer audiences desperate for affirming or empowering images of their lives. She notes that paranoid readings typically dismiss the pleasures or consolations that readers may take from problematic texts, and condemn those texts as “merely reformist” or otherwise politically suspect. But in a world that is often quite hostile to queer people, Sedgwick argues, reparative readings can help us to understand the ways queer readers use texts to create an

Central Characters and Story Lines

In many ways, The L Word resembles countless other television dramas. It features a range of attractive, fashionably dressed characters who drive nice cars, live in beautiful homes, and pursue empowered personal and professional lives in an upscale community. It presents, in short, a kind of utopian fantasy world in which free time and opportunities abound, women are taken seriously, and queer people live safely and openly, largely free of the sexism and homophobia of the larger society. As executive producer Rose Troche joked, “It should have been on the SyFy channel!” (2010a). But for all its television unreality, the show’s queer utopian dimension constituted much of its appeal. The L Word opens by introducing us to Bette Porter and Tina Kennard (Jennifer Beals and Laurel Holloman), who have

Introduction

affirming, nurturing world for themselves, so as to resist that hostility (2003, 143–44). The argument that follows is an explicitly reparative one that seeks to understand the ways that The L Word has become an important sustaining text for many female and queer viewers. That is not to say that I do not agree with many of the critiques that have been leveled against the program. Such analyses are absolutely necessary to making further progress against a long and continuing history of misrepresentation and prejudice. But I argue that they are not sufficient to understand the complexity of The L Word’s project and its accomplishment. If we look at the program from a reparative perspective, we see that it is simultaneously registering a complex analysis of misrepresentation and proposing a necessarily partial and inadequate alternative. It is also using a variety of strategies to remind viewers that it too is only a representation, and teaching us not to take it at face value. In other words, when we watch The L Word, we might not be seeing what we think we’re seeing.

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been together for seven years and have begun trying to have a baby. Bette directs an art museum, and Tina has just quit her job as a movie executive to concentrate on parenthood; their newly traditional relationship explores whether conventional heterosexual family models will work for lesbians. Bette and Tina have a circle of close friends who constitute their lesbian family and who congregate at a local café called the Planet, which is owned by their friend Marina Ferrer (Karina Lombard). The group includes Shane McCutcheon (Katherine Moennig), a talented hairdresser who pursues a very active sex life; Alice Piesecki (Leisha Hailey), a bisexual journalist who maintains the Chart, a map of all the sexual connections between women in the community; Dana Fairbanks (Erin Daniels), a professional tennis player who remains in the closet to protect her career; and Kit Porter (Pam Grier), Bette’s heterosexual sister, a professional musician who struggles with alcohol but eventually regains her sobriety and buys the Planet when Marina returns to Italy. Next door to Bette and Tina live swim coach Tim Haspel (Eric Mabius) and his girlfriend, Jenny Schechter (Mia Kirshner), an aspiring writer who has just arrived in Los Angeles. Jenny meets Marina and is swept into a passionate (but short-lived) affair that destroys her relationship with Tim but sets her on the path to embracing a lesbian identity. Jenny’s confusion and bad behavior during her coming-out process make her a character to whom many viewers can relate, but whom they also love to hate. At the same time, Bette’s infidelity leads to a breakup with Tina, but although each has important relationships with others, their deep connection eventually leads them back to each other. As the stories of the main characters unfold, new characters enter the circle. After Tim leaves Jenny, Shane moves into her house, and they invite filmmaker Mark Wayland (Eric Lively) to be the third roommate. Shane also meets Carmen de la Pica Morales (Sarah Shahi), an aspiring DJ, who persuades the

Introduction

reluctant Shane to try monogamy. But although she proposed it, Shane cannot go through with their planned wedding, leaving a heartbroken Carmen at the altar. Meanwhile, having undergone a painful process of remembering a childhood sexual assault, Jenny returns home to Illinois for treatment, where she meets Moira Sweeney (Daniela Sea), a computer programmer who decides to move to Los Angeles with her. Jenny is supportive as Moira begins to identify as transgendered and transitions to living as a man, taking the name Max, but their sexual relationship does not survive the process. Eventually, Jenny and Shane recognize their mutual attraction and become involved. Dana meets Lara Perkins (Lauren Lee Smith), a chef at her country club, and they become lovers. But their relationship cannot survive Dana’s fear of coming out of the closet, and they break up. After Dana has a brief, ill-advised fling with promoter Tonya (Meredith McGeachie), Dana and Alice realize they are in love and pursue a tumultuous, if short-lived, affair. Dana breaks up with Alice and returns to Lara, and Alice is unable to handle the heartbreak. But when Dana is diagnosed with breast cancer and pushes Lara away, Alice becomes her devoted caretaker. After Dana’s tragic death, Alice takes her journalism and her Chart online in new ways, creating a lesbian social networking site called OurChart. Through this system, in which lesbians can map their sexual connections, Alice meets characters who are part of other lesbian social scenes in Los Angeles, including Eva “Papi” Torres (Janina Gavankar) and her best friend, army officer Tasha Williams (Rose Rollins). Tasha becomes Alice’s lover, and Alice supports her as she fights her expulsion from the military for “homosexual conduct.” After Bette and Tina break up, Tina becomes involved with Helena Peabody (Rachel Shelley), a wealthy heiress, who interferes with Bette’s hope of reuniting with Tina. Although they do get back together briefly as Tina gives birth to their daughter, they are quite unhappy, and Tina explores her renewed attraction to men. She begins a relationship with a divorced father

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named Henry Young (Steven Eckholdt), while Bette takes a job as a university art school dean and becomes involved with a fiery artist, Jodi Lerner (Marlee Matlin); together Bette and Jodi become the confidantes of Bette’s boss, chancellor Phyllis Kroll (Cybill Shepard), who decides to come out as a lesbian after a twenty-three-year marriage. Helena buys a movie studio and convinces Tina to help her run it, which leads to Tina obtaining the movie rights to a novel Jenny has written; the book retells the story of the first few seasons of the show from Jenny’s perspective. Much of seasons 4 and 5 follow the difficult process of making this film, which is called Lez Girls. Along the way, Jenny becomes the director of the film and starts an affair with the lead actress, Nikki Stevens (Kate French). Also during season 5, Bette and Tina struggle with their renewed attraction to each other and eventually break up with their current partners and reunite. Max falls in love with Jodi’s interpreter, Tom Mater (Jon Wolfe Nelson) and is shocked to learn that he has become pregnant and must carry the baby to term, a process that deeply troubles his gender identity and sense of self. Bette’s sister Kit works hard to build the Planet into a successful business. She falls in love with Angus Partridge, (Dallas Roberts), an aspiring musician who also works as Bette and Tina’s nanny. His infidelity sends her into a tailspin, and her personal troubles are exacerbated by the arrival of two women who open a rival club and attempt to drive her out of business. She is saved by the return to the scene of Helena, who has been in jail but who has just had her fortune, which had been taken away by her mother, Peggy Peabody (Holland Taylor), restored to her. Helena becomes Kit’s business partner and they successfully scheme to buy the competing club and put its unscrupulous owners out of business. Season 6, quite different from the previous five, was widely viewed as ill conceived and disappointing. This season began with the death of Jenny, who was found floating in Bette and Tina’s pool, apparently the victim of foul play. Each of the eight

Origin Stories

The L Word’s creator and executive producer, Ilene Chaiken, has said that the idea for the show came from an article she wrote for Los Angeles magazine chronicling the lives of a group of affluent lesbian and gay couples raising children in her West Hollywood neighborhood (Chaykin 2000). She pitched the idea for an ensemble show on this theme to Showtime in 2000 and was turned down because the network’s executives feared the subject was too controversial and would not garner a large enough audience to be profitable. A few years later, after the great success of Will and Grace (1998–2006) on NBC, Sex and the City (1998–2004) on HBO and Queer as Folk (2000–5) on Showtime, Chaiken promoted the project again, and this time the network immediately gave her the go-ahead (Bolonik 2005, x-xi; POWER UP panel discussion 2004).2 More detail about this process emerged in April 2009, when Michelle Abbott and Kathy Greenberg, who are credited as cocreators of the show, told AfterEllen.com that they

Introduction

episodes constitutes a flashback in which a different character becomes infuriated with Jenny and develops a good reason to kill her. This structure was designed to lead to a sequel, which was to be set in a women’s prison where Alice would be serving her sentence for the crime. But the new show was not picked up by Showtime, and The L Word never revealed what happened to Jenny, which enraged many viewers. Also unpopular were the “Interrogation Tapes,” police interviews with each of the main characters who had a motive to kill Jenny. Released online after the show had concluded, the tapes revealed various bizarre and implausible truths about the characters. Fans, cast members, and even members of the production team strongly disliked this story line and thought it violated the show’s fundamental premise about the love and friendship that united the characters.

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invented most of the main characters and the idea for the Chart, bringing them along when they accepted Chaiken’s invitation to collaborate and to join her in pitching the show the second time. In their narrative, what sold the network people was Greenberg’s scrapbook of photos from her “legendary lesbianonly pool parties,” at which powerful executives and celebrities mingled; these images “showed the studio execs a world they had never seen or imagined as traditional lesbian culture” and persuaded them that this “subculture of the subculture” would be a viable setting for the show. Abbott and Greenberg left the show after helping to produce the first two episodes, and the task of developing their creations was entrusted to the team of writers assembled and supervised by Chaiken (Ficera 2009). Chaiken, who had studied film at the Rhode Island School of Design and at Brown University, was an experienced television executive, having worked at both Aaron Spelling’s and Quincy Jones’s production companies (Prigge 2005). She had also already made two films with Showtime and was confident she could work successfully with the network. She hired a team of writers that included Rose Troche and Guinevere Turner, who had collaborated to make the low-budget New Queer Cinema classic Go Fish in 1994, writer and director Angela Robinson, and a number of experienced television writers. This group would evolve over time and would include several writers well established in other genres, including novelist A. M. Homes, playwright Adam Rapp, and graphic novelist Ariel Shrag. After season 1, Chaiken also added a staff composer, Elizabeth Ziff, a member of the band Betty. Ziff composed original music (including the controversial theme song), selected the music used in each episode, and hired the musical guests who performed on the show (Bolonik 2005, 233–37). She also eventually joined the writing staff. Although many fans insisted that lesbian actors should play the roles, Chaiken’s standard was that the actors she hired had to be believable as lesbians. She explained, “It’s a lesbian

Introduction

thing. . . . We’re looking for a kind of authenticity that’s very, very hard to articulate, but we know what it is” (Bolonik 2005, 80–81). The cast members she assembled were given extraordinary input into the development of their characters and considerable freedom to improvise which, as many of them have noted, is extremely unusual in Hollywood (Beals 2010, 150–51, 205; Bolonik 2005, xii–xiii). Chaiken chose to hire directors who came primarily from the world of independent cinema, including many who had made important feminist or queer-themed films. The directors were also given extraordinary creative freedom to interpret the characters and the story, and many of those involved with the production noted that the experience was like making a small independent film each week, a practice that is quite unusual in television (Bolonik 2005, 217–22). Filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia, the show was by virtually all accounts an unusually collaborative, female-driven enterprise, led by women who were, as writer Ellie Herman noted, determined to make a show about “dynamic, interesting, intelligent women” (POWER UP panel discussion 2004). Perhaps this intention helps explain why the show attracted an overwhelmingly female audience; many straight female viewers appreciated its focus on strong women and female friendship as well as its female-centered point of view. (Ahmad 2005). But it found a particularly passionate and devoted fan base among women who identify as queer because it offered an appealing representation of a loving, supportive, queer female friendship circle to a group that has long suffered “symbolic annihilation” (Gross 1989) in the media. But even while they were constructing this appealing counternarrative to previous Hollywood representations, the creators were well aware that they could not possibly represent the full diversity of the lesbian world. They acknowledged this openly, explained the inevitable limitations that they faced, and promised to expand and diversify their representation over

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time (The L Word Defined 2003). They kept this promise, but along the way they did much more. They taught viewers to see the complex history of the ways lesbians have been misrepresented, and the codes and conventions through which this has been accomplished. And while they revised or rewrote many of those conventions, offering engaging alternative views of lesbian lives and cultures, they also reflexively deconstructed their own narrative, reminding us that it too was only a fiction and inevitably partial. In other words, The L Word taught its viewers to see in new ways and to think hard about the relationship of representation to reality.

Chapter 1

The Problem of Representation

A

s I noted in the introduction, my central argument in this book is that The L Word demonstrates a sophisticated awareness of feminist debates about the visual representation of women and makes those debates a central theme of the program. This chapter will analyze four of The L Word’s strategies for resisting and revising hegemonic representations of women in general and lesbians in particular.3 First, I argue that the show is well aware of the history of misrepresentation of women and particularly of lesbians, and that it names and challenges that history through an analysis of pornography. Second, I explore how the program constructs and denaturalizes a hegemonic straight male gaze, drawing our attention to the ways conventions and techniques of representation reproduce sexist, heterosexist, and homophobic ideologies. Third, I suggest that the show carefully constructs a lesbian spectating position, encouraging viewers to look at the world through this alternative gaze, which can be occupied by anyone able to embrace the show’s lesbian-centered worldview. In effect, the show teaches viewers how to look differently and calls a lesbian audience into being. Finally, I argue that The L Word constructs a radically antiessentialist representation of lesbian identity, suggesting that

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while there is such a thing as a coherent lesbian subjectivity, there is no one lesbian subjectivity; there are many, and they are not easy to define, much less to see. Histories and Theories of the Gaze

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In her 1975 article “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Laura Mulvey made a startling claim about classical Hollywood cinema: that the cinematic apparatus itself was structured so as to provide visual pleasure to male spectators. Drawing on psychoanalytic theories, Mulvey argued that the cinema offered the pleasures of scopophilia (“taking other people as objects and subjecting them to a controlling and curious gaze”) and a narcissistic identification with ideal male figures on-screen (60). But the eroticized, objectified female figure also potentially represented the threat of castration to the male spectator, so cinema also offered two options for controlling this threat to his unconscious: the voyeuristic investigation (and often punishment) of female sexual difference or the fetishizing of a stylized and often fragmented perfect female beauty. Mulvey also mapped her analysis of the active, controlling male gaze and the passive female object of that gaze onto the structure of film narratives themselves, arguing that in classical Hollywood cinema male characters actively controlled the unfolding of events, while female characters were displayed as erotic spectacles that “connote to-be-looked-at-ness” (1975, 62–63). (As John Berger had formulated a similar point, “Men act and women appear” [1972, 47]). The structure of cinema provided these pleasures to male spectators through the mobilization of three different looks: the look of the camera as it recorded, the look of the spectator at the film on-screen, and the looks of the characters at each other within the narrative. Since what spectators see is determined by the gaze of the camera, which is aligned with the look of the male protagonist,

The Problem of Representation

the structure of cinema required everyone to identify with his active, controlling gaze (and his power to control events). Obviously, Mulvey’s analysis paints a rather bleak picture for female spectators of cinema, and cannot explain how female spectators can also derive pleasure from cinema. Nor did she make claims that her analysis applied to visual narratives other than the specific set of films she had focused on. But her argument was tremendously generative, as she and others developed her insights in various directions, using psychoanalytic concepts to illuminate many aspects of the structures of cinematic codes and conventions. Other critics, skeptical about the psychoanalytic approach, began to develop models of spectatorship that did not rely on theories of psychological structure and that focused more on the possibility of active consumption by audience members. Thirty years after Mulvey’s initial formulation, there is an enormously rich and diverse body of theory and criticism about the topic of the gaze, representing a wide variety of perspectives and approaches.4 As several critics have argued, The L Word knows this history, and particularly made the male gaze a central issue in its first two seasons (Wolfe and Roripaugh 2006; Heller 2006; Moore 2007). The show is filmed and edited in such a way as to make evident, and thus denaturalize, conventions of visual representation that many viewers have long since internalized, and that may shape our ways of seeing the world. While the program is generally concerned with how the male gaze has shaped representations of women, it is more specifically interested in how that gaze has shaped representations of lesbians. Therefore, the show constructs, and thus invites viewers to recognize, a specifically heteronormative male gaze as one that has profoundly structured our culture’s view of lesbians.5 This gaze becomes visible through the perspectives of characters who embody this prurient and voyeuristic outlook; if we identify with them, as the camera directs, we are suddenly put in a very

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uncomfortable viewing position. If we don’t identify with them, we are invited to reject their way of seeing. The L Word explores this heteronormative male gaze at women by providing a detailed history of the misrepresentation and objectification of lesbians in mainstream pornography, where the voyeuristic and fetishizing gaze is most obvious. This approach acknowledges the fact that the most common, and thus the most familiar, representation of lesbianism in U.S. popular culture is in straight male pornographic film, and that images, stereotypes, and conventions from this genre have come to play a powerful role in other visual media, including mainstream film, television, and advertising. In a ubiquitous pornographic scenario, scenes of two women having sex precede the “real” action, in which a man either joins them for a threesome or moves to heterosexual sex with one of them.6 These kinds of films treat lesbian sex as merely a warm-up or as “practice” for heterosexual sex. Also, the women portrayed in these pornographic films tend to be quite hyperfeminized and to have exaggeratedly large, eroticized, and often disembodied breasts, buttocks, and legs. They don’t generally fit anyone’s stereotypes of lesbians, and viewers are not supposed to think they really are lesbians, as they are typically recuperated back into the structures of heterosexuality by the narratives. Further, it is obvious from the details of these narratives that the presumed consumer of these images is male because they are preoccupied with seeing, and thus exposing to knowledge, the “mystery” of the female body and female sexuality. Indeed, many early critics of The L Word worried that to attract a larger audience, the show would pander to the straight male viewer by offering just this kind of soft-core porn, featuring conventionally beautiful and gender-normative women, and thus would once again exploit or trivialize lesbianism (Moore 2007, 130–31). Instead, the program cleverly offers precisely this voyeuristic viewing position only to expose its sexism and heterosexism. Further, the show systematically identifies these

The Problem of Representation

Jenny’s view through the fence of two women having sex in the neighbors’ pool.

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stereotypical misrepresentations and refutes them, revealing them to be damaging fantasies created by and for people who know nothing about lesbian lives. We see this strategy immediately, in the pilot episode. Jenny, newly arrived in LA, watches two women having sex in the neighbors’ pool and later recounts the scene to her boyfriend, Tim, to titillate him during sex. This scene was controversial for many lesbian viewers, who saw it as exploitative in recognizable ways. However, the scene effectively exposes the dynamic whereby representations of lesbian sex become titillation for straight men (or straight couples), and therefore in this context constitutes a critique of that reality. From the outset, then, the narrative is both showing the existence of a voyeuristic heteronormative gaze and challenging its role in perpetuating the misrepresentation of lesbianism. Indeed, as I will discuss below, the show systematically offers viewers an alternative perspective from which to view the normative one. This destabilizing or exposing of the voyeuristic gaze reappears frequently throughout the show. For example, this gaze is often the subject of the “random act” vignettes that open each

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episode and remind us from the beginning that we are watching something constructed. Episode 1.10 begins with a vignette set on a shoot for a pornographic film called Here Cums the Principal. We see the director instructing the two actresses, who are dressed as Catholic schoolgirls, to kiss in a school bathroom and to pretend to be shocked and afraid when discovered by the hunky principal, with whom, of course, one immediately begins having sex. This textbook example of the male fantasy that lesbians are only waiting for a man to come along puts the fact of such formulaic stories right out in the open; the vignette also reveals the mundane and profoundly unsexy and mechanical means by which such films are produced. Many minor male characters are also characterized by their voyeuristic gazing and evident titillation at the idea of lesbian sexuality. For example, Slim Daddy (Snoop Dogg) leers at all the women who cross his path, focusing much of his conversation on the lesbian sex he says he keeps fantasizing about them having. Dana’s manager Conrad, Jenny’s teacher Nick, Tim’s basketball buddies, and many other unlikable male characters propose threesomes or find other ways to express their prurient interest in lesbian sexuality. In all these cases, peeping, leering, and propositioning men are presented as pathetic or laughable caricatures, and the voyeuristic heteronormative position is made visible and unappealing. Straight women’s prurient curiosity about lesbians is also made visible, as in the scene in the pilot episode in which Jenny stares across the room at Shane, who is passionately kissing another woman. As Jenny says, with some discomfort, “Wow. This is a very, very interesting party,” Shane looks up, turns right to the camera that has taken Jenny’s point of view, and winks, perhaps mockingly. This is an important moment because just briefly, the object of the heteronormative gaze breaks the voyeuristic illusion and looks back at the gazer. In addition to exposing the operations of the heteronormative gaze, the show simultaneously presents and refutes various

The Problem of Representation

common stereotypes about lesbians that abound in pornography and in other popular cultural forms. In the pilot episode, the formulaic lesbian ménage à trois with a man is explicitly shown and rejected as uninteresting to lesbians. When a male artist flirts with Bette and Tina at a gallery opening, they decide to take him home, not because they’re interested in sex with him but because Tina is ovulating and their attempts to find a suitable sperm donor have failed. In realistic terms, this is crazy. But as an exploration of the conventions of representing lesbians, it takes on a different valence. The scene is blocked and shot so as to make the women’s relationship with each other central; the man has to fight his way in to disrupt their passionate kissing and intense eye contact. The direction makes it obvious that the man is very much the third wheel; before he arrives, Bette tells a hesitant Tina, “Just look at me,” and that’s what she does. They are quite focused on one another the entire time, only somewhat responsive to his attempt to choreograph the scene. When they tell him he needn’t use a condom, he catches on to their design and storms out in a huff after demanding, “Why is it when dykes want to have sex with a guy it’s only because they want to steal his sperm?” His indignant exit line is comical in this context, since one response might be that dykes for the most part don’t want to have sex with guys at all, a possibility he is too self-absorbed to consider. The scene shifts to a lengthy sexual encounter between Bette and Tina that represents their reconnection after a period of difficulty communicating. The encounter begins with them agreeing that they were not turned on by the nameless man and ends with a simultaneous orgasm. So right from the start, the “classic male fantasy” is rejected as unexciting to lesbians. Also, the scenes of this failed threesome are intercut with scenes of Jenny’s first lesbian encounter, with Marina, an experience she will later describe as the best sex of her life. So the ill-advised threesome with the straight man is surrounded by two very different scenes of passionate lesbian desire—neither of which

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is a warm-up for anything else and which do not require the presence of a man to be fulfilling. Further, the narrative shape of the pilot episode reverses the conventions of heterosexual pornography, in which the “lesbian” scenes often end with one or both of the partners’ desires unsatisfied, leaving the subsequent heterosexual scenes as the moments for female sexual fulfillment. In this case, it is the heterosexual male character, standing in for the voyeuristic male spectator, who doesn’t get what he wants. Through its ongoing analysis of pornography and of other popular forms, then, The L Word teaches its viewers to see how prevalent certain ideas and stereotypes still are, and offers alternative images and narratives that challenge these destructive notions. Deconstructing the Voyeur

In season 2, the damaging relationship between the heteronormative male gaze and the misrepresentation of lesbians becomes an even more explicit narrative arc, through the story of Mark Wayland, a maker of Girls Gone Wild–style videos.7 Mark moves in as the new roommate of Jenny and Shane, whom he persuades not to hold his lucrative enterprise against him; he insists he really aspires to make serious documentary films. Intrigued by his new roommates, he soon decides to create a Sundance-ready “anthropology” of lesbians. The program’s representation of Mark suggests that outsiders to the lesbian community are unlikely to understand or be able to represent it accurately. With this story, The L Word implicitly stages a debate about who has the right to tell lesbian stories in popular culture. Mark (perhaps representing most straight people) is unable to escape his own prurient sexist and heterosexist perspective, and the narrative anatomizes his very real failure to understand and to represent. For example, when we first encounter Mark, it is through the viewfinder of his video camera, which he has on throughout much of the initial

The Problem of Representation

roommate interview. He is ingratiating and flirtatious, complimenting Jenny and Shane on various body parts that we see him ogling with his camera: “Wow, amazing eyes!” (2.4). Exploiting their tenuous economic situation, Mark bribes the reluctant women to consent to interviews, during which his limited perspective becomes painfully evident. His hopelessly ignorant questions all focus on sex, which he can only imagine through the lens of heterosexuality; in this view, lesbianism is solely about sex and lesbian sexuality is an inferior imitation of the real thing. When Shane objects angrily to these misconceptions, Mark gives away his real (and unexamined) agenda, which is “simply trying to gain some insight for us guys that don’t understand.” Yet he is shown as unable to take her position seriously, moving into the viewfinder to reframe her, in his sexist terms, as “the lesbian sexual conquistador” before expressing a hope that there will soon be some “action” and obnoxiously wiggling his tongue. Since he previously tried to convince them to participate in the film with the idea that they might provide role models for some isolated lesbian teen in the Midwest, this is a telling admission about who his real audience is: not lesbians, but the straight men who buy his porn videos (2.5). His film becomes, then, just another version of the pornographic quest for the hidden, fetishized “truth” of female sexuality. The women’s resistance to his misrepresentation of them leads Mark to mount hidden cameras in every room in the house to spy on them. This makes visible the ways that Mark uses his financial resources to force Jenny and Shane into his ideological frame, which works as a powerful allegory for the misrepresentation of lesbians in mainstream popular culture more generally. That is, to the extent that lesbians have appeared at all in popular culture, it has been through the misrepresentations of the mainstream; lesbians have had little access to the resources or opportunities to tell their own stories in film or on television. Mark’s story arc also makes clear that the heteronormative male gaze is not a minor or abstract matter; it has the power to

