Face to Race

6     We will argue that The L Word makes the struggles lesbians face invisible and, instead, defines lesbianism by the sex act. This narrow representation may teach heterosexuals (and some lesbians) that lesbianism is a social past time, not fraught with political, economic, and other difficulties related to discrimination. While The L Word works to inscribe lesbianism within heterosexuality, it also portrays a very White middle-class version of lesbian life. Although there are Black and Latina characters, their race and ethnicity and any hint of cultural difference are often erased by the show's normative intent.

7     We write from a feminist cultural studies standpoint[6]McRobbie, 1991; Probyn, 1993, which posits that textual representations matter and that most popular culture texts articulate ideologies of race, gender, class, and sexuality.[7]Kellner, 1995 In addition, viewers of a text enter into a relationship with all texts. This means, then, that there are multiple representations of The L Word. Ours is but one. We interpret the text from the standpoint of lesbian women of color. Although within queer theory there is a movement away from textual analysis and a turn toward "analysis of practices as they are constructed in social and institutional locations" (Talburt 526), this project is still important because it examines a site of learning about lesbianism. Our project also uncovers the ways a dominant text such as The L Word participates in the silencing of the Black lesbian. As Hammonds questions:

. . . if the sexualities of black women have been shaped by silence, erasure, and invisibility in dominant discourses, then are black lesbian sexualities doubly silenced? What methodologies are available to read and understand this void and its effects on that which is visible? Conversely, how does the structure of what is visible, namely white female sexualities, shape those not-absent-though-not present black female sexualities. . .? (141)

Though we will examine this argument in more detail later, it is important to note that our analysis takes up the ways in which the Black lesbian functions as an absent-present in The L Word.

8     We also recognize that popular culture is not only a site where identities are produced, but it is also a site of struggle. It is a place where viewers negotiate, resist, and even reshape texts. It is in this spirit that our critique of The L Word moves beyond whether or not representations of lesbians are 'good' or 'bad.' In fact, it would be difficult to determine what a good representation is versus a bad one because lesbianism as a social identity is so complex. Instead, we are interested in examining how the text takes up the intersections of race, gender, class, and sexual orientation because viewers construct lived experiences from texts.

9     As we begin our critique of The L Word, it is important to remind ourselves of Fiske's argument that television texts, in order to be popular, must appeal to multiple audiences. Fiske imagines the text as existing in "a state of tension between forces of closure, which attempt to close down its potential meanings in favor of its preferred ones, and the forces of openness, which enable its variety of viewers to negotiate an appropriate variety of meanings" (84). This means, then, that television texts can be interpreted multiple ways and, thus, they are situated within a struggle for meanings. This is one reason we felt it important to include voices of viewers besides our own. In addition, we follow Stein and Plummer's challenge to queer sociology:

Queer theorists have attuned us to the importance of looking at texts, but as sociologists we need to look at how identities are constituted in the cultural practices of everyday life, though mediated by texts. (184-185)

Because all viewers may negotiate the text's meanings and because all viewers make these negotiations based on lived identities, we also include qualitative data collected from a focus group intended to investigate the lived experiences and meaning making of the participants' relationships with The L Word. Data from the focus group suggests that the informants found The L Word problematic on many levels, but they were still happy that a lesbian representation existed on cable television.

Focus Group Data Collection

10     We recruited participants for the focus group through snowball sampling. We were interested in including those who watched the show regularly. All of the participants had viewed Season One and, at the time of data collection, were watching season two. We also wanted to interview mostly women of color as we were interested in learning their perspectives on race and The L Word. On the evening of the focus group, we screened the first episode for participants. We then engaged in a three hour question/answer session. It was our hope to foster an open dialogue among participants instead of a dyadic dialogue between an individual participant and the researchers. Some questions we posed included: "What do you think about the show? Which characters do you identify with and why? How is lesbianism represented? How is race represented?"