May the circle stay unbroken Friends, the presence of absence, .docx

May the circle stay unbroken: Friends, the presence of absence,
and the rhetorical reinforcement of whiteness
Shows like Friends may shape and reinforce both white
audiences’ perceptions of the racialized Other and of
marginalized audience members’ perceptions of themselves as
raced beings
Ross and Julie
whiteness remains central and invisible
unquestioned power
Unearned racial privilege
whiteness is an expression of hegemonic force (Gramsci, 1971)
hegemony – In this case hegemony is dominance of one social
group over another
“Whiteness desires to be seen as object, yet insists on remaining

invisible as subject. In other words, whiteness resists the kind
of intense scrutiny that might result in its becoming effectively
fixed to a specific position and revealed as a system of privilege
and power”
Friends limits and regulates the racialized other in a place like
New York that is the opposite
Popularity of friends, comfort food, transcends tragedy
When there are non white characters there is no mention of race
Reference to white rappers
“overt claim to the value of white authenticity, I contend that
any number of contemporary media texts have made similar, if
less blatantly overt, assertions in recent years about whiteness’s
enduring worth as a subject position”
Can we relate any of this to last week?
Nothing Queer about Queer television
It’s All Relative

Increased visibility does not always translate into social
tolerance
Most of these shows ignore the political issues
Sexuality is culturally essentialized to inscribe heterosexuality
as normal and all other sexualities as deviant
Queer represents a resistance to anything that is socially defined
as normal
“Gramsci’s (1973) notion of hegemony shifts the focus of
scholarly attention from explicit ideologies or agendas to the
common-sense norms that influence everyday interactions and
are taken for granted.”
It doesn’t matter how many representations there are but rather
the complexity of the representations
Images of gay men are being presented in a way the reinforces
traditional values like family, monogamy, and stability

Queer has come to mean gay men
It usually excludes and ignores other issues of feminism,
lesbians, race, and other minority groups
Gender, sex, class and race also need to be taken into account
There is nothing queer about queer television when the
flexibility of the term is reduced to an interpretation that
reinforces the traditional homosexual/heterosexual binary
Stereotypes of the feminine and masculine roles in gay
relationships, gender traditions
Gay men have to accommodate straight men’s activities but not
the other way around
Queer Eye - five asexual fairy godmothers that appear,
transform a straight man’s love life, but are themselves denied
love lives of their own
In the end they’re all just a bunch of guys
Although maybe they got better, Glee, Modern Family
The gay characters are not the only focus of either show and
there are still some desirable values like family values, or
young good looking white men
Class identity and gay men, is this still a focus?

May the Circle Stay Unbroken: Friends,
the Presence of Absence, and the
Rhetorical Reinforcement of
Whiteness
Phil Chidester
Whiteness has been broadly conceived as a subject position that
is discursively negotiated
and maintained, yet rarely explicitly addressed in the social
discourse. The television
series Friends demonstrates how media texts as largely visual
forms of rhetoric function
to reinforce notions of racial identity without overtly speaking
race. Presenting the closed
circle as a visual metaphor, Friends turns to the presence of
absence to achieve two
rhetorical aims: to perpetuate whiteness as a subjectivity that
claims an exclusive racial
position, and to defend whiteness’ perceived purity through
active exclusion of Others.
Keywords: Whiteness; Rhetoric; Visual; Absence; Friends
Midway through ‘‘The One With the Monkey’’ (1994), an

episode from the first
season of NBC’s enduringly popular sitcom Friends, Rachel
enjoys a rare glimpse of
the racial Other through the screen of Chandler and Joey’s
living room television set.
Typically naive, she is visibly startled by what the small screen
reveals to her. In a
storyline that carries over into future episodes, Ross’s monkey,
Marcel, has used
the remote control to switch the set’s audio channel to the
Spanish setting, and none
among the program’s core group of acquaintances has yet to
figure out how to change
it back. In familiar Friends fashion, the characters have come to
deal with this minor
problem by largely ignoring it*that is, until Rachel makes her
wide-eyed discovery.
Paying only halfhearted attention to the linguistically
unintelligible goings-on of
Phil Chidester is an assistant professor in the School of
Communication at Illinois State University.
Correspondence to: 434 Fell Hall, Campus Box 4480, Normal,
IL 61790-4480, USA. Email: [email protected]
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2005
annual conference of the Association for Educators in

Journalism and Mass Communication, San Antonio, TX. The
paper is also based in part on the author’s 2002
master’s thesis, written at the University of Kansas (thesis
advisor Dr. Shannon B. Campbell). The author would
like to thank Dr. Eric King Watts and the anonymous CSMC
reviewers for their insightful comments and
valuable suggestions regarding previous drafts of this essay.
ISSN 1529-5036 (print)/ISSN 1479-5809 (online) # 2008
National Communication Association
DOI: 10.1080/15295030802031772
Critical Studies in Media Communication
Vol. 25, No. 2, June 2008, pp. 157�174
fellow sitcom Family Matters, the Friends heartthrob happens to
hear the familiar
name of the program’s ubiquitous nerd character rise above the
group’s conversa-
tional chatter. Her general disinterest is suddenly transformed
into insightful cultural
commentary.
‘‘Hey!’’ she exclaims to no-one in particular. ‘‘‘Urkel’ in
Spanish is ‘Urkel!’’’ Rachel’s

observation is indicative of many such revelations of racial and
cultural difference (or,
conversely, of what is consistently presented as a surprising
lack of difference) that are
common elements in contemporary media texts in general and in
works of television
entertainment in particular. Just as familiar to scholars are
critical analyses that
interrogate the potential influences of race-focused media
content on the perceptions
and opinions of entire generations of viewers, listeners, and
readers. The field is
replete with examples of research that focuses on the ways in
which such fare may
shape and reinforce both white audiences’ perceptions of the
racialized Other and of
marginalized audience members’ perceptions of themselves as
raced beings.
1
Still, few
researchers have considered the extent to which consumption of
racialized media
products might speak to and reinforce white audiences’
perceptions of themselves as

white people and of whiteness as a subject position of
stubbornly enduring power and
privilege in contemporary U.S. society (e.g., Dyer, 1988; C.
Jackson, 2000; Tierney,
2006; Weigman, 1999).
This persistent gap in the literature on media and racial
representation is probably
due to a number of factors. Chief among these is whiteness’s
fundamentally
paradoxical character as a racial marker. While researchers tend
to agree that race
in general and whiteness in particular are discursive concepts
(Bonilla-Silva, 1999;
Dyer, 1988; Nakayama & Krizek, 1995), they also concur that
whiteness as a racial
position is able to maintain a sense of centrality in
contemporary American racial
politics precisely because it remains largely invisible and
unspoken (Crenshaw, 1997;
Nakayama & Krizek, 1995; Pope-Davis & Ottavi, 1994). As R.
Jackson (1999) notes,
whiteness presents itself as being open to examination at the
same time that it refuses
to be interrogated*a result that produces and sustains what is a

highly ambivalent
marker of racial identification. Much of the rhetorical power of
whiteness is founded
in its ability to avoid any explicit statements about or claims to
racial centrality. It is a
perpetual silence that resists any critical study of whiteness’s
social instantiation and
rhetorical influence.
A second, related force discourages critical analysis of the
hegemonic perpetuation
of whiteness in contemporary media texts. This force is a
modernist insistence on
presence as the carrier of meaning and influence. This mode of
thinking holds that
texts that are free of overt or explicit references to race simply
cannot communicate
racial meanings. However, such an approach clearly ignores or
even denies the extent
to which the absence of overtly racial depiction and discourse
may function
rhetorically. The result is a critical approach that has largely
failed to ‘‘abolish the
(usually unquestioned and unseen) everyday social norms,
values and structures

through which whiteness, as a privileged cultural construction,
is maintained’’
(Shome, 2000, p. 367).
158 P. Chidester
Still, a political climate in the late 1990s and the early 21st
century that has paid
increased attention to issues of racial parity in the U.S. has
threatened to disrupt
whiteness’s comfortable, silent centrality. In the process, this
climate has also forced
the subject position to speak itself more actively as part of the
burgeoning national
discourse on race (Giroux, 1997; Kennedy, 1996; Madison,
1999; Rowe & Lindsey,
2003). As a consequence, an already fundamentally paradoxical
racial marker has
found itself in a most untenable position. Whiteness today faces
an urgent need to
speak while at the same time defending its historically-
grounded privilege of silence.
It attempts to reinforce its claim to centrality against mounting
challenges from both

critical and popular camps without engaging in the kinds of
overt racial discourse
that would only contribute to the on-going cultural ‘‘outing’’ of
whiteness as a
structure of privilege and power.
To understand how whiteness as a marker of identity and
difference has come to
respond to such a daunting conceptual and cultural challenge, it
is necessary first to
recognize the decidedly symbolic, even rhetorical character of
this racial marker. As a
socially constructed subject position (Bonilla-Silva, 1999;
Ferber, 1998; Shome, 2000),
whiteness is a tool through which individuals and groups mark
difference as part of
the on-going struggle to ‘‘categorize people and understand
their social locations’’
(Crenshaw, 1997). Because whiteness does function as a marker
of identity and
difference that is founded in and perpetuated through social
discourse (Nakayama &
Krizek, 1995), it becomes important to examine the rhetorical
character of this racial
position.

