Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty six, in the middle of an episode
Speaker 1: of the beloved sitcom The Golden Girls, a silly, simple joke.
Speaker 2: Not Lebanese black.
Speaker 1: Lesbia triggered that classic laugh track and a surprising legacy.
Speaker 1: That's because those four Golden Girls had an unsuspecting power,
Speaker 1: the power to influence public perception about a topic that
Speaker 1: remained taboo.
Speaker 3: You have these four women living together in a chosen family.
Speaker 3: This is a really powerful relationship they have with each other,
Speaker 3: and I think that's subconsciously really good modeling for anyone really.
Speaker 1: In shoulder pads and captans, the Golden Girls snuck positive
Speaker 1: gay representation into millions of living rooms across America, creating
Speaker 1: a ripple effect in writer's rooms and on screens for
Speaker 1: decades to come. I'm Jessica Bennett and I'm Susie Vana Karam,
Speaker 1: And this is in retrospect, where each week we revisit
Speaker 1: a cultural moment from the past that shaped us.
Speaker 2: And that we just can't stop thinking about today.
Speaker 1: We're talking about the Golden girls first encounter with a
Speaker 1: lesbian and the way it spawned an enduring gay joke,
Speaker 1: but we're also talking about the creative ways that Hollywood
Speaker 1: has written and sometimes hidden queer characters for decades. This
Speaker 1: is part two. So, Susie, we've been talking about the
Speaker 1: Lebanese lesbian episode of Golden Girls, which is actually called
Speaker 1: Isn't It Romantic? That aired in nineteen eighty six, And
Speaker 1: in that episode, Dorothy's friend Jane comes to visit after
Speaker 1: the death of her partner Pat, and she develops a
Speaker 1: crush on Rose. As we spoke about, that episode was
Speaker 1: ahead of its time for many reasons. You know, it
Speaker 1: was a pretty tender depiction of a lesbian character at
Speaker 1: a time when that was pretty rare, and as we
Speaker 1: have left about its repetition of the word lesbian really
Speaker 1: drove home that that was a word we should feel
Speaker 1: comfortable with.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and even the fact that there was a gay
Speaker 2: character at all was pretty significant for that time.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And in order to understand how subversive that was
Speaker 1: for the time, what you really need to understand is
Speaker 1: the way that gay and lesbian characters were depicted back then.
Speaker 1: So I want to set the scene a little bit
Speaker 1: in terms of what was happening in this time. Prior
Speaker 1: to nineteen seventy, there really were very few, if any
Speaker 1: gay characters on screen, at all, and like that makes
Speaker 1: sense for the time, Like homosexuality was classified as a
Speaker 1: mental illness until nineteen seventy three.
Speaker 2: It was I didn't realize it was that late.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in the idea zone.
Speaker 2: Pretty recent.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But then you know, in nineteen sixty nine, Stonewall occurs.
Speaker 1: So the gay liberation movement is bursting forward in the
Speaker 1: early nineteen seventies and representation on television begins to shift
Speaker 1: as a result of that. So in nineteen seventy one,
Speaker 1: you have the first gay male character who appears on
Speaker 1: the sitcom All in the Family.
Speaker 2: What do you think that your I can't even shit you, Steve,
Speaker 2: He's right, art Eh.
Speaker 1: And that's interesting too because four years later, that same
Speaker 1: show has a recurring drag queen character that's actually played
Speaker 1: by an out drag queen.
Speaker 4: I'm afraid you don't understand, missus Bunker, I'm a transvesti.
Speaker 1: And then Skip I had a few years in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy seven, you have a trans character that appears on
Speaker 1: The Jeffersons, and the plot line there is essentially George,
Speaker 1: who's the patriarch of the Jefferson family, goes to meet
Speaker 1: his old navy buddy Eddie, only to find out that
Speaker 1: Eddie has transitioned to Edie.
Speaker 5: If you don't understand, George, I'm a woman deep down inside.
Speaker 4: I've always been a.
Speaker 1: Woman, even in a navy, even in the navy.
Speaker 2: Oh interesting, And actually, you know, in nineteen seventy seven
Speaker 2: is the same year there's that show soap that appears
Speaker 2: with Billy Crystal playing a gay character. Right, Oh, okay,
Speaker 2: and I think that show was also made by Susan
Speaker 2: Harris who made Golden Girls, right and girls.
Speaker 1: Oh, I hadn't realized that, Okay, so before the Golden
Speaker 1: Girls episode, she has already done this.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And interestingly, that show initially got a lot of
Speaker 2: backlash for having an openly gay character, but then went
Speaker 2: on to become a huge success. So maybe that's why
Speaker 2: she felt so comfortable.
Speaker 1: Maybe that in Bolden Yeah. Yeah, So nineteen seventy seven
Speaker 1: was I guess a big year because that also was
Speaker 1: the year that one of the first black gay characters
Speaker 1: appears on television. And this is in an episode of
Speaker 1: Sanford Arms. I didn't know this show, but it was
Speaker 1: a spin off of the popular black sitcom Sanford and Sons. Basically,
Speaker 1: the character in the show is this tall, handsome civil
Speaker 1: rights lawyer, so very much a positive depiction.
