Queer TV #1
Posted on | October 18, 2005 |
I had been worried about Queer As Folk. Last week I was starting to think that The L Word had killed it for me, because it draws out in an even more profound way how much Mel and Lindsay’s relationship has to bear the burden of representation. (Then again, although I haven’t watched enough to tell yet, after the sublime pilot episode the best thing about The L Word seems to be the haircuts. Watching QAF last week was when I started wondering what is it that makes ‘working in The Art World’ the default lesbian occupation.)
I’ve always felt uneasy watching Mel and Lindsay’s characters develop. It’s not solely because having a baby ruled out other narratives, although that’s probably a big factor for me personally. It’s more because their relationship made me feel suffocated. It seemed emblematic of a practice of monogamy that frightens me, because (now it should be obvious I’m moving far beyond the text) in its possessiveness and co-dependency it plays into a normative societal expectation. What I mean is in its capacity to offer comfort, respite and defence from the big bad world out there, it mirrors the function of the typical heterosexual and therefore sanctioned union. Now, I don’t have a problem with that, it makes a lot of sense, especially in the absence of any other available or successful techniques which would let people live in radically different forms of co-habitation or community. Finding out what kinds of community and affiliation survive in spite of the pressure neo-liberal ideologies place on us is really the focus of my work in future. But what scares me is when such a union operates to restrict the development of each person’s individuality or potential; when it blocks the process of becoming. This is to put such emphasis on the strength gained from the joining of two that it seems worth sacrificing any further, possibly significant acts of personal exploration. It’s this kind of rhetoric that you hear in religious wedding ceremonies, the form of jealous love Derrida talks about in The Politics of Friendship. It’s a commitment I can only admire other people doing, because it seems such a selfless and humbling thing to be able to do. This explains why I cry at weddings: because they make me realise I’m too self-interested to see that marriage is the best thing I can hope to do in my life, or that it is worth sublimating all of my desires for, even though I am desperately wanting to demonstrate my “commitment” to the people I love and the society I live in. An alternative to this form of love - one which I have to believe most people mean when they talk about “monogamy,” “marriage” or “having a partner,” but who would know because who has conversations about this sort of thing? - might be one that allows a safe foundation for acts of self exploration, as well as many others, to take place.
Anyway, because I have extensive problems with the “you are a lesbian or you’re not” position - one of which is that it so often operates as a strategy of shaming and in that sense seems in a similar paradigm to certain forms of homophobia; shame is absolutely the most damaging affect that sexual politics has been aligned with - I’ve found the subplot around Lindsay’s affair pretty painful to watch. Not the least because I know a lot of people who would probably take Mel’s position: utter disbelief; a feeling of profound betrayal; incomprehension. It seems blasphemous in the framework our society is built on but I guess I need to believe that there could be a world where people can be a little more forgiving of the Lindsays. Anyway, the season isn’t over yet, so I may have a surprise in store (and please, please, no spoilers… it’s hard enough finding one free-to-air program to watch per week these days).
Clearly, from all this, last night’s episode made me realise why I continue to find this show so important. The juxtaposition of stories - Brian’s ceaseless raging against the suburbification of his mates, his unremitting disdain for any sign of normativity, his precious shameLESSness; followed by the unbearable sequence when we slowly realise Hunter is going to lose the little remaining optimism he has left; and the scene where Deb is finally, deservedly, the object of female rather than maternal or some lame fetshised and kitchy class affection…
God bless Queer As Folk.
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21 Responses to “Queer TV #1”
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October 18th, 2005 @ 12:17 pm
Interesting post, Mel.
I haven’t seen much of Queer as Folk - in part because sbs reception in New Farm is pretty terrible and the cable tv oriented body corporate won’t pay for a better arial for our building. My flatmate tells me, incidentally, the British original was much more radical - featuring a relationship with a 16 year old boy.
I did recently get the L Word on DVD - there’s more to it than the haircuts! It’s the Melrose of the new millennium, I tell you!
But a couple of observations on your substantive points.
One thing I’ve noticed as I’ve grown older is that people who once attempted to sustain non-standard relationships no longer feel the need to do so. On reflection, that really relates to straight relationships - as any same-sex one is still outside the norm - hence to some degree the attempt in American pop culture to reinscribe “normality” on queer coupling - ie monogamy, childrearing - in an attempt to minimise the still threatening difference of queer. I think people face very powerful social pressures to normalise their understanding of family and relationships as they age - particularly as they leave what are often transient spaces where different forms of intimate expression are possible - usually over time as they’re incorporated more into the “real world” of work and lose touch with student or other alternative cultures of youth.
I can think of a number of women I knew at Uni who rejected marriage on principle who are now or have been married.
