clap clap blog: we have moved


Friday, January 16, 2004
"The L Word," of course, does not exclude men at all. While ostensibly celebrating the lesbian life, the two-hour pilot is in such a rush to pander to male viewers that at times it seems less like an American television show than a hastily dubbed Swedish "art" film. Each new plot development works as a perfunctory excuse to introduce another sexual variation — a man alone, a man with a woman, two women, two women and a man, etc.

All the women are beautiful, which on the one hand works to dismiss the stereotype of lesbians as squat, plaid-shirted and mannish. On the other, they are all so exquisite, even by the high standards of affluent Los Angeles, that it plays into another stereotype — and male fantasy — of the lipstick lesbian.


Miss Clap's reaction to this would probably run something along the lines of: "Damn straight! When I'm watching TV, I want to see attractive people. A show about actual lesbians would be ugly and boring--two minutes of sex followed by 58 minutes of talking about the relationship and whether they were really in love and the politics of monogamy and blah blah blah. Gay men are natural drama queens, gay women are fun to watch football with."

Not that I would endorse this point of view, of course. I'm fine with unattractive people on TV.