Speaker 2: It's so interesting this is all happening in the seventies.
Speaker 2: When you told me that just until nineteen seventy three
Speaker 2: it was classified as a mental illness, you sort of
Speaker 2: feel like it's a sea change in terms of the
Speaker 2: way people are starting to think. Right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, actually, that's a really good point, because what you're
Speaker 1: seeing in the seventies is pretty progressive. But then there's
Speaker 1: this kind of backlash or this erosion of that when
Speaker 1: you start to have the eighties emerge. Essentially, by the
Speaker 1: time The Golden Girls airs, this episode in nineteen eighty six,
Speaker 1: is a crisis.
Speaker 2: A mystery disease known as the gay Plague.
Speaker 3: AIDS appears to be a virus transmitted through body secretions.
Speaker 1: Ronald Reagan as president. I think that abstinuce has been
Speaker 1: lacking in much of the education.
Speaker 2: President Reagan was repeatedly booed at an AIDS research fundraising
Speaker 2: dinner last night.
Speaker 1: And I think to some degree, Hollywood gets scared off
Speaker 1: from writing these fully rounded gay characters.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think AIDS was used so much as
Speaker 2: a cudgel to push back on gay civil rights right
Speaker 2: I mean, it was just a way in which people
Speaker 2: stoked so much fear around gayness and gay people. So
Speaker 2: it makes sense that that actually pulled back on some
Speaker 2: of the games.
Speaker 1: Yeah, pulled back. And then at the same time, if
Speaker 1: there are gay characters written into scripts, they're typically white
Speaker 1: gay men, and the plotlines usually revolve around aids in
Speaker 1: some way anyway, So this is very negative depiction.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess it was either negative or very sorrowful.
Speaker 2: So you just never got any depictions of gay joy.
Speaker 2: But also where were all the lesbians?
Speaker 1: So to a large degree in the eighties, lesbian visibility
Speaker 1: on film actually reflects life like it's very much in
Speaker 1: the shadows, even as lesbians are very instrumental to the
Speaker 1: fight for gay rights. A couple of things worth understanding
Speaker 1: are essentially how lesbians fit into the larger feminist movement,
Speaker 1: which was very charged at the time, in part because
Speaker 1: Betty Fridane called lesbians quote the lavender menace because she
Speaker 1: felt like they would derail the women's movement's other causes.
Speaker 1: And so I love lavendar, I know what, I love
Speaker 1: the color level like whatever, And so lesbians felt marginalized
Speaker 1: within the women's movement, but they also felt pretty marginalized
Speaker 1: within the larger gay community. You know, the first Dike March,
Speaker 1: which is the lesbian march that happens every year around Pride,
Speaker 1: didn't even happen or become a thing until nineteen ninety three.
Speaker 1: And I think that also shows just how groundbreaking that
Speaker 1: Golden Girls episode was in nineteen eighty because, in fact,
Speaker 1: the lesbian character Gene, the friend of Dorothy's, as we've discussed,
Speaker 1: was just the second lesbian character ever to appear on
Speaker 1: primetime TV.
Speaker 2: Wow. Really, even in nineteen eighty six, it was the
Speaker 2: second time they had a lesbian character.
Speaker 1: Yes, and the first happened just a few years before
Speaker 1: on a cops show called Hill Street Blues, and lesbian
Speaker 1: was a police officer.
Speaker 2: I remember Hill Street Blues. Isn't that the show that
Speaker 2: spawned like be careful out there?
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2: Really yeah, with the Cops. They end the meeting by saying,
Speaker 2: be careful out there.
Speaker 1: I had nose.
Speaker 2: But I don't remember this character, so it must not
Speaker 2: have been a super prominent character.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's probably by design. I don't particularly
Speaker 1: remember it either. But lesbian representation was also working against
Speaker 1: this thing called the Hayes Code, Susie, I feel like
Speaker 1: you probably know what that is.
Speaker 2: I mean when you say that, I feel like I
Speaker 2: should know. But I don't know what that is.
Speaker 1: I don't know that you should know. I just feel
Speaker 1: like you're a TV film whisper. But the Hayes Code
Speaker 1: was a set of content guidelines for American movie that
Speaker 1: existed between nineteen thirty four and nineteen sixty, with movies at.
Speaker 4: Their lowest moral lib but riding high financially.
