Loving The L Word: The Complete Series in Focus

269 Pages·2013·2.691 MB·English

by  Dana Heller (ed.)

Loving
the L word
READING CONTEMPORARY TELEVISION
Series Editors: Kim Akass and Janet McCabe
[email protected]
The Reading Contemporary Television series offers a varied, intellectually
groundbreaking and often polemical response to what is happening in
television today. This series is distinct in that it sets out to immediately
comment upon the TV zeitgeist while providing an intellectual and creative
platform for thinking differently and ingeniously writing about contemporary
television culture. The books in the series seek to establish a critical space
where new voices are heard and fresh perspectives offered. Innovation is
encouraged and intellectual curiosity demanded.
PUBLISHED AND FORTHCOMING
Loving The L Word: The Complete Series in Focus edited by Dana Heller
Mad Men: Dream Come True TV edited by Gary R. Edgerton
Makeover Television: Realities Remodelled edited by Dana Heller
New Dimensions of Doctor Who edited by Matt Hills and David Mellor
Nip/Tuck: Television That Gets Under Your Skin edited by Roz Kaveney and
Jennifer Stoy
Quality TV: American Television and Beyond edited by Janet McCabe and Kim
Akass
Reading 24: Television against the Clock edited by Steven Peacock
Reading Angel: The TV Spin-off with a Soul edited by Stacey Abbott
Reading CSI: Television under the Microscope edited by Michael Allen
Reading Deadwood: A Western to Swear By edited by David Lavery
Reading Desperate Housewives: Beyond the White Picket Fence edited by Janet
McCabe and Kim Akass
Reading Little Britain: Comedy Matters on Contemporary Television edited by
Sharon Lockyer
Reading Lost: Perspectives on a Hit Television Show edited by Roberta Pearson
Reading Sex and the City edited by Kim Akass and Janet McCabe
Reading Six Feet Under: TV to Die For edited by Kim Akass and Janet
McCabe
Reading Stargate SG-1 edited by Stan Beeler and Lisa Dickson
Reading The L Word: Outing Contemporary Television edited by Kim Akass
and Janet McCabe
Reading The Sopranos: Hit TV from HBO edited by David Lavery
Reading the Vampire Slayer: The Complete, Unofficial Guide to Buffy and
Angel edited by Roz Kaveney
The Queer Politics of Television by Samuel A. Chambers
Third Wave Feminism and Television: Jane Puts It in a Box edited by Merri Lisa
Johnson
TV’s Betty Goes Global: From Telenovela to International Brand edited by Janet
McCabe and Kim Akass
Dana Heller
Edited by
Loving
the L word
The Complete Series in Focus
Published in 2013 by I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd
6 Salem Road, London W2 4BU
175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010
www.ibtauris.com
Distributed in the United States and Canada
Exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan
175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010
Copyright Editorial Selection and Introduction © 2013 Dana Heller
Copyright Individual Chapters © 2013 Rebecca Beirne, Tara Shea Burke,
Kellie Burns, Cristyn Davies, Faye Davies, Kim Ficera, Deborah E. R.
Hanan, Dana Heller, Winnie McCroy, Margaret T. McFadden, Candace
Moore, Marnie Pratt, Sal Renshaw, Heidi Schlipphacke
The right of Dana Heller to be identified as the editor of this work has been
asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act
1988.
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any
part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission
of the publisher.
ISBN: 978 1 78076 424 5
A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available
Printed and bound in Sweden by ScandBook AB
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
List of Contributors ix
Introduction: Loving and Losing: From The L Word
to The “R” Word 1
Dana Heller
Part 1: Lamentations
1 “Slip under my cloak of boringness. No one will
even know we’re gone.” 17
Kim Ficera
2 The T Word: Exploring Transgender Representation
in The L Word
Rebecca Beirne 23
3 The End of The L Word: Fan Pleasure or Fan Pain? 37
Faye Davies
Part 2: Laudations
4 Queering The L Word 57
Sal Renshaw
5 The Trouble with Shane: Lesbians and Polygamy 81
Heidi Schlipphacke
vi Loving The L Word
6 “L” is for Looking Again: Art and Representation
on The L Word 99
Margaret T. McFadden
Part 3: Lineage
7 Trashy, Trivial, and Testimonial: From Pulp Novels
to The L Word 119
Marnie Pratt
8 From the Bottom to West Hollywood: Finding
Community in Sula and The L Word 141
Winnie McCroy
9 “No Limits” Entertainment: All-consuming
Transgressions in Showtime’s The L Word 153
Deborah E. R. Hanan
Part 4: Legacy
10 Imagining Queer Community in The L Word
Cristyn Davies and Kellie Burns 173
11 “The D Word” 191
Candace Moore
12 Why The Real L Word Matters: Community and
Lesbian Sex, in the Flesh 209
Tara Shea Burke
Character/Actor Guide 223
Complete Episode Guide 225
Film and TV Guide 231
Bibliography 235
Index 251
Acknowledgments
Two things occurred that I could not have predicted when Kim
Akass and Janet McCabe graciously invited me to edit a sequel
volume on the Showtime series, The L Word, which would examine
the final seasons of the series and provide a follow-up to the 2006
collection, Reading The L Word: Outing Contemporary Television. The
first surprise was Showtime’s and Ilene Chaiken’s announcement
that they were launching a new unscripted spin-off, The Real L
Word, which would boldly go where no cable program had gone
before by following a cadre of young, hip, openly gay women in
