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Critical Studies in Media Communication
ISSN: 1529-5036 (Print) 1479-5809 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcsm20
Ellen, Television, and the Politics of Gay and Lesbian Visibility
Bonnie Dow
To cite this article: Bonnie Dow (2001) Ellen, Television, and the Politics of Gay and Lesbian Visibility, Critical Studies in Media Communication, 18:2, 123-140, DOI: 10.1080/07393180128077
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/07393180128077
Published online: 09 Nov 2010.
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Ellen, Television, and the Politics of Gay and Lesbian Visibility
Bonnie J. Dow
�—The discourses constructing the coming-out of Ellen DeGeneres/Ellen Morgan, star of and lead character in the ABC television sitcom Ellen, were permeated with implications of authenticity and liberation, illustrating the continuing power of the confessional ritual described by Michele Foucault in The History of Sexuality. In contrast to the popular interpretation of the coming-out as an escape from repression, media treatment of the Ellen phenomenon was productive, in Foucault’s sense, constructing a regulatory discourse that constrained the implications of gay visibility on commercial television by channeling it through a narrative of psychological autonomy, through television norms for representing homosexuality, and through an overarching strategy of personalization. I conclude with a discussion of the problems of ‘‘poster-child politics’’ as exemplified by the Ellen discourse.
IN their December 1997 year-end is-sue, the editors of Entertainment Weekly named Ellen DeGeneres ‘‘En- tertainer of the Year,’’ noting that
at a time when an acknowledgment of homosexuality has entered all aspects of popular culture, when diversity and accep- tance are the words of the day but by no means entirely the deeds, and when more and more of the sizeable population of homosexual men and women working in the entertainment industry today are weigh- ing the risks of coming out themselves, DeGeneres allowed herself to become a poster girl—not for lesbianism, but for hon- esty. . . . DeGeneres risked her profes- sional reputation for personal freedom. And she pulled it off. She did good, impor-
tant work that continues to shape the pub- lic discourse. (Schwarzbaum, 1997, p. 18)
It is perhaps arguable how widely shared the opinion is that Ellen De- Generes’s poster child status is about honesty rather than lesbianism, but the assertion that DeGeneres’s coming-out narrative, in both its ‘‘real’’ and fiction- alized forms, has had a profound effect on public discourse, can hardly be ques- tioned (although, as I argue here, the dimensions of that effect are open to question). DeGeneres’s public an- nouncement of her homosexuality made the cover of Time magazine (Handy, 1997b), got her an invitation to the White House (‘‘Girls Night Out,’’ 1997), and provoked laudatory com- ments from Vice-President Al Gore about Hollywood’s new openness to- ward sexual orientation (Price, 1997).
DeGeneres’s ascendance as 1997’s lesbian media icon was, of course, trig- gered by the ABC sitcom Ellen, which
Bonnie J. Dow is Associate Professor in the Department of Speech Communication at the University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602- 1725. Earlier versions of this essay were Pre- sented at the 1999 Southern Speech Association Convention in St. Louis and the 1999 National Communication convention in Chicago, IL.
Critical Studies in Media Communication Vol. 18, No. 2, June 2001, pp. 123–140
Copyright 2001, National Communication Association
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broadcast three episodes, beginning on April 30, 1997, concerning the ‘‘com- ing-out’’ experiences of its lead charac- ter, Ellen Morgan. Prior to the first coming-out episode, DeGeneres, the star of and creative force behind the sitcom, was featured in a media blitz of interviews in three high-profile make for a: Time magazine, 20/20, and Oprah, in which she discussed her own struggles with her sexuality, her roman- tic relationships with women, and the process of creating the Ellen episodes. The generally positive response to the coming-out episodes and DeGeneres’s sudden media popularity seemed to indicate that previously censored forms of sexuality were gliding rather easily out of the closet and into prime-time.
By the spring of 1998, however, this triumphal narrative had taken another turn. After a season of lackluster rat- ings, ABC canceled the sitcom. There were accusations from DeGeneres that the network had not been supportive of the show, claims from ABC execu- tives that the program had turned into her personal soapbox, and arguments from television critics and commenta- tors that it had simply ceased to be funny (Cagle, 1998; Gilbert, 1998; Tucker, 1998). Even amid the rancor, there was agreement from both sides that Ellen had changed the face of tele- vision, and a syndication deal with the Lifetime network meant that Ellen would live on in re-runs. Indeed, several crit- ics have argued that the success of the NBC sitcom Will and Grace, which de- buted in the fall of 1998 and focuses on two roommates, a heterosexual woman and a gay man, was made possible by the path that Ellen blazed (Hall, 1998; Milvy, 1998; Mink, 1998).1 Moreover, in February of 1999, the coming-out of a male character on the WB teen soap Dawson’s Creek, and the revelation that
the show’s creator, Kevin Williamson, was gay, caused ‘‘barely a ripple’’ in public discourse (Bauder, 1999, p. 7c; see also Connelly, 1999).
Whether or not Ellen did, in fact, make it ‘‘okay to be gay,’’ is not the primary concern here, although this analysis may make some gestures to- ward answering that question. Rather, I am concerned with the narrative logic of the coming-out discourses in and around the three Ellen episodes in the spring of 1997. As a case study, the Ellen coming-out sheds light on the various mechanisms through which the ostensible liberation of the truth of sexuality—from silence, repression, de- nial—was not a simple case of setting free the truth, but was, rather, the begin- ning of a discursive construction of that sexuality—of its authenticity, of its form, and of its politics. This construction, from its beginning, was ‘‘thoroughly imbued with relations of power’’ (Foucault, 1978, p. 60) that channeled its rhetorical effect in particular direc- tions and that present implications for our understanding of what gay visibil- ity can and cannot be allowed to mean in commercial media.
Confession, Liberation, Authenticity
In his explanation of the repressive hypothesis, Foucault argues that, con- trary to the belief that the late twenti- eth century gave rise to ever expand- ing levels of openness about sexuality, discourse about sex has been proliferat- ing at an excessive rate since the late nineteenth century (1978, pp. 63–65). Confession, originally in the form of penance, but later in a wide variety of forms and within a wide variety of relationships, ‘‘was, and still remains, the general standard for governing the production of the true discourse on
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sex’’ (Foucault, 1978, p. 63). Impor- tantly, the attraction of confession has, in large part, been linked to a belief in its liberating effect, what Foucault calls ‘‘the internal ruse of confession’’: the assumption that ‘‘confessions frees, but power reduces one to silence; truth does not belong to an order of power, but shares an original affinity with free- dom’’ (p. 60).
