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The Evolution of the Prime-Time Lesbian Clinch
Diane Anderson-Minshall / WINTER 2004
 
 
 
WHEN MADONNA AND BRITNEY SPEARS MADE OUT AT THE MTV Video Music Awards last September, some called it a brilliant marketing ploy (the pair duets on Spears’s current release,
In the Zone
). Others dismissed it as a fading hipster’s desperate homage to herself, Madonna anointing the next Madonna. Still more disdained it as a gratuitous display of vulgarity—for which conservatives immediately demanded, and in some situations received, an apology (from papers such as
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution,
which printed a photo of the event on its front page). The obsessively documented kiss could have served as an irreverent pop-art critique of America’s concerns about same-sex unions; after all, anxiety about Supreme Court rulings and Canadian legislation had placed gay marriage in the headlines throughout the summer of 2003. The VMA routine had all the elements needed to make a statement: Christina Aguilera in hot pants, Missy Elliott as a butch groom, Madonna as a polygamous bride, and those ostentatious kisses.
But it wasn’t a statement. Rather, the Madonna-Britney kiss was a choreographed moment of pure showmanship, the ultimate example of the lesbian kiss as sweeps ploy that prime-time producers have spent the last few years perfecting.
If you’ve turned on the TV during sweeps month in any recent year, you may well have wondered whether all the girls have gone gay. Jennifer
Aniston kisses Winona Ryder. Lisa Kudrow smooches Jennifer Aniston. Tiffani Thiessen snogs Jaime Pressly. Denise Richards lipsmacks Heather Locklear. There are so many girl-girl clinches during sweeps, in fact, that male pundits have started muscling in on the action: In 2003, David Letterman joked, “You know what Paul [Shaffer] and I are doing for our season finale? A lesbian kiss.” Bada-bing!
Of course, network sweeps isn’t the only time you can see girls snagging a kiss. From reality TV (
Big Brother, The Real World
) to movies (
The Real Cancun
and
Anger Management
), women are kissing each other like never before. Heck, even video games are getting in on it: Jada Pinkett Smith and Monica Bellucci’s kissing scene in
Enter the Matrix
is the most talked-about gaming feature of the year. What are we to make of this? Are these public displays simply self-conscious, soft porn-style clichés of lesbians that feed boys’ fantasies? Or do they signal a subversive seismic shift in the landscape of popular culture?
Television has offered up same-sex kisses longer than it has offered up portrayals of actual lesbians. That’s because such kisses have come primarily in the guise of farce or satire. When Laverne locked lips with Shirley in 1978, they didn’t have to worry about the sociopolitical context of the comedy: It was just about the yuks. In the ’80s, lesbianism as a social issue made prime-time appearances on the chickcentric shows
Golden
Girls and
Designing Women,
with well-intentioned if formulaic plotlines concerned with the main characters overcoming their own homophobia when they discover a friend is a lesbian.
But it wasn’t until 1992’s
L.A. Law
that lesbianism as a sexual orientation was really explored. The show presented TV’s inaugural lesbian kiss when bisexual attorney C.J. (Amanda Donohoe) romanced her bi-curious colleague Abby (Michele Greene) in a scene scripted without an ounce of nonsense and achieved in the absence of bombastic media attention.
This and other formative same-sex kisses proved controversial all around. Advertisers and religious groups hounded networks about moral decline, while gay-rights advocates and progressive media watchdogs found reasons to criticize the kisses, whether for not going far enough or for being handled awkwardly. (Of the smooch between Mariel Hemingway and Roseanne on
Roseanne,
lesbian comic Mary C. Matthews says, “Props to them for going there, [but] it wasn’t very pretty to watch.”)
But even more troubling to the moral-decline patrol was the specter of TV kisses that weren’t one-off aberrations. These became more prevalent in the ’90s and beyond, when ensemble casts with one or more lesbian characters—as opposed to the odd gay guest appearance or experimental auxiliary character—became commonplace. Shows like
ER,
the sadly short-lived
Relativity,
and
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
offered some characters who were already gay when they made the scene, so there were no coming-out dramas, no overplayed ratings ploys—and their kisses were treated no differently from those between hetero characters on the same shows.
