The Daily Orange

Media Credit: Carrie Jordan [Click to enlarge]

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. 

Continued...

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