Queer Television Thesis FINAL DRAFT Amended Date and Footnotes
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Queer British Television: Policy and Practice, 1997-2007 Natalie Edwards PhD thesis submitted to the University of Nottingham School of American and Canadian Studies, January 2010 Abstract Representations of gay, lesbian, queer and other non-heterosexualities on British terrestrial television have increased exponentially since the mid 1990s. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer characters now routinely populate mainstream series, while programmes like Queer as Folk (1999-2000), Tipping the Velvet (2002), Torchwood (2006-) and Bad Girls (1999-2006) have foregrounded specifically gay and lesbian themes. This increase correlates to a number of gay-friendly changes in UK social policy pertaining to sexual behaviour and identity, changes precipitated by the election of Tony Blair’s Labour government in 1997. Focusing primarily on the decade following Blair’s installation as Prime Minister, this project examines a variety of gay, lesbian and queer-themed British television programmes in the context of their political, cultural and industrial determinants, with the goal of bridging the gap between the cultural product and the institutional factors which precipitated its creation. Ultimately, it aims to establish how and why this increase in LGBT and queer programming occurred when it did by relating it to the broader, government-sanctioned integration of gays, lesbians and queers into the imagined cultural mainstream of the UK. Unlike previous studies of lesbian, gay and queer film and television, which have tended to draw conclusions about cultural trends purely through textual analysis, this project uses government and broadcasting industry policy documents as well as detailed examination of specific television programmes to substantiate links between the cultural product and the wider world. The main body of the thesis comprises five chapters, including three industrial case studies examining the four main terrestrial broadcasters- Channel 4, Channel 5, ITV and the BBC- and their gay, lesbian and queer output between 1997 and 2007. Again by analysing policy documents and the distinct public service obligations of each broadcaster, these case studies link the brand identities and imagined audiences of each with the range and volume of LGBT and queer programming they produced within the ten year period studied. In doing so, they also consider the effect of digitisation and the multi-channel environment on the specific types of queer and LGBT programming provided by each broadcaster, and the impact of niche-market broadcasting on the presentation of sexual difference within the contemporary UK context. i Acknowledgements Many thanks to my supervisors, Roberta Pearson and Mark Gallagher. Without their support, advice and constructive criticism, this project would not exist. Thanks to the staff and students of the Institute of Film and Television Studies and the Department of American and Canadian Studies at the University of Nottingham, and in particular to Clare Russell, Rachel Walls, Zalfa Feghali, Fran Fuentes and Áine Kelly, who also offered support, advice and a round of drinks where necessary. Thanks to Michal Charemza, Scheherezade Soodeen, Róisín Ryan-Flood, Darren Porter and Laura Brown, among others, for putting up with me for the duration of this project, and for likewise offering support when I most needed it. Thanks to Siân Pearce, whose love, support and gentle mockery helped get me through the viva. Thanks to my family. Thanks, above all, to my parents, Jane and Eric Hanson, for their love, encouragement and everything else besides. ii Contents Abstract i Acknowledgements ii Introduction: Queer Television Production 1997-2007 1 Chapter 1. Queer Visibility and British Television Production: Literature Review 24 Chapter 2. Queer Visibility in the UK, 1997-2007: Some Cultural and Political Determinants 53 Chapter 3. From Minority to Mainstream: Channel 4’s Queer Television 104 Chapter 4. Queer TV on the BBC: Branding, Genre and the “Good Homosexual” 155 Chapter 5. Competitive Urges: Queer Commercial Television, 1997-2007 235 Conclusion 292 References 297 Appendix: Selected Television Programmes 323 iii Queer Television Production, 1997-2007: An Introduction How social groups are treated in cultural representation is part and parcel of how they are treated in life […] The resonances of the term ‘representation’ suggest as much. How a group is represented, presented again in cultural forms, how an image of a member of a group is taken as representative of that group, how that group is represented in the sense of spoken for and on behalf of (whether they represent, speak for themselves or not), these all have to do with how members of groups see themselves and others like themselves, how they see their place in society, their right to the rights society claims to ensure its citizens. Equally representation, representativeness, representing have to do also with how others see members of a group and their place and rights, others who have the power to affect that place and