Producing Containment: The Rhetorical Construction of Difference in Will & Grace

Debates over appropriate sexual politics take place as much within LGBT organizations as they do in general culture, as the interests and needs of a nonheterogeneous LGBT population often clash over issues of race, sex, class, gender, and political strategies and goals. The state of "gay politics" is a state of contradictions and negotiations of power where inclusion is tempered by violence, and cooperation by competition. In this light, Mitchell interrogates one site of this social negotiation, NBC's popular Emmy-winning program Will & Grace. She extends Suzanna Walter's depiction of the show as the "new homophobia on TV" arguing that the program works to enforce hegemonic social relations of inequity in a broader sense as well.