The problem with academia is that most of the work published by academics is in dense theoretical language that renders it accessible only to other academics. The result is that all of the great analysis and discussion taking place in our universities frequently takes years to trickle down to the masses.

This is one of the reasons Suzanna Danuta Walter's "All the Rage: The Story of Gay Visibility in America" is so refreshing: it conveys academic ideas in non-academic language. Walters is a Sociology professor at Georgetown and the chair of their Women's Studies department, as well as an out lesbian and single mother, all of which inform her perspective on issues of gay visibility in the media, as articulated in this book.

Completed in January of 2001 and published in October that same year, "All the Rage" looks at the progression of gay visibility over time, but focuses primarily on visibility in the 90's, and covers everything from film and television to advertising, comic strips, and politics.

Walters' central thesis is that gay visibility over the last decade has been of the two-steps forward, one step back variety. Or, as she puts it, "Surely, times are better, but I believe there ways in which this new visibility creates new forms of homophobia...We may be seen, now, but I'm not sure we are known" (p. 10).

While it would be easy to look at gay visibility in film and television then and now and conclude that things have only gotten better, Walters' intention is to get viewers (both gay and straight) to acknowledge the complicated and contradictory facets of this new visibility. In short, she believes that quality matters as much as, if not more than, quantity.

The book focuses slightly more on television than other mediums, because Walters believes "the contemporary story of gay visibility has been told more consistently on television than in popular film" (p. 27). She has an entire chapter on Ellen and its impact, and series with central gay characters like Will and Grace and Queer as Folk get ample coverage as well, but she also includes television shows with minor lesbian characters like Roseanne, Ally McBeal, and Dark Angel.

Individual television characters and shows are examined in the context of this tension between simultaneous progress and retreat, as Walters does here with Ellen:

"The coming-out episode--like other 'firsts'--broke down barriers that may never again be firmly rebuilt. But it is also clearly true that double standards and heterosexual unease are still firmly in place, as the cancellation of Ellen sadly reveals. Indeed, the show really did become too gay, revealing that a gayness not in the background, not fully assimilated, not willing to slink off, is always too gay." (p. 94)

Similarly, in her analysis of Queer as Folk, Walters asserts that "while I applaud the breakthrough quality of its depiction of sexuality, Queer as Folk seems to substitute sexuality for community and to imply that gay sexual expression means an absolute erasure of everything else" (p. 122). Specifically looking at the lesbian couple in the series, she maintains that while Melanie and Lindsay "are more sexual then most lesbians we see on TV," they are in the series primarily "to serve as nutritional supplements to the main course of male...sexuality and life" (p. 124).

She also examines the gamut of television movies with gay and lesbian characters over the last twenty years, including What Makes a Family and If These Walls Could Talk 2, and a lengthy analysis of The Truth About Jane.

Themes that cut across film and television are also analyzed, like the ubiquitous gay wedding storyline (introduced on TV series like Friends, Northern Exposure, and Roseanne and in countless television movies) and the the coming-out narrative (in The Truth About Jane, Dawson's Creek, and The Incredibly True Adventures of Two Girls in Love.)

She also critiques the presentation of gay parents in TV and film as being "hetero clones," noting that "truly alternative models of parenting and familial arrangements are largely invisible" (p. 229). Walters believes this equation of "sameness" with "equality" is one of the largest ongoing problems in gay and lesbian representation on TV and film, and a missed opportunity to challenge the existing (heterosexual) norms of family and relationships which have pervaded entertainment for so long.

In her chapter on independent films, Walters applauds films like Go Fish, which "captured a slice of lesbian life without ever insisting on either boring stereotypes or pandering to a heterosexual audience" and The Incredibly True Adventures of Two Girls in Love, which "not only depicted an interracial lesbian high school romance, but placed one of the lead characters in a lesbian family context" (p. 173). Movies like these, she contends, are "examples of what can be visualized when the reigning tropes of sameness and difference are ignored in favor of a rich social and political and sexual world" (p. 176).

She also makes the observation that "independent and foreign films feature lesbians and lesbian culture much more than mainstream films, which tend to focus on gay men" (p. 173).

In her section on mainstream films' depiction of gays and lesbians, she compares and contrasts the 1996 films Bound and Chasing Amy, finding them both progressive and problematic in different ways. "In an interesting reversal," she comments, "it is Bound, which is less 'about' lesbianism, that unabashedly centralizes the lesbian relationship. In contrast. Chasing Amy is explicitly a boy's fantasy movie about girls who like girls" (p. 164).

For all the wealth of knowledge and criticism in this book, like any other analysis of society, it has its weaknesses. The first is inherent to any book of this kind: when you're trying to present a comprehensive overview of visibility over time--and when you're trying to cover both gay male and lesbian characters--you're necessarily going to have to sacrifice some depth.

So movies, TV shows, and characters that many lesbian and bisexual women would consider pivotal receive only scant mention here; Bianca on All My Children and Willow on Buffy, for example, both only get one paragraph in the book, and several 90's mainstream and indie films with lesbian characters (like Gia, Higher Learning, and Show Me Love) aren't even mentioned, which will strike many as glaring omissions.

The second problem with books like these is that they are incredibly time-sensitive. Both Bianca and Willow had only recently come out when Walters finished the book, for example, making it difficult for Walters to find much to say about these characters. And there have been several developments (both good and bad) in TV and film since January 2001 that can make the book feel dated already.

For example, the last two years of television have seen the introduction of central lesbian characters on ER, The Wire, and Once and Again, none of which are included in the book, as well as the further development of lesbian characters like Bianca, Willow and the women of Queer as Folk. And with the introduction of The L Word in 2004, lesbian visibility on TV is going to go through another dramatic change (although whether it will be a step forward or backwards remains to be seen).

In film, we have seen the launch of several more mainstream movies with lesbian characters and themes since 2001, like Frida, Kissing Jessica Stein, and The Hours, and there are more on the way (such as Monster and Gigli) as well as several independent films. All of these will also impact lesbian and bisexual visibility in some way.

Since the subject matter is always changing and evolving, however, there is clearly never a "perfect" time to write a book like this--at a certain point, you just have to take the plunge and tackle the subject matter as it exists at that moment in time. Other books have done this in the past, but they have primarily been written by white, non-academic men; the fact that "All the Rage" is written by an academic Latina lesbian already makes it unique in its field.

It is also one of the most up-to-date books on the subject matter, aside from Larry Gross' "Up from Invisibility: Lesbians, Gay Men, and the Media in America" (Gross is also an academic, and his book is another one I highly recommend). Most of the other books on this topic were written during the 90's, so they obviously weren't able to look at the decade as a whole.

In sum, despite its limitations, "All the Rage" gives a thought-provoking, entertaining, and balanced critique of gay and lesbian visibility in the 90's, in which "Gays [were] at once the sign of social decay and the chic flavor of the month" (p. 14). You may not agree with many of Walters' critiques, but she will certainly give you something to think about.

Amazon.com: "All The Rage"