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Queer Gazing and the Popular

A Study on the Representational Strategies of Queer Representations in Popular Television Fiction

Sofie Van Bauwel, Frederik Dhaenens, and Daniel Biltereyst

Contemporary Western society is dominated by a media culture (Featherstone, 1995; Kellner, 1995). Besides printed media, radio, and information and communication technologies (ICTs), television is still an important medium in the realm of everyday life. Fiction, and especially fiction series, is ubiquitous in this Western television world, and broadcasters travel around to buy not only formats but also fiction series. Several studies with an emphasis on the political economy of the global media market (e.g., Chalaby, 2006; De Bens & De Smaele, 2001) have stressed the importance of importing fictional television formats. In this respect, Biltereyst (1995) has already argued that the European market is dominated by North American (i.e., US) fiction. European channels have gained success with fiction series such as 24, Lost, Heroes, Prison Break, and Sex and the City.

Recently, television series that predominantly represent queers have also entered the international television market. In this chapter, the concept of “queer” refers to those who do not consider their sexual identity and/or desires as strictly heterosexual, and/or who articulate sexual and gender identity positions that are considered as diverging from the heteronormal. Hence, queer representations can have the potential to challenge heteronormativity and/or heteronormative representations of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) characters and articulate queer identities.

To this end, we illustrate how potential queer strategies are articulated in popular television series. In particular we focus on Queer as Folk, The L Word, and Six Feet Under, since these series on the one hand represent characters who transgress fixed identity positions and, on the other, subvert and/or depict alternatives to certain heteronormative institutions, practices, norms, and values, unlike Will & Grace (see Provencher, 2005). These series are not only popular on television but are also successful (like many other series) on the DVD market. The L Word was broadcast in 44 countries, Six Feet Under in 22, and the original British Queer as Folk in 16 countries, quite comparable with, for example, the popularity of Sex and the City, which was broadcast in 39 countries.

It should be noted that the increase of LGBT representation on television began in the late 1990s. Prior to that time, LGBTs on the small screen were rarely present. In contrast, cinema and Hollywood have always represented LGBT and queer characters (Dyer, 1990). Even during the era of the US Production Code, subtextual articulations of queerness were depicted on the big screen (Barrios, 2003). (From 1934 until 1968, Hollywood installed the Production Code Administration (PCA) as a self-regulatory institution that provided self-censorship rules.) Among other constraints, the PCA forbade depictions of sexual perversion. From the 1950s on, LGBTs did enter the small screen, albeit as sidekicks who very often had to be “cured” of their “sexual deviancy.” During the 1980s and 1990s, most of the series exchanged the pathological queer for a more mainstream gay character. However, series that are explicitly defined as queer by their producers are a recent phenomenon within Western media culture. As such, fictional texts are created that are positioned outside the borders of heteronormativity (Hayward, 2000). This practice very much corresponds with some of the basic premises of queer theory, the poststructural theory that contests strict categorical views on gender and sexuality (Seidman, 1996). These series represent characters whose gender and sexual identities are blurred, paradoxical, and undefined. Further, these series expose and deconstruct the way mainstream Western society reiterates and consolidates the hegemonic discourse of heteronormativity, for instance by questioning the hierarchical supremacy of certain institutions (e.g., marriage), practices (e.g., procreation), and norms and values (e.g., monogamy, stability, longevity).

Even without production intentions, these explicit queer representations are pre-occupied with “alternative” representations of identity and sexuality. Besides the fact that the signifying practices in relation to these representations are multilayered and not fixed, we want to explore the representational strategies that are being used to depict the British and North American queer characters in fictional series like Queer as Folk, Six Feet Under, and The L Word. Elaborating on queer theory, we will analyze these media texts and stress the different representational strategies of queer identities in popular television fiction. These series are interesting to research not only for their queerness, but also because they are present in the contemporary international DVD market and gain large audiences in Western broadcasting media.