The implicit notion that ‘‘the truth is corroborated by the obstacles and resis- tance it has had to surmount in order to be formulated,’’ and that ‘‘the expres- sion alone, independently of its exter- nal consequences, produces intrinsic modifications in the persona who ar- ticulates it’’ is precisely the logic that governs the coming-out discourse in and around Ellen. That confession, for the confessor, ‘‘exonerates, redeems, and purifies . . . unburdens him [or her] of his [or her] wrongs, liberates him [or her], and promises him [or her] salva- tion,’’ is a key theme in the language of both Ellen DeGeneres and Ellen Mor- gan (Foucault, 1978, p. 62).
The April 14, 1997, issue of Time magazine featured DeGeneres on its cover in a simple portrait over the words ‘‘Yep, She’s Gay.’’ The Time story was DeGeneres’s first act of com- ing out in the mainstream media, and it is the first instance in the pattern that would emerge. The article describes her coming out as ‘‘the culmination of a long process of struggling with feel- ings about her own sexuality, her fears about being rejected for it, her wish to lead a more honest and open life in public, her weariness at the effort it took her not to’’ (Handy, 1997b, p. 78�). DeGeneres is quoted within the article saying, ‘‘this has been the most freeing experience because people can’t hurt me anymore’’ (Handy, 1997b, p. 78�). The interview with DeGeneres
on ABC’s 20/20, her next major media appearance, began with Diane Saw- yer’s noting of the ‘‘risk’’ entailed in ‘‘deciding to go public with a lifelong secret.’’ DeGeneres herself makes refer- ence to not living her life as a lie any- more, refusing to be ashamed any longer, and the ‘‘joy’’ that coming out gave her.
However, the Oprah interview that aired shortly before the coming-out epi- sode was broadcast is perhaps the rich- est example of the liberation narrative that threaded through DeGeneres’s media discourse. Importantly, Oprah Winfrey’s facilitation of DeGeneres’s rev- elations on daytime television had ad- ditional intertextual power as it was noted during the interview that Win- frey herself had a cameo in the first coming-out episode. She played Ellen Morgan’s therapist, who aids Ellen in reaching the realization that she is gay, much as Winfrey herself aids De- Generes in discussing her sexuality on Oprah. Very early in the interview, Winfrey asks DeGeneres, ‘‘Now that you have come out, what has been the biggest relief for you?’’ and DeGeneres replies in the same terms she has else- where, describing her confession as a kind of freedom: ‘‘To feel completely honest—that’s something I’ve never felt in my life, and I don’t know how many people do feel like that. And this is not a gay issue, this is just an issue about truth and about not having anything to hide. No one can hurt me.’’ Within the first Ellen episode, as Ellen Morgan is talking with Oprah in character as her therapist, she says something remark- able similar: ‘‘I feel like this tremen- dous weight has been lifted off of me. I mean, for the first time in my life I feel comfortable with myself.’’
DeGeneres’s public confession of her sexuality was saturated with implica-
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tions of authenticity at different levels. First and most clearly, her revelations were couched in terms of her personal discovery or recovery of authenticity; she was revealing her ‘‘true’’ self to the public. As Joan Scott notes, ‘‘What could be truer, after all, than a subject’s own account of what he or she has lived through?’’ (1993, p. 399). Second, these initial revelations occurred in a prominent print news magazine, a prominent television news magazine, both high status non-fiction fora, as well as in a highly rated daytime televi- sion talk show well known for its use of intimate confession as a path to per- sonal authenticity (Fiske, 1987, pp. 281–282; Davis, 1999). Despite their status differences, all three of these me- dia contexts share a common method- ological and epistemological premise that Scott identifies in historical writ- ing: the ‘‘authority of experience’’ arises from and contributes to its function as a ‘‘reflection of the real’’ (1993, p. 399). Thus, DeGeneres’s testimony, coupled with the contexts in which it appears, constructs an authenticity narrative that privileges what Scott calls ‘‘the evi- dence of experience.’’ This epistemo- logical framework,
whether conceived through a metaphor of visibility or any other way that takes mean- ing as transparent, reproduces rather than contests given ideological systems—those that assume that the facts of history speak for themselves and those that rest on a naturally established opposition between, say, sexual practice and social conven- tions, or between homosexuality and het- erosexuality. (1993, p. 400)
Crucially, the authenticity narrative established by DeGeneres’s coming- out in non-fiction media appearances carries over to the coming-out epi- sodes of Ellen. Not only does the pro- gram gain credibility for its representa-
tion from the intertextual links with DeGeneres’s personal testimony and its interpretation in other venues, but, in many ways, the struggle for the truth and the eventual triumph of authentic- ity and honesty that DeGeneres de- scribed or alluded to in interviews was enacted within the Ellen episodes. For example, in the climactic moment in the first coming-out episode, when Ellen first confesses her sexuality to a woman to whom she is attracted, the struggle is clear in the speech pattern itself:
I can’t even say the word. Why can’t I say the word? I mean, why can’t I just say . . . I mean, what is wrong . . . Why do I have to be so ashamed? I mean why can’t I just say the truth, I mean be who I am. I’m thirty- five years old. I’m so afraid to tell people, I mean I just . . . Susan, I’m gay.
Almost immediately, the liberating ef- fects take hold, as Ellen says, ‘‘That felt great, that felt so great.’’ In the second episode, as Ellen’s mother laments that she misses ‘‘the old Ellen,’’ Ellen re- plies in terms that stress the authentic- ity that the ‘‘new’’ Ellen has gained: ‘‘Which Ellen is that? The Ellen that used to keep her feelings bottled up? The Ellen that used to lie to herself and everybody else? The Ellen that could have spent the rest of her life alone?’’
