Feeling and the production of lesbian space in The L Word

Cefai, Sarah (2014) Feeling and the production of lesbian space in The L Word. Gender, Place, and Culture, 21 (5). pp. 650-665. ISSN 0966-369X

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Abstract

This article seeks to understand the production of lesbian space in the TV series The L Word (TLW) (Showtime 2004–2009). To do so, it departs from theories of the lesbian gaze to discuss the visibility of feeling. Specifically, I consider how TLW represents the visibility of feeling as constitutive of lesbian bodies, communities and spaces. In TLW, real spaces (actual locations) fold into virtual ones (on screen) in a deliberate construction of televisual lesbian space. TLW implicitly reflects and is embedded within real-life configurations of lesbian space. I identify four excerpts from the series – ‘gay LA’, ‘the pool’, ‘Olivia cruise’ and ‘High Art’ – that problematise lesbian visibility by foregrounding the relationship between feeling and place. Permission to feel, represented as permission to look, reproduces community as the threshold of lesbian identity. Critical to understanding this production of lesbian space is the way in which TLW associates feeling with social relationships as vividly depicted by ‘the chart’, a representational motif that maps lesbian sexual relations and the intelligibility of lesbian feeling. Finally, I develop my account of lesbian visibility through the example of the facial expression of feeling, at once a demonstration of the visible embodiment of lesbian feeling, and the intelligibility of lesbian space.

Item Type:	Article
Official URL:	http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cgpc20
Additional Information:	© 2013 Taylor & Francis
Divisions:	Media and Communications
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General) H Social Sciences > HQ The family. Marriage. Woman
Date Deposited:	28 Feb 2014 14:50
Last Modified:	14 Sep 2024 06:26
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/55926

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