Critical Studies in Media Communication

Vol. 28, No. 3, August 2011, pp. 193212

Pink Dollars, White Collars: Queer as

Folk, Valuable Viewers, and the Price
of Gay TV
Wendy Peters

Using the American series Queer as Folk (QAF) as a lens into queer televisual
representation, this article undertakes a political economic analysis of the shows
production and combines it with existing textual analyses of the series, in order to argue
that the quest for valuable demographics privileges viewers*gay and straight*with
access to race, class, and male privilege, and leads to whitewashed representations of
affluent, gender normative, gays and lesbians. Seeking to explore the implications of such
claims, I take up Fejess (2000) notation that the media [are] part of the larger social
process of creating identities for lesbians and gays and offer a qualitative analysis of
audience research involving a small sample of avid Canadian viewers of QAF. Among
these viewers, white, middle-class, gay, and questioning men were most likely to validate,
experience, and forge personal and collective gay identities in relation to the series. That
is to say, those non-heterosexual viewers most likely to be deemed valuable by Viacom
were best able to validate existing gay identities and come out in relation to QAF. This
research points to the ways in which gays, lesbians, and queers who fall outside of
demographics assessed as valuable may continue to be excluded from popular
representation and the apparently validating experience of consuming commodified
versions of oneself on television.

Keywords: television; niche marketing; lesbian and gay identities; Queer as Folk;
audience reception

Queer as Folk (Cowen & Lipman, 20002005), a dramatic and rather soapy series,
featured an ensemble cast of seven white, gay and lesbian characters who had gay and
lesbian friends, a larger queer community, and sex**plenty of sex.1 Clearly, at least
on the face of it, this was a different televisual representation of gays and lesbians than

Dr. Wendy Peters, Nipissing University, Gender Equality and Social Justice, 100 College Drive, Box 5002, North
Bay, Ontario, P1B 8L7, Canada. Email: [email protected]

ISSN 1529-5036 (print)/ISSN 1479-5809 (online) # 2011 National Communication Association

DOI: 10.1080/15295036.2011.559478
194 W. Peters
had been depicted prior to 2000. In fact, prior to the 1970s, representations of gays
and lesbians were largely absent from U.S. television. The rare depictions that did
exist cast them as pathological and criminal (Sender & Jhally, 1998). The growing
lesbian and gay liberation movement resulted in the first sympathetic representations
of gay and lesbian characters on the small screen in the 1970s, although with a
persistent tendency to limit them to the roles of victim, villain, or comic relief (Gross,
2001; Walters, 2001).2 These stereotypical tropes endured for three decades, and
television viewers grew accustomed to seeing the occasional solitary and predomi-
nantly chaste, white, middle-class, gay man or lesbian in weekly sitcoms or made-for-
TV movies. Even the first two broadcast network sitcoms to feature lesbian and gay
leading characters, Ellen (19941998) and Will & Grace (19982006), kept to the
comic relief pattern of representing white, middle-class, gay and lesbian characters
as lovable, amusing, and mildly neurotic: all talk and no action. Within this context,
Showtimes cable series Queer as Folk (QAF) appeared different in many respects.
While it primarily maintained the representation of gays and lesbians as white and
affluent, the series featured many gay and lesbian characters who formed a clique
within a larger queer community. Furthermore, beyond depicting love, intimacy, and
sex between same-sex partners, the characters enjoyed public sex, sex with strangers,
polyamorous relationships, sex for pay, bondage, discipline, and sado-masochism to
name only a few of the non-normative sexual practices represented on the series. QAF
(U.S.) quickly became the number one rated show on Showtime in the United States
and number two on Showcase in Canada (Underwood, 2002).
The programs popularity and its selective challenges to earlier tropes make it a
promising site at which to study televisual representation and how viewers respond
when groups that have been marginalized and stereotyped within popular culture
become privileged enough to be represented differently. While entering popular
culture is undeniably an important political objective for a marginalized group in
terms of visibility, it also marks a moment of commodification: identities have the
potential to create profits for large media conglomerates such as Viacom, which owns
niche market television networks including Showtime, LOGO for LGBT viewers,
and Black Entertainment Television.3 In assessing the current value of the pink
dollar, for example, LOGO estimates the gay market as having $835.3 billion in
buying power by 2011 (LOGOonline Gay Market Overview, 2010). What is at stake,
then, when representations of marginalized groups fall under the direction of
mainstream media conglomerates seeking to flatter and court members of such
economically valuable demographics?
Beginning with a description of the neoliberal corporate context of QAF (U.S.),
I argue that the quest for valuable demographics privileges viewers with access to
race, class, and male privilege, and leads to whitewashed images of middle-class,
primarily gender normative, gays and lesbians.4 I make this argument by
undertaking a political economic analysis of the shows production and combining
it with existing textual analyses of QAF. Seeking to push this analysis further, I take
up Fejess (2000) observation that the media [are] part of the larger social process
Pink Dollars, White Collars 195

