L.A. LOVE.(The L Word)(Television Program Review)

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 02-FEB-04

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COPYRIGHT 2004 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

"The L Word," the perhaps overpublicized new Sunday-night Showtime series about a group of lesbians who live in Los Angeles, is groundbreaking not because it shows naked women. For that, you can go to an art museum or buy a magazine or turn on your computer (a Google search for "naked men" yields about six hundred thousand results; "naked women" yields more than a million). And it's not because the show depicts women having sex with each other. Any Showtime subscriber who is up after midnight has probably already seen a fair amount of girl-on-girl action, as it's called in the biz. But the late-night Showtime (and Cinemax and HBO) sex is motivated only by a paycheck, and the performers have a hard time even mimicking the expressions of ecstasy. Their job is simply to be on display for their male co-stars, who sit watching from the sidelines, and for the men who sit watching from the comfort of home or hotel rooms. What's different about the sex in "The L Word" is that it isn't staged for the benefit of...

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