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cause terrible damage to women. When she discovers the hidden cameras, Jenny is plunged deeper into an emotional crisis caused by the emergence of a repressed memory of being sexually assaulted as a child. Mark’s violation echoes the earlier violation, and she is able to articulate a feminist analysis and critique of the relationship between exploitative male voyeurism and the violent oppression of women. Jenny initially confronts Mark through his hidden camera; impersonating a fourteen-year-old girl, she says in a childish voice, “My pussy’s never been touched by a big cock before. And I want you to fuck me,” as she undresses. We see and hear this male pornographic fantasy character through Mark’s video monitor. Jenny has taken control of the representation coming through the hidden cameras and thus exposes the exploitative logic that underlies his work. He races to her room, where she is standing naked, “Is this what u want” written on her body. As Mark begs her forgiveness for violating her trust, she films him with his own video camera for an “interview.” Then she instructs him: “I want to you ask your sisters about the very first time they were intruded upon by some man or a boy.“ When he replies, “What makes you think my sisters have been intruded upon?” she insists, “Because there isn’t a single girl or woman in this world that hasn’t been intruded upon! And sometimes it’s relatively benign, and sometimes it is so fucking painful. But you have no idea what this feels like!” At this point, Jenny has taken control of the power of representation; she has his camera, and she insists that he not take those “rapey” hidden cameras down until she says he can, emphasizing the parallel between the intrusive, phallic camera and the intrusive male sexual subject (2.10). Jenny’s argument names a reality of life for women in patriarchy; many men take for granted their right to control and dominate women, not only with their gazes but in every sphere of life, and they are oblivious to the effects of this power on women. But unlike many other shows that expose the concrete

Oh, fuck off, Mark! It’s not my job. I don’t give a shit. . . .  It’s not a fucking woman’s job to be consumed and invaded and spat out so that some fucking man can evolve. . . .  What I want is for you to write “Fuck me” on your chest. Do it! And then walk down the street. Anybody that wants to fuck you, say, “Sure, sure.” And when they do, you have to say “Thank you very much” and make sure you have a smile on your face and then, you stupid fucking coward, you’ll know what it feels like to be a woman! (2.11) Interestingly, Jenny’s argument is remarkably similar to French feminist theorist Monique Wittig’s (1992) description of the “category of sex” for women. Arguing that the definition of womanhood includes compulsory heterosexuality, Wittig writes: The category of sex is the product of heterosexual society that turns women into sexual beings, for sex is a category which women cannot be outside of. Wherever they are, whatever they do (including working in the public sector), they are seen (and made) sexually available to men, and they, breasts, buttocks, costume, must be visible. They must wear their yellow star, their constant smile, day and night. One might consider that every woman, married or not, has a period of forced sexual service. (7–8) It is significant, however, that it is Jenny who makes this case, as her analysis is really about heterosexual women’s relationship to patriarchy and sexual relations with men. Having named the

The Problem of Representation

operations of sexism, The L Word does not then undermine the character’s political analysis; it deepens it.8 When Mark later tries again to apologize, insisting that he now understands how hard it is to be a woman and that he has become a better man through his friendship with Jenny, she is infuriated:

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operations that shape “how it feels to be a woman,” Jenny is able to begin to refuse them; most important, she will no longer play the passive, masochistic female role that Mark has tried to impose on her with his camera. This lengthy story arc about the relationship of the male gaze to the control of women is intertwined with a parallel narrative about Jenny’s struggle to remember a repressed childhood experience of sexual assault. Like Mark, she seeks to find a truth that has been invisible and hidden, but her struggle to form her experience into a coherent narrative that she can understand, and then try to put behind her, is treated by the show as a much more legitimate enterprise. Since Jenny is a writer, she initially tries to use her craft to pull her memories into focus, a process shown to viewers throughout the season in the form of flashback-like sequences that are stagings of her stories as she writes them. These vignettes are as puzzling to the audience as they are to Jenny; they produce curiosity, alienation, or intense frustration, not unlike what Jenny seems to be feeling. Jenny’s writing fails to produce an intelligible narrative from these fragments, so she turns to working with images as well, sorting through family photographs, making her own videos, and filling the walls of her room with a visually overwhelming array of disconnected photographs and drawings that seem to represent her confusion and inability to narrate the truth of her own experience coherently. When Jenny’s attempts to use words and images to narrate her story fail, she turns to more dramatic strategies. She begins to perform in a seedy working-class strip club, billing herself as Miss Yeshiva Girl. This club is contrasted with the upscale strip clubs patronized by the main characters in other episodes; here, the men are portrayed as lowbrow creeps who feel entitled to paw any woman who crosses their path and who howl and pound the stage with alcohol-fueled rage if they don’t get the exploitative show they expect (Wolfe and Roripaugh 2006,

The Problem of Representation

50–51). Jenny explains to a skeptical and worried Shane that she is doing this because it makes her feel in control of men’s consumption of her. “When I’m in there it’s my fucking choice when I take off my top, when I want to show my breasts. And it’s my fucking choice when I take off my pants and I show my pussy. And then I stop when I want to stop and it makes me feel good because I’m in charge. And it helps me to remember all this childhood shit that happened to me. And you know, I have to. It’s important” (2.13). Jenny does finally remember the incident from her childhood: she was raped by a group of boys in the woods. Unable to cope with the remembered trauma, she takes a ritual bath and then cuts herself with a razor blade, an explicit cry for help. She is discovered by Shane, who promises to get her that help and reminds her that she does not have to face her past in selfharming ways, offering the solidarity and care of her female friends. Indeed, this scene is immediately followed by an emotional scene of female bonding in which the group assembles at the hospital to welcome Bette and Tina’s daughter, Angelica, who was born the same night (2.13). The L Word is weaving together several complicated narratives here. The first is about the tremendous harm done to many girls and women by sexual violence, and the refusal of patriarchal cultures to acknowledge this reality and care for its survivors. In season 3, Jenny’s very traditional and subservient Orthodox Jewish mother finally acknowledges that she knew what had happened to Jenny, apologizing for never having admitted this before (3.1). Second, Jenny’s experience of a sexual assault is connected to a much larger historical and cultural context of sexual violence. To understand what happened to her, she has to reconstruct her history. This premise implicitly structures much of The L Word, which uses a variety of strategies to situate the contemporary world of the characters within the larger histories of women and gays and lesbians. Third, The L Word demonstrates how sexual violence is enabled, perhaps

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even encouraged, by forms of representation that dehumanize, degrade, and misrepresent women. Jenny finally is able to remember what happened and piece all the fragmentary images together during an evening when she hears Kinnie Starr perform her poem “Buttons,” a powerful evocation of the dangers that women face on the street every day. The performance is filmed so that some lines are clearly audible in the sound mix, including the lyrics: “Boy on the street’s got his eyes pinned onto me / Buttons unbuttoned in his head, he wants to see” and “This is not fair, because he penetrates me with his stare” (2.13). Starr’s words echo Jenny’s analysis of the connection between the visual representation of women, male entitlement to the gaze, and the potential danger to all women from male sexual violence, which is not dramatically different from the heterosexual imperative that all women be sexually available. This story has a moral. Mark tries to sell his producer his documentary, but the producer is interested only in the conventional pornographic story, demanding, “Where’s the fucking pussy?!” (2.9). Mark has given up that voyeuristic gaze, but he is also unable to make a coherent documentary. He’s out of business, and the show suggests that’s right; he should not be profiting by representing people whose lives he can’t understand. By extension, the show is clarifying its position. It’s not creating pornographic fantasies designed to appeal to a straight audience. Nor is it trying to “explain” lesbianism in terms intelligible to a heteronormative audience. Indeed, the narrative suggests that it is not the job of members of oppressed groups to explain themselves in ways that will be morally beneficial to their oppressors. Instead, through the character of Jenny, The L Word argues that lesbians have to tell the truth of their lives within the logics of the lesbian culture the show makes visible. The last thing we hear before Mark’s producer shuts off the documentary in disgust is Jenny saying, ”This is so much more complicated than that,” and her words might stand as an

Inventing a Lesbian Gaze

The L Word constructs an explicitly lesbian gaze and teaches viewers to see the world through that lens. Any viewer can occupy this viewing position, but to do so requires that one be able to situate oneself in a coherent, complex, lesbian-centered culture. In this world, lesbian identity is neither inherently problematic nor defined by the heteronormative world. The show’s lesbian community has its own norms, values, and assumptions, and the characters’ central concern is not with what heterosexuals or mainstream cultures will think of them, but rather with the loving friendships and relationships they have with each other. The show’s structured lesbian gaze serves to make this “minority” world, which is usually constructed in mainstream media as alien and other, seem perfectly natural and, indeed, normal. In other words, the show transforms a “minority” point of view into the universal, making a lesbian world, not the straight world, the norm. Viewers who can embrace this lesbiancentered perspective can be sutured into the narrative. The show’s attention to the history of feminist theorizing about visual representations of women is evident in the ways it constructs its lesbian gaze. As Mulvey (1975) argued, the male gaze was organized by the looks between the characters within the film. In a parallel way, The L Word’s lesbian gaze is constructed by the relays of looks between the women. That is, the camera’s gaze is aligned with the looks of the lesbian characters, and therefore we are positioned as lesbian spectators by the camera.9

The Problem of Representation

exemplary statement of the show’s attitude toward the misrepresentation of lesbians. And having denaturalized and critiqued the hegemonic viewing position, it is constructing a more complicated, alternative, lesbian spectating position, and encouraging viewers to look from this perspective. In effect, the show creates a queer audience for itself.

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Within the frame of the show, what most clearly marks lesbian women is precisely that—and how—they look at each other. The show’s representation of the exchange of looks between women is a crucial element of its construction of lesbian identity and subjectivity. In this world, what defines a lesbian is how she looks at other women; these women make direct eye contact, exchange lengthy and meaningful gazes, and often look at each other with desire, but in ways that are not objectifying, prurient, or voyeuristic. In other words, lesbian subjectivity on The L Word is constituted by looking, but with a difference. This redefinition of the meaning of the camera’s look allows the lesbian characters to take pleasure in looking at each other, and as the camera takes their points of view, it invites viewers to enjoy looking at beautiful women as well. This approach refuses the assumption that the camera’s point of view must be male and must objectify, but in order to see this fully, the viewer must embrace the lesbian world’s love, not fear, of women. For example, in an episode in which the main characters tell each other their coming-out stories (1.11), each of the narratives, which we see in flashback, begins with the narrator saying how beautiful her first love was; all the stories start with us seeing the beloved through the eyes of the storyteller. Another way the show makes this point is by comparing scenes from the lesbian world to similar (and familiar) scenes from the straight world. For example, the exclusively male gaze in the hellish, misogynist strip club where Jenny performs is contrasted with diverse audiences enjoying the gender- and sexuality-bending performances of Peaches and the feminist musical performances of Kinnie Starr and Heart (2.12, 2.13). Within this world, lesbian characters do not look as voyeurs or fetishizers because they have no need to control or punish female bodies for the symbolic threat they represent. Within the show, we see several varieties of lesbian looks, many of which are established in the pilot. Initially, we see that lesbians actively notice other women, in a way we might

The Problem of Representation

describe as cruising. Early in the episode, Dana sees Jenny walking by outside the Planet and interrupts the conversation to say “Helloooo!” about her. The camera looks at Jenny from the point of view of the whole table, as everyone turns to follow her progress past a series of blowing draperies. Jenny looks in, but there is no eye contact; the camera’s point of view, in a brief foreshadowing, becomes that of Marina. This leads to dialogue that clues us in that one way to identify a lesbian is that she looks at other women in a particular way: Alice (to Dana): You are so gay. Tina: So gay. Dana (helplessly): I know. I know! This kind of cruising of other women happens frequently in the show. Not only does the camera take the point of view of the lookers and make it ours (often through eyeline match editing), but we also see the practice of cruising from a distance, as when heartthrob Shane enters a crowded room, and women stop to watch her go by. This is often done so blatantly as to approach parody, as the sea of women parts and all watch Shane walk in. A second way the show identifies lesbians is that they look directly, with desire, at other women—and often, that look is returned. In other words, lesbians communicate their interest in each other through intense eye contact. For example, in a series of scenes set at a party, Shane’s look connects with that of a blonde woman across the room. In an exchange of unusually long point-of-view shots, we see the woman hold Shane’s gaze, drop her eyes momentarily, then return her gaze to Shane in an unmistakable invitation. The camera switches to the woman’s point of view, as we see Shane look right back and slightly purse her lips. These looks pass back and forth several times. A few scenes later, we see a close-up of Shane and the woman locked in a passionate kiss. At the end of the party, Shane and the

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woman depart together; as Alice marvels, “She’s totally going home with that girl” (1.1). Further, the show constructs the process of claiming a lesbian identity as a process of claiming certain forms of looking, a construction that makes sense for women moving from a heteronormative to a lesbian-centered world. That is, in the public heteronormative world, men stare at women to assert their dominance and women often look down or away. This reality is frequently represented in classical Hollywood film, and as Linda Williams (1984) has argued, if a female character dares to return a male look, she is typically punished by the narrative, as in film noir. But in the lesbian world, direct looking is the norm, and not only is it not punished, it is often rewarded. This is represented as initially quite confusing to characters who are just starting to come out, like Jenny. Marina accomplishes her seduction of Jenny primarily through looking. When they first meet (1.1), Marina looks intently and directly at Jenny. Marina’s assertiveness is signaled by the fact that she takes up most of the frame as she looks, while Jenny is lit and shot in soft focus, smaller (and lower) in the frame, and off center. As they discuss Jenny’s writing career and the books that have most influenced them, they exchange increasingly bold looks in close-ups, some of which transform into extreme close-ups of each other’s eyes or lips. When they reencounter each other outside the bathroom later, Marina once again looks directly at Jenny, saying, “There you are,” as though she has been looking for her; Jenny, visibly uncomfortable with the intensity of her gaze, looks down. When Marina follows Jenny into the bathroom and kisses her, we are not surprised when Jenny initially responds, then pulls away. The next day she visits Marina at the Planet to insist, “I’m not . . . I’m not . . .” to which Marina wryly responds, “a big coffee drinker?” Their exchange of eye contact in a series of shot/reverse shot closeups belies Jenny’s protestations; she looks at other women like a lesbian, no matter what she says. After Jenny refuses Marina’s

The Problem of Representation

Jenny gazes at Marina as she walks away.

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invitation to a party the next night, she can’t make eye contact anymore. But her continued interest is marked by the fact that as Marina walks away, the camera takes Jenny’s point of view as she watches Marina’s swaying hips. At this point, Jenny is still sneaking looks like a voyeuristic, prurient heterosexual. Jenny’s ambivalent looking figures her sexual confusion. Later in the same episode, Marina enters the grocery store where Jenny is working the cash register and purrs seductively, “I want to see you check me out.” After their business is done, the camera takes Jenny’s perspective as she does indeed check Marina out as she walks away. This might be read as Marina teaching Jenny the lesbian gaze. At the very least, it is significant that Marina invites Jenny’s look, thereby complicating who is active or has agency in the scene; she is not the passive object of a controlling or voyeuristic gaze. Further, since Marina had already taken the initiative to kiss Jenny, thereby setting into motion a long story arc about their turbulent relationship, she is the character whose actions were driving the narrative. In this moment, then, Marina collapses the gendered distinction

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Jenny tells Marina she wants to see her again. Their separation and differing identities are emphasized by the frames.

between acting and appearing identified by Mulvey; like the other female characters in the show, she both acts and appears, often simultaneously. Soon thereafter, when Jenny and Tim and another couple are dining out and Marina walks by with her group of friends, Jenny is aghast. The camera takes her point of view as she watches Marina pass; she can’t resist looking Marina up and down. Empowered as a man to claim the gaze in a way Jenny isn’t, their friend Randy can exclaim, “Man! That girl is so hot! She doesn’t really look like she’s gay.” Jenny swivels to watch Marina walk by again. Before long she follows Marina into the bathroom to announce, “I’d like to see you again.” Their encounter is shot from behind, so we see their conversation through reflections in a pair of heavily framed mirrors. Marina reaches into Jenny’s frame and pulls her into her frame to try to kiss her; Jenny pulls away and regards Marina from a position right between the two frames, another metaphor for her confusion. Once Jenny and Marina have begun their affair, we see them regularly communicating with their looks, a communication

Alice: She saw them touching hands, and then she knew everything. Dana: How could she tell just by seeing them touch hands? Shane: Women can do that. Alice: Yeah. Especially dykes. (2.1) This aspect of the show makes visible the fact that attentive looking is an important survival skill for a group that in the

The Problem of Representation

that is invisible to Tim. But it isn’t invisible to the other lesbians, who are well aware of what’s going on, although no one has told them. Though Jenny has begun to look at Marina like a lesbian, she doesn’t yet understand how this form of communication works; she wrongly accuses Marina of telling others about them because she doesn’t realize that they knew by decoding her looking. The exchange of looks between friends who care deeply for one another is another crucial visual element in the representation of lesbian subjectivity. In The L Word, women look directly at each other, often in quite long shots, and their gazes are carefully matched. The overall visual effect of this is that we understand that these women take each other seriously and have profound connections to each other. Group scenes on The L Word are often shot to emphasize connections between friends; for example, when they converse around the tables of the Planet, the camera often frames two or three characters at a time, even if only one of them is speaking. And in the most important scenes of group bonding, the lead characters are often bunched in the frame, photographed in ways that highlight their connections to one another. The L Word also seems to claim a certain penchant for attentive and perceptive looking among lesbians. Tina knows Bette has been unfaithful to her just by seeing her across a room with Candace. The friends discuss this:

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heteronormative world is often hidden from view. Lesbians have to learn to spot each other in a dominant culture where it may not be safe to reveal themselves; they’ve got to look carefully because often it isn’t obvious who the lesbians are. Once these patterns of looking have been established, we see them repeated over and over, as lesbian characters meet and establish both friendships and sexual relationships. The exchange of looks is how lesbians recognize each other and communicate their desires. And this delineation of a visual language constructs an audience that is able to see through a lesbian gaze. But though we have seen these lesbian looks in operation, we still don’t know exactly how it is that these women recognize each other, raising the question: What does a lesbian look like? De-essentializing Lesbian Identities

This careful delineation of a lesbian gaze as the primary element of lesbian subjectivity provides a site for subtle questioning of stereotypical ideas about what lesbians look like. Randy’s comment that Marina “doesn’t really look like she’s gay” reminds us that various stereotypes and preconceptions about lesbians circulate widely in popular culture and cannot be accepted at face value. The show’s upscale West Hollywood setting makes characters who are beautiful, gender normative, fashionably and expensively dressed, and predominately white seem unremarkable in context. But since they don’t fit the common stereotypes about lesbians that circulate widely in mainstream culture, how can we recognize them and how can they recognize each other?10 At the very least, the main characters certainly challenge the notions that all lesbians are androgynous or stereotypically masculine, that femme lesbians are somehow not “real” lesbians, and that all lesbian couples are imitating heterosexuality by forming butch/femme partnerships.

The Problem of Representation

While The L Word challenges these outdated stereotypes, the show also has a complicated argument to make about lesbian identity: there is such a thing, but it is impossible to define, fully characterize, or make visible on-screen. Put another way, there is no one lesbian identity that all members of this community can be assumed to share; there are a lot of different ways of being a lesbian, and these variations come in and out of view as the series progresses. So from the start, the show constructs an antiessentialist view of lesbian identity at the same time that it is constructing an identifiably lesbian world. The show’s narrative explores this apparent contradiction in varied ways, some playful and others quite painful. In its antiessentialism, The L Word embraces some of the founding premises of queer theory. Most obviously, the show relies on an analysis of lesbian identity that originated with Judith Butler in her enormously influential books Gender Trouble (1990) and Bodies That Matter (1993). Butler argued that far from being natural or unchangeable, sex, gender, and sexuality are constructed categories, and that individual subjects become intelligible or recognizable as gendered or sexed beings by virtue of their repeated performances of gender and sex, in accord with established (and often violently enforced) norms. The L Word takes these premises for granted in its presentation of lesbian identity, showing viewers both the variety of intelligible lesbian performances and the policing of the nonnormative. The question of lesbian identity first appears in a series of scenes involving Dana, who identifies as a lesbian but is still largely in the closet for professional reasons. Early in season 1, Dana is attracted to Lara, a chef at the country club where she plays tennis, but she dares not ask her out because she fears she has misinterpreted Lara’s friendly overtures. Alice and Shane try to help her, and together they articulate a queer vision of the difficulty of defining anyone’s identity:

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Alice: Most girls are straight, until they’re not. And sometimes they’re gay until they’re not. Shane: True. But then there are also the ones that never look back, right? And you can spot them coming a mile away. Dana: How can you tell? Alice: You read the signals. Shane: Dana, it’s not a problem. Sexuality is fluid. Whether you’re gay or straight or bisexual, you just go with the flow. Dana: No, that is my problem. I can’t feel the flow. That thing, whatever it is, I don’t got it. Alice: You don’t have gaydar. No, you’re so right. You don’t have it! (1.2) The key idea here is that the categories of sexual identity on which society is organized are constructed and quite unstable; individuals can and do choose how to identify, and they may well identify in different ways at different times. One implication of this idea is that the gay, bisexual, and heterosexual worlds are much more closely intertwined than rigid mainstream ideologies of gender and sexuality allow us to imagine. The second important point made in this scene is that there is a group of women who “never look back” and who can be identified by reading “the signals.” Given that we already know that Dana is “so gay,” her inability to read Lara’s signals suggests that ”gaydar” is something one learns as one begins to identify as a member of this culture. Implicit here, of course, is the further point that women who identify as lesbian can choose to make themselves visible—to send signals through aspects of dress, grooming, and behavior that will make them recognizable to others who have learned the codes. But they might also choose not to. Alice and Shane decide that finding out the truth about Lara requires the expertise of the group’s most experienced

The Problem of Representation

members. Led by Bette, who announces that they will “deploy a mission to ascertain the disposition and intentions of one Miss Lara Perkins,” the friends undertake a hilariously campy Mission Impossible–style visit to the country club, complete with coded cell phone transmissions of key information about Lara’s looks and behavior, which are then evaluated for “lezzie points” and “straight points,” and outrageous public displays of affection to gauge Lara’s reaction. The evidence leading to an unclear conclusion, they resort to a sure-fire indicator: a pass from Shane, which “pretty much works on everyone.” The group then concludes that Lara isn’t a lesbian, based on their reading of all the signs and Lara’s apparent indifference to Shane’s charms. Yet later Lara surprises Dana by backing her against a wall of lockers, kissing her, and remarking, “Just in case you were still wondering” (1.2). These funny scenes, set to music that comically evokes 1960s spy stories, raise a very important point: exactly what constitutes lesbian identity or visibility is elusive. A big part of the joke is that nobody—not even the lesbians—can always tell who is or isn’t one of the tribe. It’s only when Lara identifies herself that we can imagine we know that she is a lesbian. The L Word repeatedly reinforces this point that the characters have a choice about whether to make themselves visible, both within the cultural codes of the community and within the larger society. When several members of the group travel to Palm Springs for the Dinah Shore weekend, they survey the crowd and joke about the diversity of the hundreds of women gathered around the pool. Alice identifies a butch woman as “a hundred-footer,” musing, “Is it her hair? Is it her jog bra? Is it her mandles? I don’t know. I can tell she’s a lesbo from across a football field!” This provokes Jenny to demand, ”You guys. What am I?” They scrutinize her briefly and then Alice pronounces her illegible: “You’re in transition. It’s impossible.” But when we next see Jenny, she is wearing a T-shirt that reads “Lesbian wanted” and drunkenly telling her coming-out story

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to a crowd of strangers; in this limited context, she has chosen to identify herself (1.11). Yet the edge of nastiness to Alice’s comments reminds us that there are many lesbian communities and they are divided by many forms of difference; these communities do not always overlap comfortably. The L Word reminds viewers of this point whenever the main characters find themselves in public places—clubs, parties, concerts, vacation spots, cruise ships— where members of different lesbian communities come together. The extras who surround the protagonists are typically much more diverse and unconventional in self-presentation than the stars. The gender diversity of lesbian communities becomes even more obvious when Moira joins the group; the other main characters respond to her working-class, butch gender performance with discomfort that includes incomprehension, awkwardness, rudeness, unkind jokes, and outright hostility (3.3). These moments visually and narratively reinforce that there is no single lesbian identity—different people may define that identity very differently. But even in the more gender-normative world of West Hollywood, there are ways for the characters to make themselves visible as lesbians. After a conversation with Mark, Jenny insists that Shane give her a short haircut so that she can be legible as a lesbian in the prevailing visual system (2.4). This is a powerful, emotional moment for Jenny because for her it signals an embrace of her new identity. The success of Shane’s work is seen the next morning as the camera watches a woman walk toward and then past Jenny and Shane on the street. Spinning around, Shane chortles gleefully, “You totally just got cruised!” as Jenny beams. Given this problem of appearances, the show does offer us two ways to know who the lesbians are within its narrative frame: they are people who explicitly claim that identity and who learn to embody the lesbian way of looking described above. So we “know” about Lara when she looks deeply into

The Problem of Representation

Dana’s eyes and tells her that she’s a lesbian. And we realize that had Dana actually looked at Lara in a way that allowed their gazes to meet, she could have known. The fact that Lara kisses Dana is not, in fact, the definitive cue, as we see numerous women who are having sex with other women but who don’t claim a lesbian identity. And while the show does construct a lesbian world that the main characters inhabit, making visible its differences from the heteronormative world, it doesn’t oversimplify the complexities of (or the differences within) the lesbian world. The L Word’s antiessentialist view of lesbian identity and its attention to the complexities of representing lesbian characters mean that while it does construct a lesbian gaze for us, it does not want us to imagine that this gaze is providing access to some heretofore invisible and now revealed truth. And it goes out of its way to disrupt any such assumption on the viewer’s part.

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The L Word’s Reflexivity

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he L Word is committed to reflexivity as a key strategy for telling stories and making meaning. Reflexive texts draw attention to the artifices by which they seduce us into their illusions, and thus teach us to be more self-aware and critical consumers of representations. Many twentieth-century artists and filmmakers used reflexive techniques for political ends; they sought to expose the capitalist ideologies naturalized by works of art and, by extension, the structures of society justified by those ideologies (Stam 1985, 13–21). The L Word has borrowed a great deal from its avant-garde predecessors. At the same time that the program offers viewers a range of engaging stories about lesbians, told through the recognizable conventions of serial drama, it also deconstructs and denaturalizes both the stories themselves and the codes and conventions through which it is telling them. The show uses a variety of reflexive devices to teach viewers to be much more critical spectators of mass-media representations of lesbians. While the program does indeed include pointed critiques of the ways capitalist commercial imperatives drive what can be produced, this critique serves the writers’ larger political concern with exposing the history of misrepresentations of lesbians.