The temporal and thematic conver- gence of the confessions of Ellen De- Generes and Ellen Morgan is key to understanding the significance of the repressive hypothesis in the Ellen dis- course. In both cases, the confession is represented as changing Ellen by allow- ing her authentic self to emerge, be- cause such a deep truth ‘‘ ‘demands’ only to surface . . . and it can finally be articulated only at the price of a kind of liberation’’ (Foucault, 1978, p. 60). This is an implication articulated repeatedly in coming-out narratives, what Bonnie
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Zimmerman (1985) calls the ‘‘ ‘tribal’ lore,’’ and the ‘‘myth of origins’’ of the lesbian community (p. 262). Zimmer- man’s study of literary coming-out nar- ratives analyzes the liberatory function of such discourse, in which ‘‘speaking, especially naming oneself ‘lesbian,’ is an act of empowerment. Power, which traditionally is the essence of politics, is connected with the ability to name, to speak, to come out of silence. . . . Pow- erlessness, on the other hand, is associ- ated with silence and the ‘speechless- ness’ that the powerful impose on those dispossessed of language’’ (p. 259). The notion of power at work in this descrip- tion is one that assumes ‘‘a world of discourse divided between accepted discourse and excluded discourse, or between the dominant discourse and the dominated one’’ (Foucault, 1978, p. 100); it is, in short, the world as- sumed by the repressive hypothesis, one in which the evidence of experi- ence is transparent and its liberating effect is assured.
For the literary coming-out narra- tives Zimmerman speaks of, the audi- ence is clear: they are addressed to ‘‘a reading community assumed to be (or to have the potential to be) lesbian’’ (Martin, 1993, p. 278). The politics of such narratives, then, are connected to ‘‘self-worth, identity, and a sense of community,’’ and coming out ‘‘aims to give lesbian identity a coherence and a legitimacy that can make both indi- vidual and social action possible’’ (Mar- tin, 1993, p. 278). Following Foucault, Biddy Martin (1993) questions the wis- dom of rooting political liberation in the ‘‘autonomy of the psychological’’ arguing that the repressive hypothesis works to ‘‘mask the actual workings of power’’ (p. 276). Indeed, this caution is even more necessary when consider- ing the function of the DeGeneres/
Morgan coming-out in mass media, a context in which a supportive or identi- fying audience can hardly be assumed. Lost in the narrative of authenticity and liberation that permeates coming- out stories is, of course, Foucault’s claim that to enter the confession ritual may be seemingly to escape from one power relation only to enter another. As La- Fountain (1989) explains, ‘‘the whole truth does not rely in the confessor but rather is ‘incomplete, blind to itself’ and only reaches completion in the one who assimilates and records it.’’ This process ‘‘aligns the interpreter with knowledge and truth, and with power. It is to and for power that we are confessing animals.’’ (p. 132)
Television, Heteronormativity,
and Confessional Politics Acknowledged or not, then, the con-
fession ritual demands an audience, for ‘‘one does not confess without the presence (or virtual presence) of a part- ner’’ (Foucault 1978, p. 61). Indeed, given DeGeneres’s public statements, the presence of the audience was fore- most in her mind. Explaining her reser- vations about coming out in her 20/20 interview, she noted her fear that ‘‘if they found out I was gay, maybe they wouldn’t applaud, maybe they wouldn’t laugh, maybe they wouldn’t like me if they knew that I was gay.’’ ‘‘They’’ presumably refers to Ellen’s assumed heterosexual audience, as it seems logical to assume that the gay community, to whom DeGeneres was hardly closeted anyway, would hardly condemn her for coming out. Thus, the discourse of the Ellen coming-out episodes can most usefully be read as a demonstration that the most powerful implied audience for Ellen’s revela-
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tions was, in fact, heterosexual. With that in mind, the episodes’ discourse must be seen in relation to the logics of control and depoliticization that histori- cally have governed gay representa- tion on television and that governed Ellen as well. For Ellen, the implied confessional partner, the ‘‘authority who requires the confession, prescribes and appreciates it, and intervenes in order to judge, punish, forgive, con- sole, and reconcile,’’ was always hetero- sexual, both inside the show’s narra- tive and outside, in its viewing audience. Thus, from the first moment, DeGeneres’s/Morgan’s ostensibly lib- erating move from silence into speech ‘‘unfold[ed] within a power relation- ship’’ (Foucault, 1978, p. 61) that, within the Ellen discourse, was simultaneously implicitly observed and explicitly de- nied.
Seen through both DeGeneres’s dis- course and media treatments of it, the coming-out campaign was clearly geared toward gaining the approval of mainstream, heterosexual Americans— the kind of people that ABC wants to watch its sitcoms, for instance. For ex- ample, DeGeneres came out to Time magazine, rather than, say, Out, the most widely read gay newsmagazine, or Curve, a popular lesbian publication. In the Time article, DeGeneres took pains to insist that she ‘‘didn’t do it to make a political statement,’’ but merely because ‘‘it was a great thing for the show,’’ and that she saw the point of what she was doing as ‘‘acceptance of everybody’s differences’’ (Handy, 1997a, p. 86).
Interpreted within this frame, the DeGeneres/Morgan revelations were touted by mainstream media as evi- dence of progress: in (always pre- sumed to be heterosexual) Americans’ tolerance for representation of homo-
sexuality, in network television’s will- ingness to break the sexuality barrier by broadcasting a sitcom with a gay lead character, in Hollywood’s em- brace of an openly gay actress. The notion that representation of a lesbian on prime time signaled a kind of accep- tance of homosexuality was explicitly stated in the Time article discussing the show itself. As Bruce Handy (1997b) put it, ‘‘Does Ellen Morgan’s coming out in what is still our massest medium legitimize homosexuality, or does the sponsorship of a bottom-line business like ABC merely reflect its acceptance by a significant portion of the popula- tion? Clearly, the answer is both’’ (p. 78�). Generally, the reception of the coming-out episodes was framed as a referendum on prejudice against gays and lesbians; as a comment in People magazine put it, ‘‘Advertisers, net- works, producers and fans have to haul out their prejudices and say, ‘Does this make a difference in how I feel about this woman?’ ’’ (Gliatto, et al., 1997, p. 129�). Frank Rich (1997, p. A29), writ- ing in The New York Times, phrased a similar question before the coming-out episode aired: ‘‘If [the show] fails, will the character’s homosexuality, rather than the series’ spotty quality, be held accountable?’’
