| |
|
So, Scrubs. I like it a lot, and have in fact gone as far as to say (here) that it's the best thing on TV apart from the L-Word in terms of its representation of sexuality and gender. Now I've been challenged to back that up.
Some might say that Scrubs is profoundly flawed by its lack of any non-heterosexual characters. I wouldn't be among them, since what I particularly like about the construction of sexuality in Scrubs - what makes it a very post-Friends phenomenon - is an awareness of the fluidity of friendship/romance, and the complicated new patterns of kinship and caring that are set up when traditional institutions of relationship (like marriage) come into conflict with contemporary "friends are the new family" style arrangements (as well as with work commitments/relationships). The three-way relationship between JD, his best friend Turk, and Turk's girlfriend (S1/2)/fiancee (S2/3)/wife (S4) is delicately balanced: the best-friendship is given as much weight and importance as the romantic/marriage relationship (with an awful lot of innuendo about how JD and Turk are actually a couple), and shifts in any of the twosomes affect the other relationships in the triangle.
Now, okay, there are lots of cases where a friendship is constantly characterized as being "like" a marriage which strike me as actually being disguised homophobia - like, ridiculing the very notion that JD and Turk could be sexually attracted to each other. The episode which made all the difference for me on this front was the one just after Turk and Carla set a date for their wedding, My Journey, in which JD asks Turk on a "man-date" to talk about their feelings about how their relationship will change once Turk is married, which freaks Turk out. They eventually work it out through meeting, and differentiating themselves from, an actual interracial gay couple (played by actors who look very like JD and Turk themselves). Scrubs seems to me to be really rare in that its portrayal of heterosexuality and homosociality isn't constantly defending itself against homosexuality as "other", but accepts a level of queerness within heterosexuality (while also not, I think - though I'm on dodgier ground here - appropriating queerness for heterosexuality).
I'm also endlessly amused by the way that JD is basically played as a teenage girl: his mentor, Dr Cox, subjects him to a constant stream of misogynistic abuse (addressing him consistently as if he were a dreamy-eyed Sandra-Dee type), but JD sort of reclaims that by actually being pretty much a dreamy-eyed Sandra-Dee type. Again, it's a non-defensive kind of feminine masculinity, which is neither "othered" into a transgender or transvestite character* nor, I think, an appropriation of transness for non-trans characters. JD is just a girl who happens to be an adult male.
*By which I don't mean that transgender/transvestite people are "others"; I just mean that Scrubs doesn't locate improper gender in a character which it then others, as some shows can and do.
So that's what I think. I'm expecting some fairly strong disagreement here - I can even dimly make out its outlines, I think - so disagree away.
Oh, and finally, on non-gender/sexuality stuff - the episode My Porcelain God, with Michael J Fox as a surgeon suffering from OCD, is one of my favourites, not only for Michael J Fox's pretty moving performance - he makes a joke out of his condition, but the episode doesn't allow us to think it is a joke - but also for the bit where JD longs to find out whether Fox loves pirates as much as he does (that will probably only make sense if you've seen it, but hey, barbelith, pirates...) |
|
|