Dyer (1988) argues that considering whiteness as a largely
visual rhetoric is a vital
step in interrogating its power. The author contends that
whiteness is an expression
of hegemonic force (Gramsci, 1971) that exerts control and
dominance over related
racial subjectivities while at the same time deflecting any
attention to its own position
and function within the overall social fabric. In doing so,
whiteness continues to
assert itself through distinctly visual forms of discourse.
However, far from merely
exerting a claim to dominance by presenting itself openly and
consistently as a
privileged racial position, Dyer (1988) claims that whiteness’s
complex visual rhetoric
echoes the paradoxical nature of whiteness itself. Whiteness
desires to be seen as
object, yet insists on remaining invisible as subject. In other
words, whiteness resists
the kind of intense scrutiny that might result in its becoming
effectively fixed to a
specific position and revealed as a system of privilege and
power (Nakayama &

Krizek, 1995). In sum, Dyer (1988) argues that whiteness uses
the visual both to
assert itself and to recede into the background when necessary.
It is a rhetorical tool
that can claim immense range and influence precisely because it
is so difficult to affix
to any single communicative text or set of discourses.
Finally, if whiteness consistently affirms and reinforces its
claim to racial centrality
and superiority in part through a distinctly visual discourse,
then the absence of such
symbolic markers might also communicate distinct meanings,
particularly in
moments when these symbols are expected. A number of
scholars concur that
absence can function rhetorically in mediated texts (e.g.,
Entman & Rojecki, 2000;
Fiske, 1994; Nakayama & Krizek, 1995), but it is Scott’s (1993)
discussion of
Circle 159
rhetorical silence that suggests a means through which
discursive as well as visual

absences can come to function rhetorically. According to Scott,
all silences are not
created equal. If silence is simply an absence of sound, it cannot
communicate; only
what is present is able to carry meaning. However, Scott argues,
silence can be made
present if it is made to occur in a moment when speech is
expected*when silence
becomes an intention rather than a simple absence of sound.
Silence becomes
rhetorical when it is a conscious choice on the part of the
rhetor, and when that
choice is made evident to and is understood by those for whom
the silence is made
present.
At first glance, most of today’s television content would seem
to be wholly silent on
issues of race*to be largely free of overt racial content or even
of more implicit
messages about race. However, occasional seams in the fabric
of our contemporary
hegemonic discourse on race reveal the continuing, almost
desperate need of
whiteness to disguise its centrality, if only from itself*and if
only as a means to

assuage white Americans’ guilt at claiming and occupying a
position of unearned
racial privilege. This essay argues that one of the most popular
television sitcoms of
the late 1990s is both evidence of just such a rupture in the
‘‘smooth’’ contemporary
discourse on race and a compelling example of the
implementation of rhetorical
absence as presence as an argument in favor of whiteness’s
continued centrality and
privilege. It is my contention that, for a significant body of
viewers, Friends’
popularity is rooted not only in the program’s value as a source
of entertainment, but
in its efforts to defend whiteness’s hegemonic privilege in
contemporary America.
Following Watts (2005), who argues that Eminem’s emergence
on the hip-hop scene
represents an overt claim to the value of white authenticity, I
contend that any
number of contemporary media texts have made similar, if less
blatantly overt,
assertions in recent years about whiteness’s enduring worth as a
subject position.

Friends is a media text replete with such claims to the
authenticity and power of
whiteness as a racial subjectivity.
In this essay, I contend that Friends incorporates the closed
circle as a core visual
metaphor to represent whiteness as a marker of privilege, and
that it does so in two
crucial ways. First, the sitcom reinforces whiteness’s exclusive
freedom to convert its
public spaces to private ones; and second, it argues for
whiteness’s continued right
(and concurrent responsibility) to maintain its core sense of
purity against racial
outsiders by limiting and regulating contacts with the racialized
Other. This process
refuses to acknowledge the very real outcomes that accrue to
racial difference in
contemporary American society. Locating Friends’ rhetorical
power in this way speaks
to what we understand of the role of a largely visual rhetoric in
a media-saturated
culture, and to the ways in which whiteness persists in its claim
to a central position
in America’s racial discourse, even as that position is

progressively assailed on every
side. Further, I argue that NBC executives’ conscious decision
to locate Friends in the
same Thursday evening ‘‘viewing strip’’ (Newcomb & Hirsch,
1983) as fellow sitcom
Seinfeld has itself served to shape viewers’ perceptions of
whiteness. The juxtaposition
of the two programs invites viewers to read Friends’ statements
on racial difference
through the lens of absence as a form of presence. The messages
about race that
160 P. Chidester
emerge from a viewing of the two programs in contrast, I
conclude, reveal the extent
to which network production decisions shape and reinforce
persistent notions of
racial difference and privilege. It should be noted that it is not
my intent to reshape
the already existing and excellent literature on whiteness as a
largely rhetorical subject
position but, rather, to reveal the extent to which popular
cultural texts contribute to

the ongoing social discourse that continually shapes and
reinforces what we know
about and how we live race in the day-to-day. In particular, I
contend that while the
attention that is paid to texts that explicitly speak race is
important and valued, more
scrutiny is needed of texts that more implicitly forge our
notions of race and racial
difference. It is also vital to interrogate the ways in which these
texts interrelate to
create a web of meanings through which audiences come to see
and understand their
own experiences, including their perspectives on the enduring
problem of race in
America today.
The Presence of Absence as a Rhetorical Construction in
Friends
While the sitcom reached its zenith of popularity in the late
1990s, Friends continues
to be a staple of audience consumption in households across
America in the early 21st
century, providing the program with significant opportunities to
influence viewers’
notions about race. The creation of Marta Kauffman and David

Crane, Friends
reigned for years as the top comedy on network TV and the top
program of any type
in its time slot. During its first four years of production, the
sitcom received some 27
Emmy and three Golden Globe nominations, a Screen Actors
Guild Award in 1996
for ‘‘Outstanding Ensemble Performance in a Comedy Series,’’
and three People’s
Choice Awards (NBC, 2001). Even reruns of this beloved
denizen of NBC’s Thursday
night lineup have received consistently high ratings. Tellingly,
the program pulled in
31 million viewers just two days after the September 11, 2001
terrorist attacks against
the U.S. In the words of Bauder (2001), ‘‘[O]ne rival network
executive likened
Friends to comfort food in troubled times and admitted he
watched instead of his
network’s fare Thursday night’’ (p. 8A). As a pop cultural
phenomenon capable of
transcending both familiarity and tragedy, Friends deserves
critical attention as a
rhetorical artifact.

A promising avenue through which to understand Friends’
discourse on whiteness
as a racial subjectivity can be found in the program’s treatment
of the racial Other as a
form of visual and discursive absence. As a sitcom that features
a group of racially
and socio-economically homogeneous characters, Friends is no
different than any
number of television texts that likewise unfold in situations
marked by the absence of
the racial Other (Hunt, 2000). Because both America itself
(Yousman, 2003) and the
world of television entertainment (Hunt, 2000) remain highly
segregated spheres, the
typical white viewer is likely to find a good deal of formal and
substantive fidelity
(Burke, 1968) in his or her consumption of Friends. In other
words, for those who are
rarely confronted with racial difference in actual experience and
who have come to
expect media content that is likewise free of references to race,
episodes of Friends are
sure to ring true*even when the backdrop for the program’s
brand of racial

Circle 161
homogeneity is New York City, which is perhaps the most
racially diverse community
in the nation.
Friends’ ability to reinforce rhetorically a whiteness perceived
by some to be under
siege would seem to be severely limited by its own understated
treatment of race as
subject matter. Short of suddenly inserting overt statements of
and discussions about
race into its weekly scripts*a move that would probably cost the
program a good
share of its devoted fans and, in the process, would actually
reduce its rhetorical range
and impact*it would appear that Friends would have little to
contribute to the
scramble to bolster and defend a contemporary American
whiteness. However, an
analysis of Friends as a series of thematically related media
texts reveals that the
program does speak to notions of race and whiteness in two
distinct ways. First, the
sitcom reinforces whiteness’s exclusive freedom to convert its

public spaces to very
private ones. Second, it argues for whiteness’s continued right
(and concurrent
responsibility) to maintain its core sense of purity against racial
outsiders by denying
any significant contacts between whiteness and the racialized
Other. Interrogation of
Friends’ various episodes also suggests that each of these
racially-invested themes is
driven by a single, persistent visual message.
Visual Whiteness and the Closed Circle
The key visual metaphor that emerges through a viewing of
numerous episodes of
Friends is that of the closed circle. This visual symbol is a
necessary tool for the
sitcom to assert its message about the need actively to defend
whiteness’s purity as a
racial marker. Without the symbol, viewers might assume that
the group maintains
itself out of sheer circumstance or convenience. Instead, the
visual instantiation of the
closed circle in Friends is a constant reminder, in the absence of
any significant racial