Mapping Queer Theory

The roots of queer theory can be found in the late 1970s when the concept of homosexuality began to be questioned, a phenomenon that radically changed gay and lesbian studies (e.g., Creekmur & Doty, 1995).¹ At that time within academia and grassroots movements in particular in Western countries, homosexuality began to lose its essentialist and uniform connotation while homosexual desire came to be positioned in a social and historical context (for an overview, see Seidman, 1996). Still, it is important to state that essentialist notions of homosexuality are still predominant in Western mainstream societies and that queer thinking in academia and activism is not a unified endeavor. Gradually, class, race, ethnicity, and nationality were integrated into the debate about identity (Seidman, 1995). Social constructivism was the dominant approach or paradigm within which identity and sexual orientation were discussed from historical and cultural angles, from which emerged two important principles. The first was that socially recognized sexual orientations vary culturally and historically; the second suggested that in cultures where heterosexuality and homosexuality are acknowledged, sexual behavior can move between these categories or incorporate both (McIntosh, 1997). As a consequence, unified values or political aspirations were rendered practically impossible because of the diversity within the queer community (Seidman, 1995).

At the same time, in feminist film theory contradictions were revealed. Research on different feminisms focused on changing the structure of patriarchal societies in order to end the oppression of women and minorities, which in the 1970s experienced a theoretical transformation into film studies (Chaudhiri, 2006). In this context the accomplishments of feminist film theorists were of great importance (for example, Laura Mulvey's (1975) groundbreaking essay on questioning the male gaze in cinema). But what seemed to have been overlooked by both the British and the American traditions of feminist film critiques were the “real” women. Teresa de Lauretis (1987) pointed out that feminist theory continued to think in terms construed by patriarchies, creating women as a universal sex category opposed to that of men (see Benhabib, Butler, Cornell, & Fraser, 1995; De Vos & Van Bauwel, 2002), making differentiating between “women” and “Woman” impossible. Such a differentiation required a radical rethinking of the very concept of gender. Founded on Michel Foucault's technology of sex (1976), de Lauretis suggested that there is a technology of gender that is the product of hegemony. This enabled research in which men and women were analyzed in relation to power strategies rather than merely in relation to one another. Judith Butler (1999) also reacted against the assumption of women having a common identity, in the sense that at certain moments in time and place common goals and/or aspirations are articulated as shared and even universal in relation to women's emancipation building on a common identity as a woman. Although this insistence was constructed within feminist movements and theory to challenge patriarchy in the context of women's emancipation, the conformance to the boundaries of representational politics promoted exclusion and misrepresentation. Butler suggested a radical rethinking of the ontological constructions of gender and identity within the frame of feminist political practice. Butler (1999), who is considered to be one of the leading queer theorists, raised the issue that is foremost in communities of women and LGBTs, namely, the importance of understanding how categories such as “women” or “gays” are produced and reiterated.

Besides the fact that there is a diversity within queer studies and despite the overlaps and interrelatedness with lesbian and gay studies, queer theorists share a concern with how some lesbian and gay scholars try to legitimize homosexuality as a sexual minority by positioning it within the binary construction of homosexuality versus heterosexuality, and by disregarding the hegemony that regulates and reiterates this framework. As a result, these minorities remain conceptualized as the opposite extremes in a spectrum where the center is intact. Queer theory is about reacting against these normalized hierarchies and identity politics, conducting research outside the boundaries of predefined gay or lesbian communities (Seidman, 1995; Stein & Plummer, 1996). The concept of resistance is at the core of queer theory. It is a conscious refusal of labels that define what it is against and it emphasizes a retreat from binary thinking (McIntosh, 1997), which is why queer theory embraces all “non-normative” identities relating to the need to revise society's assumptions about gender and sexuality (Hayward, 2000). In this context, Steven Seidman (1995) is correct to suggest pushing the hetero/homosexual opposition from the individual to the cultural level, and to formulate it as a category of knowledge that encompasses the possibility of imagining homosexuality at the center of popular culture and society, which also exposes the emphasis on heteronormativity. Larry Gross (1998) makes similar claims in his work on sexual minorities and the media, arguing that audiences – and especially minority audiences – can read media texts “as if,” reversing the hegemonic meanings embedded in them.