those rights. How we are seen determines in part how we are treated; how we treat others is based on how we see them; such seeing comes from representation.1 Richard Dyer, The Matter of Images, p1. Before writing this introduction, I quizzed several friends on their recollections of queer programmes and instances of queer visibility as they occurred on terrestrial television in the mid 1990s. One recalled Queer Street (1997-98), a series of documentaries, shorts and feature films on a lesbian and gay theme broadcast by Channel 4 post-watershed across four successive Saturday nights- and watched, in his case, with the volume down low, after his parents had gone to bed. Another spoke fondly of the BBC’s You Rang, 1 Richard Dyer, The Matter of Images, p1. London: Routledge, 2002. 1 M’Lord? (1988-93), a 1920s-set sitcom parodying the earlier drama Upstairs, Downstairs (1971) which ran for several years and which featured a butch, implicitly lesbian woman (Catherine Rabett) among its cast of characters. A third proved unexpectedly enthusiastic about Eurotrash (1993-2003), a surreal Friday night magazine and clip show co-presented by the openly gay fashion designer Jean-Paul Gaultier, which touched upon an array of queer and sexually-explicit themes. All, however, agreed on one point when it came to queer television in Britain in the mid 1990s: there wasn’t much of it at all, and what little there was (You Rang, M’Lord? notwithstanding) was mostly to be found on Channel 4, buried in the schedules in the middle of the night. As of mid 2009, the LGBT and queer television landscape of the UK is configured rather differently. Even a brief glimpse of the terrestrial viewing figures of the previous month reveal prime-time schedules saturated with queer content. The highest rated British serial drama, ITV’s Coronation Street (1960-) now features a gay male character, barman Sean Tully (Anthony Cotton) in a relatively long-standing and prominent role; others have appeared within the show in recent years in more transient or less central parts. Channel 4’s teen soap Hollyoaks (1995-), currently broadcast at 6.30pm on weekday evenings, has featured an array of gay, lesbian and queer characters and couplings in its recent history, including one gay priest, and currently has several gay men and one lesbian on its roster. 4’s most popular talk show is hosted by out comedian Paul O’Grady, perhaps better known as drag queen Lily Savage, its equally popular fashion show How To Look Good Naked (2006-) by out presenter Gok Wan. The BAFTA-winning drama Shameless (2004-), notable here for its inclusion of a gay 2 teenage boy, a lesbian mother and (in its early episodes) a great deal of interracial male/male sex, regularly attracts viewers in the several millions. Out actor, comedian and writer Stephen Fry is currently to be found on any number of channels, throughout the daytime and evening, whether as host of the successful BBC quiz show QI (2003-), the protagonist of the prime time ITV legal drama Kingdom (2007-) or the presenter of his own recent six-part US travelogue (2008). In 2009, gay, lesbian and queer representations abound on British television. The opening epigraph, taken from Richard Dyer’s The Matter of Images, explains at least in part why the issue of gay, lesbian and queer visibility-of “representation”-was so relevant to individual queers in the mid 1990s, and why it continues to be so as of 2009. As Dyer observes, the cultural depictions of social minorities suggest to these minorities not only how the world regards them, but how they ought to regard themselves. Low visibility offers only limited images or representations with which individual gays, lesbians and queers might identify. More than this, though, it suggests that they do not matter enough to be represented at all, that their representation is of only minimal interest to the creators of cultural material. Increased visibility conversely signals not only the increased social acceptance of queers, gays and lesbians, but also their designation as acceptable by cultural architects, and specifically in this instance by broadcasters. Dyer’s second point, that the legal and cultural rights afforded social minorities can be discerned from the modes of their cultural visibility, is equally relevant here. By examining the sharp increase in gay, lesbian and queer visibility on British television 3 since 1997, this project posits a relationship between broadcast media images, industrial practice and government policy. In doing so, it aims to determine how and why alterations to British law and within British broadcasting institutions affected television programming so profoundly as to engender the explosion of gay, lesbian and queer images discussed. Institutions, Policy and Practice British media representations of queer sexualities have changed perceptibly since the mid 1990s. The cultural visibility of LGBT and queer Britons has increased exponentially, with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender characters now routinely populating television programmes, and the mainstream press often covering gay and lesbian stories as a matter of course.