Much of the existing academic work on The L Word's fan intensities might be fruitfully informed by this theoretical perspective, and this project is informed in turn by my colleagues' analyses. Amy Villarejo evokes the excess value enumerated above when she proposes that we "imagine TV as a site of transcoding, where that commodity that is our collective attention is bought and sold (this is, after all, what ratings measure, and what advertisers and networks trade), but where we as spectators also are not entirely equivalent to that commodity" (389). Villarejo reiterates that, in an era when "capital has been invested at an affective level... [the] labor of the production, circulation, and manipulation of affect... becomes crucial" (391). Because this affective juncture has oriented marketing to minority desires, she asserts that "queer studies needs rigorous economic analysis and intervention into audience research... that can redress the so-called 'research' undertaken by market studies and polling groups who benefit from overemphasizing the riches of the gay market" (396). The L Word is a prime example of these tactics of homonormative commodification, and Villarajo writes that the program "is a melodrama for a digital age... [with an] overt sense of a network or set of ties among strangers [that] comes in an early drawing Alice makes of the web that emerges from Shane’s sexual life" (398) -- that is, the Chart. Through this trope, "characters' movement between home and work, family and friends, invokes some of the material of lesbian life that has been central to lesbians' political aims, only to defuse that material or transcode it into this loosely-defined sense of 'connection' that is the series' most apt figure" (399). In other words, the Chart is among the gestures enabling the market logic that renders lesbian identity as commodity rather than political affinity. For Villarejo, the transition to digital television is a key element in this emerging configuration but, by the same token, "digital television, with its expanded spectrum and hundreds of offerings, has already taught us, I want to argue, how to juggle multiple realities, divergent stories, and not just at the level of what is on television" (402). Thus, convergence furnishes a set of conditions that facilitate capitalist expropriation of a "gay market," but these same conditions provide the ground for queer disruptions of this trend.
Michele Aaron also references today's media transformations when she observes that, in the case of The L Word, "the actual airing of the show becomes just one way in which it is experienced, or bought into, by a queer audience" (66). She therefore suggests an "extraterrestrial avenue" for queer TV studies that takes as its object "this queer community and discourse generated by but existing beyond the analogue... forged via other media (satellite, cable, the internet) and... linked to the television programme from which it originates, [while] it also operates independently of it" (66). This provisional independence could be associated with the ways that "visual pleasure... engages our desire for, or to be, on-screen characters counter to our 'normal' sexual orientation" (70), and Aaron advises that, following psychoanalytic film theory, "television must be reconsidered, therefore, for its potential influence on subject formation" (71) if we are to understand the significance of "extraterrestrial" formations. M. Catherine Jonet and Laura Anh Williams likewise urge us toward more complex models of reception, offering a counterpoint to the many scathing criticisms of The L Word's imposition of normative identities. In their view, "The L Word is a 'restive' text" (153): due to its "conflicting impetuses of representational insufficiency and recuperation... [its] representation of lesbians and queer women will always be insufficient. It will never achieve the 'truth,' authenticity, or even the 'inside glimpse'" (155). Rather than regarding the program's relentless claims to authenticity as an unyielding ideological tactic, that is, Jonet and Williams imply that their inevitable failure opens onto an ambivalent terrain that is fertile for queer readings. These articles thus advance a precarious understanding of The L Word's commodified viewer and an optimistic outlook on the possibilities of queer engagement.
