Can<i>Romantic Comedy</i>Be Gay?: Hollywood Romance, Citizenship, and Same-Sex Marriage Panic

Moddelmog, Debra A.

doi:10.3200/jpft.36.4.162-173

Cited by 10 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…Television shows with gay characters can reinforce traditional patriarchal attitudes and function to extend heterosexual male privilege, as Helene Shugart (2003) has asserted. When heterosexual romantic comedies are compared with homosexual ones, Debra Moddelmog (2009, 162) finds that camera techniques and plot narratives stop short of celebrating homosexual desire as legitimate, ensuring that “heterosexuality remains the privileged mode of desire and marriage, the sanctioned form of bonding.” Gay characters are sometimes “neutered” and are produced as heterosexual rather than gay by being coupled and by being portrayed without eroticism. Coupling domesticates sexual beings into “tame” and proper citizens, and helps them appear “appropriately gendered” (Ingraham 1999, 18).…”

Section: Bromance and Postfeminist Masculinitymentioning

confidence: 99%

No Girls Allowed

Nettleton

2016

Television & New Media

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This article analyzes the male-only spaces present in four television series, FX's The Shield, Nip/Tuck, Rescue Me, and ABC's Boston Legal, which each include a gendered territory as a recurring feature. I argue that these homosocially segregated environments enforce boundaries against women and shelter intense bromance relationships that foreclose romantic relationships of any kind, acting as physical incarnations of troubling retrograde sexual politics and ideologies. I also assert that the "boys' clubs" in which these narratives take place, enabled and empowered by the aesthetic dimensions of architecture and design, help establish workplace patriarchy as commonplace, reasonable, and benign. This article reveals that in these television boys' clubs, problematic gender ideologies are protected and celebrated, misogyny is naturalized, and patriarchal beliefs and behaviors legitimized.

show abstract

Section: Bromance and Postfeminist Masculinitymentioning

confidence: 99%

No Girls Allowed

Nettleton

2016

Television & New Media

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“…Scholarship in the field of media and communication largely ignores cross-sex friendships. Researchers have examined media representations of heterosexual romance (Galician, 2003; Galician & Merskin, 2006; Martin & Kazyak, 2009; Shumway, 2003), and studies have traced the depiction of romantic same-sex relationships in popular film and TV (Becker, 2006; Holz Ivory, Gibson, & Ivory, 2009; Moddelmog, 2009). Others have examined the role of the media in depicting same-sex friendships between women (Hollinger, 1998; Winch, 2012) and men (Alberti, 2013; Baker, 2006; Ibson, 2006), but little scholarship that exists considers the depiction of platonic relationships between men and women in the media—a fact which is, perhaps, telling in and of itself.…”

Section: Cross-sex Friendships In the Mediamentioning

confidence: 99%

We could never be friends: Representing cross-sex friendship on celebrity gossip web sites.

McDonnell¹,

Mehta²

2016

Psychology of Popular Media Culture

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Can men and women be "just friends?" Existing scholarship on cross-sex friendship in the field of psychology is mixed, with some literature suggesting that men and women cannot be friends and other literature suggesting that they can. Media representations of cross-sex friendships often reference the homosocial norm, which contends that members of the same sex prefer to spend time with one another and implies that relationships between members of the other sex are necessarily sexual (Rose, 1985). Despite this, few studies have examined the nature of cross-sex relationships in the popular media. This study examines the textual features of 391 cross-sex narratives appearing on three popular celebrity Web sites (TMZ, PerezHilton, and Celebuzz) between January and June 2012. Two hundred eleven (59%) of the stories sampled contained either speculation or a rebuttal of speculation about whether or not 2 individuals were romantically involved, with particular attention given to relationships between coworkers and ex-lovers. One hundred twenty-nine (33%) of the stories featured feuds, antagonism, and/or stalking and abuse engaged in by members of the other sex. These findings suggest that celebrity Web sites reinforce the homosocial norm by continually presenting cross-sex relationships as either romantic or antagonistic in nature.

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Dramatic Romance and the Value(s) of Tragedy

Abbott

2022

The History of Trans Representation in American Television and Film Genres

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CanRomantic ComedyBe Gay?: Hollywood Romance, Citizenship, and Same-Sex Marriage Panic

Cited by 10 publications

References 13 publications

No Girls Allowed

No Girls Allowed

We could never be friends: Representing cross-sex friendship on celebrity gossip web sites.

Dramatic Romance and the Value(s) of Tragedy

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