The Generic Closet: Black Gayness and the Black-Cast Sitcom

by Alfred L. Martin Jr.

Overview

Even after a rise in gay and Black representation and production on TV in the 1990s, the sitcom became a "generic closet," restricting Black gay characters with narrative tropes.

Drawing from 20 interviews with credited episode writers, key show-runners, and Black gay men, The Generic Closet situates Black-cast sitcoms as a unique genre that uses Black gay characters in service of the series' heterosexual main cast. Alfred L. Martin, Jr., argues that the Black community is considered to be antigay due to misrepresentation by shows that aired during the family viewing hour and that were written for the imagined, "traditional" Black family. Martin considers audience reception, industrial production practices, and authorship to unpack the claim that Black gay characters are written into Black-cast sitcoms such as Moesha, Good News, and Let's Stay Together in order to closet Black gayness.

By exploring how systems of power produce ideologies about Black gayness, The Generic Closet deconstructs the concept of a monolithic Black audience and investigates whether this generic closet still exists.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780253054593
Publisher:	Indiana University Press (Ips)
Publication date:	04/06/2021
Pages:	242
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.55(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Alfred L. Martin Jr. is Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Iowa.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction: Television in Black and Gay
1. Building and Rebuilding Generic Closets within the Black-Cast Sitcom Industry
2. Scripting the Generic Closet in the Writers' Room
3. Comedy, Laughter and the Generic Closet
4. Black Queens Speak: The Generic Closet, Black-Cast Sitcoms and Reception Practices
Conclusion: Trapped in the Black-Cast Sitcoms' Generic Closet
Appendix A: List of Black-Cast Sitcoms with Black Gay Characters
Appendix B: Interview Script for Black-Cast Sitcom Viewers
Appendix C: Interview Script for Industry Professionals
Bibliography
Index

What People are Saying About This

Herman Gray]]>

In The Generic Closet Alfred Martin shows us how to read within and against the practices and ideologies of the generic closet which frame the image of Black gay men in Black-cast situation comedies. By emphasizing the semiotic work of narrative and characters, technologies like scripts, costuming, and the laugh track that map pathways of identification and dis-identification, the industry (de)valuation of black audiences, the writer's rooms, and the reception of images of Black gay men in Black-cast situation comedies, Martin shifts analytic attention from the textual preoccupation with the politics of representation to the politics of industrial production and in the process gifts us with a critical and robust account of Black-cast situation comedies and their cultural work in shoring up Black heteronormativity. The Generic Closet treats Black gay male characters as the 'subjects of communication' rather than the objects of liberal recognition and self congratulation. With Alfred Martin's careful curation and astute analysis, The Generic Closet gives us a new way to critically view Black-cast situation comedies and how they police the boundaries of Black respectability and heteronormativity while protecting heteronormative black masculinity. By dwelling on formal elements of television practices, industrial systems, and genre conventions in the production of black gay masculinities and using the rich analytic of the generic closet we see the limits of reaching for the mere visibility of Black gay men in Black-cast situation comedies. Politically, Alfred Martin deftly explores the pivotal role of the generic closet in regulating and managing Black gay men even as it meets the purported industry and activists thresholds of liberal visibility and recognition for black writers and audiences. With The Generic Closet Martin tells a thoroughly researched, brilliantly analyzed, and nuanced story of normalization, containment, recognition and management of black difference. Both revelatory and confining, the generic closet is the perfect research site and conceptual metaphor for the complex cultural, racial, and sexual politics at work in Black-cast situation comedies. The book's remarkable achievement is in detailing the industrial practices of containment and weighing the social impact that the cultural labors of the generic closet achieves in regulating Black gay men in Black-cast situation comedies.

"The circuit of culture approach illuminates the complicated queer politics of the generic closet, offering readers important and meaningful insight into the limits and limitations of black gay visibility . . . giving the reader a rich explanation of why black gay visibility has been so limited."

Robin R. Means Coleman

Professor Martin's intellectual chops are on full display in The Generic Closet. He evidences a theoretically steeped, rigorous analysis of audience reception practices, identity construction, and queer aesthetics.

Kathleen Battles]]>

Martin demonstrates impressive mastery of a range of methods, from industry analysis, textual analysis, and audience analysis, providing a rich explanation of why and how black gay visibility has been so limited. In expanding our historical focus to a group of texts less associated with "quality" by virtue of both the racial makeup of the audience and genre and in its specific focus on black gay representation, The Generic Closet is an essential and necessary contribution to television studies, but will also appeal to readers interested in the history of gay visibility, and the complicated relationship between race, sexuality, and media.

