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- Title
Will& Grace: Negotiating (Gay) Marriage on Prime-Time Television.
- Authors
Quimby, Karin
- Abstract
The article analyzes the issue of gay marriage being addressed by the television program, Will & Grace. While most would agree that the program is the first successful gay sitcom on network television, it is, ironically, the question of marriage--and, more specifically, the form and function of male-female intimacy--that fuels the primary anxiety or problem that this show attempts to negotiate. That is, the show has not yet directly addressed the issue of gay marriage, but the show's construction of the relationship between its title characters, Will and Grace (Eric McCormack and Debra Messing), reveals the pressure that the gay marriage issue has brought to bear on the definition of marriage. That conventional marriage is under some attack in this sitcom is no more apparent than in the outrageous attitudes of supporting character Karen Walker (Megan Mullally), the only character in the show actually to be wedded during the first four seasons. In contrast to the unqualified denigration of marriage traditions that the character of Karen Walker offers up, the relationship between Will and Grace acknowledges the loving and supportive intimacies that people of different sexual orientations can form. The television program explores the contra-straight space of heterosexual women's relationships to gay men as one of its narrative foci is apparent in most of its episodes.
- Subjects
WILL &; Grace (TV program); TELEVISION programs; TELEVISION programs for gay people; SAME-sex marriage; MAN-woman relationships
- Publication
Journal of Popular Culture, 2005, Vol 38, Issue 4, p713
- ISSN
1540-5931
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/j.0022-3840.2005.00137.x