Finally January. The only thing to look forward to after x-mas (yes, I like x-mas kitsch!) is the new L Word season in the beginning of the year... Everybody claims that this is the last one. I hope not. Yeah, there are so many things that I wish would be different in the L Word. But where is the substitute that we could turn to? Where is the less soapy, even queerer, more explicitly feminist tv entertainment? Of course I wish there would be a multitude of lesbian tv programs... I’m still waiting for George’s coming out in Dead Like Me. Or rather Daisy’s? And for the feminist super hero_ine series. Or at least a gender-bending trans character in Heroes. Or maybe there already is one in the second season? I wouldn’t know; I was too pissed off by the stupid, unimaginative, patriarchal, status quo affirming end of the first, so I didn’t watch the new one... Or what about a lesbian guerillia politics magazine? Or a reality tv show about a group of queer polyamourists? Ahh – nobody’s gonna read this ☹ Well, there’s going to be a lesbian remake of “Lola rennt” next year. I don’t know what to expect. And since Wonder Woman isn’t going to be directed by Joss Whedon I doubt it’s gonna be any good. What are we going to do? Will we have to watch L Word again and again until somebody decides to invest money in another Sugar Rush season? And as for films: before I have to watch another Itty Bitty Titty Committee I’ll rather turn my back to commercial lesbian film-making and found a John Waters fanclub.
Blablah...
Actually I wanted to write about the new L Word episodes. The first one started promising: some exciting moments from the fourth season to start with *sigh* And then Jenny working on Lez Girls, rewriting her own experiences into a lesbian pulp fiction for a hetero audience. We see the beginning of the first season through her eyes. You might object: I don’t wanna see that. But you should reconsider – it’s so much fun to not just listen to Jennys version of the first episode party scene but actually see Bette and Tina and Shane enact their Lez Girls counterparts Bev and Nina and Shaun as life size lesbian (girlongirl) porn clichees. Seeing that, you understand the difference between mainstream hetero representation of lesbians and the L Word. Well, I reckon that if you didn’t get the difference before you’d probably not watch the series anyway. I wonder which audience they had in mind when they made this...
I wonder less about the scene where Bette and Tina try to score points at the pre-school application interview. They argue with their bi-racial, lesbian, etc. status but don’t seem to stand a chance against a gay male couple who are Muslim and Christian and whose son is adopted and “half Jewish, a quarter Latino and a quarter Chinese.” The contest of the adults is foiled (?) by shots of the 2-year-olds looking at each other, both standing between their parents... We could read this scene as a horrible backlash anti-pc statement ála: “Homos always get the best opportunities nowadays and normal people (aka what they think is normal) don’t stand a chance against minorities. The world is out of joint!” (I was actually confronted with these arguments recently when I met an old family friend whom I used to admire and ask for help when I was a teenager.) But lets assume that there are not so many reactionary homophobic people watching the L Word. I see this scene as a statement about the chances and perils of identity politics: It shows how people can take the victim identity projected onto them and turn it around as a weapon in order to get what/where they want (their children to be...) The frame of reference of this representation is the possible/likely discrimination of children of gay parents but it reaches beyond that scope. While acknowledging that there actually IS something like homophobia in this (L) world the scene avoids victimisation of the children because we do not actually see them discriminated against. I don’t know how you feel but one of the reasons I love the L Word is the absence of discrimination and violence against the protagonists to the greatest extend. I know it, I’ve seen it, I experience(d) it and that’s enough for me; show me some positive role models! Thank you ☺
But it’s not just the anti-victimizing statement I value in the scene. The exchange of catchphrases over their children’s heads (who, I reckon, don’t understand what’s going on) like in the TV game show duel, outlines very well the ridiculousness of this insistence on victim identities as the centre of one’s (or rather your children’s) self. And it also demonstrates which aspects of your life you can turn into weapons against normative society and which not when Bette and Teena let the interviewer believe that they are still together. Afterwards Teena says to Bette: “It was a little white lie told for the greater good … I think it works in our favour that we are a lesbian couple, I think we scored diversity points for that. I just don’t think they are ready for a divorced lesbian family.”
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