threat to the group, that the characters are still vigilant against
the Other as largely
unseen outsider. Although the domestic action in the sitcom
tends to shuttle between
two private living spaces in the same building*a smaller
apartment occupied by the
program’s male characters and a larger apartment for the female
characters across
the hall*the majority of these scenes are set in the latter. This
apartment features not
one but two arcs about which the friends may congregate: a
round table in the
kitchen area, and a cluster of couches in the living room. The
circle motif is also
picked up as the action moves to the sitcom’s other core stage
setting*the wryly-
entitled Central Perk, a Manhattan-based coffee shop. While
business buzzes along
the bar in the background, the sitcom’s sextet of core characters
joins in conversation
around an eerily familiar cluster of couches in the foreground.
An Equation of Public and Private Space
In serving as the dominant visual backdrop for the sitcom, these
groupings of
furniture become the core of Friends’ visual comment on
whiteness as a racial subject

position. The closed circle is incorporated into the argument in
a number of highly
specific and potent ways. First, the purposive similarity
between the cluster of
162 P. Chidester
couches in the female characters’ apartment and the group of
couches in the coffee
shop suggests an easy conversion of public space to private
space*a conversion that
is simply not available to (or possible for) those who are
marked as the racial Other. It
is telling how little the Friends’ behavior changes from
apartment to coffee shop; the
characters engage in the same lively banter and personal barbs
at either locale, hardly
stopping to take note of the many individuals who move about
the outside of the
public circle. Effectively centered both visually and
discursively, the characters have
no fear of these outsiders, or of the consequences that might
accrue to their very
public venting of personal experiences and concerns. On the few
occasions when any

of the individual stars of the sitcom are censured for a statement
or misdeed, the
reprimand is invariably an internal one; the culprit is taken to
task not for violating a
larger social norm, but for violating the inner group’s
expectations.
The arrogance of the Friends’ claim to the right to translate
private behaviors into
the public sphere is revealed in its full complexity when the
sitcom is viewed in
relation to its counterpart in NBC’s Thursday evening lineup.
While both sitcoms
actively blend private and public storylines and experiences, the
Seinfeld crew is much
more wont to censor its public displays. In one memorable
episode, the staff actually
banishes George from Monk’s, the Seinfeld equivalent of
Central Perk. Such an
expatriation would be all but unthinkable in Friends, so closely
have the characters
been tied to the eatery as an expression of their centrality. As
contrasted with the
atmosphere and action on Seinfeld, the episodes of Friends as a
pattern of meaning

represent a compelling argument in favor of whiteness’ ability
to claim a medial
position in contemporary life. It is a claim that extends into the
public sphere as a
privilege unique to whiteness.
A Boundary Under Patrol
A second instantiation of the closed circle in Friends
emphasizes the extent to which
the circle serves as a visual boundary between included and
excluded, as a perimeter
to be doggedly defended against anyone who might challenge
the in-group’s physical
solidarity and cultural unity. The circle as racial metaphor
echoes Sleeter’s (1996)
description of white racial bonding as ‘‘interactions that have
the purpose of
affirming a common stance on race-related issues, legitimating
particular interpreta-
tions of oppressed groups, and drawing we�they boundaries’’
(p. 261). In other
words, at least some level of interaction with the racial Other
becomes necessary in
order for the in-group to recognize and appreciate its own racial
‘‘purity’’ and

cohesion. If the threat of the Other is largely absent, as it is in
Friends, then such a
sense of unity and sameness requires an even more vehement
defense in order to
produce a semblance of in-group similarity and belonging.
Just as whiteness itself remains silent and invisible in
contemporary American
society until it is assailed by some exterior force, so too is the
Friends’ metaphorical
circle rendered clearly visible and meaningful only in moments
of challenge. And
such menaces are not the exclusive domain of outsiders; Ross in
particular is a
character who constantly threatens the stability of the group by
introducing new
Circle 163
elements to the circle. It is interesting to note that these
occasional interlopers rarely
present the possibility of a complete breakdown of the group’s
internal (racial)
homogeneity and cohesion. An excellent case in point can be
found in ‘‘The One

With the Breast Milk’’ (1995), an episode from the sitcom’s
second season. In a carry-
over storyline from previous episodes, Rachel finds herself
struggling to deal with the
fact that Ross, her on-again, off-again love interest, seems to be
getting along too well
with his new girlfriend, Julie. That Julie is Asian American is a
fact that is never
explicitly broached by any of the characters. The failure to note
such an obvious
difference is an important means of reinforcing the program’s
verbal silence on all
matters racial.
Such a refusal to speak race becomes even more noticeable with
the introduction of
Aisha Tyler to the cast in 2003. While much was made in the
popular press of NBC
executives’ decision to include an African American character
in the regular Friends
cast for the first time, no mention is ever made of the
character’s race in the actual
sitcom, despite the fact that neither Joey nor Ross had ever been
romantically linked

to an African American woman during the sitcom’s run.
Interestingly, the core cast
members seem to go to great pains not to discuss Tyler’s racial
difference; Rachel
instead limits her predictable jealous barbs to a comment about
the black woman’s
height. However, if the characters’ verbal statements manage to
steer carefully away
from any recognition of Tyler’s racial difference, her visual
exclusion from the group’s
circle speaks volumes about her perceived value as Other.
Tyler’s Charlie does manage
to insert herself twice into the coffee-shop scene during her
short run on the
program, but on both occasions she is joined by only a few
members of the central
cast. She is allowed to interact with members of the core circle,
in other words, but
never to be seen as belonging to that group of insiders as a
whole. Finally, Tyler’s
departure from the sitcom after just a few episodes met with
almost no reaction or
discussion from either the sitcom characters themselves or from
network executives.

Again, the refusal to speak race, as Scott (1993) would argue, is
made evident through
such dramatic visual encounters with the racial Other.
In comparison to Charlie’s active visual exclusion from the
center, Julie does
manage to breach the perimeter*but the viciousness with which
she is treated as an
interloper, particularly in comparison to other (white) women
Ross dates in these
episodes, speaks to a threat well beyond her presence as a
simple substitute for
Rachel’s affections. ‘‘The One With the Breast Milk’’ (1995)
begins with Julie seated at
one of the couches in Central Perk. Invited to enter (and thus to
join) the circle of
friends by Ross, Julie’s welcome by the rest of the group is
awkward at best; in the
opening scene, a gaping space on the couch between Julie and
Monica speaks of the
insiders’ discomfort with the newcomer. Still, Julie does her
best to ingratiate herself
with the rest of the friends, to close the physical/rhetorical
space on the cushions. She
offers to get muffins for everyone, and even re-ties Rachel’s
apron strings as she passes

by on her way to the counter. Rachel, however, is anything but
impressed by these
gestures of friendship. As soon as Julie is out of earshot, Rachel
responds to the
niceties with a snippy, under-the-breath, ‘‘What a bitch!’’ This
bitter assessment is
picked up again in the episode’s final scene, as Julie and Rachel
sit alone in the coffee
164 P. Chidester
shop. Ross’s new love interest openly admits that she is
somewhat intimidated by
Rachel as a former romantic interest of her new boyfriend, and
expresses a hope that
she and Rachel can become friends. Following such a heartfelt
appeal, Rachel’s
response is somehow both startlingly blunt and completely
expected. The instant Julie
is out of earshot, Rachel exclaims, ‘‘What a manipulative
bitch!’’
Such openly verbal rejections of this potential violator of the
Friends’ closely-
guarded internal purity are intensified by the visual nature of

Julie’s difference as a
marker of her non-belonging. Over the course of the series, a
number of white
romantic interests are easily and freely welcomed into the circle
by both male and
female members of the group; although Rachel in particular
expresses to various
degrees her feelings of jealousy over Ross’s dalliance with
other women, the brunt of
her fury is reserved for Julie. Rachel’s verbal anger serves as a
compelling
reinforcement of the visual message of the episode*that the
need to maintain the
racial purity of the inner circle requires not only the visual
expulsion of the Other, but
an accompanying verbal rejection of such a clear threat.
Rachel’s vicious treatment of Julie might be read as nothing
more than a fit of
jealous rage against a perceived romantic rival. However, it is
difficult to discount the
expressly racial quality of the encounter, or the extent to which
Rachel’s presented
value as a woman is tied to her worth as the visual ideal of the
white woman, the

blonde, pale-skinned beauty who has so often served in visual
media texts as the
source of desire for the red-blooded American male (Dyer,
1988). To be supplanted
by a woman who so clearly fails to meet this ideal not only
threatens Rachel as an
individual; such a violation by the Other challenges the very
fabric of racial
heterosexual desire upon which a sense of white privilege has
so long been based.
Viewed through this lens, Rachel’s inability to ‘‘get over’’ Ross
and move on to more
attractive male conquests is suddenly rendered wholly
predictable, even rational, as
an attempt to defend the purity of the inner circle against
‘‘contamination’’ by the
Other.
Freedom From Contact With the Other
Rachel’s vehement reaction to this seemingly harmonious
encounter with the racial
Other, particularly when that Other has been strangely cleansed
of all but the vestiges
of difference (Julie’s character in the episode is accent-free,
sports an ‘‘Americanized’’

