Julia Himberg Race, Sexuality, and Television Editor’s Introduction

On November 4, 2008, the same day that Barack favor of Prop 8 and this bias was broadly attributed Obama was elected President of the United States, to cultural and religious beliefs that firmly opposed California voters passed Proposition 8, a statewide homosexuality and the right of lesbians and gays ballot initiative that limited marriage to the union to marry. Critics such as The Nation’s Richard of a man and woman only.1 While the Presidential Kim, The Atlantic’s Ta-Nehisi Coates, and The election inspired jubilation over the nation’s first San Francisco Chronicle’s Matthai Kuruvila quickly black President – the event was seen by many as published critiques of this claim, re-framing and proof that racial differences had been overcome re-contextualizing Prop 8’s passage. 4 Just twelve – Prop 8’s passage instead provoked public days after the vote, Kuruvila wrote: “demographers outcry for being “a dangerous and discriminatory say the focus on one race not only disregards the step backward,” especially in a state with such a complexity of African American identity but also progressive reputation.2 The coincidence of these overlooks the most powerful predictors affecting two events revealed triumph on the racial front views on same-sex marriage: religion, age and concurrent with the powerful renunciation of ideology, such as party affiliation.”5 Critics in lesbian and gay rights. Black comedienne Wanda the popular media who offered more complex Sykes, who publicly “came out” during the Prop analyses of the factors contributing to Prop 8’s 8 campaign, articulated this paradox in her 2009 passage often gestured toward theories of race HBO stand-up special: “That night was crazy. and sexuality developed by scholars including Black President – yay! Oh Prop 8 passed, shit, now Jasbir Puar, Barbara Smith, Roderick Ferguson, I’m a second-class citizen.”3 and Patricia Hill Collins among others. Popular In this socio-political environment, discussions interventions into the assertion that Prop 8 passed about racial and sexual identities have dominated because of black voters, for example, echoed Puar’s U.S. media, especially television. Media coverage concept of “homonationalism,” which describes about the fight for the marriage rights of lesbians the ways that the “good” U.S. citizen depends on and gays has underscored, exaggerated, and the consolidation of a normative homosexuality reinforced social and religious conflicts between based on categories of race and class in particular.6 sexual and racial identities. For example, when Despite these nuanced critiques, national TV Prop 8 passed by a slim margin, media reports news commentators from ultra-conservative Bill attributed its adoption to black voters; exit polling O’Reilly (Fox) to ultra-liberal Rachel Maddow indicated that seven out of ten blacks voted in (MSNBC) used Prop 8 as a platform for discussing

Race, Sexuality, and Television 5 Julia Himberg, editor, Spectator 31:2 (Fall 2011): 5-11. EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION the eruption of a “culture war” between race and critical understanding of film as part of reality sexuality in the nation.7 rather than as a reflection or representation of it.”10 Political tensions have been equally high Texts like Muñoz’s and Keeling’s provide valuable about the country’s stand on immigration and interventions into theorizations of racialized sexual citizenship, a debate focused primarily on race minorities, analyzing a broad range of media and and ethnicity, especially on undocumented Latino making use of interdisciplinary approaches. immigrants. As Esteban del Río notes about media Building on and expanding these influential representations of Latinos, “when times are bad, works, the aim of this collection is to offer ways as they are now, Latinos are lumped into moral to think through representations of racial and panics about illegal immigration and invasion sexual minorities, especially queer characters and from Latin America.”8 Laws like Arizona’s SB personalities of color, in the context of the modern 1070, which criminalizes illegal immigration U.S. television industry. In this introduction, by defining it as “trespassing” and allows police “queer” stands for the range of non-heteronormative to question and arrest a person they suspect of identities rather than an oppositional stance to being undocumented, underscore the divisiveness categorization. of immigration reform battles in the country. SB My interest in this topic stems both from the 1070, the strictest bill on immigration in the U.S., work of scholars such as those