24. On Queer as Folk

The strength of the statement that Queer as Folk (Showtime, 2000-2005) is a television series that deserves remembering depends largely on the aspects of the show the critic chooses to emphasise. On the one hand, it is impossible to downplay the sociocultural significance of Queer as Folk; after all, it was the first TV-series that centered around gay characters and did it in a three-dimensional way, a phrase one of its actors used to refer to the unusual sexual and social frankness visible in almost each of its episode. More than being close to reality in its depiction of the life of the people who belong to a social group self-labelled as gay, it is realistic because of the deeply self-conscious and permanently playful reliance on the signs, stereotypes, and, if you wish, clichés widely spread within that group. Queer as Folk is thus an important cultural document of the mind of its creators, reflective of that of the majority of the gay community; it gives a thorough and funny, although unsystematic, overview of the gay perspective.

The fact that Queer as Folk is extensive rather than intensive in its nature is simultaneously the show's major default. It wants be representative of the general homosexual experience without paying attention to the possibility of the idea that homosexual identity could also express itself in ways clearly different from those depicted in the show. Therefore, it is extensive, but not extensive enough. Furthermore, the characters of Queer as Folk, even though colourful (especially Sharon Gless's Debbie), tend to be psychologically flat. Rather than naturally inhabiting the fictional world that has been created for them, they behave as extensions of their creators' minds, whose manipulations are, especially in the final seasons, clearly visible. This flatness makes the narrative of the series nothing more than mediocre; the creators of the show seem to have thrown together all the precious bits of gay consciousness without knowing how to organise them in a meaningful way. There is a lot of wit involved but not enough art of original storytelling. (Remember that Queer as Folk was created at the time when several landmark shows concurrently proved that there could be auteurs in television.) In terms of its intrinsic values, Queer as Folk is, henceforth, just an average TV-series, no better than Desperate Housewives, much worse than The Wire. It is its groundbreaking social role, and the subsequent status as an icon for a significant amount of people, that makes it a cultural phenomenon worthy of admiration.