"Acceptable" Sexuality: Kissing on Television

By Shayna Bane

On November 25th, CBS’s “Early Show” covered Adam Lambert’s American Music Awards performance with a story that blurred his kiss with his male keyboardist. The story then showed the 2003 Madonna-Britney kiss from the MTV Video Music Awards uncensored. CBS released this statement regarding the double standard:

We gave this some real thought. The Madonna image is very familiar and has appeared countless times including many times on morning television. The Adam Lambert image is a subject of great current controversy, has not been nearly as widely disseminated,and for all we know, may still lead to legal consequences (Shea).

Not covered in this statement was Madonna and Britney Spears’ overt heterosexuality and Adam Lambert’s much flaunted homosexuality. It might be fair to argue that the Lambert performance was obscene except that pop music is built on selling sex, and award show performances often seem to compete in terms of “shockability.” Lambert and endless pop stars before him have done what has come to be expected of them – generate publicity through controversy (“For Your Entertainment: The Adam Lambert Controversy”). Spears and Madonna did this as pop stars in a very similar way in 2003, but without the same outcomes. This brings us to the question: Why was Lambert’s kiss blurred and not Madonna’s?

The simple answer could be that television still often upholds heterosexist norms and assumptions. While Madonna and Britney’s kiss could be deemed homosexual, in real terms, it is not. The kiss was a practice and was not reflecting a lifestyle (beyond a pop star lifestyle that requires controversy for survival). The two were gay pretenders and their homosexuality was temporary – not living beyond the kiss. When the kiss was over, the two returned to their heterosexual life of straight privilege, and so too did their heterosexual viewers who were mere voyeurs. Diane Raymond (2003) agues in Popular Culture and Queer Representation:

…how [shows involving gays] resolve tensions often results in a [rewriting] of heterosexuality and a ‘containment’ of queer sexuality, that is, that the resolution these programs offer enables viewers to distance themselves from the queer and therebyreturn to their comfortable positions as part of the dominant culture (99-100).

This means that while there is movement toward more tolerance of alternative lifestyles on television, it is only when they are contained and controlled. In his 2008 AfterElton blog, Brent Hartinger covered a long list of gay kisses on television, from Will & Grace to Greek, but all of the shows covered in the blog were scripted, making the kisses controlled by television producers and gatekeepers. Even reality shows have producers behind them choosing content. An unscripted kiss between two men, one of which is flamboyantly gay, on a major network is hardly contained. The censorship of the kiss by CBS on The Early Show, on the other hand, allowed for the distance Raymond described.

Adrienne Rich described popular culture’s tendency to portray heterosexuality as normal while portraying alternative sexualities as “other” as “compulsory heterosexuality” (Raymond 103). CBS’s censorship and non-censorship was just that, compulsory heterosexuality – the Madonna-Britney kiss was a heterosexual practice rather than a signal of a homosexual lifestyle. Kissing and lesbian play between women (regardless of actual sexuality) has come to serve as sexual entertainment for heterosexual males and, as such, has come to be as much a part of heterosexuality as homosexuality. Thus, The Madonna-Britney kiss was normalized and uncensored while Lambert’s was made a practice of the “other” by censorship.

Meaning is never fixed, and media consumers, regardless of resistance to dominant messages about sexuality, the family, and love, are still subjected to dominant ideologies’ messages about these lifestyles (Raymond 100). The meaning behind CBS’s actions on that November morning, if viewed as representative of mainstream culture, could be interpreted as: the dominant ideology still does not make room for true male homosexuality on commercial television.

Works Cited

"For Your Entertainment: The Adam Lambert Controversy." After Elton. Word Press, 26 Nov 2009. Web. 1 Dec 2009. .

Raymond, Diane. "Popular Culture and Queer Representation." Gender, Race, and Class in Media. Ed. Dines, Gail and Jean M. Humez. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 2003. Print.

Shea, Danny. "CBS Blurs Adam Lambert Gay Kiss, Shows Madonna-Britney Kiss On “Early Show.”Huffington Post 25 Nov 2009: Web. 1 Dec 2009. .

