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.

摘要

在 2011 年 1 月《娱乐周刊》的一份特别报道中，詹妮弗·阿姆斯特朗指出，“同性恋角色已经从曾经的客串明星、耳语的悲剧和愚蠢的搭档变成了以青少年为中心的电视节目中不仅被接受而且被期待的部分”（36，原来的重点）。在这一类型中，出柜叙事已成为表达和代表 LGBTIQ+ 身份和经验的主要手段。本文追溯了一系列青少年文本，这些文本通过 LGBTIQ+ 出来的故事来协商真实性和酷儿身份，其中酷儿编码的角色试图以异性恋的身份传递，为了人身安全而进行“伪装”，并作为融入青少年社会环境的一种手段。MTV 的伪装（2014-2016）在这个奇怪的青少年故事中翻转了剧本，跟随两个不受欢迎的最好的朋友，Karma（凯蒂史蒂文斯）和艾米（丽塔沃尔克），他们假装是女同性恋者以攀登高中等级。虽然在发布时引起争议，但Faking It因其对性别和性多样性的新颖表现而被认为是“改变电视上酷儿表现的性质”。本文探讨了该系列如何表达和理解青少年性行为。通过仔细的文本分析，本文展示了Faking It如何利用伪造的主题来破坏作为真实性表达的出来叙事的经典概念，这些概念长期以来一直是电影和电视中 LGBTIQ+ 青年叙事的核心。