of creating identities for lesbians and gays (p. 115). He is not suggesting a
hypodermic needle model where media fill passive viewers with beliefs and
identities, but rather a postmodern one in which media operate alongside other
systems of regulation and control**such as law and medicine**in the
production, circulation, and naturalization of discourses concerning sexual
identities, practices, and desires. Building on Fejess further assertions that
[m]edia images are very powerful in helping one develop a sense of identity
and, more specifically, that [p]eople coming out search the interpersonal and
media environment to understand their feelings and sense of difference (p. 115),
I offer a qualitative analysis of audience research involving a small sample of avid
Canadian viewers of QAF and suggest that, among these viewers, white, middle-
class, gay, and questioning men were most likely to validate, experience, and forge
personal and collective gay identities in relation to the series. Specifically, those gay
and questioning viewers most likely to be deemed valuable by Viacom were better
able to produce themselves as gay subjects, and validate their existing gay identities,
by watching QAF.
Based on these audience reception findings, and in keeping with Fejess claims
above, I assert that as media conglomerates consolidate the power of popular
representation within privatized neoliberal markets, they gain further influence in the
production and shaping of the personal and collective identities of their viewers.
They produce and widely distribute the representations that ultimately foster greater
access to, and validation of, gay subjectivities for privileged queers over others. In
turn, we see a further investment in, and entrenchment of, hierarchies of privilege
that structure queer communities. It is also worth considering QAF and the
commodification of gay and lesbian identities in a larger societal context. Changing
public opinions, court challenges, the continuation of neoliberal economic frame-
works and the increasing privatization of gayborhoods,5 in combination with the
discovery of gay markets and mainstream viewers edgy tastes, have all been part
of a broader movement contributing to the increasing acceptance, not of a complex
range of queer identities, but of gays and lesbians who represent the ideal consumer:
white, privatized, and affluent.
In the context of television studies, I draw on the recent work of Miller (2009),
specifically his vision of Media Studies 3.0.6 Fundamental to this approach is
a particular focus on gender, race, class, and sexuality in everyday life across
national lines (p. 6), that combines the study of ownership and production with
textual analysis and ethnographic research on audiences (see also Miller, 2010). In
this spirit, this article addresses and attempts to bridge the institutional context of
the production of QAF, the text itself, and Canadian viewer responses to a
transnational AmericanCanadian series with its origins in Britain. I point to the
limits of gay visibility by exploring how the neoliberal deregulated media markets
in the United States produce texts for valuable viewers and encourage privileged
gay subjectivities.
196 W. Peters

Queer as Folk: From Public-service to Premium Television

QAF began its televisual life in 1999 on Britains Channel 4, a publicly funded and
profit-oriented broadcast channel introduced in 1982 with a mandate to provide
programs for minority groups and those sections of the population not adequately
served by existing channels (Casey, Casey, Calvert, French, & Lewis, 2002, p. 36). The
British eight-part miniseries QAF (Shindler & Davies, 19992000) was an original
drama commissioned within the terms of this public-service mandate (Bignell, 2002,
p. 157). With its primary focus on the lives of three white, working- and middle-class
gay men, and its disavowal of positive stereotypes especially in relation to explicit
and non-monogamous gay sexual content (Davis, 2007), QAF (U.K.) was unique at
least by U.S. standards.7 A few minutes into the very first episode, viewers watched
29-year-old Stuart pick up, take home, kiss, rim, and have penetrative sex with
15-year-old Nathan. The British press, sponsors of the series, and a number of
Channel 4 viewers offered some unfavorable reactions, as did some [q]ueer critics
and commentators [who] were nervous and concerned about the messages that the
series sent out to the wider audience (Davis, 2007, p. 12).8 Yet, even with this critical
publicity**or possibly because of it**QAF s popularity stayed strong on a
weekly basis, with both gay men and a wider audience.9
The original home of QAF is notable because this British public-service broad-
caster*with its equity mandate*ultimately helped to shape the popular representa-
tion of gay men in the United States and Canada. Channel 4 created a show that U.S.
and Canadian networks were, prior to that time, not ready or willing to produce. As
the success of the British series caught the attention of Hollywood, the cable network
Showtime signed on to co-produce a North American version together with Canadas
Temple Street Productions.10 According to Gross (2001), Showtime was looking to
compete with rival HBOs success with provocative series such as The Sopranos, Oz,
and Sex and the City, and QAF looked appealing within that context. As a
consequence of its groundbreaking content, as well as its popularity and success in
Britain, QAF found a new home in the profit-driven, niche market of Showtime in
the United States.
As should already be apparent, the context out of which QAF emerged on
Channel 4 was markedly different from its context of recreation on Showtime.
Within its public-service regulatory mandate, Channel 4 explicitly prioritized the
representation of underrepresented groups, including gays and lesbians. By contrast,
while broadcast regulation in the United States prior to the mid 1970s sought to
promote diversity and minority perspectives in the name of the public interest,
the 1980s brought a period of rapid deregulation in favor of a market-driven logic
within which popularity and profitability became the determinants of televisual
content at the expense of regulations protecting underrepresented groups. This
deregulated context of production, in turn, influences who is represented onscreen.
The representation of marginalized groups on Showtime occurs incidentally and in
the service of courting and pleasing viewers who are valued in economic terms. In
the context of neoliberalism and deregulation, then, it has been noted that issues of
Pink Dollars, White Collars 197

underrepresentation are made invisible and representation is privatized and

available to those who can afford it (Wible, 2004).

Media Markets and Profitable Margins

Examining the political economy of QAF offers insights into how and why new
representations of marginalized groups occur in a given economic context. The
neoliberal privileging of deregulation, privatization, and value proportional to
affluence defines the context of production, appears throughout the text of QAF,
and is evident in the non-heterosexual viewers who are best able to cultivate
identifications and gay identities in relation to the series, extending even to the
privatized spaces where some viewers watch QAF.

From Marginalized Communities to Valuable Niche Markets

In the absence of regulations to promote the televisual representation of under-
represented groups, moving QAF across the Atlantic depended, in part, on
narrowcasting and the pursuit of economically valuable minority and main-
stream viewers. Where broadcasting typically consists of free, terrestrial networks
attempting to address and capture mainstream, predominantly white, middle-class,
heterosexual viewers, cable television introduced narrowcasting whereby specialty
channels are geared towards narrower taste cultures and previously overlooked
groups designated as minorities on the basis of race, sex, or sexual orientation
(Nightingale, 1996).11 As Arthurs (2003) explains, subscription cable channels*like
Showtime*draw

the audience into a different economic relation to the product, where the tastes of
audience-as-market, as direct purchasers of the channel, are not as obscured by the
normalizing processes of the mass market. This segmentation allows for a pluralism
that recognises previously marginalized cultures, albeit by their ability to pay.
(p. 84)

