Race-ing Queerness

Abstract

We argue that the representations of sex, love, and relationships in the television series Downtown Los Angeles (DTLA) mirrors existing racialized, gendered, sexualized, and classed hierarchies of masculinities among queer men. DTLA attempts to project a more inclusive ideology through its focus on typically marginalized groups but fails to offer a space for resisting or subverting those hierarchies. For that reason, we complicate DTLA’s representations as reproducing normative hierarchies. By doing so, we reimagine the potentiality of mediated spaces where the intersections and complexities of differences are embraced.

Keywords

race and sexuality queer of color interracial normativity intersectionality

Fashionable, stylish, and cosmopolitan ways of gay life have been on display and popularized through various media programming (Clarkson, 2005, 2008; Sender, 2004, 2006; Shugart, 2008). For instance, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy (2003–2007) helped successfully rebrand the Bravo channel by focusing on gay men (Kooijman, 2005; Ng, 2013; Sender, 2006). Bravo, a network owned by NBC Universal, utilized cultural stereotypes of gay men to shift their formerly high-end arts programming into contemporary high-end fashion or lifestyle programming to attract mainly White and politically progressive audiences (Sender, 2007). Bravo’s rebranding efforts successfully retained its affluent viewers with high-end tastes, in addition to cultivating a new market of well-to-do viewers who enjoy contemporary fashion or lifestyle television (Ng, 2013), as well as aspirational viewers hoping to cultivate high-end tastes.

Gay visibility was further promoted by the launch of the LOGO network in 2005. Owned by Viacom (which also owns MTV, VH1, BET, SpikeTV, Comedy Central, and a number of other niche networks), LOGO’s programs are designed for the lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender (LGBT) communities. Ng (2013) notes, “LOGO produced or acquired a number of documentaries spotlighting different LGBT communities in its first year, along with running films and series with LGBT main characters” (p. 258). One of LOGO’s most popular offerings was drama series Noah’s Arc (Terrell, 2007). The addition of this show to the gay identity-based lineup was refreshing because the series focused on the lives of four Black gay men (Stephans, 2010; Yep & Elia, 2012). Despite the positive reception of Noah’s Arc, LOGO did not add more original shows, instead shifting its programming to feature more reality television shows such as The A List and RuPaul’s Drag Race (Ng, 2013).

In 2012, LOGO added DTLA (Downtown Los Angeles) to the programming lineup. Before the debut of DTLA, advertising for the show on LOGO focused on Darryl Stephens, who played the titular Noah in Noah’s Arc and was the main character in DTLA. LOGO attempted to distinguish DTLA from Noah’s Arc. DTLA explored issues of sex, love, and relationships with a multiracial or ethnic and multisexual cast to reflect the area of Los Angeles in which it was set. The ensemble cast featured gay Black, White, and Asian men, and a heterosexual White woman. Other characters represented diverse elements of the community such as a Middle Eastern American queer man, curious “straight” men, lesbian parents, drag queens, and celebrities. DTLA’s only season ran from October 24, 2012 to December 1, 2012 and can still be seen on LOGO and Netflix.

Despite its cancelation after one season, we call for unpacking the representations of queer male sex, love, and relationships in DTLA in this essay. We argue that DTLA’s “failure” ironically illuminates queer potentiality. According to Muñoz (2009), this potentiality is possible because “Queerness is a structuring and educated mode of desiring that allows us to see and feel beyond the quagmire of the present” (p. 1). For example, we contend that the messy intersections and complexities of differences such as race, ethnicity, gender or sex, sexuality, and class effect not just who we are and what we do, but also how we make sense of ourselves in relation to others in a very specific time and space (Calafell, 2012). Differences matter particularly for LGBT people from raced and classed communities whose embodied experiences cannot escape intersecting social, cultural, political, economic, and historical contexts (Johnson, 2001; McCune, 2014). Yep, Olzman, and Conkle (2012) envision “a queer world [that] is not necessarily coherent and neatly delineated because it embraces all of the intersections and complexities of human relations.” (p. 136). Thus, “[q]ueerness is essentially about the rejection of a here and now and an insistence on potentiality or concrete possibility of another world” (Muñoz, 2009, p. 1). Therefore, in critiquing the representations of queerness in LOGO’s DTLA, we hope to create a potential space for imagining alternatives in which the messy intersections and complexities of differences are embraced.

