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Abstract
This essay addresses why Rosie O'Donnell's “coming out” as a lesbian, as a gay parent, and as an advocate for gay adoption generated such little and lukewarm response, arguing that O'Donnell's lesbianism was rationalized in the public discourse by powerful preexisting narratives that constructed her as both maternal and childlike. These narratives converged with the narrative alterity of O'Donnell's homosexuality in such a way as to sharpen and strengthen established heteronormative discursive margins. The O'Donnell case contributes to an understanding of how dominant narratives negotiate competing narratives of resistance and offers an opportunity to examine mediated representations of “coming out.”
Notes
Helene A. Shugart is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Utah. Correspondence to: Helene A. Shugart, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA. [email protected]. An earlier version of this essay was presented to the 2002 annual meeting of the Rhetoric Society of America, in Las Vegas, Nevada.
[1] See Ginia Bellafante, “Looking for an Out,” Time, 7 October 1996, 90; Frank DeCaro, “Finally Out, and Suddenly In,” Newsweek, 12 May 1997, 83; Rick Marin and Mark Miller, “The Outer Limits,” Newsweek, 7 October 1996, 65; Rick Marin and Mark Miller, “Ellen Steps Out,” Newsweek, 14 April 1997, 65–67; Jean Seligman and Tessa Namuth, “A Sitcom Coming Out?” Newsweek, 23 September 1996, 87–93; Mark Steyn, “Everybody Out! Ellen DeGeneres Ignites Lesbian Fever,” The American Spectator June 1997, 37–41.
[2] Bellafante, 90; John Brandt, “Magic Kingdom under Attack,” Industry Week, 15 September 1997, 6; Matt Labash, “Selling Ellen Out,” The Weekly Standard, 28 April 1997, 12–14.
[3] “Rosie Topples Oprah in LA,” Mediaweek, 3 March 1997, 3; Peg Tyre, “Rosie Rolls Out Rosie,” Newsweek, 2 April 2001, 40–42.
[4] T. L. Stanley, “What They've Got,” Mediaweek, January 1997, 34–36.
[5] Tyre, 40.
[6] See, for example, Kathleen Battles & Wendy Hilton–Morrow, “Gay Characters in Conventional Spaces: Will and Grace and the Situation Comedy Genre.” Critical Studies in Media Communication 19 (2002): 87–105; S. Steven Capsuto, Alternate Channels: The Uncensored Story of Gay and Lesbian Images on Radio and Television (New York: Ballantine, 2002); Larry Gross, Up from Invisibility: Lesbians, Gay Men, and the Media in America (New York: Columbia University, 2001); James R. Keller, Queer (Un)friendly Film and Television (Jefferson, NC: Macfarland & Company, 2002); Helene A. Shugart, “Reinventing Privilege: The (New) Gay Man in Contemporary Popular Media.” Critical Studies in Media Communication 20 (2003): 67–91.
[7] Randall L. Sell and Jeffrey B. Becker, “Sexual Orientation Data Collection and Progress toward Healthy People 2010,” American Journal of Public Health, 91 (2001): 876–82.
[8] Public Opinion Online, Associated Press Poll, 11 April 1997 http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe/document?_m=e2e70574b1f135e322cdfc6afc9760f8&_docnum=8&wchp=dGLbVlb-zSkVb&_md5=0427823ccabab7dd7a604cb2f0fa6288 (accessed May 2002); Public Opinion Online, 1996 Survey of American Political Culture, 27 January 1996 http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe/document?_m=3ea599075b982083d2c9859f354c9575&_docnum=30&wchp=dGLbVlb-zSkVb&_md5=2a50ab3518830991d887a7f42546f881 (accessed May 2002); Public Opinion Online, Gallup Poll, 21 November 1996 http://web.lexisnexis.com/universe/document?_m=5edcc83aa26aa136d906d9b5b249fa3a&_docnum=1&wchp=dGLbVlb-zSkVb&_md5=4f75d4c8eba29d5e585f6c4ec96acc00 (accessed May 2002).
