William Hague speaks frankly about gay rumours

Brother to Brother - Film Review

Those were the days...

Jubilations on the Jubilee line

"Closet of Desire"

PRIDE LONDON 2010

Mon 5 Jul, 2010
By Danielle Carter

Young lesbians were becoming a lot more attuned to the glamorous styling and began adopting a more feminine default gender expression - Jane, editor DIVA

Feature: The L Word - The end of an era

Danielle Carter investigates the impact that The L Word has had on the lesbian identity.

The Sapphic Island of the UK holds its breath as it waits for the final series of The L Word. For those of you who have never heard of The L Word you must be straight, still living in the land of VHS or male.

The L Word is a show that has romped through six seasons following a group of LA lesbians living, loving and generally messing up their lives.

It ticks all of the usual homosexual boxes – marriage, children, coming out, religion and other more obscure stuff such as lesbian vampires, transsexual pregnancy and male- identified dykes. This show has it all and with a line-up of the hottest women on the box there is someone for everyone.

Lesbians had been scarce on TV up until TLW. Most lesbian TV lists still included Beth Jordache from Brookside and Sandi Toksvig on Call my Bluff. The only sexy lesbians were on Television X and they weren’t even real. So why is it so important that we have lesbians on TV?

I asked Jane Czyzselska editor of DIVA why it is so important: “I came out when there were virtually no out lesbians in the media, no internet and no role models (apart from Martina and I was rubbish at tennis...) so there was a frightening sense of being alone and invisible. Thankfully that's not the case for most of us today in the UK. I think it's crucially important to see that your existence is being acknowledged in the public domain. The job now is to show a better diversity of lesbians - BME, differently abled, different ages.”

Amanda Falkson a Psychotherapist from Psychotherapy City agrees: “There’s probably more positive portrayals of younger lesbians than in the past, I’m thinking Emily and Naomi in Skins in particular. I would say that there’s more work to be done with older TV viewers to positively reinforce lesbianism. My mother’s generation for example would have watched those ghastly portrayals of the mad, bad, sad lesbians that were the stuff of dramas from the 1960s through the 80s, Sister George and The Children’s Hour for example, and some will not have had those notions disabused. Clearly there’s still more work to be done.”

So was TLW anything more than feel good TV? It definitely made every lesbian in the land want to swim across the pond and set up home in West Hollywood but did it serve any kind of purpose beyond aspirational ‘I want to be them/sleep with them’ programming?

“Well it ran for many more seasons than anyone, even its creator Ilene Chaiken, first expected it would” says Jane, ”And it paved the way for more lesbian-friendly TV programming in the US - witness The Real L Word which launches on HBO at the end of June. It's spawned a dozen or more online TV soaps and given rise to spoof covers that parody lesbian culture, which, is a sign that some sections of the lesbian community feel confident and comfortable enough to send themselves up. It raised a whole range of issues and characteristics, (sometimes clumsily) - transgender, drag kings, butch and femme, lesbian parenting, lesbians and disability, lesbian players - that rarely, if ever get explored in other TV dramas.”

Come on Ilene
And this was the crux of TLW, not only was it simply perfect to watch, the sun was always shining, the women beautiful. It lacked reality. Jenny the tortured writer who is the device that brings all of these characters and storylines together seemed to go through long periods of unemployment writing endlessly in the her studio in West Hollywood, still managing to wear Prada and forever purchasing coffee at The Planet. The first three seasons had tackled infidelity, homophobia and breast cancer, we all laughed and cried along with them but series four came and creator Eileen Chaiken was shaking it up. Plot lines became disjointed, characters that were once identifiable were having their diaries turned into films and gossips were being given talk shows. Even the once poor jobbing hairdresser was now seemingly wealthy with no explanation of how she achieved this lifestyle.

Characters were disappearing and storylines were remaining incomplete, the series was now revolving around Jenny who was unravelling. It became a journey through one woman’s breakdown rather than the light-hearted ensemble that it once was.

Season Three saw the death of Dana from breast cancer, a well- written, well- acted tragedy that raised so many debates. It made us all more breast aware and highlighted some of the issues around lesbian partners not being recognised by the health system. When they killed Dana off, a move that even upset some of the cast, Katherine Moennig was reported as saying that she was deeply upset about the decision to kill off a main character. This started a trend and characters began to flow in and out, the anchored storylines that had once kept us gripped had become confusing.

Characters were introduced, enter Papi and Molly to name but two, and then for no reason left. The relationship that the viewer had with the show was being dismantled and many lesbians were left open mouthed. The transgender storyline that had been sensitively portrayed by Daniella Sea depicting a man who was discriminated against at work because of his gender showed us how his relationship with his girlfriend broke down and how he found himself detached from his group of gay friends had also lost its way. It went from a story echoing the all too frequent experiences of the trans community to find him two seasons later shacked up with a man and pregnant. Chaiken had seemed to have gone too far. The L Word became more about shock factor, pushing the taboo so far over the line that it lost its audience. They were no longer women like us and we found it difficult to relate.

Sex and Style
You only had to go into your local gay village to see the impact TLW had on our sense of style. You couldn’t flick a dog end without hitting a Shane look-alike, like the Rachel haircut for the straight world we all dyed our hair black, feathered our bangs and liberated the skinny jeans from the wardrobe for maybe longer than necessary.

Jane thinks that TLW has definitely influenced lesbian identity: ‘Has it made a difference? What, you mean apart from the world wide generation of Shane-a-likes that it spawned?!
Yes, I think it has although it’s hard to say what came first.

The L word fed aspects of Los Angeles lesbian culture to viewers worldwide. In the first season lots of people in the UK complained that it didn't reflect our reality but by Season Three, young lesbians were becoming a lot more attuned to the glamorous styling and began adopting a more feminine default gender expression. I'm not saying the L word caused it but I think it definitely contributed to it. I don't think this is a good or a bad thing, it's just an observation. It has also, I believe, coincided with a more confident generation of lesbians in the UK who have a greater sense of entitlement in regards of equality and openness.”

So what happens now? Well we obviously all wear our DVDs and obsessively watch all of the tributes on Youtube to Tibette and Sharman. Well despair not because even though TLW has ended HBO has realised that there is still a pink buck or two to be made out of us Hollywood hungry lesbians, they are launching a fly on the wall documentary called ‘The Real L Word’ following a group of hot Hollywood dykes.

But the really good news is that the UK has finally caught up and with its own Sapphic series. ‘Lip Service’ kicks off this autumn on the BBC writer Harriet Braun says “I loved The L Word but it's high time we saw some contemporary British lesbians, with all the bad weather, trips to the pub and repressed emotions that go with that. It will be as funny as it is pathos filled, because in my experience that's how life is.”

So it seems that TLW has been a seminal series, not only did it give us fashion and a media presence, but it paved the way for lesbian ensemble shows to be aired here in the UK. Life of course will never be the same without Bette, Tina and gang but they haven’t ruled out a comeback and if Sex and The City can do it who is to say in a few years time your local Odean won’t be under siege by lesbians on ‘Orange Wednesday’ getting ready to see your favourites take to the big screen for a reunion.
Watch this space.

Credits

The L Word Season 6 is now available on DVD from Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment

Amanda Falkson is a Psychotherapist and Counsellor based in the City of London. She works with clients on all human issues and is passionate about sexuality being embraced, celebrated and viewed with warmth and compassion, whatever form it takes for further information contact her at www.psychotherapycity.co.uk

DIVA magazine is published monthly and can be found online at www.divamag.co.uk