Having it All Ways: The Tourist, the Traveler, and the Local in The L Word

One of the most effective strategies of the lesbian-themed serial drama The L Word has been a double one: to produce sex scenes that ensure appeal for a premium-paying straight audience, while offering specific pleasures for queer viewers "in the know." Analyzing scenes from the show's first and second seasons, I will demonstrate how the hit Showtime series makes us all tourists, through the enticement of lesbian sex (a spectacle of attraction for straight and queer viewers alike) and through the wonderment of either "understanding" the other or "recognizing" oneself (fantasy of authenticity), through both "watching from a remove" and "being there."