Sinful Sunday: Worshiping the Iconic Queer Villainy of Deborah Vance
Jean Smart's acidic comedian is both the best part of "Hacks" and a bitchy queer icon worthy of absolute veneration.
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Welcome to “Sinful Sundays,” where I explore and analyze some of the most notorious queer villains of film and TV (and sometimes literature, depending on my mood). These are the characters that entrance and entertain and revolt us, sometimes all three at the same time. As these queer villains show, very often it’s sweetly good to be bitterly bad.
It was a bit tough to settle on a queer villain for this week. Part of me was tempted to continue looking at the characters from AMC’s Interview with the Vampire–Armand and Santiago were both prime candidates–but that seemed a bit too easy. There’s enough time to talk about them in more detail when the second season concludes in a few weeks. Finally, I turned to a less obvious candidate: Deborah Vance of the hit HBO Max series Hacks. At first I wasn’t sure this choice would work, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized she made for the perfect villain showcase, not necessarily because she is queer per se (though I’ll address that more in a moment) but instead because she embodies all of the other aspects of queer villainy that we love: dazzlingly sharp dialogue, a kickass attitude, and professional success. Oh, and as if all of that weren’t enough, she’s also played by Jean Smart, one of the most talented actresses of her generation.
I know I’m hardly the only person to sing Jean Smart’s praises, but as someone who has been a fan of hers since she appeared on Designing Women way back in the 1980s and early 1990s, I’ve continued to be astounded at just how versatile she is as a performer. Unlike so many other women, who might have been content to remain in the world of comedy, she’s repeatedly shown–in series as varied as Fargo, Watchmen, and Mare of Easttown–that she is as adept performing in heavy-hitting dramas that are Emmy-bait. Moreover, as I wrote some time ago, one of Smart’s tremendous strengths as an actress is her ability to excavate and showcase the deep humanity of her characters, even the ones who are at times not particularly likable. And boy does she shine as Deborah Vance. From the moment we meet her in the first season, it’s abundantly clear that Vance is the kind of bad bitch who takes no prisoners. She’s the epitome of the tough-as-nails female comedian with an acid tongue, and we love her for it.
And then young, idealistic, SJW Ava (played by a remarkable Hannah Einbinder) shows up to help punch up Deborah’s writing and help make her more appealing to a younger generation. Over the past few seasons we’ve watched these two grow from mutual antagonists to master and apprentice to something approaching genuine friends. At least, it seems like they’re friends, right up until the moment when Deborah, having at last achieved her dream of being a late night host, throws Ava under the bus and denies her the position of head writer, only for Ava to turn right around and blackmail her into offering it. This whole exchange–which is tautly-written and perfectly acted by both Smart and Einbinder–makes very clear that Deborah has more than met her match in Ava, who is willing to be as ruthless as necessary in order for her to get what she feels is her due from her employer and erstwhile friend.
Seeing the two of them stare daggers at one another from across the writers’ table is truly one of the greatest tableaus this series has yet created, and I think it bodes well (or ill, depending on your point of view) for the characters going forward. Up to this point Deborah has always seen Ava as a junior And who knows? It might be that Ava could well become just like Deborah herself, someone who is always willing to put her career first, no matter what it costs and no matter who she has to step on as she makes her way to the top. This is the kind of rich interpersonal drama between two powerful female characters that is like catnip to queer male viewers like me, and the fact that Deborah is so clearly in the wrong–yet refuses to see it that way–gives this scene a rich emotional depth that makes us appreciate both characters all the more.
What makes Vance so fascinating from a queer point of view is how much her status as a gay icon converges with that of Smart herself. Smart has been on the queer radar ever since she played the lovable and goodhearted (if at times rather simple-minded) Charlene on the hit sitcom Designing Women. Like its NBC counterpart The Golden Girls, Designing Women was a hit among gay men, and not just because we homos tend to idolize female stars of a certain age. Who could forget, for example, the famous moment when Dixie Carter’s Julia Sugarbaker takes down a vicious homophobe in the way that only Julia could? While Smart’s Charlene might not have the jagged edges and sharp tongue of Julia, she does have her own unique charms, particularly for those queers, like me, who also come from a rural place and are never quite able to shake off our rural roots.
In Hacks, of course, Vance is widely beloved by her queer fans, who revel in her bitchiness and in her arch sense of humor, to say nothing of her take-no-prisoners attitude when it comes to both her comedy routines and her relationships with the many queer people in her orbit, including and especially her CEO, Marcus. The series is remarkably self-aware about Vance’s queer icon status. In one remarkable exchange, a gay fan says to Marcus (who is resentful that Deborah has ditched Pride and continues to privilege her own well-being and interests over those of everyone in her orbit including those, like Marucs, who have been key to her success): “Nobody’s ever going to know Deborah like we do. She’s a survivor like us.” If being a bit of a ruthless bitch is the price that she has to pay in order to be a survivor, then all the better.
Like so many other queerish figures in the world, she operates at the margins of her chosen realm: comedy. For almost the entirety of her career she has had to be on the outside looking in, dismissed by the men who get to pull the strings and get the best gigs. At the same time, she has had to endure heartache after heartache, including having her husband leave her for her younger sister, to say nothing of the fact that she sabotaged her relationship with her daughter in order to put her career first. Is it any wonder, then, that Deborah has erected a prickly shield about herself, using both her comedy and her ironic attitude to keep herself sane? Queers, both those in the series and in the real world, love her because of her capacity to be cruel precisely because they recognize the pain and the anguish that lurk beneath the surface.
As a result, while we may not always approve of her actions or take her side, we can nevertheless appreciate the extent to which she has succeeded despite all of the obstacles thrown in her way. Hacks thus ends up being not just one of the best shows that has yet to emerge on HBO Max–a steamer with a checkered record, to say the least–it has also blessed us with a divine queer villain at whose altar we can unashamedly worship. Now that we know that we are going to be getting a fourth season (a rare bright spot in the HBO landscape these days), we can only hope that both Deborah will give us more reasons to adore her for the immortal queer villain she is destined to become.