Speaker 1: A new name appears on the national scene, Will Hayes
Speaker 1: and the Hayes Code basically outline moral codes for what
Speaker 1: could appear on screen. And so they kept this list
Speaker 1: of topics that were not allowed to be shown. Things
Speaker 1: like homosexuality, which was called in their words, sexual perversion,
Speaker 1: interracial relationships, drug use, scenes of passion that feels like
Speaker 1: it can be very hard to define, nudity, ridicule of religion,
Speaker 1: et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And so the Hayes
Speaker 1: Code was for movies. But the point is it seeped
Speaker 1: into television. It goes on to set the model for
Speaker 1: what becomes the code of practices for television broadcasters. That's
Speaker 1: a mouthful, but basically that's the code that prohibited depictions
Speaker 1: of homosexuality.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I didn't know any of this history, but it
Speaker 2: makes sense. I mean, a lot of those codes are
Speaker 2: still in place. There are a lot of things you
Speaker 2: still can't say on TV. And didn't you used to
Speaker 2: not be able to say hell for a long time
Speaker 2: on television?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: And actually I want to reintroduce Maya Salam here. She's
Speaker 1: the culture editor at The New York Times who's written
Speaker 1: about this and who he spoke to earlier, and specifically
Speaker 1: she's written about how so much of this stuff ties
Speaker 1: back to the power of the Catholic Church. And it
Speaker 1: wasn't just words that you couldn't say. It was subjects too, so.
Speaker 4: Divorce, abortion, home sexuality.
Speaker 5: The church threatened to boycott movies if these strict regulations
Speaker 5: weren't applied, and so filmmakers and studios bowed to them.
Speaker 5: So that's why you know, characters were written as like
Speaker 5: Sissy's villains are sexual deviance is kind of the way
Speaker 5: that it's put. Then it was more acceptable. They would
Speaker 5: be more likely to allow it if they were cast
Speaker 5: in this really negative way.
Speaker 1: So essentially, what Maya's saying here is that the only
Speaker 1: way to have content that the Catholic Church would disapprove of,
Speaker 1: like representations of homosexuality, was to write these characters as villains,
Speaker 1: so that behavior could basically act as a warning to
Speaker 1: viewers like don't do this, look what will happen to you.
Speaker 1: And to get around that, writers and directors start doing
Speaker 1: something called queer coding, which is essentially create characters who
Speaker 1: appear to be queer but couldn't actually be out due
Speaker 1: to the codes.
Speaker 2: That's actually kind of brilliant. So there's ways in which
Speaker 2: they're indicating that someone is gay, but not explicitly.
Speaker 1: Saying it exactly. Here's my again.
Speaker 5: That's when you really start to see the really clever
Speaker 5: ways that queerness was shown and explored in characters.
Speaker 4: It was really this.
Speaker 5: Under the radar only gaze maybe might pick up on it,
Speaker 5: you don't know unless you know kind of representation. One
Speaker 5: of my favorites is Calamity Jane, which is a nineteen
Speaker 5: fifty three musical western with Doris Day and there's a
Speaker 5: scene in the movie where she like walks up to
Speaker 5: sort of who would be her crush, and she kind
Speaker 5: of like almost tries to like look down her top
Speaker 5: and she's like, oh I think I might be in
Speaker 5: love with you or something like that.
Speaker 2: Gosh, al money, the prettiest thing I ever seen.
Speaker 4: And there's a wonderful song. It's called Secret Love.
Speaker 1: First of all much secret Love, no Sea Coo witch, and.
Speaker 4: It is the gayest.
Speaker 2: Jess. It sounds like queer coding initially was a good thing.
Speaker 2: It was kind of a way to have gay characters
Speaker 2: hidden in plain sight and give them an opportunity to
Speaker 2: be part of the stories.
Speaker 1: Right and Jean, the lesbian front of Dorothy's on Golden
Speaker 1: Girls is really a great example of this. Here's Drew
Speaker 1: Mackie again for.
Speaker 3: A lesbian cacharacter. Gene is very found, like she looks
Speaker 3: like one of the girls, Like you would not look
Speaker 3: at her and presume she's a lesbian, So she is
Speaker 3: like sneaky And that sounds like a negative phrase, so
Speaker 3: I'm using it as a positive here. Like they did
Speaker 3: their homework. They tricked the audience into giving a shit
Speaker 3: about a gay person, which is remarkable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So the problem with queer coding is that in
Speaker 1: some cases it's easy for these characters to quickly veer
Speaker 1: from kind of like this. You know, wink nod. Example
Speaker 1: of representation to tropes.
Speaker 2: So this positive thing can sort of turn negative when
Speaker 2: it becomes kind of stereotypical. So what does some of
Speaker 2: those tropes look like?
Speaker 1: One of them is what Drew and his co host
Speaker 1: call it, the angel gay. That's this idea that you
Speaker 1: have to be perfect good in every way, like you're
Speaker 1: not allowed to have flaws if you are a gay character,
Speaker 1: because you can't possibly reflect poorly on your community in anyone. Oh.
Speaker 2: Interesting, So this is sort of like the equivalent of
Speaker 2: a model minority.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's a really good comparison. Here's Drew
Speaker 1: talking about how this applies to that Golden Girls episode.
Speaker 3: In some ways, Gene is sort of an angel lesbian
Speaker 3: in that, like she doesn't really have any flaws. She's
Speaker 3: aside from the fact that she is lusting after Rose,
Speaker 3: and angel gays normally don't get to want someone the
Speaker 3: way Gene wants Rose. So that's probably the one exception
Speaker 3: to it.