Queer theorists draw on French poststructural theory, its methods of deconstruction, and Foucault's legacy, particularly his views on power/knowledge and the history of human sexuality (Lapsley & Westlake, 2006; Seidman, 1995). A characteristic of poststructural theory is its rejection of a total theory, which implies that texts can be approached from multiple perspectives focusing simultaneously on discourses and non-discourses, uncovering multiple signifiers such as context, intertextuality, and different subject positions in addition to the text itself (Hayward, 2000). Many poststructuralists use deconstruction to analyze the signifiers and to unravel the modes of representation in a text. Deconstruction is a mode of reading against the grain (i.e., not a method) that is aimed at attacking the ideological values of hegemonic institutions by revealing the illusions being created in a text (see Derrida, 1987). According to Seidman (1995, p. 25):

Finally, queer theorists are heavily inspired by Foucault's (1980) view on power as a possibly repressive and productive factor. Power is not only repressive and disciplinary (from above and institutional) but can also produce agency within the subject (i.e., individual subjects). Broadly, agency can be considered as a discursive construction that produces power. The merit of Foucault's concept of power lies in his linking of power and the discursive position of resistance, in which resistance is allowed to expand and to be articulated as a reflection of power relations. The risk of this perception, according to Mark Thorpe (1999), is that when emphasis is laid on the social factor a pessimistic view is created, meaning that resistance and change are almost impossible in the praxis and only take place at a theoretical discursive level. The introduction of discursive articulations of resistance gives power to each social actor, and the inequalities in the power relations might be overlooked. Thorpe rightly argues that valorizing the margins as progressive spaces of resistance can lead to problems in the attempt to turn theory into empirical evidence. Based on his own research, he makes some suggestions about how to (re)consider the “margins of resistance.” Thorpe (1999) says that these margins of resistance can be seen as both “something” and “nothing,” “there” but “nowhere” as one shifts between lived views, imaginative presentations, and localized structures of validity and meaning. This theoretical insight is particularly fruitful for media and film studies because of its nonromantic and nonidealistic view on the concept of resistance.

Resistance can be present in contemporary representations but at the same time these are incorporated by the boundaries of contemporary mainstream popular culture. There is an opportunity and a potential space for resistance but it is incorporated in mainstream media, and the optimistic notion of pleasure and resistance within media studies is left behind. Furthermore, Foucault (1976) suggests that there is no essential truth of human sexuality as each time it is reconstructed in society's discourses where different sexualities are produced. The fluidity within sexual identity implies that queer theorists find it pointless to conduct a politics of identity in the name of repressed sexualities that can become new sexualities in the future; rather, they prefer to focus on how subjects construct their sexualities in relation to the mechanisms of power and knowledge (Dunphy, 2000; Lapsley & Westlake, 2006).

Queering Academia

Studies of representation are no longer served by the “screen tradition” – film scholars who emphasized the role of film as a text and who were once indispensable to research on cinema (e.g., Gove, 1996). Jeff Lewis (2002), for example, criticized the screen tradition for being concerned mainly with the subject and how it relates to the text. In a similar vein, Ien Ang (1991) criticized screen theorists' textual determinism or their focus on the text as the main source of meaning, thereby ruling out the text readers. According to Ang, readers are able to offer different interpretations of the same text. The noble goal of creating a unified theory of signification, ideology, and subjectivity had become unachievable (Lapsley & Westlake, 2006).