Legally Straight: Reading Queernees in Boston Legal

By Ryan Radke

While gays, lesbians and bisexuals are portrayed more often on television than ever before, GLBTs are still the punch line in many shows. In this blog, I will analyze the relationship between two men, best friends, in the legal drama, Boston Legal . Boston Legal is a show that is now of the air, however it was a big hit when it first came out. This show was a spin-off of the hit legal drama “The Practice”. Boston Legal was nominated for many awards including Emmy nominations for best Drama Series twice, including its final season. The show was extremely liberal in its politics, as on a weekly bases it seemed to be tearing down George Bush and the Bush administration and the conservative ways of thinking in America in favor of new progressive ways of thinking. James Spader and William Shatner both gained a lot of respect from doing this show. During its run Spader won the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series twice, and Shatner won best supporting actor once. Shanter also won a Golden Globe for best actor in a supporting role. James Spader plays a controversial lawyer names Alan Shore, who is known for his strange methods and progressive thinking. Meanwhile Williams Shatner plays a has been star lawyer named Denny Crane, who is only still at the firm because his name is on the door. Unlike Shore, Crane is extremely conservative and seems to represent the writer’s vision of Corporate America. The two are constructed as very straight, as they are both obsessed with women and sex. Much of the episodes feature steamy sex scenes the men have with various women. This show follows many of the conventions of the “buddy narrative.” The two men are close, but there are always women in the background to assure the audience that the men are heterosexual. Towards the end of the show, however, the characters steer away from the conventions of the buddy narrative, and confront the issue of their relationship head-on.



In this episode, Denny and Alan actually wind up sleeping together. Alan is actually having night terrors, and is sleep walking. One night, he wakes up at the edge of his balcony in a high rise apartment building. As a result, he asks Denny to come sleep with him to make sure he doesn’t hurt himself. Despite protests, Denny does come sleep with Alan. Alan winds up tying himself to Denny in order to avoid sleep walking. This leads to a rather humorous scene between the two, however, as the series goes on it is Denny who is often times suggesting sleepovers to Alan, despite his original protests. This is a significant transformation for these two because they are very vulnerable characters. They have sexual relationships with women, but they struggle to make those relationships emotional and as a result the relationships are very short and stagnant. However, the willingness to sleep over more and more as the series goes on shows that the two are able to bond emotionally with each other, despite the fact they can not bond emotionally with women. As a result, the two are closer to each other than they could ever be with any woman.

Their relationship is hinted at in other episodes. For instance, at yearly Halloween parties, Alan and Denny usually dress in matching costumes. The costumes are usually of the girly variety. One year they dressed as pink flamingoes, another year they dressed as the Lennon sisters. They came to these parties together, dressed the same, and not in the manliest of costumes. In fact, in the final episode of the show, the relationship between Alan and Denny climaxed when Denny asked Alan to marry him so that he could protect his assets as he got older. Despites Alan’s uneasiness about the situation, the two are married by a Supreme Court Judge.

The implied homosexual relationship between Alan and Denny is a constant source of the show’s humor. And, while their heterosexuality is, overtly, guaranteed by the numerous scenes of heterosexual sex, the show does address the fluidity of sexuality, as much as in could, perhaps, in the main protagonists in a mainstream drama on network television.

Television’s Newest Gay Stereotype on Glee

By Markanne Benich

Television shows have come a long way over the past decade in regards to representing gays and lesbians. Since the 1990s, with the coming out episode of Ellen, gays and lesbians are no longer invisible. It is now easy to tell when someone is gay or lesbian on a television show. In this paper I will look at a fairly new televisions series, Glee, and one of its main characters, Kurt. Kurt is gay and loves singing, dancing, and fashion. While it is refreshing to see a gay main character, he is still stereotyped; he is, in fact a caricature, of a gay man who is a hyper-feminine consumer.

Gay man as consumer of fashion
On a recent episode of Glee he is asked to give Rachel, another member of glee club, a makeover. He does this at first just because “makeovers are like crack” to him, as he states on the show. He sees that Rachel is in desperate need of fashion advice. He then finds out that she wants to look better in order to impress a boy at school. Kurt is there for her heterosexual desires. By getting a makeover, Rachel hopes to get the attention from Finn, who is also a member of glee club. Kurt, however, has not yet had a love interest on the show and is desexualized. While other characters have relationships on the show, he is disregarded when it comes to relationships. His main focuses are on glee club and fashion.

Queer Eye for the Straight Guy is similar because each of the men on the show have a particular area of expertise such as fashion or interior design, while Kurt seems to be well-rounded in some of the topics on Queer Eye. In the same scene that Kurt gives Rachel a makeover, he makes a comment about the way her room is decorated, hinting at the fact he likes interior design as well as fashion.



Gay man as hyper-feminine

In another episode Kurt learned and performed Beyonce’s “Single Ladies”. He then taught it to the football team and performed it in order to get himself ready for the field goal kick that makes them the winning team.