name, and displays no cultural markers in dress or behavior),
also points to an
extended function of the closed circle in the sitcom*that of
preventing any
potentially sullying contact with racial outsiders. As one of the
sitcom’s most beloved
characters, Joey Tribiani fills a pivotal role in this regard. The
only regular cast
member to display any clear racial/ethnic characteristics, Joey’s
stereotypical Italian
beefcake, and his often stumbling, awkward efforts to meet the
standards and
expectations of his social group, become the markings of a
liminal personality
(hooks, 1990). Joey’s character serves as a visible boundary
between what is white and
what is not quite white, between what is acceptable to the in-
group and what must be
ultimately rejected in order to maintain the purity of what lies
within. As the extreme
Circle 165
limit of the group’s tolerance for racial difference, Joey is
always on the verge of being

turned away by the cluster of friends. His is a constant cycle of
transgression and
punishment, of learning to tame his natural tendencies to behave
inappropriately
based on his own racial impurities.
An excellent example of this boundary can be found in ‘‘The
Pilot’’ (1994). The
action opens, as is often the case in Friends, in Central Perk. As
the rest of the gang
shares stories, Rachel stumbles into the coffee shop in her
wedding gown,
announcing that she has just abandoned her would-be husband
at the altar. Within
minutes, Joey has turned on his Italian charm and made a play
for the distraught
Rachel. Chastened by Monica with the news, ‘‘You don’t hit on
a girl on her wedding
day,’’ Joey is left to slump away from the circle and pout in a
corner by himself.
Coupled with this and numerous other examples of Joey’s
‘‘inappropriate’’ sexual
mores are moments in the sitcom when the character’s unrefined
social skills*also
implicitly linked to his liminal nature as a not-quite-white

male*fit him awkwardly
at best within the collective. Matt LeBlanc’s character is
constantly chided, for
example, for his lack of intellectual sophistication and his
failure to keep a job*
qualities that distance him from the more accomplished (and
therefore more worthy)
members of the collective of friends. Again, the visual
representation of the circle as a
closely-patrolled core of behavioral (racial) purity uses Joey as
a vivid example of
what belongs and what does not. Over the course of the sitcom’s
run, Joey learns
precisely what it means to belong to the in-group. In the
process, we as viewers are
taught these enduring lessons as well.
A final example from the sitcom’s fourth season demonstrates
the extent to which
Friends’ presence of absence as a form of rhetorical silence
speaks to whiteness’s
privilege as a subject position: the privilege of sealing oneself
off from any interaction
with the racial Other. In ‘‘The One With All the Haste’’ (1998),
Rachel and Monica
continue to deal with the fallout of an ill-fated bet that led to

them swapping
apartments with Chandler and Joey. Rachel’s discomfort with
the new living space is
compounded by the fact that she is regularly awakened by an
unseen man in the
neighboring apartment building who belts out a ‘‘morning
song’’ at the top of his
lungs. Finally fed up with the intrusion, Rachel flings open her
window one morning,
only to discover a well-dressed black man making the final
adjustments to an
expensive silk tie as he sings. True to Friends form, nothing is
ever explicitly said of
the cantor’s race; Rachel only stares in surprise at the man for
an awkward moment
or two, and then turns away to begin her own morning
preparations. In the absence
of any direct conversation about this rare encounter with the
racial Other, Monica’s
agreement with Rachel later on in the episode, ‘‘This place is a
hole,’’ can be read
by the audience in a number of ways. The characters may be
simply complaining
about the cramped conditions of their new quarters; or they

may, in fact, be giving
voice to their unease at suddenly being forced to make contact
with those outside the
closed circle. This conclusion speaks quite compellingly to a
sense of experiential
privilege that has always accompanied whiteness as a racial
marker.
Through the consistent visual metaphor of the closed circle,
Friends argues for
whiteness’s continued privilege of confounding private and
public spaces, for the
166 P. Chidester
racial position’s need to protect the boundary between insider
and outsider, and for
its inherent right to avoid contact with the racial Other in order
to maintain such a
state of purity. Still, two additional brief observations are also
necessary in order to
understand the full rhetorical potential of Friends as a mediated
treatise on race.
First, it is important to note the extent to which race and gender
are juxtaposed in

these conversations. Throughout the sitcom’s episodes, it is the
male characters who
most doggedly patrol the borders of the group while the women
rest comfortably
inside; it is the male characters who respond to any threat from
the outside by
encouraging internal (perhaps even incestuous) romantic
relationships with the
female characters*relationships that prevent the Friends women
from becoming too
attached to the Other. Thus, any attempt to consider the range of
meanings generated
by the sitcom must also include considerations of gender (and
of class as well, as any
number of the episodes would suggest).
Second, to contend that the core visual metaphor of Friends is
the closed circle is to
ignore the fact that the circle is not visually closed at all. In the
case of both the
apartment couches and the couches in Central Perk, the
furniture circle is open to the
screen; the viewer is visually invited to close the circle, to make
up the fourth side of
the racial border to be patrolled and defended. Not enough can
be made of the

rhetorical power of the invitation to identification (Burke,
1969) that this visual
consistently and persistently extends to the audience member.
By simply suggesting to
the viewer that whiteness’s continued efficacy as a subject
position requires his or her
active participation, Friends moves from serving as a comment
on contemporary
racial patterns and mores to functioning as a veritable potent
facet of that public
discourse.
Seinfeld as Viewing Lens
Recognizing that the context within which media texts are
considered influences the
meanings that audiences attach to them suggests a second
rhetorical strategy through
which these largely implicit messages on race can be made
much more explicit and
potent. If Friends were somehow able to make its historic
refusal to deal with issues of
racial parity even more clearly evident to its viewers, then the
program could make a
significant contribution to the reinforcement of whiteness as a

contemporary
American subject position. A conceptualization of meaning as
arising through the
audience’s juxtaposition of various texts (Ott & Walter, 2000)
provides just such an
opportunity for Friends to maintain its race-free ethos while at
the same time joining
in the effort to mend the spreading rupture in whiteness’
civilized surface.
One such means of interrogating Friends’ visual racial discourse
is by examining
the program through the lens of fellow NBC sitcom Seinfeld.
When viewed as a
dialectical partner to the latter program, Friends’ presumed
absence of racial
conversation is made wholly, significantly present to audiences.
Such an approach
not only represents a fruitful means through which to
understand the meanings
which viewers might attach to these sitcoms as rhetorical texts.
It also provides a
method through which to read network executives’ programming
decisions as forms
Circle 167

of political strategy. Linking these textual representations in
viewers’ minds, I
contend, reveals a deliberate and consistent intention to
maintain and reinforce status
quo perceptions of racial difference and privilege.
The meaning viewers may attach to Friends as a contemporary
media document is
certainly not limited to their comparisons of the program to
Seinfeld; the ultimate
significance of any text undoubtedly rests in its openness to the
entire range of
available mediated texts, as well as to individual viewers’ own
material experiences.
However, it is also important to consider the decidedly
rhetorical nature of the
signifying process any program necessarily constructs and
presents. Audiences
are always actively invited to use particular texts as lenses
through which to interpret
the messages they consume, and likewise to ignore other text-
lenses through which
they might interpret these messages (Ott & Walter, 2000). This

process is put into
play in different ways by different audiences; those with
broader cultural and
mediated experiences apply much more expansive lenses to the
process of
interpretation than those with more limited exposure. Many
viewers of color, for
example, might conclude from the perspective of their own
material experiences that
the two distinct forms of racial discourse presented by Friends
and Seinfeld are merely
two sides of the same white racist coin, with Seinfeld
representing enduring patterns
of explicit racism in America today and Friends standing in for
a more politically
correct*yet still pervasive*form of implicit, unspoken racism.
Still, while Friends
might be understood through a comparison with any number of
related television
programs, I contend that the viewers who stand to be most
influenced by Friends’
visual discourse on race*namely, those who are (perhaps only
subconsciously)
seeking a mediated reinforcement of hegemonic notions of
whiteness*are encour-
aged in any number of ways to read and understand Friends in a

highly specific
manner. Rather than seeing the program’s racial homogeneity as
an anomaly when
viewed in the context of racially diverse dramas, these viewers
are invited to juxtapose
the program against another media text that deals with race in a
highly unusual way.
In the process, viewers are invited to see Friends not as an
unrealistic picture of
contemporary race relations, but rather as an idyllic setting free
of any explicit
discourse on race or accusations of racial domination, a safe
media haven for those
viewers most heavily invested in preserving a sense of
whiteness as an unspoken
marker of privilege.
Utilizing Seinfeld as an interpretive tool for deriving racial
meanings from Friends
is an act that is encouraged in audiences in a number of ways.
Foremost among these
is the programs’ placement on NBC’s broadcasting roster.
Throughout its nine-year
run, Seinfeld served as the cornerstone of the broadcasting
company’s ‘‘Must See TV’’