[9] Public Opinion Online, Princeton Survey Research Associates, Newsweek Poll, 30 July 1998 http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe/document?_m=12b2e460a8a58a64ddf36e184e48339c&_docnum=10&wchp=dGLbVlb-zSkVb&_md5=b871f2cce2f52e30b78f5d60be6d06c9 (accessed May 2002); Public Opinion Online, Time, CNN, Yankelovich Partners Poll, 14 October 1998 http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe/document?_m=12b2e460a8a58a64ddf36e184e48339c&_docnum=1&wchp=dGLbVlb-zSkVb&_md5=33aa1ea60d4970b1b886e625f68090ca (accessed May 2002); Public Opinion Online, NBC News, Wall Street Journal Poll, 16 June 1999 http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe/document?_m=2ac156db693a9e4321d10b8e2bc2ba42&_docnum=3&wchp=dGLbVlb-zSkVb&_md5=fe425b7b568374b8da11fb4ebceac271 (accessed May 2002); Public Opinion Online, Washington Post, Kaiser Havard—the 2000 Election Values Survey, 7 September 2000 http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe/document?_m=341e996c0e75b484538a70dd14f23731&_docnum=3&wchp=dGLbVlb-zSkVb&_md5=5c121c8f9d879e4a666fcf1030cfe7a0 (accessed May 2004); Public Opinion Online, Princeton Survey Research Associates, Newsweek Poll, 9 March 2000 http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe/document?_m=341e996c0e75b484538a70dd14f23731&_docnum=6&wchp=dGLbVlb-zSkVb&_md5=ad115255f2d22309c66ea979ed321d46 (accessed May 2002); Public Opinion Online, Civic and Political Health of the Nation Survey, 4 April 2002 http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe/document?_m=13bcfd94cabbbde7a8e4caeeb5857ab8&_docnum=2&wchp=dGLbVlb-zSkVb&_md5=237480943fa7543df1dc37794446b175 (accessed May 2002); Dave Ford, “Coming Out Needn't Be a Television Event,” The San Francisco Chronicle, 19 March 2002, D8.
[10] Diane Sawyer, “Rosie's Story: For the Sake of the Children,” Primetime Live (ABC), 14 March 2002; Cal Thomas, “Rosie's Power is Put to the Test,” The Buffalo News, 22 March 2002, C3.
[11] Bonnie J. Dow, “Ellen, Television, and the Politics of Gay and Lesbian Visibility,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 18 (2001): 137.
[12] Dow, 136–37.
[13] Dana L. Cloud, “Hegemony or Concordance? The Rhetoric of Tokenism in ‘Oprah’ Winfrey's Rags-to-Riches Biography,” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 13 (1996): 122.
[14] John M. Sloop and Kent A. Ono, “Outlaw Discourse: The Critical Politics of Material Judgment,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 30 (1997): 62.
[15] In this essay, I reference DeGeneres' coming out solely as a basis for comparison, a springboard for examining O'Donnell's coming out. As a result, I do not delve into the particulars and complexities that characterized the DeGeneres case. For an extensive and thorough treatment of poster child politics as it applied to DeGeneres and the context surrounding her coming out, see Dow.
[16] For example, Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” (New York: Routledge, 1993); Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990).
[17] Helene A. Shugart, “Performing Ambiguity: The Passing of Ellen DeGeneres.” Text and Performance Quarterly 23 (2001): 30–54.
[18] See, for example, Dow; Helene A. Shugart, “Parody as Subversive Performance: Denaturalising Gender in Ellen,” Text and Performance Quarterly 21 (2001): 95–113.
[19] Shugart, “Parody.”
[20] Dow, 137.
[21] Jean Seligman, “A Sitcom Coming Out?” Newsweek, 23 September 1996, 87.
[22] Suzanne Moore, “Ellen DeGeneres Comes Out.” New Statesman, 14 November 1997, 47.
[23] See, for example, Celeste M. Condit, “Hegemony in a Mass-Mediated Society: Concordance about Reproductive Technologies.” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 9 (1994): 205–30; John Fiske, Understanding Popular Culture. (New York: Routledge, 1989); Todd Gitlin, “Looking Through the Screen” in Watching Television, ed. Todd Gitlin (New York: Pantheon, 1986), 3–8; Stuart Hall, “Encoding/Decoding” in Culture, Media, Language: Working Papers in Cultural Studies, 1972–79, ed. Stuart Hall (London: Hutchinson, 1980), 128–38; Neil M. Poster, The Mode of Information: Poststructuralism and Social Context (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990).
[24] See, for example, Terry Arendell, “Conceiving and Investigating Motherhood: The Decade's Scholarship,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 62 (2000): 1192–208; Nancy Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978); E. N. Glenn, “Social Constructions of Mothering: A Thematic Overview,” in Mothering: Ideology, Experience, and Agency, ed. Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Grace Chang, and Lynda Rennie Forcey (New York: Routledge Press, 1994), 1–29; Sharon Hays, The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996); Elizabeth A. Kaplan, Motherhood and Representation: The Mother in Popular Culture and Melodrama (New York: Routledge Press, 1992).
