A summary of Moore’s Article Getting Wet

不行了，寫到三點多才嘔完這文——關於the l word的文的summary一篇……沒修改過直接放上來，明天再改（更新：改好了）～～想到一個星期後還要交一篇自己分析the l word文就頭疼了……太晚了，還是睡了……

p.s. 最近在反思“國家”這個名詞。還有，為何這么多人都只顧著火炬被搶之類的“面子”問題，而不去真正關心國內的民生、民主呢？說別人偏頗的同時，卻看不見自己的狹隘，有時候，我不禁“猜測”，可能就是這種偏頗的“國族精神”阻礙了國家的發展……

算了，還是莫論國是，專心做好本分，繼續沉迷shane/kate，呵呵～

Course Title: Feminist Theories Course Code: FEM 3105

Student: Wenyan Chen Student ID: 5120852

A summary of Moore’s Article Getting Wet:

The Heteroflexibility of Showtime’s The L word

An American pay cable network, Showtime, has made a series of lesbian drama called The L Word since January 2004. As the world’s first serial lesbian TV drama, The L Word has become more and more famous not only within USA but also other parts of the world. Its audiences are not just limited in queer identified people, but also including a huge number of self-identified heterosexual women and men. And because it’s a pay network, lots of these audiences belong to middle or upper class. Candace Moore has an article analyzing on The L Word’s heteroflexibility politics. It’s called Getting Wet: The Heteroflexibility of Showtime’s The L word and it has been published in the book Third Wave Feminism and Television-Jane Puts It in a box edited by Merri Lisa Johnson. The following is my summary to this Moore’s analysis work.

In this article, Moore finds out that The L word tries to use the tourist gaze to guide the so called heterosexual audience to experience the queer activities and life styles. She especially focuses on the character Jenny’s special experience, from a heterosexual changing to a woman with blur identity and sexual orientation. And Jenny’s change has become a guide for the heterosexual audiences to get involved in the lesbian lives. Moore also finds that some important scenes for Jenny’s change or introspection on her identity are relative to ‘water’, that’s ‘wet’. Besides, Moore suggests that other non-normative activities The L word revealing, such as sex with sex toys, can also give the heterosexuals a lesson to ‘queer sexual representation’ (2007: 136), so that the heterosexual normality can be subverted.

The comparison between a lesbian sex and a straight sex

Moore first focuses on comparing a pool scene and the following straight couple’s sex in the pilot episode. A straight girl Jenny happens to voyeur a hot lesbian sex in her neighbor’s pool through a fence. This sex is performed by an unknown woman and Shane, who leads the sex. Moore considers the representation of this sex is just like the soft lesbian porn sex for straight men. However, by comparing to the following heterosexual sex scene between Jenny and her boyfriend Tim, Moore rethinks that the previous lesbian sex has opened a window for the straight viewers to a lesbian sex because of their gaze with Jenny, a straight girl’s point of view, and moreover, this sex eroticizing Jenny. We can see during the latter love scene between Jenny and Tim, Jenny has the erotic fantasy of being fucked by Shane, the girl in the lead position of the lesbian sex by her voyeur. Because Jenny continues to describe the lesbian sex to Tim and re-enact this sex by indicating Tim to perform like what Shane was doing to that woman in the pool. Moore considers that Jenny’s heterosexual sex is mixed with lesbian sex that it ‘complicates and queers the trope of straight male pleasure in lesbian sex’ (2007: 122). Also because it’s Jenny, a woman that leads this heterosexual sex by her non-heteronormative pleasure and desire, Moore claims that these two sex scenes together ‘offer a feminist, queer-positive political edge’ (2007: 122). She argues that The L Word provides a politic to ‘encourage heteroflexibility in the straight viewers’ through accessing ‘multiple desires and sensitivities’ in queer fashion (2007: 123).

Jenny’s confused identities

Turn to Season 2’s pool scene and Jenny’s confusion with her identities, Moore suggests it’s to open a discussion for what is lesbianism. This scene displays a lesbian community playing in pool and is no longer about lesbian sex but ‘lesbian sensibility’ (2007: 130). From Jenny and her roommate Mark’s conversation, Moore figures out the answer to what’s lesbianism. That’s lesbianism is the combination of a style, attitude and desire. And to Jenny’s blur identities, Moore also suggests a queer answer that Jenny can be, at the same time, a ‘feminist straight woman’ and ‘queer woman’ and ‘lesbian women’ (2007: 131).

‘The honesty of dishonesty’ to the lesbian culture

Moore analyzes a storyline that Shane and Jenny’s roommate Mark, a heterosexual male, installs tiny surveillance cameras around their house to shoot a lesbian ‘documentary’, which at last is discovered by Jenny. Moore sees this as the show reminding its viewers to aware their voyeur position and they are just the tourists in ‘Lesbian-Land’ (2007: 135). Although The L Word provides pleasure for the heterosexual males, these straight guys are still ‘outsiders’ to the real lesbian culture. Moore further argues that The L Word here critiques some authorities’ representation of lesbians or queers by using the self-claim ‘ethnography’ or ‘scientific objectivity’. Instead, The L Word provides an ‘honesty of dishonesty’ angle to exam lesbian culture, ‘through fictional rather than social-scientific means’ (2007: 136).

Destabilization on the binary of normative and non-normative

The ways that The L Word provides images about lesbian sex are varied. The L Word shows the diversities of lesbian sex, such as using tools, procreative sex, group sex, and etc... Moore argues that some of these sex ways close up to the heteronormative sex such as procreative act and dildo, but of course these queer sexes are still outside the ‘norm’. From this perspective, they can destabilize ‘the binary of normative and non-normative’ (2007: 137), so that both straights and queers can find the pleasures in the text with being opened up to more pleasure and desire possibilities.

Summary

In Moore’s article, she argues that the politics used by The L Word provide heteroflexibility for the straight spectators and even for the queer people. It tries to blur the line between normative and non-normative and open up more pleasures possibilities for its diversified audiences. These politics can destabilize not only the heteronormative but also some ‘norms’ in the minorities.

Reference:

Moore, Candace. “Getting Wet: The Heteroflexibility of Showtime’s The L word.” In Third Wave Feminism and Television-Jane Puts It in a box. Ed. Merri Lisa Johnson. London.Newyork: I.B.Tauris, 2007. 119-146.