Speaker 1: And Okay, it's because they can't show lust or desire.
Speaker 2: They don't.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they don't. You're there to like maybe make some
Speaker 3: snapping comments and that's it. Mostly you're there to help
Speaker 3: probably a straight female character achieve something in her life,
Speaker 3: and then you fled away and you never heard from again.
Speaker 3: There is this thing that happens on sitcoms where usually
Speaker 3: in the second season they'll do an episode that tells
Speaker 3: the audience, despite how things might look, this character is
Speaker 3: not gay. And this is an example of that where
Speaker 3: if someone is watching, like, why are these ladies living together?
Speaker 3: Are they some sort of lesbians? This is the episode
Speaker 3: that will definitively spell out they are not lesbians. B
Speaker 3: Arthur has that voice, she is not a lesbian and
Speaker 3: they are all heterosexual. Don't worry, you're watching a straight
Speaker 3: show with straight characters.
Speaker 1: Do you have a name for that?
Speaker 3: I guess we're called the second season clarification.
Speaker 1: Another troupe you might recognize, it's called buryer gaze.
Speaker 2: That doesn't sound good.
Speaker 1: The trope was originally used actually in books. It was
Speaker 1: a way for gay authors to write about gay characters
Speaker 1: without coming under fire for breaking laws. And so you
Speaker 1: see this a lot in lesbian pulp fiction of the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties and sixties, and the idea there was that
Speaker 1: they could avoid the censors and the obscenity laws because
Speaker 1: if a queer character was given a happy ending, it
Speaker 1: would set off alarms. But if you just kill one
Speaker 1: off at the end, then it becomes a cautionary tale. Okay,
Speaker 1: terror maybe God, it's so insidious, isn't that crazy? So
Speaker 1: it sort of starts as this sneaky positive but not
Speaker 1: totally positive thing, but then it just starts to become
Speaker 1: a broader trop.
Speaker 2: Meaning they just eventually start killing off all their gay characters.
Speaker 1: I mean kind of auto Straddle, which is a lesbian website,
Speaker 1: has a list that they update every year of currently
Speaker 1: it's two hundred and thirty dead lesbian and bisexual characters
Speaker 1: on TV and how they died.
Speaker 2: It's interesting because that's a trope we hear about so
Speaker 2: much in horror movies about the black friend, Like if
Speaker 2: you're the black friend in a horror movie, you're going
Speaker 2: to die first. But I didn't realize this was also
Speaker 2: a thing. If you were a lesbian or bisexual character,
Speaker 2: you also were doomed. That's a really good comparison.
Speaker 1: And yeah, there are a few that I remember, Like
Speaker 1: there's an example in nineteen ninety seven and NYPD Blue
Speaker 1: where Kathy, who is a lesbian, is shot by a
Speaker 1: hitman hired by her girlfriend's ex. There's another example on Buffy,
Speaker 1: which I think is more our generation. There's this scene
Speaker 1: where you finally get to see longtime girlfriends Willow and
Speaker 1: Tara in bed together. I forget how good this could feel,
Speaker 1: us together, about the magic. There was plenty of magic,
Speaker 1: and yet then in that very same episode, Tera is
Speaker 1: killed by a stray bullet, so you don't get to
Speaker 1: see the relationship progress.
Speaker 2: Wasn't that sort of a famous scene with Willow and
Speaker 2: Derek as they had shared a historic kiss.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's why I think it was so upsetting when
Speaker 1: she was killed off. But here let me go to
Speaker 1: Maya again, because she actually talks about how this plays
Speaker 1: out in a couple of different ways.
Speaker 5: There is the obvious the person literally dies, it drops dead.
Speaker 5: But even if a lesbian character or any LGBTQ character,
Speaker 5: even the Golden Girl's character, in a way, they might
Speaker 5: not die, but you just never see them again. You Know,
Speaker 5: It's one thing to like come out on TV or
Speaker 5: be on an episode, say, it's a whole other thing
Speaker 5: to have a whole storyline and continue to be gay.
Speaker 5: So it's like one thing to come out and be
Speaker 5: gay on TV, but it's another thing to stay gay.
Speaker 1: Okay, there's one other phenomenon I want to mention here,
Speaker 1: which is the lesbian kiss, and in particular the lesbian
Speaker 1: kiss episode, which becomes a thing in television and film
Speaker 1: where a seemingly heterosexual female character will kiss a possibly
Speaker 1: lesbian or maybe by character, and in many of the instances,
Speaker 1: like the potential for a relationship does not actually survive
Speaker 1: past this one episode, and you know, the lesbian or
Speaker 1: suspected lesbian is never to be heard from again, and
Speaker 1: the other character goes back to their straight hetero.
Speaker 2: So this would be the sort of like the lesbian
Speaker 2: kiss that's really purely for the male gaze.
Speaker 1: I think that's exactly it. And one of the first
Speaker 1: big examples of this comes in nineteen ninety one on
Speaker 1: La Law.
