| Note:
to read an alternate opinion on butch representation on
The L Word, go here.
It
has been much repeated in the press that
creator and executive producer Ilene Chaiken had to pitch
The L Word to Showtime
for several years before she finally got the green light.
But
less has been written about the monumental task she faced
after that: creating a successful lesbian series when there
not only had never been a show almost entirely about lesbians
before, but rarely even a show in which almost all of the
lead characters were women.
But
Chaiken and her team of writers and directors pulled it
off and the series earned a second-season renewal only days
after its first episode premiered in January--an achievement
that is partly attributable to the fact that The L Word
didn't show the full diversity of the gay community and
didn't challenge gender norms very much.
From
the beginning, Showtime emphasized the
similarity of the gay women on The L Word to their
heterosexual counterparts, as illustrated in The L Word's
marketing slogan ("Same Sex. Different City.")
which sought to draw comparisons to the hit mostly-heterosexual
show Sex and the City.
Promos
for The L Word featured a montage of sensual scenes
set to sexy music featuring conventionally attractive women
interacting with one another in various sexual and non-sexual
ways which seemed designed to attract both gay and straight
viewers. It worked on the mainstream media, too, who eagerly
ran cover stories featuring the women of The L Word.
The
cast also smartly featured a mix of actresses with gay fan
bases (Laurel
Holloman from her role in the indie teen lesbian flick
The Incredibly True
Adventures of Two Girls in Love, Leisha
Hailey from her real-life role as k.d. lang's girlfriend
for several years, and Katherine
Moennig from her androgynous role in the WB's short-lived
series Young Americans) and broader ones (Jennifer
Beals from Flashdance, Pam Grier from Foxy
Brown, and Mia
Kirshner from 24 and Exotica).
If
the series had been packaged to more accurately represent
the lesbian community in all its glorious gender-bending
variety, we would have enjoyed it for a few weeks--only
to see it yanked from the schedule or limited to a one-season
run because it didn't draw a big enough audience (even with
the lipstick lesbians, The L Word still only averaged
around 1 million viewers per episode).
In
today's television environment, where new shows
often only have a few episodes to prove they can gain an
audience and there are dozens of potential shows vying for
every time slot, creating a well-written series with solid
actors isn't enough to ensure success anymore (as we've
seen with the premature deaths of many an excellent series,
like Relativity, Once and Again, and Wonderfalls).
Unfortunately,
in such a crowded marketplace, how you package and market
a series is almost as important as the content of the series
itself.
And
if ever there was a series that had to be packaged just
right in order to succeed, it was The L Word: a
show that featured characters to whom few Americans could
easily relate engaging in sexual activity that had never
been shown on television before and matter-of-factly discussing
topics that are considered controversial at best, offensive
and profane at worst.
This
might not have mattered if The L Word only needed
to appeal to lesbians, but it needed to draw a broader audience
outside the gay community in order to succeed.
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