Gay Stories for Gay People

• In Event: Papers on Marriage, Media, and Inclusion

Abstract

This paper differentiates four types of coming out stories that television tells about gay men and lesbians in Queer as Folk and Will & Grace: the revelation narrative, the discovery narrative, the development narrative, and the coming-in narrative. Revelation narratives tell stories of the process of announcement of a person’s homosexuality to others. Discovery narratives depict the process through which an individual comes to acknowledge his or her homosexuality to him/herself for the first time. Development narratives show the events that happen after a character’s homosexuality is revealed. For homosexuals, these narratives describe the process of sexual identity development, where the character learns what his or her sexual identity will consist of and how it will be performed. The heterosexual derivative of the development narrative typically recounts the struggles of a gay character’s family to cope with homosexuality after it is revealed. Finally, the coming-in narrative depicts the struggles of gay men and lesbians to reject their own previously acknowledged homosexuality.

Author

• Jay Clarkson, University of Iowa