But whatever evolution allowed for these thoughtful and realistic portrayals hasn’t shouldered out the propensity for lesbian farce and the mediapromoted kisses that go with it. A few years back, while Willow and Tara bickered and smooched unobtrusively on
Buffy the Vampire Slayer,
the sweeps-month kiss between
Ally McBeal’s
title character and her archrival Ling was hyped within an inch of its life. “More people heard about the kiss via the Fox publicity buzz than actually saw it,” comments Scott Seomin, entertainment director for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. For every natural, nuanced prime-time kiss—2002’s slowly building romance between two teenage girls on
Once and Again
comes to mind—there’s a nutty gambit like the Winona Ryder-Jennifer Aniston liplock on
Friends.
These single-episode storylines and ratings ploys keep the subject firmly in novelty territory: A kiss, in these cases, is just a kiss. Yet the moralizing that has always dogged any televised portrayal of homosexuality hasn’t evaporated just because TV has offered up a clutch of gay kisses, real or faux. This fact is amply illustrated by the fate of daytime TV’s first lesbian character,
All My Children’
s Bianca. Though Bianca was already established as a lesbian, soap opera fans—widely presumed to be TV’s most conservative audience—had begun to question just how long a young, pretty woman could go without getting some. After months of lobbying, in April 2003
AMC
gave the people what they wanted, writing a storyline in which Bianca actually kissed a girl. Predictably enough, the smooch was a hit—ratings for the episode jumped 15 percent.
Then, nothing. Well, Bianca did get some action—in July, she was raped. Perhaps viewers should expect such drama from a soap opera, but it’s hard not to conclude that having a girl raped after her first lesbian kiss reinforces society’s negative attitudes about lesbianism. Historically, in Hollywood
depictions—from
The Children’s Hour
to
Basic Instinct
—same-sex desire has been followed by some sort of punishment meted out to the dyke. Tara’s murder on
Buffy,
for instance, happened well after her first kiss with Willow—the couple had been shown seminaked in bed, even—but the fact that she was killed at all spoke to a concern, long argued by lesbian feminists, that authentic lesbian imagery arouses not just men’s desire but also anxiety about their own sexual necessity.
No matter what you think about Tara’s death—and
Buffy
fans both gay and straight are still furiously debating it—those of us who watch these things closely thought it might really shift the landscape of sexuality on television. But if it did, then why does it seem like there are more straight girls making out for prurient audiences than ever before?
This year, TV viewers have witnessed a proliferation of faux-lesbian kisses, especially on reality shows. The same kind of women who catfight sexily in beer commercials suck face with each other on programs like CBS’s
Big Brother 3
and MTV’s
Dismissed.
The Britney-Madonna stunt is an emblem of how far lesbian kisses have come since that milestone episode of
L.A. Law:
so far that they’ve ceased to be about lesbians at all. Though members of Spears’s family were promptly interviewed regarding their thoughts on the kiss (a rebuttal by Spears’s little sister Jamie Lynn in
US Weekly
was hilariously adamant: “I promise you, my sister is totally into boys”), the fact that Spears’s sexual orientation even figured into the coverage seems almost quaint. Given today’s prevalence of televised girl love, Madonna is—as usual—a lot farther behind the curve than she’d like to think.
Though the presentation of the lesbian liplock might have evolved from traditional farce to soft-core pornography, the intention is still the same: to titillate while avoiding trickier questions about sexuality. It’s as if, subconsciously, producers are trying to minimize the political significance of realistically portrayed lesbians. These days, women who kiss women on TV aren’t coded as gay; they’re simply sexually adventurous, and their adventurousness is geared toward nothing so progressive as the advancement of lesbian visibility—it’s simply meant to excite the men who are watching (and perhaps inspire their girlfriends and wives). While these fauxmos have become an indelible part of popular culture, there hasn’t been a great deal of discernible change in how real, live lesbians are treated in society and how uncomfortable their presence still makes straight viewers.
Network producers offer no argument. Rather, wary of offending audiences in what they call the flyover states, they regularly issue “mature audience” warnings that serve to both arouse viewers and reinforce their negative stereotypes about women’s sexuality. In an effort to capitalize on that arousal, they also exaggerate the kisses: After
Fastlane’s
ratings jumped 32 percent during an episode in which main character Billie (Tiffani Thiessen) kisses a woman, Fox reran it. Its print and web ad campaign, featuring close-ups of the two women, asked, “Did you miss the kiss?” By pulling the scene out of context, Fox essentially neutered the smooch of any sociopolitical meaning it might otherwise have held.