Ellen Cleghorne]]>

The Generic Closet is a necessary intervention not only for the Black scholar but for the Black culture in general. Dr. Martin has created a tour de force that gives gravitas to the Black sitcom and elevates Black gayness into visibility. Simply, thank you for this! Never before have Black gay characters been acknowledged in the sitcom genre – and it is past time.

Herman Gray

In The Generic Closet Alfred Martin shows us how to read within and against the practices and ideologies of the generic closet which frame the image of Black gay men in Black-cast situation comedies. By emphasizing the semiotic work of narrative and characters, technologies like scripts, costuming, and the laugh track that map pathways of identification and dis-identification, the industry (de)valuation of black audiences, the writer's rooms, and the reception of images of Black gay men in Black-cast situation comedies, Martin shifts analytic attention from the textual preoccupation with the politics of representation to the politics of industrial production and in the process gifts us with a critical and robust account of Black-cast situation comedies and their cultural work in shoring up Black heteronormativity. The Generic Closet treats Black gay male characters as the 'subjects of communication' rather than the objects of liberal recognition and self congratulation. With Alfred Martin's careful curation and astute analysis, The Generic Closet gives us a new way to critically view Black-cast situation comedies and how they police the boundaries of Black respectability and heteronormativity while protecting heteronormative black masculinity. By dwelling on formal elements of television practices, industrial systems, and genre conventions in the production of black gay masculinities and using the rich analytic of the generic closet we see the limits of reaching for the mere visibility of Black gay men in Black-cast situation comedies. Politically, Alfred Martin deftly explores the pivotal role of the generic closet in regulating and managing Black gay men even as it meets the purported industry and activists thresholds of liberal visibility and recognition for black writers and audiences. With The Generic Closet Martin tells a thoroughly researched, brilliantly analyzed, and nuanced story of normalization, containment, recognition and management of black difference. Both revelatory and confining, the generic closet is the perfect research site and conceptual metaphor for the complex cultural, racial, and sexual politics at work in Black-cast situation comedies. The book's remarkable achievement is in detailing the industrial practices of containment and weighing the social impact that the cultural labors of the generic closet achieves in regulating Black gay men in Black-cast situation comedies.

Robin R. Means Coleman]]>

Professor Martin's intellectual chops are on full display in The Generic Closet. He evidences a theoretically steeped, rigorous analysis of audience reception practices, identity construction, and queer aesthetics.

Kathleen Battles

Martin demonstrates impressive mastery of a range of methods, from industry analysis, textual analysis, and audience analysis, providing a rich explanation of why and how black gay visibility has been so limited. In expanding our historical focus to a group of texts less associated with "quality" by virtue of both the racial makeup of the audience and genre and in its specific focus on black gay representation, The Generic Closet is an essential and necessary contribution to television studies, but will also appeal to readers interested in the history of gay visibility, and the complicated relationship between race, sexuality, and media.

Ron Becker

The Generic Closet brilliantly demonstrates that understanding the industry and cultural forces at play in Black-cast sitcoms and their treatment of Black gay men is essential for our understanding of U.S. television and its role in the intersectional politics of race and sexual identity.

Ellen Cleghorne

The Generic Closet is a necessary intervention not only for the Black scholar but for the Black culture in general. Dr. Martin has created a tour de force that gives gravitas to the Black sitcom and elevates Black gayness into visibility. Simply, thank you for this! Never before have Black gay characters been acknowledged in the sitcom genre – and it is past time.

Editorial Reviews

In The Generic Closet: Black Gayness and the Black-Cast Sitcom, Alfred L. Martin Jr. constructs a rigorous, persuasive account of the historical inclusion of Black gay characters in Black-led sitcoms. Zeroing in on the period in the 1990s and 2000s when, in US television, a significant increase in on-screen Black and gay representation occurred, Martin uses interviews with audiences and industry professionals to produce nuanced understandings of the industrial moment itself, the programs created during it, and, most centrally to the monograph's arc, Black gayness as it appeared in Black-cast sitcoms. . . . Notably, throughout The Generic Closet, Martin holds space for the positive and productive aspects of representations of Black gay characters, even while highlighting areas worthy of critique. This tension is something many scholars studying media industries (while also attending to implications of race, sexual identity, and other minoritized identity categories within those industries) are required to balance: while there is willingness, and even desire, to acknowledge advancements around diversity, engaging with the potential of what could be can make it difficult to maintain a critical lens toward understanding which elements have limited or continue to limit possibilities around more authentic, dynamic representations of minoritized groups. Martin successfully strikes this balance through careful deployment of his multifaceted analytical approach, the facets of which are ultimately unified by his illumination of the previously obfuscated generic closet and the revelation of how it functions to uphold boundaries around Black gay inclusion in US television.

