• DOI:10.1177/0163443708098243
• Corpus ID: 144705667

Nothing queer about queer television: televized construction of gay masculinities

@article{AvilaSaavedra2009NothingQA,
  title={Nothing queer about queer television: televized construction of gay masculinities},
  author={Guillermo Avila-Saavedra},
  journal={Media, Culture \& Society},
  year={2009},
  volume={31},
  pages={21 - 5}
}

• Guillermo Avila-Saavedra
• Published 1 January 2009
• Art
• Media, Culture & Society

The longest-running gay character in American television is Will Truman, played by Erick McCormick on NBC’s Will & Grace for eight seasons from 1998 until 2006. Will Truman is an attractive and successful Manhattan lawyer in his mid-thirties. However, the American public never sawWill Truman go to bed with another man. In addition, for most of those eight years, Will Truman was sitting by himself in America’s prime-time network television gay bar. However, starting in 2003 American television witnessed the appearance of more audacious gay male characters, including a sitcom featuring a middleaged gay couple with a daughter (It’s all Relative on ABC), a dating reality show (Boy Meets Boy on Bravo) and a make-over show (Queer Eye for the Straight Guy on Bravo), in addition to the controversial drama Queer as Folk. According to the media-watch organization GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) the 2003–4 network prime-time line-up can be considered a breakthrough with eight leading gay characters, compared to five the three previous seasons (GLAAD, 2006). Gay characters, in particular gay males, started populating television dramas, situation comedies and reality shows. The presence of homosexual characters in American television would seem to imply an endorsement of a liberal agenda of tolerance and inclusion of alternative lifestyles and sexual orientations. However, the perceived progressiveness of gays’ sudden appearance on American television could be undermined if it responds to traditional norms of social relations. In her analysis of the television program Ellen, where comedian Ellen DeGeneres and her fictional character came out in 1997, Dow (2001) argues that increased visibility of gays and lesbians in the media does not always translate into social tolerance