In “Imitation and Gender Insubordination,” Judith Butler explores the notion of sexuality, by stating that “compulsory heterosexuality sets itself up as the original, the true, the authentic” (Rivkin and Ryan 722). In 1987 the television sitcom “Ellen” starring Ellen Degeneres featured the character of Ellen Morgan. Morgan was a likable young woman struggling to define herself in many aspects of her life. The show regularly focused on social relationships and workplace experiences. One element featured in the show were the regular pressures the character faced to date, “find a good man,” and become involved in a romantic relationship. This sense of “compulsory heterosexuality” was resultant from societal and familial pressures upon the title character – but also from within herself. Butler’s assertion that sexuality is performative was reflected by the character’s earliest presentation in the series which featured her wearing make-up, a softer hairstyle and more feminine clothing choices.
Throughout the course of the show, Ellen Morgan became more frustrated with the challenge of trying to find a relationship, and more overwhelmed and by the constant pressure to meet up to societal ideals. Butler would argue that the Ellen’s attempt to fit into the heterosexual ideal “is always the process of imitating and approximating its own phantasmic idealization of self-and failing” (Wexler 2) Ellen’s romantic relationships were bound to fail because she was not being true to herself, and was allowing socially constructed ideas of normative behavior to define her identity.
In History of Sexuality, Michel Foucault examined the different cultural perceptions of sexuality and how they were framed in both religious and scientific terms. Foucault discussed the notion of “unnatural” sexuality being sinful, and later the need to confess evolving out of a religious act into a need for processing identity through speech and self acknowledgement. In the following scene from season four, Ellen is recalling a dream she had in which the lesbian references and stereotypes are abundant. Her desire to conform is so strong that she is only able to access her true identity during a subconscious dream state. Though the scene is constructed in an entertaining way, Foucault would recognize this as Ellen’s desire to not only hide her true desires from society, but also – more poignantly, from herself.
Several times during the scene Ellen is referred to as a gay woman or lesbian. As she begins to take on this identity, she is no longer described as simply a person or a woman, but as a gay woman or lesbian. Foucault wrote that those who assumed or declared their identity as anything disparate from the norm, became the other – “The ‘perverse’ became a group, instead of an attribute,” (Wexler 2) in fact, Foucault went so far as to say that these “others” were so separate that they were actually viewed as a separate “species.”
The scene concludes with Ellen turning to the mental health provider for clarification or validation of her obvious desires. Foucault believed that the science of sexuality was instituted as a way of ordering or regulating “other” sexual behavior. But in this process, the individual who struggles with their sexual identity may finally voice or confess their true desires, and in doing so, the dirty shameful secret of “other” sexuality loses its taboo and stigma.
The notion that talking about sexuality causes it to lose its power is validated by the groundbreaking decision of the writers of the comedy series to confront the struggles of a featured character not only being gay, but inviting the viewer to accompany the character along on the search for identity. In 1987, homosexuality was rarely referenced on episodic television, and no regular featured characters were depicted as gay, and in little over twenty years it is easy to point to multiple examples of gay characters and exploration of homosexual issues on shows like Friends, Brothers and Sisters, Will and Grace and Grey’s Anatomy. This representation of homosexuality in a more personalized form helped many viewers to challenge their constructed views of lesbian and gay men as something more that "other", allowing them to challenge their own ideas about identity and sexuality.
Works cited - under construction.
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