Through the end of the 1997 season, at least, the approval of these various constituencies named by commenta- tors seemed clear. The coming-out epi- sode more than doubled Ellen’s regular viewing audience, the show was re- newed by ABC, and Ellen garnered an Emmy for best comedy writing. On the other hand, saying that the success of Ellen’s initial coming out means the end of prejudice against gays and lesbi- ans is like saying that the success of The Cosby Show in the 1980s signaled the end of racism ( Jackson, 1997). There
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is, however, a useful parallel to be drawn between Ellen and Cosby, which is that just as Cosby was often inter- preted as a sitcom about black people that was largely geared toward the com- fort of white people (see, e.g., Gray, 1994), Ellen was a sitcom about a les- bian that was largely geared toward the comfort of heterosexuals.2 In this sense, it differs little from the history of repre- sentations of gays and lesbians on tele- vision.
As Foucault has noted about sexual- ity in general, the history of sexuality in prime-time television is not one of absence and repression, but, rather, one that has followed clear norms for different kinds of silence and speech. Representations of homosexuality have existed since television’s earliest days, although, of course, in limited number. A drag queen routine was one of the favorite and most popular items in the repertoire of Milton Berle, one of early television’s most popular comedians, and there were powerful gay under- tones in the comic relationships of Jack Benny on The Jack Benny Show (Doty, 1993). The counterpart in 1950s dra- mas was to cast homosexual charac- ters, largely, male, as villains. In this context, homosexuality was used pri- marily to establish an additional level of deviance for such characters. The link of homosexuality with criminality was a dramatic convention that contin- ued for decades, surfacing in series dramas such as Police Woman, Marcus Welby, Hunter, and Midnight Caller in the 1970s and 1980s (see Fejes & Petrich, 1993; Gross, 1994).
With the growth of the gay rights movement in the 1970s and resultant pressure for more positive representa- tions, television networks began to view homosexuality as an appropriate topic for ‘‘socially relevant’’ programming;
that is, programming designed to sensi- tively treat the ‘‘problem’’ of homo- sexuality. This motive resulted in tele- vision movies such as 1972’s That Certain Summer, in which a gay man must tell his son about his homosexual- ity, 1978’s A Question of Love, in which a lesbian mother fights for custody of her son, 1985’s An Early Frost, the first TV movie about AIDS, which focuses on a young man who must reveal both his illness and his homosexuality to his family, and 1992’s Doing Time on Maple Drive, in which a college student comes out to his very traditional (and dysfunc- tional) family.
These TV movies relied on the gen- eral rules for representing homosexual- ity on television that were also evident in the sympathetic portrayals of gays and lesbians that emerged in series television in the 1970s and 1980s in shows such as The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Rhoda, Barney Miller, Cheers, Kate and Allie, The Golden Girls, or Designing Women. These rules include the follow- ing: First, representations of gays and lesbians were incorporated as ‘‘one time’’ appearances rather than as inte- gral elements or regular characters in a series narrative (This is why the ‘‘one shot’’ TV movie was such a popular form for dealing with homosexuality). Second, such characters are never ‘‘in- cidentally’’ gay; they appeared in epi- sodes or movies in which their sexual- ity was ‘‘the problem’’ to be solved; third, the problem they represent is depicted largely in terms of its effect on heterosexuals. Homosexual characters are rarely shown in their own commu- nities, homes, or same-sex romantic relationships but are depicted in terms of their place in the lives of heterosexu- als. Finally, and perhaps most crucially for a commercial medium like televi- sion, representations of gay or lesbian
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sex, or even desire, are absent (Fejes & Petrich, 1993).
The 1990s witnessed the subversion of some of these rules as recurring gay or lesbian characters were incorpo- rated into both comedy and drama, although, as has historically been true of all marginalized groups, the prepon- derance of these representations oc- curred in comedy (Marc, 1989; Taylor, 1989). There were a few exceptions beginning in the 1980s. Dynasty, one of the most popular prime-time soaps of the 1980s, contained a storyline about a bisexual male character who had a difficult time deciding between men and women, much to the consterna- tion of his father, the family patriarch. Another 1980s drama, the short-lived medical show Heartbeat, has received some critical attention for its depiction of a recurring lesbian character who worked as a nurse in a women’s health clinic run by feminist doctors (Hantzis & Lehr, 1994; Moritz, 1994; Torres, 1993). However, the drama only lasted one season, and the lesbian character’s sexuality was featured in only two epi- sodes.
Those few prime-time representa- tions of gays or lesbians that have taken the risk of depicting actual gay and lesbian sexual interaction, however brief and avowedly ‘‘tasteful,’’ have pre- dictably run afoul of sponsors and con- servative interest groups, all of which claim to be representing the interests of the American (presumably hetero- sexual) public. For example, a 1989 episode of the yuppie drama thirtysome- thing featured a brief scene of two gay men in bed together. The scene prompted advertisers to pull their spon- sorship of the show, and, although the episode was still aired, it was removed from the summer rerun schedule (Fejes & Petrich, 1993, p. 413). A 1991
episode of L.A. Law featured a brief kiss between two regular characters— one of whom was bisexual and the other of whom was presumably hetero- sexual but was nonetheless intrigued. The Reverend Donald Wildmon’s American Family Association brought its wrath to bear on NBC, threatening product boycotts (as it had done with Heartbeat), and NBC responded by dis- claiming any attempt to create a con- tinuing lesbian storyline (Gross, 1994, p. 151). Indeed, by the end of the season, the intrigued woman was re- committed to her heterosexuality, and the bisexual woman was happily in- volved with a man—with whom, of course, she was shown having sex. In the early 1990s, Roseanne added a regu- lar bisexual female character. The most famous moment in this storyline, how- ever, came when Roseanne herself, in a visit to a lesbian bar, briefly kissed another woman. The episode in which this occurred was preceded by a ‘‘viewer discretion’’ warning from ABC (Roush, 1994).
