How Gay Characters Have Come of Age
I thought that this article was appropriate considering the recent discussions on here re: Queer Eye and that awful reality thing... this show starts on Sunday on Bravo.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/21/ar...ner=ALTAVISTA1
TV REVIEW | 'TV REVOLUTION: OUT OF THE CLOSET'
How Gay Characters Have Come of Age
By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN
Published: May 21, 2004
Most Americans are repelled by the mere notion of homosexuality," Mike Wallace asserts on a news special.
From 1967. Today, repulsion at the mere notion of homosexuality — or that way of phrasing it, at least — is a thing of the past.
Or so we will be told on Sunday. The archaic CBS clip, in which Mr. Wallace interviews an anonymous Gay Man whose face is decorously obscured by the leaves of a potted plant, has a reprise on Bravo as part of a documentary about social progress that doubles as an hourlong promo for another Bravo show, "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy." "TV Revolution: Out of the Closet" appears as the first installment in a harmless but self-congratulatory weekly series about how television has revolutionized everything in every possible way. (Next up: women.)
A bargain-basement history of TV is enlivened, a little, by a tender account of gay men and women in the media. Bedeviled by the usual "and lesbians" problem that tugs at every effort to talk about gay people as a coherent group, "TV Revolution" begins and ends with stories of homosexual men.
Revisiting this country's "Far From Heaven" days of stylized repression, the documentary cites Paul Lynde and other wisecracking figures as paradigms of a bygone closeted gay television identity. Archie Bunker then appears, on cue, vexed by the fact of a manly homosexual. This is a handy transition, if a familiar one: it sometimes seems we'll be teaching that lumbering straw man our lessons of tolerance forever.
Some details stand out. The behind-the-scenes story of "An Early Frost" (1985) forcefully evokes the health panic of the 1980's. Before televising the movie, NBC had to consult the Centers for Disease Control to get leave to show the movie's AIDS-stricken hero, Michael Pierson (Aidan Quinn), getting a kiss from his grandmother (Sylvia Sidney). What was that conversation like between the experts and the network? Did they talk about blood-borne diseases and saliva or what? The questions are tantalizing; I could have heard more.
On a lighter note, images of certain protean gay television icons — Jody Dallas (Billy Crystal) from "Soap," Matt Fielding (Doug Savant) from "Melrose Place," and Xena (Lucy Lawless) and Gabrielle (Renee O'Connor) from "Xena, Warrior Princess" make a pleasant review.
The documentary also nails a small but bright point. It asserts that lesbian romance on television is a function of sweeps week; the networks want to be able to promote kisses between women that can be billed as minor porn and political provocation. Liz Friedman, the most insightful commentator on this program and a television writer, calls these kisses "sweeps lesbianism"; others note that characters who participate generally snap back to heterosexuality when a show's regular season resumes.
At the end, Ted Allen of "Queer Eye" shows up to give the final score. His show, on which he stars with four other gay men who rehabilitate sloppy straight men, has accustomed viewers to gayness, he says, and that's commendable. The show has superb ratings, too. And to Bravo, that's even better.
