The Case of John and Juliet: TV Reboots, Gender Swaps and the Denial of Queer Identity

This article deals with issues of diversity and ‘visibility politics’ in contemporary American middlebrow television. The focus here is specifically how the reboots of Hawaii Five-0 (CBS, 2010-20), MacGyver (CBS 2016- ), Magnum, P.I. (CBS, BNBC, 2018- ) and The Equalizer (CBS, 2021- ) approach these issues. The article uses the gender swap Magnum, P.I., where Higgins (John Hillerman/Perdita Weeks) is rendered female, as example to explore how feminism and queer visibility are pitted against each other, while being rendered politically mute. While contemporary US middlebrow TV features a lot of racial, gender, and body and ability diversity, many of these issues are approached as visual rather than political. Drawing on theories by Sarah Banet-Weiser (2018), Kristen Warner (2015 and 2017), Andrea Weiss (1986) and Alexander Doty (1993), this article argues that middlebrow TV reboots aim for a higher degree of inclusion than original series, without fully responding to the political agendas linked to equality and civil rights. Reducing political issues to questions of visibility results in a ‘flattening out’ of goals white maintaining an ideology of ‘political neutrality’.