The L Word

4. Genre: Soap-drama and Politics

87 Chapter 4 genre: soap-drama and Politics The L Word is one of many shows in the hybrid genre that Glen Creeber has called “soap-drama.” Creeber argues that while such shows focus on the personal lives of a close-knit group of friends, using conventions of melodramatic serial narrative and characterization borrowed from soap operas, they also present the personal problems of the characters in ways that explore how the “micropolitics” of daily life are affected by larger, more public political questions (2004, 113–18). The personal is definitely the political on The L Word, as the framing of the struggles of the characters enables the show to take strong positions on many issues important to women and to queer people. In the early publicity surrounding The L Word, executive producer Ilene Chaiken denied any intention of advancing a political viewpoint. She insisted that her obligation was to entertain , not promote an agenda: “I rail against the idea that pop television is a political medium. . . . I am political in my life. But I am making serialized melodrama. I’m not a cultural missionary ” (Glock 2005, 26). Such disclaimers are standard industry practice (Caldwell 2008, 316–43). I will argue, however, that politics and drama are very much entwined in The L Word. 88 Chapter 4 First, I argue that The L Word advocates specific political positions and uses varied dramatic devices to lead viewers to embrace its perspectives. Second, I analyze how the program makes visible the discriminatory effects of large social structures and powerful institutions on the lives of individual characters , showing exactly how their choices are constrained by institutional sexism and homophobia, and challenging the misrepresentations of queer lives that obscure (or sustain) these forms of discrimination. Third, I suggest that The L Word overtly promotes a range of feminist viewpoints, structuring many stories to condemn discrimination and affirm equality and choice. Finally, I explore how The L Word narrates and celebrates the gains of the feminist and LGBTQ movements, while also challenging the common post-feminist view that the work of these movements is done. The L Word uses the dramatic mode very effectively in order to win the audience’s allegiance to the values that organize its overarching politics and worldview. The program regularly shows how homophobia and sexism affect the daily lives of the characters, doing so in a manner that arouses feelings of empathy or outrage. Typically, such stories are framed as conflicts between characters acting in sexist or heteronormative ways and the characters with whom viewers have come to empathize. Viewers are positioned to see the problem from the queer characters’ point of view and to reject the perspectives of those who would discriminate. But unlike many mainstream dramas, The L Word does not generate strong feelings by presenting its characters as powerless victims; in both private and public contexts, the characters fight back and regularly defeat injustice and inequality in ways that are also structured to provoke strong viewer emotions. And also unlike more mainstream dramas, in which narrative resolutions tend to reinforce and affirm conventional values, The L Word’s narratives normalize and reinforce the values and ideologies of the lesbian world against those who purport to uphold “traditional 89 Genre: Soap-drama and Politics family values.” Further, these apparently individual, personal problems are presented in a way that makes visible the social structures and institutions that create them and that need to be changed. Indeed, the program reverses the dominant cultural logic in which gay people constitute a problem for society; in the L world, antigay prejudice and the actions of those who would try to force their biases on others are presented as the social problems. In all these ways, The L Word is once again using conventional Hollywood dramatic structures to expose and rewrite dominant stories about lesbians. The L Word’s political analysis operates on a number of levels simultaneously, and the relationships between those levels are frequently explored. At the broadest level, the show makes visible how the logic of capitalism and heteronormative patriarchy shapes and constrains the characters’ choices. For example, we see over and over how Dana is made deeply miserable by her internalized homophobia and by the constant pressure from her agent, Conrad, to remain in the closet to preserve her earning potential as a professional athlete. Capitalism is structured to promote the most conservative social values, so Dana...