Lesbians on Television: New Queer Visibility the Lesbian Normal

Description

The twenty-first century has seen LGBTQ+ rights emerge at the forefront of public discourse and national politics in ways that would once have been hard to imagine. In Lesbians on Television, Kate McNicholas Smith maps concurrent contemporary shifts in lesbian visibility within popular media, focusing on the small screens of Europe and North America. Central to these shifts has been a re-imagining of queer lives—or a “new queer visibility”—as LGBTQ+ characters have become increasingly visible within popular culture. Kate McNicholas Smith explores this increased visibility through the lens of television, and in doing so, she identifies a “new lesbian normal”—a normalization of lesbian subjects that both helps and hinders those it represents.  Structured around five central case studies of popular British and American television shows featuring lesbian, bisexual, and queer women characters—The L Word, Skins, Glee, Coronation Street, and The Fosters—the book develops a detailed analysis of the shaping of a new “lesbian normal” through representations of LGBTQ+ figures, and examines their televisual representation and reception. Presenting critical queer and feminist theory alongside empirical research that includes interviews and multi-platform media analyses, McNicholas Smith works to untangle the social, political, and cultural implications of new visibility in a period of significant social change in the LGBTQ+ experience. Front Cover Half Title Frontspecies Lesbians on Television: New Queer Visibility & The Lesbian Normal Copyright page Table of contents Acknowledgements Introduction A new era in LGBTQ+ rights New queer visibility New queer visibility and post-queer popular culture New queer visibility and the lesbian normal Lesbians go public Publics and counterpublics The intimate public A note on terminology Chapter outline Notes 1 ‘Previously…’:  Queer women on screen Early screen lesbians and the motion picture production code The evil lesbian The sad, sick lesbian The dead lesbian The lesbian vampire The 1990s: TV comes out Lesbian chic The temporary lesbian and the lesbian kiss episode ‘Yep I’m gay’: Ellen comes out Queer as Folk: Pride and patriarchy The lesbian gaze Notes 2 ‘The way that we live and love’: The L Word and the tensions of visibility The L Word: ‘A mini-series of one’s own’ Love and legislation: The politics of The L Word Motherhood, monogamy and marriage ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Lipstick lesbians: The body politics of The L Word The glamorous femme/ininity of The L Word ‘You’re looking very Shane today’: Androgyny and ambiguity in The L Word Trans visibility and transphobia in The L Word Queer women of colour and the racialized limits of The L Word The L Word lesbian: Contemporary figurations Loving and loathing Jenny Schechter: Or, The L Word’s queer feminist gaze? Jenny: The queer voyeur Mark and the male gaze Lez Girls and The L Word’s meta-commentary Jenny’s queer femme disruptions The L Word online Conclusion Note 3 ‘Homophobia is so old fashioned’: Skins and the lesbian normal New queer markets and the lesbian normal Skins and the (queer) teen gaze Skins as transmedia TV Lesbian romance: Naomi and Emily New lesbian figures Intrusion Resolution Death and futurity Conclusion Notes 4 ‘Skins’ truest legacy’: The counterpublics of Naomily fandom Skins fanfiction Filling in the gaps Fanfiction as queer sex education Re-writing Naomily’s future Alternative universe Naomilys Fantasizing Keffy The queer world making of Skins fandom Sociability Identification The limits of queer world-making Conclusion Notes 5 ‘The nation’s favourite lesbian’: Coronation Street and the ‘everyday’ soap lesbian Coronation Street: Sexuality, class and the soap opera A new era on the Street: Sophie comes out The soap matriarch as pedagogic guide The ‘everyday’ lesbian The nation’s favourite lesbians Brooke Vincent wants people to know she’s ‘not gay’, and so does the lesbian normal Coronation Street and the lesbian wedding Coronation Street and social change The limits and losses of same-sex marriage Coronation Street and the unsustainability of the ‘everyday’ lesbian Another wedding, another dead lesbian Conclusion Notes 6 ‘New Directions’: Glee, new queer visibility and post-queer popular culture Welcome to Glee Club!1 Glee: New directions in queer TV Glee as transmedia TV Glee’s queer teens ‘Baby I was born this way’ Don’t be a bitch, be a lesbian Everybody’s different, everybody’s the same The limits of inclusion Glee and ‘the lesbian blogging community’ Fan protest Brittana Faberry Opposition Happily ever after: Glee does same-sex marriage A Glee wedding The other weddings Postfeminist lesbian brides Post-queer popular culture Conclusion Notes 7 ‘A new kind of family’: The Fosters and the radical potential of the lesbian normal The Adams-Fosters How do you define family? Expanding the lesbian normal: The Foster’s LGBTQ+ representation Stef and Lena: The lesbian moms Stef’s queer shame Queer parents and queer teens The Fosters’s trans visibility: Or, we’ve come a long way from The L Word The personal is political Feminism and The Fosters Conclusion Afterword: Reflections on the limits and possibilities of new queer visibility and the lesbian normal References Index Back Cover