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Lesbian Cop, Queer Killer: Leveraging Black Queer Women's Sexuality on HBO's the Wire

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Lesbian Cop, Queer Killer: Leveraging Black Queer Women's Sexuality on HBO's the Wire Jennifer DeClue Lesbian Cop, Queer Killer: Leveraging Black Queer Women’s Sexuality on HBO’s The Wire HBO’s drama series The Wire has been the subject systems of power that conspire through racialized of at least one academic conference, an online violence, failed education, nefarious politicians, academic journal, numerous college courses, several and law enforcement to subjugate marginalized scholarly articles, and as of this writing, there communities in the United States. Nearly every are rumors of a forthcoming book on the series. major character in The Wire has a rich emotional Although much has been written and probably interior that provides an entryway into the even more has been spoken about The Wire, complexities of life in Baltimore. The Wire’s creator, concerns have primarily been with the realistic David Simon, prides himself on linguistic accuracy manner in which institutionalized racism, political achieved through immersing his cast and crew in a corruption, and impoverished communities are city’s rhythms and sounds during production1. The depicted. I find it startling that fewer discussions rich realism with which Simon treats his characters have been concerned with the representation of is attributed to his long career as a crime reporter racialized genders and sexualities given that a host with the Baltimore Sun;through a mix of veracity of black queer characters populate this HBO series. and fiction, this HBO drama is habitually credited The five seasons of the controversial and with being the “real thing.”2 provocative series (2002-2008), expose the inner- During what Ron Becker calls the “gay workings of the Baltimore police department nineties,” prime-time television programs included through ongoing police investigations that utilize gay characters who were predominantly white, wire tapping (hence the title) to break codes of save Carter, a black gay character on Spin City. 3 communication used by local crime rings. The Becker critiques these representations of gay and show’s fictional narratives address contemporary lesbian characters on prime-time television for not social and political issues specific to Baltimore. depicting the “lived experiences of thousands of In doing so, the show cast local talent as well gay and lesbian people” who experience poverty, as professional actors, and incorporated actual racial discrimination, and social oppression.4 He neighborhood businesses into its narratives. says: This combination of real life and fiction creates diegetic complexity and an atmosphere of The problem, of course, as with nearly all authenticity. As a result, The Wire’s strengths lie television representations, is that they do in the narrative deconstruction and critique of embody stereotypes. Instead of images of Race, Sexuality, and Television 53 Julia Himberg, editor, Spectator 31:2 (Fall 2011): 53-62. LESBIAN COP, QUEER KILLER nelly queens or motorcycle dykes we are My analysis of The Wire hones in on the presented with images of white, affluent, narrative treatment of two of the black queer trend-setting, Perrier-drinking, frequent characters, Detective Shakima “Kima” Greggs, a flyer using, Ph.D-holding consumer sexy lesbian cop, and Felicia “Snoop” Pearson, a citizens with more income to spend than hypermasculine ruthless criminal. I attend to the they know what to do with.5 representations of Kima and Snoop’s sexuality and gender by examining the production of black Since the so-called “gay nineties,” there has been queer women’s sexuality in the context of quality an increase, albeit a small one, in representations of TV, wherein race and gender have played a key queer characters of color on TV shows including role in the elevation of television through complex, Greek, Ugly Betty, Noah’s Arc, The L Word, Six Feet sophisticated narratives. In this context, I question Under, and RuPaul’s Drag Race. The Wire also the manner in which The Wire both expands the rectifies this disparity with the inclusion of several parameters of quality television and concomitantly black queer characters that present a range of situates itself solidly within this genre by utilizing genders, sexualities, income levels, and ethics. The black queer sexuality to refine aesthetic values and black queer characters on The Wire expand the intensify narrative arcs. I am concerned with the representation of blackness on television beyond ways in which quality TV programming creates the lone black gay character like Carter or past a demand for black queer characters but then the parameters of an explicitly black gay show delimits the depth with which these characters can like Logo’s Noah’s