Los Angeles as they did the things that lesbians do best—“talking,
laughing, loving, breathing, fighting, fucking, crying, drinking,
riding, winning, losing, cheating, kissing, thinking, dreaming”—
only this time, in reality.
The second surprise was that I suddenly found myself in the position
of department chair at my university, and was almost immediately
sucked into the paperwork vacuum where all new chairs must inevitably
kiss their research agenda goodbye for at least one full year in order to
learn the administrative ropes.
Therefore, for their heroic patience and fortitude in the face of
perpetual delays and long unexplained silences, I want to thank my
contributors: Rebecca Beirne, Kellie Burns, Cristyn Davies, Faye
Davies, Kim Ficera, Deborah E. R. Hanan, Winnie McCroy, Margaret
T. McFadden, Candace Moore, Marnie Pratt, Sal Renshaw, and Heidi
Schlipphacke. I also want to thank Tara Shea Burke for hopping aboard
the project while it was already in full motion so as to provide much-
needed commentary on The Real L Word.
Many thanks to Janet and Kim, for their friendship and good
humor, and to Philippa Brewster at I.B.Tauris for her stalwart
dedication to this project—along with so many others—and her
faith in my ability to pull this particular one together despite the
obstacles.
viii Loving The L Word
And finally—as always—I am happily indebted to my eminently
wise and magnanimous better half, Galina Tsoy, for watching television
with me and buoying me up through all this with more to come.
Contributors
REBECCA BEIRNE is Lecturer in Film, Media and Cultural
Studies, University of Newcastle. She is the author of Lesbians in
Television and Text after the Millennium and editor of Televising
Queer Women: A Reader and has written numerous journal articles
and book chapters discussing queer representation in popular
culture.
TARA SHEA BURKE earned her MFA in poetry from Old
Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, in May 2012. She
is also working towards a graduate certificate in Women’s
Studies, and has traveled to South Africa and Senegal to work
with and offer service to global women’s organizations. She has
served as poetry editor for Barely South Review and currently
teaches freshman composition and literature at Old Dominion
Univerity, USA. Burke will begin teaching an LGBT-centered
creative writing course at The Muse, a community-writing
center in Norfolk Virginia, in the fall of 2012. Her poems
are featured in The Quotable and forthcoming in Rougarou and
Switched-on Gutenberg.
KELLIE BURNS is Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Education
and Social Work at The University of Sydney, Australia. Her
research explores the intersections between sexuality, citizenship,
and public and media discourses. Her current work explores the
ways in which sexual citizenship is produced through the National
HPV/Cervical Cancer vaccination program in Australia.
CRISTYN DAVIES is a Research Associate at The University
of Sydney, Australia. She is an experienced researcher, writer,
editor, and tertiary educator. Her current research interests include
the culture wars; literature and new media; and the intersections
x Loving The L Word
between gendered and sexual subjectivities with citizenship,
childhood and youth studies, and mediated environments. Cristyn
has collaborated with academics, writers, performance artists, and
digital and new media artists on a range of projects.
FAYE DAVIES is Senior Lecturer in Media and Cultural Theory
at Birmingham City University, UK. She is also part of the newly
formed Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research. Her
specialist areas are television cultures, production processes, and
the representation of sexuality in both television and film. She
teaches on a variety of courses around the issue of representation
and is currently continuing her doctoral research on US commercial
television and the representation of sexuality.
KIM FICERA is a northern California-based author, essayist, and
humorist, who has been writing about social, political, and LGBT
issues since 1997. She has authored one book of humorous essays,
Sex, Lies and Stereotypes: An Unconventional Life Uncensored, which
earned her a spot in Out Magazine’s OUT 100 in 2003, and
contributed to two others, Legacies and Reading The L Word:
Outing Contemporary Television. From 2005–2008, Kim wrote a
popular column titled “Don’t Quote Me” for MTV Networks/
Logo’s AfterEllen.com. “Don’t Quote Me” analyzed the ways in
which gay and lesbian characters and celebrities are portrayed in
the media. Today, when she is not working on her next book, a
fictional prelude to the experiences she wrote about in Sex, Lies
and Stereotypes, she works as a freelance writer, editor, and content
producer.
DEBORAH E. R. HANAN is Associate Faculty for Royal Roads
University’s School of Communication and Culture (Victoria,
Canada). A former recording artist, performer, and cultural
producer in the music, film, television, and themed entertainment
industries, Hanan specializes in entertainment and the arts, media
cultural studies, critical media studies, queer theory, and American
cultural history. Her work has been published in Popular Media
and Communication: Essays on Publics, Practices and Processes; Film
and History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Film and Television
Studies; Communication Colloquy; and the two-volume encyclopedia