What you say about jealous love is interesting. However, the broader points about neo-liberal influences and the survival of different forms of community and co-habitation need some more thought, I think.
I think that historical and sociological studies of the family show that the desire to coccoon oneself in a private sphere separable and distinguishable from the public sphere of work is in part a form of threatened patriarchy and masculinity, and in part a way in which the family and its privacy adapt to and become functional for capitalism. It’s much more likely that the “neo-liberal” influences you talk about are working against this walling off of family from work and the economy - the need for two incomes, the blurring of the divide between leisure time and work time, more geographically dispersed labour markets and occupational mobility over time and space, etc. Thus the desire to make a separate space for a life outside of work becomes more radical, as I’ve argued recently, but at the same time conservative and its implications for gender politics should not go unscrutinised.
I’m also a little sceptical of the utopianism that inheres in the desire to find communal forms which are spaces outside a neo-liberal cultural and social hegemony, though I share the desire.
Thanks for an extremely interesting and thought provoking post.
October 18th, 2005 @ 12:31 pm
Trackback.
October 18th, 2005 @ 12:50 pm
You:
1. Have waaaaaay too much time on your hands. Go and wash the dishes. Or the car. Or mow the lawn. Or throw out all that junk mail you’ve been saving. Or something. Stop watching TV. Clear your mind of clutter while you’re at it too. But don’t forget to feed the cat.
2. Are extraordinarily self-obsessed. Give yourself a break. You’re not the centre of the world, and you won’t be able to put someone else at the centre of your world if you’re so self-absorbed. And what of being the centre of someone else’s world? Not for you. You’re like Agent Smith from the Matrix, “Me, me, me”
3. Need to get out more - not to spend your single income on yourself and your shallow material acquisitions, but to work graciously and selfless for other people who may nver appreciate what you do, nor reward you for it. try working in a soup kitchen. And if you already are, don’t be so sanctimonious about it! No one like the haughty charitable - we already feel bad enough about ourselves (but not as bad as you do about yourself!)
4. Should investigate the difference between “humility” and “depression”. A little more of one, a little less of the other please. take two aspirin, but don’t ever call me in the morning
Have a nice day!
October 18th, 2005 @ 2:12 pm
I don’t know if the “You” who is the adressee of your comment, anonymous, is me or Mel, but it doesn’t strike me that you’re in a position to make remarks about degrees of being charitable.
October 18th, 2005 @ 3:43 pm
As part of my new minimalist approach to online deliberation, I choose to respond with a t-shirt design: http://ww2.spreadshirt.com/shop.php?sid=12132
October 18th, 2005 @ 3:59 pm
In that world, Brian _is_ a superhero. He rocks. Pity it is always expressed as a function of his money.
Anon. TV is good for discussing new/old/whatever ways of being in the world. Some TV is more subtle/obvious/whatever than QAF, but it certainly serves as a site for imagining new relations, new bodies, and new affections… as Mel points out. To trigger acts of imagination (and _not_ to represent or consume representations of another’s imagination) is surely the sign of the artistic in this hyper-commodified world.
Move on, move out, you say, into the world. Firstly, discover the world for what it (apparently) is. Press upon those points of already inscribed and mostly needed sites of ‘charity’ (soup kitchens, etc). Yes, because the will for change _must_ be expressed through the neo-liberal artifice of charity. I have about this on my blog before. That fucking idiot Brendan Nelson going on a bike ride for _fund raising_ when he is the minister in charge of _funding_ what he is helping _raise funds_ for. Am I the only one who sees the grotesque stupidity of that act? Contempt.
Of course! Let ‘charity’ capture us, because the world that is, is the world that shall be; we need to help those that can not live in this world. Of course! There is no reason to imagine a space for new worlds; let change be subsumed under what is because we are obviously blinded by our own privilege to this world’s unchanging nature. Of course! It is all common sense!
Anon., I think one of the reasons why many contemporary academics invent new ways of talking about things is so that stupidities of ‘common sense’ can not so easily infect the discussion.
Ahh, TV… that’s entertainment.
October 18th, 2005 @ 4:06 pm
“written” was left on the mildly dyslexic bus.
Jean, isn’t ‘bat’ a euphemistic slang word for male masturbation?
October 18th, 2005 @ 4:22 pm
Mark, I have the same problem with SBS in my apartment. Try bunny ears rather than an external. It worked for me
October 18th, 2005 @ 4:33 pm
I haven’t heard it, but then again I guess there are so very many euphemisms for that particular solitary pleasure, and the necessary equipment. Besides, the phrase already has so many possible interpretations, the more the merrier I say
October 18th, 2005 @ 4:36 pm
http://www.worldwidewank.com/synonyms2.html
October 18th, 2005 @ 4:42 pm
OK, so minimalism aside, the phrase appears as in response to, “i thought you batted for our/the other team!”
now it isn’t funny. But at least the list of euphemisms is. sigh.