In 1997–98, the television season following Ellen’s coming out, recur- ring gay or lesbian characters were featured on Spin City, Friends, ER, NYPD Blue, and Chicago Hope, just to name a few popular shows. Indeed, when De- Generes appeared on Oprah, a young heterosexual mother in the audience claimed that the abundance of such characters had become overwhelming and that media attention to gay and lesbian sexuality was crowding out tra- ditional family values. As DeGeneres gently pointed out, we are a long way from such a situation. However, the immense attention given to Ellen Mor- gan’s coming out has been interpreted as indicating a genuine shift in the level of tolerance for gay and lesbian repre- sentation. However, this conclusion is
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not self-evident, as some have claimed, but is rather the product of Ellen’s inter- action with ‘‘the complex and changing discursive processes by which identi- ties are ascribed, resisted, or embraced, and which processes themselves are unremarked and indeed achieve their effect because they are not noticed’’ (Scott, 1993, p. 408). It is this interac- tion, of the liberatory coming-out nar- rative, of television’s historical patterns of homosexual representation and of the personalizing of sexuality in the Ellen episodes discussed below, that produces the grounds for claiming Ellen as emancipatory.
Personalizing Sexuality in Ellen
Certainly, DeGeneres and Ellen brought some visibility to an important issue: the representation of gays and lesbians in mainstream media. Cer- tainly, a lead character that is lesbian is a step beyond what we have seen be- fore. In crucial ways, however, Ellen departed little from representational norms. The underlying similarity of the rules of gay and lesbian representa- tion discussed above is that they all contribute to the conclusion that homo- sexuality is relevant almost exclusively for its impact on personal relation- ships, and moreover, that the most im- portant personal relationships a gay or lesbian character has are those s/he has with heterosexuals. Stock story- lines have included the coming-out nar- rative (and its effect on spouses, par- ents, children), the narrative about acceptance of a gay partner, or, increas- ingly, the ways that family and friends cope with AIDS.
In many cases, such storylines in- clude allusions to larger political or legal issues that affect gays and lesbi- ans, but such issues are alluded to pri-
marily for their utility in prompting interpersonal confrontation, reconcilia- tion, or solidarity. Typically, this kind of plot device results in the moment when the homophobic friend or family member realizes that to hate gays is to hate someone that he or she loves and is instantly transformed as a result. It is the moment when political oppression becomes a personal problem, and the solution to that problem is largely in the hands of heterosexuals. Thus, even when confronting the supposed subver- sion of heterosexuality, heterosexism governs Ellen’s representation as well as the production of the ‘‘truth’’ of her sexuality: what it will and will not mean, how it does and does not matter.
There is a moment in the second coming-out episode of Ellen that exem- plifies this process quite well. In this episode, Ellen comes out to her par- ents, who are, predictably, shocked and dismayed. Ellen’s father has a particu- larly hard time with her lesbian iden- tity. Although her mother, Lois, is con- vinced to attend a meeting of PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays), she informs Ellen that Ellen’s father refused to come. During the meeting, another parent attacks Ellen, saying ‘‘Why should your mother ac- cept this [your lesbianism]? It’s wrong. It’s sick. And you’re sick.’’ Ellen’s mother jumps to her defense, saying ‘‘Don’t you talk to my daughter that way. . . . Sure, I’m not happy about this. But I love her and I don’t want to lose her.’’ At that moment, Ellen’s fa- ther arrives unexpectedly and joins in, ‘‘You tell ’em Lois. She’s here, she’s queer, get used to it!’’
The man who attacks Ellen repre- sents the kind of bigotry that she is likely to face as a lesbian. However, the point of this moment is not to draw attention to that fact of lesbian exis-
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tence; rather, it is to showcase the tri- umph of Ellen’s parents’ love for her over their disappointment. Even though Ellen’s father recites a slogan popular with queer political activists, it is also clear that he has little idea what it means, as he notes in an aside to Ellen that he read it on a bumper sticker. Moments earlier in this scene, Ellen’s mother Lois specifically raised the issue of discrimination, albeit obliquely, by saying that she was con- cerned for Ellen because ‘‘Life is going to be so hard for you now.’’ The imme- diate reply from the PFLAG counselor was ‘‘It’s harder to live a lie than it is to live your life openly and honestly,’’ neatly sidestepping the very real issue of discrimination and turning the issue into one of personal integrity.
The treatment of Ellen’s homosexu- ality in the coming-out episodes oper- ates repeatedly to emphasize personal issues over political ones; that is, it presents acceptance by family and friends as the most crucial issues Ellen faces. The first episode in the series of three treated Ellen’s recognition of her attraction to women, her difficulties coming out to her friends, and her first encounter with lesbian culture (a trip to a lesbian coffeehouse). The second focused on her coming out to her par- ents, and the third centered on the conflicts engendered by her sexuality with her best (heterosexual) woman friend and with her boss at the book- store where she is a manager. The majority of the problems treated in these episodes are standard sitcom fare solved in standard sitcom style—fear and ignorance are conquered through love, support, and mutual understand- ing.
In all of these episodes, the sitcom follows the basic rules of gay and les- bian representation: no sexual interac-
tion, treating Ellen’s revelation as a ‘‘problem’’ to be dealt with by her heterosexual friends and family, and minuscule representation of any sort of lesbian community—indeed, it is quite amusing that in the first episode of the 1997 fall season, Ellen’s best hetero- sexual friend bemoans the fact that Ellen is not ‘‘clicking’’ with any of the women she fixes her up with, and she says, ‘‘I’m running out of lesbians.’’ Apparently the heterosexuals in her life know more lesbians than Ellen does. In terms of its subversion of tele- vision’s patterns of representation of homosexuality, the biggest contribu- tion that Ellen makes is taking us be- yond the ‘‘one shot’’ or ‘‘one episode’’ approach.
