Stairway to acceptance

Speaker Amy Villajero relates architecture to gay lifestyle

By: Andrew Kase

Posted: 9/26/07

Armed with a fake ID and her best gay boyfriend, Amy Villajero went out to a dance club, but she was only permitted to enter because she looked like a boy.

Villajero was just a teenager at the end of the '70s, and an open lesbian who wanted to be part of the burgeoning gay community.

Ironically, in a community where everyone wants acceptance, looking like a boy was the sole thing that granted her entrance into the gay club.

This story and other related subjects were the themes of Villajero's lecture, "Tales of the City: TV and Queer Urbanity," at the Hall of Languages Tuesday.

Villajero, an associate professor and director of the Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies program at Cornell University, presented an hour-long lecture about feminist and homosexual theories pertaining to and around the television show "Tales of the City."

The United States-British hybrid television show ran as a miniseries on PBS in 1994 and starred Olympia Dukakis and Laura Linney.

"Tales of the City" originally aired in Britain on Channel 4, the British equivalent of PBS.

Some affiliates in the United States feared that the homosexual themes, nudity and illicit drug use present in the show would cause too much of a stir, but the miniseries aired on PBS regardless and garnered the highest ratings PBS has had for a drama series.

The program was based on Armistead Maupin's novel, "A Man I Dreamt Up," and took place in 1976 in San Francisco.

Villajero divided her lecture into four sections: walls, sidewalks, stairs and windows. She described how the show utilized these architectural design interconnections and metaphors to gay lifestyles in San Francisco, specifically relating them to the show.

For example, stairs symbolized obstacles and challenges that people in the gay community face every day. In the show, the residents of Barbary Lane had to climb stairs to get to their house every day.

Jessica Treen-Barnes, a graduate student in linguistics, said that Villajero's lecture was appealing, and she enjoyed the clip showed of the TV show and the gender binaries discussed.

"Television preoccupied the melodrama during this period, and the different stairs of Barbary Lane represented different challenges, obstacles and paths of obstruction," Villajero said.

Villajero discussed how to account for large spatial structures, like Barbary Lane in the TV show, in other films and shows. The lane signified heading toward "out-ness," while walls of a small room signified being "in the closet."

She talked about how queer history and literature affected gender binaries and related back to the open and closed architecture symbolism in "Tales of the City."

Before the last segment of her lecture, Villajero showed a clip of "Tales of the City," during which Singleton met Mrs. Madrigal and how she was almost instantly sold on living at Barbary Lane.

The clip displayed the acceptance within the gay community, a rare thing in San Francisco during the '70s, which was before the area became a popular gay neighborhood.

After the lecture finished, the professor held a brief question and answer portion during which a few questions were asked.

"I also thought the answers she gave were pretty straightforward," said Adam Goldsmith, an undeclared freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences.

Villajero discussed in detail the architecture symbolism which was present all through the show, and even constructed unique terms as reference points, such as gatekeepers. Gatekeepers refer to those who monitor who comes and goes within the small community of Barbary Lane.

When the presentation finished, Villajero started an informal social session, during which people could grab some refreshments.

"Tales of the City" was the catalyst for Villajero's lecture, and her ideas and concepts drew attention to the representation of gays in the 1970s.

"I thought it was interesting how she integrated the TV show with the lecture," said Goldsmith. "I had actually seen the show already, but I liked how she explained it."