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But beyond exposing the lies that justify and sustain sexist and heteronormative power structures, the show also offers alternative images and narratives that revise or rewrite the conventions of representing lesbians. It demonstrates, therefore, considerable optimism that the meanings of even the most familiar codes and conventions can be changed and that viewers can become more discerning and critical consumers of such imagery. Further, the show also manifests optimism that if representation could be otherwise, so too could the operations of social and political power in the world. In chapter 1, I argued that The L Word makes visible the history of pornographic representations of lesbians and constructs an alternative lesbian gaze to replace it. In this chapter, I argue that the show uses a highly self-conscious strategy to present and to revise the history of the representation of lesbians in mainstream popular culture more generally. After a brief discussion of the stereotypes that the show challenges, I analyze how The L Word uses various forms of intertextuality, or the inclusion of references to other texts, to tell the story of Hollywood’s treatment of lesbians and revise those stories through parody. Second, I explore the ways the show rewrites popular heterosexual narratives as lesbian ones, thereby eliminating the need for “translations” by queer viewers. Finally, I argue that the show calls attention to its own artificiality, through an analysis of its deliberate disruptions of filming and editing conventions and its use of strategies of “alienation” to break down conventions of narrative and characterization that many viewers have learned to take for granted. Such highlighting of the norms of popular storytelling invites the viewer to look at the program in a much more critical and self-aware fashion. Reflexivity and Intertextuality

Hollywood film and television have long since developed conventions of storytelling that viewers learn to recognize and

The L Word’s Reflexivity

interpret as part of being socialized into the culture. These conventions are so familiar that viewers do not consciously notice them. If the narrative unfolds seamlessly and coherently in a recognizable genre, if the characters’ psychological motivations are made intelligible, and if the visual language of shots and editing used to convey the story are those audience members have learned to understand, then they are likely to accept the story on its own terms and take pleasure in it. Further, in many cases, such stories seem “realistic” because they correspond to commonsense understandings of the world that viewers have also learned (Bordwell, Staiger, and Thompson 1985). These compelling fictions have enormous ideological power because they present a vision of the world that viewers may absorb passively and unconsciously. Film and television convey and naturalize stereotypes or other ideas about groups of people and thereby shape viewers’ unconscious attitudes toward members of those groups. The pathologizing ideas that have circulated about queer people in popular culture for decades have helped to justify and explain discrimination against them, thus helping to sustain a status quo of inequality and injustice. The L Word’s reflexive approach to storytelling is built on an understanding of these premises and this history and on a commitment to put different ideas into popular circulation. The L Word’s approach to form is also based on an understanding of the goals of reflexive art cinema, as exemplified by the films of French New Wave director Jean-Luc Godard, among others. Godard’s early films were influenced by the ideas of German playwright Bertholt Brecht, who argued for disrupting the codes and conventions that allowed theatergoers to suspend disbelief and enter the world of a play. Many of Godard’s 1960s films took up this challenge, presenting and subverting familiar Hollywood codes and conventions of narrative, characterization, and editing. In the end, the deconstruction of artistic illusions was meant to lead to the deconstruction of ideological and political illusions, and to suggest

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Jenny in an opening vignette set in Paris, one of many references to French New Wave directors. She is dressed like Jean Seberg as she appeared in Jean-Luc Godard’s film Breathless.

that the status quo is neither inevitable nor unchangeable (Stam 1985, 17–22). One of Godard’s signature techniques was to saturate his films with references to other texts that could be understood to comment on his own fictional worlds. These citations draw attention to the constructed nature of the film and to the process of making meaning or interpreting. The insertion of texts and their associated meanings into a film invites viewers to respond more actively, to try to interpret the significance of the reference. From its inception, The L Word has used a dense web of intertextual references to call attention to its own status as a constructed text. Specific artists and works of high culture— literature, film, art, philosophy—are alluded to in various contexts and blended with allusions to works of mainstream popular culture. The show invites us to read it this way by its frequent pointed references to Godard films. Early on, we learn that Tina has quit her job as a development executive at Alphaville Studios (1.11). Alphaville is a

Rewriting the History of Lesbians in Hollywood Film and Television

In order to rewrite the conventions and codes of representation, the show must first make them visible. The L Word carefully situates itself within the history of lesbian representation in film and mass media. Perhaps the central theme of lesbian representation in popular culture is invisibility; lesbians have rarely appeared at all, and when they have, it has typically been as secondary or minor characters, almost always white, who exemplify a few threatening or pathetic stereotypes: the lonely and isolated person with no lesbian friends who must hide her identity from her family and coworkers to survive (Rachel, Rachel, 1968); the self-hating person whose horrible, sick desires are so appalling to her that she commits suicide (The Children’s Hour, 1961); the denizen of a dark, violent underground subculture designed to hide her terrible secret (Foxy Brown, 1974); the gender-troubled, working-class “diesel dyke” butch (The Killing of Sister George, 1968); the sexually predatory older woman who abuses her power over young women (Caged, 1950); the straight woman who is rescued from her mistaken foray into homosexuality by a good man (Lilith, 1964); and the violent,

The L Word’s Reflexivity

complex 1965 Godard film that can be read as an implicit critique of Hollywood’s willingness to put on-screen virtually anything that will make money (Travers 2011). It tells us something important about Tina’s character when we learn that she resigned because she “hated the business.” A few episodes earlier, Jenny had exclaimed to her friend Annette about Marina’s partner Francesca, “Look at her. She’s fucking beautiful. She drives a vintage Mercedes. She’s like fucking Belmondo in a Godard film!” (1.9) These and many other allusions to French New Wave filmmakers and actors constitute broad hints that the show will take up their reflexive techniques and that the allusions to and citations of dozens of other cultural texts are quite deliberate.

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man-hating psycho killer (Basic Instinct, 1992). These characters are miserable, and more often than not, they come to a bad end. Whether viewers are consciously aware of it or not, these images, often presented in conventional narratives and genres, have shaped most Americans’ ideas about lesbian women. Over the course of six seasons, The L Word takes on most of these canards, directly or indirectly. Most obviously, the show focuses on a circle of openly and proudly gay friends who support each other, and who socialize happily in safe, upscale spaces that cater to queer patrons. The friends are racially diverse and clearly part of a much larger community, which is shown to have its own mores, values, norms, and cultural expressions. Some form loving couples, while others choose to remain unattached. Most of the characters are conventionally feminine and do not have to hide who they are to maintain relationships with their families or to be successful at work. None of them is a psycho killer or a child molester. So just by virtue of its basic premises, the show challenges most of the negative stereotypes that have historically shaped lesbian representation. But beyond these premises, The L Word uses a variety of strategies to systematically expose and deconstruct Hollywood’s misrepresentations of lesbians and, more generally, to remind viewers not to accept Hollywood’s fictions at face value. Intertextuality and Parody

The L Word identifies and critiques the ways that certain film genres have typically served as vehicles for conveying images of lesbians, and it exposes the operations of these genres in ways that are often quite humorous. Campy parodies of womenin-prison films or lesbian vampire stories, for example, work as comic counterparts to the more serious critiques of pornographic or voyeuristic misrepresentations discussed in the previous chapter. Viewers familiar with the conventions of these genres can enjoy both the parody and the reclaiming of these

The L Word’s Reflexivity

stories for lesbian viewers that the show provides; others can learn this history. Since the 1950s, Hollywood films and television shows have used the context of women’s prisons as settings in which to present pathologized and sensationalized lesbian characters or as narrative excuses to show titillating representations of lesbian sexuality that were clearly intended for a male audience. But it was in the early 1970s that a great many of these films were made, most notably by Roger Corman, who invented and endlessly repeated the women-in-prison formula for the B-movie market (Corman and Jerome 1990). Films like Black Mama, White Mama (1973) and The Big Bird Cage (1972) were set in an unspecified “third world” nation and featured conventionally feminine, attractive, and scantily clad prisoners; machine gun–toting female guards in minidresses and high heels; and various shady and/or corrupt prison authorities. As in earlier women-in-prison films, the characters in these films are stock types: the hardened longtimer, the predatory butch lesbian, the innocent newcomer, the maternal figure, the mentally disturbed or drug-addicted woman, the prostitute, and the evil prison guard or matron, and they move through formulaic episodes like the stripping/showering scene when the newcomers arrive; the “catfight” between female prisoners; the attempt to escape; the lesbian sex scene; and the cafeteria food fight, which often results in the prisoners being sprayed with fire hoses by the guards (Mayne 2000, 115–45). Judith Mayne has analyzed both the pleasures and the discomforts of watching these films, arguing that their campiness, their scenes of intense female bonding, and their depiction of rage against patriarchal oppression and male violence are appealing, but that their scenes of rape and torture are appalling. Of course, these films also lend themselves to appropriation by lesbian viewers, who can read some of these stock types and caricatures as figures with whose nonconformist traits and/or resistant behavior they might actually identify.

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The L Word knows this film history and the history of lesbian viewers’ appropriation of mainstream texts not made for them. The show takes a knowing pleasure in reproducing and parodying the attractive aspects of these formulas and conventions, while not reproducing the insidious and violent ones. In episode 1.13, a right-wing protest at Bette’s museum leads to many of the main characters being arrested and taken to jail, traveling in a police van with their antagonists. In the van, as a bluesy harmonica plays, a handcuffed Alice performs a caricature of the predatory lesbian stereotype; she whistles aggressively, says, “Hey, good-lookin’ ” in a vaguely menacing way, and then bares her teeth and growls at the terrified fundamentalist woman sitting across from her, who looks away in horror. Once the group arrives at the jailhouse, they must give up their possessions and don prison clothes before being hauled off to their cells. The central jailhouse scenes involve Bette and Candace, who have been separated from Dana, Shane, and Alice because, as the very butch female guard tells them, they have been branded “dangerous ringleaders.” Since this is laughable, it makes a joke of the association of lesbians and criminality implicit in the genre and in many stereotypes. Bette is trying to resist her sexual attraction to Candace. Eventually they settle for sex that involves no contact between them and that leaves them fully clothed, denying viewers the conventional titillation of such scenes; they talk each other to orgasm in a scene that makes intertextual reference to at least two well-known gay films. Bette is filmed with her face and body pressed up against the prison wall, a reference to Jean Genet’s 1950 short film Un chant d’amour, which explores male sexuality in prison, including a lengthy sequence of two men in adjoining cells who communicate through the wall to have sexual encounters. Bette’s expressed wish for a cigarette (though she doesn’t smoke) alludes to the way the men in Genet’s film communicate by blowing smoke through straws inserted in the walls between cells. Further, some of the dialogue between the

The L Word’s Reflexivity

two women echoes the 1997 film Bent, in which two gay male prisoners in a Nazi concentration camp talk each other to orgasm without touching while standing under surveillance in an open courtyard. In season 5, Helena’s arrest for grand theft allows the program to return to these tropes and parody them more extensively. We see her photographed, stripped of expensive clothes and jewelry, and forced to undergo a cavity search by an unsmiling butch guard. In a scene that is repeated several times over the season, she walks through a cellblock as female prisoners catcall and proposition her. When she arrives at her cell, she is terrified of her surly, butch cellmate, Dusty (Lucia Rijker), a powerfully muscled woman of color whom she imagines is a “homicidal psychopath.” When her friends visit, they warn her that, above all else, she must not drop the soap (5.1). This sets up a parody of the stock shower scene, in which dissonant music that evokes a feeling of danger accompanies a shot of Helena dropping the soap and immediately being set upon by a menacing butch woman bearing a large knife and demanding sex. She is saved from her generic fate by Dusty, who announces that Helena is hers. Eventually, of course, Helena and Dusty do develop a romantic relationship, which begins as they bond over their shared passion for Dorothy Dandridge’s performance in Carmen Jones (1954) (5.2). In the film, the fiercely independent Carmen uses her sexuality to escape prison, and Dandridge, the actor who played her, struggled throughout her career to avoid roles in films that were racist or misrepresented people of color; these are both thought-provoking intertexts in The L Word, since Hollywood’s misrepresentation of people of color has many parallels to the misrepresentations of queer people. Also, Helena and Dusty’s cross-race romance reminds us how often the original genre films involved interracial relationships between women; as Judith Mayne has observed, the lesbian plots and the race plots of these films are inextricably intertwined (2000, 138). Of course, Dusty, whom Peggy

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Peabody will later describe as a “butch prison daddy dyke,” turns out to be in jail not for murder but for tax fraud (5.3). The parodic repetition of stock scenes reminds us of how formulaic and phony these films were. Visitors must walk through the cellblock, which allows us to see Kit stride fearlessly through the catcalls, accompanied by scratchy 1970s funk guitar music. Later, she explains to Helena how to understand prison slang and culture. When Helena asks, “How do you know all this?” Kit replies, “I been places, okay?” (5.2) The joke in these brief scenes is that the actor who plays Kit, Pam Grier, played a jaded lesbian prisoner in The Big Doll House (1971) and a sadistic prison guard in Women in Cages (1971), both Roger Corman films, in addition to her tough action-hero roles in numerous blaxploitation films, such as Foxy Brown (1974) and Coffy (1973). Later, when the elegant Peggy Peabody walks the cellblock to the accompaniment of a blues guitar, she pauses to respond to a prisoner who shouts, “Lemme eat your pussy!” The music screeches to a stop and the cellblock quiets, and Peggy says with characteristic hauteur, “Were I receptive to such a proposition, it would first require a full booty check. And were you to pass muster, baby, I’d give it to you family style.” The prisoners receive this retort with cheers of approval, and Peggy sails away (5.3). These brief gestures of homage to queer film history and the rewritings of certain stock elements of women-in-prison films to affirm lesbian desire and solidarity, while erasing voyeurism and violence, make visible and therefore denaturalize the stereotypical misrepresentations of lesbians. They also contribute to writing an alternative cultural history of lesbian representation and spectatorship. The show’s treatment of vampire stories, another formulaic genre that prominently featured lesbian characters and that became especially popular in the 1970s, works similarly. This genre is important for the show to engage because, as historian Andrea Weiss argues, “Outside of male pornography, the

The L Word’s Reflexivity

lesbian vampire is the most persistent lesbian image in the history of the cinema” (1993, 84). But these cinematic vampire lesbians, most visible in low-budget horror films, are not the more sympathetic characters that are often found in vampire literature. Rather, they tend to be portrayed in ways designed to appeal to male spectators. These “lesbian” characters are often conventionally beautiful and feminine, and they are filmed in voyeuristic and fetishizing ways. They tend to be closely associated with violence, as both perpetrators and victims. And they exemplify other stereotypical ideas about lesbians; in addition to being predatory denizens of a dark and violent underworld and dangerous to straight women, they tend to be highly narcissistic, and their sexuality is constructed as infantile and obsessed with breasts (90–94). The formulaic plot has three acts. Innocent travelers arrive at the castle of the vampires; next follows a lengthy period of sexual titillation and violent bloodletting as the vampires move about at night seducing their victims. Finally, the story concludes with the destruction of the vampires, often by a male who wins his female lover back from the predatory lesbian who has attempted to convert her to the undead. Jean Rollin’s Shiver of the Vampires (1971), alluded to in The L Word, is fairly typical in its inclusion of sadomasochism, rape, and images of whips, chains, and deadly spiked breastplates. As Weiss suggests, it is hard to imagine how to reclaim these texts for lesbian audiences, except perhaps through camp appropriations (1993, 104–8). The L Word revises this formulaic genre with a campy story arc featuring Alice’s dates with lesbian vampirologist Uta Refson. Uta explains that she teaches college courses on “the queer vampire in literature and film and a seminar called Demon Desire about the vampire as a lesbian predator” (3.5). Uta’s claim introduces a level of analytical distance and a recognition of contemporary queer rewritings of the genre into the story from the outset, as does Alice’s gushing response that she is “a total lesbian vampire freak!” Uta and Alice’s story is told using many

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of the generic conventions of the original films, but these are reframed in ways that refuse the voyeuristic male gaze or narration and that de-link sexuality and violence while keeping intact the idea of women’s sexual desire and agency as powerful and, for Alice, healing. Alice is titillated and a little frightened by the possibility that Uta is not a scholar of the queer vampire, as she claims, but a real vampire. Helena thinks Alice is being ridiculous but colludes with her as she tries to find out the truth about her new friend, offering her a compact with a mirror so that Alice can see if Uta makes any reflection. But as Alice maneuvers the mirror into place, Uta bends down and moves out of the mirror’s view. Alice’s anxiety at this development (and several others) is accompanied by shrill music that comically evokes the soundtrack to the famous shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960). Nevertheless, Alice accepts Uta’s invitation to go home with her, and we next see Alice naked in a dungeonlike room lit in red light, phoning Helena to tell her how great the sex with Uta was. Helena reads Alice a description of vampire qualities she found on the Internet, and Uta seems to have quite a few of them, including remarkable strength and physical stamina. Nonetheless, when Uta walks naked into the room, bearing large glasses of red wine for which she “had to go to the cellar,” Alice abandons all caution. She allows herself to be chained to the ceiling, and as she swings around, she looks in a mirror and realizes by reading Uta’s framed “teaching certificate” that Uta’s name is Nosferatu spelled backward. But the sex is fantastic and Alice is smitten; this is a very different vampire story, and its reflexive nature rereads lesbian vampire desire as empowering, not destructive. Queering Popular Culture

The L Word also uses varied techniques to make viewers notice the heterosexist and homophobic conventions of love, romance,

The L Word’s Reflexivity

and sexuality that structure most popular culture, conventions that exclude lesbians and other queer people. By placing lesbian and bisexual characters into well-known and popular images of romance and sexuality, the show queers these conventions and thereby exposes them. This practice reproduces the process queer viewers have long undertaken of translating or reading themselves into narratives and representations that have excluded them (Doty 1993, 1–16; White 1999, 31–60). The program thus makes visible the reading strategies that queer viewers have used to participate in a culture that has largely erased them, and then makes those strategies unnecessary by offering images that do not require translation or interpretation. First, the show inserts its characters into parodies of wellknown romantic or sexual scenes from film and television history. For example, in episode 2.10, when many of the characters go on a cruise, significant queer rewritings take place. Wellknown scenes from Titanic (1997) are parodied as a lesbian “sexpert” named Phoebe Sparkle (evoking the queer performance artist/sexologist Annie Sprinkle) has a series of intense sexual encounters with another passenger: in staterooms, high up in the mast, on the bow of the ship. In a more comic vein, Dana and Alice dress up as Captain Merrill Steubing and cruise director Julie McCoy of the popular comedy series The Love Boat (1977–86). At one level, this is a goofy little story that ends when their long-delayed, in-costume sexual encounter is unpleasantly interrupted by Dana’s seasickness (2.10). But at another level, it explores the ways that we construct our identities with reference to popular culture texts, which provide us with frameworks for imagining our own lives. Our intense childhood engagements with popular culture have a tremendous effect on our ability to make sense of who we are (Doty 1993, 1–16; White 1999, 197–200). The Love Boat’s heteronormativity was central to its premise, and this parodic interlude reminds viewers of how gay people see few images of themselves engaged in healthy, sex-positive romantic

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Dana and Alice role-play as Captain Steubing and Julie McCoy of The Love Boat.

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relationships. These scenes provide precisely the corny lesbian love boat that 1970s viewers did not ever get to see, but the characters’ explicit role-playing reminds us that it is a constructed and very queer image. A second technique that reveals histories of lesbian spectatorship is the naming of queer content in mainstream films or the celebration of stars who are queer icons. One example is the sequence that turns Jenny into Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz (1939); this signature Judy Garland film has iconic status in gay culture, but the show rewrites it to make it a lesbian narrative of seeking a home (2.7; Doty 2000). The Planet is the scene of other lesbian rereadings of popular narratives, in the form of theme parties. One such event, called Rancho Notorious, is an homage to the 1952 western of the same name, which featured Marlene Dietrich as the owner of a remote ranch house used as a hideout by bandits fleeing the law (4.3) Viewers familiar with Dietrich’s iconic status with many lesbians can appreciate this homage (Weiss 1993, 30– 50; White 1999, 29-60), while others may enjoy the parodic

The L Word’s Reflexivity

western fantasy sequence that interrupts the narrative. There’s also a nice musical intertext as Phyllis arrives at this event; on the soundtrack is a cover of “Once I Had a Secret Love,” a song made famous by Doris Day in Calamity Jane (1953), a film widely read as a lesbian camp classic (The Celluloid Closet 1995). Marshaling numerous clichés of Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns, the interlude portrays Papi’s introduction to Shane as a sepia-toned, slow-motion send-up of the conventions of gunfighter confrontations: swinging wooden saloon doors; tumbleweeds blowing by (indoors!); scared locals heading for the door; close-ups of Papi’s rhinestoned but phallic gun belt as she grabs her crotch; a freeze-frame of Alice’s, Bette’s, and Helena’s faces as they watch the confrontation unfold; shot/ reverse shot sequences of the camera panning up each woman’s body to her face, and the exchange of stares in extreme close-up. As the show reels off these visual clichés the soundtrack locates us: horses whinny and the music that accompanied a famous gunfight scene in Leone’s 1965 hit film For a Few Dollars More swells up. But then the show jumps back to color and real time, and Shane politely refuses to engage Papi’s notion that they are competitors. This sequence does important work; its fantasy dimension breaks the show’s illusion, and it both evokes the history of lesbian spectating and queers a hypermasculine genre by having two of the characters confront in a way that highlights the homoerotic logic of many westerns. Of course, the show also portrays the further rewriting of these clichés by contemporary lesbian club patrons, who are not harmed by these misrepresentations; the fantasy sequence is followed by scenes of go-go cowgirls dancing on hay bales, to the hooting appreciation of the crowd. Over the years, The L Word also “rewrote” many well-known films. Cherie Jaffe’s competition with her daughter over Shane turns her into Mrs. Robinson from The Graduate (1967) (1.9); the “sit-down” between the feuding owners of SheBar and the Planet evokes The Godfather (1972) (5.9); and Shane’s work as a hairdresser at a posh Beverly Hills wedding leads to a farcical

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lesbian version of Shampoo (1975) (5.2). Briefer allusions include Jenny’s performance as Stanley Kowalski from A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), howling “Staceeeeeey!” at the writer who gave her a bad review (4.3); Dana and Alice’s version of a sex scene in the kitchen from 9 1/2 Weeks (1986) (2.5); and Alice’s transformation of the lesbian phone tree into a rewriting of the multiple split-screen opening of Oceans 11 (2001) (4.6). But while it uses all these intertextual references to present and critique the history of lesbian misrepresentation and to celebrate strategies of lesbian reading and rewriting, the program also suggests that some mainstream narratives can’t or shouldn’t be queered. In the final episode of season 4, Shane and her current girlfriend, Paige (Kristanna Loken), discuss whether to rent a house together (4.12). As they converse, the show moves into a fantasy sequence in which they are plunged back in time into what looks like a 1950s sitcom. Hair slicked back, Shane plays a nerdy but cheerful suburban husband: dressing for work, reading the paper at breakfast, and mowing a tiny lawn bordered by a white picket fence; Paige becomes an equally cheerful and stereotypical suburban housewife, baking and cooking. Although these scenes are quite funny because they capture many of the codes of early television’s representation of ideal American families, they raise an important question about how functional these 1950s-era notions of gender roles and family are in our time. Shane desperately longs for a “normal” family, but the show consistently suggests that this model will not work for lesbians, who cannot fit themselves into these conventionally gendered roles. It didn’t, for example, work for Bette and Tina, and it won’t for Shane and Paige either. The difference between this old-fashioned imagery and contemporary lesbian existence is emphasized by the intercutting of the fantasy sequence with scenes of an intense sexual encounter between the two women, who then dress to go to a lesbian club together. These intertexts and many similar allusions contribute to The L Word’s overall project of reflexively questioning the

The L Word’s Reflexivity

Shane and Paige, playing a husband and wife with two sons, in a fantasy sequence that evokes the conventional bourgeois family of 1950s sitcoms. This model won’t work for them.

process of representation, exposing outdated and misleading codes and conventions of lesbian representation and offering appealing alternatives. As executive producer Rose Troche explained, “We were looking at every way that we could be represented, and showing how representation gets co-opted. . . . We had fun taking these famous movies and making them into our lesbian famous movies. We were taking from them, and also showing how people misrepresent us” (2010b). But at the same time it’s having this fun, the show also deploys alienating devices, from the framing of shots to the construction of narrative and character development, to remind audiences that this program too is just a constructed fiction. Reflexive Devices and the Lesbian Gaze

In chapter 1, I argued that The L Word draws attention to the history and operations of the male gaze in cinema and television, making the gaze visible, critiquing it, and offering a different,

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lesbian gaze to replace it. But the program does not naturalize its lesbian gaze; the show makes visible the fact that the lesbian gaze is as constructed as any other. Using filmic devices, The L Word highlights the process of constructing a visual narrative; the continuity editing standard in most Hollywood film and television productions, which is designed to make us forget that we are seeing through the camera’s eye, is regularly interrupted by unusually interesting or puzzling visuals. Countless shots are emphatically framed through windows, doorframes, arches, hallways, and other strong architectural features, gestures that draw attention to the framing process. Episode 3.5, for example, contains many striking shots, including a series of dissolves that repeatedly frame Bette, who is meditating, in a large window; a deep focus shot that frames Dana in multiple planes, with two doorways and a painting behind her; and a remarkable sequence that frames Cherie Jaffe in a window eleven times as she walks through her glasswalled house to meet Shane at the doorway, in which she is framed again. Many other shots use mirrors to define the visual field; these serve to remind us that everything we are seeing is mediated by the processes of representing and looking. Important conversations (and sexual encounters) often happen in front of the three round mirrors in the Planet’s bathroom or in the mirrors of Shane’s hairdressing station, in shots that foreground the presence of the camera. Complicated shots that involve multiple mirrors, such as when Carmen tries on wedding dresses with her friends (3.12), make visible that there are many different perspectives from which one might see the world. Similarly, in episode 3.6, there is a scene in which Shane and Carmen, who are fighting about Shane’s infidelity, meet in the bathroom. Shane is in the shower while Carmen stands before a partially fogged mirror over the sink, and a series of complicated reflection shots shows us Shane looking through a clear shower curtain that partly obscures her face, talking to Carmen, who is

The L Word’s Reflexivity

looking at her in the mirror and who goes in and out of focus. When Carmen accepts Shane’s apology and goes to join her in the shower, we see this in the mirror—the camera zooms in not on the couple but on their reflection as they embrace. The frequent presence of mirrors shows viewers that what we see is mediated, distorted, misleading, or revealing, which has the effect of denaturalizing the gaze. Characters are also posed with paintings or photographs, which points to the unnaturalness of framing images of women as aesthetic objects. Bette’s role as an art collector and curator enables the show to frame her often in this way, and the two-dimensional artworks behind her also emphasize the twodimensionality of the screen. But Bette is not the only one; frames, or parts of frames, are constantly in view behind the characters. And in a striking shot that combines all these reflexive devices, when Moira dresses as Max for the first time, he gazes at himself in the mirror as Jenny stands behind him, and we see them both reflected in the mirror, framed by a number of photographs (including two images of giant eyes) and bathed in an unusual pink-red light (3.5). Unusual camera perspectives are also common, including shots from inside wastebaskets, toilets, birthing tanks, and safes, and shots pointedly looking into or out of closets. When Shane visits Carmen’s family for the first time and they must pretend to be only friends, a remarkable shot/reverse shot sequence positions them in a dark room, with the camera alternately looking past them into Carmen’s mother’s lighted walkin closet or out at them from within the closet; as they steal secret kisses, a large picture of Jesus and a crucifix appear and reappear on-screen behind them as the camera moves (3.1). The difficulty of seeing the truth clearly is also emphasized by frequent shots through curtains or blinds, by tracking shots in which one’s view of the action is periodically occluded as the camera moves past obstructing objects, and by the use of very low lighting that makes it difficult to see what’s happening.