campaign. Five years after Seinfeld’s debut, Friends joined the
fold, filling the 8 p.m.
time slot ahead of Seinfeld’s well-established 9 p.m. perch. The
programs’ four-year
run together marked a period of phenomenal critical and
financial success for the
network. In fact, so solid was the carry-over audience from
Friends to Seinfeld that
NBC used the half-hour time slot in between the two as a
launching pad for
numerous new sitcoms (Morreale, 2000). The very fact that
legions of viewers
regularly consumed both Friends and Seinfeld as part of the
same viewing strip
168 P. Chidester
(Newcomb & Hirsch, 1983) makes a joint reading of the
programs by viewers a
significant likelihood.
A second quality inviting audience comparisons of the two
programs is the fact
that both are set in contemporary New York City, and yet they
treat the city as

backdrop in widely divergent ways. In contrast to Friends’
strangely homogenized
Gotham, Seinfeld’s NYC presents its characters with
innumerable opportunities to
encounter and understand the racial Other. That the program’s
characters are
generally smugly condescending or even dismissive of these
encounters is hardly
the point. For Friends viewers who see the sitcom’s
homogeneous whiteness as
reflective of both their own segregated material experience and
of television’s highly
segregated landscape, Seinfeld is a reminder that Friends’ visual
and verbal
racelessness is an anomaly of the first order. It is through the
lens of Seinfeld that
Friends’ racial absence is made wholly, evidently present to
viewers.
It is this ‘‘difference in similarity’’ that lends potency to
Friends’ understated
treatment of race and racial difference. As but one example,
while the sitcoms’
narratives both speak to the characters’ desires to maintain a
cohesive group of

acquaintances, the Seinfeld crew seeks unity largely as a
response to encroachment by
the racial Other. At times, the core characters recoil from
others’ attitudes and
behaviors; at other times, they fetishize cultural and racial
difference to such an extent
that the Other is effectively reduced to an object of derision, of
almost morbid
fascination, or of pleasurable consumption (Watts & Orbe,
2002). Examples of this
treatment of the Other as a means through which to valorize the
(white, pure) self
abound in the sitcom’s episodes. The series regulars react to the
eccentricities of an
immigrant soup kitchen owner by quickly labeling him a
‘‘Nazi’’; Jerry encourages a
Pakistani restaurant owner to shift his menu to include only
food from his native
country, then shrugs off any responsibility when the business
fails; and Kramer is
happy to tuck his Japanese visitors into the drawers of his
bedroom dresser for the
night. Elaine, for her part, is overjoyed to be dating a man
simply because she thinks

he’s black*yet is disturbed to discover that he’s dating her
because he thinks she’s
Hispanic. And George’s character comes to represent a middle-
class American
whiteness under siege, a subject position that valorizes its own
centrality while at the
same time discounting its active participation in the
marginalization and exploitation
of the Other. By directly and often forcefully responding to
these claims to value in
difference by the racial and cultural Other, Seinfeld works to
reveal and assert
whiteness’s own worth as a marker of identity. And as a lens
through which to view
and understand Friends, the sitcom reaffirms not only
whiteness’s claim to superiority
through these open encounters with the Other, but also its
ability to maintain a safe
distance from the Other when necessary or desired.
In contrast, the Friends crew extols belonging as a natural
desire to be with like
others. The difference is telling. In the absence of any racial
Others as threats to the
group’s inner unity, the Friends characters are left to defend the

borders of the in-
group against even the most benign of possible interlopers, and
with a ferocity that
seems out of keeping with the explicitly-stated reason for the
group’s composition. If
this is simply a group of friends, after all, why refuse to include
anyone new in the
Circle 169
group? It is only when the racial quality of the group is made
present through
the viewing strip juxtaposition with Seinfeld, one of few
contemporary sitcoms to
actively and regularly depict whiteness’s encounters with the
racial Other, that the
motive behind the Friends’ careful patrolling of the group
perimeter is made clear
to the viewer, and the program’s contribution to the
reinforcement of whiteness is
made evident. Audiences’ proximate viewing of Friends and
Seinfeld provides a telling
reminder of the former program’s purposive racial homogeneity
as a media text.

Once this understanding has been established through viewing
strip exposure of
Friends to the intertextual influence of Seinfeld, Friends is free
to generate and
reinforce its own messages about the centrality and value of
whiteness as a hegemonic
subject position.
Conclusions and Implications
It is difficult to argue against Friends’ potential to contribute in
a significant way to
the overall visual/cultural web that continues to enable
whiteness’s mute, pervasive
privilege in contemporary American society. Neither is it easy
to dismiss the
potentially useful insights that are gleaned when critics consider
the broader themes
generated when audiences read individual media texts through
the lenses of other
texts. It is vital to investigate the persuasive power that is
brought into play when
media executives invite, and when viewers themselves work to
create, media
environments that serve to reinforce their own perceptions of
and ideas about

important social issues.
To argue that Friends may serve, at least in part, to reinforce
perceptions of
whiteness’s centrality as a racial subjectivity among some
viewers is to contend that
there is some benefit to be gained from such efforts. The
advantages to media
producers and performers are clear: offering attractive products
to audiences,
regardless of the nature of the interests that are activated and
reinforced by the
products themselves, cannot help but boost a company’s bottom
line. Further,
reading executives’ decisions through the textual
representations they produce and
market reveals the extent to which they are invested in
reinforcing comfortable*and
profitable*status quo social norms, including perceptions of
race and racial
difference. But what of the viewers who are drawn to such
racially-centered media
fare? For those who are most heavily invested in the idea of
whiteness as a marker of
racial privilege (Gibson, 1996), Friends represents, in times of
perceived racial turmoil

and challenge, a glimpse of what whiteness as identity was once
thought to be. It is
also an image of what some would argue that whiteness should
continue to signify in
contemporary times as well. For those who have felt little
advantage in a white racial
identification in their own material experiences, the sitcom
promises an opportunity
to continue to claim centrality (and privilege) on the basis of
skin color alone. As
Brooks and Rada (2002) note, media messages on race tend to
reinforce whiteness
not only as a central racial position but also as a standard
philosophical site. In other
words, white people’s positions on issues are consistently
presented as the expected,
rational point of view. Thus, to embrace whiteness’s centrality
as a white person is
170 P. Chidester
also to argue that one’s social and political views are the most
correct ones. Further,
open identification with mediated characters would seem to aid

at least some viewers
in transcending a fractured sense of self and forging a strong
identity as group
member (Gresson, 1978). It is easy to see how white viewers
with little sense of
personal achievement could gain from such a deliberate
reinforcement of whiteness as
a source of group identity.
If whiteness seems to afford few benefits in the day-to-day lives
of many viewers,
Thursday evenings offered for nearly a decade a cherished
opportunity to see race as
power, if only in brief 30-minute installments. Considering the
contributions of
Friends and other television fare to this reinforcement of
perceptions of whiteness as a
subject position, then, is also to acknowledge the considerable
forces that stand in the
way of our society’s efforts to deal effectively with enduring
patterns of racial
discrimination and violence. It is a powerful motive for scholars
to continue to
interrogate mediated treatments of race in contemporary
America.

As an essay more concerned with examining the rhetorical
processes engaged by
the episodes of Friends than with considering the actual effects
of viewing on the
sitcom’s legions of rabid fans, this effort has sought to
encourage greater awareness of
and attention to visual messages as they variously reinforce,
contradict, and diverge
from mediated products’ verbal content. At the same time, as a
text emerging itself
from a material and symbolic society that remains highly
segregated in nature, this
analysis of Friends has worked to reveal the ways in which both
material reality and
mediated symbol may continue to resist racial understanding
and cooperation by
insisting on an essentialist, polar view of race as difference
(Flores & Moon, 2002;
McPhail, 1994; Rockler, 2002). Finally, by actively questioning
the network decisions
that so actively reinforce viewers’ conceptions of whiteness,
this essay has invited
further interrogation of the political economic production of
media texts. It is hoped

that this and other revelations of media messages’ complicity in
furthering the racial
divide may be a useful step in achieving some measure of racial
understanding in
contemporary America.
Note
[1] See, for example, Armstrong (1992), Berg (1998), Bernardi
(1997), Binder (1993), Bogle
(1992), Calafell and Delgado (2004), Campbell (1995), Cloud
(1992), Dixon and Linz
(2000), Domke (1996), Entman and Rojecki (2000), Fitzgerald
(1991), Gandy (2001), Gray
(1989, 1993), Hall (1995), Hochschild (1995), hooks (1997),
Jeffres (2000), Lipsitz (1986),
Manatu-Rupert (2000), Myers (2004), Pan and Kosicki (1996),
Prosise and Johnson (2004),
Wellman (1997), and Wilcox (1996).
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Media, Culture & Society
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The online version of this article can be found at:
DOI: 10.1177/0163443708098243
2009 31: 5Media Culture Society
Guillermo Avila-Saavedra
masculinities
Nothing queer about queer television: televized construction of
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Nothing queer about queer television: televized
construction of gay masculinities
Guillermo Avila-Saavedra
SALEM STATE COLLEGE, USA
The longest-running gay character in American television is
Will Truman,
played by Erick McCormick on NBC’s Will & Grace for eight
seasons from
1998 until 2006. Will Truman is an attractive and successful
Manhattan lawyer
in his mid-thirties. However, the American public never
sawWill Truman go to
bed with another man. In addition, for most of those eight years,
Will Truman
was sitting by himself in America’s prime-time network
television gay bar.
However, starting in 2003 American television witnessed the
appearance of
more audacious gay male characters, including a sitcom
featuring a middle-
aged gay couple with a daughter (It’s all Relative on ABC), a
dating reality