discussed above and has further ignited controversy and protest about with my own work as a volunteer for GLAAD (the racial profiling and discrimination, topics that have Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation). been central to 21st century American discourse In 2006 and 2008, I served on the television jury, since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. which along with GLAAD’s film, music, and print/ Scholars such as del Río, Herman Gray, Chon journalism juries, meets monthly to discuss and Noriega, L.S. Kim, Sasha Torres, Kara Keeling, assess the previous month’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, Celine Parrenas Shimizu, and José Esteban Muñoz and transgender (LGBT) representations. As a have offered compelling investigations of racialized national media watch-dog organization, GLAAD sexualities in media. Muñoz’s Disidentifications: believes that calling attention to “accurate” as well as Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics to “defamatory” LGBT media images significantly (1999), for example, reclaims agency as a method influences the way society views LGBT citizens of examining race, ethnicity, desire, and the queer and the fight for civil rights; within this framework, body. Drawing on psychoanalysis and theories media visibility is a necessary strategy to gain entry of revisionary identification in productive ways, into the political establishment. I joined the jury Muñoz explores the process of identification/ eager to understand and contribute to popular disidentification in performances of film, television, responses to representations of sexual minorities pornography, literature, and visual culture. For on television, a medium with a history of LGBT him, the artists and performances, each on their invisibility. Television, widely considered a cultural own terms, transgress “repressive regimes of truth” mirror and arbiter of shared values and norms, in order to create their own truth.9 In this way, has been a perpetual lightning rod for discussions Muñoz offers a theoretical framework that allows about representational politics. one to trace the lineage of marginal sites, locating On the jury, conversations often focused on alternative spaces for queers of color. how much a character’s motives and storylines In The Witch’s Flight: The Cinematic, The Black revolved around her or his sexual identity. These Femme, and the Image of Common Sense (2007), discussions highlighted what’s known as a “post- Keeling analyzes popular films such asEve’s Bayou, gay” rhetoric; while in academic circles, “post” Foxy Brown, and Set It Off in order to articulate can denote a clearly marked artistic or historical the ways in which film and processes of production period as well as a transition that blurs temporal help prop up structures of racism and homophobia, distinctions, in popular discourse, “post” usually denying and exposing alternative social constructs. signifies social progress wherein differences are She contends that Deleuze’s concept of the no longer significant or consequential. With this cinematic produces the space “for a nuanced and approach, a character’s sexuality is a “non-issue,”

6 FALL 2011 HIMBERG neither defining the totality of the character nor This collection then frames the television driving their actions. GLAAD jurors especially industry as a social, political, and economic praised TV characters and personalities who entity, grounded in particular logics, formal were LGBT and of color, when those identities characteristics, financial structures, and regulatory were not an integral part of the narrative. These practices. Characters such as Calvin Owens on evaluations also picked up on the “post-race” Greek, Kima and Snoop on The Wire,and reality TV rhetoric that entered the mainstream with stars such as Tila Tequila (A Shot at Love with Tila Obama’s election. Consistently, many jurors Tequila) and Ongina (RuPaul’s Drag Race) have argued that the less relevant race and sexuality emerged during a time of unprecedented industry were to a character, the more “progressive” the deregulation, consolidation, and expansion. While representation. the advent of the VCR, cable TV, and premium My experience with the jury underscored subscription channels in the 1970s, 1980s, and the ease with which queer representations of early 1990s impacted audience’s viewing habits color are categorized as either “stereotypical” or substantially, the changes that occurred in the late “progressive/groundbreaking,” with little room 1990s and early 2000s drastically altered television for negotiation, ambiguity, or intricacy. As as a whole. These shifts