6x11: When A Reductive Gay Joke Plotline Is Still Queer-coded (or More Metatextual Queerness In House

6x11: when a reductive gay joke plotline is still queer-coded (or more metatextual queerness in house md)

in its later seasons, house md keeps doing this really funny thing where they play into house and wilson with increasingly low-hanging fruit gay jokes (dw i still laugh lol). but they manage this without sacrificing the 6 seasons' worth of cultivated subtext that permits genuine queer coding above queerbait/2000s gay jokes/etc. 6x11 is one of the best examples of this so far.

so i'm not a musical junkie, and i'm sure this has already been written about to hell and back, but 6x11 prompted me to look more into the song that wilson was singing at the end of the episode.

"one" from the musical a chorus line (also the poster house bought):

"One singular sensation Every little step she takes One thrilling combination Every move that she makes One smile and suddenly nobody else will do You know you'll never be lonely with you-know-who!"

according to genius lyrics, "Despite the lyrics which praise a singular star, the star at whom it’s directed is never shown. The “One” is absent...The star is not even named – only referred to as ‘she’ or ‘You Know Who.’"

there is a "one" in 6x11 - nora, whom both house and wilson stake their claims for dating (which is exceptionally gross & misogynistic of them). but the song/musical choice implies that she was never important enough to be The One in question.

this frame seems self-aware of the potential absence of "The One." the shot gives the impression of symmetry, but it's very uneven. house is reclined back, warping the straight line of the couch, and the boxes on wilson's side are neat and tidied, whereas those on house's side are sparse and thrown about. more importantly, there's that arm rest between house and wilson's seats. if The One (nora) was to sit anywhere, this frame seems to imply that it would be there.

thus, this frame isn't straight.

house seems to be aware of this pseudo-absence, as well. he looks at wilson with a thoughtful, revelatory look on his face:

superficially, he's probably just astounded that wilson is singing the song from a musical he hates so much, but he lets the song continue, nonetheless. here, the episode remembers the genre of the song that wilson is singing - a showtune! and what happens in showtunes/musicals? the singers are spot-lit! the audience watches them perform!

here i'm gonna posit that wilson is a (non-self aware) paul, a chorus line's man character whose revelation that he's gay is both tragic but also drives the plot. house can see this. meta-textually, we see this THROUGH house seeing this.

taken together, this scene's asymmetry, implied spotlight, and awkward arm rest divide offer wilson as the performer in this musical-adjacent exchange, with house as the in-text audience, and us, the real audience, as the outer-textual audience. what a long winded way of saying that wilson is performing comphet here!

and there's another note i want to make on the subject of performance/performativity...

this is from the golden globes official article, "'A Chorus Line' Brought Visibility to Queer Stories in the 70s and 80s'":

"The audience gets to see [Paul, the main character's] valor, which may be an inspiration to those in the audience who face similar challenges."

wilson's proposal to house is complete performance. the entire precedent for the scene is just gay joke after gay joke and wilson's anxiety that this false impression of him will negatively impact his dating life.

when he makes this performance of homosexuality, he's lauded for it. the restaurant urges house to say yes, and everybody claps even before house has given an answer.

also from the article: " The character of Paul delivers a touching monologue about how performing revealed his identity as a gay man."

6x11 inverts this dynamic. the performance in question is that of homosexuality, and wilson is not rewarded for it in the end. he loses The One, as does house, and they go home and watch a hockey game together in yet another intricate ritual (as stated above).

i also think there's something to be said about house enlisting nora's help in bringing the poster for a chorus line up to his apartment.

i'm genuinely hesitant to applaud this show - or any show, really - for subtextual intentionality like this. i have a hard time believing that there was, long ago, a time where tv didn't just capitalize off fandom's tendency to pair up its characters in our internet fanbase/fanfiction age but deliberately queer-coded things. but even silly episodes like this one remind me of that one robert sean leonard quote about house and wilson, that they are the only relationship in the show based completely on choice - the choice to always come back to each other.

all that is to say that i sincerely think these 2 are written in a subversion of gender norms and binary platonic/romantic relationships. for 2000s tv, that's just like lightning in a bottle.

oh and apparently there's a gay character named greg in the musical, too. someone who's more qualified to talk about a chorus line should hijack this post. what the hell are we doing, david shore.