show (Boy Meets Boy on Bravo) and a make-over show (Queer
Eye for the
Straight Guy on Bravo), in addition to the controversial drama
Queer as Folk.
According to the media-watch organization GLAAD (Gay &
Lesbian Alliance
Against Defamation) the 2003–4 network prime-time line-up
can be considered
a breakthrough with eight leading gay characters, compared to
five the three
previous seasons (GLAAD, 2006). Gay characters, in particular
gay males,
started populating television dramas, situation comedies and
reality shows.
The presence of homosexual characters in American television
would seem
to imply an endorsement of a liberal agenda of tolerance and
inclusion of alter-
native lifestyles and sexual orientations. However, the
perceived progressive-
ness of gays’ sudden appearance on American television could
be undermined
if it responds to traditional norms of social relations. In her
analysis of the tel-
evision program Ellen, where comedian Ellen DeGeneres and
her fictional
character came out in 1997, Dow (2001) argues that increased
visibility of
gays and lesbians in the media does not always translate into
social tolerance
Media, Culture & Society © 2009 SAGE Publications (Los
Angeles, London,
New Delhi and Singapore), Vol. 31(1): 5–21
[ISSN: 0163-4437 DOI: 10.1177/0163443708098243]

2014mcs.sagepub.comDownloaded from
or recognition, particularly because the fictional media
narratives tend to
emphasize the interpersonal issues of homosexuality and avoid
the political
ones. Shugart (2003) analyses the construction of gay identity
of several male
homosexual characters in popular films and television programs
in the context
of the gay male/straight female best-friends narrative. She
argues that gay
males are defined as privileged for their total access to women
but as impotent
for their homosexuality (2003: 88), a notion consistent with
heterosexism. On
the other hand, Meyer (2003) maintains that the best-friends
narrative of Will
& Grace provides a space to explore intimate issues of gay male
characters
outside the core friendship. Battles and Hilton-Morrow (2002)
analyse Will &
Grace with regard to its dependence on traditional sitcom
formulas and argue
that the narratives diminish any of the show’s potentially
subversive themes.
Such unprecedented explosion of gay male characters
inAmerican television
and the perceived liberalism of their representation require
further examination.

Queer theory and notions of hegemony applied to issues of
gender, race and
class provide this article’s conceptual foundation. Using
discourse analysis of
television shows with leading gay male characters as its
method, this study
examines the dominant themes in the construction of gay male
identity in
American television. It addresses in particular whether the
sudden increase of
gay male characters and the perceived advancement in their
representation chal-
lenge heteronormative notions of masculinity and hegemonic
models of social
relations. This article also discusses what has happened since
the ‘break-
through’ year of 2003 and the current state of queer television
in America.
Hegemonic sexual identities
The debate over essentialism and constructionism is central to
studies of
human gender and sexuality. Essentialists believe that
homosexuality is innate
or biological and that gay identities can be traced back in
history, while con-
structionists believe that a homosexual identity is a cultural
product and a
social construction. Foucault (1978) argues that sexuality and
sexual defini-
tions are created by society in order to repress individuals
wishing to engage
in behaviors that deviate from the heterosexual model. Queer
theory is a radi-
cal area of study resulting from the development of feminist

theories, gay and
lesbian literary criticism, and Foucault’s revolutionary ideas
about sexuality
and identity. The term ‘queer’ itself attempts to negate the
notion of sexual
identity, resulting as it did from post-structuralist debates that
defy rigid defi-
nitions and categorizations (Jagose, 1996). Queer theory
discusses how power
operates with sexuality in contemporary society to define social
and cultural
norms. According to Brookey: ‘a primary purpose of the critical
application of
queer theory has been to demonstrate how sexuality is culturally
essentialized
to inscribe heterosexuality as normal and all other sexualities as
deviant’
(1996: 41). Furthermore, queer studies propose that sexuality is
not restricted
6 Media, Culture & Society 31(1)
to heterosexuality or homosexuality, a binary system reinforced
by hegemonic
patriarchal societies, but is a more complex array of gender
possibilities.
Queer represents a resistance to anything that is socially defined
as normal,
and in that sense queer may exclude some gay and lesbian

practices that have
a ‘normative perspective’ or may include other experiences that
are not
explicitly sexual (Jagose, 1996: 98). If queer is not linked
solely to sexual
objects and desires, it can be understood as a reaction to
broader structures of
social and cultural domination. Rather than coercion, social
domination can
be conceived as a more flexible system of normalization
through social struc-
tures and cultural production. Gramsci’s (1973) notion of
hegemony shifts
the focus of scholarly attention from explicit ideologies or
agendas to the
common-sense norms that influence everyday interactions and
are taken for
granted. Although Gramsci understood hegemony as part of the
dynamic
process of class struggle and domination, his ideas can inform
other discus-
sions of power regarding gender, race and sexuality. For
example, Berlant and
Warner define heteronormativity as the institutions and
practices that make
heterosexuality privileged and therefore desirable (1993: 355).
Social desir-
ability gives heterosexuality its hegemonic dimension.
External hegemonic masculinity is defined as the patriarchal
system where
men dominate women, while internal hegemonic masculinity is
defined as the
domination of white heterosexual men over other men (Connell,
1992). In
light of these definitions, homosexual men are neither

participants nor bene-
ficiaries of any kind of hegemonic masculinity. Demetriou
challenges these
definitions and argues that hegemony is not the privilege of
white heterosex-
ual men but rather manifests itself through different kinds of
masculinities in
order to assure the survival of the patriarchal system. He claims
that the inte-
gration of gay male representations in diverse cultural practices
can be under-
stood as a gay masculinity that forms part of a contemporary
‘hegemonic
masculine bloc’ (2001: 343). Along the same line, Ward (2000)
says that pop-
ular representations of homosexual experience carry the
assumption that gay
males’ interests are in line with those of lesbians, feminists, and
other sexu-
ally and racially marginalized groups. She argues that the
discourse of gay
masculinities actually excludes and ignores concerns of other
gender and sex-
ual minorities. Ward (2000) calls this phenomenon ‘queer
sexism’ of which
gay white men would be active enforcers rather than victims.
Considerations of hegemony and sexual identities in queer
media studies
cannot be divorced from issues of class and race. Foucault
(1978) argues that
the real forces behind traditional values are economic, because
the family
represents the perfect unit to maximize consumption in
capitalist societies.
Chasin (2000) discusses how capitalism and consumerism have

appropriated
the American gay liberation movement with the consequent
exclusion of
those who do not fit the profile of the ideal gay consumer.
Brookey argues
that representations of homosexuals who hold traditional values
are con-
ceived as a way for heterosexual viewers to reflect their own
experiences in
Avila-Saavedra, Nothing queer about queer television 7
them, since ‘representations of homosexual experience suggest
homosexual
men are worthy of validation in mainstream society if they
follow the offered
examples’ (1996: 45). A contemporary critical analysis of gay
male repre-
sentations on television needs to be informed equally by notions
of gender,
sex, class and race.
Gay male identities on television
Queer media studies examine how the mass media, as a cultural
and social
institution, contribute to the maintenance of the sexual status
quo expressed
as the pre-eminence of heterosexuality in the representation of
social interac-

tions. A queer perspective in media criticism requires going
beyond issues of
numeric representation of gays and lesbian towards an analysis
of the nature
and complexity of such representations in the context of a
broader notion of
hegemony. Traditionally, mediated images of gays and lesbians
have been
analysed from the perspective of hegemonic masculinity
(Connell, 1992) and
notions of invisibility and symbolic annihilation (Fejes and
Petrich, 1993;
Gross, 1991; Kielwasser andWolf, 1992). Hanke used the term
‘subordinated
masculinity’ (1992: 195) to describe the absence of gay male
identities on
television. However, since invisibility, at least of gay males, is
no longer an
issue in American popular media, an analysis of current
mediated gay images
is more in line with alternative definitions of hegemonic
masculinity that
incorporate issues of gender, race and class (Demetriou, 2001;
Ward, 2000).
Fejes (2000) suggests that representations of gay and lesbian
identities in the
mass media are occurring in a rather conservative period for
American soci-
ety and therefore are harmless to heteronormative values.
Homosexual
images are presented in a way acceptable for heterosexual
audiences by rein-
forcing traditional values like family, monogamy and stability.
Most of the
erotic connotations of homosexuality have been eliminated. Gay
male char-

acters in particular are only welcomed in mainstream mass
media as long as
they do not infer any sexual desires and practices.
In the past, gay men were consistently portrayed as effeminate
in the media.
In today’s mass media, a man can be at the same time openly
gay and mascu-
line. However, media’s gay masculinity is predominantly
‘young, white,
Caucasian, preferably with a well muscled, smooth body,
handsome face, good
education, professional job, and a high income’ (Fejes, 2000:
115). This of
course does not imply that all gay characters on television
respond to this
description or that the effeminate gay man has completely
disappeared from
the mass media. However, the focus of attention should shift to
understanding
if what is presented as the desirable image of the gay male, in
terms of race
and class in particular, is the same as the desirable image of the
heterosexual
male. Additionally, it is necessary to examine whether only a
filtered version
of the gay male, in terms of sexuality, practices and desires, is
offered.

