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Starring
comediennes Marga
Gomez and Julie Goldman, The D Word spoofs The
L Word’s ridiculous waxing chats and its portrayal
of an uber-domestic, yuppie couple in search of “strong”
sperm. Meanwhile, it transports the show’s storyline to
New York’s subways and small, cramped flats, its off-off-off
Broadway theaters and its less grooming-fixated dykes (thus
the "D").
Playing
several LGBT film festival circuits this year (The D Word
screened at San Francisco’s Frameline and will show at
Los Angeles’ Outfest on July 12th), The D Word
loosely follows the plot and dialogue exchanges of The L
Word’s first season with six mock episodes of its
own. Characters are all christened with Ds—there’s
Dot and Dina, Dim and Dani, Danyisha (A WNBA player version
of Dana) and Dara, and Drea (The D Word’s butcher-than-Shane
character, who is constantly getting restraining orders on girls
like Dicey, who swoon under the flash of Drea’s fingernails—since
she has such “cuticle confidence”).
When
I asked Gomez how she thought Showtime might react to the parody,
she answered that she thought “they should be flattered.
All it does is create an energy for them—not saying that
this is the Rocky Horror Picture Show, but Rocky
Horror did really well by people dressing up as the characters
and going up on the stage at midnight and throwing toast.
So
this is all part of making The L Word bigger.”
The
D Word is a good-natured imagining of what if
the characters of The L Word were goofy and the show
was set in a
milieu
more similar to Rent than
The Anniversary Party. This collection of episodes
is amusing and worth a gander, but it’s definitely necessary
to be well L Word-versed to get all the jokes.
The
D Word also includes more representations of feminine masculinity
and sex toy play than The L Word’s season one--most
of its sex scenes are playfully bawdy and over-the-top and tend
to involve strap-ons and daylight rather than soft music and
dim lighting.
Referencing
The L Word’s muddled representation of Ivan,
who goes from an upfront gender queer drag king with drawn-on
facial hair in season one, to an ostensibly ashamed transgender
character who can’t bear to be seen naked in season two,
The D Word has a corresponding character Dex, who is
a proudly proclaimed FTM on T (testosterone) with growing whiskers
of his own.
A
street-performer, The D Word’s Dex is soon capitalized
on by a music promoter who hopes to hype up the token-icity
of a transman frontman (perhaps a direct dig to producers of
The L Word for their slightly freakshowish way of handling
of the Ivan character?).
The D Word’s satire only has a few deliberate
political barbs pointed The L Word’s way. For
the most part it is a friendly parody that has a sort of second
cousin feel to it, and offers tongue-in-cheek pleasures derived
straight (or bent, rather) from The L Word’s
fantasy world. Ultimately, surely Gomez is right, and this spoof
only enhances desire for more of Showtime’s original series.
The
D Word screens at Outfest
in L.A. on July 12, 2005;
visit thedword.com
for more info and screening locations
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