Popular Cultural Representation of Queer Men and Intersectionality

Mainstream media and popular cultural narratives about queer men have focused on openly and mainly gay men who are interested in high-end fashion, grooming, and social life (Clarkson, 2005, 2008). Representations of queerness have been gradually shifting from what Gross (1991) pointed out was a focus on “obviously effeminate men and masculine women” (p. 27) to less stereotypical depictions. This popular cultural production of gayness coincides with the overwhelming visibility of Whiteness. More precisely, openly, gay men have been mainly represented through cis-gendered, youthful, and attractive White male bodies for the profit making needs of the culture industry (Avila-Saaverdra, 2009; Fejes, 2000; Shugart, 2008). So now hip and edgy markets of what Becker (2006) has termed the “slumpys”—Socially Liberal Urban-Minted Professionals—comprised mainly of Whites who have been commercially cultivated and sustained to buy into liberal programming including gay content. The conflation of gayness with Whiteness has been accomplished at the expense of queer sexual identities and performances that could actually disrupt, destabilize, and shift taken-for-granted social, political, and economic relations (Becker, 2006).

In recent years, we have seen an increase in media and popular cultural representations of queer men of color. These images, however, have continued to reify the ways queer men of color have been historically racialized, gendered, sexualized, and classed via White capitalistic heteropatriarchy. For example, Black men continued to be framed as hypersexual beings with large penises (Eguchi & Robers, 2015; Johnson, 2003; McCune, 2014; Yep & Elia, 2012). The hyper-macho hip–hop aesthetic of a homo-thug distinctly sexualizes and racializes Black or African American queer men (McCune, 2014). Brown Latino bodies are also eroticized as hypersexual beings due to cultural conceptions of machismo (Ortiz, 1994). Extending the “tough guy” imagery related to working-class masculinity, both Black and Latino men are repeatedly symbolized as sexual tops—intercourse penetrators (Eguchi, Calafell, & Files-Thompson, 2014; Ortiz, 1994; Yep & Elia, 2012). Similarly, the Orientalization of Asian men imagines them as feminine foreigners (Eguchi & Roberts, 2015; Han, 2006; Hoang, 2014). Asian queer men are frequently sexualized as bottoms—intercourse receivers (Han, 2009; Hoang, 2014). These representations of queer men of color are produced for the center, White men with power (Becker, 2006). The needs of the culture industry to increase profits results in erasing, marginalizing, and spoiling the culture- and text-specific nuances of knowledge embedded in the material realities of queer men of color (Eguchi & Roberts, 2015). Thus, existing social, political, and economic structures continue to be sustained through the representations of queers of color.

For these reasons, we call for careful and nuanced analyses of intersectionality in DTLA. By intersectionality, we do not mean a linear metaphor for multiple differences. Cohen (2013) reminds us that “while heterosexual privilege negatively impacts and constrains the lived experiences of ‘queers’ of color, so too do racism, classism, and sexism” (p. 81). Thus, we reject an artificial critique against the notion of intersectionality as the strategy of adding multiple differences into the list of oppressions. As Muñoz (1999) emphasizes, “Intersectionality should not be confused with multiculturalism” (p. 167). Instead, we argue that the theoretical lens of intersectionality allows us to identify how interlocking systems of power, oppression, and privilege are socially, culturally, politically, economically, and historically embedded in the material conditions of LGBT people of color. Ferguson (2013) notes “queer of color analysis has to debunk the idea that race, class, gender, and sexuality are discrete formations, apparently insulated from one another” (p. 121). From this intellectual and political perspective, we move to complicate the representations of queer male sex, love, and relationships in DTLA to join the critical genealogy of reimagining alternatives in which the messy intersections and complexities of differences are recognized.