Even with this limitation in mind, we argue that the first step in deconstructing and unraveling these contemporary queer representations is embodied in a textual analysis of these fictional series, more specifically of the queer representational strategies, without falling into the passive “spectator trap” of film theory. The deconstruction of the represented queer identities is conceptualized by work on identity that is part of the active viewer paradigm that challenges textual determinism and conceptualizes the viewer assuming an active role within the signifying practices. This implies that both the text and the audience give meaning to identities such as class, sex, ethnicity, and nationality (Stacey, 1994). This conceptualization embroiders on Hall's fundamental work on the theory of identity (see Hall, 1992, 1996, 1997), which postulates that identities are discursive constructions that produce subjectivities with meanings that are fluctuating in time and place. Rosemary Hennessy (1995) valued cultural studies because of “the intellectual's commitment to and articulation of the relationship between theory and practice.” She stressed that what distinguishes cultural studies from film studies is the scarce acknowledgment within film theory at the beginning of the 1990s of race, class, sexuality, and ethnicity, or the role of gender in these concepts (Hennessy, 1995, p. 22). The interdisciplinary field of cultural studies has much stronger ties with activism and notions of exclusion, diversity, and inequalities are much more prominent in its work. One could argue that gender gained recognition in feminist film theory; however, even here some theorists did not include race, class, sexuality, and ethnicity and focused solely on the construction of “woman” (Chaudhiri, 2006). If we consider Henderson's (1995) remark on the ease with which cultural studies transgresses disciplinary borders, it becomes clear how comfortably queer theory can be merged into it. The need for this is accentuated by Lapsley and Westlake (2006) in their Film Theory: An Introduction, which described how postmodernity in all its diversity demands different approaches and methods. The authors stressed that “it is hard to see how anyone could now plausibly advance claims for the universal validity of a particular orientation while delegitimizing all others” (Lapsley & Westlake, 2006, p.xv).

It is not only film and cultural studies that benefit from queer theory, but queer theory itself becomes more viable when its theoretical stances are integrated into film studies or cultural studies, both of which include research on LGBT and queer representation. Although queer theory engages in the promotion of individuality and celebration of differences, it never fully explains the type of difference politics it envisions. Seidman (1995) even suggested a conscious refusal on the part of queer theorists to formulate ethical and political points of view or imagine a constructive social project. Seidman (1995) referred to Judith Butler and her suggestion to expose and undermine the compulsive reenactment of heterosexuality and the assumption of causality between sex, gender, and sexuality by means of deconstructive critiques such as drag or performative politics (see also the work of Halberstam, 2005; Edwards, 1998).

Besides the theoretical emphasis on performance and subjectivity, it is important to link these almost ontological positions to the ideological and emancipatory positions of research on queer representations. The critique that there is no solid ground for subject positions could be countered, possibly by applying queer theory to research LGBT representations. Specifically, a queer theoretical perspective allows for highlighting the resistant potential of queer representations to expose or disrupt the hegemonic heteronormative discourse.

Recognizing and identifying these articulations would facilitate the formulation of constructive social practices. As such, queer theory could become an element of research aiming at concrete, constructive ethical points of view.

Putting the Queer into Media Studies

The integration of queer theory into film studies resides in a small but significant number of essays regarding queer film production and reception (e.g., Gittings, 2001; Rich, 2004; Wallace, 2000). Researchers mainly depart from the key idea of queer theory, which is a rejection of the biological and essentialist notions of gender and sexuality, perceiving them as fluent and socially constructed. Harry Benshoff and Sean Griffin (2004), for instance, emphasized that queer film research aims at exploring all non-normative sexualities and how they relate to the screen. The possibility of broadening the spectrum beyond gay and lesbian identities makes it possible for scholars to embark on the practice of queer reading (e.g., Cover, 2000). Apart from Alan Sinfield's (2004) queer readings of literature, one of the first queer readers of texts was Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (1985). In Between Men, Sedgwick reread English literature to expose discriminations and contradictions in what she called “homosocial desire,” a continuum between the homosocial and the homosexual. In doing so, she reacted against the opposition of the latter two as separate categories. She found this opposition to be less emphasized among women than among men in current society. This difference in emphasis contrasts to Athenian societies, which recognized the homosocial continuum among men. For this reason, she suggested that research on sexuality should be conducted in relation to historical power relationships (Sedgwick, 1985, pp. 1–5), a perspective that has been adopted by queer film theorists in some of their essays on gender and sexuality. Caroline Evans and Lorraine Gamman (1995) put great effort into revisiting gaze theory. They reviewed it in relation to queer theory and referred to the debates over identification in cinema that raised (still unanswered) questions about gender and identity. The problem lies in the concept of identity, which sneaks in and prevents queer reading from being detached from the identification practices in the queer gaze. Although the authors quite firmly argue that identification is fluid and constructed, their idea seems to be approaching the linear “natural” and “essential” bounds of queer reading and identification.

