ABSTRACT
If, as Marshall McCluhan suggested, “Art is anything that you can get away with”, many critics did not let the HBO dramedy Looking (2014) get away with much. Accused of being “boring” and “ordinary” by some TV critics, while heralded for being “revolutionary” for its depiction of gay men by others, the show never quite found a decent sized audience and was cancelled after just two seasons (a total of 18 episodes). Looking: The Movie completed the various storylines and premiered in July 2016. This chapter engages with historian Joan W. Scott’s notion of “fantasy echo” (2001, 287), referring to “the repetition of something imagined or an imagined repetition”. By employing Scott’s notion of “fantasy echo”, Manganas explores whether reception to the show was somewhat muted because audiences are projecting a “fantasy” of queer identities and politics that is not rooted in reality. Manganas argues that Looking functions as an “echo” – an incomplete reproduction – of the queer experience and as such falls short of the expectations of its critics. This tension, he argues, suggests that there is an underlying anxiety among audiences, artists and critics about how to represent queer narratives in popular culture. Looking is a glimpse into a world where queer identities and politics have become banal and resistance invisible. Manganas argues, however, that Looking’s subversiveness lies in its celebration of the banality of queer and that HBO’s slight gay dramedy might signal the arrival of a post-resistance, post-politics, queer era.
