From Heteronormative to Homonormative Storytelling
Having the show’s male lead sexually prefer men is one way to stave off a series-ending resolution between paired opposite-sex leads, even if the cost is grossly misrepresenting gay life. Researchers Kathleen Battles and Wendy Hilton-Morrow call this the convention of “delayed consummation,” which calls back to old Hollywood movies where the woman wanted to get married and the man wanted to consummate the relationship (Battles and Hilton-Morrow 93).
When the relationship is consummated, a rom-com series will often fizzle out. The title characters demonstrate intense love and intimacy for individuals of conflicting orientations which also guarantees an absence of sex (Hall 2). Still, the show presents a Grace perspective of – “if only Will was straight.” In the pilot, Will convinces Grace to leave a bad engagement. At a bar to celebrate – Grace still in her wedding dress – the two are mistaken for newlyweds and pressured to kiss; they do and Grace questions, “Nothing? Anything?” to which Will awkwardly apologizes “Sorry, no, it’s…” as Grace smiles bitter sweetly. This relationship set up from episode one and then reinforced in later episodes.
The heteronormative placing of responsibility on Will for not fitting the mold is seen clearly in the flashback episode where Will comes out to Grace:
Battles and Hilton-Morrow point out the episode where Will and Grace’s friends Joe and Larry are having a commitment ceremony (what gay people did to celebrate marriage before it was legally recognized), but “Grace is clearly positioned as Will’s wife, much to Will’s resentment” (Battles and Hilton-Morrow 94). They fight over money, specifically Grace not paying her part of the wedding gift/the fact that they have a shared gift despite the pair’s lack of romance. As Battles and Hilton-Morrow explicate:
This is to say that, even though there is a gay main character, the model of romantic comedies holds true which is why the show is so intertextual of an older model like I Love Lucy. Placing gay characters in conventional spaces/situations and in front of mainstream straight audiences inherently limits three dimensional gay representation. The specific relationship between Will and Grace is that of a would-be couple which is also an especially fixed way to guarantee heteronormativity.“Will and Grace’s relationship closely resembles sexual tension and bickering between heterosexuals in other sitcoms prior to the consummation of their relationships” (Battles & Hilton-Morrow 93).
It was not until the writers took opportunities in the reboot to even address the fundamental problem with the show. The following quote refers to creator-writer Max Mutchnick's own evolution of thought in terms of his off-screen relationship with Janet, the inspiration for Grace. Mutchnick felt that he was always disappointing her and he came to the conclusion that this had to do with their relationship dynamic:
Will was in the closet when he dated Grace so from the heteronormative perspective of "these two young opposite-sex couple should be together," Will is the bad guy. He kept keeping a devastating secret and waited til the worst possible moment to break Grace's heart.“For so long, I’ve lived a heteronormative narrative in my relationship with Janet. And for this moment, I reframed it and thought of the relationship from the vantage point of a homonormative narrative. When you do that, all of a sudden, you see that you can forgive yourself and that you should be forgiven. Because everybody’s narrative is what it is and should be accepted for exactly what it is. There should be no judgment. If that’s my truth, then that’s what we should accept. And I shouldn’t have to apologize for it.”
Mutchnick's personal coming to terms with how the heteronormative view is one-sided. His own emotional journey is clearly reflected in "Who's Sorry Now?" Grace's apology for holding Will's incidental gayness over his head for all of these years is a writer's euphemism for apologizing for reinforcing heteronormativity in the older seasons.
The intense episode is intertextual of itself. Even though Grace's apology is hardly a drastic reformation of the show's heteronormativity, it is a powerful symbol, much more so if the watcher takes note of the self-intertextual nature as presented in successive viewing of the clips:
This page has paths:
- Chapter Two - Self-intertextualization Fernando Rivera