Speaker 2: Oh, I know La Law. I watched La Law. I'm
Speaker 2: beginning to think this episode is purely set up to
Speaker 2: make it look like I did nothing but watch TV
Speaker 2: as a child, which is not.
Speaker 1: You too accurate, And maybe I didn't watch enough. It's
Speaker 1: like all I did about it because I don't remember this,
Speaker 1: But what happened is there's a kiss between these two lawyers,
Speaker 1: Lamb and Abby Perkins and It's widely regarded as the
Speaker 1: first romantic kiss between two women on a major network.
Speaker 1: And this is interesting because it's historic in a good
Speaker 1: way in that it's the first time two women kiss
Speaker 1: on TV, and also because you know, neither one of
Speaker 1: them dies or like kills anyone or is ostracized afterwards.
Speaker 2: And I don't remember this character being gay at all,
Speaker 2: so that's fascinating.
Speaker 1: And part of that is probably because it was never
Speaker 1: meant to be a real relationship that would develop.
Speaker 4: You kissed me back, Yeah, I'd sort of like to forget.
Speaker 2: The whole thing.
Speaker 1: Even later on, as the actresses who played these characters
Speaker 1: were interviewed, they've described how essentially this kiss was included
Speaker 1: for race of course, like it was not meant to
Speaker 1: be developed, It was not meant to be expanded on.
Speaker 1: And that was it.
Speaker 2: Wasn't there something similar on Picket Fences?
Speaker 1: Yeah? So Picket Fences is another example where two teenagers
Speaker 1: kiss in nineteen ninety three, and then one of the
Speaker 1: big ones that's often referenced is nineteen ninety four on Roseanne,
Speaker 1: and this is a kiss between Roseanne Barr and maryo Hemenway,
Speaker 1: and it's in an episode titled don't ask, don't tell,
Speaker 1: get a hang out world.
Speaker 2: I was thinking that too, but next time, let's leave
Speaker 2: the wives at home.
Speaker 4: Read my mind.
Speaker 1: Huh.
Speaker 2: I don't actually remember this particular episode, but this must
Speaker 2: have been the Clinton era, right because don't Ask, Don't
Speaker 2: Tell was something he introduced in relationship to gays in
Speaker 2: the military, but it was very much part of the zeitgeist.
Speaker 1: And this one actually ends up being a pretty big deal.
Speaker 1: The kiss lasts for three seconds, oh my god. Though
Speaker 1: of course, if you rewatch it, you can't actually see
Speaker 1: either of their lips, so you.
Speaker 2: Know, I'm watch that because I don't know how you
Speaker 2: would have a kiss where you couldn't see any lips.
Speaker 1: But it becomes a big deal. Like ABC didn't want
Speaker 1: to air the episode, and whatever we think of Roseanne
Speaker 1: bar today, at this time, she, to her credit, threatened
Speaker 1: to take her sitcom to another network if they wouldn't
Speaker 1: actually air, which I think is part of the beauty
Speaker 1: of being in charge of your own show, which she
Speaker 1: was at the time with her husband.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think that is the sad thing about
Speaker 2: rose Enbart because that show really did break so many
Speaker 2: barriers and was so progressive in so many ways.
Speaker 1: And actually that character becomes one of the first recurring
Speaker 1: bisexual characters on a show, so it really did have
Speaker 1: an impact. But for the most part, these lesbian kiss
Speaker 1: episodes were more just sweep stunts. And in many cases,
Speaker 1: these sweep stunts are dreamed up by a straight male
Speaker 1: show runner.
Speaker 2: I mean, of course they are, because straight male showrunners
Speaker 2: still run most shows unfortunately.
Speaker 1: And the thing is, these stunts are actually pretty effective
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways. Like they're visual, they are cheap,
Speaker 1: they're controversial, so people talk about them. And then the
Speaker 1: other thing is they're like easily reversible. You don't have
Speaker 1: to develop the relationship. You can, like you said, just
Speaker 1: like go vanish into the night and go back to
Speaker 1: the plotline as you had.
Speaker 2: It before, right, So it's like the lesbians sweeps in,
Speaker 2: gives you your sweeps numbers, and then sweeps away exactly.
Speaker 2: You know what this reminds me of actually is do
Speaker 2: you remember when Brittany and Madonna and Christina Aguilera did
Speaker 2: that kiss at the MTV VMAs in two thousand and three.
