X-MAN AGAINST GAY TELEVISION

[CellarDweller]

It is. You actually posted it first.

Yeah, that's a great video.  I couldnt' see it becasue I was at work, and the job blocks access to sites like YouTube or DailyMotion.

[x-man]

Guys, I'm back sooner than I expected.  Was at the ophthalmologist today.  It was like stepping back into the 1950' literally.  The equipment was that dated, and so was the  doctor.  The nurse saw the tarot card tattoos on my arms and wanted me to do a reading for her.  The whole scene got a little surreal.  Anyway I learned nothing except that I am probably not going quickly blind, and will be seeing a retinologist soon.  Until then I will struggle on here, just taking a long time to read the screen and to type without too many typos.

I have been thinking about the question that has reappeared on this site about media portrayal of gay men.  Discussing this topic here and on other sites in Bettermost, I began to realize that I seemed to be looking at the whole question differently from the rest of you.  I suspect that the reason for this is that you guys are content to look at TV and movie presentations of gay men in situtions where it is ONE gay character in the midst of  a bunch of straight people, and the reason that one character is gay is so the plot can revolve around the problems he has dealing with a straight world.  Thus comes the preoccupation with how the individual gay man comes across and  how butch or flamboyant he is etc. is important to know because that influences how he is treated by the straight world.  I have 2 contrary examples.  The first is Alicia's brother in The Good Wife.  He is a regular guy and his orientation seldom matters at all—to keep the story moving he could just as easily be straight.  Contrast this with most other situations where a gay person is involved like, say, Degrassi.  It's old I know, but it is Canadian and was progressive in its time.  In Degrassi the straight students' story lines were about their interactions including lots of young love, sex and teenage angst.  For  the one or two LGBT characters the story was all about their problems being gay.  For example the bit with Riley, the captain of the football team, and his boyfriend Zane—all about the problems they had coming out, dealing with homophobia, and the like.  We never saw them in bed together “doing it.” or even getting ready to, or even the slightest indication that they actually DID do it.  And Degrassi was made in Canada where gay love isn't such a big deal. The difference between the way they are dealt with in scenes where they are together alone, and the same kind of situations involving males and females is quite different.  We don't see Riley and Zane reacting to the world as lovers, just how to deal with an ambivalent to hostile straight world outside. 

Now this may be of great novelty to straight people, but to gays it is a fact of life we have to deal with every day.  We know all about it, and I hardly need to have it take up my TV watching  time—much less am I going to be grateful for even being shown a bit of gay life.   Riley and Zane and their like may be telling straights that we are just people like they are, but this is not news to us, and frankly I find it extremely disappointing.  Contrast this to program where virtually everybody is gay—like QAF and Looking, and most gay movies (not gay-theme movies like BBM but real gay movies).  Now QAF and Looking may be soap operas, but they do give me a chance to watch gay men dealing with each other and with situations common to gay men, where love scenes are comprensible to me, and where the humour often has an in-gay quality to it that I find very funny.

 This is a bit off the topic above, but what do you think of Two and a Half Men compared to Looking?  Sleazy is too kind a term to describe the former.  What if we got our understanding of straight men from Sheen?  And then Big Bang Theory—what world does that show describe?  Those guys are so nellie yet so far in the closet they will never come out.  (Yes I know the main character came out in real life.)

News flash to any X-MEN fans out there.  In the latest issue of the comic book, Ice Man is revealed to be gay.

Milo, any chance you could download the video here like you did for the TV commercial? 
 

[x-man]

  And would you do the same to those "straight person, even the most gay-friendly"?  Push the button and make us disappear, thinking you would be doing the gay world a favor?

It just dawned on me:  bf, you are telling us you're STRAIGHT?!!!!  Oh God, I'm sorry.  Are you sure?  You are too young to know who you are.  When did you decide to be straight?  Maybe you are just going through a phase.  Maybe you just haven't met the right boy.  Didn't your mother smother you enough?  Did your parents make you play with trucks and play baseball rather than let you play with dolls and dress up in your mother's clothes?  You know there is always ex-straight conversion therapy.  We all just want to help you.