Downtown Los Angeles¹

Recognizing DTLA as a cultural product allows us to focus on the underlying social cultural assumptions within the show and using critical textual analysis enables us to expose the ideologies operating in and through the show (Washington, 2012). DTLA’s tagline is “One city, seven lives; old friends, new stories,” though it features and revolves around a main protagonist, Lenny. Lenny is a Black lawyer who is in a 6-year relationship with his partner, Bryan. Bryan is a White, unemployed, marijuana aficionado, who is the son of two friendly but no longer partnered lesbian women. Lenny and Bryan are both unhappy with their relationship, and they decide ultimately to breakup. The series opens with a birthday party for Bryan where the audience is introduced to the other characters. There is SJ, a White heterosexual woman, professor of fashion, and Lenny’s best friend from college. SJ is estranged from her husband and spends the series sorting through her feelings for her former partner, a male model, and her philandering husband. SJ’s new best friend is Kai, an Asian American gay man and high school teacher, who is convinced his favorite celebrity is gay (and spends multiple episodes trying to meet him) and has trouble committing to a relationship with the Middle-Eastern owner of the club where his celeb crush parties. Lenny’s new best friend is Stephan, who is also a Black gay lawyer. Stephan begins the series in a relationship with Trey, a much younger Black man who performs as a drag queen in West Hollywood. Stephan breaks up with Trey after finding out about his drag persona and is seen with a bevy of attractive, young, black men for the remainder of the season. Bryan’s best friend is Matthew, a White actor cast in his first Los Angeles production, a play starring another White male actor in which they have intercourse on stage. Matthew is dating Marky, an out, White, active duty Marine.

Critiquing Normative Intimacies in DTLA

Based on our analysis, DTLA’s representations of queer male sex, love, and relationships are produced for what Ng (2013) suggests is the LOGO’s current target audience—upper or middle-class “heterosexual” women with liberal ideas about sex and sexuality, and their comparably upper or middle-class gay male friends. More precisely, we find through deconstructing DTLA’s depictions of difference that those depictions are simply a façade, and operating underneath are the same representations that audiences will find familiar. DTLA both heterosexualizes queer male sex and normalizes interracial relationships that are not threatening to their current target viewers. Additionally, DTLA utilizes reductive stereotypes to represent contemporary inclusiveness. DTLA’s representations of differences do not problematize existing power relations, which we argue means the show fails to provide a reimagining or at least establishes possibilities for a space in which the intersections of differences are embraced and can be generative.

Heterosexualizations of Queer Male Sex

We maintain that visible representations of a rigid top–bottom binary grounded in heteronormative and essentialist discourses about sex, gender, and desire shape and promote the heterosexualization of queer male sex in DTLA. As such, a top is the penetrator during sex and the embodiment of masculinity, while a bottom is the receiver of penetrative sex and feminized. Representations of a rigid top or bottom binary reproduce heteropatriarchal dichotomies of masculine or feminine and dominant or submissive in the context of queer male sexual encounters (Yep & Elia, 2012).

In the first episode, viewers can easily identify that Black Lenny is a top, while White Bryan is a bottom. During the post-birthday party scene, they are shown having sex in the missionary position and the camera focuses on Lenny’s butt between Bryan’s legs as Lenny moves on top of Bryan. This interracial queer male sexual image reinforces what McCune (2014) suggests is a sociohistorical construction of hyper-sexualized Black masculinity in contrast to White masculinity. Black men are discursively and ideologically pressured to adapt, embody, and perform the racist depictions of Black hypersexualized masculinity to cope with White discipline and surveillance (Johnson, 2003), which results in their framing as sexual tops.