Arc. Furthermore, The Wire also be written into existence. stands apart from other television representations for its incorporation of black queer female Quality TV and The Wire characters; along with The L Word and Pretty Little Liars, The Wire is among the first fictional TV Quality TV has been troubled by its value-laden programs in the U.S. to depict black queer women. moniker because “quality” inherently distinguishes The Wire creates a dystopic landscape in which that which falls within its parameters from black queer women navigate their surroundings television programs that are presumably lacking without their sexualities or genders inhibiting their in quality.9 Robert J. Thompson asserts that “[q] movements or causing their premature deaths.6 An uality TV is best defined as what it is not. It is impeccable attention to detail in writing, direction, not ‘regular’ TV.”10 This distinction between and production creates never before seen black quality TV and “regular TV” is reminiscent of the queer women that we love and despise. distinction made between art and mass culture, While the presence of these characters which placed television solidly within the purview on television expands representations of black of the latter. Thompson characterizes quality TV sexualities in popular culture, I argue this expansion as having a “quality pedigree” and asserts that is tempered by the use of black sexual taboo to quality TV writing is complex enough to handle produce an aesthetic of quality TV.7 With media multiple plots woven among a large ensemble representations of marginalized groups come cast. He argues that the audience is from a “blue expectations that lived experiences are taken into chip” demographic of “upscale, well educated, account; in my discussion of quality TV, I consider urban dwelling young viewers.” 11 Quality TV, the manner in which visual representations of according to Thompson, tends both toward blackness have been mired in the rhetoric of controversial subject matter as well as realism.12 authenticity. Specifically, I interrogate the ways “‘Quality TV’ is then simply television’s version that the fraught history of black women’s sexuality of ‘art film.’”13 in the U.S. is leveraged in the production of The Janet McCabe and Kim Akass address the Wire’s black queer women characters.8 I contend manner in which HBO exhibits “the best of that The Wire both complicates and exploits black American TV” through “misogynistic violence” queer sexuality in order to produce provocative and the pleasure derived from pushing moral quality television. boundaries.14 They write: 54 FALL 2011 DECLUE Contentious subject matter and edgy Either Black people could not be scripts containing adult themes are homosexual or those Blacks who were predicated on risk-taking that strains homosexual were not “authentically” broadcasting limits… Pushing limits of Black. Black people were allegedly not respectability, of daring to say/do what threatened by homosexuality because cannot be said/done elsewhere on the they were protected by their “natural” networks, is entwined with bein g esoteric, heterosexuality.17 groundbreaking and risk-taking.15 If blackness is constructed as diametrically opposed This discussion of HBO’s edgy, quality television to homosexuality, then being black means being programming that at once promotes diversity heterosexual. This understanding of authentic while taking advantage of gender, race, and class blackness as naturally heterosexual but not differences informs my analysis. The Wire secures heteronormative situates black queerness as inevitably its quality TV status, in part, by foregrounding aberrant. The denial of black homosexuality is linked the marginalized sexualities of black queer female to black women’s sexuality that historically has been characters. While many characters marginalized produced as insatiable, wanton, and perpetually by race, class, gender, and sexuality do appear in available to sexual domination and violence.18 The Wire, Kima and Snoop, in particular, produce Black women in the Victorian era uplift quality television narratives that push moral movement designed and enforced a politics of boundaries and showcase diverse representations. respectability that was initially meant to protect While The Wire boldly makes black queer black women from being stigmatized as lascivious women characters visible, the series does not and immoral, a pathology that was rooted in chattel escape reproducing stereotypes either. Rather, slavery. During this period of time, respectable representations of black queer women on The Wire black women upheld strict codes of silence and reinforce and resist stereotypes. In addressing these dissemblance around their own experiences of complex characters, I begin by contextualizing the sexuality and desire in an effort to elevate black pathologization of black women’s
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