QUEER TV? THE CASE OF SHOWTIME’S QUEER AS FOLK AND THE L WORD by MAGALI Claudine Dominique BURNICHON A thesis presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Supervised by: Mr James Agar, Principal Supervisor Dr Robert Mills, Subsidiary Supervisor University College London, UK 2018 Declaration I, Magali Claudine Dominique BURNICHON, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. 2 Abstract This work answers questions regarding the extent to which U.S. pay cable television can be thought of as queer TV, in the sense of defying (hetero)normativity and advocating for political resistance. Adopting a queer theory approach, the thesis examines how this queerness manifests at the production, textual and reception levels and how it shifts the understanding of television as a domestic medium and re/producer of mass culture. It suggests that Showtime’s Queer as Folk and The L Word are queer narratives that generate critical and political sites of resistance by offering diverse and flexible producing and viewing positions and images challenging essentialised understandings of identities and sexualities. This is possible because these texts are produced by Showtime, which offers its writers creative freedom and authorial vision unavailable on other forms of television, and its subscribers content that is not ‘regular TV’. Exploring the state of the U.S. television landscape, Chapter I demonstrates the complexity of U.S. television and argues that TV texts should be discussed in relation to the medium that produces them. Analysing Showtime’s writing process, Chapter II identifies three characteristics that make my case studies queer narratives and proposes that these narrative devices are directly connected with the Showtime ‘quality TV’ brand. Focussing on television reception, Chapter III discusses TV viewers as tourists visiting and discovering new places and characters and suggests that queer narrative viewers occupy viewing positions that exist betwixt and between on-screen and real- life life-worlds. Another queer narrative characteristic, liminality offers viewers a dual identification process with the characters: immersion and awareness. This thesis contributes to the body of work on my case studies by discussing them with respect to Showtime, a perspective often neglected in past studies, and to the queer television 3 studies literature through its discussion of queer narratives and liminal television viewers. 4 Impact Statement My research has two main contributions. First, it contributes to the body of studies on Queer as Folk and The L Word from a different perspective. Although the subject of various studies, most work on Queer as Folk and The L Word pays attention to whether both series manage to offer verisimilar and comprehensive representations of LGBTQ identities, discussing their contributions in terms of visibility and political recognition of minorities. With some notable exceptions, many studies discuss these series in regard to their representational practices and politics to acknowledge their potential inputs into a larger history of LGBTQ representations on television and cultural and social visibility. However, most fail to situate these texts in the context of the U.S. television landscape, with respect to Showtime and in relation to the form, content and reception of these texts, to address what these queer narratives reveal about Showtime (and pay cable television to a greater extent) and its position regarding the re/production of contemporary normative ideas about LGBTQ people and queer lives promoted by U.S. culture and society and other queer images on U.S. television. In contrast, my work situates Queer as Folk and The L Word in the context of Showtime and examines how Showtime’s creative freedom and authorial vision enable writers to create queer narratives that differ from ‘regular TV’. In particular, my work identifies four narrative features directly related to the Showtime ‘quality TV’ brand that make these texts queer narratives: the use of stereotypes and typical scripts, the queer temporality of these texts, their politicised narratives and their liminality. Second, my research contributes to the growing body of literature on queer television studies. The literature review of television studies and queer television studies shows that U.S. television is often addressed as one institution regardless of its 5 various systems of television. Conversely, I suggest that the complexity of the television medium demands the distinction between the various forms of television of the U.S. television landscape, proposing that each form of television (and its products) be addressed with respect to the system it belongs to. As a result, my