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Unnaturally colored or filtered light also highlights representation; some scenes have a strange yellow, green, or pink cast that cannot be mistaken for realistic interior or exterior lighting. The motion of the camera also draws attention to itself, disrupting the illusion of continuity, as in a Chinese restaurant scene in which the camera moves with the revolving tabletop as the characters talk during their meal (2.2). Techniques of Alienation

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The L Word regularly violates familiar television conventions in ways that can cause considerable displeasure to viewers. First, the show does not offer a coherent narrative that develops in a logical sequence, driven by plausible causes. Viewers who have learned to expect this convention can watch conventional narratives unfold without having to think about what is happening and why. The L Word regularly offers unexplained narrative developments or interrupts the plot development in confusing ways, thereby presenting what seems like a discontinuous or disjointed narrative. The most obvious example of this device comes at the start of the third season, which begins “six months later” but fails to explain much of what happened in those months until much later. Second, The L Word refuses the expectation of conventional psychological realism in character development. Standard Hollywood storytelling teaches viewers to expect characters to behave in ways that seem plausible and “realistic.” The goals and motivations of the characters should also be clear and consistent; significant changes in personality or behavior have to be explained. On The L Word, many characters undergo surprising transformations and behave in ways that seem unexpected, even unlikely, for them. How can we understand Helena’s metamorphosis from a destructive, selfish villain into a supportive friend and a welcome member of the circle, or Alice’s transformation from a cheery free spirit to a desperate, dysfunctional,

The L Word’s Reflexivity

pill-popping stalker? How does Tina change from being a warm, nurturing, motherly type into a shrill, mean-spirited harridan, while the driven, ambitious Bette ends up rudderless, unemployed, and broke? These puzzling developments require viewers to devise their own explanations; vibrant conversations on Internet message boards include viewers who are frustrated and annoyed by this technique and viewers who enjoy the opportunity to develop their own theories. Third, The L Word also regularly blurs the boundary between fiction and nonfiction, moving back and forth from fictional to real characters, texts, and objects with abandon. For example, in the “random act” scene that begins episode 3.6, where Bette and her boyfriend are in Bette’s dorm room at Yale looking at Robert Mapplethorpe photographs, the young woman we see is dressed in the outfit of torn sweatshirt and leggings that Jennifer Beals made a national fashion craze in her first film, Flashdance (1983). Immediately after completing the film, Beals enrolled at Yale, from which she graduated four years later. The woman does look like the young Beals, but she has the mature Bette’s voice, and we hear often in the show about Bette’s Yale education. So this scene breaks the illusion of realism by playing with the intertextual connections between the life and career of the real Jennifer Beals and what we know about the life and career of Bette Porter. The show also features a wide range of guests who are well known and accomplished in their fields, from Gloria Steinem and Dr. Susan Love to Billie Jean King, Russell Simmons, and Arianna Huffington. Many other celebrities play characters that are much like themselves, as when Snoop Dogg portrays Slim Daddy. These guest appearances tend to be minimally connected to the narrative. The success of these breaks in alienating audiences is perhaps captured by many fans’ vocal objections to what they perceive as pointless and self-indulgent “stunt casting.” These encounters between “real” people and fictional characters can disrupt the pleasurable suspension of disbelief.

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These devices that break down the illusions of storytelling rupture the sense that we are seeing a transparent reflection of an underlying reality. Further, they require us as viewers to be active and engaged, not just passively take in an entertaining narrative. Since such stories leave puzzling gaps, we are forced to try to figure out what happened and why. The phenomenal volume of discussion of these kinds of questions on message boards suggests that audiences have indeed been alienated by these formal elements, infuriated and displeased by what they perceive as evidence of terrible writing and editing. Viewers have accused the producers of being utterly incompetent, unable to maintain the simplest levels of continuity. These critics who are not getting what they want exemplify what Christian Metz characterized as “bad object” criticism, viciously attacking those involved with the show with a level of outrage, and even malevolence, that is remarkable (Stam 1985, 158-59). Others may be less vehement, but they also frequently express a wish on message boards for an otherwise completely conventional fictional television show, just one that features attractive lesbian characters. These viewers don’t want their illusions shattered, and they want what they see as a positive representation of lesbians with conventional happy endings. But if we read what the producers have done as reflexive, in that they are trying to create a different kind of audience, one aware and critical of the representation of lesbians and the ideologies that underpin those representations, then many of these alienating gestures are intelligible. Within the frame of an apparently conventional and enjoyable serial drama, The L Word uses reflexive and alienating devices to invite us to think hard about representation and ideology, to cue us not to take what we are seeing at face value.

Chapter 3

The L Word’s Complicitous Critique of Hollywood

T

he L Word provides viewers with a detailed analysis of the industrial structures that have produced the systematic misrepresentation of lesbians. It offers a brutal critique of Hollywood and the people who have power in the media and entertainment industries, most of whom are portrayed as greedy, unethical, narcissistic, power mad, abusive, and completely uninterested in the real-world effects of the representations they create. Various story arcs present cogent explanations of why stereotypical Hollywood representations do not change; the people in charge of creating them care only about money and power and therefore choose to make hopelessly conventional products that they imagine will appeal to large audiences. Further, the show suggests that most creators in Hollywood are oblivious to their own sexism and heterosexism, thoughtlessly reproducing formulaic stories that either misrepresent lesbians or completely erase them. By showing so many examples of production, the program precisely anatomizes all the industrial practices and assumptions that lead to misrepresentations in Hollywood. The L Word’s solution, of course, is for lesbians to take control of their own representation. But in order to gain access to

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the power to represent on a large scale, the program has to participate in precisely these Hollywood structures that are so problematic, trying to change them from within. The show makes visible how difficult this is to do, while simultaneously acknowledging the compromises it has had to make. Indeed, the program is quite self-reflexive about this point; the extended story arc about the transformation of Jenny’s novel, Lez Girls, into a mainstream Hollywood movie provides a context in which to offer both a detailed critique of Hollywood’s industrial norms and a self-parodying representation of the show’s own production. The L Word thus presents what critic Linda Hutcheon has called a “complicitous critique” of the media industries (1989, 1–10). It exposes the ways that the machinery of representation has historically been used to distort and mislead while acknowledging that it is using that same machinery to tell its own stories. The program’s ambivalence about its location in this corrupt system is highlighted by its frequent references to prostitution and other contexts in which the characters must compromise their values and ideals because of economic pressures or because they seek to achieve a greater good. But having gained a foothold inside capitalist media structures, the show demonstrates how it is possible to begin to subvert and rewrite Hollywood’s codes and conventions from within. In the end, we are reminded that however flawed and compromised by corporate pressures The L Word’s representations were, it did manage to offer complex, alternative visions of lesbian lives that exceeded anything that had been seen before on television. Ultimately, the show argues that, given the powerful influence of representation on the lives of queer people, it really matters that these stories are being told, and it matters who is telling them. I argue that there are four main elements to The L Word’s complicitous critique of Hollywood: its portrayal of media executives; its account of movie stars and the operations of the Hollywood closet; its deconstruction of the process of making

The Business of Hollywood

The L Word never lets us forget that the mass media is a vast, complex, and multibillion-dollar business, run by enormously wealthy people. Indeed, the portrait of powerful Hollywood people that the show offers is quite negative; these people care only about amassing ever more money and power, and have no regard for anyone but themselves. They feel entitled to take whatever they want, and they use and discard others with little thought. They are also presented as having little interest in the nature or the quality of the representations they’re putting out as long as they make money. Throughout the series, we see examples of the making of predictable, formulaic, and generally bad productions that keep the worst and most damaging stereotypes and ideologies about women and gay people circulating widely. Further, the people responsible for these productions are portrayed as sexists who treat women as property or sex objects, which suggests why their productions are so often degrading to women. To work in Hollywood, then, is to have to contend with this nasty mix of greed and misogyny. But along the way, the show has some fun turning the camera on the bosses (mostly men) who perpetuate this problematic system. Hollywood’s powerful people seem to think everyone is for sale, and anyone who becomes involved with them must play by their rules. Shane meets Hollywood mogul Harry Samchuk through her troubled friend Clive (Matthew Currie Holmes), who is Harry’s current sexual interest. Shane warns him, “You are going to be the latest boy toy to a bunch of Hollywood fags who are going to pass you around and suck you dry. They’re vampires, man, and you should know that,” but Clive insists he has no other options. As a favor to Clive, with whom she

Complicitous Critique of Hollywood

representations and misrepresentations; and its self-reflexive, parodic acknowledgment of its own participation in this corrupt and corrupting system.

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once did sex work, Shane agrees to meet Harry, who leers and paws at her. He will not believe she is not a man and that she is not available to him until he grabs her crotch. Releasing her, he says, “I must admit I am disappointed because it’s always the skinny boys that have, ooh, the biggest cocks!” Shane walks away in disgust, but Harry remains intrigued and decides he is going to make Shane’s career by introducing her to powerful Hollywood wives like Cherie Jaffe (Rosanna Arquette) (1.06). Harry assumes he can control Shane. So does Cherie, who summons Shane to her home to do her hair and immediately makes a pass at her. While they’re having sex, Cherie exclaims, “You are fucking amazing! I can’t wait to tell Harry. He’s going to be so jealous!” They are interrupted by Cherie’s husband, Steve (James Purcell), whose hand Shane comically avoids shaking. To Shane’s horror, Steve follows her outside, but it is only to pay her. He says, “You made my wife look hot, seriously. I saw her, I thought I was going to bang her right there. You know how many married men think that about their wives? None! You could be a gold mine!” (1.10) The men are crass and sexist, and everyone seems to be playing some game in which Shane is a mere token; she is the powerless one being passed around by the vampires. The Jaffes imagine they own Shane, providing the financing so she can open her own salon, buying her expensive gifts, and requiring her to spend time with their troubled daughter, Clea. When Shane worries about mixing business with pleasure, Cherie says, a bit menacingly, “You’re not trying to break up with me, are you? Because that would be a very, very bad thing to do” (1.10). Eventually, Steve and Cherie wrongly come to believe that Shane had sex with Clea, and Shane and Cherie’s affair is exposed. Steve threatens to kill Shane if she comes near his family again, and Cherie tells Shane that no matter how much she loves her, money and status matter more to her than love (1.13). This story arc suggests that members of the Hollywood elite imagine that they can basically buy or sell anyone they want,

Complicitous Critique of Hollywood

and expect complete obedience to their whims and desires from everyone in their orbit. Although Shane tries to maintain her integrity, she cannot quite control her own life anymore. Shane’s conflict serves as an allegory of working in Hollywood; those who work in the system may gain a lot but may also lose their autonomy and their voices. The narrative of Hollywood’s abuse of money and power, and its reduction of virtually everyone to some kind of prostitution, is more fully developed in season 2, when viewers are introduced to Veronica Bloom (Camryn Mannheim), a highpowered studio boss who sees potential in Shane and hires her as an assistant. Through this story arc, we are given a particularly jaded vision of how Hollywood operates. Veronica may be a brilliant producer, but she treats everyone around her abusively. Everyone fears her, and her subordinates are portrayed as sycophantic and terrified. She is crass and sexist, screams vile insults at people, throws things, and constantly threatens to use her power to get others to obey her wishes. She is mystified that this behavior does not result in loyalty. When Veronica first appears, she is storming onto a movie set on which an actress has refused to work and has therefore stalled the entire production. The camera looks down the length of the period set, revealing all the machinery of artifice that filmmaking involves. Despite Veronica’s ranting and threats, no one can get the production rolling again. Shane, who has been hired as a hairdresser, speaks kindly to the actress, who then agrees to resume work. Veronica summons Shane to her office and offers her a job as her assistant because she has the “rare and special skill” of “knowing how to talk to people.” A puzzled Shane accepts; we understand that she is not part of this surreal world because she is not particularly interested in a job that Veronica claims any ambitious person in Hollywood would do anything to get and because talking to someone with respect does not seem difficult to her. Since she doesn’t care about the job, Shane refuses to endure Veronica’s insults and

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abuse; unlike the other staffers we see, she won’t sell herself or compromise her integrity (2.4). Shane’s first assignment is to meet with a woman whose life story Veronica wants to option. “Priscilla,” a prostitute who escaped the Russian mob, is wary of her Hollywood suitors. After making a pitch, Veronica leaves Shane behind to close the deal. Since Shane also has a history of sex work, she earns Priscilla’s trust by talking honestly with her. It is no coincidence that the story to be optioned is about being forced into prostitution by powerful interests, and that the deal is made by two former prostitutes; the story within the story is a mirror of the larger narrative (2.5). The theme of Hollywood forcing creative people into artistic prostitution is reemphasized in nearly every interaction Shane has with Veronica. In one sequence, Veronica insists that Shane accompany her home and cater to her every whim; then she announces that they will watch Funny Girl, which is her “tonic” when she’s upset. When Shane politely declines, Veronica screams at her departing back, “I’m fucking paying you. You will stay here until I tell you you can go. You will do what I tell you to do. You will fucking watch a movie with me if tell you to. You’ll tickle my back if I tell you to tickle my back. You’ll fuck me if I tell you to fuck me. Come back here!” (2.7) Later, when Veronica berates Shane for rejecting the great opportunity she has given her, Shane retorts that she is “not one of your little tricks” (2.9). Shane can walk away; the former sex worker is the only person not for sale. She will not be seduced by Hollywood money and power again. When The L Word takes up the story of the making of Lez Girls, we get an even more caustic portrait of Hollywood leadership. In season 4, Aaron Kornbluth (Brian Markinson), known for producing trashy formula movies like Zombies on a Train, takes over as the head of Shaolin Studios. Helena says he’s a person whose films would appeal only to someone “with the intellect of a troll” (4.2), and she’s right. He is a sexist, soulless

Complicitous Critique of Hollywood

cretin, willing to do anything to make money, and utterly lacking in artistic integrity. He’s also a bully, constantly shouting at his employees and threatening to fire them if they don’t do his bidding. Throughout this story arc, Aaron is contrasted strongly with Tina, who is portrayed as a cultured, intelligent producer who knows how to make serious movies and cares deeply about the quality of her work. But she needs the job, so despite her strong dislike of Jenny’s novel, she complies when Aaron tells her that she must secure the rights to the book or be fired. (She does forcefully press a large phallic carrot into a juicer as she argues with him.) So she compromises her integrity, telling Jenny how much she loves the story. Later, Tina admits to Bette how much she hates “having to kiss Jenny’s ass, because every studio in town is blowing smoke up it. All I really want to do is wring her neck!” (4.7) And yet, once she secures the rights by enduring a nasty and manipulative bidding war and by convincing Jenny that she is best qualified “to protect the integrity of the project,” Tina genuinely works hard to make a mainstream film that is honest about lesbian lives and faithful to a lesbian perspective. But she is repeatedly undermined by Aaron. Hollywood also empowers people inappropriately and destructively. When the hedge-fund billionaire William Halsey (Wallace Shawn), who knows nothing about making movies, decides to fund Shaolin’s next three films as a vanity project, Aaron panders to his every whim. Because he is starstruck, William is easily manipulated and led to affirm bad ideas. The worst of these is the distribution company’s insistence that the ending of the film be changed back into a heterosexual love story. Since they have no investment in the movie’s premise, caring only about money, these men will destroy the movie, and Tina has no power to protect it. The overall message of these stories is clear: lesbians continue to be misrepresented because the power and money to make mainstream texts is controlled by greedy, egotistical sexists—mostly men—whose desire for

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big profits and lack of concern about the effects of their representations prevent them from ever taking the risk of telling a new kind of story. The Hollywood Closet

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Over the years, The L Word spent considerable time exploring the effects of the closet on gay people, particularly those in the public eye. More specifically, the program linked the continuing problem of misrepresentation to the complicated forms of homophobia that drive most gay actors to stay in the closet and cause most actors to be reluctant to play gay roles. Once again, the problem is economic; Hollywood’s leaders—even the gay ones—believe that the heterosexual public will not pay to see actors who are known to be gay in leading roles. They also believe that the “mainstream” public will not want to see stories about gay lives, and that gay audiences are not large enough to make expensive productions economically viable. Even if Hollywood were to tell a gay story, many actors would avoid it out of fear that playing a gay role would damage their careers because everyone would assume they were gay. The L Word analyzes how this closet works as it reflexively takes us to various film and television sets as production is in progress. This analysis constitutes another aspect of the show’s complicitous critique; it explains sympathetically why people feel forced into complicity to protect their livelihoods, but it also presents the negative consequences of the Hollywood closet clearly and critically. Episode 2.8 begins by showing us a scene of three people in period costume climbing a mountain trail. A voice yells, “Cut!” and the camera pulls back to reveal the machinery of filmmaking (sets, cameras, lights, technicians, actors), showing once again how the illusion we just watched was created. We are on the set of one of action hero Burr Connor’s (Tony Goldwyn) westerns, and this scene introduces the story line in which Jenny will ghostwrite the star’s memoirs.

Complicitous Critique of Hollywood

The story about Burr Connor explores the economic realities and the devastating personal costs of Hollywood’s homophobia. In the context of discussing his memoirs, Burr argues to Jenny and her writing teacher, Charlotte Birch (Sandra Bernhard), that he cannot possibly come out as a gay man because it will destroy his credibility as an action star and therefore end his career. Indeed, it becomes clear that he has gone to enormous and self-destructive lengths to protect his secret. Burr insists that he has no choice but to hide his sexuality—his career as a macho hero would be over if the fans ever discovered he was a “card-carrying member of the cocksucker club” (2.9). Why is this? The fact that Burr Connor, the ultimate macho western hero, turns out to be a closeted gay man implicitly undermines the stereotypical and simple-minded views of gender and sexual identity that formulaic genres like the western endlessly reproduce. And since popular culture typically constructs ideal masculinity as defined by heterosexuality and homophobia, by definition a “real man” can’t be a gay man. But Hollywood’s economic logics prevent challenging or rewriting this damaging falsehood. Jenny’s observation that he and his longtime costar Rod Sebring (Christopher Shyer) seem deeply connected provokes Burr to admit that Rod was the love of his life, but that he drove him away and destroyed his career because he feared Rod was not being discreet enough in his sexual relationships with men. He had his publicist plant an item “outing” Rod in the tabloids, thus ruining his career; the fact that the ploy worked suggests that Burr’s fears of exposure are well founded (2.9). Charlotte argues that times have changed and that he should come out in his memoirs, but Burr refuses, threatening to sue her, as he has so many others, “for what you just accused me of.” These details allude jokingly to some much-gossipedabout famous actors who have sued repeatedly to refute charges that they are gay, including Tom Cruise and John Travolta (Ehrenstein 1998, 319–35). But Burr also admits to Jenny that

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his life is lonely and unhappy (2.9). Significantly, we see that Burr is made miserable by his choice to surrender to the pressures of homophobia; the show understands his choice but hardly affirms it. Indeed, this story is intertwined with one about Dana’s decision to come out publicly, which is presented as personally liberating and actually beneficial to her career. The show also delineates the ways that the Hollywood system relies on a vast engine of publicity discourses to convince consumers to believe in the constructed images of particular performers, and to believe that stars really are authentically like the kinds of characters they play. Here, as elsewhere, we are shown that these discourses hide the truth of celebrities’ real lives and behavior. It’s part of the business, and vast sums of money are at stake. Charlotte’s notion that times have changed underlies the argument some make that celebrities should come out so as to be role models to queer youth and to demonstrate to the heterosexual public that figures whom they much admire are gay, which might reduce prejudices and stereotypes (Signorile 1993). This might be true, but the risk is enormous. Gay debates about the ethics of outing are further explored when Alice develops a certain celebrity with her “Alice in Lesbo­land” podcasts on OurChart. This leads to an invitation to a top-secret party, what she calls “one of those velvet mafia underground-type parties for all the closeted Hollywood homos.” She and Tasha attend the party, where they see Darryl Brewer (Jason Collins), an NBA star and married family man. Alice surreptitiously takes a cell phone video of Brewer and his date dancing and cuddling. In a form of juxtaposition the show often employs, scenes of the secret party are intercut with scenes of out gay people partying at the opening of the new lesbian club SheBar, drawing a clear contrast between living openly and in the closet (5.4). The next day, Alice sees Brewer on television, commenting on the coming-out of retired NBA player John Amaechi with viciously homophobic

Complicitous Critique of Hollywood

language. Alice is so incensed by his hypocrisy that she makes a podcast incorporating the video she made at the party, which quickly goes viral. Invited to appear on national television, she defends her actions by arguing that when Brewer used his stature to attack gay people, he forfeited the right to be protected by other gay people. Soon we are shown the standard publicist’s damage-control statement; surrounded by his wife and children, a humbled Brewer vows to “ask the Lord’s forgiveness” and “seek the help that I need,” a ploy clearly designed to preserve his endorsement contracts and fan support as well as to accommodate the presumed homophobia of sports fans (5.5). Alice’s notoriety leads to an invitation to audition for a television talk show called The Look, an obvious parody of ABC’s The View (1997-) (5.7). Here too we see exposed the process by which misrepresentations are reproduced, as the producer, who stands next to the cameraman, directs both the performers and the audience’s responses. She and one of the hosts explain to Alice that they “definitely want a gay” for the job because “gay brings ratings in daytime.” But, they caution, they want “the right kind of gay.” One performer squeals, “Like, fun gay. Not angry gay. Gossip, gay lifestyle—you know, fun!” They love the “stunt” they think she pulled on Brewer, failing to see the principle behind her action or the cost to him of her decision. When Alice asks, “You want me to out people? On every episode?” the producer chirps, “Only if you want the job.” The L Word thus contrasts this unprincipled heterosexist desire for scandalous gay gossip with the position that it is fair to out only closeted celebrities who have publicly attacked the gay community. Alice really wants the job, so when she is prompted to “Dish! Dish! Dish!” about other gay celebrities, she panics and strongly implies that Nikki Stevens, who is playing the lead in Lez Girls, is a lesbian. This gets her the job, but she won’t keep it for long because she violates the requirement that she be a “fun gay” person by reading on air a letter from a teen girl whose brother had been killed in a gay bashing. By telling the truth

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about homophobia and violence, Alice uses her celebrity to raise awareness and argue for gay acceptance, which is shown to have a positive effect on the teenagers who look up to her. But it also gets her fired. Alice’s experience suggests that while she can tell the truth about gay lives in her podcasts, which she controls, once she gets into the Hollywood system, she will have to conform to the minstrel-like role of the gossipy gay, forbidden to do anything that might challenge the homophobia of the audience. The economic pressures that constrain any threats to conventional heterosexist representations are clear. Alice’s near outing of Nikki creates a context for further analysis of the logics and mechanisms of the Hollywood closet, and we see exactly how this process works and what its costs are to those who participate (5.7, 5.8). Nikki is a talented actor, a fast-rising star, and also a lesbian. Her agents don’t want her to do the film because they fear audiences will think she is a lesbian, an identification her handlers believe will destroy her ability to command multimillion-dollar salaries for her next films. Tina manages Alice’s revelation by having the studio issue a press release stating that only one member of the cast is a lesbian, and naming her. But when a tabloid cover story asks, “Is Nikki a Lez Girl?” her agents threaten to pull her out of the film in midproduction. Again, the economic dimension is foremost, as Nikki’s agent, himself gay, screams at Tina, “She has a hundred-million-dollar, career-making blockbuster opening tomorrow night, and all anyone wants to talk about this morning is your little turd of a movie!” He groans, “The last thing I need is the zit-faced teen-boy demographic thinking that Nikki Stevens doesn’t like dick.” Tina offers the standard Hollywood solution: “We need her to be photographed at her premiere with someone hip and hot and hunky and handsome. Somebody whose dick she might like.” Despite the fact that Nikki and Jenny, who are having a wild fling on the set, are deeply upset about this plan to provide Nikki with a “beard,”

The Process of Representation: Lez Girls

When The L Word turns to showing each step of the process of making Lez Girls, we get a multilayered, reflexive, and often amusing account of exactly how lesbians are systematically misrepresented by Hollywood. We see every key moment in the production process, and therefore every point at which the film could go horribly awry. At the same time, we are shown a retelling of the making of season 1 of The L Word. This show-withina-show parodically reveals the multiple levels of fictional reality that coexist within the narrative. It also jokes about aspects of the first season’s production that are widely known to have really happened, weaves a complicated web of intertextual

Complicitous Critique of Hollywood

Nikki does go to the premiere on the arm of her handsome Lez Girls costar, and Jenny is literally left standing on the sidewalk outside the theater, alone and heartbroken (5.8). Voicing the view that being gay is nothing to be ashamed of and so should be reported on straightforwardly, Alice challenges Tina’s participation in this dishonest enterprise: “She’s a lezzie. It’s a lezzie film. What’s the big deal?” Tina explains her problem, which is different from the agent’s: “It’s because this is a lesbian film. . . . We want this movie to reach a large, mainstream audience. . . . And if everyone thinks the lead of our movie is gay, then that makes it a small, little niche film” (5.7). Rejecting this rationale, Alice accuses Tina of thoroughgoing hypocrisy, equating her with Colonel Davis (Kelly McGillis), the (closeted lesbian) lawyer who is trying to expel Tasha from the army for being gay. Tasha’s story ends differently, of course, when she gives up the military career she loves to live honestly; her choice is affirmed in a way the more complicitous ones are not (5.8). Tina’s argument goes to the heart of the show’s complicitous critique: the only way to change the representations that reproduce stereotypes of gender and sexuality is by conforming to some aspects of Hollywood’s industrial logics.

