L Word Creator Challenges TV Industry

"The opportunity is there for you to make a killing telling our stories."

At the San Francisco GLAAD Media Awards on Saturday, actress Jennifer Beals presented The L Word creator/producer Ilene Chaiken with the Davidson/Valentini Award, a GLAAD honor given to an openly LGBT individual who has made a significant impact in promoting equality. Chaiken's powerful words — or her "rant," as she called it — challenges television executives to do a better job in telling our stories. It wouldn't do Chaiken (right, with GLAAD President Neil Giuliano) justice to merely excerpt her words, so here is the complete text of her powerful speech.

Before I begin ranting – because that’s what I’m going to do tonight; I’m going to rant a little – let me just take a moment to catch my breath. Jennifer Beals is breathtaking, right? But not just for the obvious reasons. Rather, for the reason that her talent and her intelligence and her convictions all at once run so deep; and I feel so blessed to have had the privilege of working closely with her these last six years, of calling her my friend, and of having been represented by her – not as the writer and producer of The L Word, but as a gay woman who never before saw herself, or anyone very like herself, portrayed in such a complex, powerful, uplifting, intriguing, ongoing way in the popular media.

Now for the rant…

I had imagined that when we announced that The L Word was coming to an end there would be another show – or maybe another two or three shows – poised to take up where we’re leaving off. I thought maybe we would have our lesbian cop show on CBS. You know, a latter day Cagney & Lacey in which the prettier cop is a svelte, stylish lezzie and her ostensibly straight partner is one of those big-boned, handsome, vaguely homophobic gals…? Or, I don’t know, where’s our doctor show in which Patrick Dempsey stars – stars being the operative concept – as the egotistical head of surgery with a slew of boyfriend problems but no issues about being comfortably and demonstratively out of the closet? And while we’re at it, give me a comic book superhero movie in which the pithy one-liners and snarky asides are believably uttered by a homosexual billionaire industrialist who likes to fight evil while showing off his exquisite muscles in a tight-fitting costume. As an aside, I’m willing to bet you that if that movie were to be made with the same skill and resources and budget of, say, Ironman, it would be no less successful at the box office. I know… far-flung. We’re not there yet. But we need to get there. Because the same old stories are getting old and tired, and we’ve got a lot of great, moving, entertaining, powerful stories to tell that haven’t yet been told.

So it’s not okay that when The L Word goes off the air sometime in 2009, we stand to be cast back into the desert in terms of primary representation of our lives and our stories in mainstream popular media. We’re hardly better represented right now than we were ten, even twenty years ago, and, bizarrely and inexplicably, less well represented than we were just a few years back when at least we had Will & Grace and Queer Eye and Queer As Folk. We’re relegated, once again, to minor roles as recurring secondary characters, or cute but oddly asexual best friends, and sometimes on procedurals we get to be murder victims. And it’s not enough.

It’s not enough when GLAAD – and don’t get me wrong; I’m a devotee of GLAAD; without GLAAD there would be no accountability and no presence and no mindful, vigilant advocacy on behalf of LGBT visibility and fair and accurate representation – but it’s not enough when GLAAD has to honor programs among the media awards nominees that don’t even feature any LGBT characters as series regulars.

It’s not enough that on broadcast television, we still have to wait until the third year of some popular ensemble drama for the introduction of a gay or lesbian storyline that was originally intended for one of the series leads but, after reconsideration, was relegated to a less beloved minor and more dispensable character.

It’s not enough that three years ago [fellow GLAAD honoree] James Schamus [right] produced a big budget Hollywood movie that should have won the Academy Award for best picture, and that no major motion picture since then has featured gay themes or a gay character in any significant way until the intrepid Mr. Schamus brings us Sean Penn as Harvey Milk.

It’s not enough that Showtime is the only mainstream network ever to have produced and aired and supported a scripted drama series about LGBT characters. Twice. And, by the way, aren’t they being touted as the best, hottest network on television?

It’s really not enough that LGBT people historically have written and directed and produced so many of the world’s greatest movies and television shows while hiding behind veiled portrayals of our real, true selves. We’ve given it up, given away our gifts to the dominant heterosexual culture – and we’ll keep on doing it for them because we’re that generous and talented and prolific – but I’d like to think that we won’t do it any longer at the expense of seeing our own selves fully visible and gloriously, complexly, glamorously and heroically represented right alongside of them.

I am hopeful right now as we find ourselves in a relatively progressive political moment, with (technically still two) imperfect but educable Democratic candidates who embrace most of our LGBT issues. Two candidates, both of whom stand a better-than-fighting chance of routing this morally bankrupt and socially backward Republican regime that’s desiccated our world these last eight years. And I’m proud, very proud, of the role that many of the artists and activists here in this room tonight have played in moving forward that progressive change. I envision a moment in the not too distant future when my kids are going to say to me, “What? You mean there used to be a time when gay people couldn’t get married to one another? That’s crazy, mama.”

It’s just as crazy to me that at sometime in the very near future we might look around at our movie and TV screens and find ourselves all but invisible again. I’m baffled and perturbed by the way in which our Hollywood entertainment culture seems to lag behind the culture at large. When I first pitched The L Word to Showtime – back in the dark ages – I went out on a limb and said to them, If you let me make a smart, sexy TV show about lesbians and you give me as much money and support as you give to any other aspiring prime time drama (and you let me cast Jennifer Beals in the lead), I’m willing to bet you it will be a hit. I’ll put that same bet on the table again right now – to every network, every studio, every production company and every creative artist. It’s no riskier than any other risk you take.

The opportunity is there for you to make a killing telling our stories. And for those of us in the LGBT community, I say, if history is indeed written by the victors, let’s make ourselves victorious by writing our own history… and directing it and producing it and starring in it.