exist at each level of the Stuart Hall reminds us, though, “representation industry including ownership, technology, program is a complex business and, especially when creation, distribution platforms, advertising models, dealing with ‘difference’, it engages feelings, and systems of audience measurement.12 Amanda attitudes and emotions and it mobilizes fears and Lotz writes that these shifts demarcate a new era anxieties in the viewer.”11 Popular culture’s use in the industry, what she calls the “post-network” of “post-gay” and “post-race” rhetoric provides an era.13 This issue of Spectator reflects two of the opportunity to examine the cultural and political most talked about trends in this post-network era: complexities of modern identity formations. This the proliferation of cable channels and the surge topic seems especially pressing as contemporary in reality TV programming. Of the six articles in television shows including The Wire, Six Feet this issue, five examine cable TV shows and three Under, Greek, Hell Date, The L Word, Rupaul’s analyze reality TV stars and programs. Drag Race, The Real World, The Wanda Sykes Show, In the contemporary media landscape, scholars Pretty Little Liars, and A Shot at Love with Tila have consistently tied the increase in television Tequila have provoked strong reactions about images of LGBT characters and personalities to their representations of queer characters and the rise of cable TV.14 Unlike broadcast channels, personalities of color. which are subject to heavy regulation because they use public airwaves, cable is a private industry, Why Television? subject to less stringent regulations. Cable’s fewer regulations tend to mean more sex, violence, and The sheer volume of TV production creates a profanity, as well as more images of racial and steady stream of programming that engages with sexual minorities. Cable channels also provide contemporary cultural pleasures, anxieties, and the largest revenue streams for the major media tensions; television, unlike film, produces vast outlets. As industry journalists have noted, “Cable quantities of programming in short amounts of is… king when it comes to driving the revenue and time. While the rhetoric of new digital technologies profits of Hollywood’s entertainment giants.”15 promises to displace television as the medium of With the proliferation of cable channels, the future, this Spectator issue approaches TV as advertisers and television executives have an apparatus and representational form that is intensified efforts to reach smaller and more intertwined with newer technologies. Several of the distinct segments of the population in the hopes articles collected here examine TV programming in of finding ever more efficient ways to market to the context of convergence culture, accounting for consumers. As Joseph Turow observes, marketers the aesthetic, economic, and technological demands try to build “primary media communities,” which placed on television in the early 21st century. are formed when “viewers or readers feel that a

RACE, SEXUALITY, AND TELEVISION 7 EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION magazine, TV channel, newspaper, radio station, sexual identities are central to TV characters’ and or other medium reaches people like them, personalities’ storylines, playing an integral role in resonates with their personal beliefs, and helps how they navigate the televisual universe. them chart their position in the larger world.”16 The articles in this collection explore the In this framework, racial and sexual minorities are complex relationships among race, sexuality, and desirable and commodifiable niche audiences and television in this competitive, multi-channel, markets. However, as Evan Brody’s article in this conglomerate environment. “Race,” “sexuality,” and collection demonstrates, network television has “television” each offer their own distinct histories, had to keep pace with cable’s “edgy” content and theories, economics, and aesthetics. Yet, what ties high production values to compete for audiences these articles together is a deep investment in how and advertisers. In 2011, network shows are images of or issues concerning race, sexuality, and receiving unprecedented credit for both reviving television are constructed, represented, and received the flailing broadcast industry and for doing so by in various contexts of contemporary culture. While creating diverse casts with queer characters that are these articles traverse a broad range of television “changing hearts, minds, and Hollywood.”17 shows, theoretical frameworks, and modes of Over the first decade of the 21st century, analysis, they