Commercialization of Lesbian Identities in Showtime’s The L-word
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3384/cu.2000.1525.10215265Keywords:
Lesbian identities, intermedia storytelling, thingification, television merchandize, The L-word, discourse analysisAbstract
The article discusses recent developments in media culture through one case study: The L-word, the first television series narratively centered around lesbian and bisexual characters. The business discourse surrounding the series’ production is examined together with the televised text itself and the merchandize connected to The L-word brand. The main research question is why lesbians, a target group previously deemed uninteresting by advertisers and international media conglomerates, have suddenly become demographically desirable. Media producers show increasing interest in the active audience, and encourage fans’ own creativity, for example through social web 2.0 media productions and events, and intermedia storytelling. This is made possible through the televised text’s discursive re-positioning of lesbian identities. The article argues that lesbian identity is a social construction and that it can be seen as an empty or floating signifier, which is filled with new meanings. It also analyzes the immersive online communities and various other merchandize connected to the series as an aspect of thingification, a process were the media is increasingly occupied with things and brands rather than stories and representations. The result is the branded lesbian, or the lesbian brand, which can be seen as an appropriation of lesbian identities.
References
Aaron, Michele (2003): “The New Queer Spectator”, Aaron, Michele (ed.): New Queer Cinema: A Critical Reader, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 187–200.
Aaron, Michele (2007): Spectatorship: The Power of Looking On, London: Wallflower.
Akass, Kim & Janet McCabe, (eds.) (2006): Reading The L-word: Outing Contemporary Television, London: IB Tauris.
Avila-Saavedra, Guillermo (2009): “Nothing Queer About Queer Television: Televised Construction of Gay Masculinities”, Media, Culture & Society, 31:1, 5–21. [Read this Article]
Bachmann, Monica (2000): “’Someone Like Debbie’: (De)Constructing a Lesbian Community of Readers”, GLQ, 6:3, 377–388. [Read this Article]
Beirne, Rebecca (2008): Lesbians in Television and Text after the Millennium, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. [Read this Article]
Bergström, Fredrik & Fredrik Erixon (2002): Rosa pengar, Stockholm: Timbro.
Bennett, Tony (1985): “Texts in History: The Determination of Readings and their Texts”, The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association, 18:1, 1–16. [Read this Article]
Bordo, Susan (1999): The Male Body: A look at Men in Public and Private, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Bowlby, Rachel (1985): Just Looking: Consumer Culture in Dreiser, Gissing and Zola, New York: Menthuen.
Bowlby, Rachel (1993): Shopping with Freud, London: Routledge.
Bowlby, Rachel (2000): Carried Away: The Invention of Modern Shopping, London: Faber and Faber.
Business Wire (2005): “Showtime and FanLib Plot ”THE L WORD®” Fan Episode; Innovative and Highly-Interactive Online Event Kicks-Off Q1 ‘06 and Will Result in an Original Fan-Written Script for the Critically-Acclaimed Drama”, Business Wire Dec 5th 2005. Retrieved in May 2008 from
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_2005_Dec_5/ai_n15895128/pg_1
Caldwell, John (2008): Production Culture: Industrial Reflexivity and Critical Practice in Film and Television, Durham: Duke University Press.
de Certeau, Michel (1984): The Practice of Everyday Life, Berkeley: University of California Press.
Ciasullo, Anne (2001): “Making Her (In)Visible: Cultural Representations of Lesbianism and the Lesbian Body in the 1990s”, Feminist Studies, 27:3, 577–608. [Read this Article]
Clark, Danae (1995): “Commodity Lesbianism”, Henry Abelove, Michèle Barale & David Halperin (eds.): The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader, New York: Routledge, 186–201.
Cole, Peter (2006): “The L Word Perfume Arrives: Market Branding brings a Sweet Smell of Success”, L-word.com. Retrieved in May 2008 from http://www.lword.com/news/perfume.php
Davies, Bronwyn (2000): A Body of Writing 1990–1999, Walnut Creek: Altamira Press.
Doty, Alexander (1993): Making Things Perfectly Queer: Interpreting Mass Culture, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Douglas, Erin (2008): “Pink Heels, Dildos, and Erotic Play: The (Re)Making of Fem(me)ninity in Showtime’s The L-word”, Rebecka Beirne (ed.): Televising Queer Women: A Reader, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 195–209.
Dove-Viebahn, Aviva (2007): “Fashionably Femme: Lesbian Visibility, Style, and Politics in The L-word” , Peele, Thomas (ed.): Queer Popular Culture: Literature, Media, Film and Television, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 71–83.
Featherstone, Michael (1991): Consumer Culture and Postmodernism. London: Sage.
Florida, Raymond (2002): The Rise of the Creative Class and How It is Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life, New York: Basic Books.
Goodman, Nelson (1978): Ways of Worldmaking, Indianapolis: Hacket.
Glock, Alison (2005): “She likes to watch”, New York Times Feb 6th 2008. Retrieved in May 2008 from http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/06/arts/television/06gloc.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
Gross, Larry (2001): Up From Invisibility: Lesbians, Gay Men, and the Media in America. New York: Columbia University Press.
Hall, Stuart (1980): “Encoding/decoding”, Stuart Hall, Dorothy Hobson, Andrew Lowe & Paul Willis (eds.) Culture, Media, Language: Working Papers in Cultural Studies 1972–79, London: Routledge, 128–138.