This interracial queer male sexual image is further heteronormalized as the scene cuts back and forth between them having intercourse and an explicitly heterosexual act between White male model Kevin (SJ’s ex-boyfriend) and his date, a Black or multiracial woman, in the next room. The image of Kevin, whose steroid addiction has resulted in an extremely muscular physique, powerfully penetrating the female model of color serves as a juxtaposition of the heterosexualization of the penetrative sex between Lenny and Bryan, and the racial and gender dynamics of intercourse. Whereas Lenny’s embodied performance of hypermasculine Blackness allows him to literally dominate Bryan, Kevin’s Whiteness enables him to objectify (as he acknowledges later) and dominate his Black woman date. In this particular moment, viewers are being asked to envision a patriarchal connection between heterosexuality and homosexuality. The discursive illusion of queer male sex as parallel to heteronormative sex shapes and highlights the heterosexualization of the top or bottom male-queer sex between Lenny and Bryan.

The top or bottom binary embedded in visual images of sex between Kai and Middle-Eastern bar owner Rafi also articulates and visualizes the heteronormalization of male-queer sex in DTLA. In the first episode, for example, Kai tells Stephan, Trey, and SJ about a closeted celebrity. Kai claims to have seen the celebrity at a deli, where they lusted after each other. Kai shares: “He fucking wants me. He was full on with starring at my ass and shit. I even stared at his cock for, like 5 seconds. And he was like mmm hmmm. And you know it’s time for some Asian pussy up in there. Shit, right, right, and right? (S1E1).”

By referring to his “pussy” Kai makes explicit his feminized queer positionality. This linguistic practice has been paradoxically a rhetorical method of reappropriation or appropriation to indicate the value of sexual bottoms—intercourse receivers among queer men of color (Eguchi & Roberts, 2015). Later, SJ informs Kai that the celebrity may be at a gay bar called, “Club Load.” In the club, Kai approaches the tall, attractive, and muscular Rafi to find out more information. The next scene shows Kai being penetrated by Rafi from behind. In the fourth episode, Kai meets Rafi in a hair salon where Rafi convinces Kai to have sex with him, where again Rafi penetrates Kai. In Episode 6, Kai opens up about his past relationships during a romantic dinner with Rafi. As Kai shows his emotional vulnerability, Rafi tries to comfort him. The scene dissolves into the bedroom where Kai and Rafi have the most conventional sex of their short relationship. Conventional because they are in a bed, instead of an office or closet or bathroom, and because the sexual position they are in is the most familiar—missionary. Kai is on the bottom during this queer male sex scene, and Rafi is both literally and figuratively on top. These descriptions of a rigid top or bottom binary between Rafi and Kai symbolize hegemonic practices of a racialized, gendered, and sexualized hierarchy of sex.

In queer male sexual encounters, Asian American gay men are ideologically and materially expected to be bottoms—intercourse receivers—because of their gendered and racialized stereotypes as feminine, submissive, and passive. Han (2006) writes, “Much like the way that women are ‘rewarded’ for playing the feminine role, gay Asian men are ‘rewarded’ by the dominant gay community for performing their prescribed gender roles” (p. 17). Orientalism essentializes the White or West as dominant and Asian or East as submissive, which is reflected in the narrative framing of Kai in DTLA. Han (2009) continues, “Given the long history of feminizing Asian men in Western discourse, it is not surprising that gay Asian men came to represent a ‘feminine other’ to the masculine white man” (p. 110).

At the same time, the Orientalist framing of Rafi’s “Middle-Eastern” male body complicates the racialized, gendered, and sexualized significance of a top or bottom binary between Rafi and Kai. However, Puar (2007) notes that “the improperly racialized and perversely sexualized bodies of Arab or Muslim or Middle-Eastern men invokes a homonational project that embroils gay subjects into upholding and sustaining dominant heteronormative forms instead of contesting them” (p. 39). When Kai meets Rafi in the first episode, Rafi performs his hypermasculinity both verbally and nonverbally by adopting a homo thug aesthetic both verbally and nonverbally. In this post 9/11 moment, discourses of terrorism and terrorists frame Middle-Eastern men as dangerous, thus Rafi’s Middle Eastern-ness is racialized, gendered, and sexualized by shifting him toward hypersexualized and masculine Blackness in order to emphasize the threatening function of his body. This move allows for the feminized framing of Kai’s East-Asian body, which is explicitly renewed and redefined according to the Orientalist sexual imagery. Thus, we maintain that DTLA ensures representations of the racialized, gendered, and sexualized hierarchy between Rafi and Kai is legible according to hegemonic practices of masculine-feminine and dominant-submissive binaries.