In the deregulated media marketplace, niche market networks allow for representa-
tions of marginalized groups. However, Arthurss notation*albeit by their ability to
pay*is central to the decisions made by networks that narrowcast in determining
which marginalized cultures will gain representation and, more specifically, which
valuable segments of a marginalized group will be flattered and courted by the
network.
Commercial and cable broadcasters are concerned with the size of a programs
audience and the amount of disposable income viewers have to spend. Viewers are
hierarchically ranked as valuable or not, based on their disposable incomes. As
Wible (2004) points out, such priorities can lead to programming only to young,
affluent*and white*audiences (p. 35). He offers the example of Latinos in the
United States who were shown through Nielsen ratings to represent a large percentage
of viewers yet were rarely marketed to prior to 2000, because media executives still
198 W. Peters
widely perceive[d] that all Latinos are poor (p. 45). By the same logic, televisual
representation prior to the 1990s suggests that gays and lesbians have not always been
a valued demographic group. Becker (2004) dates a significant representational shift
for gays and lesbians into new prominence to the 1990s when television network
executives began to believe that their most valued demographic, 1834-year-olds,
were a progressive and sophisticated group of liberal-minded viewers who would
embrace gay and lesbian characters. In a complementary analysis, Fejes (2000) argues
that the discovery that gay men were an attractive consumer market because of their
supposedly high-income profiles helped to bring gay characters to the small screen.12
Channel 4s public-service mandate led to the production of a miniseries about gay
men that mapped favorably onto the privatized free market model of appealing to
valuable demographics, including gay-positive straight viewers and supposedly
wealthy gay viewers.13 Together these market conditions facilitated QAF s move from
Manchester to Pittsburgh.

Naughty Network Branding

While QAF tapped into the pink dollar that Viacom had been pursuing, the series
attempted to attract a larger mainstream audience through a $10 million campaign to
promote the first season on Showtime (Elliot, 2000). The series fit within the niche
marketing and branding of Viacoms Showtime network, as well as Showcase, a
cable network owned by Canadas largest media conglomerate Canwest. Consider the
connotatively adult branding strategies of Showtime and Showcase as represented
by their transgressive slogans: No Limits and Television Without Borders. During
the run of QAF, Showcase underscored its sexual edginess by broadcasting sex- and
queer-themed programs such as Oz, Bliss, and KINK, aimed to appeal ostensibly to a
youthful, sexually adventurous, queer, and queer-positive audience. An analysis of
Showcase print advertisements suggests that the network presented the series under
the rubric of providing a naughty sexual diversion from white, middle-class norms.
Three ads from the 2004 Showcase print advertising campaign illustrate the brands
association with sexual subversion. One of the ads in the series features a mid-
twenties white male, dressed in business casual clothing, leaping gleefully from his
desk in the midst of a labyrinth of cubicles. Over this image is the phrase Im gay for
a day. Thanks Showcase! (2004b). Another ad shows office workers making lewd
gestures with their bodies, paired with the phrase We just slept with our boss.
Thanks Showcase! (2004a). Both ads depict conservatively dressed office workers
who appear to be cutting loose from their usual, presumably dull, daily grind. A third
ad in the series depicts an older, grey-haired, white heterosexual couple lying side by
side in bed, wearing modest pajamas, looking directly into the camera and smiling.
Over the image is the bondage, discipline, and sado-masochism-tinged phrase,
Showcase is our safe word. Thanks Showcase! (2004c). The text beneath each ad
reads: Every day countless people push their personal boundaries. If we helped, even
just a little, youre welcome. Showcase*saluting boundary pushers everywhere. The
campaign humorously and consistently positions Showcase as responsible for
Pink Dollars, White Collars 199

presumably shocking personal developments, particularly sexual transgressions

among normal, white, middle-class people.
By offering a fantasy of sexual transgression as a consumable affect for viewers,
Showcases brand association positions the viewer as normative but with a naughty
sexual side. It is within this context that QAF is positioned as out of bounds and
exactly where the viewer wants to go. The networks claim to offer television without
borders opens the door to programs such as QAF that, in part, challenge the status
quo of television representations. As Wible (2004) asks in his exploration of
Showtimes No Limits branding: Do the endless possibilities hint at the depiction
of multicultural experiences from the perspective of diverse subjects? Or does the
slogan only suggest representations of minority groups and other lifestyles that
white, moneyed viewers can feel comfortable watching? (pp. 4950). In relation to
QAF and the Canadian Showcase ads, normative boundaries of sex, gender, race, and
class are primarily maintained and re-entrenched*providing enough similarity to
limit the alienation of valued mainstream viewers*while sexual borders are
transgressed in the quest to provide edgy and provocative entertainment.14 The
selling of QAF and Showcase in these particular ads works, in part, because of
the marketing, privileging, and isolating of sexual transgression as a consumable
difference that is desirable and shocking. The foregrounding of white, middle-class,
gender normative characters on QAF and in the Showcase ads plays on the tension
between the presumed sexual normativity of the white middle-class and dirty
sexual non-normativity*two supposed opposites*producing the frisson of trans-
gression. In relation to the Showcase branding, the white, middle-class, gays and
lesbians on QAF can be seen as fresh, yet acceptable, fantasies to titillate and gratify
the otherwise normative viewer.

Synergy and Merchandizing

In terms of producing and shaping popular understandings of gays and lesbians, QAF
(U.S.) falls under the ownership and direction of one of the largest, vertically
integrated corporate parent companies in the contemporary U.S. media marketplace.
Media deregulation in the United States led to conglomeratization, which further
consolidated the power to produce popular representations to fewer and fewer
companies, creating synergistic conditions that position products made by vertically
and horizontally integrated conglomerates*such as QAF within the media
conglomerate Viacom*to become prominent and widely accessible within popular
culture.15
Through vertical and horizontal integration Viacom was able to: commission and
co-produce QAF with Temple Street Productions in Canada; attract subscribers to its
network Showtime; advertise the show on Viacom owned billboards in the United
States and Canada; syndicate the series on networks worldwide; earn rental and sales
income on the QAF DVDs through their assets Blockbuster Video and later the
LOGO online store16; and produce the QAF coffeetable book and paperback novel
series through their publishing house Simon and Shuster.17 These are only a few
200 W. Peters
examples of the value added marketing opportunities that media conglomerates can
access post-deregulation. In terms of creating and influencing popular under-
standings of gays and lesbians, the series is greatly privileged over independent queer
productions that do not have access to large-scale synergy.
In the absence of regulations concerning the televisual underrepresentation of
marginalized groups, the emphasis on narrowcasting and targeting valuable
audiences offers a context for understanding the profit motives driving the increase
in gay and lesbian representation. While media conglomerates seek untapped niche
markets to enhance their profits, and networks produce edgy programming to keep
mainstream viewers interested, valuable marginalized groups are increasingly
represented, and at times flattered and courted, by mainstream media conglomerates.
The deregulated and market-driven context of production influences the content of
the texts produced (Wible, 2004; Kellner, 2003), allows conglomerates synergy in the
creation, extensive marketing, and distribution of the representations they author,
and is evident in the gay and questioning viewers who are best able to cultivate
identifications and identities in relation to the series.