all account for the ways that post- reality TV shows established themselves as network television engages with, constructs, and popular and standard fare on broadcast and cable delimits representation. In the first article, “Selling networks (premium cable has largely distanced the Hypersexual Body: Tila Tequila’s ‘Alternative’ itself from associations with reality formats in Gender Performance Across New and Old Media its focus on producing “quality TV”). As Taylor Platforms,” Taylor Nygaard examines Tequila’s Nygaard’s article in this collection explains, TV racialized sexuality as a Vietnamese, bisexual networks use reality shows to offset the soaring woman in the contexts of celebrity branding, reality costs of fictional programming in a society defined television, and convergence culture. With an eye to by media saturation. The genre’s significance, as the economics of the media industries, Nygaard Laurie Ouellette and Susan Murray note, lies in addresses the range of forces that construct its status on “the cusp of developments in media Tequila’s celebrity text. She sees this process as a convergence, interactivity, user-generated content, contradictory one – for racial and sexual minorities and greater viewer involvement in television.”18 like Tequila, celebrity is both a success story of the As a cultural form, reality TV raises pressing democratic potential of convergence culture and a questions about power, authenticity, surveillance, troubling tale of commodification and exploitation and representational practices. In addition, from the top-down. Nygaard’s article makes a scholars such as Larry Gross, Hector Amaya, and significant contribution to understanding the Christopher Pullen contend that racial and sexual interplay of television, convergence culture, gender, minorities “have been consistently included as sexuality, and postfeminism at a time when these part of the social lineup in the reality television discourses are in flux. world.”19 As the articles by Nygaard, Hargraves, In “‘You Better Work:’ The Commodification and Ault in this collection detail, reality TV relies of HIV in RuPaul’s Drag Race” Hunter Hargraves on inter-personal conflict to create high drama; continues to explore the interweaving of commercial these shows tend to pit racial, sexual, gender, class, imperatives and queer politics. He uses Ongina, a and religious-based identities against each other. Filipino-born contestant on Logo’s RuPaul’s Drag In reality TV’s discourse of “difference,” queer Race who disclosed her HIV-positive status on personalities often face off against heterosexuality the show, to consider the implications of having and heteronormativity. Moreover, race is sometimes a reality TV star as a celebrity spokesperson for aligned with and other times opposed to queer HIV. Hargraves expands the scope of research on identities, offering particularly dramatic sites of HIV/AIDS disclosure and celebrity by situating conflict in shows such as The Real World (MTV), his analysis of Ongina within a discussion of labor, College Hill (BET), Survivor (CBS), and Wife Swap race, gender, sexuality, commodity production, (ABC). As this collection demonstrates, racial and and reality television. Pointing out the problems

8 FALL 2011 HIMBERG inherent in the commodification of HIV positive black female characters on HBO’s The Wire. individuals, particularly HIV positive individuals Interrogating the construction of Kima and of color, he ultimately argues that public disclosure Snoop through the lens of female masculinity, on reality TV programs reframes the disease within DeClue draws connections among conventions of both commercial and mainstream LGBT culture. quality TV, the conflation of gender and sexuality, Evan Brody’s essay “Categorizing Coming discourses of television realism, and the historical Out: The Modern Televisual Mediation of Queer treatment of black women’s sexuality in the U.S. Youth Identification” also engages in discourses of Her analysis calls attention to the ambivalent disclosure, focusing on the “coming out” narratives status of these representations; they are powerful of two teenage boys on network television. Using critiques of racism, sexism, heterosexism, and Glee’s Kurt Hummel and Ugly Betty’s Justin Suarez, homophobia. Yet, they are also narrow depictions Brody traces the ways that each show reinforces of queer black women, confined by the demands and contests the normalized process of “coming of quality TV. out.” Closely examining how performativity and Shifting from an analysis of queer black confession function differently in Kurt and Justin’s women to queer black men in “TV in Black and