Harris interactive and Witeck-Combs Communications (2007): “Gays, Lesbians, and Bisexuals Lead in Usage of Online Social Networks”. Retrieved in March 2009 from http://www.witeckcombs.com/news/releases/20070102_socialnetworks.pdf
Hebdige, Dick (2001): Subculture: The Meaning of Style, London: Routledge.
Holmberg, Ingalill (2002): “Levande varumärken. Ikonisering och imageskapande allianser”, Lena Holger & Ingalill Holmberg (eds.): Identitet: Om varumärken, tecken och symboler, Stockholm: Nationalmuseum och Raster förlag, 83–90.
Jenkins, Henry (1992): Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture, New York: Routledge.
Jenkins, Henry (2006): Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, New York: New York University Press.
Jørgensen, Marianne & Louise Phillips (2002): Discourse Analysis as Theory and Method, London: Sage.
Laclau & Mouffe (2001): Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. Second Edition, London: Verso.
Ladendorf, Martina (2007): “The L-word: Flat-identitet och lesbiska stilmarkörer i och framför teverutan”, Lambda Nordica, 12: 3, 7–20.
Ladendorf, Martina (2008): “The L-word – Queer identifikation och mediereception”, Tidskrift för Genusvetenskap, 3–4, 115–136.
Lagrace Volcano, Del & Ulrika Dahl (2008): Femmes of Power: Exploding Queer Femininities, London: Serpent’s Tail.
Lash, Scott & Celia Lury (2007): Global Culture Industry: The Mediation of Things, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Lash, Scott & John Urry (2002): Economies of Signs and Space, London: Sage.
Liljestrand, Jens (2003): Made in Pride: Ett reportage om det rosa kapitalet, Stockholm: Timbro.
Martinsson, Lena (2005): “Är lesbiska snåla? Queerperspektiv på ekonomiska beteenden”, Don Kulick (red.): Queersverige, Stockholm: Natur och Kultur, 390–412.
McGuigan, John (1993): Cultural Populism, London: Routledge.
Moore, Candace (2007): “Having It All Ways: The Tourist, the Traveler, and the Local in The L Word”, Cinema Journal, 46:4, 3–23. [Read this Article]
Moore, Candace (2009): “Liminal Places and Spaces: Public/Private Considerations”, Mayer, Vicki, Miranda J. Banks & John Thornton Caldwell (eds.): Production Studies: Cultural Studies of Media Industries, New York: Routledge, 125–139.
Moorman, Jennifer (2008): ““Shades of Grey”. Articulations of Bisexuality in The L-word”, Beirne, Rebecca (ed.): Televising Queer Women: A Reader, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 163–177.
Mulvey, Laura (1975): “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, Screen, 16:3, 6–18.
Muñoz, José Esteban (1999): Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Muñoz, José Esteban (2005): “Queer Minstrels for the Straight Eye: Race as Surplus in Gay TV”, GLQ, 11:1, 103–105.
Murdock, Graham & Janet Wasko (eds.) (2007): Media in the Age of Marketization, Cresskill: Hampton Press.
Nguyen, Hanh (2009): “The L-word Spinoff Pilot goes to Prison”, Zap2it.com. Retrieved in September 2009 from: http://www.zap2it.com/tv/zap-lwordspinoffleishahaileyprison,0,4667421.story
Nordyke, Kimberly (2008): “L-word ending run on Showtime”, Reuters March 10th. Retrieved in March 2009 from http://www.reuters.com/article/televisionNews/idUSN1040349620080310
OurChart.com, website, n.d. International Press Tour, n.d. Retrieved in January 2009 from http://www.ourchart.com/video/p/1328266225/1336697584
Scott, Lesley (2006): “Watch and Wear the L-word in the Limited Edition Fashion Line”, Fashiontribes Daily, Dec. 19 2006, podcast. Retrieved in March 2009 from http://www.podcasternews.com/fashiontribes/3361/the-l-word-inspires-a-fashion-line-l-elements-of-style/
Sho.com, The L-word community website, n.d. Retrieved in February 2009 from www.sho.com/site/lword/community.do
Stein, Arlene (2006): Shameless: Sexual Dissidence in American Culture, New York: New York University Press.
Talbot, Mary (2007): Media Discourse: Representation and Interaction, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Ves, L.A. (2008): “Lesbian Gaming: ‘The L word’ in Second Life”, Gaywired.com January 30th 2008. Retrieved in May 2008 from http://www.gaywired.com/article.cfm?section=70&id=17941
Vanasco, Jennifer (2006): “The Glamour Factor and the Fiji Effect”, Kim Akass & Janet McCabe (eds.): Reading The L-word: Outing Contemporary Television, London: I.B. Tauris, 183–188.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2010 Ladendorf
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.
Copyright for all manuscripts rests with the author(s). The editors reserve the right to edit manuscripts. Contributors are responsible for acquiring all permissions from the copyright owners for the use of quotations, illustrations, tables, etc. Each author must, before final publication fill, in a publishing agreement provided by LiU E-Press.
Since 2021 Culture Unbound uses a Creative Commons: Attribution license for new articles, which allows users to distribute the work and to reform or build upon it without the author's permission. Full reference to the author must be given. For older articles please see each article landing page.