Speaker 1: I of course remember this moment, but I think I've
Speaker 1: forgotten the details a little bit. Like I remember there
Speaker 1: was a pretty lengthy kiss between Brittany and Madonna, And
Speaker 1: was Christina watching while that happened?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, I guess Christina was watching, But really
Speaker 2: what it was was that the three of them performed
Speaker 2: a song Brittany, Madonna, and Christina Aguilera, and at the
Speaker 2: end of the song, Madonna leans over and gives Brittany
Speaker 2: kind of a peck. Actually it's not like a lengthy kiss,
Speaker 2: although there was a lot of debate at the time
Speaker 2: of whether or not there was tongue or whatever. And
Speaker 2: then she does the same with Christina. But most people
Speaker 2: don't remember the Christina part because the camera immediately panned
Speaker 2: to Justin Timberlake, because Brittany and Justin had recently broken up,
Speaker 2: So you know, all the audience cared about was his reaction,
Speaker 2: or all the director thought the audience would care about
Speaker 2: was his reaction. So, you know, Brittany wrote about this
Speaker 2: in her book about how this becomes kind of a
Speaker 2: big cultural moment and it's for the same reasons, right,
Speaker 2: It's salacious and it gets attention because it's two women kissing.
Speaker 1: And actually Maya said something really interesting about how growing
Speaker 1: up during this time, these random performative kisses felt so
Speaker 1: prevalent that they actually influenced how she felt about using
Speaker 1: the word lesbian.
Speaker 5: I mean, I will admit that it has not always
Speaker 5: been the most comfortable word for me to use, depends
Speaker 5: on the setting. In the eighties and nineties and the aughts,
Speaker 5: it was like a phrase that represented it just went
Speaker 5: hand in hand with like pornography and what The word
Speaker 5: lesbian was like a word kind of owned and used
Speaker 5: by like men to represent like what they wanted to see.
Speaker 4: It was.
Speaker 1: It was like titillating to say the wordless exactly exactly.
Speaker 5: You don't always want to conjure up images of like
Speaker 5: lesbian sex and people's.
Speaker 4: When you use the word.
Speaker 5: So I used to just rely on using the word
Speaker 5: gay because I didn't feel like I own the word
Speaker 5: lesbian in the way that I wanted to the way
Speaker 5: that I feel like I do now.
Speaker 2: But some real lesbian characters do you start to emerge.
Speaker 2: Right in the late nineties and the aughts, we start
Speaker 2: to see this improve in a way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there were a few. One that I really remember
Speaker 1: is on Friends, where you have Ross's ex wife Carol,
Speaker 1: who has an affair and leaves him for Susan. Yes, Friends,
Speaker 1: Family were gathered here today to join Carol and Susan
Speaker 1: in holy matrimony, and Susan and Carol go on to
Speaker 1: get married, and the three of them cope parent their son,
Speaker 1: which is actually a really nice example of a blended family.
Speaker 2: I really remember that it was often sort of a
Speaker 2: joke at Ross's expense, right that his wife had left
Speaker 2: him for a woman. But they did air Susan and
Speaker 2: Carroll's wedding nearly a decade before same sex marriage was
Speaker 2: legal in the United States.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so all of that was great in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways, but there were still limits, like they didn't
Speaker 1: kiss at that wedding. The wedding episode was banned in
Speaker 1: several markets, and like you said, the relationship was really
Speaker 1: used as a punchline at the expense of Ross, like
Speaker 1: sometimes in a funny way, but also as a punchline.
Speaker 1: It seems like.
Speaker 3: Ross is the kind of guy who would marry a
Speaker 3: woman on the verge of being a lesbian and then
Speaker 3: push her over the ash.
Speaker 1: Another thing that happened was later on the actress who
Speaker 1: played Susan actually did an interview where she talked about
Speaker 1: how she was cast for the role because basically she
Speaker 1: didn't look like a lesbian, so she was palatable enough
Speaker 1: for the friend's audience.
Speaker 2: You know, that's kind of a parallel to Jane in
Speaker 2: the Golden Girls episode, right, that in some ways it's
Speaker 2: progress to have lesbian characters who don't look like some
Speaker 2: sort of stereotype, the same way it's progressed not to
Speaker 2: have gay men who always have to be like sassy
Speaker 2: best friends. But on the other hand, it's also about
Speaker 2: making them accessible to a quote unquote mainstream audience.
Speaker 1: I guess, yeah, exactly. And actually, I want to go
Speaker 1: back to Jane for a moment and that Golden Girls
Speaker 1: episode that started all of this, because yes, on the
Speaker 1: one hand, like Jean is the perfect not too lesbian lesbian,
Speaker 1: but there are also some things in watching the episode
Speaker 1: now that really stood out to me. The first thing
Speaker 1: is that Jean's character is pretty well developed for a
Speaker 1: gay character at that time, Like she's comfortable with her sexuality,
Speaker 1: she's uninterested in hiding it. At one point, when Dorothy
Speaker 1: is telling her that she wasn't sure she should tell
Speaker 1: the other girls, Jane says, well, you know, I'm not
Speaker 1: embarrassed or ashamed of who I am.
Speaker 2: Hey, you know your friends better than I do. If
Speaker 2: you think they're the kind of people who can handle it, I'd.