Still, some argue that even the most obvious of these male-targeted marketing ploys can be subversive ways to desensitize viewers. “Context definitely matters,” says Sarah Warn, creator of the TV watchdog site
AfterEllen.com
. “A same-sex kiss designed specifically to titillate male viewers is clearly not as identifiable to lesbian and bi viewers as kisses between characters in an actual relationship. But that doesn’t mean kisses promoted as ‘hot girl-on-girl action’ don’t have some positive impact on desensitizing viewers. They’re just not as powerful and as subversive as lesbian kisses in the context of a larger relationship would be.”
If, as some media pundits claim, fewer television shows are issuing warnings, fewer TV stations are reporting complaints, and fewer advertisers are objecting to lesbian programming, it’s still worth worrying that this new proliferation of girl-girl kisses on television imprints popular culture with a false sense of social—and political—acceptance. If straight audiences see lesbians leaping out from the TV each night, they may forget that we still don’t have the same fundamental protections as they do in most parts of their lives. While it’s wonderful to see yourself on TV, if TV is simply another realm in which cultural symbolism outpaces and overshadows real political progress, what’s the point? Having more women kissing on TV might legitimize lesbians in real life—but, as Warn points out, only to the extent that it desensitizes and normalizes lesbian sexuality. “It’s really the kiss as an expression of a deeper relationship … that legitimizes lesbians in real life,” she continues. “Empty kisses don’t have the same impact.” And so far, what most television programs have offered are not only empty kisses but a host of empty promises about balanced and accurate depictions of lesbian lives.
Reality Porn and the Rise of Humilitainment
Shauna Swartz / FALL 2004
 
 
 
IN MOST PLACES, PAYING FOR SEX IS ILLEGAL. THAT IS, UNLESS you document the transaction and sell the footage on the Internet. And if you show an attractive young woman, enticed by promises of cash, having sex with a complete stranger in a public setting—only to be kicked to the curb afterward with no pay and plenty of insults—chances are your porn site will be very, very popular. Unoriginal, but popular.
Gonzo. Porno
verité.
Reality porn. Whatever you call it, this particular variety of smut has flooded the Internet in much the same way that reality shows have taken over television. “Real” sex has always been valued in porn, but even the casual consumer can testify that realistic trappings—sets, plotlines, and especially dialogue—are usually an afterthought. The genre’s latest offshoot has upped the ante, featuring scenes that appear to unfold unedited and in real time, with participants who directly acknowledge the camera. But what really distinguishes this new smut from its predecessors isn’t whether the action is scripted, but whether it’s portrayed as nonconsensual.
Reality porn features some of the most violent and demeaning scenes to hit the mainstream, what some call “humilitainment.” Tagging these disturbing spectacles of deception and abuse with the “reality” label enhances their allure, as it claims to offer consumers unstaged and authentic action. Where reality TV panders to a collective schadenfreude, pornographic content
sends already sleaze-bound reality entertainment into new and disquieting territory.
Take, for instance, the pithily named BangBus, which debuted in 2001 and features two men roaming the streets, trolling for young women they can lure into their van to have sex with them on camera in exchange for a little cash. The bang squad searches out “every girl’s inner slut,” testing how far she’ll go to sexually satisfy a stranger. BangBus’s popularity led to other reality sites popping up overnight like silicone implants: The throng of high-profile sexploitation offerings now includes websites like Bang-Boat, BaitBus, BackroomFacials, XratedGangBang, and Trunked (“It’s simple. Throw the bitch in the Trunk. If she doesn’t like it. She can get out. Oh yeah. We’re goin’ 55 mph …”).
The guiding premise of these sites is that a woman must be coaxed into sex—but, once persuaded, she’s soon begging for it upside down and sideways. “Under every skirt is a pussy that just wants to be fucked,” proclaims BackseatBangers. Penetrability is simultaneously celebrated as a woman’s most valuable quality and scorned as evidence of her indelible sluttiness. In the end, she always gets her due, with most episodes culminating in a facial (and not the spa-treatment kind), and many topped off by the guy spitting on her face. After the besmeared, duped woman musters a grin for the camera—sometimes, as on Trunked, with a sticker advertising the site plastered across her forehead—she is left stranded. While the money shot is the crown jewel of traditional hard-core porn—proving the action is genuine—reality porn derives its authenticity from a thornier crown: Someone has to be humiliated, and that humiliation has to look real.