Media Industries Journal - Lauren E. Wilks

In The Generic Closet: Black Gayness and the Black-Cast Sitcom, Alfred L. Martin Jr. embarks on a detailed case study of five U.S. shows that aired between 1996 and 2014 and outlines the circumscribed roles available to Black gay characters. Martin unpacks the television industry's imagination of Black audiences as monolithically intolerant of homosexuality, traces the implications of these industrial assumptions from the writers' room to the screen, and concludes with the voices of Black gay viewers themselves. . . . Martin's work is timely given the present climate of growing awareness of structural racism, especially in the United States. This book also underscores the need for intersectional analysis, highlighting the disparate conditions of representation for White gay characters and Black gay characters during the so-called Gay '90s and the problematic depiction of the "coming out" narrative as universal to the LGBTQ+ experience, despite studies showing that it is less salient to the Black LGBTQ+ experience.

International Journal of Communication - Aiden James Kosciesza

"Martin demonstrates impressive mastery of a range of methods, from industry analysis, textual analysis, and audience analysis, providing a rich explanation of why and how black gay visibility has been so limited. In expanding our historical focus to a group of texts less associated with "quality" by virtue of both the racial makeup of the audience and genre and in its specific focus on black gay representation, The Generic Closet is an essential and necessary contribution to television studies, but will also appeal to readers interested in the history of gay visibility, and the complicated relationship between race, sexuality, and media."—Kathleen Battles, author of Calling All Cars: Radio Dragnets and the Technology of Policing

"Professor Martin's intellectual chops are on full display in The Generic Closet. He evidences a theoretically steeped, rigorous analysis of audience reception practices, identity construction, and queer aesthetics."—Robin R. Means Coleman, author of Horror Noire: Blacks in American Horror Films from the 1890s to Present

"In The Generic Closet Alfred Martin shows us how to read within and against the practices and ideologies of the generic closet which frame the image of Black gay men in Black-cast situation comedies. By emphasizing the semiotic work of narrative and characters, technologies like scripts, costuming, and the laugh track that map pathways of identification and dis-identification, the industry (de)valuation of black audiences, the writer's rooms, and the reception of images of Black gay men in Black-cast situation comedies, Martin shifts analytic attention from the textual preoccupation with the politics of representation to the politics of industrial production and in the process gifts us with a critical and robust account of Black-cast situation comedies and their cultural work in shoring up Black heteronormativity. The Generic Closet treats Black gay male characters as the 'subjects of communication' rather than the objects of liberal recognition and self congratulation. With Alfred Martin's careful curation and astute analysis, The Generic Closet gives us a new way to critically view Black-cast situation comedies and how they police the boundaries of Black respectability and heteronormativity while protecting heteronormative black masculinity. By dwelling on formal elements of television practices, industrial systems, and genre conventions in the production of black gay masculinities and using the rich analytic of the generic closet we see the limits of reaching for the mere visibility of Black gay men in Black-cast situation comedies. Politically, Alfred Martin deftly explores the pivotal role of the generic closet in regulating and managing Black gay men even as it meets the purported industry and activists thresholds of liberal visibility and recognition for black writers and audiences. With The Generic Closet Martin tells a thoroughly researched, brilliantly analyzed, and nuanced story of normalization, containment, recognition and management of black difference. Both revelatory and confining, the generic closet is the perfect research site and conceptual metaphor for the complex cultural, racial, and sexual politics at work in Black-cast situation comedies. The book's remarkable achievement is in detailing the industrial practices of containment and weighing the social impact that the cultural labors of the generic closet achieves in regulating Black gay men in Black-cast situation comedies."—Herman Gray, author of Watching Race: Television and the Struggle for Blackness

"The Generic Closet is a necessary intervention not only for the Black scholar but for the Black culture in general. Dr. Martin has created a tour de force that gives gravitas to the Black sitcom and elevates Black gayness into visibility. Simply, thank you for this! Never before have Black gay characters been acknowledged in the sitcom genre – and it is past time."—Ellen Cleghorne, cast member Saturday Night Live (1991-1996)

"The Generic Closet brilliantly demonstrates that understanding the industry and cultural forces at play in Black-cast sitcoms and their treatment of Black gay men is essential for our understanding of U.S. television and its role in the intersectional politics of race and sexual identity."—Ron Becker, author of Gay TV and Straight America

"In The Generic Closet: Black Gayness and the Black-Cast Sitcom, Alfred L. Martin Jr. embarks on a detailed case study of five U.S. shows that aired between 1996 and 2014 and outlines the circumscribed roles available to Black gay characters. Martin unpacks the television industry's imagination of Black audiences as monolithically intolerant of homosexuality, traces the implications of these industrial assumptions from the writers' room to the screen, and concludes with the voices of Black gay viewers themselves. . . . Martin's work is timely given the present climate of growing awareness of structural racism, especially in the United States. This book also underscores the need for intersectional analysis, highlighting the disparate conditions of representation for White gay characters and Black gay characters during the so-called Gay '90s and the problematic depiction of the "coming out" narrative as universal to the LGBTQ+ experience, despite studies showing that it is less salient to the Black LGBTQ+ experience."—Aiden James Kosciesza, Temple University, International Journal of Communication

