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The Curious Case of Gayface: Should straight actors play gay roles?
CellarDweller:
I personally am not upset by straight actors playing gay. What should it matter? It's the performance that is applauded, the the sexual orientation of the actor portraying the character.
Reading this article made me think of a reverse question. Are straight people angry when a gay actor plays straight?
Were they upset wtih Rock Hudson for all the roles he took? Are they angry at Neil Patrick Harris for his role on "How I Met Your Mother?"
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: CellarDweller on June 17, 2013, 03:18:41 pm ---I personally am not upset by straight actors playing gay. What should it matter? It's the performance that is applauded, the the sexual orientation of the actor portraying the character.
Reading this article made me think of a reverse question. Are straight people angry when a gay actor plays straight?
Were they upset wtih Rock Hudson for all the roles he took? Are they angry at Neil Patrick Harris for his role on "How I Met Your Mother?"
--- End quote ---
It's a different situation, I think. Straight people don't get angry (there's enough straight roles that they don't have to worry that gay people are taking all the good ones). But I do think there's a legitimate fear that if a star who plays a lot of straight romantic roles came out, s/he would no longer be seen as romantic to straight audiences (to be clear: I don't mean the straight bias is legitimate, I mean the fear of the bias may be well-founded). With I guess the exception of Zachary Quinto, I can't think of any actors who are out now who do a lot of those kinds of roles.
Rock Hudson was a romantic star, but he was no longer playing those sorts of roles by the time he was fully out, as opposed to rumored-about. And NPH isn't the equivalent of a matinee idol like, say, George Clooney or Tom Cruise or Megan Fox or whoever.
When Sean Hayes played a straight character on Broadway, one critic wrote a negative review saying he was too aware of Sean Hayes being gay to accept him in a straight role. I don't have time to google for the controversy right now, but it's probably easy to find. I actually think I read that the critic himself was gay.
Katie77:
What an interesting article and topic, with a question that I really had never heard before.
It really does bring us to the wonderful art of "acting", and whether an actor can make the audience believe the performance.
A straight actor playing a gay role, would be just as challenging as an actor playing the role of serial killer. Both are playing a role that is not the "real them", but for that couple of hours we watch the movie, we are completely lost in the concept that they are real. If they have a good script, can transfer the right emotions and looks and expressions, we dont question the credibility of their character.
If nothing else, it also shows that gay or straight, the only distinguishable difference is their sexual orientation....it really is an unnecessary tag that the media and critics throw around too frequently. Hopefully the word "gay" will one day not be used as an adjective to describe certain people or movies as in "the gay cowboy movie" or "gay actor so and so"...after all we dont say "straight cowboy movie" or "straight actor so and so". They probably used to say "black actor so and so", but dont say that any more.
If an actor is chosen to play any role, it would be that they have been suggested as the best one to play that role, whether it be a hated killer, a sick child or a musician. The script will be written about the lifestyle of the character, and the best actor to play that character and give meaning to the role, will be chosen. If we as an audience accept the credibility of the actor and his ability to take us with him into that role, then he has done his craft well.
x-man:
Reading over the responses to this forum, I am left with one question: Why should we even expect Hollywood to make gay-theme movies for general release, whether or not the characters are played by straight or gay actors? If you live in San Francisco, Toronto, Boston, etc.,you may be fooled, but let's face it--the world is overwhelmingly straight, by some 95%. Straight people have no interest in gay love or gay sex because it has nothing to do with their lives. They are of interest only to us.
Sometimes something unusual comes along like Queer as Folk or BBM, but not often. Should that surprise us? We have niche film makers and distributors like Here!, TLA, Regent, Wolfe, and others. Some of their films are bad, but lots of major Hollywood releases are bad too. Some of them, however, are very good indeed--easily the equal of straight Hollywood fare.
We should look to the gay specialty film makers and distributors, rather than worry about what the straight movie industry is doing and thinking about us. Perhaps we could even do with less straight handling of our lives in straight-made movies, given the gay stereotyping and barely disguised homophobia often to be found there.
I suspect that at the heart of this preoccupation with how gay people and gay life are portrayed in the movies is the desire to convince the straight world that we are just like them. Well, we aren't. Even the savage send-up of the straight world and gays who try to assimilate into that world which we saw in Queer as Folk should have made that clear to everyone. All we can and should try for is to stop them from bullying, bashing, ostracizing, jailing, and killing us.They are never going to love us. Remember the old saying: There are basically two kinds of straight people--those who hate you to your face, and those who hate you behind your back. It may not be true 100% of the time, but it is true enough to be a good way to proceed.
serious crayons:
That seems very harsh to me.
Are gay-theme movies of interest only to gay people? I'd say this site suggests otherwise, given that Brokeback Mountain is a gay-theme movie and plenty of Brokies are straight. But also, do moviegoers only want to see characters exactly like themselves? I realize audiences do have prejudices -- which is why far fewer than 5 percent of movies have gay protagonists and movies about major events in African-American history often have on a white protagonist -- but I don't think they're quite as self-centered as you suggest.
--- Quote --- Remember the old saying: There are basically two kinds of straight people--those who hate you to your face, and those who hate you behind your back. It may not be true 100% of the time, but it is true enough to be a good way to proceed.
--- End quote ---
The old saying seems like outright bigotry to me. As a straight person, I've been involved in countless conversations that touched on homosexuality where no gay person was present. Yes, I have heard people say hateful things. But not even remotely close to 100 percent of the time. The vast majority of straight people I know (admittedly, not necessarily a cross-section of the population, but a fairly mainstream bunch) do not hate gay people behind their backs.
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