Ellen is framed in our public imaginary as the inaugural ‘television gay’. Her sitcom featured the first ‘coming out episode’; episodes which have proliferated in the 18 years since. ‘Coming out’ has become an important component of LGBTQ+ politics and has become a sort of performative act that has a culturally embedded script. To ‘come out’ is to assert a ‘deviant’ sexual orientation or gender identity in a public forum; “to be anything but heterosexual, one must explicitly claim it” (Reed 18). Ellen provided a ‘coming out’ framework which has, at least partially, informed what it means to ‘come out’ in the present. Television is politically and culturally significant in the way it “teaches the formation of identity and citizenship in a society characterized by the unknowability of its nevertheless sovereign populations” (Reed 11).

In 2012 ABC broadcast a problematic segment which ‘reflects’upon Ellen’s coming out. This clip begins by presenting Modern Family and Glee as emblematic of our postgay society. In her article “The Three Phases of Ellen: From Queer to Gay to Postgay,” Reed characterizes the postgay era by the rhetoric of “I’m gay but it doesn’t matter” (Reeed 19). While LGBTQ+ representation in popular television shows is essential to the continuing fight for equality, it all too often obfuscates the persistent need to fight for equality due to the illusion that equality has been achieved. Through watching shows such as Modern Family and Glee, “a liberal straight audience gets the satisfaction of knowing that they are open minded and accepting of lesbians [LGBTQ+ persons], at the same time that they do not have to be bothered with any of the real differences that lesbian [LGBTQ+] identity can present, or with their own homophobia” (Reed 23). Watching popular television shows which feature sanitized representations of the LGBTQ+ community can serve as an opt out clause for interrogating your own discrimination, in much the same way that ‘having a gay friend’ precludes one from homophobic sentiments.

This ABC news anchor perpetuates postgay ideology by stating, “Gay or not gay, we’re all part of the big American family.” Through this statement there is a paternalistic and nationalistic silencing of the continuing discrimination, hatred, and violence faced by members of the LGBTQ+ community every single day. This ideology is not benign. As Reed explains, “Liberals fear for their place in the world true pluralism would create. And so, the bargain they set requires us to deny our difference, thereby affirming the bedrock principle of liberalism: that all people are fundamentally the same” (Reed 23). The assimilationist logic of sameness is a barrier to confronting the heteronormative basis of our ‘liberal’ society. To insist upon the current state of ‘sameness’ rejects the existence of instances of discrimination based on difference. Since we are postgay, we must also be post gay discrimination.

This clip concludes with the determination of Ellen’s success by the most blatant neoliberal capitalist indicators. We are instructed to “look at Ellen DeGeneres today.” Her success is made apparent by her #31 ranking on Forbes’ ‘Most Powerful Celebrities’ list and her $45 million net worth. Her personal success is calibrated by the dollar value of her public persona. In a strange applauding of “a classic assimilationist move,” Ellen’s involvement with JC Penney is framed as vindication and retribution (Reed 20). Even though JC Penney pulls their advertisements from Ellen’s sitcom following her character coming out in 1997, Ellen agrees to be their spokesperson years later. While I cannot understand the complexities of corporate endorsement, I would think a stern rejection and a fuck you to JC Penney would be in order instead of the signing of contracts. The JC Penney ‘gay support’ arc is emblematic of many instances of corporate involvement in LGBTQ+ issues and the ways in which they are profiting off aligning themselves with the “gay or not gay, we’re all part of the big American family” ideology. In our postgay society, all past discrimination is forgiven and all past guilt assuaged.