Speaker 1: Prefer to tell them. And also she's always been a lesbian,
Speaker 1: like she's not just trying this on, which I think
Speaker 1: is how in later years a lot of the gay
Speaker 1: characters were depicted as just trying it out and then
Speaker 1: going back to the way they were. And even when
Speaker 1: you know she has the hots four Rose, it's not
Speaker 1: treated in like a predatory sense or even so much
Speaker 1: like a joke. And then when the episode closes, after
Speaker 1: we've learned that Rose doesn't share the feelings, but she
Speaker 1: says this really lovely thing, which is she gently tells Jean,
Speaker 1: if I were like you, meaning a lesbian, I'd be
Speaker 1: proud and flattered that you thought of me that way.
Speaker 2: That is actually a really lovely way to respond. I
Speaker 2: think we all wish that, you know, when we were
Speaker 2: presented with something uncomfortable, we would respond in such like
Speaker 2: a gentle and sweet way.
Speaker 1: And so it's interesting looking back and trying to analyze
Speaker 1: I guess what is going on here, and like how
Speaker 1: much the writers were actually conscious of what they're doing,
Speaker 1: because on the one hand, Jean, she appears she's like
Speaker 1: very attractive, she's super palatable. She looks like the other girls.
Speaker 1: You know, she's got her own caf dan. She's not butchered.
Speaker 1: She's not playing into the stereotype we might have of
Speaker 1: what a lesbian looks like. At the same time, the
Speaker 1: writers are not shying away from the fact that she
Speaker 1: is who she is, Like they say the word lesbian
Speaker 1: in that episode over and over and over again, like
Speaker 1: if you were confusing Lebanese and lesbian before, you will
Speaker 1: not be confusing it after you watch this, And that
Speaker 1: was really not common at that time.
Speaker 2: We've finally seen an evolution to some degree with how
Speaker 2: lesbians are depicted on TV. But I'm curious if anything
Speaker 2: else comes of the Lebanese lesbian joke.
Speaker 1: Well, yes, so, just to recap after Golden Girls, the
Speaker 1: joke first re emerges in nineteen ninety one on the
Speaker 1: Rose O'donnald Show in a conversation with Ellen DeGeneres, and
Speaker 1: then again it appears in Me and Girls as a
Speaker 1: kind of wink wink inside joke about janis Ian the
Speaker 1: hot goth Lebanie is lesbian. But this is the best part.
Speaker 1: The joke keeps coming up.
Speaker 2: It really does have a life of its own.
Speaker 1: It is again in twenty eleven episode of Glee. This
Speaker 1: is an episode titled Born This Way, which is the
Speaker 1: Lady Gaga queer anbum. Yes, I'm guessing you also watched
Speaker 1: Clee Okay.
Speaker 2: Yes, obviously I'm familiar both with Lady Gaga and Lee.
Speaker 1: Okay, And so in this episode there's a scene of
Speaker 1: Santana and Brittany, and Brittany gets a T shirt made
Speaker 1: that's supposed to say lesbian, but instead it says Lebanese Way.
Speaker 2: Was that supposed to be lesbian? Yeah? Isn't that what
Speaker 2: it says?
Speaker 1: And it's supposed to be I guess this kind of
Speaker 1: airhead moment or mistake, but there it is again, Lebanie
Speaker 1: is lesbian.
Speaker 2: I probably watched this and it didn't register for me
Speaker 2: because I didn't know that this joke was like a thing,
Speaker 2: So I probably was just like, yes.
Speaker 1: He's very did see Then later on in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: there's actually an episode of Master of None. This is
Speaker 1: the show created by Azi's I'm Sorry, and they devote
Speaker 1: this entire episode to the coming out story of Denise,
Speaker 1: who's played by Lena Waith.
Speaker 2: We finally found a show that I did not watch,
Speaker 2: but I do remember that Lena in an Emmy for this, right,
Speaker 2: I've been meaning to watch this show.
Speaker 1: Yeah it's Leena Way want an Emmy for this. But
Speaker 1: the interesting thing here is that this joke appears again,
Speaker 1: but this time it's a little bit less of a
Speaker 1: joke here. I'm gonna let Maya explain this.
Speaker 5: I talk about this episode all the time because I
Speaker 5: do think it's pretty much the greatest, one of the
Speaker 5: greatest episodes of.
Speaker 4: Television in like the last ten years.
Speaker 5: But in this episode, the Lebanese lesbian joke kind of
Speaker 5: takes like a little bit of a different spin, even
Speaker 5: though it's used in a similar way, but it's not
Speaker 5: as jokey Lena Waite as the adult Denise. But here
Speaker 5: you have like the teenage Denise speaking to dev the
Speaker 5: childhood version of Ziz and Sorry's character.
Speaker 2: But they have this conversation, where are you trying to
Speaker 2: tell me that you're you know?
Speaker 4: She says, like, you know, I'm Lebanese?
Speaker 2: Lebanese? Wait, you're from Lebanon? No wat, I don't know
Speaker 2: how to fet comfortable with the word a lesbian.
Speaker 5: And she kind of uses that as a cover because
Speaker 5: she's not ready to use the word lesbian or say
Speaker 5: the word lesbian even as refer to herself who she
Speaker 5: is or in conversation, because she's still kind of like
Speaker 5: grappling with that reality, so she uses it as kind
Speaker 5: of a substitute word that she's more comfortable saying.
