Butch in Progress

by Rebecca Beirne, published in Refractory: a Journal of Entertainment Media

[K] Very interesting take on The L Word - read as a pop cultural successor to the 50s pro-lesbian pulp novels, hence caught between the wish to actually portray lesbian lives on the one hand, and on the other the need to satisfy the voyeurism of male readers/viewers and to please the censors by not allowing the lesbians a happy ending or - worse - depicting butch lesbians as anything else than an aberration.

Though I have a slightly less grim opinion on The L Word (despite its rather dubious ethics when it comes to LGBTQ representation), definitely worth a read. To wet your appetite, here’s an exceprt from Beirne’s conclusion:

For all its weaknesses, lesbians do love to watch The L Word, much as they loved reading lesbian pulp novels, […]. For The L Word takes on the same duality offered by lesbian pulps, simultaneously offering lesbian survival television through its creation of lesbian stories and sexuality rarely seen on television, just as it mediates these images in order to appeal to a predominately heterosexual marketplace and appease potentially homophobic censors and viewers. Perhaps one day we will reach a point where lesbian images and narratives that appear in popular cultural formats will not need to be mediated in this manner, but until then, lesbian pulp television such as The L Word will offer us an eroticised, twilight glimpse of Sapphistry on the small screen.