Alexander Doty is another prominent queer film reader who has formulated in a more balanced way propositions in the spectatorship paradigm within film studies. According to Creekmur and Doty (1995), reading practices can vary from revealing queerness in popular culture by questioning the role of mainstream culture and its preferred readings to reinscribing queerness at the margins of popular culture and positioning queer and queer readings on the scholarly agenda of research into popular culture. Doty – well aware of the irony of the subtitle of Flaming Classics: Queering the Film Canon – stressed that the practice of queer reading should not be interpreted as making texts queer, but rather as trying to understand how texts might be understood as queer (Doty, 2000). Robert Lang (2002) also gazed at Hollywood through a queer looking-glass and discovered hidden homosocial and homosexual bounds in films such as Batman and Robin (1997), Midnight Cowboy (1969), and The Outlaw(1943). The latter is a Western that features the character of Doc Holliday falling in love with Billy the Kid.

The flexibility of the concept of queer makes it possible to understand almost any film as queer to a greater extent than standard lesbian or gay films. Doty (2000) referred to classic Hollywood films such as Thelma & Louise (1991) or Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), in which he recognized the creation of an unstable space between the same-sex leads that leaves room for all sorts of interpretations (see also Doty, 1995). Put otherwise, it enables us to read and expose non-normative sexual desires that remain concealed within the heterocentric and stereotyped way of watching films and other popular culture products. It also exposes how LGBT characters are only recognized as such when they are portrayed in clichéd and often pejorative ways (Doty, 2000).

The concept of representation looms in every queer reading, although approaches to it vary. Researching queer representation in a historical context involves consideration of the political and social contexts in which these films were made and seen. North American films that were made in the 1940s and 1950s, when the Production Code (which forbade references to sexual perversions such as homosexuality) was in force, had to find ways around it to enable the representation of gay and lesbian characters on screen (Barrios, 2003). Queer reading practices that focus upon contemporary culture either regard the representation of gay- or lesbian-identified characters or work on queering popular mainstream cinema (see Dhaenens et al., 2008). David Gauntlett (2002) falls within the latter tradition, although he regards queering texts as inventing alternative readings that the authors did not intend and most audiences do not recognize. The body of queer film studies is a diverse package of possible readings of queer and non-queer movies in which the spectator is a mere construction in the mind of the author. Doty (1995, p. 77), for instance, talked of already queerly positioned viewers and straights, both of whom are assumed to be prone to queer impulses. It is therefore important to look at the text and the representational strategies before making arguments about the reading and possible alternative readings. Yet, media studies and screen studies could benefit from the insights and theoretical conceptualizations of queer theory, especially when analyzing queer representations.

Textual Deconstruction

In discussions on queer reading, the dominant voice is that of the queer scholar, while media producers and audiences are often overlooked. Most of the scholars are doing significant theoretical work, but the academic queer gaze shifts from theory to audience and the text is often forgotten. Using a textual analysis (Van Bauwel, 2005) based on the tradition of film analysis, in this chapter we distinguished several representational strategies when a queer identity is represented in popular television fiction. We analyzed moments of queer identity by the characters in the series Queer as Folk, The L Word, and Six Feet Under. Therefore, we analyzed two different levels of the series' textual signifying practices – narrative (e.g., characters, actions, space) and cinematographic elements (e.g., camera movement, lighting, editing). The latter category was divided into aspects of the image (camera use, light, color use, juxtaposition) and aspects of sound (music, spoken language, natural sound, on screen or offscreen). Together, these elements create the mise-en-scène, which gives meaning to the articulated queer identity.