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references to itself and to other texts, and incorporates and humorously acknowledges many of the audience’s criticisms of the show. This extended story also constitutes an allegory of The L Word’s participation in the Hollywood system. The film’s lesbian writer/director and producer must fight to protect the film’s lesbian story and point of view from the soulless corporate bosses who are locked in a sexist and heterosexist mindset, from the assumptions that perpetuate the Hollywood closet, and from the capitalist logics that structure the production. Along the way, they must compromise with all these forces in order to make their movie available to a large, mainstream audience. They are motivated by the belief that these kinds of stories need to be told, and told by the people who really understand them. In this regard, the Lez Girls story offers a further complicitous critique of Hollywood; it is simultaneously a justification for working within the system and a scathing critique of how that system works. Jenny’s novel is a thinly fictionalized (and quite nasty) account of her friendship circle, and its narrative retells the stories that viewers watched in season 1 from Jenny’s point of view. The names and details are barely changed (for example, Bette and Tina become Bev and Nina), and so although Jenny insists repeatedly, “It’s fiction!” her friends are incensed at her portrayal of them, and many other readers take the book to be a true account of events. Already there are several levels of “reality” at issue: the real world of LA lesbians, The L Word’s fictional world, and Jenny’s retelling of that fictional story. When filming begins, yet another level is added as viewers watch the rehearsal and filming of scenes that were broadcast in season 1, played by actors who are playing the main characters—who are, of course, also played by actors. This layering of stories within stories allows the show to reaffirm its own constructed and fictional nature, highlighting that we don’t really know what “the real” is. Implicitly, this

Complicitous Critique of Hollywood

makes a joke of the frequent criticism that the show doesn’t accurately represent or reflect the lives of most “real” lesbians; of course it doesn’t, in many ways. It isn’t a documentary, although many people apparently watched it as though it were, taking it at face value. As the story unfolds, Tina becomes the primary character who fights to “protect the integrity of the project” from Hollywood’s conventional assumptions and ways of doing business. Her struggle reveals both the problems lesbian creators face and the compromises they have to make to work in the system. One important moment in the process comes in episode 4.9, when Tina and Jenny seek a director for the movie. They interview three well-known male film directors and producers— John Stockwell, Garry Marshall, and Lawrence Bender, playing themselves—each of whom suggests a different idiotically sexist and heterosexist approach to the film. These encounters both make fun of these directors’ actual history of representing women and present them as completely unable to imagine how to tell a lesbian story without falling back on stereotypical codes and conventions. Jenny and Tina are appalled, but then they find a lesbian independent film director, Kate Arden (Anabella Sciorra), who does know how to write and direct the film and who can define the problem precisely; “It’s a struggle to try to do something that you really believe in and to stay true to your vision with all these fucking Hollywood suits trying to pigeonhole you” (4.10). But it isn’t just the clueless directors and the “suits” whose actions threaten to derail the film. There are also many conflicts between the lesbians involved in the project because they do not all share the same vision of the film or have the same goals. This conflict is exacerbated by the fact that in The L Word’s Hollywood, hierarchies of power are always in flux, and virtually everyone is constantly scheming and jockeying for position. The ruthlessness of Hollywood power struggles appears vividly when Jenny is fired from the movie for her

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incompetent adaptation of her novel, then schemes with William to fire Kate from the movie and become its writer and director. This deranged system enables Jenny, who has no experience with screenwriting or directing, to gain immense power through a manipulative alliance with a powerful man. Subsequently, in one of The L Word’s many intertextual homages to film history, Jenny herself is pushed out of the director’s chair by the unscrupulous and ambitious Adele Channing (Malaya Rivera Drew), whose climb to the top over the course of many episodes closely parallels the plot of the camp classic All about Eve (1950). These developments make visible the challenges that face filmmakers who aspire to do something different from the norm and remind us how easily people can be seduced by money and power. The vignettes that open each episode in season 5 carry the multilayered story of making the film forward. In episode 5.1, we see Jenny’s computer screen as she types the screenplay for the film. Behind her screen, as the words materialize, the frame fills with what she’s describing, and suddenly we see the scene from the pilot episode (1.1) in which Jenny appears at the party at Bette and Tina’s house. As she types, the characters act out a very different version of their initial encounters, one in which Tina, Bette, and Shane are exaggeratedly predatory lesbians who “ogle Jesse’s cute little butt.” The camera zooms in on Jenny’s behind (twice!), a nice intertextual joke about Jenny’s lesbian gaze at Marina’s butt in the grocery store in that same episode. Having Jenny’s writing blend into live action also parodies the alienating segments in season 2 when Jenny’s short stories became live-action sequences. Cheesy 1970s action-show music emphasizes the unreality of the images we are seeing. The effect of all this is to reinforce again that these are representations, not reflections of reality, and to wryly acknowledge those viewers who complained about the show’s lack of realism. Episode 5.2 begins with Aaron gesturing vulgarly and demanding that Jenny and Tina include more sex scenes in the

Complicitous Critique of Hollywood

As Jenny types the screenplay for Lez Girls, we see reenacted her distorted version of scenes from the pilot episode of The L Word. This story arc reflexively emphasizes the process of representation.

script. “More lesbian sex! I want more of it! You’re the ones who told me lesbians were always sleeping with their friends. So let’s see it! See them hook up!” Shot in a way that connects him to Mark Wayland’s equally vile porn producer, Aaron proposes hookups between various implausible couples, and as Tina and Jenny chorus, “That would never happen!” we see his fantasies played out by The L Word actresses against a white backdrop, again to the accompaniment of the corny music. Although played for laughs—Bette and Helena dressed identically and wrestling for control of the encounter is priceless—the sequence shows that Aaron does not understand this world; he is interested in seeing sex, not in the truth of the characters or the story. Against their objections, he insists, “This is Hollywood. We can do whatever the hell we want.” Aaron’s view is the conventional heterosexist one that must be resisted, but the sequence also winks at viewers who criticized the show for pandering to attract voyeuristic male viewers.

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Casting is another issue on which Tina must convince Jenny to compromise with Hollywood’s codes (5.4). We see the fictional auditions being filmed and watch them replayed on a screen as the characters review them. Jenny doesn’t want Nikki Stevens to play the lead because “she looks like she just walked out of a Maxim magazine.” Evoking The L Word’s critics’ complaints about the conventional attractiveness of the actors, she continues plaintively, “She doesn’t look like a writer!” Tina looks pained when she explains that Jenny’s choice is “not fuckable,” arguing that Nikki is a good actor who “completely sold the kiss,” and so will be convincing as a lesbian on-screen. Aaron delivers the Hollywood economic imperative: Nikki has sex appeal and “We need heat to put asses in the seats! Do you have any idea what kind of a risk I’m taking on this film?!” But Jenny is not persuaded until Nikki begs for the role so as to escape the way she is typecast into “stupid Michael Bay films.” Arguing, “I know what I look like, and I know why guys like me, and all that stupid Hollywood bullshit,” Nikki pleads for a chance to play this character, to whose story she deeply relates. Jenny finally agrees, but not before insisting that Nikki being gay won’t get her the role: one last joke about those fans who wanted lesbian actors in all the roles. Once the film cast is assembled and starts rehearsing, The L Word begins to parody itself on even more levels. Jenny throws a party at which the actors can meet their “real-life” counterparts, and references to the narrative events of season 1 and to the story of making that season begin to multiply rapidly as these different levels of reality all coexist in time together. “Shaun” anxiously insists to Shane that she’s not gay; biracial Bette becomes angry when she learns that “Bev” is white; and Jenny and Nikki “workshop” the scene in which Marina followed Jenny into the bathroom, and their reenactment leads to them having sex—in Jenny’s closet (5.5). As Tina later giggles to Bette about Jenny’s affair with the woman who’s playing her, “Jenny is, um, fucking the star . . . Or should I say she’s . . . fucking herself!” (5.6)

Complicitous Critique of Hollywood

Episode 5.6 opens with the actors playing Bev and Nina ineptly rehearsing on the set; they have no idea how to play the sex scene. To their relief, Jenny announces, “I’m getting a lesbian sex coach to teach you,” which is something The L Word producers actually did. Jenny insists that locations in Vancouver, where The L Word is shot, “don’t pass as LA.” The L Word actresses also wander the movie set that re-creates their world; Kit comments on the décor of the “Café Pluto,” while Bette and Tina sneak kisses in Bev and Nina’s bedroom (5.8). Perhaps the best example of the show’s comic self-referentiality comes in episode 5.11, as Jenny edits the scene in the Planet in which Bette tells Tina that she has broken up with Candace and wants Tina back. In this version, Tina doesn’t storm out angrily; she takes Bette back as their friends chorus, “Awwww!” One gushes, “I don’t know what I’d have done if they split up,” while another agrees, “They’re the best couple that ever lived!” A third coos, “They’re role models for the rest of us, they really are,” and a fourth adds piously, “And an example for the straight world.” This saccharine version of events gently sends up those fans known as TiBetters, who so avidly demanded that the show reunite Bette and Tina and who wished for a conventional, romantic ending to the series. And yet the show did give those vocal fans what they wanted; just as Jenny rewrote the original story to give her movie a happy ending, season 5 of the show brought Bette and Tina back together. At the end of season 5, the program returns forcefully to its analysis of how the Hollywood system can defeat attempts to change representation from within. It turns out that the marketers don’t think the lesbian happy ending that Tina praised so highly to Bette as “offering such a positive message to young gay women” will test well in “flyover country,” and they want to reshoot the ending to reunite Jesse with Jim. Aaron loves it, of course, but Tina is beside herself. Later in that episode, when Jenny is given a chance to speak to the cast and crew at the wrap party for Lez Girls, she makes clear what’s at issue: “I know that

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the movie is out of my hands now, and I hope that those people entrusted with this responsibility will honor it.” They won’t. When Tina learns that Adele has agreed to change the ending of the story, she is furious, addressing the issue directly: “This is bullshit! We worked really hard on a movie that we believed in, and the marketing people just come along and change the whole ending? The guy gets the girl, the end? This is the movie that was supposed to change all that.” Adele argues, “Look, Tina, if the movie is too gay, it’s going to alienate audiences.” Tina retorts, “Too gay?! It’s a movie about lesbians!” Tina’s objection is lost on the studio boss and the financial backer, who respond idiotically that the movie is still “chock-full” of lesbians and that only one character changes. Aaron shrugs, “It’s not that big a deal.” When the others in the group hear about the change to the ending, they are incredulous. Alice asks, “You’re not going to let them get away with it, are you?” but Tina’s powerlessness is clear. Tina demands of Adele, “How do you live with yourself?” but Adele just smiles calmly, secure in the new three-picture deal that her cooperation with the bosses has earned her (5.12). This plot development might seem to be pessimistic about the possibility of making alternative images of lesbians within the Hollywood system. But early in season 6, we learn that the original negative of the film has been stolen from the lab, so no copy of the film is available for release, and an investment of many millions of dollars is apparently lost (6.3). It’s not until the final episode of that season that Shane discovers the film reels hidden in Jenny’s attic; Jenny has stolen her film back from those who would misrepresent lesbian lives (6.8). And as the entire series ends, and Tina prepares to move to New York for a great new job with the company that made Brokeback Mountain (2005)—a financially successful gay-themed film with mainstream appeal—we have no reason to believe that she and Shane will ever reveal what they have discovered. But even if they did return the movie, we are given to understand that except for the changed ending, the film does have

Complicitous Critique of Hollywood

“integrity,” and does present an alternative to the formulaic Hollywood representations of lesbians. Throughout this Hollywood story arc, The L Word offers an implicit defense of the compromises its creators had to make to reach a mainstream audience and offer a representation of lesbian life that has had an impact. The program may be conventional in many ways, but at the same time it used varied strategies to challenge and rewrite those conventions. Along the way, it made an argument that even within a sexist, male-dominated capitalist media system, the possibility of telling new stories in new ways does exist, and that every queer story that is created and gains a broad audience contributes to destabilizing and transforming hegemonic images and assumptions and thus also contributes to changing the world. The victories may be only partial, but they are real, and they create spaces for more stories and more possibilities for transforming the world.

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Genre: Soap-drama and Politics

T

he L Word is one of many shows in the hybrid genre that Glen Creeber has called “soap-drama.” Creeber argues that while such shows focus on the personal lives of a close-knit group of friends, using conventions of melodramatic serial narrative and characterization borrowed from soap operas, they also present the personal problems of the characters in ways that explore how the “micropolitics” of daily life are affected by larger, more public political questions (2004, 113–18). The personal is definitely the political on The L Word, as the framing of the struggles of the characters enables the show to take strong positions on many issues important to women and to queer people. In the early publicity surrounding The L Word, executive producer Ilene Chaiken denied any intention of advancing a political viewpoint. She insisted that her obligation was to entertain, not promote an agenda: “I rail against the idea that pop television is a political medium. . . . I am political in my life. But I am making serialized melodrama. I’m not a cultural missionary” (Glock 2005, 26). Such disclaimers are standard industry practice (Caldwell 2008, 316–43). I will argue, however, that politics and drama are very much entwined in The L Word.

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First, I argue that The L Word advocates specific political positions and uses varied dramatic devices to lead viewers to embrace its perspectives. Second, I analyze how the program makes visible the discriminatory effects of large social structures and powerful institutions on the lives of individual characters, showing exactly how their choices are constrained by institutional sexism and homophobia, and challenging the misrepresentations of queer lives that obscure (or sustain) these forms of discrimination. Third, I suggest that The L Word overtly promotes a range of feminist viewpoints, structuring many stories to condemn discrimination and affirm equality and choice. Finally, I explore how The L Word narrates and celebrates the gains of the feminist and LGBTQ movements, while also challenging the common post-feminist view that the work of these movements is done. The L Word uses the dramatic mode very effectively in order to win the audience’s allegiance to the values that organize its overarching politics and worldview. The program regularly shows how homophobia and sexism affect the daily lives of the characters, doing so in a manner that arouses feelings of empathy or outrage. Typically, such stories are framed as conflicts between characters acting in sexist or heteronormative ways and the characters with whom viewers have come to empathize. Viewers are positioned to see the problem from the queer characters’ point of view and to reject the perspectives of those who would discriminate. But unlike many mainstream dramas, The L Word does not generate strong feelings by presenting its characters as powerless victims; in both private and public contexts, the characters fight back and regularly defeat injustice and inequality in ways that are also structured to provoke strong viewer emotions. And also unlike more mainstream dramas, in which narrative resolutions tend to reinforce and affirm conventional values, The L Word’s narratives normalize and reinforce the values and ideologies of the lesbian world against those who purport to uphold “traditional

Genre: Soap-drama and Politics

family values.” Further, these apparently individual, personal problems are presented in a way that makes visible the social structures and institutions that create them and that need to be changed. Indeed, the program reverses the dominant cultural logic in which gay people constitute a problem for society; in the L world, antigay prejudice and the actions of those who would try to force their biases on others are presented as the social problems. In all these ways, The L Word is once again using conventional Hollywood dramatic structures to expose and rewrite dominant stories about lesbians. The L Word’s political analysis operates on a number of levels simultaneously, and the relationships between those levels are frequently explored. At the broadest level, the show makes visible how the logic of capitalism and heteronormative patriarchy shapes and constrains the characters’ choices. For example, we see over and over how Dana is made deeply miserable by her internalized homophobia and by the constant pressure from her agent, Conrad, to remain in the closet to preserve her earning potential as a professional athlete. Capitalism is structured to promote the most conservative social values, so Dana must appear in public with a male companion because, as Conrad insists, “that’s what people want to see.” Her companion, Harrison, affirms the view that Lara should understand that this is “just business”: “Out and proud does not sell cars” (1.5). This story portrays Lara and Dana’s romance as sweet and healthy, presenting Conrad as a sexist, heterosexist creep whose enforcement of heteronormativity endangers the couple’s relationship and happiness. Indeed, the two break up because Dana feels pressured by Lara to live more openly. In this scene, set in a restaurant, we first see a heterosexual couple nuzzling as both couples wait for tables. Then we see Dana and Lara in a similarly intimate shot, from which the camera cuts to the straight woman looking at them disapprovingly. Her gaze discomfits Dana, who pushes Lara away and then quotes Conrad as she tearfully breaks up with her; the watching couple

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disdainfully observes. This visual juxtaposition of heterosexual privilege and lesbian experience is a device the show uses frequently to highlight inequity; we see how the heteronormative gaze destroys this appealing couple. Yet when Subaru offers to feature Dana in an ad campaign aimed at gay audiences, she can symbolically reconcile this contradiction of capitalism, fire the villainous Conrad, and publicly claim her lesbian identity. Having made this decision, Dana exults, “You have no idea how good this feels!” conveying how oppressive and destructive the closet has been for her, and the narrative positions viewers to desire this outcome (1.8). But lest we think this utopian happy ending resolves the problem, the program repeatedly shows us characters who don’t have Dana’s choices and who are forced into lives of deceit and dishonesty that harm others, like movie stars Burr Connor and Nikki Stevens and NBA player Darryl Brewer. In this analysis, capitalist economic pressures and homophobia combine to destructively limit everyone’s freedom, and the clear moral lesson is that this is wrong. The L Word also makes visible the ways that major social and political institutions are structurally homophobic and therefore discriminate against gay people in unjust and damaging ways. One major target of The L Word’s critique is organized religion; in many cases, people who imagine themselves to be morally superior, doing God’s work by trying to restrict or censor gay people, are shown to be dishonest hypocrites and hateful bigots who are harming innocent people. We see this in small, private ways, as when Bette’s deeply religious father, Melvin (Ossie Davis), refuses to acknowledge her relationship with Tina on the grounds that it is sinful and wrong. Bette names and objects repeatedly to his deliberate erasure of Tina’s place in her life, and we are invited to sympathize with the couple at each of his slights. When Melvin demands from his hospital bed, “Don’t you ever think about the day you’re gonna stand in the judgment before God? What are you gonna say to him when he opens the book of

Genre: Soap-drama and Politics

life and reads your sins?” Bette retorts defiantly, “I will say I am your creation and I am proud,” and viewers are positioned to affirm her statement. Melvin’s mean-spirited self-righteousness is all the more upsetting because we know he has abandoned two wives to take up with other women, and he has encouraged Kit to pursue her relationship with Benjamin, even though he knows Benjamin is married (2.11). His hypocrisy, like that of so many other characters who invoke religion to justify their antigay activity, undercuts the moral authority he tries to claim. On a more public scale, The L Word takes up the important question of religious conservatives’ attempt to force their theological views on a secular, democratic society. In season 1, Bette must fight Christian activist Fae Buckley’s (Helen Shaver) attempt to prevent the opening of a controversial art show featuring works by queer and radical artists that Bette has brought to her museum. The emotional climax of the story arc comes when Bette debates Buckley on television, presenting a series of reasoned arguments about the role of art and free expression in a pluralistic society, while Buckley counters with the familiar arguments of the religious Right in favor of restricting queer lives and repressing queer visibility. But when Buckley sees that Bette may expose her hypocrisy, she makes a hateful personal attack. Shot in a tight close-up but canted in the frame, Buckley snarls, “The Bible condemns homosexuality. That’s why God took your unborn child from your lesbian lover. And that was a blessing. That baby is with him now. So he doesn’t have to suffer the degradation he would have been subject to had he been born into your depraved life.” The camera cuts to a close-up of Bette, who gasps and bursts into tears, and then to Tina, watching on TV, who leaps up in horror at Buckley’s cruelty. Buckley then tries to comfort Bette, who pushes her away, exclaiming, “Monster!” and her reaction is ours. For emphasis, the editing repeats Bette’s exclamation: Buckley is a monster (1.10). As I have argued elsewhere (2006), this conflict is an allegory for the real-world religious Right’s very powerful and

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effective opposition to the gay rights movement. The L Word mobilizes the audience’s emotional investments, inviting both strong moral support for the queer characters who are being personally victimized and condemnation of the hypocritical homophobes who blithely say, “Nothing personal” as they attack in viciously personal ways. In the end, Bette and her friends fight back and win, and the justice of their cause is strongly affirmed, as is the need for progressive people to continue to oppose the religious Right. The L Word also dramatizes the myriad ways that the state discriminates against gay families. Since the characters cannot marry, their families do not enjoy the same protections as heterosexual citizens. This becomes visible when Bette seeks a second-parent adoption of Angelica, and she and Tina must prove their suitability to be parents to an openly homophobic social worker, who insists that a child raised by lesbians will be damaged by the absence of a strong male figure in her life. Although Roberta’s (Cynthia Stevenson) excessive rhapsodizing about the importance of men is played for laughs, this is no joke; she can deny Bette a legal relationship to her child (3.1). In desperation, Bette asks her very conservative nephew David (Colin Lawrence), who described a queer party at the Planet as a “nightmare” attended by “freaks,” to vouch for them. He refuses in front of Roberta, saying that he believes in “traditional family values,” doesn’t support gay adoption, and will not lie to an agent of the government for them (3.2). The fact that heterosexist and homophobic people can force their values on lesbian families and deny them legal protections that others can take for granted invites viewers to feel strongly about how unjust public policy harms individual families. The L Word also stages a powerful moral argument against the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, which excludes openly gay service members from serving in the armed forces, when Tasha is accused of “homosexual conduct” and must fight in court to remain in the army. Since we know that Tasha comes

Genre: Soap-drama and Politics

from a military family and has served in Iraq with distinction, the foolishness of expelling a dedicated and effective leader from the ranks is made very evident. And because we have been introduced to other gay soldiers in her unit, we know this is not simply one person’s story. In addition, when military investigators invade Alice’s apartment and sneeringly amass evidence of Alice’s lesbian identity, we see that her personal life is not protected from the intrusion of the state; this policy harms both soldiers and civilians and denies queer people the rights of privacy that others enjoy. Alice is so upset by these bullies that she erases the Chart from her wall, a powerful metaphor for the invisibility forced on queer people by discriminatory laws. Furious, Tasha goes to her military lawyer’s home to protest, waking his wife and child, and the parallel to (and wrongness of) what happened to Alice is made visible by her pointed apology for inappropriately disturbing innocent people who have done nothing wrong (5.4). Called to testify at Tasha’s trial, Alice refuses to lie, instead slyly threatening to expose the closeted lesbian prosecutor who has been vigorously pursuing Tasha’s discharge. To avoid being outed, the prosecutor helps to exonerate Tasha, but Tasha decides that she can no longer accept the army’s restrictions on her freedom. She has been testifying calmly, in a medium shot, but then the camera moves into close-up and she speaks much more forcefully, saying that after fighting in Iraq, “it seems wrong to have my personal freedom denied to me within my own country.” Tasha announces to the court that she loves Alice, which to her is a victory. After the trial, she beams, “I won! I told them I love you!” The prosecutor and her three henchmen walk by in dark sunglasses that mark their thuggishness. But their power is denied: Tasha kisses Alice passionately, swinging her around in a circle as an upbeat song with lyrics that consist only of the words “little by little” swells up on the soundtrack. The camera zooms up and away from the happy couple and their gawking and/or cheering onlookers (5.8).

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This story too is organized as a clear dramatic conflict: the virtuous and honorable Tasha, who just wants to serve her country, is pitted against the self-righteous and self-serving enforcers of the state’s discriminatory and unjust policy. The emotional and moral energy of the narrative is strongly in favor of gay soldiers and against the unjust state. By showing viewers the effects of this policy on characters in whom we are invested, The L Word presents a strong case that people should not be forced to lie about who they are to pursue their dreams. Just as it advocates for gay equality, The L Word also regularly affirms a range of feminist political viewpoints in stories that reveal the negative effects of sexism and inequality on women. The show’s feminism is thoroughgoing; it takes women seriously, presents a female-centered view of the world, and assumes that women should be fully equal to men and free of violence and oppression. This feminism is also rather unsystematic and internally contradictory, perhaps reflecting the ways feminism is lived by many women; the show presents an overarching viewpoint rather than a nuanced or coherent account of debates in feminist theory. Rebecca Beirne (2008a) has persuasively argued that The L Word’s feminism is sometimes inconsistent with much contemporary feminist thought, particularly regarding the issues that have come to be known as part of “the feminist sex wars” of the 1980s and 1990s. Further, The L Word dramatizes many feminist issues much less starkly than it does other political conflicts, adopting a strategy of presenting competing views of particular questions and letting viewers draw their own conclusions (POWER UP panel discussion 2004), as when Shane argues that strippers and other sex workers enjoy their work, against Tina’s view that women shouldn’t participate in an activity that exploits other women (2.2). Varied second- and third-wave feminist positions coexist in the text, in all their messy contradictions. Nevertheless, there are topics on which the show’s position is unambiguous.