Candace Moore has worked specifically on The L Word screening parties (plus OurChart.com's "virtual" version) as "peripheral sites of production, where queer female consumers become incorporated into the production process (through audience surveillance and interaction) and where lines between private/public, producer/consumer, and insider/outsider are blurred" (126). She notes once again "the unquantifiable nature of television consumption and fandom... [g]iven OnDemand, DVRs, TV-on-DVD, online viewing technologies, as well as group screenings" (127) and suggests that one motivation behind OurChart.com, like Nielsen's social network, is covert market research. While "queer female cyber-identities are 'charted' (i.e. organized) on the site, and thus made ever more accessible to Viacom, the conglomerate that owns Showtime Networks, as a market demographic," it is equally true that identity is not so easily rationalized, since here "anyone can declare him- or herself a 'lesbian,' or indeed a 'friend of'" (134). So if Moore is realistic about the retrenchment of capitalist logics animating The L Word's show of involvement with its fan community, she concludes that the program is nonetheless "dependent upon fan identification, recognition, and at least partial belief in the notions of identity and community which the show founds itself upon and also 'works on'... [and thus] is also predicated on the fan culture it has promulgated" (136). This negotiation between fan communities and the media industry is endemic to late capitalism, and given that both sides have their share of power in this milieu, the outcome of mediations between capital and fan laborers is far from a foregone conclusion.
As a corollary, though, Kelly Kessler emphasizes that capital is rapidly adapting its strategies of containment to optimize the burgeoning gay media market. "As corporations take control of fansites through pimped-out network/studio/label-sponsored sites," she writes, "an increased level of policing of fan art/fiction/chat/use of images or texts seems to work to limit types of fan activity.... Increased visibility seems to be exchanged for complicity in a vision most conducive to the studios'/labels'/corporations' own economic or ideological goals" (Kessler). This trend was very much in evidence at OurChart.com, where "Showtime took a site once more focused on individual fan postings on random topics [official and unofficial message boards] and molded it to one that foregrounds characteristics seen [as] desirable by dominant culture, the economic imperatives of the culture industry, and the very characteristics of the show critiqued by fans." Corralling the fandom within a corporate framework entailed, in particular, that "the network-sponsored site erase[d] the butch, the bi, the trans, the working class, the Midwestern or rural, all in favor of creating a largely idealized and perhaps marketable (to both men and women) image of lesbianism." Once again, however, these problematic dynamics did not necessarily go unchallenged. Humorist Kim Ficera raises one obvious objection to OurChart's attempt to commodify intimate networks as so much market data. When it was introduced onscreen, she recalls, "we saw ourselves in the Chart," but in addition to the thrill of recognition "we were reminded of exactly how incestuous our sexual behaviours are" (112). The Chart is haunting in its insinuation that "our exes -- four, five or sixty times removed -- aren't really removed at all, but rather re-posited [sic] into a familiar lesbian landscape... [because] one thing the lesbian world isn't is Large" (112-113). "Uncomfortable sexual connections are made every day -- that's life," Ficera opines -- "But we really don't need to keep a record of them" (114). This acknowledgement, however oblique, of the contentious power relations of archives indicates that queer subjectivities cannot simply be translated into online databases without resistance. There are certainly losses when an "official social network" is superimposed onto a fan community, but there is also lossiness: noise and tension that belie doomsday scenarios of total subsumption by capital. I hope that my case study of The L Word's fan-driven internet promotions extends these analyses of their contingent and ambivalent character by offering a theoretical scaffold for the labor negotiations in progress.
Michele Aaron also references today's media transformations when she observes that, in the case of The L Word, "the actual airing of the show becomes just one way in which it is experienced, or bought into, by a queer audience" (66). She therefore suggests an "extraterrestrial avenue" for queer TV studies that takes as its object "this queer community and discourse generated by but existing beyond the analogue... forged via other media (satellite, cable, the internet) and... linked to the television programme from which it originates, [while] it also operates independently of it" (66). This provisional independence could be associated with the ways that "visual pleasure... engages our desire for, or to be, on-screen characters counter to our 'normal' sexual orientation" (70), and Aaron advises that, following psychoanalytic film theory, "television must be reconsidered, therefore, for its potential influence on subject formation" (71) if we are to understand the significance of "extraterrestrial" formations. M. Catherine Jonet and Laura Anh Williams likewise urge us toward more complex models of reception, offering a counterpoint to the many scathing criticisms of The L Word's imposition of normative identities. In their view, "The L Word is a 'restive' text" (153): due to its "conflicting impetuses of representational insufficiency and recuperation... [its] representation of lesbians and queer women will always be insufficient. It will never achieve the 'truth,' authenticity, or even the 'inside glimpse'" (155). Rather than regarding the program's relentless claims to authenticity as an unyielding ideological tactic, that is, Jonet and Williams imply that their inevitable failure opens onto an ambivalent terrain that is fertile for queer readings. These articles thus advance a precarious understanding of The L Word's commodified viewer and an optimistic outlook on the possibilities of queer engagement.
