Cloned This Way: Emphatic Dissonance and Mixed Messages in the Representations of Non-Heterosexual Sex Acts in Three Television Series

Abstract

The United States has experienced increasing social and political acceptance of LGBTQ culture. This increasing acceptance has been accompanied by increased representations of LGBTQ in popular culture, particularly television, and, in the case of this work, fictional narratives. While there are certainly representations that are worthy of the term “trailblazing” in their treatment of LGBTQ relationships, many seem to be included in plotlines for shock value. This article discusses and explores three questions: First, what impact might media representations have on heteronormative understandings of LGBTQ culture? Second, does acceptance of LGBTQ culture follow any sort of historical trajectory that is similarly evident in other examples such as with changes in the representation of race over the history of television? And third, how might the representations reviewed in this article affect the struggle for LGBTQ rights?