When larger issues related to the political status of gays and lesbians are raised in Ellen, they are turned into jokes or transformed into personal iden- tity or relationship issues. At a few points in these episodes, the possibility of larger ramifications appears. For ex- ample, in the first episode, during a conversation with her therapist, Ellen mentions discrimination against gays and lesbians, but her only specific ex- ample is ‘‘Do you think I want people calling me names to my face?’’ Amused by Ellen’s attempt to explain discrimi- nation to a black woman, her therapist (played by Oprah Winfrey) sarcasti- cally replies, ‘‘To have people commit hate crimes against you just because you’re not like them? . . . To have to use separate bathrooms and separate water fountains? Sit in the back of the bus?’’ Ellen, finally seeing the irony, humorously replies, ‘‘Oh, man, we have to use separate water fountains?’’
The point of this interaction seems to be to belittle Ellen’s fears, or, per- haps, to draw a parallel between preju- dice against African-Americans and
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prejudice against gays and lesbians. However, the point that is not made in this scene is that the kinds of discrimi- nation that were once legal against Af- rican Americans are still legal, in most states, against gays and lesbians. There is no federal civil rights law protecting the rights of gays and lesbians. Unlike African-Americans, they have not yet been designated a protected class. In 39 states, it is legal to discriminate against gays and lesbians in employ- ment.
However, Ellen assiduously avoids such recognition; indeed, at the end of her interaction with her therapist, Ellen Morgan turns the issue of discrimina- tion back into one of self-acceptance when she says, ‘‘You have to admit it’s not exactly an accepted thing. I mean, you never see a cake that says ‘Good for you—you’re gay.’ ’’ Continuing the personal turn, the therapist replies, ‘‘Okay, then, Ellen, I’ll say it: ‘Good for you, you’re gay’ ’’ (my emphasis).
This neat turning of the potentially political into the personal becomes a pattern in the coming-out episodes. In the third such episode, Ellen faces the possibility of workplace discrimina- tion, when her boss at the bookstore she manages reacts negatively to the knowledge that she is a lesbian. Impor- tantly, however, his first reaction is not to fire her, which would take the issue into the realm of politics by introduc- ing employment discrimination. Rather, her boss’s reaction is manifested in personal terms, as he tells her that he no longer wants her to baby-sit his children, with whom she has a close relationship. When Ellen presses him for an explanation, his response is that he thinks homosexuality is wrong and that he is ‘‘just protecting my kids.’’ When Ellen asks him if he sees her as ‘‘someone so evil that you’ve got to
keep your children away from me?’’ he replies that he has to do what he thinks is right. At this point, Ellen quits her job saying that she cannot work with someone who feels this way about her.
Ellen is not fired, a move that would be legal in many states; rather, she makes the decision to quit, turning the issue (again) into one of her own per- sonal integrity. Moreover, it is obvious that she is most disturbed by the break- down of her relationship with her boss and his family rather than by the effect of his homophobia on her workplace environment.
In the coming-out episodes, Ellen simply refuses to recognize the exis- tence of organized, systemic, or politi- cally oppressive homophobia, and the political status of gays and lesbians is never raised. When this issue finally surfaces, it is in a fall 1997 episode that appears designed to critique the oppres- sive nature of gay and lesbian political activism, rather than the political op- pression to which such activism re- sponds. In this episode, Ellen’s gay friend Peter (a recurring character) in- vites several of his gay and lesbian friends to a party at Ellen’s house, in an effort to introduce her to the gay and lesbian community. Again, politics are played for laughs, as Ellen reacts to meeting a rather militant, politically aware lesbian. The woman hands Ellen a rainbow flag, explaining that ‘‘The rainbow is a sign of unity for gays of all sexes, creeds, and colors.’’ Ellen in- stantly repudiates this political implica- tion, responding that ‘‘Well, it’s also a sign that it’s raining and the sun is still shining.’’
Later in the party, Ellen offers this same woman some ‘‘Señor Crunchy’’ corn chips, and is refused with the comment that the woman is ‘‘boycott- ing—excuse me—girlcotting. Señor
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Crunchy’s has repeatedly denied ben- efits to same sex partners.’’ At a loss for words, Ellen replies, ‘‘But they’re corn- delicous.’’ Moments later, Ellen uses the word ‘‘straight’’ and receives an instant lecture: ‘‘You really shouldn’t use the word straight—it implies that gay people are somehow crooked, or bent.’’ Ellen’s cutting response makes it clear that the appropriate reaction to this woman is to dismiss her as humor- less and rigid: ‘‘Well, what about the word gay? I mean, that’s a lot of pres- sure, to be happy and cheerful all the time. Although I see it didn’t touch you at all.’’ The woman does not give up on her relentless pressure to politicize Ellen, proposing ‘‘a toast to our new sister Ellen. We hope she will remem- ber, as John Kennedy might have said, had he been gay, ‘ask not what the gay community can do for you, ask what you can do for the gay community.’ ’’
Incredibly, at the same time that it dismisses the possibility or relevance of the material effects of homophobia, Ellen takes pains to establish gay politi- cal awareness and activism as oppres- sive. Indeed, at the end of this episode, the pressure toward political aware- ness is constructed as a threat to Ellen’s newfound authenticity as she discusses the evening with her friend Peter.
Ellen: I don’t want people to think that I don’t support the community. I do, but I can’t keep up—it’s overwhelming. I can’t keep up with the bumper stickers and the flags and the gay bakeries and the lesbian friendly furniture polish . . . I came out so I could be who I am. I’m not about to change so I can please other people. Peter: Ellen, the only reason I’ve been bug- ging you to get more involved is because I wanted you to know that there’s a whole support system out there of people just like you. The person you are is wonderful . . .
And the good news is that you can be any kind of gay person you want to be.
What is most interesting about this is Ellen’s claim that she does not wish to change just because she has come out—as if, again, coming out is a purely personal phenomenon that is relevant only in terms of who she decides to date or sleep with and has no impact on her status in the larger world. Her liberation has been so complete that homophobia is no factor at all. Even more interesting, Peter’s reply to her complaint is that the primary function of his community is to offer Ellen per- sonal support in her quest to be what- ever kind of gay person she ‘‘wants to be.’’
