The L Word
Created by Irene Chaiken
Channel 7
Wednesdays 10.30pm
REVIEW BY RACHEL EVANS
"There has been so much toxic TV in the last few years and this is just more of it. It's like TV shows glamorising cigarette smoking. This is double standard".
Is this from a citizen's group concerned about kids affected by news coverage of United States troops torturing Iraqi prisoners of war?
Nope. Bill Muehlenberg from the Australian Family Association is concerned about the new program about lesbians The L Word on Channel 7.
Explicit gay and lesbian shows are new to America, and even newer for Australian audiences. The 1999 BBC TV series Queer As Folk was the first series about gay male life seen in the First World. It's title was taken from an old Yorkshire saying, "there's nowt so queer as folk", meaning people are strange. The series created a stir in England, with the "shocking" inclusion of a determined,"out" 15-year-old gay man.
The success of the show caught the eye of Showtime, a production company that produced Lolita. In 2000, a US spin-off was born.
The first three seasons featured the mostly white, beautiful and financially secure cast with storylines emphasising relationships, sexual prowess and dance parties, with hot male-to-male sex scenes. That the lesbian couple were mostly baby obsessed while the boys got to have group sex and multi-dimensional relationships grated.
The third season saw Queer As Folk matching sexy hedonism with serious gay issues: The pain of HIV infection, gay adoption, fighting steroid addiction and successfully fighting a homophobic mayor through the use of "agitational propaganda" and heartfelt street campaigning. The fourth season includes same-sex marriage and a vigilante group "Pink Posse" who fight violent homophobes.
In contrast we have Queer Eye for a Straight Guy, the other "mainstream" gay male show that reduces gay men to asexual, sociable, helping hands for hetrosexuals.
After spectacular ratings for Queer As Folk, Showtime followed up with another hit series about the lives of lesbians in The L Word.
Saltshakers, a small Victorian-based religious group successfully lobbied Just Jeans, DaimlerChrysler, Roche, Allianz and Centrum to withdraw their advertising from the show. Saltshakers' chief executive Peter Stokes apparently convinced these corporations that "their ads might be supporting women self-inseminating and women bringing children into the world who haven't got a father".
The show would be better digested without any corporate garbage between scenes, but the attack shows that the fight to have queer lives represented in the mainstream continues.
One promotion summarised The L Word as "Same Sex. Different City". Similarities with the US series Sex in the City abound: "Gorgeous" women, no financial pain, cafe scenes galore and swanky parties. The relationship angst just revolves around women chasing women.
Unrepresentative? Yes. Long-haired, made-up and wearing high-heels (and talking seriously about butt waxing), these lesbians come from a Hollywood planet not accessible to us poorer, feminist types still rallying against gender stereotypes. Writer-executive producer Irene Chaiken claims: "I think there's one image of lesbians that's been put out to the world at large, and it's nice to be able to get a chance to take it on."
Criticisms notwithstanding, the storylines do reflect lesbian lives and issues.
The main characters Bette and Tina are trying for a kid through self-insemination. They are joined by bisexual journalist Alice, trying men after a hard time with women; Shane the only androgenous character, sleeping with every available woman; Dana the tennis player, frightened of being publicly outed; and exotic Marina, the lesbian cafe owner. The lives of the straight couple Tim (a swimming couch) and Jenny (a writer) are thrown into turmoil when Jenny starts a passionate affair with Marina.
The pain of Jenny "coming out", racism within Bette and Tina's relationship, homophobia at work and female sexuality (female ejaculation) are issues the show has explored.
The sex scenes aren't as exciting as Queer As Folk's, realistically reflecting the less public, sexually adventurous dyke scene. The politics are also less exciting, (hopefully) just reflecting the show's early character development.
It is great to see lesbians on TV. Women having sex with each other, making babies together and having non-committal sex with a variety of women, all fly in the face of the "return to monogamous heterosexual relations and breed" message that Prime Minister John Howard and his ilk are promoting.
From Green Left Weekly, May 26, 2004.
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