Other DTLA images of queer male sex such as the relationships between Marky/Matthew and Stephan/Trey and later Stephan/Thomas simultaneously shape, highlight, and promote the normative representations of a rigid top or bottom binary further. Rubin (1998) maintains, “According to this system [of heteropatriarchy], sexuality that is ‘good,’ ‘normal,’ and ‘natural’ should ideally be heterosexual, marital, monogamous, reproductive, and noncommercial. It should be coupled, relational, and within the same generation, and occur at home” (p. 108). Although DTLA’s queer male sexual images are not heterosexual, most of the images are closer to these heteropatriarchal practices of “good” sex. Rubin continues, “Most homosexuality is still on bad side of the line. But if it is coupled and monogamous, then society is beginning to recognize that it includes the full range of human interactions” (p. 110). The proximity to heteronormativity is socially, culturally, and politically constructed as a way for queers to be happy. As Ahmed (2010) notes, “Happiness involves a form of orientation: the very hope for happiness means we get directed in specific ways, as happiness is assumed to follow from some life choices and not others” (p. 54). Thus, we argue that heterosexualization of queer male sex in DTLA strategically duplicates the power of heteronormativity. At first, queer male sexual images in DTLA seemingly appear to disrupt the heteronormative mode of reproductive penetration by insinuating the potentiality through anal sex. However, anal sex can paradoxically function as a camouflage since queer male sexual images are strategically materialized for LOGO’s current target audience without any vivid visualizations. Therefore, its viewers can enjoy sexually and culturally forbidden and exotic aspects of queer male sex but are assured this sex aligns with the best practices of heteronomativity.

Normalizations of Interracial Relationships

DTLA attempted to capture the multicultural diversity of Los Angeles via the casting of the show’s characters. While the audience is able to check off the major racial and ethnic groups² represented by the city’s demographics, the show interestingly uses interracial relationships as a signifier of progress in the form of change, success, or general well-being of the characters. More than normalizing interracial couplings, DTLA uses monoracial relationships as a foil for interracial relationships—those not linked romantically and interracially experience personal destruction at a level far more harmful than those in interracial relationships. While all the relationships on this show fail (if breaking up is the ultimate marker of failure), the characters (Stephan, SJ, Matthew, and Marky) in monoracial relationships fail more spectacularly resulting in the narrative framing of interracial relationships as an act of solidarity with postracial America and necessary for self-preservation, while same-race relationships are posited as hindrances to success and happiness.

In the second episode of the series, the main characters are at a dinner with friends and the topic of race and dating comes up. At one point, Trey, who is in a same-race relationship with Stephan, upon learning that Bryan is “just White” not Latino, mixed-race, or ethnically ambiguous, remarks to Lenny, “wouldn’t you think that’s like a little bit racist?” When the reaction around the table swiftly condemns Trey as the racist one through Kai’s rebuke to Trey that “No one asks people who are dating within their own race why they are being racist.” DTLA turns what could have been an incredibly nuanced moment in the show regarding race and desire into a topic so banal that SJ closes that portion of the conversation by stating, “This is boring.” Not only does the show foreclose any opportunity for actually critiquing the politics of desire, it congratulates itself by reveling in what it deems a postmodern, postracial, and postgendered moment when a friend³ at the table exclaims, “I do not fuck with boxes.”

