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