All of the other guys in glee club are straight and masculine (two members are on the football team) while Kurt, the only gay person in the club, is coded as highly feminine and flamboyant. There is no doubt that Kurt, played by Chris Colfer, is a popular character, but it may be hard to relate to him because he is so one dimensional. He was given a somewhat more serious storyline on one episode.

In this particular episode Kurt came out to his father and the audience was able to sympathize with Kurt and see that he was struggling with telling his father. However, it was more or less turned into a joke because when he told his father, his father told him that he knew he was gay since he was about three years old and wanted a pair of “sensible heels for Christmas”. Since this episode, there have been few serious moments. Even when they are somewhat more serious, there is still a joke wedged into the scene for comic relief.

While this was a more serious episode, the issue seems to be forgotten about for the most part. The issue is also depoliticized because the conflict is taken out. While gays and lesbians are more accepted in society, some still disagree. While it is refreshing that gay characters like Kurt have become more visible on broadcast television, the characters are too often portrayed as non-threatening comic relief side-kicks to the “more important” heterosexual characters. Unless television moves beyond these roles, it is likely gays and lesbians will continue to be marginalized.

Works Cited

“Glee-Teaser: Single Ladies.” Youtube-Broadcast Yourself.. N.p., 22 Sept. 2009. Web. 9 Dec. 2009.

Murphy, R. (2009). Preggers. In R. Murphy, Glee. Hollywood: Fox.

Murphy, R. (2009). Hairography. In R. Murphy, Glee. Hollywood: Fox.

Stempel, L. (2009). Queer life for the straight eye: Television‘s commodification of queerness. Race/Gender/Media: Considering Diversity Across Audiences, Content, and Producers, 2.

She's The Man

Kit Yi Ng




She’s the Man (2006) centers on a teenage girl, Viola, who poses as a boy at a highschool. As a female posing as a male, this film examines the role of gender and sexuality.
Viola’s mother teaches Viola table manners and buys her a lot of feminine dresses. Viola’s mother values consumption, male power and feminine passivity (as she doesn’t approve of viola’s interest in soccer.) The mother here, represents the extreme ideology of traditional femininity, which mainstream culture has long identified as out-dated. As personified by the “masculinized” Viola, this construction of femininity is clearly not valued within the film’s narrative. Viola is not satisfied with following the old rules and does not want to “behave like a lady”. Instead, she insists on playing soccer and even enters the team of another school to prove her abilities.

In the film, Viola is an active character, not passively waiting for male attention. For example, in the last scene, her brother pulls down his shorts to show that he is a male in the stadium and viola who pulls up her sports shirt does the same. She also takes initiative sexually, kissing Duke who is her roommate first. At the end, Viola’s team wins the game and her mother no longer stops her from playing soccer. On one hand, the film seems to tell audiences that females have the power to make changes.

On the other hand, I argue that the film still holds a deeply rooted ideology which values masculinity over femininity. First of all, the film shows that sports are still the world of males and females are not supposed to get in. Viola cannot play soccer if she does not pose as a boy. In order to play soccer, she must abandon all of her feminine traits, and hide any feminine signifiers. For example, she needs to put on a wig of short hair and fasten her breasts on sunny days, hide all the tampons away, take showers only when there is nobody in bathroom and speak in a deep voice. Furthermore, the coach in Viola’s highschool, who represents the mainstream opinion, actually discriminates against females as he does not allow Viola to join his team.

The main actor, Duke, is muscular, tall, athletic and interested in girls. Meanwhile, when Viola acts as a woman, she is very feminine. She is thin, slender, has long blonde hair, big eyes and smooth skin. Moreover, other actresses in the film are all very feminine and appealing. When Viola’s friends show up in the movie, they dress in low-cut dresses and make-up; their goal is to grab male attention.

Much of the humor in the film comes from near-homosexual encounters. When Viola poses as a boy, her female classmate wants Viola to be her boyfriend. Much of the humor also stems from the fact that Viola is interested in men, staring at men in the changing room and hugging her male roommate.

On the surface, the film portrays the flexibility of gender roles. Viola is able to successfully “act like a boy,” and thus demonstrates the social construction of gender. However, this interrogation of gender roles is ultimately superficial. Viola, even when dressed as a boy, is still very feminine. Her love interest is also hyper-masculine. Furthermore, the fact that a large portion of the film’s humor stems from near gay/lesbian encounters makes one question just how progressive the film really is.