Genre: Soap-drama and Politics

Many stories are premised on the unspoken assumption that women have the absolute right to control their own bodies and to pursue their sexual and reproductive lives freely and without limitation. When Kit becomes pregnant and decides to have an abortion, her partner, Angus, supports her decision and accompanies her to the clinic. It turns out that he has inadvertently taken her to a clinic run by Christian antiabortion activists, who manipulatively try to change her mind. Before she runs out, Kit furiously tells off the “self-appointed, Biblepushing, antiwoman” staff for “harassing and intimidating” women who need medical care. Later, when Kit recounts the story at the Planet, Bette agrees with her angry wish to firebomb the clinic and begins chanting, “Arson! Arson!” Alice suggests a more positive response, such as organizing a benefit for Planned Parenthood, but the emotional logic of this story arc is unequivocally pro-choice (4.1). Dana’s struggle with breast cancer in season 3 is another emotionally wrenching story, exploring the impact of a disease that affects so many women from a feminist women’s health perspective. Explicitly intended to raise awareness of the need for early detection, this story arc presents many moments in diagnosis and treatment that are rarely shown on television, explicitly advocating that women take care of their health and become involved in breast cancer–related activism. Since Dana was a very popular character, her eventual death was strongly affecting to many viewers, which drove home the point that this could happen to anyone. The educational dimension of this story arc was reinforced by a wide array of extra materials made available online and as bonus features on the season 3 DVDs,11 and by episode 4.10, in which the characters participate in a bicycle ride to raise money for breast cancer in Dana’s honor. Similarly, Jenny’s highly emotional struggle to come to terms with the trauma of a childhood sexual assault in season 2 explores the difficult process of beginning to heal from

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an experience that is still far too common in this society. The show exposes how the truth about sexual assault is repressed in patriarchal societies, which helps to protect perpetrators and hide the scale of the problem. Jenny criticizes her mother for being a “silent slave” to her husband, for not reassuring her that the assault wasn’t her fault, and for participating in a conspiracy of silence about what happened. She tells her domineering stepfather Warren (Stephen Aberle), who is also trying to silence her, “I am not going to shut up and be subservient. I’m not gonna set the dinner table and pretend that bad things don’t happen. Because when you don’t talk about them, they get worse, Warren” (3.1). In this brief scene, Jenny challenges the widespread practices of blaming the victim and assuming that talking about the assault will further harm the victim, both common responses to sexual assault that feminists have long argued against. This scene powerfully solicits our identification with Jenny’s feminist view. The inequality of the relationship between Jenny’s parents points to another aspect of The L Word’s feminism; like many serial dramas, the show offers a critique of bourgeois marriage, but it does so from a lesbian perspective. Bette and Tina’s decision to reorganize their relationship to mimic a conventional heterosexual marriage is presented as disastrous because the structural inequality brings out the worst qualities in each of them. Lawyer Joyce Wischnia’s (Jane Lynch) analysis that Tina needs to regain her personal and financial autonomy (2.2) is affirmed over the course of the series; Bette and Tina can reunite successfully only when they are independent and equal partners. While it is true that, as Jane Feuer argues about melodrama, “happy marriage does not make for interesting plot complications” (1994, 558), on The L Word, the unhappiness of couples is often caused by power imbalances and abuses that arise from financial inequality. Given the many dramatic conflicts caused by inequality, the show’s feminist affirmation of the need for equality in relationships is very clear.

Genre: Soap-drama and Politics

The L Word also offers a complicated analysis of gendered employment discrimination when Moira interviews with a creepy supervisor, Mitch (David Lewis), who acknowledges her strong qualifications but explicitly denies her the job because of her masculine gender presentation (3.5). After his gender transition, Max is hired by Mitch, who does not recognize him, and he is very successful. When a female colleague sues Mitch for sex discrimination, Max is privy to the men’s collusion to discriminate and courageously supports her claim; but to do so, he must come out as a transman (4.6). The program then portrays how the company systematically makes his life so miserable that he finally quits. Max’s resignation is staged in a staff meeting in which he begins to report on a complex project to the group but is interrupted by Mitch, who smugly tells him he is off the project. His boss tells Max that he “took vacation” at a crucial time for the client, and when Max protests that he was at his mother’s funeral, the injustice of this decision is clear. It turns out that in his absence, the woman whose discrimination claim he supported has taken his job; the camera cuts to her, and she looks down, unable to meet Max’s eyes. As he leaves, Max responds to this treatment with great dignity, shaking hands with and thanking even the colleagues whom we have seen blatantly discriminate against him (4.11). This story arc invites viewers’ strong disapproval of both sex/gender discrimination and transphobia. The L Word regularly conveys a sense of the importance of feminist history, if only in small ways. In a contrived and rather awkward scene in which the characters talk with Gloria Steinem, women of varied ages and races all strongly affirm their feminism (with the exception of Shane). Later in the same episode, musical performers of different generations take part in a benefit concert for the Ms. Foundation, celebrating a long history of women’s activism and cultural production. The impact of feminism is reinforced by the structure of episode 3.1, which begins with a scene of women at a consciousness-raising group in 1973 discussing how the male-dominated medical

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profession has denied them knowledge about their own bodies and sexuality; it ends with the now much more knowledgeable main characters at the Planet, cheerfully comparing slang terms for female genitalia and for sex in an homage to Eve Ensler’s Vagina Monologues. The changes wrought by feminism are celebrated here. Although The L Word’s characters are clearly beneficiaries of the notable gains of the feminist and LGBTQ rights movements, the show does not present them as living comfortably in what Angela McRobbie (2009) has described as an individualistic, “post-feminist” world, one in which feminism is no longer necessary. Rather, the show constructs a vision of a world in which the choices and desires of female and queer characters are still limited by powerful social forces like capitalism and patriarchy, and by institutions that include organized religion, the mass media, and agencies of the state. However, although we see characters experience sexism, homophobia, and other forms of discrimination, they are not portrayed as helpless victims; the show consistently creates narratives in which characters encounter structural inequality or injustice but find the wherewithal to resist or fight back. The L Word’s deployment of conventional dramatic forms effectively conveys how it feels to be queer and female in this society, mobilizing viewers’ emotional responses in support of a worldview in which feminism and LGBTQ activism are still very necessary, while simultaneously revising the history of misrepresentation. At the same time, the show emphasizes the importance of lesbian solidarity and lesbian culture in sustaining these characters through tough times.

Chapter 5

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A

nother significant way that The L Word responded to Hollywood’s misrepresentation and erasure of lesbian lives was to create its own complex representation of a lesbian community, making visible many aspects of lesbian experience, history, and culture. The show’s portrait of the relationships, bonds of solidarity, and activities that sustain its lesbian characters is very appealing, implicitly refuting the stereotyped image of the isolated, asexual, and unhappy lesbian so familiar from mainstream popular culture. The program suggests that certain characteristic experiences and practices, as well as participation in certain forms of lesbian cultural production and consumption, shape lesbian identity and create lesbian community. And while the show’s focus is on its relatively glamorous and prosperous West Hollywood milieu, The L Word also locates this small (fictional) world in a much larger, more diverse, and more queer community and culture. The L Word’s approach to representing lesbian culture makes lesbian experiences central, and the values and practices of the culture are staged as the norm. The program presents lesbian lives from the perspective of those who live in the culture rather than from the point of view of the dominant culture that has so

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systematically misunderstood, misrepresented, and devalued it. Further, by strategically juxtaposing queer women’s perspectives with the perspectives of straight characters who enter their world, the show destabilizes the mainstream, dominant viewpoint of what is natural, normal, or immutable, and celebrates the values that structure lesbian cultures and communities. Within this lesbian-centered frame, the program represents women’s love for other women as the bedrock foundation of the culture. This love between women takes many forms, from passionate sexual connections to deep bonds of friendship and solidarity. While the show’s fictional lesbian world is not, in many ways, realistic, its presentation of lesbian culture and experience does have an emotional realism; The L Word is at its best in those moments—as when the group gathers in the Planet—when it portrays the camaraderie and affection between the characters, depicting how central their relationships with each other are to their lives. By creating a representation of a vibrant queer female community, The L Word also conjured a real community into existence: the community of people who watched the show and discussed and debated every aspect of it. In some cases, this phenomenon was quite local, as when groups of friends gathered every week to watch together or when viewers chose to watch at public screenings in bars and restaurants. These contexts brought people together physically and perhaps let them see themselves as members of queer communities in new ways. But this phenomenon was also national and international, as a larger community came together online and in the press, using the show to frame important conversations about both representation and the real world. That is, since conversations and debates about identity are a central part of lesbian culture, the debates about representation that swirled around The L Word were not simply parsing the details of a soapy serial drama; they were just as much about contesting the very different visions of lesbian culture and identity that constitute real-world lesbian communities.

Mapping Lesbian Culture: The Chart, the Family, and the Planet

The L Word builds its portrait of lesbian culture and community around three main themes—the Chart, the family, and

Lesbian Cultures and Communities

In this chapter, I argue that the program presents a compelling portrait of a supportive and loving female community whose members participate in a vibrant (and recognizable) lesbian culture, and it invites viewers to imagine themselves in that world. Further, I argue that this portrait appealed widely to a diverse female and queer audience, which embraced the show and created an active and enthusiastic fan culture. At the same time, however, The L Word’s fan culture became a site for an intense and contested discussion of the very issues of representation that the show made so central. The history of misrepresentation has created a community that is desperate for a truer representation and has, therefore, a deep emotional investment in the fictional world created by the program. But that investment means that as they watched, many viewers were constantly interpreting and evaluating The L Word’s answers to the very complex question of what lesbian lives look like (Heller 2006; D’Erasmo 2004). The impossibility of the show’s ever being able to represent such a diverse community fully or accurately created a context in which vigorous debate about all the dimensions of this question was both inevitable and highly fraught. I argue that the fans’ debates about questions of representation were simultaneously debates about a perennial real-world question: what constitutes lesbian identity, culture, and community? Since there are many different lesbian communities, whose members would answer this question in varied ways, it is not surprising that many of The L Word’s fans ended up embracing complicated reparative readings of the show, deeply valuing some aspects of the show’s representation of lesbian identity and culture while being quite critical of others.

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the Planet—and it explores these themes with characteristic reflexivity. First, it continually blurs the boundaries between the fictional and real worlds. The characters look at real art, attend concerts by popular musicians, and participate in events like Gay Pride parades. The effect of this is to situate this small group of characters from a very particular context in a much longer history and a much larger, more diverse community. Second, it conveys the history and diversity of the community by accumulating an ever-expanding body of intertextual references to people, to sexual practices, and to works of art, music, literature, and mass media that collectively constitute lesbian culture. The show uses these intertexts to include forms of queerness that the show’s frame cannot easily accommodate, thus reinforcing the point that the show cannot possibly represent all lesbian cultures and communities (and that we should not expect it to). Finally, these reflexive gestures make it possible for a broad cross section of the viewing audience to recognize aspects of the show’s representation of real-world lesbian lives and cultural practices, and to take pleasure in identifying with them. In the pilot episode, viewers are introduced to the Chart, Alice’s map of the history of sexual connections between the women in the community. This metaphor is explored in various ways across the show’s six seasons, but the way it is introduced is significant. Alice demonstrates to Dana that even though Dana has very little sexual experience, she can be connected to Alice through the sexual encounters of four other women. Alice then demonstrates further, sketching the network of relationships that link their friends. Dana marvels, “It’s like this whole crazy little tiny world,” to which Alice replies sagely, “Crazy, yes. But not tiny.” The camera then zooms in to show us the Chart, which covers a wall of Alice’s apartment; lest we miss that these are sexual connections, the next cut is to an intense sexual encounter between Bette and Tina. In the next episode, Alice pitches a story about the Chart to her editor, explaining,

Lesbian Cultures and Communities

Alice’s Chart of sexual connections.

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“They’re random acts of sex. They’re encounters, romances, onenight stands, twenty-year marriages. Anytime you get a group of gay girls together, you are guaranteed that someone slept with someone else, who slept with someone else.” As she speaks, the Chart she has been drawing for him develops on the screen. After proving that she could link herself to any lesbian he could name, and to him, through fewer than six people, she insists, “The point is, we’re all connected.” (1.2). Alice thus articulates a key premise of the show; this community is created by the love and sexual connections between women, and it has a history and a scope that exceeds their particular friendship circle. In addition to making visible the sexual dimensions of lesbian relationships so often erased by mainstream representations, the Chart conveys the fluidity of sexual identity and the porousness of the boundaries of the community. The male partners of bisexual women or of formerly (or newly) heterosexual women are also part of the web of connections. Further, Alice’s account of the varieties of sexual connections between women provides an outline of the kinds of sexual relationships we will see, which include long-term, monogamous partnerships,

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various kinds of serial monogamy, long-term open relationships, and casual, onetime sexual encounters. Within these relationships, we see a wide variety of sexual expression and hear articulated a range of sexual ethics. Lorna Wheeler and Lara Raven Wheeler argue that The L Word’s representation of sexuality changes significantly between the first and second seasons. Although they note that, from the outset, the characters “demonstrate a remarkable lack of sexual restraint in their unabashed enjoyment of the body,” they also see the representation of lesbian sexuality as rather conservative and obscure during season 1. In the following season, they argue, the representations of sex become much more explicit and varied, involving a much wider, and queerer, range of sexual practices (2006, 99–102). They note approvingly that the show’s lesbians have sex not only in conventional locations like bedrooms but also in swimming pools, bathrooms, closets, offices, restaurants, doctor’s offices, and jail cells (103–4); later they will also get it on in cars and buses, in tents and hotels, on sculptures and dining-room tables, at the opera, and while very pregnant. Over time, the show presents—if sometimes only briefly—characters enjoying sex toys, golden showers, S and M encounters, threesomes, and lap dances at strip clubs. Transman Max has sex with lesbians and with gay men in various ways, significantly queering the show’s representation of sexuality. Recognizing the existence of varied political views about sexual practices in lesbian communities, the show often has characters take different viewpoints or explain themselves, as when Alice reassures Dana that using a strap-on dildo is not a sad imitation of heterosexuality but a genuinely lesbian practice (2.9). The characters also espouse (but sometimes do not live up to) a range of sexual ethics, from Bette’s insistence on monogamy to Marina and Francesca’s open relationship to Shane’s articulated polyamorous view that sexual encounters are about enjoyment and pleasure and do not involve exclusivity.

Lesbian Cultures and Communities

All these sexual encounters and discussions of sexuality and sexual ethics create a representation of lesbian sexuality as active, passionate, and driven by female desire; these characters are uninterested in the moral judgments and values of a repressive patriarchal society. Further, they also implicitly refute the claims of scholars who have argued that sexual expression is not necessarily central to lesbian identity. As Ilene Chaiken told an interviewer in 2005, “For anybody’s who’s thought that lesbian sex was this, or this, and dull and boring or not really fucking—any number of things that have been said about the way women have sex with one another—I’ve got news for you: There’s a lot that can happen” (Conaway 2005). The Chart takes a new form in season 3, constructing a historical narrative that links the feminist activism of the 1970s to the much more well-informed and sexually liberated lives of women today. Many of the vignettes that begin each episode convey moments in women’s history, starting with a women’s consciousness-raising group in 1973 at which a group of friends are using mirrors to try to learn about their own genitalia, and reading Anne Koedt’s “The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm” (1968) as a springboard to discuss their—and their husbands’—lack of understanding of female desire and pleasure (3.1). Two of these women are terrified to recognize their desire for other women, and subsequent vignettes trace these characters’ sexual connections across time and across the country. Along the way, we are introduced to several scenarios—women cruising for public sex in San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood in 1979 (3.2); lesbian nuns and the best-selling 1985 anthology Lesbian Nuns: Breaking Silence (3.3); and the operation (and hypocrisy) of so-called ex-gay ministries—all of which are then connected to The L Word’s characters (3.4). In the final episode, Peggy Peabody reencounters Marilyn (Isabella Hofmann), the woman from the first vignette, with whom Peggy had a passionate affair in 1974; this plot point reinforces the vision of lesbian history as created

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by women who found the courage to admit and claim their desires and who refused to live a lie, despite severe social sanctions. But now they have found each other again in a very different historical and cultural moment, with very different possibilities. At the conclusion of the episode, the screen fills with a chart of the connections made across the season; then the chart grows to include all the sexual connections we have seen established in the first three seasons of the show (3.12). This image connects the small West Hollywood lesbian friendship circle to a much larger and longer history, also reinforcing two important ideas: that we are all connected, and that sexuality is fluid, as many men—gay, straight, and bisexual—are part of the lesbian chart. In season 4 the presentation of the Chart develops these ideas further, as Alice has put it on the Internet, allowing anyone to add her sexual connections. This makes visible that there are many different lesbian communities in Los Angeles, which Alice ditzily conceives of as “solar systems” made up of individual women’s “constellations.” Soon her server is crashed by the solar system that revolves around a mysterious Latina known only as Papi, and Alice sets out to meet this person, whose sexual connections outnumber even Shane’s. In this way, the show acknowledges the insularity of the main cast’s community and brings more racial and class diversity into the circle, as Alice befriends Papi and falls in love with Papi’s best friend, Tasha, an African American soldier. Life also imitates art here, as Alice’s fictional site became an extended advertisement for the real-world OurChart, a social networking site created by Ilene Chaiken and several members of The L Word’s cast. Both the fictional and the real OurCharts were designed as sites for lesbian cultural production and consumption, aggregating blogs, podcasts, news sites, discussion boards, and other kinds of texts, and helping to shape (and profit from) a queer women’s online community. All these versions of the Chart help to delineate a larger vision of queer

Lesbian Cultures and Communities

women’s identities and cultures that acknowledges differences of race, class, generation, gender identity, and sexual practice. Another important aspect of the Chart is that it makes clear how many characters remain close friends with their ex-lovers, a characteristic aspect of lesbian communities. As Tina tells Helena, even though they have had a painful breakup, “Bette’s still my family” (2.11). Similarly, when Dana calls Alice in need, Alice leaves a date with another woman, who says she “knows all about it” when Alice jokes wryly about the lesbian tendency to “maintain deep, intimate, sexless relationships with our past lovers” (3.9). This is the second important aspect of The L Word’s representation of lesbian community: friends who are family. In her 1991 book Families We Choose, anthropologist Kath Weston argued that since queer people are often estranged from their families and denied access to conventional forms of kinship and marriage, many of them form alternative families of lovers and close friends (1–20). This idea is central to the representation of lesbian life on The L Word; these characters are linked by deep bonds of love and friendship, and they regard each other as family. Indeed, The L Word is at its best when it conveys how seriously these characters take each other and the priority they place on their relationships with each other, because it gets right the ways that queer families work. The show presents a vision of a group of intimate friends who gather regularly to talk, eat, gossip, party, argue, tease, debate, and laugh. They challenge each other, support each other, fight with each other, and sometimes sleep with each other. Despite their ups and downs and intermittent conflicts, they figure out how to work it out—like a family. Most important, they take care of each other, in small ways and large. They are all together at moments of great joy and celebration and at moments of crisis and loss. This idea that they are a family is reiterated in various ways, as when Dana, Alice, and Shane perform an “intervention” to try to save expectant parents Bette and Tina from becoming hopelessly boring. Officiously wielding a clipboard bearing a

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Friends you can count on: Shane and Alice vandalize the billboard that features Shane’s Hugo Boss underwear ad. This parodies the show’s complicity with product-placement deals and evokes 1970s feminist vandalism of sexist billboards chronicled by photographer Jill Posener.

list of boring incidents and a multiple-choice self-assessment the friends have prepared for the couple, Alice explains, “The reason we’ve gathered here, your friends and family—because we do consider you guys our family . . .—is to perform an intervention.” They insist to Bette and Tina that although they love the couple deeply, they cannot allow the focus on Tina’s pregnancy to overwhelm their collective life (1.08). (This scene also implicitly acknowledges the reality that many queer people do not want to embrace more normative, child-centered forms of family.) Similarly, we see them count on each other during various capers, like the mission to the country club to “ascertain the disposition . . . of one Miss Lara Perkins,” the theft of the “17 Reasons Why” sign that Bette brings to Jodi as a peace offering (4.12), or Alice’s helping Shane deface a Hugo Boss

The family gathers to welcome newborn Angelica. The women are framed to emphasize their closeness.

Lesbian Cultures and Communities

billboard after she has lost custody of her brother (4.9). Their enduring camaraderie often leads to great fun. Another moment that powerfully captures many aspects of their bond is when Angelica is born and the friends gather at the hospital to welcome the newest member of the family (2.13). Tina has had a difficult birth and isn’t present in the scene, but as the women take turns holding the baby, they are framed so that their deep connections to each other are evident. Bette tells Angelica, “This is your family,” as the sound of Sweet Honey in the Rock singing Ferron’s song “Testimony” swells up on the soundtrack. This music is perfectly chosen because it links this family of women to a larger history of lesbian and feminist culture—the composer and performers were central figures in the 1970s women’s music movement, and the lyrics celebrate intergenerational female solidarity and care. The friends constitute a family at moments of crisis as well. After Dana has had breast cancer surgery, the group gathers at the foot of her bed when she wakes, and the camera takes her point of view as they all smile down at her. Bette steps forward

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and takes her hand, saying, “Dana, sweetie. We love you. Do you know that? Do you know we love you?” Dana smiles, nods, tears up, and says, “Yeah.” When Dana’s mother’s later insists that Lara and Alice should leave the hospital, telling Dana, “We are your family, honey,” Alice forces her way into the room, refusing to allow the Fairbanks to dismiss the importance of Lara’s relationship to Dana (3.06). After Dana drives Lara away, Dana’s friends all help take care of her during her chemotherapy, offering everything from meditations to trips to WNBA games; during her final crisis, Alice doesn’t leave her bedside for five days (3.10). When Dana’s family tries to erase her lesbianism at the funeral, Alice stands up and demands, “What are you talking about? Dana was gay!” and proceeds to steal some of Dana’s ashes. The group then holds its own memorial, which involves hiking to a waterfall at Dana’s summer camp; its Native American name, Imalahkaha, means “place of family” (3.11). All these points in the narrative combine to refute Dana’s parents’ notion that family is only a biological relationship and that lesbian families aren’t real families. The importance of the lesbian family is emphasized by representations of the characters’ troubled relationships with their biological families. Many of the characters’ parents and relatives refuse to acknowledge or accept that their children are gay or transgendered, and they certainly don’t regard gay relationships as serious or valid. Each set of parents stands for a different prejudice against or response to homosexuality. For example, Jenny’s Orthodox Jewish parents regard her as mentally ill (3.1), while Dana’s conservative Republican parents disapprove of her failure to resist her “unnatural” feelings (1.8). Bette’s rigidly Christian father refuses to acknowledge her relationship to Tina, which he regards as immoral, sternly insisting he will never recognize their child as his grandchild. Kit directly challenges his view that the only meaningful form of kinship is biological, to no avail (1.6). Alice’s heterosexual siblings assume that she should deal with their erratic mother

Lesbian Cultures and Communities

because, unlike them, she doesn’t have any “real” responsibilities (1.7), while Max’s sister fails to tell him that their mother is dying because he is not welcome in the family home (4.10). We are shown how painful these experiences are for the queer characters, and therefore we see more clearly how important their chosen family is to their well-being. Also vitally important is their participation in a lesbian cultural world. The notion that the characters are part of a very particular cultural world is highlighted by the name of the café at which they congregate: the Planet. The characters gather here regularly for meals, drinks, musical performances, and dance and theme parties, and so it is a central location for the show’s construction of the group as a family. At the same time, their circle is situated within the larger and more diverse community of the café’s patrons, allowing the show to expand its representation of queer people and communities. Over time, the show builds up a dense web of intertextual references to many aspects of lesbian culture, making visible both the history and the contemporary forms of lesbian cultural production; participation in these activities constitutes one’s membership in this community, or this lesbian world. The show creates a picture of a diverse queer musical scene. It includes a significant number of live musical performances, and many of the featured performers are themselves queer or have a large lesbian and feminist fan base. These performances create a context for the characters to come together as part of a community in a way that simultaneously registers the existence of a real-world queer musical scene. Some of these performers, like Nona Hendryx, the B-52s, and Heart, gesture to a longer history, while the more contemporary performers cover a wide range of popular musical styles that suggest the diversity of the lesbian audience. The acoustic songs of Toshi Reagon, Shawn Colvin, and the Ditty Bops coexist comfortably with the hiphop of Kinnie Starr and God-des and She, the electronica of Peaches and Goldfrapp, the riot grrl punk of Sleater Kinney,

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and the alternative rock of Betty and the Organ. The soundtrack for the series also includes many musicians who have an important history in lesbian, queer, or feminist music, from Tracy Chapman, Joan Armatrading, and Dusty Springfield to Le Tigre, Tegan and Sara, and the Murmurs (Gemelli 2006). Music supervisor and composer Elizabeth Ziff, a member of Betty, made her musical choices very purposefully, noting, “I like to give props to people who have been in the gay and lesbian music scene for years,” adding, “We want great music to not only help the story along lyrically and musically, but also to give a history of the community” (Bolonik 2005, 234–35). Other kinds of events also bring the community together in ways specific to queer worlds, including women’s parties, drag king performances, bisexual speed dating, post–pride parade dances, and fund-raising parties for top surgery. Queer-themed parties make visible both the political and the gender-bending aspects of gay culture, such as Billie Blaikie’s “Vulva Las Vegas” AIDS benefit, which featured Alan Cumming as emcee, introducing acts like drag king Elvis Herselvis singing “The Lady Loves Me” from Viva Las Vegas (1964) and an Ann-Margret impersonator (3.2). The show also took the main characters to many iconic scenes of lesbian sociability, including Gay Pride parades, Olivia cruises, WNBA games, and the Dinah Shore weekend. At Pride, the characters ride with the Dykes on Bikes, who lead many a Pride parade, and watch floats and visit exhibitions that make visible a much more diverse queer community. The group’s participation in an Olivia cruise hints at a longer history of lesbian culture. Olivia was founded by radical lesbianfeminists in 1973 as a record company that produced the work of lesbian and feminist performers in a genre known as “women’s music”; the company produced over forty albums and sold over 1 million records. For decades, small concerts featuring these performers brought together lesbian communities across the nation, and women’s music performers and lesbian