The logic of the coming-out epi- sodes, and one which DeGeneres her- self explicitly endorses, is that ‘‘being gay is okay,’’ and that gays and lesbian need to accept and value themselves and to expect the same from their loved ones. DeGeneres’ appearances on talk shows and her interviews in the print media have underscored this message again and again. The episode of Prime- Time Live that immediately followed the broadcast of the first coming-out episode was introduced as ‘‘a gay daughter and her anxious parents. One family’s story,’’ and centered on De- Generes’s relationship with her family, as her mother, father, and brother all discussed their reaction to her coming- out. Ellen’s discourse, DeGeneres’s dis- course, and the media discourse that accompanied them all constructed the DeGeneres/Morgan coming out as a personal phenomenon for whom the appropriate audience was her hetero- sexual friends, family, and fans.
At times, DeGeneres brought up her hope that her show would have some impact on gay teenagers and adoles-
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cents. A 1992 study of gay and lesbians youths, for instance, found that 64% of males and 50% of females said that their self-esteem was affected posi- tively by coming out. Lesbian and gay youths are two to three times more likely to attempt suicide than their het- erosexual peers, and gays and lesbians account for 30% of all completed suicides among youths (Singer & Deschamps, 1994, pp. 76–77). If a show like Ellen can alter those statistics in a positive way, it deserves praise. Self-acceptance and ac- ceptance by friends and family is impor- tant, particularly so in the process of coming-out. However it is not the en- tire battle, and to talk about Ellen as though it signifies some kind of achieve- ment of equality for gays and lesbians, either in media or in life, is to ‘‘confuse autobiographical gestures with [politi- cal] liberation’’ (Martin, 1993, p. 276).
Indeed, proclaiming that ‘‘Black is beautiful’’ hardly ended racial discrimi- nation. As Biddy Martin has argued, the clear implication of Foucault’s argu- ment about confession is that ‘‘laying claim, then, to one’s sexuality and the rights associated with it, insisting on the freedom to speak freely of one’s sexuality, risks subjection to regulation and control’’ (1993, p. 276). Ellen dem- onstrates this most clearly in its adher- ence to the norms for gay and lesbian representation on television. Equally important, however, is the realization that it is not sexuality that has been repressed in television, but, rather, the politics of sexuality. Or, to put it an- other way, the secret being kept isn’t homosexuality; it’s homophobia and heterosexism (Crimp, 1993, p. 308). In this sense, Ellen only amplifies the si- lence, demonstrating the powerful mechanisms of power and control at work in mediated discourse about gays and lesbians.
Conclusion I have emphasized two facets of the
Ellen coming-out discourse: the reli- ance on a belief in the liberating effects of confession and a construction of gay identity as primarily, if not exclusively, a personal and relational concern. These two threads in the Ellen dis- course stem, of course, from the same source: a commitment to the notion that subjectivity is under the control of the individual, that human beings have an authentic sexual and psychological self which can exist outside of social control and cultural pressure, that we are, in fact, only political subjects when we allow ourselves to be such. What it denies, as Jeffrey Weeks (1985) points out, is that
in a culture in which homosexual desires, male or female, are still execrated and denied, the adoption of gay or lesbian identities inevitably constitutes a political choice. These identities are not expres- sions of secret essences. They are self- creations, but they are creations on grounds not freely chosen but laid out by history. (p. 209, emphasis in original)
Yet, the romantic narrative of au- tonomy and liberation that undergirds the rhetoric of Ellen allows it to be cele- brated by gays and straights alike. For many gays, the fiction of personal au- thenticity and control provides psycho- logical comfort in a deeply homopho- bic culture; for sympathetic straights, this narrative facilitates blindness to- ward the heterosexism and homopho- bia in which they are complicit and from which they benefit. DeGeneres/ Morgan’s coming out was not an es- cape from power; rather, it was an entry into a different realm of power, one governed by a familiar yet potent narrative that carries its own forms of repression. To see it this way is to
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‘‘refuse a separation between ‘experi- ence’ and language and to insist in- stead on the productive quality of dis- course’’ (Scott, 1993, p. 409).
The narrative produced by discourse in and around Ellen is understood here as a discursive construction, not as a transparent rendering of experience. It is discourse that ‘‘position[s] subjects and produce[s] their experiences. Expe- rience in this definition then becomes not the origin of our explanation, not the authoritative (because seen or felt) evidence that grounds what is known, but rather that which we seek to ex- plain, that about which knowledge is produced’’ (Scott, 1993, p. 401). The question, then, is not whether coming- out is liberating or not, but how is it produced as liberating and what power dynamics does that production rely upon, produce, and also repress? For example, the liberation narrative in and around Ellen allows mainstream media to proclaim increased visibility for gays and lesbians as increased legitimacy for gays and lesbians, in presumably social and political ways. If acceptance is merely a matter of being heard, of being recognized, of having one’s con- fession acknowledged, so to speak, Ellen is progress. This is the claim that both DeGeneres and Morgan make, and it is an easy wish for a heterosexist media culture to grant. If, on the other hand, we are willing to interrogate the ‘‘out- ing fantasy—that the revelation of ho- mosexuality would have a transforma- tive effect on homophobic discourse—,’’ this claim should arouse suspicion, not comfort (Crimp, 1993, p. 308).
Moreover, Ellen’s foregrounding of the personal—and its concomitant re- pression of the political—is classic tele- vision strategy in its representation of marginalized groups, and it blinds us to the contradictions inherent in claim-
ing political progress from media repre- sentation (see Dow, 1996). Such contra- dictions are particularly clear in the case of Ellen and its relationship to gay and lesbian politics (see Dow, 1998). For instance, President Clinton, who, with much media fanfare, welcomed Ellen DeGeneres and her then-girl- friend Ann Heche to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner (and who later invited lesbian poet Adrienne Rich to be the nation’s Poet Laureate) is the same President who signed the De- fense of Marriage Act and who failed to follow through on lifting the ban against gays and lesbians in the mili- tary. Despite the fact that a 1993 New York Times poll found that 78 percent of Americans believe that gay and les- bian workers should have equal rights on the job ( Jackson, 1997, p. A23), only 11 states have laws forbidding workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual identity. There is no federal civil rights law for gays and lesbians, and a federal statute that would have protected gay and lesbian workers failed in the Senate in 1996 (Price, 1997). More than half of all socially active gays and lesbians have experi- enced some sort of anti-lesbian and anti-gay violence, and the third most common perpetrators of such violence are police officers (Singer & Deschamps, 1994, pp. 69–70). There are still several states in which one can be imprisoned for same-sex relations. Only 11 states have laws that make sexual orientation irrelevant in cus- tody cases, and, of course, gays and lesbians are denied the right to marry same-sex partners.3
The positive visibility given to les- bian identity in Ellen is not the same as political progress—or even political awareness—and it is a mistake to confuse them. Ellen’s interpretation of lesbian
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identity as an exclusively personal issue makes it easier for everyone—espe- cially those viewers in middle America that DeGeneres so desperately wants to reach—to ignore that there is much more at stake here than making TV safe for gays and lesbians. Entertainment Weekly’s designation of DeGeneres as a ‘‘poster child’’ that was noted in the opening to this essay is right on target; indeed, one could extend that meta- phor to argue that Ellen is a fairly clear example of poster child politics, in which the attractiveness of an issue is directly related to who represents it.
