Lily: Sold out! the Queer Feminism of Lily Tomlin (Critical Essay‪)‬

[1] Lily Tomlin was perhaps at the peak of her mainstream fame and popularity in the 1970s and 80s. Her body of work at that time includes live performance, television, sound recording, and film. Prominent in all of these, her public persona was shaped mostly in the latter three arenas, what we now call 'old media.' This persona was a product of what Philip Auslander calls the "mediatized" culture of that historical moment (1999, 5). That is, as a widely recognized media presence, Tomlin had the cultural influence to make meaning in dominant culture. [2] Most well known as a television star, Tomlin became a familiar and well-loved personality at the cultural moment when television was at the height of its influence. According to Auslander, "the televisual has become an intrinsic and determining element of our cultural formation," (1999, 2) particularly in the last half of the twentieth century. Her television career took off through Laugh-In, on which she debuted in December 1969, then as a guest on other talk and variety shows, and finally on six television specials of her own produced with her partner Jane Wagner: The Lily Tomlin Show (1973), Lily (1973), Lily (1974), Lily Tomlin (1975), Lily: Sold Out! (1981), and Lily For President? (1982).