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The L Word Is Landmark Television Media Matters |
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A few minutes later, the fiancé comes looking for his girl. When Tim enters the bathroom and calls out Jenny's name, she breaks away from Marina and leaves her alone inside the stall. The final shot in the sequence includes three images: Tim is urinating in one stall, Marina waits silently in a second stall, and Jenny stands frozen in the common area of the bathroom-a look of terror on her face because Tim has come so close to discovering that the woman he's engaged to is having a lesbian affair.
And yet another plotline has the confirmed bisexual in the cast, after being cheated on by a woman, deciding it's time to switch to a man. Regrettably, the guy she has her eye on turns out to be, in fact, a lesbian. Well, up to a point. The guy definitely looks like a man and presumably has the anatomical equipment to qualify as one, but he announces that he is "a lesbian-identified man." As these brief snapshots from the program illustrate, The L Word is more than merely the first lesbian-centered drama in the history of American television-even though that credential makes the program a breakthrough in its own right. After Ellen DeGeneres came out on her sitcom Ellen in 1997, and then two gay women began appearing in secondary roles on Queer as Folk in 2000, it clearly was only a matter of time before someone in TV Land created an entire program revolving around women who love women. Nor was it a surprise that the venue was Showtime, the same premium pay channel that broke new ground first by introducing Queer and then by making it what the Washington Post has called "the most unapologetic treatment of gay people ever seen on American television." Most of The L Word's reviews have characterized it as a lesbian version of Queer as Folk, and the two programs most certainly have their similarities. Like its male counterpart, The L Word is tightly focused on a cluster of gay people-women, in this instance, rather than men. The only one of the eight major characters who is not either a lesbian or a bisexual is Tim, and this lone straight guy is definitely not a power figure, as his fiancée is having a clandestine sexual relationship. Queer as Folk and The L Word also both feature lots of sexual plotlines and an abundance of nudity and sex scenes that qualify as soft porn, while they also concentrate on characters who are young, well educated, firmly situated in either the middle- or upper-class, and white-although one of the major characters in The L Word has an African American stepsister. And, of course, all of the main characters in the program, as in Queer, are highly attractive. This last aspect of The L Word is one of the show's most significant elements as the female characters shatter the common stereotype of lesbians being physically unattractive, at least by the conventional standards of society. As a recent cover story in New York magazine put it, "Since the dawn of gay liberation, lesbians have been relegated to the role of the queer community's fishwife." Based on the occasional lesbian who has managed to make her way onto the television screen, gay women are overweight, sexless, and humorless man haters who work as truck drivers, wear flannel shirts and Birkenstocks, eat nothing but tofu and alfalfa sprouts, shun jewelry and makeup, and refuse to shave their legs or armpits-much less their moustaches. Ellen DeGeneres with her affable nature, glistening blond hair, and pale blue eyes offered a break from the unflattering stereotype, but ABC canceled her sitcom toute suite. DeGeneres is now enjoying well-deserved success with her daytime talk show on NBC, but references to her sexuality are few and far between.
One of the show's most prominent plotlines highlights the difficulties of sustaining a long-term relationship when both partners have career goals, life trajectories, and aspirations beyond keeping the spice jars alphabetized. In this particular storyline, two women who've been together for seven years are trying to make it to their eighth anniversary by going to a counselor and having a baby. This how-to-keep-a-relationship-from-stagnating challenge is part of one of the major pluses of the program: Communicating that gay people are not defined by their sexuality. At the same time that one of the central characters in the program-Bette Porter played by Jennifer Beals-is trying to keep her relationship alive and start a family, she's also trying to provide emotional support for her troubled half sister, who's in the throes of trying to recover from alcoholism, while also struggling to maintain her reputation as an up-and-coming star in what the show illuminates to be the cutthroat world of art museum management. Sort of one part gay to three parts life. The program also deserves praise for its depiction of bisexuality. Just as lesbians have rarely appeared in TV Land, men and women who are physically attracted to both sexes also have been largely absent. And on the infrequent occasions that bisexuals have shown up, they've been portrayed as confused and/or indecisive. Not on The L Word. Alice Pieszecki-played by the only openly lesbian actress on the show, Leisha Hailey-knows who she is and what she wants from a lover, and she literally doesn't care if she gets it from a woman or a man. Alice has emerged as one of the most endearing characters on the show. She's an unpredictable journalist whose witty lines have included references to the debauchery of Dinah Shore weekends and her unrestrained admiration for women-and perhaps men as well-who possess "nipple confidence." That sort of brings me back to the various plotlines that showcase the sexual and relationship intrigue that drives much of this pioneering program, which has already been renewed for a second season. One of the distinctive elements of The L Word is that it portrays an aspect of the Sapphic world that no previous program has so much as touched: Lesbodrama. This concept refers to the intricacies of the interwoven relationships that gay women living in a particular community find themselves having to navigate on a daily basis: How long after a friend breaks up with a woman do you have to wait before making your move? If you go to bed with a friend one night, the next morning is she still your friend or is she now your lover? What about if you go to bed with her a second time? I don't claim to have an entirely clear understanding of lesbodrama, but I appreciate the fact that Showtime has the courage to bring this aspect of the human condition to light for me and presumably for a sizeable chunk of the other million viewers who are tuning in each week. That "L" in The L Word doesn't stand merely for "Lesbian"-it also stands for "Landmark" television. 
Rodger Streitmatter, Ph.D. is a member of the School of Communication faculty at American University in Washington, D.C. His latest book, Voices of Revolution: The Dissident Press in America has recently been published by Columbia University Press. He is also the author of Unspeakable: The Rise of the Gay & Lesbian Press in America (Faber & Faber, 1995) and Raising Her Voice: African American Women Journalists Who Changed History (The University Press of Kentucky, 1994)
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Writer Jenny is having a lesbian affair in The L Word, unbeknownst to her fiancé 
The L Word's Tim 
Pam Grier takes on the role of Kit Porter in Showtime's The L Word