The L Word Site

Dr. Kelly Kessler, an Assistant Professor of Media and Cinema Studies in the College of Communication at DePaul University, will be presenting her work at The University of Arizona.

The title of her presentation is: 

Showtime Thinks, Therefore I Am: 

The Corporate Construction of “The Lesbian” on sho.com’s The L Word Site

Kelly Kessler, PhD

Monday March 1

5-6:30pm

Student Union Tucson Room

FREE and open to the public

Presented by the School of Media Arts Visiting Artists and Scholars Series, co-sponsored by the Hanson Film Institute, the UA Office of LGBTQ Affairs, the Institute for LGBT Studies, ASUA Pride Alliance, the Department of English, and the Department of Gender & Women's Studies.

In 2004 Showtime launched its dyke drama with a less-than-stellar website that allowed fans to login and talk about the show (or whatever they liked). Over time, Showtime pimped out the site with all of the emergent bells-and-whistles: blogs, social networking, Second Life (SL) portal, wiki, online-only video materials, and message boards. Indicative of trends in corporate driven cyberspace, these sites simultaneously provided lesbians—perhaps once isolated in the closet or rural Wyoming—an easy-access online community and created a corporate-controlled space that spoke to Showtime’s own economic imperatives.   This business-driven visibility and access allowed the powers that be to define just who was worthy to engage in/seemingly/ independent conversations about who s/he was and what s/he desired (Liberals? Butches? Lesbian mothers? Intellectuals?).  In order to partake in these new, sexy online toys, fans were forced to conform—wittingly or no—and define themselves in ways most conducive to Showtime’s vision. Through an examination of the site’s strict reins on identity construction as produced by its texts, interfaces, inclusions, and striking omissions, this presentation seeks to shed some light on the more subtle means by which corporate fingers placed in fannish pies may lead to a less than savory dish.

Kelly Kessler is an Assistant Professor of Media and Cinema Studies in the College of Communication at DePaul University.  Her work has focused on issues of gender, sexuality, and genre in both television and film, specifically engaging with the mainstreaming of lesbianism in television and film and the articulation of masculinity in the Hollywood musical.  Her book/Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical:  Music, Masculinity, and Mayhem/is forthcoming from Palgrave.  Current projects like the one being presented seek to examine the various ways in which the user /freedom/ and /agency/ provided through fan sites, social networking sites, and role-playing games come with a catch: the corporate fingerprint behind the user-friendly content.