thesis emphasises how Showtime shifts the meaning of television from a domestic medium catering to the ‘traditional family’ to a cultural medium better thought of in terms of personal, interactive television and individual screen. By acknowledging the complexity of U.S. television and focussing on pay cable TV’s features, my analysis complicates the understanding of TV viewers as passively active and glancing at the screen from time to time, suggesting instead an understanding of pay cable TV viewers in terms of liminality and heteroflexibility, which gives viewers access to a dual identification process characterised by viewing positions that are situated in-between that of television (articulated in terms of the glance) and that of the cinema (articulated in terms of the gaze). Hence, my discussion proposes a new approach to television viewership that queers the viewers’ gaze and draws their attention to the constructedness of both on-screen life-worlds and real-life life-worlds. 6 Table of Contents Declaration 2 Abstract 3 Impact Statement 5 Table of Contents 7 Table of FiGures 9 INTRODUCTION 10 1.1. Queer theory 13 1.2. Queer TV 24 1.3. The limits of queer 33 1.4. Justification and literature review 38 1.5. Thesis outline 51 CHAPTER I 54 1. U.S. television landscape 55 1.1. Broadcast television 64 1.2. Cable television 74 1.3. Pay cable versus basic cable 80 1.4. ‘Quality TV’ 89 1.5. Research questions 94 CHAPTER II 101 1. Queer television narratives 102 1.1. Creative freedom and authorial vision 106 1.2. Subverting stereotypes 130 1.2.1. Traditional queer representations on television 133 1.2.2. Stereotypes and textual content: Conforming to deconstruct 142 1.2.3. Stereotypes and textual form: The example of Gay as Blazes 149 1.3. Queer temporality 163 1.4. Politicised narrative 170 1.4.1. Contextualising history: Stonewall and Pride 172 1.4.2. Contextualising politics: DADT and LGBTQ visibility 187 CHAPTER III 195 1. WatchinG queer television 196 1.1. Television viewers 203 1.2. Television viewing and liminality 213 1.2.1. An example of liminality: The case of Ivan 229 7 2. Virtual tourism in Queer as Folk and The L Word 234 2.1. The tourist gaze, heteroflexibility and on-screen life-worlds 236 2.2. The guide as viewers’ proxy 244 2.2.1. The case of Justin: Queer as Folk 245 2.2.2. The case of Jenny: The L Word 256 CONCLUSION 269 BIBLIOGRAPHY 279 TV Guide 306 APPENDIX 308 Queer as Folk regular cast 309 The L Word regular cast 310 8 Table of Figures Figure 1 (a and b) Shane’s Entrance at The Planet (Pilot 1.01) ........................................... 117 Figure 2 Representation of Dana prior to Coming Out (‘Longing’ 1.04) ............................ 118 Figure 3 Dana’s Image Post-coming-out (‘Liberally’ 1.11) ................................................ 119 Figure 4 (a and b) Gaydar (‘Let’s Do It’ 1.03) ..................................................................... 123 Figure 5 Mark and Jenny (‘Lynch Pin’ 2.04) ....................................................................... 127 Figure 6 Jenny Post-Haircut (‘Loyal’ 2.08) ......................................................................... 129 Figure 7 Heterosexualisation of the Lesbian Body (‘Home is Where the Ass Is’ 2.01) ...... 145 Figure 8 Mel and Lindsay (‘All Better Now’ 2.02) ............................................................. 146 Figure 9 Heterosexualisation of the Gay Male Body (‘Home is Where the Ass Is’ 2.01) ... 147 Figure 10 Ted and Emmett (‘All Better Now’ 2.02) ............................................................ 147 Figure 11 Gay as Blazes Scene 1 (‘Hypocrisy! Don’t Do it’ 2.03) ..................................... 150 Figure 12 Gay as Blazes Scene 2 (‘Hypocrisy! Don’t Do It’ 2.03) ..................................... 157 Figure 13 Emmett with Blaine and Blair, the Real-life’s Gay as Blazes Characters (‘Hypocrisy! Don’t Do It’ 2.03) .................................................................................. 160 Figure 14 PFLAG Pride (‘Pride’ 2.04) ................................................................................. 175 Figure 15 Michael Marches in Drag for Pride (‘Pride’ 2.04) ............................................... 180 Figure 16 The ‘Bathroom Problem’ (‘Lost Weekend’ 3.02) ............................................... 183 Figure 17 Violence against Gender Transgression (‘Lost Weekend’ 3.02) ......................... 186 Figure 18 Parallel Scenes: Tasha and the Naked Soldier (‘Laydown the Law’ 5.08) ......... 190 Figure 19 Parallel Scenes: Colonel Davis and the Naked Soldier (‘Laydown the Law’ 5.08) ....................................................................................................................................