queer self-identification, he demonstrates the Gay: Examining Constructions of Gay Blackness varying possibilities for representing the “coming and Gay Crossracial Dating on GR∑∑K,” Alfred out” story as a simple recognition of the self rather L. Martin, Jr. provides an examination of Calvin than as a life-altering marker of sexuality. His Owens, the lone gay black male character on the comparison of the two characters, importantly, ABC Family show Greek. His article focuses on suggests that Justin’s racialized “coming out” the ways that the show constitutes Calvin’s gay narrative provides a compelling challenge to the identity in relation to his black identity. Through a formulaic “white” “coming out” story offered by careful analysis of key scenes throughout the show’s Kurt and numerous characters before him. four seasons, Martin details the ways that race and With “Nightmares of Neoliberalism: sexuality operate as discrete and often conflicting Performing Failure on Hell Date,” Elizabeth Ault social categories. Rather than representing these moves us from in-depth character analysis to a identities as overlapping and intersecting, Martin broader critique of the cable network BET and argues that Greek shifts Calvin’s self-identification its reality dating show Hell Date. Ault uses the based on his social environment. Additionally, show to study the logic of African American Martin complicates this discussion of identity by self-fashioning in light of neoliberal theories incorporating an analysis of the show’s treatment and practices. Her analysis reveals the ways that of interracial relationships between Calvin and neoliberalism’s ties to cultural politics play out his white boyfriends over the course of the series. on a niche cable station dedicated to African This article moves beyond the kinds of evaluations American audiences. Ault examines an array offered by “post-gay” and “post-race” frameworks, of racialized stereotypes featured on Hell Date, sustaining the cultural and political complexities of positioning them as “hauntings” that must be gay and black identities. repressed to ensure African Americans’ access The collection concludes with reviews of to what she calls “entrepreneurial citizenship.” two recent books that interrogate contemporary The article contributes to the growing body of constructions of racial and sexual minorities in research on television, racial and sexual minorities, the media. Lorien Hunter reviews Erica Chito and neoliberal regimes of power. Hell Date, Ault Childs’s Fade to Black and White: Interracial contends, presents the types of racial and sexual Images in Popular Culture, which analyzes the excess that have to be denied for neoliberal ways that media including film, television, music, multiculturalism to prevail, but in doing so, makes and the Internet depict biracial individuals visible the pleasure in these same cultural ruptures. and interracial couples, providing an account Also taking up the topic of racialized sexuality of modern perceptions of a range of racialized in cable television, Jennifer DeClue offers one representations. Bryce J. Renninger reviews of the first sustained critiques of the two queer Samuel A. Chambers’s book The Queer Politics of

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Television, which integrates television studies the intersectionality of identity categories. and political theory to read contemporary TV Such analyses enable us to better comprehend programming through the lens of queer theory. how characters, shows, networks, audiences, These reviews complete a collection that seeks to and institutions define and challenge queer extend scholarship that examines the ways that and racialized identities on TV. Together, these the television industry produces, complicates, articles underscore the need for and importance and co-constitutes images of racial and sexual of bringing multiple fields into conversation with minorities. Each article reveals that television one another. My hope is that people will consider remains a significant site of communication the usefulness of a more rigorous integration of about racial and sexual identities, offering television studies, political economy of media, entryways into investigating the cultural and critical race theory, feminist studies, and queer political nature of U.S. programming in the new theory; this collection is designed to encourage millennium. Most significantly, this collection and inspire an interdisciplinary dialogue about provides a cross-section of methodological race, sexuality, and television in the 21st century approaches, creating scholarship that privileges United States.