Hailing Valuable Viewers

In keeping with media conglomerates emphasis on profits and hailing valuable
viewers*both gay and straight*QAF offers a popular representation of gays and
lesbians that is overwhelmingly male, white, middle- and upper-class, and gender
normative (see Peters, 2009; Farrell, 2006; Jones, 2001; Gamson, 2000).18 When value
is accorded on the basis of disposable income, and race, class, sex, and gender
continue to unequally structure access to wealth and privilege, those most likely to be
courted, flattered, and placated by conglomerates and networks are viewers with the
greatest access to privilege.
Textual readings of the show suggest that beyond asserting sex, race, class, and
gender normativity and privilege for gays and lesbians, the series is, arguably, subtly
racist and unsubtly sexist (Gamson, 2000). Beirne (2006, 2008) characterizes the
series as privileging the narratives and sexualities of gay men over lesbians, and, in
relation to class, Cossman (2002) describes the world that gay men inhabit on QAF as
a deeply privatized space, where the gay male subject comes into being as a
privatized consumer of these sexualized spaces and services (p. 499). In fact, in the
move from a public-service network to a solely profit-driven network, the gay and
lesbian characters, and queer communities, are generally more affluent than on its
British predecessor, pitching the series ever closer to the idealized middle- to upper-
class viewer.
Thus, a textual reading informed by political economy suggests that although QAF,
Viacom, Showtime, and Showcase transgress the limited representations of gay and
lesbian televisual characters prior to the 2000s, they simultaneously shore up and re-
entrench boundaries between straight and gay, as well as hierarchies of race, class, sex,
and gender that structure Canada, the United States, and the diverse queer
communities that exist within these neighboring countries. In trying to make money
Pink Dollars, White Collars 201

and create provocative entertainment while avoiding harmful controversy, television

networks push some boundaries while nevertheless maintaining others.
What content or textual analysis cannot tell us, however, even when combined with
the larger institutional context of the series, is how the text, in turn, informs the
knowledge that viewers take from the text and whether this knowledge is used in
claiming and constructing identities. The insights from existing content analyses of
QAF (Beirne, 2006, 2008; Davis, 2007; Farr & Degroult, 2008; Gamson, 2000;
Johnson, 2004; Jones, 2001) are enhanced and complemented when placed in dialog
with the following audience reception study, as it is apparent that some gay, queer,
and questioning viewers*especially valuable gay viewers with access to sex, race,
and class privilege*are able to use the series to produce and validate personal and
collective sexual identities. Having outlined market conditions that contributed to the
emergence of QAF on American and Canadian networks, I narrow my focus in order
to consider how QAF was taken up by viewers who are newly valued as a
demographic*gay, lesbian, and queer identified viewers.

Shaped by Markets: Shaping Gay Identities and Communities

Drawing on focus groups, interviews, and surveys conducted with 40 avid viewers of
QAF in Southern Ontario*primarily Toronto*it is clear that personal and
community identifications are performed and experienced by viewers through
watching QAF.19 QAF participates in shaping and validating personal and collective
gay and queer identities. Some viewers even come out as gay or queer subjects
partly in relation to watching QAF. This assertion supports Kellners (2003)
suggestion that popular cultural texts

provide materials out of which we forge our very identities; our sense of selfhood;
our notion of what it means to be male or female; our sense of class, of ethnicity
and race, of nationality, of sexuality; and of us and them.. . . Media stories
provide the symbols, myths, and resources through which we constitute a common
culture and through the appropriation of which we insert ourselves into this
culture. (p. 9)

Following Kellner, then, QAF is simultaneously shaped by the culture and

institutional context out of which it emerges and, in turn, shapes cultural beliefs
and identities. The intertwining of pre-existing hierarchies of race, class, sex, and
gender, with queer identities and commodification occurs not only behind-the-
scenes in profit motives and niche marketing, but in front of television screens as
well, in part, through the performance of identities leading up to, during, and after
watching QAF.
While QAF and this research study attracted heterosexual, gay, lesbian, and queer
identified viewers, I draw here on the responses from 11 gay men, 7 queer women,
and 2 lesbian identified viewers. In particular, I highlight how gay male viewer
responses compared with the rest of the participants. While queer and lesbian women
overwhelmingly disidentified with the representation of lesbians on the series (see
202 W. Peters
Peters, 2009), and heterosexual women viewers in this study primarily loved the
hot actors and used the series in building their own queer-positive identities, gay
men were more likely than all other viewers to demonstrate pleasurable identifica-
tions with the characters*including gay, lesbian, and heterosexual characters*and
plotlines, and to use the series in the production, validation, and understanding of
their own identities.20 In the interactions between the viewers and the text*
including the desires, knowledge, and expectations the viewers bring to their reading
of QAF*gay viewers deemed valuable by the conglomerate seemed best able to
validate and produce themselves as gay identified subjects in relation to their
consumption of QAF.