Speaker 1: I just love that so much because it's like we've
Speaker 1: seen this plan words go from haha, wink wink, that's
Speaker 1: what she said, joke to this actually really poignant moment
Speaker 1: that allows this character to say how she identifies without
Speaker 1: having to say it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really sweet in a way that this joke
Speaker 2: that now that we've traced the history sort of started
Speaker 2: in a way that was throwaway, really has become meaningful
Speaker 2: for some people.
Speaker 1: Okay, I have one other thing to tell you, which
Speaker 1: is that as I was interviewing Maya, she'd been watching
Speaker 1: RuPaul's Drag Race where this joke came up again, and
Speaker 1: I couldn't believe.
Speaker 4: When this happened.
Speaker 5: It seemed like I was dreaming in a way because
Speaker 5: it was so perfect, And.
Speaker 1: So what was happening is Maya was watching this episode
Speaker 1: of Drag Race where the queens are tasked in this
Speaker 1: challenge with giving some lesbians a makeover.
Speaker 5: Ruined Michelle have this exchange where Michellevissage asks, you know,
Speaker 5: why are we.
Speaker 4: Remaking, you know, Lebanese women, and it's.
Speaker 2: Like, not Lebanese, Michelle, Le's bit lesbian.
Speaker 4: And then you really have the full circle moment where
Speaker 4: Michelle is like.
Speaker 2: That sounds like fun.
Speaker 5: Thanks, Golden Girls, and she looks at the camera and
Speaker 5: wigs and I'm like, we're living in a simulation.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, I mean it's perfect.
Speaker 1: It's almost too perfect. And so I guess I don't know.
Speaker 1: Somewhere in writer's rooms all over America, people are still
Speaker 1: deciding that this is a joke worthy of telling.
Speaker 2: That is beautiful. And I have to say that going
Speaker 2: on this journey with you about this joke has made
Speaker 2: me love the Golden Girls even more than I did before,
Speaker 2: which I did not know was possible.
Speaker 1: I love that and I'm so glad. And I also
Speaker 1: have one more surprise for you, Yea, though it's not
Speaker 1: actually for you, But do you remember when I told
Speaker 1: you that Maya this is Maya Salaam. New York Times
Speaker 1: culture editor, a very established journalist, was once the proud
Speaker 1: owner of Lebanese lesbian.
Speaker 2: Dot Course How could I forget such a thing?
Speaker 1: How could you forget? Well, when we were talking, she
Speaker 1: confessed to me that she actually let it lapse, and
Speaker 1: I was horrified. I mean, like, honestly, that's pretty homophobic,
Speaker 1: maybe even, and so you know, I did what a
Speaker 1: good ally does. I decided to buy it for her. So, Susie,
Speaker 1: you're now speaking to the owner of Lebanese lesbian dot com,
Speaker 1: which honestly is probably appropriate. So I need to figure
Speaker 1: out how to transfer this to Maya immediately.
Speaker 2: That's really beautiful.
Speaker 1: Congratulations Maya, and congratulations to Lebanese lesbians everywhere.
Speaker 2: Jess, do you want to tell listeners we have coming
Speaker 2: up next week?
Speaker 1: Yes, it's an interview with the director of Bottoms, the
Speaker 1: hilarious gay fight club comedy whose director happens to also
Speaker 1: be the best friend of one of our producers, Sharon.
Speaker 1: I knew that I wanted to make a teen comedy
Speaker 1: and that I wanted it to be queer from the
Speaker 1: get go.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was no we'll see what the sexualities of
Speaker 2: these characters are. This is in retrospect. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 2: Is there a pop culture moment you can't stop thinking
Speaker 2: about and want us to explore in a future episode.
Speaker 2: Email us at in Retropod at gmail dot com, or
Speaker 2: find us on Instagram at in retropod.
Speaker 1: If you love this podcast, please rate and review us
Speaker 1: on Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen. If you
Speaker 1: hate it, you can post nasty comments on our Instagram,
Speaker 1: which we may or may not delete.
Speaker 2: You can also find us on Instagram at Jessica Bennett
Speaker 2: and at Susie b NYC. Also check out Jessica's books
Speaker 2: Feminist Fight Club and This Is Eighteen.
Speaker 1: In Retrospect is a production of iHeart podcast and the Media.
Speaker 1: Lauren Anson is our supervising producer. Derek Clements is our
Speaker 1: engineer and sound designer. Emily Meronoff is our producer. Sharan
Speaker 1: Atia is our researcher and associate producer.
Speaker 2: Our executive producer from the media is Cindy Levy. Our
Speaker 2: executive producers from iHeart are Anna Stump and Katrina Norbel.
Speaker 2: Our artwork is from Pentagram, additional editing help from Mary do.
Speaker 2: Our mixing engineer is Amanda Rose Smith. We are your
Speaker 2: hosts Susie Bannaccarum.
Speaker 1: And Jessica Bennett. We are also executive producers for even
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