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comedians were the main attractions at many women’s music festivals (Morris 1999; Radical Harmonies 2002; Olivia.com). Since 1988, the company has produced women-only cruises and vacations, with entertainment featuring musicians and comedians popular in lesbian communities. And when the group takes the ailing Dana to a WNBA game, we see the large lesbian fan base for college and professional women’s basketball and also hear a familiar real-world critique of the WNBA’s homophobic failure to market directly to this large and loyal audience (3.8). The group’s trip to the Dinah Shore event, a long weekend of concerts and lesbian-themed parties that attracts thousands to Palm Springs, California, every year, becomes an occasion for the show to focus on another archetypal aspect of lesbian culture: telling one’s coming-out story, a central rite of passage for queer people. In the course of the trip, Tina, Shane, Dana, and Alice tell their stories to Jenny in flashbacks. Jenny’s identity is unclear at this point, so her decision to tell her coming-out story to a group of supportive women at a party is an important moment in her life. Literary scholar Bonnie Zimmerman has argued that coming-out stories constitute a kind of “tribal lore” that creates a “myth of origins” for lesbians (1984, 674). To name oneself and claim a new identity is an act of empowerment, and to tell one’s story is both to contest the invisibility of lesbian existence and to begin to replace the distortions and misrepresentations of mainstream culture with lesbian narratives (671, 680). Over time, The L Word told many different coming-out stories, reinforcing the centrality of this narrative form to queer culture. The L Word also deepens and broadens its representation by presenting intertextual references to aspects of lesbian culture. The characters discuss political and community organizations like the Human Rights Campaign, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, and the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center, and read lesbian magazines like Velvet Park, Curve, and Girlfriends. The show also features as guest stars many performers,

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writers, and activists who are well-known lesbian or feminist icons, highlighting their work or their roles in lesbian cultural history. The characters interact with Gloria Steinem, Billie Jean King, and Dr. Susan Love, who appear as themselves, while Eve Ensler, Kate Clinton, and Sandra Bernhard all make notable cameos as fictional characters. Other casting choices evoke lesbian film history; actors who have played iconic roles in lesbian films, like Helen Shaver and Melanie Lynskey, appear, and many episodes were directed by women who have also directed well-known feminist and queer-themed films, including Rose Troche, Kimberley Peirce, Lisa Cholodenko, Mary Harron, Marleen Gorris, Angela Robinson, Jamie Babbit, and Karyn Kusama. Similarly, Bette’s work as a museum director and art school dean serves as a device through which to showcase the work of lesbian and feminist visual artists. Many of these artists are themselves engaged with questions of female and queer representation, so their inclusion adds another layer to the show’s larger message about representation and also makes visible different lesbian communities. For years, the opening-credit sequence included images of the show’s conventionally gendered leads looking at Catherine Opie’s portraits of cross-dressed women playing with masculinity, a juxtaposition that suggests the diversity of the community’s gender presentations. Including these artists’ work allows the show to include a much broader range of queer culture than the main story can accommodate (McFadden 2011). The effect of compiling all these layers of cultural texts is to make the complex world of lesbian culture and community visible. It also makes lesbian cultural knowledge the norm, since the significance of these intertexts, references, allusions, and images is rarely explained. As Bette tells Phyllis Kroll when she begins to come out, “You’ve got to learn to be a lesbian, Phyllis,” and the show makes comedy out of this truth, as Phyllis’s scholarly bent leads her to want to work systematically through sex manuals and to take copious notes as she picks up in-group

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Opening credits: Bette’s performance of femininity is juxtaposed with images of female masculinity made by photographer Catherine Opie in her Being and Having series. The photographs expand the representation of the lesbian community beyond the main cast.

knowledge. While it is inevitably partial, the program’s representation of lesbian culture constitutes a counternarrative to Hollywood histories and offers an appealing vision of a vibrant and sustaining culture. Not surprisingly, real-world participants in that culture responded to the show’s representation of their lives and cultures in complicated and often ambivalent ways. The L Word’s Fan Culture: The Fans, the Producers, and the Network

Given its pioneering status, it is not surprising that The L Word generated a remarkably wide range of audience responses, from avid fandom to passionate critique. Much of this debate has taken place in the large and vibrant fan culture that has grown up around the show, and this complex fandom has much in common with that of the cult television shows recently analyzed by Derek Johnson (2007). Johnson argues that fans

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constitute the culture around a particular show as they compete to have their respective interpretations and analyses become the ones most accepted by the fan community. Thus fan communities are literally created by what he calls “fan-tagonisms,” in which different factions struggle to establish “competing truths” about the meanings of the show. Further, fans also contend with producers of the show, hoping to shape the narrative in particular directions; in return, the producers try to channel the activity of fans into forms that affirm their vision of the franchise and increase its profitability (285–87). This model certainly describes the remarkable level of intense “fan-tagonistic” engagement with The L Word, both among the fans themselves and among the fans, the show’s producers, and the network. I argue that the underlying question that drives The L Word’s highly participatory fan community is: who gets to say what constitutes lesbian identity, lesbian culture, and lesbian community? In a variety of contexts and formats within what Henry Jenkins (2006) has called “convergence culture,” The L Word’s fans praise, celebrate, question, criticize, condemn, parody, and rewrite the text created by the producers. Viewers with different perspectives all attempt to establish their interpretations of the show’s presentation of lesbian identity and community as definitive, often actively challenging the analyses and judgments of both the producers and other fans. The producers responded to this debate by explaining, defending, justifying, expanding, and revising their presentations of lesbian lives. They also collaborated with the network as it attempted to channel and control fan behavior and to market a very particular, exclusive version of lesbian identity. In other words, the fan community took up precisely the problem of representation that the show made a central theme, and all the participants sought to control and shape the discourse about it and, by extension, the discourse about what it means to be a lesbian. Interestingly, fans rarely contested the show’s representations of lesbian culture, perhaps because its depiction of a lively culture

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organized by loving relationships was widely appealing. Instead, the critiques focused much more on the unrepresentativeness of the individual characters’ wealth, whiteness, conventional attractiveness, and gender normativity. Fans frequently registered discomfort with the absence of butch characters or characters who embodied forms of female masculinity; the small number of characters of color in the early seasons; the stereotypical aspects of those characters of color who eventually joined the cast; the program’s problematic representation of bisexuality; and the representation of transgender identity as Max made his transition. These concerns were dismissed by fans who enjoyed looking at beautiful, fashionable, conventionally feminine characters; who saw no problems in the representations of appealing characters of color; who weren’t particularly interested in bisexuality or transgender identity; and who liked the show’s setting in a fantasy world of beautiful and luxurious spaces. It is important to remember that this intense contestation happens within the fan community that the show has called into existence; even the show’s most vehement critics seem never to have missed an episode. Indeed, a great many fans admit to a profound love/hate relationship with the program, which makes sense in light of the history of erasure and misrepresentation of lesbians. This complicated, reparative response involves pleasure in being visible and represented in recognizable ways as well as a simultaneous anxiety and concern about the details and consequences of that necessarily imperfect and inadequate representation. The debate is often ferocious, even vicious, but that is because something much greater than the details of a television fiction is at stake. In the end, the fantagonistic contestation over meaning that unfolds within The L Word’s fan culture is part of a much larger cultural and political debate—about both the representation of lesbians and the meaning of lesbianism itself. Sara Gwenllian Jones reminds us that a great deal of fan culture avidly celebrates and takes pleasure in the text (2003,

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163–64), and this is certainly true of much of the response to The L Word. Devoted and enthusiastic fans of the program created a remarkable online presence, building extensive websites that gradually aggregated vast amounts of information about the show and its performers. Among the most extensive and popular were The L Word Online and The L Word Fan Site. These websites (and many others) included detailed information about the program’s episodes, characters, music, and performers. They also compiled press coverage of the show, news of events related to the show, photographs, and collections of videos, podcasts, and other multimedia texts about the program. The creators of these sites expended enormous amounts of time, energy, and money to build them, and although Showtime operated its own active and heavily visited official website, it did not interfere with (and sometimes even assisted) these sites. Fan websites also housed extensive archives of fangenerated texts, which created and circulated interpretations of many aspects of The L Word. These texts generally reflect appreciation for the show and, often, a deep identification with the characters, and they include such forms as detailed “recaps” of each episode, fan videos, fan art, screencaps, wallpaper, spoilers, and a vast outpouring of fan fiction. Even within this generally affirming category, quite a lot of fan art explores or celebrates relationships or character developments that are inconsistent with the show’s representation and thereby revise it. Fan fiction is another very popular mode for producing alternative readings of the show’s characters and stories, and the approaches of the writers are diverse. While some fan fictions simply use the characters and settings of the show to explore scenarios that are consistent with the show’s narrative, others are created out of frustration or displeasure with the direction in which the producers have taken a story or character; these fans rewrite the story to suit their own interests, desires, and interpretations of the characters. Many L Word fan fiction authors use the medium to explore relationships and story lines (and

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thus visions of lesbian identity) that the program forecloses, and thousands of fans participate actively in writing and reading these fictions. Indeed, The L Word Fan Site hosts one of the largest fan fiction archives associated with any television show; as of summer 2012, the site includes over twenty-three thousand stories written by more than thirteen hundred authors, and enthusiastic readers still follow and comment on their favorite writers’ latest stories in a separate discussion forum. This segment of the fandom is a place where readers and writers engage in a lively conversation about the nature of lesbian lives, as discussions of fictional stories often become conversations about the participants’ real lives and experiences. Quite a few online fan texts present critical commentaries on The L Word’s representations of lesbians through parody; fans rewrite and reenact the text in satirical or pointed ways that challenge the show’s inevitably limited portrayal. A frequent subject of humorous critique is how unrepresentative the glamorous and wealthy characters are. Dasha Snyder’s hourlong parody, The D Word (2005), which showed at LGBTQ film festivals around the world in 2005–6, is one such text. The D Word gently mocked its target by creating a parallel friendship circle of economically marginal queer characters who represent a wide range of body types and racial, gender, and sexual identities, and who live and work in New York City. While humorously sending up the characters and stories of season 1, the parody repeatedly makes a point that many fans have emphasized: the characters on The L Word don’t live (or look) like most lesbians in America. Indeed, The D Word cleverly uses The L Word’s own self-reflexivity and critique of misrepresentation to argue for a broader and more diverse view of lesbians. Using a similar approach, The F Word (2008), a video remake of the show’s opening-credit sequence that circulated on YouTube, rewrites the theme song to present a very different version of “the way that we live”; the first lines of the new song are “Chicks wearing T-shirts and nubby fleece jackets / Chicks driving pickups

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with flat pancake asses.” As we watch the racially diverse and unglamorous characters bowl, play pool, and lounge in cheap lawn chairs in the street, we are offered an amusing but pointed critique of the show’s affluent and normative characters from within the love-hate frame of the fandom. Some fan websites established more critical distance from The L Word, and on these sites, appreciation for the show’s accomplishments could coexist with serious discussions and analyses of the show’s limitations. For example, AfterEllen.com, an online website founded in 2002 to explore the portrayal of lesbian and bisexual women in the mass media, covered The L Word extensively and became popular with many fans. In brief articles, founder Sarah Warn and her writers praised many aspects of the show’s representations of lesbian lives and offered sympathetic, reasoned defenses of the limitations of a show shaped by commercial imperatives. At the same time, these writers articulated concerns, widespread among fans, that helped to shape the conversation significantly. Visitors to the site participated in discussions of these analyses, producing a rich and lively debate. Another popular feature of the site was the weekly recap of new episodes written by Scribe Grrrl. These sophisticated but accessible accounts mixed a fan’s real appreciation for many aspects of the show with a critic’s entertaining snarkiness about its more absurd or unrealistic developments, and thereby perfectly reflected so many fans’ deeply ambivalent attraction to the program. But it was on the message boards and forums focused on The L Word that the most wide-ranging, detailed, and contentious discussions of the show took place. Online, fans created a large interpretive community that debated passionately about characters, relationships, story arcs, and other formal aspects of the show as well as about the writers, directors, and actors who created these fictions. Participants in these conversations argued with each other and with the producers about how to interpret and develop the characters and stories and, by extension, how

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to understand lesbian identity. Over time, the community came to be structured by particular factions, each advancing competing aesthetic and political judgments that ultimately reflected the fans’ identification with characters as well as their differing understandings of real-world lesbian lives. For example, fans disagreed vigorously about Jenny; some viewed her initial identity confusion and bad behavior with compassion, while others intensely loved to hate her. Her every move was parsed and analyzed, and while this discussion was often civil and reasoned, the disagreement frequently turned personal, as fans attacked each other for their conflicting views. Some story arcs and new characters were also very controversial. Those who loved and identified with Dana’s character were infuriated at her death in season 3, while others defended the importance and relevance of the breast cancer story. Many fans deeply disliked the story line in which Tina explores her attraction to men, while others argued that such changes in people’s lives are not uncommon and are therefore appropriate to explore. Moira’s addition to the cast was welcomed by those who appreciated the class and gender difference she brought to the ensemble, but others disliked the character and her awkwardness within the established group. When Moira began to live as Max, some fans welcomed the exploration of the process of gender transition, but others found the story arc uninteresting and irrelevant. Yet even those who appreciated the inclusion of a transman character expressed serious reservations about what they perceived as misrepresentations of the transition process and the excessively melodramatic story of Max’s unexpected pregnancy. Many fans also wished for more characters of color, but some expressed reservations about the show’s construction of characters like Carmen, Papi, and Tasha, who were required to embody multiple forms of difference from the dominant group or who seemed to exemplify common racial stereotypes. Another area of intense contestation involved various factions of “shippers,” fans deeply devoted to particular relationships,

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who advocated for their preferred couple to form, stay together, or reunite. The most notable of the shippers were the TiBetters, those fans deeply invested in seeing Bette and Tina together forever. So vociferous was this group that it attracted immense hostility from others who didn’t share their passionate attraction to this couple. The often nasty arguments that ensued explored competing visions of ideal lesbian relationships, monogamy, infidelity, and family. What all these examples have in common is that they became topics through which fans implicitly or explicitly contended to define lesbian identity and police the boundaries of that identity and of the community. Since competing understandings of lesbian identity are very much alive in the real world, these controversies over a fictional community reflect much more than an intense engagement with a soapy serial drama. Given the show’s (and the fans’) deep commitment to the idea that representations shape our perceptions of reality, who is being represented and how becomes a very important political question. While many fans expressed immense gratitude and appreciation for executive producer Ilene Chaiken’s work in creating and sustaining the show for six seasons, others criticized and attacked her with extraordinary vehemence. She was routinely vilified by fans who disapproved of her decisions about the characters and the narrative, her public statements, the quality of her writing, and many other aspects of her work. The often highly personal and vituperative attacks on Chaiken suggest how deeply fans identified with the characters and their fictional world. They felt ownership of them and wanted the stories and characters to go in particular directions, and they fought the producers for the right to define and shape these stories. When they thought the producer had gone wrong, they said so, loudly. Chaiken responded in three ways. First, she made herself surprisingly visible, acknowledging and addressing her critics’

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views by giving interviews, appearing in public to talk to fans, and otherwise finding ways to explain and defend her choices and decisions. She often said things like, “We welcome the criticism as well as the enthusiasm. We enjoy the passionate debate, the demands for representation, the appetite for greater diversity, the wishes for love to be requited and endings to be happy” (Bolonik 2005, xiii). Her unusual visibility even became the subject of a parody video in which an actor playing Chaiken chases indifferent fans—who watch but make fun of the show—all over the city to talk to them about the program (Hi, I’m Ilene [2007]). Second, she sometimes gave the critics what they demanded, as when she reunited Bette and Tina in season 5. She also humorously acknowledged many of the fans’ ideas by incorporating them directly into the story, as in the Lez Girls story arc, during which the characters vehemently object to what they see as Jenny’s misrepresentation of them in her novel and then in her movie (4.5). Jenny insists that it is fiction, that it is her story, and that she has the right to tell it as she likes, an argument that was regularly made by the creators of The L Word about their show. Indeed, the whole Lez Girls story arc might be understood as an acknowledgment of and rejoinder to the fans’ criticisms. And third, Chaiken wrote examples of unhinged fans into the show as a way to push back and define the limits of acceptable fandom. For example, at the beginning of season 3, Alice behaves like a crazed fan of Dana because she cannot handle the reality that Dana has broken up with her. She has a shrine of images of Dana in her apartment, including a life-size cardboard cutout that she kisses and talks to; she stalks, spies on, and chases Dana; and she uses her radio show to blather obsessively about her unhealthy passion (3.1). Since Alice has clearly gone off the deep end, this behavior, which bears a strong resemblance to the behavior of some of the most enthusiastic fans, is mocked and stigmatized. In the end, although she really did work to sustain a dialogue with fans, Chaiken maintained her right to represent

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Alice’s shrine to Dana, who has broken up with her. Alice exemplifies the crazed fan being disciplined by the writers.

this particular lesbian community as she saw fit, even though fans contested and sought to change her choices. More interested in how to increase publicity for and revenues from The L Word than in questions of defining lesbian identity, Showtime experimented with various new mediamarketing technologies to direct fan activity into forms that were more consistent with the network’s vision of The L Word franchise’s possibilities. First, to capture the enthusiasm for fan fiction and channel those writers in certain directions, Showtime partnered in 2006 with a commercial fan fiction site called Fanlib to administer an episode-writing contest. The winning entries were selected by vote of fan readers, and the final “fanisode” was published as an online e-zine; the grand prize was a coaching session with Ilene Chaiken. A similar contest in 2007 invited fans to compete to write a scene that would be filmed as part of the show; the winning entry, selected by fans and broadcast as the opening vignette of episode 5.3, was a parody of Charlie’s Angels (1976–81).

Lesbian Cultures and Communities

Similarly, to capture the energy and activity associated with fan-created online sites, Showtime launched a real-world OurChart website in conjunction with the fictional site created by Alice. By offering opportunities for social networking, combined with many of the elements of popular fan-created boards (discussion forums, blogs, access to detailed information about the show), OurChart was designed to replace all those fan sites and drive the conversation (and the revenue) to a site controlled by the producers. OurChart had the advantage of offering what appeared to be direct access to Ilene Chaiken, who created a blog called “Come on, Ilene!” in wry acknowledgment of the fans’ critical take on many aspects of the show. Chaiken made weekly podcasts and provided the backstory on how each episode had been conceived and written. Fans were invited to engage in a direct dialogue with her and with each other. In these dialogues, fans and creators grappled over the meanings of the characters, episodes, and stories. Further, the addition to the site of a range of professional bloggers writing about many aspects of queer culture and politics meant that the conversations were deliberately broadened beyond the show. Although the creators of the site hoped to establish it as a new online community for queer women, it apparently was not profitable enough; OurChart disappeared from the Web with very little notice in January 2009, and all the user-generated content disappeared with it. And in a third marketing-related innovation, Showtime created an L Word “island” in Second Life, a virtual online world in which participants create “avatars” that can move through the virtual world and interact with other avatars. In The L Word area, avatars could meet others at the virtual Planet, dance in clubs, and watch episodes in the local theater, among other activities. This experiment further increased the number of locations in which fans could access show-related content controlled by the network. Candace Moore (2009) has argued that these opportunities for fans to participate in fandom in new ways are not, as

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some might argue, signs of the power of the fans, but rather evidence of the ways that Showtime is attempting to control and limit fan activity into frames that benefit the company and the brand while creating the illusion of fans’ involvement and control. Taking a slightly different tack, Kelly Kessler (2011) has argued that both the content producers hired for OurChart and the physical options offered for avatar creation in Second Life allowed only a very restricted notion of the kinds of people who constitute virtual lesbian communities; that is, both the website and Second Life excluded the same forms of difference that the show did, offering a vision of lesbians as upscale, urban, gender normative, and conventionally attractive women. Both Moore and Kessler persuasively analyze the ways that corporate interests were thereby participating in the process of shaping lesbian representation, and these critics raise important questions about the social and political effects of the kinds of conventional, normative, and glamorized representations that Showtime’s marketers hoped would advance the network’s economic interests. In a similar vein, Kellie Burns and Cristyn Davies (2009) argue that the show helped to construct a very limited lesbian identity that they see as problematically focused on a “cosmopolitan consumer citizenship.” In the end, as Martina Ladendorf (2010) argues, such corporate commercialization of lesbian identities is unlikely to be in the best interests of queer women. These critiques of the serious problems associated with the producers’ and the network’s focus on maximizing the show’s profitability have much to recommend them, and it is important that such analyses remain central to discussions of the show. But it is equally important to attend to all the ways that fans and critics developed less paranoid and more reparative readings of the show, embracing representations of lesbian characters, cultures, and communities that entertained, consoled, and even empowered them. The L Word, for all its limitations, helped to sustain millions of viewers by presenting

Representing Lesbians

A central premise of The L Word is that representation matters. Over the course of six seasons, the show offered a compelling analysis of the ways that invisibility and misrepresentation have contributed to justifying and explaining the inequalities that queer women face in our society.12 The show simultaneously deconstructed those misrepresentations and offered an engaging alternative account of lesbian identity, experience, culture, and community. Given how popular the show was, and how widely it has been discussed and debated, it is fair to say that The L Word has had a significant impact on the culture’s views of lesbian women. If how a group is represented shapes how others in society perceive that group, then The L Word has made an important cultural intervention by challenging so many stereotypes and misconceptions and by humanizing appealing queer characters within a familiar generic frame.13 It is impossible to quantify the effect of this intervention, but the fact that there are now so many nonstereotypical queer characters on very popular network shows—Modern Family, Glee, The Good Wife, Scandal, and Grey’s Anatomy—who generate very little negative response (Stelter 2012), suggests that The L Word has helped to change perceptions and attitudes about queer people on television—and, perhaps, in the real world. This ongoing influence is why the show, which continues to be very popular with viewers, is a Television Milestone. In 2010, Showtime partnered with Ilene Chaiken again, this time to produce The Real L Word: Los Angeles, a reality show featuring a group of Los Angeles–based lesbian women. Although the reviews and ratings for the first season were not

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affirming visions of lesbian worlds that offered a significantly different view of lesbian lives from the one available in mainstream culture. And in many cases, those reparative readings were anything but uncritical or apolitical.

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particularly good, the show was renewed in 2011 for a second season, with a largely new cast, and then again for a third season (set partly in New York) in 2012. The debate about representation has haunted this show as well; particularly controversial was the inclusion of explicit sexual encounters between the cast members in season 2. But The Real L Word has not had anywhere near the impact of the original L Word. Indeed, it is important not to underestimate the importance of the fictional L Word for queer women and their allies, who for so long have been largely invisible in mainstream popular culture. Over six years, the program gave viewers a representation of likable queer female characters who had close, loving, and supportive relationships with each other and who joyfully participated in a much larger queer culture and community. These empowered, interesting characters lived in a fictional world in which they could live proudly and openly and defeat discrimination and prejudice when they encountered it. For many viewers, especially young viewers, who live in a real world in which sexism and homophobia are still very much the norm and who struggle individually and collectively with all the difficulties that discrimination and prejudice cause, this utopian representation of female community and solidarity was reassuring, sustaining, and often empowering. Just as important as this representation of a fictional lesbian community, however, was the real-world fan community that The L Word called into being. At the same time that participants in this fan community debated every aspect of the show, they also carried on an intracommunity debate about exactly what constitutes lesbian identity, culture, and community, and this debate reinforced a key premise of the show: that the question of what a lesbian is cannot be definitively answered because there are so many versions of lesbian identity. Perhaps this explains why the producers chose to end the show in so deliberately unresolved a way. Many narrative questions went unanswered, and the show exceeded the frame of its final

Lesbian Cultures and Communities

episode by releasing the puzzling “interrogation tapes” online for weeks after the show had concluded. This unsatisfying lack of closure has the effect of permanently deferring the question of what a lesbian really is; the program ended as reflexively and thought-provokingly as it began. But it is vitally important that The L Word provided a context in which these important social and political debates about the nature of lesbian identity and the boundaries of lesbian communities could unfold. And it’s crucial that these debates were largely framed by people who consider themselves part of this community rather than by people whose views have been shaped by a long history of misrepresentation and misunderstanding. In the end, even though its representation of lesbian lives was limited and partial, The L Word broke significant new ground on television, creating a widely influential communal space for the conversation to continue, on the airwaves and in the world.

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Notes

1. See Pratt 2008 for a helpful survey of the critiques and the responses to those critiques. 2. For a broader overview of the history of LGBTQ people on television, see Becker 2006; Beirne 2008a; Capsuto 2000; Tropiano 2002; and Walters 2001. 3. The episodes discussed will be listed by season and episode number, using the numbering system on Showtime’s official L Word site at www.sho.com/sho/the-1 -word/home. 4. See Evans and Gamman 1995 for a helpful account of gaze theory. 5. The concept of “heteronormativity” describes the widespread cultural assumption that a binary gender system and heterosexuality are the natural, normal, and best ways of organizing social life. See Warner 1993, vii-xxv. 6. Linda Williams quotes Stephen Ziplow, author of Film Maker’s Guide to Pornography (1977) to explain that lesbian encounters and ménages à trois are two of the seven conventional/generic scenes essential to successful hard-core porn films. Ziplow describes lesbianism as a “major turn on to a larger portion of your heterosexual audience.” See Williams 1989, 126–27. For an illuminating analysis of similar conventions in soft-core pornography, see Kuhn 1985. 7. See Wolfe and Roripaugh 2006, 51–54; and Heller 2006, 65–67 for important parallel readings of these scenes. Moore 2007 also offers a fascinating reading of the poolside voyeurism as constructing a “tourist gaze” designed to educate straight viewers.