Queer Viewers and the Desire for Self Representation

The responses of queer, lesbian, and gay identified viewers demonstrate how viewers
with non-normative sexual identities tuned in specifically because they were actively
looking for images of gays and lesbians onscreen. This suggests that, in part, niche
marketing works because some members of marginalized groups are actively and
understandably seeking self representation. Gay and lesbian identities can be used
by corporations and marketers specifically because such identifications are valuable
for those who take them up as their own. While network and corporate interests
value viewers in economic terms, the following responses demonstrate a range of
ways in which gay, lesbian, queer, and questioning viewers valued the series on their
own terms.
When asked why they started watching QAF, the 20 gay, lesbian, and queer-
identified viewers overwhelmingly explained that they wanted substantive gay,
lesbian, and queer characters in dramatic and unapologetic narratives within a
larger queer community. These three themes dominated descriptions of why queer
viewers initially tuned in to QAF.21 Lesbian identified viewer, Sidney, for example,
started watching QAF from the first episode. She writes,

I remember being very excited to see a show about gay people. I was pretty young
then, and not out too long and I was just so happy to hear that a show about gay
people, with actual lives and feelings was going to be airing. (Survey)

Sidneys feelings of excitement and happiness to simply hear about an upcoming

series featuring gay people, with actual lives and feelings are emblematic of how
enthusiastic many gay, lesbian, and queer viewers were to see gay lives on the small
screen and how implicitly dissatisfied they were with existing representations. They
illustrate Kellners point that popular cultural texts provide materials out of which
we forge our very identities as well as Fejess (2000) suggestion that people coming
out search the . . . media environment to understand their feelings and sense of
difference (p. 115). These kinds of responses from gay, lesbian, and queer viewers
draw attention to the active search some viewers engage in, as they seek out satisfying
materials about queer sexualities when they are not readily provided.
Pink Dollars, White Collars 203

Sidneys excitement in seeing such a series complements Ian who also watched
QAF from the first episode. He writes, I was interested in a show that would have
dramatic stories of queer life (Survey). These desires for dramatic stories of queer
life and gay people, with actual lives and feelings could ostensibly be satisfied, for
example, by a series such as Six Feet Under; however, as another participant, Kenneth,
articulates, many of the gay, lesbian, and queer viewers were looking for a show not
simply featuring gay characters, but one that focused on gay communities. Kenneth
writes, The show began around the same time I had come out to my friends at
school. I was excited that there was a television show that was about gay culture and
gay life in North America (Survey). The desires of these viewers point to connections
between large-scale representations in popular culture and the personal experience of
identifying with a rarely represented and marginalized group. These viewer responses
suggest that gay, lesbian, and queer viewers desired queer representation beyond what
was offered on television at that time and saw great promise in QAF. That said, after
tuning in, not all of these viewers enjoyed the series equally, and the cohort most
active in producing their sexual identities in relation to the series were young men
who were coming out.

Coming Out with Queer as Folk

Nine of the forty QAF viewers who participated in this study said they were
questioning their sexuality while watching QAF or were recently out. For seven of
these viewers, five of whom were white and middle-class men, QAF became a
resource for learning about and constituting gay and queer identities.22 Lucas, a
young, white, urban, undergraduate student, explained,

I was watching [QAF] before I came out, and it was just part of my whole personal
identification as a gay man. So, it kind of helped me through all that. It was also a
very personal thing too, because I was watching alone. It was part of my personal
development. (Focus group)

Similarly, Leo, a young, Asian-Canadian, urban, undergraduate student, describes his

viewing history:

I started watching it when I was in grade ten, which is three years ago actually, and
it kind of gave me a glimpse of what gay culture would be like, because I wasnt
really familiar with it, and I was kind of questioning. It gave me a glimpse of
Church Street and what it might be like. (Focus group)

In referring to QAFs Liberty Street solely as Torontos Church Street*a name it is

not called on the series*Leo uniquely glimpsed not only gay culture generally,
but also used the series to gain visual and virtual access to the gay district in his own
city.
Once again, Kellner (2003) bears repeating: Media stories provide the symbols,
myths, and resources through which we constitute a common culture and through
204 W. Peters
the appropriation of which we insert ourselves into this culture (p. 9). Prior to a
more public coming out, QAF provided these young men with a publicly accessible
field*although on a private cable network*where they could privately consume
images of gay culture and access discourses about gay and lesbian communities and
identities. While Lucas and Leo will have had access to discourses concerning gay
sexuality and identities outside of QAF, their comments suggest that QAF offered
knowledge that, in turn, was accepted as a form of self-knowledge to which these
viewers eventually subscribed. To subscribe in this context is first to subscribe to cable
in order to view QAF, and to subscribe to a dominant version of sexuality as a salient
and meaningful identity, which in the case of non-heterosexual identities must be
claimed and cultivated. Lucass statement that QAF was just part of [his] whole
personal identification as a gay man suggests that QAF provided some of the
resource material in producing Lucas as a specific kind of modern sexual subject*a
gay man. As noted before, QAF was most readily taken up by male viewers*in this
study, five white and middle-class, and one Asian-Canadian and middle-class*in the
process of gathering knowledge towards identifying and producing themselves as gay
men.23

Building and Privatizing Community and Collective Gay Identities through Queer as
Folk
Watching QAF was not strictly a solitary practice used in the production of individual
gay identities. Viewers use of QAF to cultivate and validate gay identities extended to
a desire to enjoy queer community together with other QAF viewers. Adding a
further layer to the intertwining of queer identities and commodification, a desire for
collective queer community viewing brought four white, middle-class, gay male
participants out to Woodys*a Toronto gay bar where some of the scenes in the
series were shot*to watch QAF regularly on Monday nights.24 Viewers who
described going to Woodys were generally older and more monied than those who
described coming out in relation to QAF. The gay men who regularly watched QAF
at Woodys all sought a community experience that was specifically based around gay
identification. As Ian explains, We go to Woodys to share the experience with the
community, as it is one of the rare occasions that television caters to queers
(Survey). Similarly, Jack, who was in his early sixties and had moved from a small city
in Southern Ontario to Toronto after coming out recently, explained how his Monday
nights revolved socially around QAF,

For the last three years Ive watched it at Woodys, and I think its just as much fun
sometimes to watch the audience as it is to watch the program. My roommate and
I, we have cable, but we make Monday night an outing. Wing night at [a lounge]
and then we go across to Woodys. (Interview)