Of course we like Ellen. She’s pretty and funny, and doesn’t take herself too seriously—so we don’t have to either. In most episodes, she’s just another single woman hanging out with her friends and looking for love—standard fare for a sitcom. She is, in fact, the ultimate user-friendly lesbian for televi- sion purposes. Yet, poster child politics are double-edged. On the one hand, they can often bring needed visibility to a deserving issue—witness the turn- around in media and governmental attention to AIDS after the death of Rock Hudson or the activism of Ryan White. However, such politics as prac- ticed in popular culture can serve a masking function as representation is mistaken for social and political change. The success of the Cosby show didn’t erase racial division in this country—it just meant that middle America liked Cosby. The obvious extension of poster child politics is tokenism, and the suc- cess of Ellen doesn’t mean that discrimi- nation against gays and lesbians—and the formidable, well funded, and influ- ential political organizations that advo- cate it—is erased either. As Eve Sedg- wick (1990) notes, ‘‘we have too much cause to know how limited a leverage any individual revelation can exercise
over collectively scaled and institution- ally embodied oppressions’’ (p. 78).
Popular culture can be political, in the sense that it can empower certain constituencies and can energize politi- cal agendas. However, one of popular culture’s most salient characteristics is that it is ephemeral—its dependence on the power of personality, hot topics, and quickly shifting tastes makes it a fragile basis for lasting social change. Certainly, DeGeneres herself is aware of pop culture’s fickle nature, as indi- cated by her consistent comments that she has no desire to be pigeonholed as the ‘‘lesbian actress’’ (e.g., Handy, 1997a, p. 86). Moreover, as Sloop and Ono (1997) have noted in their discus- sion of ‘‘outlaw discourse,’’ when ‘‘one puts one’s focus on individuals rather than on discourses, one makes it more likely that a project will fail because the failure of the individual implies the failure of the discourse’’ (p. 62). Media construction of the DeGeneres/Mor- gan coming out, in which the success of the individual was taken to imply the success of the discourse (presumed to be gay and lesbian liberation), is a precise illustration of this problem.
The personalization of lesbian iden- tity in Ellen and its surrounding dis- course is what television—and main- stream media practice, to a large extent—do best: making us like charac- ters, not issues. Ellen is a likable les- bian, but her popularity doesn’t mean that America suddenly likes lesbians nor should it. In the end, what is at stake here are basic issues of civil rights, freedom of choice, and social justice— issues that shouldn’t be dependent on liking, anyway. Media avoidance of such political stakes is more than mere omission; it should be recognized as an expression, indeed a production, of power. �
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Notes 1In the fall of 2000, Will & Grace won three Emmys: for Best Comedy Series, Best Supporting
Actor and Best Supporting Actress. A few weeks later, an issue of Entertainment Weekly titled ‘‘Gay Hollywood 2000: A Special Report’’ asserted in its lead story that ‘‘today, in 2000 A.D. (After DeGeneres), gay characters are so common on television, so unexotic, that their sexual orientation has become all but invisible to most viewers. It is, in a sense, the ultimate sign of acceptance: Gays, like blacks and single moms before them, are now allowed to be every bit as boring (or smart or stupid or ruthless or whatever) as anybody else on TV’’ (Svetkey, 2000, p. 26). This commentary is a striking example of the hyperbolic claims for progress in gay representation that are attributed to the Ellen phenomenon. Svetkey’s claims are, at the very least, exaggerated, given that the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation’s (GLAAD’s) figures for the 2000–2001 television season on broadcast and cable put the number of lead, supporting, and recurring gay characters in prime-time series programming at a whopping total of 27. Moreover, the ‘‘invisibility’’ of their sexual orientation also seems questionable, given that the storylines featuring gay characters are often about being gay in a way that other programs are not specifically about being heterosexual. Finally, while gay characters may be able to be as boring or stupid or ruthless as ‘‘anybody else,’’ they are rarely allowed to be as sexual as straight characters, something that Svetkey himself seems to imply with his later comment that some see Will & Grace’s ‘‘straight-laced Will as a cop out, so blandly gay as to seem almost asexual’’ (p. 28).
2I do not mean to discount the sizable gay and lesbian audience for Ellen. GLAAD was heavily involved in publicizing the coming-out episodes, hosting viewing parties in major cities, and the gay press certainly paid close attention to the controversy surrounding the DeGeneres/Morgan coming-out. Moreover, the first coming-out episode, in particular, contained a number of ‘‘in-jokes’’ clearly designed for a gay and lesbian audience as well as a number of cameo appearances by such gay and lesbian pop culture figures as k.d. lang, Melissa Etheridge, and GLAAD Media Director Chastity Bono. However, the purpose of this analysis is to analyze the rhetorical/ideological/political function of the coming-out phenomenon as constructed in main- stream media culture for its presumed heterosexual audience.
3In the spring of 2000, the state of Vermont passed a comprehensive ‘‘civil union’’ bill, making same-sex couples eligible for the many benefits available under state law for married couples, although ‘‘civil union’’ is not technically the same as marriage. Moreover, although questions about its constitutionality continue, supporters of the Defense of Marriage Act signed into law by President Clinton in 1996 claim that it permits the federal government and the states to deny recognition of all same-sex unions in other states.
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Received November 4, 1999 Accepted January 30, 2000
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