Candace Moore has worked specifically on The L Word screening parties (plus OurChart.com's "virtual" version) as "peripheral sites of production, where queer female consumers become incorporated into the production process (through audience surveillance and interaction) and where lines between private/public, producer/consumer, and insider/outsider are blurred" (126). She notes once again "the unquantifiable nature of television consumption and fandom... [g]iven OnDemand, DVRs, TV-on-DVD, online viewing technologies, as well as group screenings" (127) and suggests that one motivation behind OurChart.com, like Nielsen's social network, is covert market research. While "queer female cyber-identities are 'charted' (i.e. organized) on the site, and thus made ever more accessible to Viacom, the conglomerate that owns Showtime Networks, as a market demographic," it is equally true that identity is not so easily rationalized, since here "anyone can declare him- or herself a 'lesbian,' or indeed a 'friend of'" (134). So if Moore is realistic about the retrenchment of capitalist logics animating The L Word's show of involvement with its fan community, she concludes that the program is nonetheless "dependent upon fan identification, recognition, and at least partial belief in the notions of identity and community which the show founds itself upon and also 'works on'... [and thus] is also predicated on the fan culture it has promulgated" (136). This negotiation between fan communities and the media industry is endemic to late capitalism, and given that both sides have their share of power in this milieu, the outcome of mediations between capital and fan laborers is far from a foregone conclusion.
As a corollary, though, Kelly Kessler emphasizes that capital is rapidly adapting its strategies of containment to optimize the burgeoning gay media market. "As corporations take control of fansites through pimped-out network/studio/label-sponsored sites," she writes, "an increased level of policing of fan art/fiction/chat/use of images or texts seems to work to limit types of fan activity.... Increased visibility seems to be exchanged for complicity in a vision most conducive to the studios'/labels'/corporations' own economic or ideological goals" (Kessler). This trend was very much in evidence at OurChart.com, where "Showtime took a site once more focused on individual fan postings on random topics [official and unofficial message boards] and molded it to one that foregrounds characteristics seen [as] desirable by dominant culture, the economic imperatives of the culture industry, and the very characteristics of the show critiqued by fans." Corralling the fandom within a corporate framework entailed, in particular, that "the network-sponsored site erase[d] the butch, the bi, the trans, the working class, the Midwestern or rural, all in favor of creating a largely idealized and perhaps marketable (to both men and women) image of lesbianism." Once again, however, these problematic dynamics did not necessarily go unchallenged. Humorist Kim Ficera raises one obvious objection to OurChart's attempt to commodify intimate networks as so much market data. When it was introduced onscreen, she recalls, "we saw ourselves in the Chart," but in addition to the thrill of recognition "we were reminded of exactly how incestuous our sexual behaviours are" (112). The Chart is haunting in its insinuation that "our exes -- four, five or sixty times removed -- aren't really removed at all, but rather re-posited [sic] into a familiar lesbian landscape... [because] one thing the lesbian world isn't is Large" (112-113). "Uncomfortable sexual connections are made every day -- that's life," Ficera opines -- "But we really don't need to keep a record of them" (114). This acknowledgement, however oblique, of the contentious power relations of archives indicates that queer subjectivities cannot simply be translated into online databases without resistance. There are certainly losses when an "official social network" is superimposed onto a fan community, but there is also lossiness: noise and tension that belie doomsday scenarios of total subsumption by capital. I hope that my case study of The L Word's fan-driven internet promotions extends these analyses of their contingent and ambivalent character by offering a theoretical scaffold for the labor negotiations in progress.
