Queer People as Heterosexual

from http://www.allstarpics.net/pictures/0695111/will-and-grace-pics.html

The final popular portrayal of queer individuals is that they are not really gay at all, that they can be straight if they really want to or if society pushes enough or if they pray hard enough, etc. In popular culture, the one show that has illustrated this portrayal more than any other is the NBC show, Will & Grace.

Firstly, look at the title, Will & Grace. It’s not Will & Jack or Karen & Grace, it’s the gay guy and the “fag hag” if I may use that expression. The show, from its very first episode, illustrates that the singular relationship that will be displayed will be between a man and a woman.

As Marisa Connolly points out in the study she conducts on the topic, it “has been clear since the show’s first season that the most important relationship has been the friendship between Will and Grace. Though the program is about a homosexual male and his heterosexual best friend, scripts and comic devices have often made it seem that Will and Grace were the perfect heterosexual couple, separated only by sexual orientation… a plot line that puts off the match up of the leading male and female characters in order to keep the audience tuning in on a weekly basis. Will and Grace are often positioned as a couple, as well as subject to the barbs of Karen, who often chides their bickering or displays of affection with lines like ‘Oh, just climb on top of each other and get it over with already!’” (Homosexuality 7).

Even other characters in the show note the strong, quasiromantic relationship between Will and Grace. I believe even at one point that the two were planning on having a child together. Not only that, but Will’s more masculine portrayal is counterbalanced by Jack, who is probably one of the best examples of the homosexual performance that has been shown on mainstream television.

But, it isn’t just gay men who have had to labour under this portrayal, not even close. Lesbians and queer women have had to endure this portray longer than anyone else and have had to work the hardest to escape from it. The portrayal of lesbians in mainstream media has always been playing into the typical male fantasy of being with two women at the same time and it can be seen that this is a rather badly veiled attempt by screenwriting, producers and directors to draw in a male audience.

Tricia Jenkins, in her analysis of lesbian heterosexualization in teen films states “it is essential to realize that most (if not all) of the mainstream teen films that include lesbian sexuality do not portray those women as traditionally lesbian. For example, Kelly Van Ryan and Susie Toller in Wild Things, Cecile Caldwell and Kathryn Merteuil in Cruel Intentions, and Merteuil’s parody, Katherine Wyler, in Not Another Teen Movie, are all sexually interested in both men and women, and the two friends in American Pie 2, Amber and Danielle, only pretend to be lesbians in order to teach the male cast a lesson in assumptions. While all of these characters appear comfortable engaging in lesbian sexual practices, none of them is exclusively interested in the homosexual lifestyle” (Potential Lesbians 492).

What these portrayals really are is a watering down of queer identity, a softening so that they can appeal to the mainstream public. The problem, therefore, that arises is that homosexuality becomes viewed as something that does not really exist or is something that someone can just slip in and out of when they need to and this is why this is, perhaps, the most damning and damaging portrayal of them all, because it makes it seem like there is no such thing as homosexuality or queer identity.

Like their portrayal as corruptors, this portray leaves queer people with only the capital that comes from being noticed, but it robs them of their voice because everyone sees them as people who are merely pretending, playing for attention or people who do not have a legitimate cause. In effect, this is the worst of the three portrayal described because it does the one thing that neither of the others does, it takes away their narratives. Even as the corruptors, the queer community still has their narratives which others, how ever few, will still listen to, but no one will listen to someone whose narratives they believe are false.

This is cruelest thing that can happen to a disenfranchised group, to rob them of their narratives and their stories is to take away the most precious thing to them because it is the story of their lives and of who they are. By taking that from them, you take away everything that they are and make them nothing…but, perhaps that is the point.

Works Cited:

-Connolly, Marisa. Homosexuality on Television: The Heterosexualization of Will & Grace in the Media. Georgetown University. 2003. Retrieved 20 Nov. 2012. Online.

-Jenkins, Tricia. “Potential Lesbians at Two O’Clock”: The Heterosexualation of Lesbianism in the Recent Teen Film. Journal of Popular Culture. Retrieved 20 Nov. 2012. Online.