[serious crayons]

I have been thinking about the question that has reappeared on this site about media portrayal of gay men.  Discussing this topic here and on other sites in Bettermost, I began to realize that I seemed to be looking at the whole question differently from the rest of you.  I suspect that the reason for this is that you guys are content to look at TV and movie presentations of gay men in situtions where it is ONE gay character in the midst of  a bunch of straight people, and the reason that one character is gay is so the plot can revolve around the problems he has dealing with a straight world.  Thus comes the preoccupation with how the individual gay man comes across and  how butch or flamboyant he is etc. is important to know because that influences how he is treated by the straight world.  I have 2 contrary examples.  The first is Alicia's brother in The Good Wife.  He is a regular guy and his orientation seldom matters at all—to keep the story moving he could just as easily be straight.  Contrast this with most other situations where a gay person is involved like, say, Degrassi.  It's old I know, but it is Canadian and was progressive in its time.  In Degrassi the straight students' story lines were about their interactions including lots of young love, sex and teenage angst.  For  the one or two LGBT characters the story was all about their problems being gay.  For example the bit with Riley, the captain of the football team, and his boyfriend Zane—all about the problems they had coming out, dealing with homophobia, and the like.  We never saw them in bed together “doing it.” or even getting ready to, or even the slightest indication that they actually DID do it.  And Degrassi was made in Canada where gay love isn't such a big deal. The difference between the way they are dealt with in scenes where they are together alone, and the same kind of situations involving males and females is quite different.  We don't see Riley and Zane reacting to the world as lovers, just how to deal with an ambivalent to hostile straight world outside. 

Now this may be of great novelty to straight people, but to gays it is a fact of life we have to deal with every day.  We know all about it, and I hardly need to have it take up my TV watching  time—much less am I going to be grateful for even being shown a bit of gay life.   Riley and Zane and their like may be telling straights that we are just people like they are, but this is not news to us, and frankly I find it extremely disappointing.  Contrast this to program where virtually everybody is gay—like QAF and Looking, and most gay movies (not gay-theme movies like BBM but real gay movies).  Now QAF and Looking may be soap operas, but they do give me a chance to watch gay men dealing with each other and with situations common to gay men, where love scenes are comprensible to me, and where the humour often has an in-gay quality to it that I find very funny.

So I guess what you're saying is you prefer shows where all or most of the characters are gay so their gayness doesn't have to be the main point of their character? Or something like that.

Well, I haven't seen any of the shows you mentioned. All I know about Degrassi is that Drake was on it, right? I watched Episode 1 of The Good Life because I was considering binging it -- I've heard it's a good show -- but that was a few months ago and I haven't gotten back to it yet.

But I guess overall it seems like shows where the majority of the audience is straight are either going to make a bigger deal about gay characters' gayness, as in Degrassi ... or they're just going to make gay characters who could just as easily be straight, as in The Good Wife. There are a few shows with mainly straight audiences that have shown same-sex people in bed together, but I agree it's rare -- and when it does happen it's on cable or Netflix or HBO -- because for much of straight America that is still a sort of jarring sight. (I once was on the phone with a friend who had "Six Feet Under" in the background and she paused the conversation to note that two male characters onscreen were "doing it" -- she was kind of shocked, not so much by seeing men have sex, though that may have been the first time she'd seen that, but that a TV show was depicting it. That was years ago, so I assume it's somewhat more common now.)

It's too bad shows rarely show same-sex characters at least acting affectionate. Someday they'll show gay couples in bed together just like they do straight couples (though hopefully not doing it, because I'm usually not fond of those scenes in either orientation).

In shows like QAF and Looking, where the audience is assumed to be largely gay, they can get past all that and do some of the gay in-jokes you like.

This is a bit off the topic above, but what do you think of Two and a Half Men compared to Looking?  Sleazy is too kind a term to describe the former.  What if we got our understanding of straight men from Sheen?  And then Big Bang Theory—what world does that show describe?  Those guys are so nellie yet so far in the closet they will never come out.  (Yes I know the main character came out in real life.)

I'm afraid my eyes and ears have, on a few occasions, been assaulted by scenes from Two and a Half Men. Never by my choice, but because my sons have watched it and I've walked past the TV long enough to make a snide comment. I've never seen BBT because even my sons hate that one. I've never seen Looking because the reviews weren't very compelling.

But I'm not sure I understand your point. We don't get our understanding of straight men from Charlie Sheen. Yet there are straight men who are like Charlie Sheen -- for example, Charlie Sheen. But yes, then there's also a million other portrayals of straight men who are nothing like that, so we can have a well-rounded view of straight men whereas we have less opportunity to do that with gay people. I guess that's what you're saying?