Stephan, who exclusively dates and has sex with Black men throughout the series, finds himself at the wrong end of a comeuppance by the last episode of the season. Stephan’s boyfriend sabotages their relationship and his job as a lawyer by convincing Stephan’s most high-profile client to leave the firm. The last episode of the season finds Stephan running into ex-boyfriend Trey and his new White boyfriend, Andrew, at a bar. The scene ends by panning out on Andrew’s curious face and Trey’s happy one, while Stephan is shown visibly uncomfortable. Trey, who had earlier in the season attempted to address the implications of interracial dating, has by the end literally left his unhappiness behind (in the form of Stephan and mono-racial dating) and embraced happiness with Andrew. The last episode finds Stephan, who is one of the few characters not in an interracial relationship, and his practice (and by extension his livelihood) in jeopardy without a high-profile client, and his personal life in shambles as one boyfriend has dumped him and the other has moved on with a White guy.

Matthew and Marky, the actor and the Marine, are also in a monoracial relationship that fails tragically. Matthew tells Marky that the play in which he has been cast is a children’s play, rather than admitting that it is a “gay play … involving graphic nudity and sex, and not that Queer as Folk US version kind either.” (S1E3) While he spends the entirety of the season duping Marky and trying to convince him not to see his play, Marky has secretly bonded with Matthew’s parents and hatches a plan to surprise Matthew at the opening of his play by attending with his parents. During opening night, Matthew looks up while he is literally being screwed to see Marky and his own parents in the audience, and realizes he is now also figuratively screwed. Matthew’s parents storm out of the play, and Marky follows quickly thereafter. While the other interracial relationships do fail, the parents who appear, Bryan’s lesbian moms and Lenny’s parents, support their children. Matthew is the only character whose parents register any sort of disapproval and certainly having ones parents watching them have sex on stage is an especially traumatic way to have a relationship end.

SJ’s narrative arc for the season revolves around her deciding whether to stay with the husband who cheated on her, or the ex-boyfriend, Kevin, whose addiction to steroids destroyed their relationship. During the final episode, she chooses Kevin and leaves her husband. SJ finds herself in her office with Kevin who assures her he will not abandon her like he did the last time. When she finally acquiesces to his promises and gives in, she attempts to seal the deal through sex but is rebuffed by Kevin who wonders mid-fellatio if they are making the right choice. She reacts to him angrily, kicking him out, and pulling out a bottle of Scotch. When we last see SJ, she is lying face down in a pool of vomit on her desk, hand wrapped around a glass of Scotch. As viewers, we are unsure whether she is alive or dead.

Lenny and Bryan serve as a last example for how DTLA punishes those characters in monoracial relationships. Although the audience sees Lenny and Bryan dealing with their break up in conventional televisual ways: crying on corners, rebound lovers, and generic sadness, the end of their relationship is relatively amicable. Lenny decides to split the profits from the sale of the home they shared, and wishes Bryan well. In the final episode, Lenny responds to a Grindr (the gay male dating phone application) message instructing him to come to a hotel in order to have sex with the room occupant. Upon entering the room, Lenny spies Bryan in the shower, fellating the White male realtor friend who had sold Lenny’s condominium. Lenny’s final angry words to Bryan before storming out are “You get nothing! Not a fucking cent!” When we next see Bryan he is sitting on the bed, with the naked realtor sleeping behind him, smoking meth instead of his usual marijuana. Thus, the series ends with Bryan now penniless, unemployed, and possibly headed toward drug addiction or an overdose.

DTLA more than normalizes interracial relationships by sacrificing the stigma of miscegenation on the altar of progress. Rather than simply removing the stigma from nonhegemonic relationships, like interracial or queer relationships, that trouble dominant understandings of conventional pairings and rendering all relationships as acceptable, DTLA merely shifts the stigma. By representing the characters involved in same-raced couplings as racist, bad, liars, addicts, and possibly dead, the show manages to proffer monoracial relationships as hindrances to progress, happiness, and potentiality to life itself. While audiences have less of a framework to understand the relationship between Kai and Rafi, having two differently raced men of color in a relationship with each other does little to challenge the hierarchy of power in sexual and romantic relationships, and thus they are left to merely break up and go on their way. The normalization of these queer interracial couplings elides the material reality of racial difference that is being packaged and commodified in such a way that (White) audiences can simultaneously indulge in the exotic-ness of racial others, while still surveilling and disciplining them. That the only romantic relationship at the end of the season is the one between Trey and White boyfriend Andrew, sets up the possibility that DTLA is rewarding the only relationship that is already legible to the viewing audience. A professional looking White man is an acceptable partner for young Trey, audiences understand this coupling as it denotes upward mobility for Trey, and it allows viewers to feel progressive in embracing interracial couplings, without having to question the underlying racialized hierarchy that makes this the only acceptable relationship.