Method
The purpose of this article is to examine the narratives and
images that domi-
nate the construction of gay male identities onAmerican
television. To this end,
the study entails a discourse analysis of three network and basic
cable television
shows with gay male leading characters from 2004: Will &
Grace (NBC), It’s
All Relative (ABC) andQueer Eye for the Straight Guy (Bravo).
Programs with
gay male leading characters from premium cable channels are
excluded in order
to make the analysis consistent with the premise that network
and basic cable
have a broader reach and therefore a stronger influence. Other
shows with sup-
porting and recurring gay male characters are excluded in order
to center the
analysis on leading gay characters and prominently gay
narratives. Finally,
because the focus of this article is the constructions of gay male
identities and
challenges to normative notions of masculinity, important shows
with lesbian
characters, as well as images of bisexual and transgendered
people, are not con-
templated for the specific discourse analysis, but never ignored
in the broader
social and political context where these representations take
place.
The study employs discourse analysis in order to identify the
recurring

themes, images and dominating discourses that guide the
construction of
gay male identities. Discourse analysis of mediated texts is
useful to reveal
the larger dynamics behind the production of such texts.
Acosta-Alzuru and
Lester-Roushanzamir define discourse as ‘a system of
representation in
which shared meanings are produced and exchanged. Discourse
emphasizes
relations of power while also attending to relations of meanings
and the
process of production and exchange are therefore “materialized”
within the
text’ (2000: 307). They favor textual analysis because it
emphasizes not
the meaning of the text but the social construction of meaning
through the
text. Miller advocates for the use of discourse analysis in issues
of sexual-
ity, gender and communication (1994: 215), and several
scholars have
approached the construction of mediated images of gay males in
particular
from the perspective of discourse analysis (Battles and Hilton-
Morrow,
2002; Brookey, 1996; Fuoss, 1994; Meyer, 2003; Radel, 1994;
Shugart,
2003). In this article, special attention is paid to the particular
narratives,
behaviors and situations that are used to identify gay male
characters in
opposition to other characters in the same text.
This study is informed by the author’s consistent following of
the programs

that are the subject of analysis throughout their time on
American television.
However, for purposes of the present analysis, special focus is
placed on the
episodes of the 2003–4 season. The 2003–4 season is
exceptional not only
because of the sudden increase of gay characters (GLAAD,
2006) but also
because it is the only season when these three programs
coincided. It repre-
sents the first season for both Queer Eye for the Straight Guy
and It’s All
Relative and the sixth for Will & Grace, and it is the most
abundant in analy-
sis material. For the analysis, the author taped each episode of
each program
throughout the season. Each taped episode was watched
repeatedly in order to
identify recurring themes and structures, and perform a more in-
depth analysis.
The Programs
The 2003–4 television season constitutes the sixth year for Will
& Grace,
which remained one of the highest rated and most popular
comedies for NBC

until its cancellation in 2006. The comedy is built around Will
and his best
friend Grace, a single, heterosexual woman in Manhattan. Other
leading char-
acters include Will’s gay friend Jack and Grace’s assistant
Karen. The NBC
website describes the character of Will as a ‘likable, handsome,
and charming
successful Manhattan lawyer’ and the character of Jack as a
‘self-involved
young man with a complete matching set of emotional baggage’
(NBC,
2004). The construction of the two gay male characters and
their interaction
with the other main characters are the focus of this analysis.
Probably motivated by Will & Grace’s success, ABC premiered
for the
2003–4 season It’s All Relative, a comedy built around a gay
male couple,
Philip and Simon, and their adopted daughter Liz who is
engaged to Bobby,
a boy whose parents, Mason and Audrey, represent the classic
working-class
American family. The comedy is built around the tension
between the future
in-laws: sophisticated gays versus uneducated conservatives.
Due to mediocre
ratings the show was cancelled after the first season.
In the summer of 2003, the basic cable network Bravo
premiered Queer
Eye for the Straight Guy, a make-over show where a team of
five gay men
attempt to improve different aspects of straight men’s lives. The
show has had

a very successful run, although the network announced that the
fourth season,
which ended in the summer of 2007, would be last one. The
network website
describes the show beyond the make-over genre as a ‘make-
better’ show
(Bravo, 2004) and describes the five men in the show as ‘The
Fab 5, an elite
team of gay men who have dedicated their lives to extolling the
simple virtues
of style, taste and class.’The ‘fab 5’ include Kyan, Thom, Jai,
Carson and Ted,
providing expert advice on grooming, interior design, culture,
fashion and
food respectively. Bravo is a basic cable channel, part of the
NBC media con-
glomerate, and a modified version of the show was broadcast a
few times on
NBC following Will & Grace.
Queer reading of mediated texts has been useful in
deconstructing the
hidden or subtle messages of perceived heterosexual narratives
and even
homophobic ones (Kanner, 2003). In the case of texts where
homosexual
content and intent are explicit, queer reading can be useful to
uncover the
underlying normative themes in the narrative. This article
proposes that
these programs are not equally open to any interpretation by
audiences and
adopts Hall’s (1993) model of ‘oppositional readings’ versus
‘preferred
readings’ as a valid alternative. Kanner notes how, according to
many, and

the entertainment business in particular, ‘2003 was a very good
year to be
gay’ on television (2004: 35). The preferred and dominant
reading of these
texts is that gays are being brought into the mainstream and that
positive
homosexual/heterosexual interactions are being reinforced. This
article
attempts to take the oppositional reading in its analysis and
highlight the
less optimistic trends. Unfortunately, the linearity of an article
does not
allow expressing how all the issues are interrelated and
integrated. A few
recurring themes are outlined below, but the reader should not
take them in
isolation from each other, as together they form what this article
identifies
as the social discourse of American prime-time television gay
male identity.
‘I’m kind of already here’
According to Jagose (1996), the term ‘queer’ is supposed to
challenge tradi-
tional gender identities and sexual binaries. LGBT (Lesbian,
Gay Bisexual,

Transgender and Transsexual) activist groups such as Queer
Nation first
claimed the term in the 1970s as a strategy of provocation with
clear political
goals of destabilizing the status quo, and a radical brand of
social and cultural
scholarship called queer theory also adopted the term. However,
in a process
consistent with hegemonic theory, the term has been gradually
incorporated
into the mainstream while its destabilizing qualities have been
neutralized.
Thanks in part to the mass media, the term is now used to
describe, almost
endearingly, a particular category of queerness that is less
socially threaten-
ing: that of the urban, sophisticated gay male (Kanner, 2004). In
the radical
and disruptive sense of the term, there is nothing queer about
queer television
when the flexibility of the term is reduced to an interpretation
that reinforces
the traditional homosexual/heterosexual binary.
Kanner (2003) notes that the gayness of Will & Grace is
normalized
because the driving force of the show is their heterosexual
friendship. Will’s
sexuality is assumed and incorporated into the show mostly as
comic source
and rarely as driving narrative. In the end, the show is indeed
about Will and
Grace. In one episode, Will has finally started dating someone;
Jack and
Karen question Will on how he can be certain he likes his new
boyfriend,

Vince, given that Grace has not yet met him and approved of
him. This
becomes a source of anxiety for Will as he wonders if his
interest on Vince
will survive Grace’s input. In the last scene, after Grace has met
and approved
Vince, the two men sit on either side of her on a sofa; when
Will asks Grace
if she could move so he could sit next to Vince, she replies ‘I’m
kind of
already here.’ It is clear for audiences that Grace will always be
Will’s most
important relationship. In other words, she will remain between
them, nor-
malizing the homosexual relationship through her heterosexual
influence.
The normalization of the term ‘queer’ is even more evident in
Queer Eye
for the Straight Guy, given that the show presents a rather
narrow range of gay
male identities. In the show, the words ‘queer’, ‘gay’ and
‘queen’ are used
interchangeably to identify the same characters. Other queer
possibilities are
not only ignored but also often ridiculed. Consider this
comment from

Carson, the fashion guru, ‘I’m bisexual, buy me something and
I’ll get very
sexual.’ In Will & Grace, a play that Will wrote about coming
out is entitled
‘Bye Bisexual’, clearly implying that bisexuality is not an
option, or perhaps
an option reserved for closeted homosexuals. Besides the fact
that flamboy-
ant, effeminate, self-absorbed Jack is a very popular character,
the truth is that
the narrative presents him not so much as likeable as laughable.
The real like-
able, and desirable, character is masculine, successful, straight-
acting, nor-
malized-through-his-heterosexual-friendship Will.
In It’s All Relative, Simon and Philip are also presented as a
white, edu-
cated, financially successful, monogamous couple. Even when
other queer
possibilities are incorporated in the narrative, it is through
normalized het-
erosexual ideals. Consider this conversation, when Mason, the
bigoted work-
ing-class father of the groom, is helping Simon put together a
crib they will
give as a present to two lesbian friends who are soon to have a
baby:
Mason: Hold it! I’m building a crib for a couple of lesbos?
What if it’s a boy?
Who’s going to teach him to use his fist, to throw a ball, or pee
standing up?
Simon: Ellen.