When I asked Jack*who identified himself as having been heterosexually married

before, and for three decades following Stonewall*if QAF had shifted his view of
himself or his identity in any way, he answered, Just having it out in the open makes
Pink Dollars, White Collars 205

it easier to come out. I came out late in life and certainly when I was growing up there
wasnt anything like this (Interview).
Again, it becomes clear how important this rare depiction of gay life is to some of
the gay men who watch the series. For Ian and Jack, as well as two other white,
middle-class, gay men in this study, going to Woodys facilitated gay personal identity
building and maintenance, added a queer community dimension to watching QAF, as
well as a further privatized class-based dimension. While many straight, gay, queer,
and lesbian viewers watched QAF with friends at someones home or alone in their
parents home, gay and queer viewers with some disposable income were better able
to access and enjoy the increasingly privatized Toronto gayborhood for the price of a
beer or two.25 QAF, Woodys, and Torontos Church Street offer opportunities for
queer identification, role modeling, and community building, and they are*at least
in part*for profit and privatized consumption. As some white, middle-class, gay,
QAF viewers with access to disposable income validate and enjoy themselves as
members of the community*even though they have cable at home*it appears
that access to gay and lesbian identities, representations, and spaces is now more
readily available to everyone, albeit by their ability to pay. In keeping with Viacoms
aim to attract the gay and lesbian population . . . with [their] projected buying
power of $485 billion (Viacom, 2004), this research suggests that among non-
heterosexual viewers, gay identified viewers with access to privilege along the lines of
sex, race, and class have greatest access to the personal and community identifications
that are produced and performed in relation to QAF.26

Queer as White, Middle-class, Men Folk

While it is likely that all sexual identities in Canada and the United States are forged
partially in relation to popular representations, the recent expansion of representa-
tions of gays and lesbians on television means that gay, lesbian, and queer identified
viewers can now engage in the practice of identity formation in new ways. But
because whiteness and affluence are produced as unmarked universal categories,
the white, American, urbane, gays and lesbians on QAF may come to symbolically
stand in for all gays and lesbians*especially for those with no access to, or familiarity
with, queers or queer communities (see Peters, 2009). A qualitative analysis of this
sample of 40 Canadian viewers of QAF suggests that white, middle-class, men were
most likely to come out and forge a gay identity in relation to the series. The same
demographic was also more likely than other viewers to regularly go to Church Street
to watch QAF at Woodys in a shared, but privatized, community space, in order to
enjoy a collective and shared sense of gay identity. In many ways, these patterns are
unsurprising given that representations on QAF prioritize white, middle-class, gay
men over all other queers.
By offering this analysis I do not mean to implicitly suggest that QAF or any other
queer series must attempt to represent all queers. Clearly, that is an impossibility
given the diversity of queers and queer communities. Nor am I troubled by individual
identifications with, or personal and collective gay identities forged in relation to,
206 W. Peters
QAF. Rather, as long as there is a televisual paucity of American and Canadian
representations of queers, queer diversity, and queer communities, and existing
representations favor those with privilege, this research points to the ways in which
gays, lesbians, and queers who fall outside of demographics assessed as valuable
may continue to be excluded from popular representation and the apparently
validating experience of consuming commodified versions of oneself on television.
Through an examination of viewers deemed valuable by media conglomerates, a
representation designed to appeal to these valued viewers, and identifications
performed and produced in relation to the series, we see a further investment in,
and entrenchment of, hierarchies of privilege that structure queer communities. In
terms of commodified representations of gays and lesbians, the whiteness and class
privilege endemic in QAF s content raises the issue of how the series and viewer
identifications with it may entrench limiting and skewed notions of: who can be gay;
how to be gay; where gays and lesbians live in the world; and what it means to be gay
or lesbian. Since the majority of LGBT primetime television characters on cable
and broadcast networks were white gay men in 20082009 (GLAAD, 2009), 2009
2010 (GLAAD, 2010a), and 20102011 (GLAAD, 2010b), these concerns extend
beyond QAF.

Representations and Rights for Gays and Lesbians Albeit by Their Ability to Pay
Recent and ongoing mainstream struggles and victories for gay rights in the United
States and Canada foreground white, middle-class, monogamous gays and lesbians
seeking access to normative structures such as legal marriage*rather than the
abolition of marriage, for example*equal spousal benefits, access to becoming
adoptive parents, and same-sex couple immigration. While these are, arguably, rights
worthy of struggle, it is significant that the project of gender and sexual liberation
across race, class, sex, and gender has been publicly sidelined in favor of privatization,
consumption, rights, and benefits. In this quest for normative representation and
rights, Manalansan (2005) points out, for example, that people of color are
inevitably shunted from the sites of gay mainstream political and cultural desires*
the family, marriage, economic stability, and legal personhood (p. 103). In looking
at the white, middle-class, gender-normative representations of gays and lesbians on
television, increasing transformation of gay ghettos into business districts (Walcott,
2004, p. 36), and U.S. and Canadian court challenges seeking increased legal rights,
QAF can be situated within a larger pattern whereby marginalized groups are
conditionally admitted into the mainstream albeit by their ability to pay and to
litigate.
The pink dollar niche market and the public fight for equal rights and benefits
fit well within neoliberal economic frameworks that seek to offload government
expenses onto private citizens. Gays and lesbians in the United States and Canada can
have more complex and flattering televisual representations, not through government
regulation protecting diversity and the public interest, but rather through proving
themselves to be valuable, wealthy demographics. As the move from Channel 4 to
Pink Dollars, White Collars 207

Showtime illustrates, the cost of these representations is offloaded from government

