Jacques Rothmann ‘Send in the (gay) clowns’: Will & Grace and Modern Family as ‘sensibly queer’1 First submission: 29 November 2012 Acceptance: 20 August 2013 Initial representation of sexual minorities reified gay lifestyle as synonymous with deviancy (Seidman 1996: 6), courtesy of news programmes or documentaries. Several depictions, whether comical or dramatic, led to an outcry from conservative and gay groups alike, protesting the stereotypical depiction of gay men as “a joke” (Burgess 2011: 178), a theme which would continue until the present day. This article provides a queer theoretical critique of two situation comedies, Will & Grace (Kohan & Mutchnick 1998) and Modern Family (Levitan & Lloyd 2009a), and their representation of gay men. Primary emphasis is placed on the dualistic use of comedic satire to either reinforce heteronormativity or exemplify the permeable nature of the supposed rigidity of the heterosexual/homosexual binary logic (Fuss 1991; Namaste 1996). Mr Jacques Rothmann, Edu-HRight Research Unit, Sociology, Faculty of Arts, North- West University Potchefstroom campus. E-mail address:
[email protected] 1 ‘Send in the clowns’ is the title to one of the songs from Broadway lyricist Stephen Sondheim’s A little night music. Acta Academica 2013 45(4): 40-83 ISSN 0587-2405 © UV/UFS <http://www.ufs.ac.za/ActaAcademica> Rothmann/’Send in the (gay) clowns’ llen DeGeneres paved the way for representation of sexual minorities on television, in general, and in the US, in particular, Ewhen she became the first lesbian character on prime-time television to “come out” in the series Ellen (1994-1998) (Moore 2008: 19). Originally depicted as uninterested in dating of any kind, a producer of the show recommended that she should get a puppy, and as result the ‘coming out’ episode was titled ‘The puppy episode’ (Meem et al.