Queering Television

For this study, we focused on three series that feature queer characters and/or are described as queer series. First is the American family drama series Six Feet Under (HBO, 2001–2005), which revolves around the Fisher family that has lost its paterfamilias and is left with the father's funeral home. One of the sons is David Fisher, a closeted gay man who has a relationship with Keith Charles. Second is the British drama series Queer as Folk (BBC, 1999–2000), which features a tightly knit group of predominantly gay friends in a contemporary urban environment. The final series is the American drama series The L Word (Showtime, 2004–2009), which focuses on the lives of a tightly knit group of primarily lesbian friends in contemporary Los Angeles. The series Queer as Folk and The L Word can be considered queer by “nature.” Even though many of the characters label themselves as, for instance, gay or lesbian, most of them can be considered queer. Further, these series depict a queer community in a cosmopolitan environment. Six Feet Under differs, aside from the fact that some of the main characters are queer; its focus is not on a queer community and most of the time the thematic scope is not queer-related (which is the case for the other two series). However, besides a diverse and rich set of characters, these series share some common strategies for representing a queer identity. Most of the strategies can be situated at the narrative level since these series can be described as a narrative genre where plot and character development are important elements of the genre conventions. Thus, our textual analysis focused on the plot and characters.

We distinguished the following five strategies: parody, strategies of corporeality, strategies of “matrix” reversal, strategies of role reversal, and strategies of rearticulation through discursive pleasure. They were all manifested in different forms and equalize at a certain point the representational strategies that are used to represent gender benders (Van Bauwel, 2005).

The queer manifestations articulated by parody strategies are often very strong representations of stereotypical queer representations (e.g., the stereotype of the overemotional queer or the butch lesbian) and are articulated through cross-dressing, overacting, and travesty. Especially in the series Queer as Folk, these strategies are used and often indicate the construction of gender identities and gender roles. This articulation situates itself foremost within the actors' codes (such as vestimentary, gesticular, and kinetic). Parody, often in the guise of self-irony, results in the excessive use of mimetic codes that produces an identity solely constructed out of stereotypes. There is also a temporary simulation of an extreme stereotypical gender identity, and the actual gender identity is not lost, although the fixed identity disappears. For instance, the effeminacy of the stereotypical gay character Alexander in Queer as Folk (season 1, episode 3) is exaggerated in such a way that what becomes mocked is the process of stereotyping instead of the character. Similarly, the series parodies heteronormative gender roles, for instance through characters systematically calling their male friends “girlfriends.” This strategy can be seen as a form of resistance, but it seldom makes a clear statement of resistance against dominant heterosexual identities. In addition, this strategy does not articulate a clear “agency.”

The strategies of corporeality emphasize the performance of the protagonist. The material body reflects the “other” gender identities or articulates an ambiguous gender identity, sometimes called the androgynous ideal. Often “agency” and active identity construction are present. These strategies are also mainly articulated through the actors' codes, such as kinetic codes under the guise of a masquerade. For instance, in The L Word these strategies can be seen as a form of criticism of a fixed gender identity. The series features Shane, a character who articulates androgyny in multiple ways. She claims a lesbian identity, which signifies a female subjectivity while nonetheless playing with both masculine and feminine codes. In contrast, Max opts more radically for a male identity, by embodying masculine stereotypes and pursuing a bodily reconfiguration from female to male. Still, both characters resist the notion of fixed identities that are based on causal relations between chromosomal sex, gender, and sexuality. However, this is a much more subtle strategy, where the cinematographic representation remains hegemonic and one often adopts a “male” gaze. In particular, The L Word has earned criticism because of the “heterosexual lusty gaze” embedded in the series; Candace Moore (2007) has referred to the “tourist” gaze where the male heterosexual viewer is looking into the lesbian world of West Hollywood. Nevertheless, this strategy can be interpreted as a form of resistance that is largely incorporated and often partial. For instance, in the pilot episode, new neighbor Jenny is peeping through a wooden fence at two women making love in the neighbors' swimming pool. Although this scene is constructed around the male gazing lustfully after two lesbian women, it assumes a female subject position through Jenny's gaze. Thus, it resists the stereotypical image of the male gazing and subject position.