regulation and onto valuable marginalized groups who can pay for popular
representation. Meanwhile, marginalized groups who are not recognized as wealthy
or valuable demographics are left out of popular representations, and race, class, sex,
and gender hierarchies within marginalized groups are further entrenched.
Cossman (2002) makes a related argument about the role of neoliberal economics
in the realm of Canadian court challenges. She argues that the Canadian court case
M. v. H. that opened the door to same-sex marriage fits well within neoliberal
frameworks. A lesbian woman took her ex-partner of 10 years to court for spousal
support and, for the very first time in Canada, won her case and necessitated the
redefinition of marriage. Cossman suggests that while all previous cases seeking equal
marital rights for gays and lesbians were unsuccessful*including access to private
bereavement leave and public pension benefits for same-sex spouses*when faced
with the prospect of the state supporting M. or off-loading this expense onto a
private citizen, H., the Supreme Court opted in favor of privatizing the expense. She
quotes the Supreme Court decision as alleviating the burden on the public purse by
shifting the obligation to provide support for needy persons to those parents and
spouses who have the capacity to provide support to these individuals (M. v. H. at
para. 93. See also at para. 106) (p. 490). This recognition of lesbian spouses by the
Supreme Court of Canada opened the door to further, and finally successful, court
challenges regarding same-sex marriage, but at what cost?
The supposed growing acceptance of gays and lesbians by the mainstream U.S.
media and Canadian governments suddenly seems unsurprising and perhaps even
pernicious when weighed in relation to the underlying neoliberal economic benefits.
QAF (U.S.) is emblematic of processes of hegemony and neoliberalism where
marginalized groups are invited, or forced in the case of M. v. H., to literally buy their
way into the power structure. It is not that we do not need these images or rights, but
rather we must be wary of normative structures that use profits and the off-loading of
government expenses as the bottom line for offering recognition, representation, and
rights to marginalized groups. These capitalist and neoliberal principles impose class-
based advancement*which implicitly favors those with race and sex privilege*and
leaves many marginalized groups and individuals with little access. Further, in terms
of liberal versus radical strategies, the continued strategies of privatization,
privileging, and foregrounding of certain gay and lesbian identities within a
neoliberal context implicitly summons queers out of a struggle for sexual and
gender liberation for all*across categories of difference such as race, class, sex,
gender, sexuality*and into established, normative, hegemonic power structures.
Such a process is in no way confined to what happens in courtrooms; indeed the
dynamics can readily be seen in the ways only some queer viewers can validate their
identities and speak themselves into existence as gay through watching QAF.
Returning to the more specific relationship between the media conglomerate
Viacom, the text, and QAF viewers, in a televisual context that offers so few
representations of gays, lesbians, queers, and queer communities, the viewers of
QAF illustrate the personal and collective investments made in this popular
208 W. Peters
conglomerate-based depiction. When the most readily accessible representations of
queers in the United States and Canada are premised on media conglomerates
valuing of privileged gays and lesbians, combined with a financial imperative to
draw in valuable mainstream viewers, we are likely to continue to see whitewashed
images of middle-class gays and lesbians. If televisual representations of queers
continue to be as limited as they are in 2010, and if indeed white, middle-class gay
men have greatest access to the personal and community identifications produced
and performed in relation to these texts, we are likely to see continued investment
in existing value hierarchies that already structure queer identities and
communities. By placing QAF and the commodification of gay and lesbian
identities into a larger societal context, it is possible to see how changing public
opinions, court challenges, the continuation of neoliberal economic frameworks,
the increasing privatization of gayborhoods, in combination with the discovery of
gay markets and mainstream viewers edgy tastes, have led to increasing
acceptance, privatization, and representation for white, middle-class gays and
lesbians especially. In all of these instances*social, legal, economic, or re-
presentational*the acceptable and valuable queer tends to be, or is imagined
to be, White, middle- to upper-class, gay or lesbian. While growing visibility is
widely accepted as a positive development, it is also important to recognize how
the marketing and privileging of selective non-normative sexualities has benefits as
well as costs and erasures.

Notes
[1] QAF utilizes the conventions of a community-based realist drama organized around a clique
of friends who are shown in a wide variety of locations. In Canada, the one-hour series aired
at 10:00 pm with an audio and textual warning that the series contains nudity, sexuality,
coarse language, and that viewer discretion is advised.
[2] Many have argued that queer politicization crystallized with drag queens and transgender
citizens leading the fight alongside gays, lesbians, and bisexuals at the Stonewall Inn in 1969.
Gays and lesbians, however, have been the primary beneficiaries of this movement in the
realm of television and, arguably, all aspects of American and Canadian societies.
[3] Viacom owned Showtime while QAF was on the air. Showtime became a subsidiary of the
CBS Corporation in 2005. In 2010 Viacom owns BET, MTV, LOGO, and Paramount, while
CBS Corporation owns Showtime and Simon & Shuster (to name only the holdings relevant
to this research).
[4] By desiring and engaging in same-sex intimate relationships, the characters on the series
violate normative gender expectations that all people will be naturally heterosexual. Apart
from this significant gender transgression, the central gay male characters are over-
whelmingly masculine, with the exception of Emmett, and the lesbian characters are
maternal and feminine. The characters transgressions against heteronormativity are
otherwise couched in proper gender codes.
[5] For more on the privatization of gayborhoods, see Walcott (2004) and Valverde and Cirak
(2003).
[6] Miller describes Media Studies 1.0 as constructing audiences as passive consumers (p. 5).
Media Studies 2.0*in his estimation*neglects the production and regulation of media,
while conferring too much agency onto viewers.
Pink Dollars, White Collars 209