Representing Non-Threatening Inclusiveness

Still, the ambivalent representations of race, gender, sexuality, and class do not interrogate, challenge, or problematize White capitalistic heteropatriarchal relations of power. Lacy and Ono (2011) remind us, “Contemporary U.S. media culture represents race [intersecting with nation, gender, sexuality, and class] in ambivalent, contradictory, and paradoxical ways” (p. 1). They further note how “race and racism are deflected, denied, disavowed, minimized, and excused” (p. 2). This structural and systematic phenomenon reproduces how DTLA presents their meanings of inclusiveness in the “non-threating” representations of race, gender, sexuality, and class in order to appeal to their current target audience.

We think the aforementioned scene where the characters discuss interracial dating encapsulates DTLA’s ambivalent, contradictory, and paradoxical ways of representing race through queer men. At first, this particular moment makes “color” differences visible through a conversation about race opened by the metaphor of chocolate as Blackness. Later, the postracial idea that race is no longer a problem minimizes the material realities of queer intercultural or interracial relationality. Kai’s comment further illustrates this when he remarks that race should not be a factor in the context of partner choices. Accordingly, Lenny’s sexual desire for Whiteness remains unquestioned. Thus, we contend that the discursive and material effects of Whiteness remain undisrupted while racial differences are visible in DTLA. Therefore, queer male racial diversity is paradoxically shown without the acknowledgement of existing power relations.

DTLA also introduces queer male issues relating to effeminate male performance and expression. The complexity of sissyphobia, which is the endorsement of hegemonic heteropatriarchal masculinity embedded in male-queer cultural identities and spaces, is strategically minimized for the audience of DTLA. Johnson (2003) notes, “Because femininity is always already devalued in patriarchal societies, those associated with the feminine are also viewed as inferior” (p. 227). For example, Trey hides being a drag queen from Stephan to avoid his disapproval. In the fourth episode, Trey’s family accidently reveals his drag persona to Stephan when Trey’s mother remarks, “My son is the prettiest girl you ever seen in your life. He looks just like Patti Labelle.” Later Stephan scolds Trey for hiding that he is a drag queen, ultimately kicking Trey out of his car, and ostensibly his life. In the following episode, Trey, who goes by Karmen when in drag, is performing on stage when Stephan comes to the club with his newest Black boyfriend, Thomas. As they watch Karmen perform, Thomas calls drag “disgusting.” In the final episode, Stephan runs into Trey at a bar and attempts to rekindle the relationship only to find that Trey has moved on with his new White boyfriend, Andrew.

DTLA introduces sissyphobia in a way that does not disrupt the racialized normative masculine hierarchy. DTLA creates a possibility for viewers to believe that Stephan broke up with Trey because he hid his drag queen persona from Stephan, rather than because of Stephan’s reaction to a feminized Trey. This reading can be reinforced by other characters’ support for Trey’s drag performance. What complicates this narrative is the reproduction of Black men as anti-feminine and as internalizing homophobia. Stephan and Thomas are “straight-acting” Black gay men who have issues with expressions of femininity. This is illustrated by the introduction of Trey’s new White boyfriend at the end of season with whom he is happy. Johnson and Henderson (2005) remind us how “the privileging of a racist discourse demand[s] the deployment of a sexist and homophobic rhetoric in order to mark, by contrast, the priority of race.” (p. 4) The introduction of Andrew in the final episode symbolizes how a White man is more “open” and “progressive” than “backwards” Black men, ensuring White heteropatriarchal relations of power are maintained in DTLA.