[25] Ken Tucker, “A League of Her Own,” Entertainment Weekly, 26 July 1996, 24–29.
[26] Tucker, 25; Bruce Fretts and Rebecca Ascher-Walsh, “Rosie O'Donnell,” Entertainment Weekly, 27 December 1996, 17.
[27] George Lange, “Rosie O'Donnell,” People Weekly, 30 December 1996, 50–52.
[28] Lange; Stanley.
[29] Tucker, 29.
[30] Stanley, 34; Lange; Rick Marin and Susan Miller, “Coming Up Roses,” Newsweek, 15 July 1996, 44–49; Tucker; David Wild, “Whole Lotta Rosie,” Rolling Stone, 22 August 1996, 107.
[31] Marin and Miller, “Coming Up Roses,” 45.
[32] Tucker, 27.
[33] Stanley, 35.
[34] Tyre.
[35] Fretts and Aschor-Walsh, 17.
[36] Stanley, 34.
[37] Lange; Tucker.
[38] Fretts and Aschor-Walsh, 16.
[39] Fretts and Aschor-Walsh, 17.
[40] Karen Benezra, “Products Pitch Talk Hosts,” Mediaweek, 24 February 1997, 6; Fretts and Aschor-Walsh, 17; Marin and Miller, “Coming Up Roses,” 44–49; Marc Peyser and Sarah Van Voren, “Rosie's Midas Touch,” Newsweek, 10 March 1997, 8.
[41] Tucker, 28.
[42] Ron Aldridge, “Just When You Thought Talk Shows Were On Their Way Out,” Electronic Media, 2 September 1996, 16.
[43] Fretts and Aschor-Walsh, 16; Wild, 107.
[44] Lange, 50.
[45] Tucker, 26.
[46] See, for example, Glenn, 16; Kaplan, 122–135.
[47] Barbara Walters, The View (syndicated talk show], 14 February 2002.
[48] Alan Pergament, “Rosie's Power is Put to the Test,” The Buffalo News, 22 March 2002, C3; Jeff Simon, “Rosie's Revelation was ‘Closetbusters, Part Two,’” The Buffalo News, 19 March 2002, C1; Michelle Tauber, “Oh By the Way … ” People Weekly, 18 March 2002, 80–86.
[49] Monica Collins, “Cause Celebre—Rosie O'Donnell Adopts New Personal Crusade and Comes Out on Primetime,” The Boston Herald, 14 March 2002, 41; Cal Thomas, “What About the Other Side of the Story?” The Buffalo News, 20 March 2002, B9; Ford, D8; Ellis Henican, “Rosie's Timing Not So Brave,” Newsday, 15 March 2002, A2; Michael Alvear, “Rosie O'Donnell is Being Opportunistic in Coming Out” [Radio commentary], All Things Considered, National Public Radio, 14 March 2002.
[50] Murray, “Rosie's Real ‘Secret’: It's All Self-Promotion,” 1E.
[51] “Arts & TV in Brief,” The Boston Herald, 19 March 2002, 44.
[52] Mediamark Research Incorporated, People Weekly magazine, total readership. (www.mriplus.com), Fall 2001.
[53] Lange, 50–52; Tucker, 24–29; David Bauder, “Rosie O'Donnell Says Being Gay Was ‘Never a Big Deal for Me,’” Associated Press (wire report], 14 March 2002; Sawyer, “Rosie's Story: For the Sake of the Children”; Tauber, 80–86.
[54] Bauder.
[55] Sawyer.
[56] Tauber, 84.
[57] Sawyer.
[58] Sawyer.
[59] Sawyer.
[60] Sawyer.
[61] Ford, D8; Sawyer; Tauber, 80–86.
[62] Sawyer.
[63] Ford, D8; Sawyer; Simon, C1; Tauber, 80–86.
[64] Sawyer.
[65] Robert Alan Brookey and Robert Westerfelhaus, “Pistols and Petticoats, Piety and Purity: To Wong Foo, the Queering of the American Monomyth, and the Marginalizing Discourse of Deification,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 18 (2001): 152.
[66] Dow, 123–140.
[67] Ford, D8; Henican, A2.
[68] See, for example, Capsuto; Suzanna Walters, All the Rage: The Story of Gay Visibility in America (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2001).
[69] Shugart, “Reinventing Privilege,” 68.