Coming out in a ‘faux-lesbian comedy’: authenticity and queer identity in MTV’s Faking it

ABSTRACT

In a special report for Entertainment Weekly in January 2011, Jennifer Armstrong noted that ‘gay characters have gone from one time guest stars, whispered tragedies, and silly sidekicks to not just an accepted but an expected part of teen-centric television’ (36, original emphasis). Within this genre, the coming out narrative has gained prominence as the dominant means of articulating and representing LGBTIQ+ identities and experience. This article traces a lineage of teen texts that negotiate authenticity and queer identity through LGBTIQ+ coming out stories where queer-coded characters attempt to pass as heterosexual, performing ‘fakery’ for personal safety and as a means of fitting in to the teen social milieu. MTV’s Faking It (2014–2016) flips the script on this queer teen narrative, following two unpopular best friends, Karma (Katie Stevens) and Amy (Rita Volk), who pretend to be lesbians to climb the high school hierarchy. While controversial upon its release, Faking It has since been credited with ‘changing the nature of queer representation on TV’ through its novel representations of gender and sexual diversity. This article examines how teen sexualities are articulated and understood in the series. Through close textual analysis, this article demonstrates how Faking It engages the theme of fakery to undermine classical notions of the coming out narrative as an expression of authenticity, which have long been central to LGBTIQ+ youth narratives in film and television.

KEYWORDS:

• Teen television
• sexuality
• lgbtiq representation
• queer media studies
• faking it

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

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Notes on contributors

Whitney Monaghan

Whitney Monaghan is a Lecturer in Communications and Media Studies in the School of Media, Film and Journalism at Monash University. Her research explores LGBTIQ+ representation on screen. She is the author of Queer Girls, Temporality and Screen Media: Not ‘Just a Phase’ (2016) and co-author of Queer Theory Now (2019).