The assignment of gender-appropriate characteristics of
husband/wife roles to
gay couples, in this case the stereotype of the butch lesbian, is a
recurring
motif in all the shows. In It’s All Relative, Simon is composed
and ‘more
mechanically inclined’, while Simon is temperamental and
interested in fash-
ion and decoration. Even straight-acting Will is dating the
archetype of mas-
culinity, a police officer, and despite the fact that Will is a
successful attorney,
he still cleans and cooks for Vince, as exemplified in this
interaction:
Vince: Is this the olive tapenade? It’s great! What’s in it?
Will: I’d tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.
Vince: Could you not say that? Since I got shot like two hours
ago?
Will: I had a day too!
These gender-traditional interactions among gay men could
perhaps be
explained by their humorous potential for the television sitcom
genre.
However, even more striking examples are found in Queer Eye
given that the
show, even if it purposely fails to do so, is supposed to
represent reality by the
very nature of its genre; these are not actors, these are real
people. Kanner
describes the Queer Eye team as ‘gay superheroes’ (2004: 36)
who have the

power to improve heterosexual relationships. They can also be
described as a
group of five asexual fairy godmothers that appear, transform a
straight man’s
love life, but are themselves denied love lives of their own. Not
only is there
not the smallest hint of sexual tension between five healthy,
good-looking
homosexual men, but viewers are also denied any information
about the ‘fab
5’s’ personal love lives. Indeed, they are portrayed, and often
behave, as inno-
cent children.Any sexual references among each other or with
the straight man
subject to the transformation are stereotypical, comical and
therefore harmless.
The willingness of the straight subject to accept, celebrate and
then dismiss
sexual innuendo from the fab 5 is itself evidence that the show
celebrates het-
erosexuality. In one recent episode, they are helping Mark
improve his rela-
tionship with his stepdaughter. Carson starts noting that ‘when
you don’t have
enough male influence in your life, terrible things can happen’
and Jai, the cul-
ture guru, provides Mark with a lecture on father–daughter

relations:
Tonight is all about letting Karly know how much you want to
be part of her life
and her interests, the trust and reliability that daughters and
fathers have, they build
self-esteem and confidence; those are all things that a young
adult needs, how
important it is for a daughter to rely on her father.
It is particularly disturbing that a young, gay, Latino man can
describe in such
detail what he considers as the fundamental environment,
something that the
majority of children in America do not have, not to mention the
children of
alternative families.
‘But in the end they’re just guys’
Any overt endorsement of the heterosexual model includes, by
default or
necessity, a covert endorsement of a patriarchal system of male
domination.
After all, heteronormativity is about the maintenance of the
status quo, with
all its elements of gender, class and race in addition to
sexuality. In a special
anniversary episode, the cast and producers of Queer Eye revisit
the pilot
episode, attempting to evaluate the evolution of the show. One
of the execu-
tive producers notes: ‘The show never had an agenda other than
people help-
ing people, gay guys, straight guys, they do things a little
different in the

bedroom but in the end they’re just guys.’ He is only partially
right. It is clear
that the show, as well as the other shows analysed here, does
not have a polit-
ical agenda of social change (Kanner, 2004). But this does, even
if uninten-
tionally, serve to prevent social change, assisting straight men
to maintain
their status. It is in the end all about guys helping guys.
In the context of comedy, interactions that on the surface
challenge or mock
traditional masculine roles are common. However, the non-
traditional is always
normalized by the implicit assertion that traditional is still
better, even if non-
traditional can be tolerated. In an episode of Will & Grace, Jack
is thrilled that
his teenaged son Elliot (the unexpected product of Jack’s one
visit to a sperm
bank) is trying out for his school’s cheerleading squad: ‘You
just made me the
proudest father in the world.’ Jack is extremely disappointed
when Elliot does
make it into the squad and wants to give up: ‘Let me tell you
something mister,
my family has had four generations of male cheerleaders and

you’re not doing
anything to break that up.’ The references to male sport
traditions are obvious,
but then the narrative is reversed. Consider the following scene
when Jack ques-
tions the cheerleader’s captain about Elliot’s rejection:
Jack: I’m Elliot’s father. That boy can cheer! He comes from a
long proud line of
cheerleaders. His great grandfather came to this country with
nothing but a
pompom in his hand and a dream that someday he’ll see his
children
stacked in a perfect pyramid. And now you’re telling me you’re
going to
deny my son his heritage?
Elliot: I can’t do this! I don’t want to be a cheerleader. I never
wanted to be one.
The only reason I did this is so you’d pay attention to me. You
know how
humiliating it was for me to try out for cheerleading? But I was
willing to
do it to spend time with you.
Jack: I didn’t know it meant that much to you Elliot.
Elliot: Why do you think I call you every Friday night to come
to my basketball
games? You know, forget it, you can’t understand.
Jack’s comments about his family tradition of male cheerleading
are prepos-
terous; they do not represent any real alternative masculinity
and are imme-
diately dismissed. The narrative is normalized because we

discover that
Elliot’s masculinity is normal, he does not like cheerleading, he
likes to play
basketball. In the end the gay man accommodates the straight
man when Jack
promises to attend Elliot’s basketball games. It is interesting to
note how the
narrative of the scene not only ridicules gay men but also puts
down feminine
activities. In a hypothetical scene, if a teenage female character
tried at
basketball to please her lesbian mother, it would not be as
comic, given that
basketball is a traditional masculine activity and therefore
respectable. In the
scene that did happen what women do is considered more
trivial, and a tradi-
tionally feminine activity like cheerleading is used to ridicule
gay men.
A space for gay men to help straight men is provided on
television even
when the straight man is not present. In one episode of Will &
Grace, Will
gets involved in a domestic drama over his parents and his
father’s mis-
tress. Will’s interactions are only with his mother and his
father’s lover, but
even though his father is not physically present, he is obviously
the center
of the argument. When Will complains to his mother about not
calling any
of her other sons for help, she replies: ‘Your brothers can’t help
me, they’re
straight, they have no finesse for manipulating the details of
petty dramas.’

In other words, gay men have the ability and willingness to help
in incon-
sequential affairs of straight men and their relationships. The
situation is
resolved in a surprisingly patriarchal way, with Will’s father
keeping both
his wife and his mistress.
The narrative of all the shows greatly defines the masculinity of
gay male
characters as realized by the acceptance of straight men. In It’s
All Relative,
the source of humor is the conflict between Simon and Philip
with their future
in-laws, in particular with Mason, described by ABC’s website
as ‘an Archie
Bunker of the new millennium’ (2004). In this context, Simon
and Philip are
forced to go camping, meet a female stripper and visit a sports-
bar, among
other things, in their search for tolerance and acceptance. Gay
men are com-
pelled to celebrate and understand straight men’s adventures,
but not the other
way around.
In Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, the dynamic is portrayed as
one of

mutual dependence. The five gay guys are delighted to be
accepted, and
needed, by straight guys. For example, in one of the episodes
they are over-
joyed to find in the straight man’s house a t-shirt with the
message ‘I don’t
like fags, I love them.’ On the other hand, straight men
welcome the gay men
because they need them in order to improve themselves and
their relation-
ships. However, the dynamic is hardly equally dependent. In the
end, it is only
the heterosexual men’s masculinities we see realized out of
selfish interest,
and the gay men appear content with the notion of ‘Mission
accomplished!’
as their only reward. This unequal relationship is even more
evident when one
considers that gay men are placed in traditional female positions
(hairdresser,
decorator, etc.) that are often considered trivial. In the narrative
of the show,
the heterosexual man’s masculinity is never threatened or
affected by the
proximity of gay men; rather, it is reinforced by servitude. As
Carson, the
fashion guru puts it: ‘Highlighting your hair doesn’t make you
gay, high-
lighting someone else’s hair, well that’s a different story.’ In
the end they are
all just guys, but it is clear that the hierarchy of gender that
does not com-
pletely compensate for the hierarchy of sexual orientation.
‘I have a PhD in upscale’

Chasin (2000) describes how capitalism has pervaded the
American homo-
sexual movement from the radical 1970s to our materialistic
times. Brookey
(1996) and Fejes (2000) note how high income is one of the
elements that
characterize media’s version of the gay male. In the shows
analysed for this
article, all gay male characters are trendy, stylish and affluent,
even when
their sources of income are not revealed. As Kanner notes about
the recent
explosion of gay characters on television: ‘The media have
finally discovered
how gayness can be capitalized upon and incorporated into
popular culture
without presenting a significant challenge or posing meaningful
change’
(2004: 36). A big part of the humorous conflict in It’s All
Relative is about
class. Liz’s gay dads, Philip and Simon, are portrayed as
wealthy cosmopoli-
tans. Bobby’s parents, Mason and Audrey, are an average
working-class cou-
ple. These portrayals are not only consistent with long-held
stereotypes of gay

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