Alternatively, they fall on deaf ears all together, requiring the assistance of a search engine to clarify their content. These scenes play out a strange equivocation there is recognition of a gay cultural legacy, but its icons are handled half-heartedly, as though they were ironic props. Later, Patrick claims he is interested in an OkCupid profile because it includes a Frank O’Hara quotation, but then confesses that he actually had to google the famous gay poet.
It transpires that Patrick’s attempt was not entirely sincere he was in fact performing a sort of voyeuristic curiosity (he and his friends had wondered, “Do people really still do this?”).įrankie Alvarez as Agustin, Jonathon Groff as Patrick, Murray Bartlett as Dom in Looking. The opening scene of the pilot in 2014 finds Patrick “cruising” in a park, only to sheepishly opt out at the last minute. Often, Looking dramatises the extent to which its characters appear estranged from the history of gay culture. If that reference is lost on you, “looking” still makes sense as a broad metaphor for the pursuits of the show – whether it references the characters’ various searches in life, or the camera’s fascination with gazing at them. Those who have used gay social networking devices will be familiar with the term “looking” as a shorthand expression for “looking for sex”. Even its title is carefully coded for both “gay” and “mainstream” audiences.
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These dual interests set up a sense of ambivalence within the series about just how “gay” it intends to be. But, perhaps in an effort not to alienate other demographics, it was also sold as a universal story. The show was marketed as a new take on what it means to be a gay male in modern times.
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There’s been gay characters and gay shows on TV before, but never told in this sort of way. The cast of Looking talk about how the series approaches its gay characters on CNN.īut in another plug for Looking, actor Jonathan Groff (who plays lead character Patrick) proudly enthused:
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I could already detect a distinct self-consciousness about how to approach the “gay issue” when I listened to the cast interviewed on CNN last year, where they each went at lengths to stress the universality of the themes that the series addresses. When I watched the first season of Looking in 2014, HBO’s original series about a group of young gay men in contemporary San Francisco (season two is currently airing in Australia), I was keenly aware of the burden that such expectations must have posed for the show’s creators. Audiences and critics tend to regard representations of the “other” with a sense of trepidation, sometimes longing to see themselves or their politics reflected back to them.
The platform for such stories is relatively small, which means there is a lot at stake. Representations of marginalised subjects on screen or in literature often trigger heated debate.
Show a gay man on TV, and you immediately open yourself up to a degree of scrutiny that other artists usually have the privilege of avoiding.