October 18th, 2005 @ 4:44 pm
Jean
That might catch on as the new mode of blog stoushing.
In this spirit, I offer response to anon.
Mel
Thanks!
Of course, sbs has also been infected with the WorkChoice virus of late!
October 18th, 2005 @ 5:01 pm
actually, it was more a response to verbosity in general. i sometimes get the feeling we just all talk soooooooo much!
October 18th, 2005 @ 5:08 pm
Well, at any rate, we could be the subset of the chattering classes whose fashionable Kaffeeklatsch attire is sourced from internet threads…
October 18th, 2005 @ 8:42 pm
This thread has set a trend!
See Moment to Moment and LP.
Ps - interesting post, Mel! If I wasn’t so tired, I’d say something responsive!
October 18th, 2005 @ 10:42 pm
I used to like QAF, mainly because it’s the only TV show that even got anywhere near explicit — and sexy — queer sex, at least until Six Feet Under. But as it became clear that the politics of the show were overwhelmingly liberal and ‘commodified-subversive’, I had to stop watching it. Glen makes a good point: Brian’s seeming radicality is only radical because he’s affluent, and ‘perfectly’ beautiful. He’s railing against suburbification now? The posterboy of queer gentrification?
And the token dyke couple’s monogamous, lovey-dovey ickiness just made me want to vomit. (Particularly when thei relationship dynamic also works as a weird anti-butch narrative: Mel is the hard-nosed bitch, the suspicious, yuppie ‘traditionalist’, who’s as close as QAF will ever get to featuring a butch lesbian; Lindsay’s all femme and sweet and good, oppressed by her woman-husband. Ugh.) My breaking-point was when they tried to get their spawn on the waiting-list for a private school… The L Word, yay! (Watch while I back-pedal furiously when Tina and Bette on the L Word have the discussion about waiting-lists, schooling and so on. No, I reckon Bette will homeschool her children — such a control freak.)
I’ve found the subplot around Lindsay’s affair pretty painful to watch. Not the least because I know a lot of people who would probably take Mel’s position: utter disbelief; a feeling of profound betrayal; incomprehension. It seems blasphemous in the framework our society is built on but I guess I need to believe that there could be a world where people can be a little more forgiving of the Lindsays.
That world exists, absolutely. I’m in it. And it’s no better, really — people find other stuff to whinge about, if they’re so inclined
October 19th, 2005 @ 12:14 am
Aside from the haircuts, who can forget Lacey’s leaflet campaign against Shane or Lisa the Lesbian-identified man?
October 19th, 2005 @ 10:37 am
Mark: more relevant for counter-example purposes might be Shane’s shady background as a street hustler, around which the show somehow avoided QAF-style diegetic deliberation among the characters - there were amusing scenes were predatory gay men mistook her for fresh bait, but otherwise there was barely a batted eyelid, even though this “past” is arguably meant to be read as part cause of Shane’s emotional “damage” - damage which will eventually be healed by Real Woman Love. Just imagine QAF handling that one.
P.S. Az, well said. Would also note that Bette is the closest the L Word gets to butch (i.e. she makes money for the little woman at home, is Busy and Important, and wears pant suits) in its regular cast (apart from that there are occasional ring-in extras with bad haircuts in the background of nightclub and dyke resort scenes, as well as a certain predatory attorney)
October 19th, 2005 @ 10:59 am
[...] e all know that’s less than likely, but my slightly childish (and little-understood) substitution of a t-shirt design for rational debate about availabl [...]
October 20th, 2005 @ 1:34 pm
I was acutely interested in the first part of your post, because I have been recently been trying to reconfigure my ideas of friendship and ways of relating to others.
But then I have never watched either QAF or The L Word and I have never really done much research in gender studies, so my thinking on these topics will no doubt be retarded.
October 23rd, 2005 @ 3:37 am
I agree with your comments about the whole problem about which positions of sexuality one ascribes to, or does not, or does not articulate, or choose to articulate etc.
I think that QAF (and The L Word, for that matter) is a really important program as that, even what it may or may not microcosmically ‘do’ or not ‘do’, it is providing a ‘Selley’s No More Gaps’ to certain cultural economics which may not ordinarily be met. This is not to say that it is filling the ‘gaps’ (oh so Irigaray-ian!) in totality, however, no cultural studies practitioner - I daresay, or shall I say (LOL), would say that… or, would they:”??????