"The Generic Closet gives readers a language to describe the pernicious industrial strategy as a structure for containing Black gayness–something that the television industry and audiences wtill cannout seem to escape."—Brandy Monk-Payton - Fordham University, Film Quarterly

"With The Generic Closet: Black Gayness and the Black-Cast Sitcom, Martin illustrates not only how Black gayness has been mediated on the Black-cast sitcom but also why it has been mediated in the ways it has. The use of his various research methods helps to make clear how systems of power produce and recycle ideologies that satisfy racial hegemony and heteronormativity. Deviation from these industrial modes is deemed risky in terms of capital gain and losing an established audience. The possible "good intentions" in producing and sustaining narratively important Black gay characters while diversifying televisual identity is unfortunately tertiary to network fears and the heterosexist American norm. To move forward from this banishment of Black gay men to the generic closet, the assumed monolithic Black audience must first be deconstructed to make way for new representational possibilities."—Adrien Sebro, University of Texas at Austin, The Communication Review

"In The Generic Closet: Black Gayness and the Black-Cast Sitcom, Alfred L. Martin Jr. constructs a rigorous, persuasive account of the historical inclusion of Black gay characters in Black-led sitcoms. Zeroing in on the period in the 1990s and 2000s when, in US television, a significant increase in on-screen Black and gay representation occurred, Martin uses interviews with audiences and industry professionals to produce nuanced understandings of the industrial moment itself, the programs created during it, and, most centrally to the monograph's arc, Black gayness as it appeared in Black-cast sitcoms. . . . Notably, throughout The Generic Closet, Martin holds space for the positive and productive aspects of representations of Black gay characters, even while highlighting areas worthy of critique. This tension is something many scholars studying media industries (while also attending to implications of race, sexual identity, and other minoritized identity categories within those industries) are required to balance: while there is willingness, and even desire, to acknowledge advancements around diversity, engaging with the potential of what could be can make it difficult to maintain a critical lens toward understanding which elements have limited or continue to limit possibilities around more authentic, dynamic representations of minoritized groups. Martin successfully strikes this balance through careful deployment of his multifaceted analytical approach, the facets of which are ultimately unified by his illumination of the previously obfuscated generic closet and the revelation of how it functions to uphold boundaries around Black gay inclusion in US television."—Lauren E. Wilks, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Media Industries Journal

"The Generic Closet is a crucial text in part because of its sharp focus on the way Black gay men are represented in a specific mode of television. Ultimately, the mix of interviews with viewers as well as writers and showrunners makes it a very compelling book, and consistently engaging, as Martin ap-proaches every single one of his arguments through several expertly researched angles."—Nina Linhales Barker -, The Velvet Light Trap, Number 19, 2023

"Martin's profound analysis of the generic closet offers other scholars of television and new media not only a powerful exemplar of the critical purchase a multimodal methodology can bring, but also a theoretically rich exploration of Black gayness and Black-cast sitcoms."—Olivia Stowell, University of Michigan, Queer Studies in Media & Popular Culture

From the Publisher

With The Generic Closet: Black Gayness and the Black-Cast Sitcom, Martin illustrates not only how Black gayness has been mediated on the Black-cast sitcom but also why it has been mediated in the ways it has. The use of his various research methods helps to make clear how systems of power produce and recycle ideologies that satisfy racial hegemony and heteronormativity. Deviation from these industrial modes is deemed risky in terms of capital gain and losing an established audience. The possible "good intentions" in producing and sustaining narratively important Black gay characters while diversifying televisual identity is unfortunately tertiary to network fears and the heterosexist American norm. To move forward from this banishment of Black gay men to the generic closet, the assumed monolithic Black audience must first be deconstructed to make way for new representational possibilities.

The Communication Review - Adrien Sebro

The Generic Closet is a crucial text in part because of its sharp focus on the way Black gay men are represented in a specific mode of television. Ultimately, the mix of interviews with viewers as well as writers and showrunners makes it a very compelling book, and consistently engaging, as Martin ap-proaches every single one of his arguments through several expertly researched angles.

The Velvet Light Trap, Number 19, 2023 - Nina Linhales Barker -

The Generic Closet gives readers a language to describe the pernicious industrial strategy as a structure for containing Black gayness–something that the television industry and audiences wtill cannout seem to escape.

Film Quarterly - Brandy Monk-Payton - Fordham University