Lastly, DTLA normalizes modern stereotypical myths of gay life as a middle or upper-class phenomenon. Class representations reproduce capitalist practices of consumerism to promote the White-normative construction of gay identity (Avila-Saaverdra, 2009; Fejes, 2000; Sender, 2004, 2006; Shugart, 2008). For example, the occupational power differences among the couples become visible throughout the season. Lenny is a civil litigation attorney while Bryan does not have a job. Lenny constantly complains about Bryan’s inability to contribute to their mortgage as Lenny faces financial difficulties as a result of his mother’s medical bills. However, Lenny and Bryan still go out for fun just like the other gay men. Stephan is an entertainment lawyer, while Trey works part-time in a doughnut shop. In the first episode, Stephan reacts to Trey’s part-time job by stating “That is a not a job.” In the fourth episode, Stephan questions whether the fried chicken served by Trey’s mother is organic, with organic food symbolizing the upper or middle class identity held by Stephan. In addition to those two couples, the other main gay male characters like high school math teacher Kai and actor Matthew are represented as well to do. Their homes are nicely decorated and spacious, and do not match audiences’ ideas and expectations of how barely working actors and high school teachers would live in an expensive city like Los Angeles. They also go out often for fun. Thus, viewers are subjected to normative representations of gay life, which are filled with urban or metropolitan stereotypical aesthetics of middle or upper class living.

Conclusion

In this essay, we have attempted to show how DTLA’s representations of queer male sex, love, and relationships do not suggest alternatives in which the intersections and complexities of identities are embraced. What DTLA symbolizes is the White capitalistic heteropatriarchal sustainability of existing power relations. The hegemonic forces of power, oppression, and privilege minimize limit and discourage the intersectional potentiality of queerness. Thus, DTLA fails to address queer potentiality through the representations of men of color.

Still, we appreciate the textual presence of LOGO’s DTLA. Almost more than two decades ago, Gross (1991) wrote, “For the most part gay people have been simply invisible in the media. The few exceptions were almost invariably either victims – of violence or ridicule – or villains” (p. 27). Since then, textual representations of queer male sex, love, and relationships have increased in media and popular culture. Yet, there continues to be a gap in how queer men of color are represented. Anzaldúa (1991) argues for the importance of taking into account races, ethnicities, genders, and classes to talk about queerness across social and cultural borders. The intersectional politics of differences embedded in the material realities of queerness cannot be forgotten, ignored, and, essentialized by the normalcy and conflation of gayness as whiteness. Thus, we would like to continue advocating for critiquing ways in which the multiple, complex, and particular nuances of queerness across social, cultural, and national borders are rearticulated and reimagined through media and popular culture further. Therefore, we end this essay by asking: what alternative modes of knowing, being, and acting are possible in the cultural and communicative processes of queer world making?

Footnotes

Author Note

An earlier version of this MS has been presented at National Communication Association (NCA), GLBTQ Communication Studies Division, Washington, DC, November 2013. The authors would like to thank the two reviewers for their careful and in-depth evaluations of this study.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author Biographies

Shinsuke Eguchi (PhD, Howard University, 2011) is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication and Journalism at University of New Mexico. His research and teaching interests are in queer intercultural communication, performance studies, and critical autoethnography.

Myra S. Washington (PhD, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 2012) is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication and Journalism at University of New Mexico. Her teaching and research interests are in critical media and cultural studies, rhetoric, and both Asian American and African American studies.

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Race-ing Queerness

Abstract

Keywords

Popular Cultural Representation of Queer Men and Intersectionality

Downtown Los Angeles 1

Critiquing Normative Intimacies in DTLA

Heterosexualizations of Queer Male Sex

Normalizations of Interracial Relationships

Representing Non-Threatening Inclusiveness

Conclusion

Footnotes

Author Note

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

Funding

Notes

Author Biographies

References

Downtown Los Angeles¹