[serious crayons]

It just dawned on me:  bf, you are telling us you're STRAIGHT?!!!!  Oh God, I'm sorry.  Are you sure?  You are too young to know who you are.  When did you decide to be straight?  Maybe you are just going through a phase.  Maybe you just haven't met the right boy.  Didn't your mother smother you enough?  Did your parents make you play with trucks and play baseball rather than let you play with dolls and dress up in your mother's clothes?  You know there is always ex-straight conversion therapy.  We all just want to help you.

Those kinds of switcheroo comments are funny and make a valid point -- in other contexts.

But butlers fantasy made a serious, valid point. The comment to which he was responding was offensive and, with all due respect, ignorant. I kept meaning to say something about it and then thinking, oh, that's so over-the-top offensive it's not even worth responding to. But let's revisit.

I hope what I am going to say doesn't have the same effect as my "two kinds of straight people" did, but the grimmer part of me tentatively believes that if a straight person, even the most gay-friendly, had the chance to get rid of the LGBT problem for good, by simply pushing a button and we would all disappear--no one would get hurt, we would just disappear--that they would push the button without hesitation, believing they were doing the world a favour.

In fact, this isn't just offensive, it's baffling. What exactly is "the LGBT problem" that concerns even gay-friendly straights? How would "getting rid of it for good" be in any way useful to non-homophobic straight people?

In other words, as a straight person, I can't see any way that the existence of gay people negatively affects me. Why would I object if they exist on the earth, or want to do anything about it?

I don't know your ethnicity, but let's say you're white. Would you want to push a button and make all non-white people disappear? I do know you're a man. Do you wish you could eliminate the "woman problem"?

[Jeff Wrangler]

In fact, this isn't just offensive, it's baffling. What exactly is "the LGBT problem" that concerns even gay-friendly straights? How would "getting rid of it for good" be in any way useful to non-homophobic straight people?

In other words, as a straight person, I can't see any way that the existence of gay people negatively affects me. Why would I object if they exist on the earth, or want to do anything about it?

Maybe it's not the existence, per se, but the constant harping of rights activists? Gets tiresome to the point that there are days even I, who theoretically have benefited from rights activism, just wish the activists would go away, at least for a while.

Yes, it's the squeaky wheel that eventually gets the grease, but sometimes that squeaking gets tiresome.

[milomorris]

Milo, any chance you could download the video here like you did for the TV commercial?  

I cannot find the Ford F-150 commercial anywhere.

But as far as other TV in the US goes, there have been quite a few shows over the last decade or so that depict homosexual men. Most of the time, the plot lines are not about being a homo in a hetero world. Shows like All My Children, Greek, Brothers & Sisters, The Wire, Oz, Six Feet Under, Scandal, Nashville, and The Night Shift have all routinely put sexual minorities in plot lines that have nothing to do with sexual orientation. And in many cases, there has been romance, intimacy, and the occasional sex scene.

[serious crayons]

Maybe it's not the existence, per se, but the constant harping of rights activists? Gets tiresome to the point that there are days even I, who theoretically have benefited from rights activism, just wish the activists would go away, at least for a while.

Yes, it's the squeaky wheel that eventually gets the grease, but sometimes that squeaking gets tiresome.

I would guess the harping of rights activists is more of an issue in the lives of the people they're harping on behalf of? I mean, gay-rights activists are so peripheral to my life that their actions don't bother me in the least; I'm barely aware of them. (The most annoying they ever get is when someone from the HRC telephones or comes to my door to hit me up for a donation, but that annoys me whatever the organization's purpose.) And of course, to the extent I'm exposed to the conflict at all, I'm much more bothered by the harping of anti-gay activists.

So to plug your opinion and my opinion into x-man's scenario, it would be gay people (and homophobes) pushing the button.

If I could push a button and make telemarketers and door-to-door solicitors disappear, I would gladly do that! 

[x-man]

Those kinds of switcheroo comments are funny and make a valid point -- in other contexts.

But butlers fantasy made a serious, valid point. The comment to which he was responding was offensive and, with all due respect, ignorant. I kept meaning to say something about it and then thinking, oh, that's so over-the-top offensive it's not even worth responding to. But let's revisit.