[7] According to Davis (2007) there were some signs that some sectors of the [British]
television audience might accept alternative depictions of gay and lesbian characters: more
rounded characters who werent entirely sanitised or always morally correct (p. 10). He cites
Channel 4s Tales of the City from 1993 as a breakthrough because [a]lthough queer sex
mostly occurred off-screen, at least it was evidently happening . . . (p. 10). Further, Davis
points to the BBCs This Life (19961997) where the only gay housemate in a gang of five,
talked openly about his sexuality and had a great deal of (graphically depicted) sex (p. 10).
Although QAF (U.K.) had a predecessor in depicting sex between men on British television,
the series was often referred to by critics and academics as groundbreaking, even
revolutionary. . . [and] a milestone in the battle for sexual equality (Davis, 2007, pp. 12).
[8] Becks beer, which sponsored the first two episodes, withdrew their sponsorship (Davis, 2007,
p. 19). Meanwhile the Independent Television Commission, which monitors British
broadcasting, received 163 complaints . . . [and i]n the ITVs history, only Channel 4s
screening of Martin Scorceses film The Last Temptation of Christ caused more controversy
(Davis, 2007, p. 19).
[9] According to Davis (2007): Queer as Folk drew around 2.5 million viewers for its first
episode, with a further 1.3 million watching the Saturday night repeat. Added together, this
makes for a 17 percent audience share*significantly larger than Channel 4s usual average of
about 10 percent . . . Throughout the first series, ratings held fairly steady at around 2.3
million for the Tuesday broadcast, and 1 million for the weekend repeat (p. 18).
[10] The show was to be shot in Toronto and set in Pittsburgh.
[11] I place minorities in quotation marks to signal that some groups designated as
minorities, such as women, actually constitute majorities.
[12] Fejes also suggests that the discrepancy between the higher income profiles of men over
women results in greater representation of gay men rather than lesbians in popular culture.
[13] Billingham (2005) writes that according to audience research the largest single
demographic viewing group [for QAF U.K.] was made up of young women between the
ages of eighteen and thirty (p. 122). Drawing on Billingham, Davis (2009) further identifies
the appeal of Queer as Folk beyond a gay niche market*indeed, the main audiences were
gay men and young heterosexual women (p. 12).
[14] The border crossed in relation to QAF seems to be the representation of sexually active
gays and lesbians on otherwise straight TV. I argue that on QAF the boundaries
separating straight from gay remain primarily intact because queer sexualities that confound
identity categories are rarely depicted on the series.
[15] Facilitated by deregulation, todays unprecedented concentration of media ownership by four
conglomerates*Disney, News Corporation, Time Warner, and Viacom*with their greatly
enhanced access to production, distribution, advertising, publicity, syndication, and
globalized distribution, allows these corporations synergy. According to Casey et al.
(2002), synergy describes the way conglomerates use multiple holdings to create, distribute,
and advertise, which means that a greater value is added to products than would have been
the case had those parts remained separate (pp. 236237). Courtesy of neoliberal inspired
television deregulation, Viacom came to own many communications assets (see Holt, 2003)
and used an impressive number of these communication related companies in the creation,
distribution, marketing, and franchising of QAF.
[16] Viacom owned Blockbuster Inc. from 1994 to 2004.
[17] In 2005, Viacom launched LOGO, an LGBT channel which is still airing QAF weekly in
syndication in 2010. The conglomerate also currently owns two popular websites,
afterellen.com and afterelton.com, that review and comment on the representations of
gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and trans people in popular culture. Through these two websites,
Viacom promotes QAF, The L Word, LOGO, and its newer gay, lesbian, and queer projects in
an online context that appears editorial, rather than promotional.
210 W. Peters
[18] As considerable attention has been given to analyzing the text of QAF (U.S.) (Beirne, 2006,
2008; Davis, 2007; Farr & Degroult, 2008; Gamson, 2000; Johnson, 2004; Jones, 2001),
I utilize other authors textual analyses to make claims about the content of the series. I give
greater attention to the institutional context of production and audience reception because
these areas have not yet been written about as extensively.
[19] Participants names have been changed and all consented to allow their words to be used in
publications. While I did not specifically collect demographic information from participants,
most disclosed age, class, race, sex, and sexuality in the course of answering questions. Their
ages ranged from 18 to near retirement. The vast majority were university students and
professionals, and while most identified as white, seven identified as Asian-Canadian, black,
Inuit, Middle-Eastern Canadian, and one as a racial minority. Viewers were recruited using
posters throughout downtown Toronto and an email circulated through queer listservs. Of
the 40 participants of this study, 16 identified as heterosexual women, 7 as queer women, 2 as
lesbians, 11 as gay men, 3 as heterosexual men (one of whom had sex with men), and one
man did not identify. These 40 participants provided me with many hours and pages of
feedback about QAF. My work offers a close reading of specific participant responses in order
to point to patterns that may be reflective of larger phenomena. I make no pretence, however,
that this work is statistically generalizable.
[20] For example, participant Bill wrote: Ben and Michael and their Sero-discordant relation-
ship. Perfect! For the first time I could relate to two gay characters who are [H.I.V.] positive
and negative and in a monogamous relationship. This storyline is parallel to my life with my
partner. To see this modeled in the media gives me a sense of normalcy. Something that I can
relate to at a deep emotional level (Survey). Bills comments offer a sense of how QAF
offered pleasurable identifications, acceptance, and personal validation to some of the gay
men who watched the series.
[21] Another less common reason was that these Canadian gay, lesbian, and queer viewers had
already watched and enjoyed the British series when it ran on Showcase.
[22] Overwhelmingly queer and lesbian women viewers disidentified with the lesbian characters
and strongly critiqued these images (Peters, 2009, p. 19). Only one queer woman, Erin,
enjoyed the lesbian characters, although she was also critical of the representation.
[23] One white, middle-class, urban, undergraduate student, Erin, also described forging a
personal queer identity partially in relation to QAF. Her experience suggests that one need
not be directly hailed by the series in order to come out in relation to it. She explained:
When I first started watching I was straight, I mean I wasnt, but everyone thought I was
because thats how I was telling everyone I was. So I made a new gay boyfriend in residence
and we would go together to someones house off-campus to watch. I was secretly
watching the lesbians and Im like getting all excited. I was totally watching for that 30
seconds in an hour of the women, like, holding hands. And my coming-out process was
kind of through that first season (Focus group). As with Lucas and Leo, QAF was part of
the resources and discourses about queerness available to Erin. Although, as she points out,
she may have had to look harder and wait longer to see the lesbian images that she was
totally watching for.
[24] This is 4 out of a total of 11 gay identified male participants. Two queer identified women in
the study said that they each went to Woodys to watch QAF once, enjoyed the experience,
but never returned.
[25] As Walcott (2004) has noted: The transformation of gay ghettos into business districts
signals the death of queer spaces as zones of socialization. In particular, the remaking of these
spaces as zones of consumption means that queers now self-select on the basis of spending
habits, and thus limits are placed on what kinds of politics, styles and tastes might bump into
each other (p. 36).
[26] I have selected the figures from 2004 in order to highlight the buying power claims made
by Viacom while QAF was on the air. As already stated, LOGOonlines most recent gay
Pink Dollars, White Collars 211

market overview for advertisers puts this figure at $835.3 billion in buying power by 2011
(LOGOonline, 2010). Returning briefly to a point made earlier in this article, while there is
scholarly agreement that lesbians are not regarded as an attractive, identifiable niche
market and that lesbians can moreover be reached through ads aimed at women generally
(Fejes, 2002, p. 201), the market research cited by LOGO continues to group gays and
lesbians together.

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