The strategies of “matrix” reversal, on the other hand, depart from a more radical position. In these strategies, queer is articulated as the norm, hegemony is transformed as queer, and heterosexuality is reallocated to the margin. The role reversal and the ambiguous game are articulated by the number of queer characters, and by the camera perspective with which the spectator mostly identifies and which is equal to the protagonist's view. Both Queer as Folk and The L Word depart from an almost exclusive queer site that is constructed as the dominant realm. For instance, The L Word is set in West Hollywood, which already has the connotation of being a lesbian-driven community, and Queer as Folk represents a street community that predominantly exists out of gay bars, gay health clubs, an LGBT community center, and so on. Most of their characters assume an LGBT or queer identity, which makes queer desire the norm. Hence, by making queer desire hegemonic, heterosexual desire becomes exceptional and rare. The role reversal is found in the “queer point of view” that turns everything upside down and works in an anti-hegemonic fashion with regard to queer identities. “Agency” is clearly present, and resistance against the dominance of compulsory heterosexuality is articulated.

At another level, we distinguish the strategies of role reversal that are articulated by playing around with traditional gender roles and identities. These strategies are often encountered, and both female and male characters, queer and heterosexual, employ them. The text often supports role reversals under the guise of amplification, and the articulation is at the level of the mise-en-scène, a clear active “agency” conferring subjectivity to the performance that articulates a possible resistance. This strategy is clearly articulated in Six Feet Under, where the series' gay couple David and Keith constantly renegotiate their roles toward each other in their relationship. They subvert the appropriation of fixed gender roles and parody them by mocking or exaggerating heteronormative domestic positions, for instance when David calls himself a “jealous housewife” on discovering that Keith is working late in a bar filled with gays (season 4, episode 7). They also renegotiate their sex roles through actively switching sexual positions (e.g., “bottom” and “top”). As such, they challenge the notion of a fixed sexual and relational position. Further, the series also deploys these role reversals in the dynamics of heterosexual relationships. For instance, Brenda's boyfriend Joe actively desires to be sexually dominated, thus challenging the unquestioned dominant position of the male.

A final form of representing queer are the strategies of rearticulation through discursive pleasure. They articulate ambiguity in a more positive way, with the production of a discourse that very subtly resists patriarchal and heterosexual ideology. A theme often used in these strategies is female lesbian sexuality, which is represented as active and positive, without a radical reversal of the “gaze,” but certainly with a reversal of the object of the “gaze.” The L Word features several lesbian sex scenes that represent the characters as subjects with agency instead of objects of desire. In several sex scenes between Dana and Alice, for instance, the sex is not represented as picture-perfect and heavily eroticized but as messy and playful. In these strategies, the articulated resistance is much more subtle and incorporated, but the subjectivity that is created through the rearticulation of the discursive pleasure makes it possible to give it the meaning of resistance.

Conclusion

In this chapter we have argued that it is important for contemporary popular culture theory to include themes such as queer representation. This is the sphere of hegemonic and anti-hegemonic ideological production in which, according to Beverley Best (1998), social change and transformation are possible. Without pleading for a romantic turn to the radical politics of the voices at the margins, we emphasize the potential for a social transformation that allows the margins and the resistance to find places outside of and within the dominant order. This dialectic of the queer discourse either in the hegemonic sphere or at the margins can only be understood on the basis of a “snapshot” of the discursive repertoires. Queer articulations are dependent upon those that attribute meaning and have to be situated in time and space. The representational strategies are only one element in this complex realm of signifying practices. By conceptualizing resistance as fluid and situated, we are unable to differentiate “fixed” recurring patterns or to make general statements about the (in)existence of articulated queer resistance in the media sphere. But explorative studies such as this case study are important to embody queer theory into mainstream media studies and to point out in what way these queer representations are depicted without stating that these representational strategies are interpreted in a specific way. The academic community should pay more attention to the theoretical richness and relevance of queer theory, and especially to the integration of these insights into film studies and media studies. Researching queer representation, queer theory, and the possibility of transgressing the boundaries by means of queer reading should be a part of this research in which identification is conceptualized as being detached from spectatorship. This case study in particular has argued that common representational strategies (parody, corporeality, matrix reversal, role reversal, and rearticulation through discursive pleasure) are used in contemporary queer television series. Beside the diversity of queer characters in these series, similar strategies of representation can be distinguished and can be seen as one of the main signifiers of queerness in the televisual machinery.

NOTE

1 This theoretical introduction to queer theory is based on Dhaenens, Van Bauwel, and Biltereyst (2008).

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