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8. See Dow 1996, xi–xxvi for a helpful discussion of the ways mainstream television programs that present feminist viewpoints often recuperate or undermine those critiques to avoid alienating viewers. 9. Judith Mayne (1990, 2000) has explored the possibilities for lesbian authorship and spectatorship in cinema in many important and influential publications. 10. Erin Douglas (2008) offers a very interesting argument that the show is constructing a queer femininity, recognizable to queer viewers but perhaps misrecognized as gender normativity by others. 11. The season 3 DVD set includes a short film explaining why the creators thought this story was an important way to educate viewers about an issue that affects so many women; a number of short explanatory videos were also available on the Showtime website. Ilene Chaiken has admitted, “The one thing that I most regret on the show is Dana’s death. The reaction was so passionate and the grief was so deeply felt—and to have been responsible for causing that kind of grief just is hard to live with. . . . If I could go back and do it over again that might be the one thing I do differently (Snarker 2011). 12. It must be noted that not all critics are persuaded that representation has as powerful a social and cultural effect as some have argued. See Gever 2003; Heller 2011; and Beirne 2008a. 13. For an ethnographic approach to the question of how viewers negotiate with the program’s constructions of gender and sexual identities, see Kern 2009.

Works Cited

Ahmad, Shazia. 2005. “Sapphosex in the City.” New York Observer, February 26, 1–8. Akass, Kim, and Janet McCabe, eds. 2006. Reading “The L Word.” London: I. B. Tauris. Beals, Jennifer. 2010. “The L Word”: A Photographic Journal. N.p.: privately printed. Becker, Ron. 2006. Gay TV and Straight America. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Beirne, Rebecca. 2008a. Lesbians in Television and Text After the Millennium. London: Palgrave Macmillan. ———, ed. 2008b. Televising Queer Women. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Berger, John. 1972. Ways of Seeing. New York: Viking Penguin. Bolonik, Kara. 2005. “The L Word”: Welcome to Our Planet. New York: Simon and Schuster. Bordwell, David, Janet Staiger, and Kristin Thompson, eds. 1985. The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production. New York: Columbia University Press. Burns, Kellie, and Cristyn Davies. 2009. “Producing Cosmopolitan Sexual Citizens on The L Word.” Journal of Lesbian Studies 13 (2): 174–88. Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Rouledge. ———. 1993. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex. New York: Routledge.

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Index

Note: Bold locators reference photographs in the text. Abbott, Michelle, 11–12 Aberle, Stephen, 96 advertising, 90, 108, 108–9 AfterEllen.com, 11, 120 Alice. See Piesecki, Alice (character) alienation techniques, 44, 59, 62–64 All about Eve (1950), 80 Alphaville (1965), 46–47 Amaechi, John, 74–75 Angelica (character), 9, 27, 92, 109, 109 Arden, Kate (character), 79–80 Arquette, Rosanna, 68 art, 2–3, 10, 46, 91, 102, 114; film, 22, 46, 77–85, 81, 114; painting, 61; photography, 61, 63, 108, 114, 115; poetry, 28 audience responses: critiques of The L Word, 11, 62–63, 78, 82, 101, 116–17, 121–23, 128; emotions and empathy, 4, 88, 91–92, 101; engagement and enthusiasm,

63, 64, 83, 100, 101, 115–19, 121–24, 128; gaze issues, 17–18; network marketing, 124, 125–26; online communities, 1–2, 64, 118–19, 120–22, 124, 125–26 Babbit, Jamie, 114 “bad object” criticism, 64 Beals, Jennifer, 7–8, 63 Beirne, Rebecca, 94 Bender, Lawrence, 79 Bent (1997 film), 50–51 Berger, John, 16 Bernhard, Sandra, 73, 114 Bette. See Porter, Bette (character) Big Bird Cage, The (1972), 49 Big Doll House, The (1971), 52 Birch, Charlotte, 73, 74 bisexual characters, 8, 9–10, 103; bisexual identity, 5–6, 38; critiques of representation of, 5–6, 117 Black Mama, White Mama (1973), 49 “blaxploitation” films, 49, 52

139

Index

140

Bloom, Veronica, 69–70 Bodies That Matter (Butler), 37 breast cancer, 9, 95, 109–10, 121 Breathless (Godard), 46 Brecht, Bertholt, 45 Brewer, Darryl (character), 74–75, 90 Brokeback Mountain (2005), 84 Buckley, Fae (character), 91 Burns, Kellie, 126 butch gender. See also masculinity, female: couple stereotypes, 36; critiques of The L Word, 5, 117, 126; identification, 39; The L Word treatments, 97, 114, 115, 117, 121 Butler, Judith, 37 Calamity Jane (1953), 57 camp, 48–52, 53, 55–57, 80, 112 Candace (character), 35, 50, 83 capitalism, critiques of, 33, 66, 71–72, 78, 88, 89, 90, 126 Carmen. See de la Pica Morales, Carmen (character) Carmen Jones (1954), 51 casting decisions: Lez Girls, 76–77, 82; The L Word itself, 12–13, 63–64 celebrity guests, 63, 79, 113–14 Chaiken, Ilene: creation of The L Word, 11–13; lesbian representation, 2, 12–13, 105; OurChart, 106, 125; parodies of, 123; politics and The L Word, 87; The Real L Word (television program), 127–28; response to audience criticism, 122–24, 125 Channing, Adele (character), 80, 84 chant d’amour, Un (1950), 50 characters. See also casting decisions; celebrity guests: audience

attitudes toward, 11, 121–22, 123, 125; descriptions, 7–11; development, 11–12, 13, 62–63; fan fiction, 118–19; heteronormative attitudes of, 20, 22–26, 28, 83–84; parallels, Lez Girls, 78, 82–84 Charlie’s Angels (television program), 124 “Chart, the,” 9, 12, 93, 101–7, 103. See also OurChart childhood sexual assault, 24, 26, 27, 28, 95–96 Cholodenko, Lisa, 114 class: critiques of representation of, 5, 7, 117, 119–20, 126; The L Word universe, 26, 36, 40, 106 Clinton, Kate, 114 Clive (character), 67–68 closet, the, 8, 9, 37, 47, 72–77, 89–90, 93, 105–6. See also coming out; “outing” Coffy (1973), 52 Collins, Jason, 74 Colonel Davis (character), 77, 93 coming out, 30, 113. See also closet, the; Dana, 74, 90; Jenny, 8, 32– 33, 39–40; Phyllis, 10, 114–15 “complicitous critique” of mainstream media, 65–67, 72, 77, 78, 85 compulsory heterosexuality, 25, 28 Connor, Burr (character), 72–74, 90 Conrad (character), 20, 89–90 consciousness-raising, 97–98, 105 continuity issues, 11, 62–63, 64 “convergence culture,” 116 Corman, Roger, 49, 52 Creeber, Glen, 87 critical viewing. See also audience responses: critiques of continuity,

Dana. See Fairbanks, Dana (character) Dandridge, Dorothy, 51 Daniels, Erin, 8 David (character), 92 Davies, Cristyn, 126 Davis, Ossie, 90 Day, Doris, 57 de la Pica Morales, Carmen (character), 8–9, 60–61, 121 Dietrich, Marlene, 56–57 directors, 13 discrimination: analysis of, 3–4, 88–89, 97, 98; relation to stereotyping, 45, 88 Drew, Malaya Rivera, 80 Dusty (character), 51–52 D Word, The (2005 parody), 119 Eckholdt, Steven, 9–10 employment discrimination, 97 Ensler, Eve, 98, 114 Eva. See Torres, Eva “Papi” (character) eye contact, 20, 31, 32–33 Fairbanks, Dana (character), 8, 9, 31, 37–39, 74, 89–90, 95, 109–10, 121; Alice, relationship with, 9, 107, 110, 123, 124; Lara, relationship with, 9, 39, 40–41, 89–90, 110 Families We Choose (Weston), 107 fan fiction, 118–19, 124 fans. See audience responses; online communities femininity, representations of, 4–5, 36, 48, 114, 115, 117

feminism, 88, 94–96, 97–98 feminist history: music, 109, 112–13; second-wave, 94, 97, 105, 109; third-wave, 94 Ferrer, Marina (character), 8; Francesca, relationship with, 47, 104; Jenny, relationship with, 8, 21, 31, 32–35, 33, 34, 80 fetishization, 16, 18, 30, 53 Feuer, Jane, 96 fiction and nonfiction, 63–64, 74, 77–79, 82–83, 102 films. See Hollywood (industry); Hollywood and classic cinema/tv film techniques: camera perspective, 31, 61–62, 91, 93; reflexive devices, 34, 34, 44–45, 57, 60–61, 62–64, 69, 72, 77–78, 80–82 flashbacks. See also random act vignettes: coming-out stories, 30, 113; Jenny, memories and writing, 26 Flashdance (1983), 63 For a Few Dollars More (1965), 57 Foxy Brown (1974), 52 Francesca (character), 47, 104 French, Kate, 10 French New Wave cinema, 45–47, 46 friendship: illustrated/read through looks, 29, 35; lesbian tendencies and community, 107; show content and focus, 11, 13, 27, 29, 48, 100, 107–10, 108, 109 F Word, The (2008 parody), 119–20 Garland, Judy, 56 Gavankar, Janina, 9 gay characters on television, 11, 127 “gaydar,” 38

Index

11, 62–63, 64; encouraged by show, 2–3, 6, 13–14 Cruise, Tom, 73 Currie Holmes, Matthew, 67

141

Index

142

gay rights movement. See LGBTQ rights movements gays in the military, 77, 92–94 gaze. See lesbian gaze; male/ heteronormative gaze gender diversity: show criticisms, 5, 18, 117; show reality and discussion, 40, 97, 114, 115, 117 gender identity, 10, 37–38, 40, 97 gender norms, 37, 58, 59, 73 Gender Trouble (Butler), 37 Genet, Jean, 50 Godard, Jean-Luc, 45–47, 46 Godfather, The (1972), 57 Go Fish (1994), 12 Goldwyn, Tony, 72 Gorris, Marleen, 114 Graduate, The (1967), 57 Greenberg, Kathy, 11–12 Grier, Pam, 8, 52 Hailey, Leisha, 8 Hall, Stuart, 2 Halsey, William (character), 71, 80 Harron, Mary, 114 Haspel, Tim (character), 8; Jenny/ Marina relationship, 34–35; voyeurism, 19 HBO (network), 11 Helena. See Peabody, Helena (character) Herman, Ellie, 13 heteronormativity. See also heterosexuality; male/ heteronormative gaze: compulsory heterosexuality, 25, 28; effects of, 23–24, 72–73, 88, 89–90; The L Word’s critique of, 2, 15, 17–18, 19–21, 22, 28–29, 44, 54–59, 65–85, 88, 99–100;

storylines, 20, 22–26, 28, 71–72, 79, 80–81, 83–84, 89–90 heterosexuality: couples, 36, 55–56, 56, 83–84, 96; families, 8, 58–59, 59, 91, 108 heterosexual sex, 19. See also pornography heterosexual viewers, 5, 19, 23, 28, 72, 75–76, 77, 78, 84; female audience, 13; male audience, 5, 16, 18, 23, 53, 81–82 Hi, I’m Ilene (video), 123 Hitchcock, Alfred, 54 Hofmann, Isabella, 105 Holloman, Laurel, 7–8 Hollywood (industry). See also Lez Girls (film): as business, 47, 65, 67, 70–71, 76–77, 125–26; characters and personalities, 67– 71, 79–81; and the closet, 72–77, 90; “complicitous critique” of, 65–67, 72, 77, 78, 85; production system and values, 3, 47, 65, 78, 79–81, 83–84 Hollywood and classic cinema/tv. See also Hollywood (industry): male gaze, 16–17, 18, 29, 32; parodies of, 44, 49–59, 56, 75, 124; “queering,” 54–59, 56, 59; reflexive art cinema, 45–47; storytelling and formulas, 4, 44–45, 47–48, 53, 62, 67, 73, 79, 83–84, 88 Homes, A.M., 12 Huffington, Arianna, 63 Hutcheon, Linda, 66 identity. See gender identity; lesbian identity “Interrogation Tapes” (bonus material), 11, 128–29

Jaffe, Cherie (character), 57, 60, 68 Jaffe, Clea (character), 68 Jaffe, Steve (character), 68 Jenkins, Henry, 116 Jenny. See Schechter, Jenny (character) Johnson, Derek, 115–16 Jones, Sara Gwenllian, 117–18 Kennard, Tina (character), 7–8, 9–11, 46–47, 63, 71, 76, 77, 78, 79, 81, 82, 83, 84, 121; Bette, relationship with, 7–8, 10, 35, 83, 90–91, 107–8, 122, 123; pregnancy and family, 9, 92, 107–8, 109, 109 Kessler, Kelly, 126 King, Billie Jean, 63, 114 Kirshner, Mia, 8 Kit. See Porter, Kit (character) Koedt, Anne, 105 Kornbluth, Aaron (character), 70–71, 80–81, 82, 83 Kroll, Phyllis (character), 10, 57, 114 Kusama, Karyn, 114 Ladendorf, Martina, 126 Lara. See Perkins, Lara (character) Lawrence, Colin, 92 Leone, Sergio, 57 Lerner, Jodi (character), 10, 108

lesbian actresses: casting, 12–13, 76–77, 82; in Lez Girls, 82, 83 lesbian communities and culture. See also online communities: history, 109, 112–13; real world, 101, 119–20, 122, 126; show representations of, 1, 99–115, 116–17, 128, 129 lesbian gaze: character looks, 19, 29–35, 33, 39, 60–61, 80; and reflexivity, 59–61, 80; show’s construction of, 15, 29–36, 44, 59–60 lesbian identity. See also coming out; representation, gay and lesbian: de-essentializing, 15–16, 36–41, 128; fan culture, 116–17, 119–21, 122, 128; history of representation of, 47–48, 126; The L Word’s representation of, 2, 4–5, 15–16, 29–30, 32–33, 36–41, 90, 114–15, 127, 128, 129 lesbian rights movement. See LGBTQ rights movements lesbian sex: “the Chart,” 8, 9, 102–4, 106; Lez Girls, 80–81, 82–83; pornographic stereotypes of, 18, 20, 22; representations of, 19, 19, 21–22, 50, 58, 104–5, 128; revising stereotypes of, 21–22, 23; and voyeurism, 19, 19, 23, 80–81 Lewis, David, 97 Lez Girls (film), 10, 66, 75–85, 81, 123 LGBTQ rights movements, 88, 91–92, 98 Lively, Eric, 8 Loken, Kristanna, 58 Lombard, Karina, 8

Index

intertextuality, 46; parody, 44, 48–54, 55–58; popular culture and film, 46, 54–59, 56, 59, 63, 80; reflexivity, 44–47, 58–59, 77–78, 102 invisibility, lesbian, 2, 4, 47, 55, 65, 93, 99, 110. See also visibility, gay and lesbian

143

Index

144

Look, The (talk show), 75 Love, Susan, 63, 114 Love Boat, The (television program), 55–56, 56 Lynch, Jane, 96 Lynskey, Melanie, 114 Mabius, Eric, 8 male/heteronormative gaze. See also heteronormativity: The L Word’s critiques of, 15, 17–29, 32, 81, 82; in tv and cinema, 16–17, 18, 20, 22–23, 28, 29, 32, 34 Mannheim, Camryn, 69 Mapplethorpe, Robert, 63 Marilyn (character), 105–6 Marina. See Ferrer, Marina (character) Mark. See Wayland, Mark (character) marketing, Showtime, 106, 124, 125–26 Markinson, Brian, 70 marriage, 8, 9, 10, 58, 92, 96, 105–6 Marshall, Garry, 79 masculinity, female: critiques of The L Word, 5; lesbian expectations and stereotypes, 36, 39, 47; show and artistic portrayals, 57, 114, 115, 117 masculinity stereotypes, men, 73 Mater, Tom (character), 10 Matlin, Marlee, 10 Max (character), 9, 10, 61, 97, 104, 111, 121. See also Sweeney, Moira (character) Mayne, Judith, 49, 51–52 McCoy, Julie (character), 55–56, 56 McCutcheon, Shane (character), 8–9, 22–23, 40, 57–58, 68–70; Carmen, relationship with, 60–61; looks, 20, 31–32, 39, 60–61

McGeachie, Meredith, 9 McGillis, Kelly, 77 McRobbie, Angela, 98 Metz, Christian, 64 misrepresentation, gay and lesbian. See also representation, gay and lesbian: critiques of show, 4–5, 18, 78–79, 80, 101, 117, 119–20, 123; history of, in pop culture and media, 2, 4, 7, 14, 15, 20, 21, 23, 43, 47–54, 65, 66, 75, 77, 89; The L Word’s analysis of, 3, 7, 14, 17–22, 23– 24, 28–29, 43–44, 48, 51–54, 59, 66, 71–72, 75, 77–85, 89, 113, 127 Moennig, Katherine, 8 Moira. See Sweeney, Moira (character) Moore, Candace, 125–26 Mulvey, Laura, 16–17, 29, 34 music and soundtracks: films (and use/parody), 52, 54, 57; history, 109, 112; The L Word, 12, 30, 57, 80, 81, 102, 109, 111–12 Nelson, Jon Wolfe, 10 Nikki. See Stevens, Nikki (character) 9 1/2 Weeks (1986), 58 nonfiction and fiction, 63–64, 74, 77–79, 82–83, 102 objectification, 18, 26–27, 28–29, 30 Oceans 11 (2001), 58 Olivia (company), 112–13, 124 online communities. See also fan fiction; “shippers”: corporate control, 125–26; fans, 1–2, 64, 100, 118–19, 120–22, 124, 125–26; OurChart, 9, 74–75, 76, 106, 125–26

Paige (character), 58, 59 parody: Ilene Chaiken, 123; The D Word, 119; The F Word, 119–20; The L Word on Hollywood, 44, 49–59, 56, 75, 124; The L Word on itself, 66–67, 78, 82–83, 108 Partridge, Angus (character), 10, 95 Peabody, Helena (character), 9, 10, 51, 54, 62 Peabody, Peggy (character), 10, 51–52, 105–6 Peirce, Kimberley, 114 Perkins, Lara (character), 9; Dana, relationship with, 9, 39, 40–41, 89–90, 110; lesbian identity and identification, 37–38, 38–39, 40–41, 108 Phyllis. See Kroll, Phyllis (character) Piesecki, Alice (character), 8, 9, 11, 62–63, 74–76, 102–3, 110–11, 123. See also “Chart, the”; Dana, relationship with, 9, 62–63, 107, 110, 123, 124; Tasha, relationship with, 93; Uta, relationship with, 53–54 Planet, The (setting), 1, 8, 10, 56, 83, 100, 101–2, 111 political views and agendas, 9, 77, 87–96, 113, 126–27 popular culture: cultural meaning and power, 2, 55, 73; history of lesbian visibility, 2, 23, 47–48, 54–55, 65; intertextuality, 46,

54–59, 56, 63, 80; lesbian representation revised by The L Word, 44, 51–54; parody of, 44, 49–54, 55–59, 124; “queering,” 54–59 pornography: critiques of, 15, 18, 20, 22, 44, 81; formulas, 18, 20, 22, 24; lesbian images and misrepresentation, 18, 20, 21–22 Porter, Bette (character), 7–8, 9, 10–11, 63, 78; career, 50, 61; family, 90–91, 92, 107; infidelity, 8, 35, 50; Tina, relationship with, 7–8, 10, 35, 83, 90–91, 107–8, 122, 123 Porter, Kit (character), 8, 10, 52, 90–91, 92, 95 Porter, Melvin (character), 90–91, 110 Posener, Jill, 108 post-feminism, 88, 98 prison films and parody, 48, 49–52 product placement, 90, 108, 108–9 Purcell, James, 68 Queer as Folk (television program), 11 queer theory, 37 race: lesbian visibility, 47; show and setting, 36, 48, 51; show criticisms, 5, 117, 121 random act vignettes, 19–20, 46; Season 3, 63, 97–98, 105–6; Season 5, 80, 124 Randy (character), 34, 36 rape, 27, 49 Rapp, Adam, 12 reality television shows, 79, 127–28 Real L Word, The (television program), 127–28 reflexivity, 43; devices, and lesbian gaze, 59–61; and intertextuality,

Index

opening credits, 114, 115, 119–20 Opie, Catherine, 114, 115 OurChart. See also “Chart, the”: Alice’s project, 9, 106; podcast content, 74–75, 76; real-life version, 106, 125–26 “outing,” 73, 74–75, 76–77

145

Index

146

reflexivity (continued) 44–47, 58–59, 77–78, 102; on The L Word, 3, 14, 43–44, 66–67, 77–79, 80, 81, 82–83, 128–29 Refson, Uta (character), 53–54 “reparative” readings, 6–7, 126–27 representation, gay and lesbian. See also lesbian identity; misrepresentation, gay and lesbian: fan culture, 116–17, 119–20, 122; history of, in popular culture, 2, 4, 13, 14, 18, 21, 23, 47–55, 58–59, 65, 66; Lez Girls, 77–85, 81, 123; The L Word’s analysis of, 2–7, 13–14, 15–16, 17–22, 43–44, 48, 52, 54–55, 58–59, 65–67, 71, 99, 113, 122–24, 126–27 Rijker, Lucia, 51 Roberts, Dallas, 10 Robinson, Angela, 12, 114 Rollin, Jean, 53 Rollins, Rose, 9 Samchuk, Harry, 67–68 Schechter, Jenny (character), 8, 9, 10–11, 20, 21–22, 27, 28–29, 31, 32, 34, 34–35, 40, 80, 96, 110, 113; audience attitudes toward, 11, 121; Lez Girls, 58, 66, 71, 72–73, 76–85, 81; Marina, relationship with, 8, 31, 32–35, 33, 34, 80; sexual assault trauma, 24, 26, 27, 28, 95–96; Tim, relationship with, 8, 34–35; and voyeurism, 19, 19, 20, 22–26, 33, 33, 34 Sciorra, Anabella, 79 Sea, Daniela, 9 Seberg, Jean, 46

Sebring, Rod (character), 73 Second Life (virtual reality), 125, 126 second-wave feminism, 94, 97, 105, 109 Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky, 6–7 serial drama, 3–4, 43, 64 setting, 1, 7–8, 11, 36, 83, 99, 100, 111 Sex and the City (television program), 11 sexual abuse, 9, 24, 26, 27–28, 95–96 sex work: character histories, 66–67, 70; Hollywood as prostitution, 66, 67–70; stripping, 26–27, 94 Shahi, Sarah, 8–9 Shampoo (1975), 57–58 Shane. See McCutcheon, Shane (character) Shaver, Helen, 91, 114 Shawn, Wallace, 71 Shelley, Rachel, 9 Shepard, Cybill, 10 “shippers,” 83, 121–22, 123 Shiver of the Vampires (1971), 53 Showtime (network), 1, 4, 11, 12; marketing and websites, 106, 118, 124, 125–26; producers, 116, 125, 126; The Real L Word (television program), 127–28 Shrag, Ariel, 12 Shyer, Christopher, 73 Simmons, Russell, 63 Slim Daddy (character), 20, 63 Smith, Lauren Lee, 9 Snoop Dogg, 20, 63 Snyder, Dasha, 119 soap-drama, 87, 122 Starr, Kinnie, 28, 30, 111

violence against women, 24, 26, 27–28, 49, 67–68, 95–96. See also rape; sexual abuse virtual reality, 125, 126 visibility, gay and lesbian: on The L Word, 2, 4, 15, 99, 113; in popular culture and history, 2, 23, 47–48, 54–55, 65; on television, 11, 127 “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” (Mulvey), 16 voyeurism: absent, lesbian/female gaze, 30; characters engaging in, and viewer response, 17–18, 22–26, 28; cinema, 53, 54; show story and critique methods, 18–27, 19, 81; voyeuristic investigation, female sexual difference, 16

Tasha. See Williams, Tasha (character) Taylor, Holland, 10 third-wave feminism, 94 Tim. See Haspel, Tim (character) Tina. See Kennard, Tina (character) Titanic (1997), 55 Tonya (character), 9 Torres, Eva “Papi” (character), 9, 57, 106, 121 transgender characters: critiques of representation, 5–6, 117, 121; Moira/Max, 9, 10, 97, 104, 117, 121 Travolta, John, 73 Troche, Rose, 7, 12, 59, 114 Turner, Guinevere, 12

Warn, Sarah, 120 Warren (character), 96 Wayland, Mark (character), 8, 22–26, 28, 81 Weiss, Andrea, 52–53 westerns (film genre), 56–57, 72, 73 Weston, Kath, 107 Wheeler, Lara Raven, 104 Wheeler, Lorna, 104 Will and Grace (television program), 11 Williams, Linda, 32 Williams, Tasha (character), 9, 74, 77, 92–94, 106, 121 Wischnia, Joyce (character), 96 Wittig, Monique, 25 Wizard of Oz, The (1939), 56 WNBA, 13 Women in Cages (1971), 52

vampire films and parodies, 52–54 vignettes. See random act vignettes

Index

Steinem, Gloria, 63, 97, 114 stereotypes: of lesbians, 18–19, 20, 21, 36–37, 44, 47–48, 49, 50, 80, 81; pornography, 18, 20, 21–22; racial, 5, 51, 117, 121; in tv and film, 45, 47–48, 49, 52–53, 58, 67, 99, 127 Steubing, Captain Merrill (character), 55–56, 56 Stevens, Nikki (character), 10, 75–77, 82, 90 Stevenson, Cynthia, 92 Stockwell, John, 79 story ownership, 22, 66, 78, 99–100, 123, 129 Streetcar Named Desire, A (play and film), 58 Sweeney, Moira (character), 9, 40, 61, 97, 121

147

Index

148

writers. See also Schechter, Jenny (character): of fan fiction, 118–19, 124; of The L Word, 12, 122, 125

Young, Henry (character), 9–10 Ziff, Elizabeth, 12, 112 Zimmerman, Bonnie, 113