In fact, this isn't just offensive, it's baffling. What exactly is "the LGBT problem" that concerns even gay-friendly straights? How would "getting rid of it for good" be in any way useful to non-homophobic straight people?

In other words, as a straight person, I can't see any way that the existence of gay people negatively affects me. Why would I object if they exist on the earth, or want to do anything about it?

I don't know your ethnicity, but let's say you're white. Would you want to push a button and make all non-white people disappear? I do know you're a man. Do you wish you could eliminate the "woman problem"?

I think your not allowing me to try to inject some humour by turning the comments usually heard from parents in coming out scenes around is unnecessarily negative.  It was actually a response to his funny sarcastic posting a page or so back.  Your real ammunition was fixed on the button-pushing business.  I ask that you read ALL of what I say about a subject before jumping to conclusions.

I draw your attention to two points I made in the lead up to this issue:1) Just because I say a situation exists does not mean I endorse it, and 2) a current running through my postings on subjects like this  is that I am saying that these negative attitudes are something that LGBT people who are old enough to have gone through them personally--rather than reading about them in books or having watched a movie or two--can not just dump the personal baggage-- attitudes, beliefs, and fears they induced--just because the scenery seems to have changed in some parts of the world.  I compared it to Ennis being unable to jettison his fears in order to settle down with Jack.  In a posting I did about COURAGE in which I defended Ennis against charges that he was a coward, you seemed to accept my point that human beings could not simply get up in the morning and decide to act completely differently and slay the demons that had been afflicting them.

I introduced the button-pushing remark with words about "a deeper grimmer part of me believes..."  I would have thought that would be a clue that I was NOT suggesting that as me at my most rational, but something that under the right circumstances when the night is dark and the road is long come into my mind unbidden., like last night when I saw The Matthew Shepard Story for the first time.  I suggest you and I watch that movie in a completely different way:  You watch it probably evaluating how effecting it might be in solving a social ill--dispassionately, rationally, objectively, coldlly, as though preparing for a review on line.  Let's just say I am a little more emotionally involved; I relive actual events in my life.  If at your age you have lived a life free of anguish, free of anything you need to flee from but sometimes invades your mind, you are very lucky indeed.

"In fact, this isn't just offensive, it's baffling. What exactly is "the LGBT problem" that concerns even gay-friendly straights? How would "getting rid of it for good" be in any way useful to non-homophobic straight people?" you ask.  I can't take this remark seriously.  The "problem" is that it is a problem.  Look up from the google map of same-sex marriage states and see what the situation really is in the world.  I was presenting, not entirely seriously, a way that the whole problem--the Matthew Shepard murders that continue to happen, the hatred, the bullying, the bashing, the torture, the imprisonment, the murders (both private ones and at the hands of governments), all things I assume you would want to stop--would just go away without anyone getting hurt  But as I said any thoughts of button-pushing are about the emotional baggage many older LGBTs are stuck with, are "heir to" as I put it.  Those words were not written to point accusing fingers at you now, but to speak to some of the consequences of the way it used to be everywhere, and what will not just go away because we wish it would.

JEFF, I might as well take on your posting here as well.  You talk of squeaky wheels turned by gay activists being tiresome to listen to.  As I tried to explain to serious crayons, I am talking really about the past--a past you seemed to agree with me should not be forgotten.  I have not been an "AIDS activist" since the middle 90's when I was with People With AIDS, although I believe every gay person should on some level or another be a gay activist.  I draw a direct parallel between being a victim of homophobia (of those dark days) and being a victim of severe child abuse:  You NEVER get over it, no matter how much therapy you get.  NEVER!  For those who have net  experienced these, they will never understand--for those of us who have experienced them, we will never forget.

[x-man]

I cannot find the Ford F-150 commercial anywhere.

But as far as other TV in the US goes, there have been quite a few shows over the last decade or so that depict homosexual men. Most of the time, the plot lines are not about being a homo in a hetero world. Shows like All My Children, Greek, Brothers & Sisters, The Wire, Oz, Six Feet Under, Scandal, Nashville, and The Night Shift have all routinely put sexual minorities in plot lines that have nothing to do with sexual orientation. And in many cases, there has been romance, intimacy, and the occasional sex scene.

Thanks for the list.  I haven't seen any of them.  I am sure I have just missed some, and perhaps some have just not made it to Canada yet.  If what you say about them is true, it is good news indeed.