I Can See Queerly Now

“Judy, Liza, Barbra, Bette, these are names I shan’t forget.” These words have been rattling around my brain since I first heard them on Will & Grace years ago. Set in late 1990s to early 2000s New York City, Will & Grace centers on best friends and roommates Will Truman (Eric McCormack), a lawyer, and Grace Adler (Debra Messing), an interior designer as well as their friends Karen Walker (Megan Mullally), a wealthy socialite, and Jack McFarland (Sean Hayes), an actor. 

The above quote comes from an episode in season five in which Will and Jack are essentially teaching Karen’s cousin Barry (Dan Futterman) how to be gay after he recently came out. Class was in session, and a young Sara was on the EDGE of her seat getting an education in queer culture alongside Barry. 

Will & Grace brought gay characters front and center on television during a time when we were relegated to being non-existent, a joke, or a dramatic plot twist. Many gay people saw themselves on television for the first time. Many straight viewers recalibrated the one-dimensional portrayals they previously believed to be true. The impact of this show even went beyond our living rooms, receiving praise from then Vice President Biden as he discussed his support of marriage equality.

A common criticism of Will & Grace is that it reinforces stereotypes. I don’t see that when I watch Will & Grace. What I do see is a show that focuses primarily on gay characters who are cis white men. But it comes at no surprise that the breakthrough show would only deviate from the cis white straight man identity by one degree, as if to say you can be “diverse” but not “too diverse.”

While I disagree with the stereotype reinforcement critique, I understand why people make it. The fear of stereotype reinforcement comes from the very real danger of misrepresenting a marginalized group, wrapping it in humor, and giving people outside of that group false information about who these people are. The weight placed on Will & Grace was so heavy because there simply was not enough queer representation.

There can be a temptation to make a final ruling on whether a show got it right. I’m just going to burst that binary-bubble. One show cannot possibly “get it right,” because one show cannot possibly represent every iteration of being queer. Queer is an umbrella term that encompasses many identities, but even if we whittled it down to one identity, being gay, that is just one of many identities an individual holds that makes them who they are. 

Critiques have value not as an assignment of blame, but rather a roadmap for where we need to go. Truly moving forward requires developing representation for those who don’t yet see themselves. And when I say more representation, I don’t just mean on screen. We need that representation from stem to stern, dear. I’m talking writers, directors, network executives. The limit does not exist. In order to have representation that is true to the experience, the people behind the scenes need to have lived that experience.

So what does the on screen representation look like? It could go the route of Schitt’s Creek, a comedy that centers on the formerly wealthy Rose family who are forced to start over in the town of Schitt’s Creek, the lone asset they retained after their business manager embezzled their fortune. 

While the town is filled with challenges and mishaps for the Roses, it is refreshingly free from homophobia. David Rose (Dan Levy) identifies as pansexual and he is able to build a business, find love, and live his life without having to overcome other people’s hatred. With the exception of the episode in which David’s fiancé Patrick Brewer (Noah Reid) is nervous about coming out to his parents, their queer identities are not framed as something that could ever spark a negative response.

The representation could also go the route of Mindy Kaling’s Never Have I Ever, which tells the story of Fabiola Torres (Lee Rodriguez) embracing who she truly is and finding love and support along the way. Never Have I Ever follows teenager Devi Vishwakumar (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan) as she navigates high school, friendships, family, and potential romantic relationships. One of Devi’s best friends, Fabiola’s season one storyline is about her discovering she is gay and coming out to her friends and family. 

In a natural progression, Fabiola’s season two storyline moves beyond the coming out story into the uncertainty of being out. Much like Barry in Will & Grace, Fabiola follows the advice of other queer people and changes who she is in order to be who she thinks she is supposed to be. But as she begins to crack under the pressure, she gets a reminder from her friend Jonah (Dino Petrera) that “the whole point of coming out is to get to be who you really are.” 

While they can be cathartic, it would be nice if one day the stories of struggle seemed irrelevant, like relics of the past. But until we get to where we want to be in society, both kinds of stories serve a purpose. It’s the reality of where we are versus the aspiration of where we hope to be: a point where we can just exist and not have to be processed or explained. 

As I thought about which shows to discuss for this piece, I was pleasantly surprised to think of so many choices. I could have talked about Abbi’s (Abbi Jacobson) casual coming out on Broad City. I could have talked about The Fosters and how meaningful it was to watch a show (for the first time) that centered on a family I imagined myself having. I could have talked about watching all of season thirteen of RuPaul’s Drag Race in two days after I got my second vaccine dose, lapping it up as if I found an oasis in a desert.

Although we’ve come a long way since Will & Grace premiered in 1998, we still have a long way to go. Trans and non-binary people are still incredibly underrepresented. We need more shows like Pose, which centers on trans women of color in New York’s underground ball culture in the 1980s and 1990s. Pose had trans and non-binary producers, directors, writers, and the largest cast of transgender actors in series regular roles. It also had the largest recurring cast of LGBTQ actors ever for a scripted series. Not to mention the absolutely iconic ball performances. I watched every episode with Shazam at the ready.

Genuine representation can be a life raft to a queer person struggling to embrace who they are when the society around them tells them to feel shame, to mute themselves, to conform. It can also develop allies by giving those who are not queer a better understanding of who we actually are, of our humanity. I hope queer representation in television continues to grow. There are so many queer people who deserve to have their stories told, and to tell it themselves.