While degradation in porn movies is certainly nothing new, the presentation of it as real rather than performed is a more recent innovation. The producers of these sites position their works as erotic documentaries that capture real encounters with eager women who are dumb or desperate enough to fall for their trickery. The people who have engineered these scenarios thereby downplay their own hand in the abuse in order to make viewers feel better about getting off on it. But behind the scenes, reality-porn producers must document the fictive nature of their productions in order for the operation to remain legal. They need to juggle the fantasy of authentic humiliation with the reality of staging in order to elude law enforcement’s scrutiny—or even to maintain personal integrity.
“We do it where the girl has fun, not where she feels bad. I’m not into that,” says Greggory Meyer, whose company, PhotoGregg, provides content for more than forty reality-porn sites. And though he provides site copy like “This little cum dumpster just has that look. The look that says, ‘I suck dick!’” Meyer doesn’t believe any of his creations are degrading.
It’s worth wondering how many keyboard-noodling at-home viewers are taken in by the proclaimed reality. PhotoGregg’s disclaimer—“The images and videos within this website depict real people and their behaviors when placed in fantasy situations. The behavior and actions within are intended only for the world of fantasy and it would be both irresponsible and dangerous to behave or act this way in the real world.”—makes it clear (to fine-print readers, at least) that the smoke isn’t confined to postcoital cliché or the mirrors to the ceiling. But fans do buy into the illusion, says Meyer, who receives more than a dozen e-mail messages each month from men touting themselves as excellent candidates for BikiniHookups, where average-looking beachgoers (really actors) score with young babes who’d otherwise shun them.
Faux reality has become the norm in pop culture, with far-reaching implications: Surrounded by convincing fakery, perhaps we’re so hungry for something genuine that we’re willing to suspend disbelief, ingesting even sham authenticity to sate our voyeuristic appetites. Reality porn lets consumers rebel against the tired old porn setups—the pizza man and the bored housewife, the take-charge nurse and her helpless patient—while enjoying the supposedly genuine degradation of women. If violence and debasement are presented as real—“human behavior brought to frightening lows,” as BangBus puts it—consumers can ignore their own complicity by believing they’re merely witnessing a spectacle rather than perpetuating humiliation. While the desire to believe these scenarios are real rather than acted out is arguably more misogynistic, a viewer might justify initial interest by attributing it to curiosity or disbelief. But the fan who continues to be fascinated can lessen any shame by recognizing that the action is staged. “ESS2S2,” a poster on an
Ubersite.com
porn forum, writes: “I get a kick out of it *because* I know it’s fake. It appeals to my more meanspirited [sic] side. Do I debase real women because I enjoy watching bangbus? No. I respect women because I understand the difference between fantasy and reality.” But fans don’t necessarily acknowledge that their interest—along
with a willingness to shell out cash in support of it—is precisely why this material exists in the first place.
As with most porn, humilitainment consumers and producers are mostly men, but many women are fans and some earn their living through it. Trunked acknowledges economic motivation for women’s participation in the antics while calling their victimhood into question, featuring one performer saying, “I wasn’t born fuckin’ yesterday, ya know … The price was right so I let him have his horny little way with me.” Candi, the twenty-one-year-old who has been fellating every guy in the virtual neighborhood for the past three years on CandiFromTheBlock, isn’t in character when she bristles at the suggestion that her own work constitutes humilitainment: “What I do is have fun every single day. I get to fulfill some guy’s fantasy in every single episode. I’m the girl who everyone jacks off to. I love that!”
The threat of criminal indecency charges is always hovering over humilitainment porn (one company, Extreme Associates, is facing federal obscenity charges for distributing its graphic, supposedly real rape-andmurder video over the Internet), revealing a double standard in public outcry over real violence against women vs. media depictions of it. The realest thing about humilitainment porn is the way it buttresses long-held assumptions of women’s inherent inferiority, even if that’s not foremost in the minds of those who get off on it. The question of authenticity overshadows the sexual politics of why a woman might be willing to play the dupe, and any law-enforcement fixation on its social demerit misses the point that pop culture reflects the popular imagination at least as much as it creates it.
BOOK: BITCHfest: Ten Years of Cultural Criticism from the Pages of Bitch Magazine
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