Julia Himberg is a postdoctoral fellow in the division of Critical Studies at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, where she received her Ph.D. Her areas of scholarly interest include television history and theory, media industry studies, feminist theory, gender studies, critical race theory, queer theory, as well as marketing and consumer culture. She is currently turning her dissertation, “Producing Lesbianism: Television, Niche Marketing, and Sexuality in the 21st Century,” into a book manuscript. The project examines the cultural, political, and economic dynamics at play in the production of contemporary lesbian TV images. Her work on TV advertising has been published in The Hummer: Myths and Consumer Culture. End Notes

1 Prop 8 supercedes the California Supreme Court’s May 2008 ruling that marriage is a fundamental right, which cannot be denied to lesbian and gay couples. Since its passage, Prop 8 has been contested in state and federal courts and is widely considered a landmark case that will eventually reach the U.S. Supreme Court. For a timeline of the events following Prop 8’s passage and details of the legal proceedings see: http://www.afer.org/our-work/case-timeline/; http://www.nclrights.org/site/PageServer?pagename=issue_ caseDocket_prop8legalchallenge_About; http://www.eqca.org/site/pp.asp?b=5716101&c=kuLRJ9MRKrH. 2 “Vote No on Proposition 8,” PFLAG, September 2008, http://community.pflag.org/Page.aspx?pid=962 (accessed February 2, 2011). 3 See Wanda Sykes’s comedy special I’ma Be Me, first broadcast October 10, 2009 by HBO. 4 One of the most basic counter-claims made at the time was that California’s black population was simply not large enough to have controlled the outcome of Prop 8. According to the 2006–2008 American Community Survey, the state’s black population is 6.7%, not nearly enough citizens to control the outcome of a statewide ballot initiative. 5 Matthai Kuruvila, “Trends beyond black vote in play on Prop. 8,” The San Francisco Chronicle,November 16, 2008, http://articles. sfgate.com/2008-11-16/news/17126664_1_black-vote-same-sex-black-gays-and-lesbians (accessed February 16, 2011). 6 Jasbir Puar, Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007). 7 For segments of these episodes see “The O’Reilly Factor on Prop 8 and Blacks,” YouTube video, posted November 13, 2008, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRBeMEUQDzo&feature=related (accessed February 10, 2011); “Rachel Maddow: African Americans on Prop 8,” YouTube video, posted November 8, 2008, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcZVAlSqNbA&feature= related (accessed February 10, 2011). 8 Esteban del Río, “The Fringe Benefits of Symbolic Annihilation,”Flow 13 No. 3, November 12, 2010. 9 José Esteban Muñoz, Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 199.

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10 Kara Keeling, The Witches Flight: The Cinematic, the Black Femme, and the Image of Common Sense(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007), 5. 11 Stuart Hall, ed. Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices (London: Sage Publications, 1999), 226. 12 See Amanda Lotz, The Television Will Be Revolutionized(New York: NYU Press, 2007); William M. Kunz, Culture Conglomerates: Consolidation in the Motion Picture and Television Industries (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007); Robert W. McChesney, The Political Economy of Media: Enduring Issues, Emerging Dilemmas (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2008); Jennifer Holt and Alisa Perren, ed., Media Industries: History, Theory, and Method(Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009). 13 Lotz, The Television Will Be Revolutionized, 15. 14 See Larry Gross, Up From Invisibility: Lesbians, Gay Men, and the Media in America (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001); Ron Becker, Gay TV and Straight America (Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2006); Suzanna Danuta Walters, All the Rage: The Story of Gay Visibility in America(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2001); Rebecca Beirne ed.,Televising Queer Women: A Reader (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). 15 Georg Szalai and Paul Bond, “Will Cable Drive Conglomerates’ Earnings?” The Hollywood Reporter, March 29, 2010, http:// www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/will-cable-drive-conglomerates-earnings-22107 (accessed February 1, 2011). 16 Joseph Turow, Breaking Up America: Advertisers and the New Media World (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1997), 4. 17 Jennifer Strong, “Special Report: Gay Teens on TV: How a bold new class of young gay characters on shows like Glee is changing hearts, minds, and Hollywood,” Entertainment Weekly, January 28, 2011, 34-41. 18 Laurie Ouellette and Susan Murray, “Introduction,” in Reality TV: Remaking Television Culture, 2nd ed. ed. Susan Murray and Laurie Ouellette (New York: NYU Press, 2009), 2. 19 Christopher Pullen, “Gay Performativity and Reality Television: Alliances, Competition, and Discourse” in The New Queer Aesthetic on Television: Essays on Recent Programming, ed. James R. Keller and Leslie Stratyner ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2006), 164.

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