Before I look at your points individually, I suggest that your argument in your last posting is something like this: If we aren't talking about DBC then what ARE we talking about? This is a sort of rhetorical question based on 4 points:
1) LGBT portrayals in the media have advanced. You give a timeline, a spectrum stretching from a vicious "education" film from your youth through to the very accepting 2013/4 TV series "Looking."
2) The negative movie examples I gave are hopelessly dated, and thus no longer relevant.
3) You turn to what the focus of my anger is--what the mainstream may think of these portrayals whether they are relevant or not.
4) And you conclude that it doesn't really matter because such portrayals do not make anyone more homophobic anyway, the worst it will do is just reinforce existing prejudices.
Is this a fair summary? If so, may I look at these questions more closely? Problems emerge.
Regarding the first 2 points I am ambivalent. I cannot deny that LGBT portrayals have become more realistic over the years, just as the portrayal of blacks has come a long way from Birth of a Nation, or of women from the ditzy dumb-blondes of 30's comedies. Nevertheless, and I emphasize this, with advances in media technology, old movies (and to a lesser extent old TV shows) are just as likely to show up on television--perhaps even more likely-- because they are cheaper to run, and I doubt that most viewers discriminate between what represents an outdated viewpoint, and one that is current. They are just "there" in a timeless television Now, and are as free to work their destructive magic on the viewers' minds as they were before.
I don't think it would be helpful to provide list of gay-theme movies I object to. We know they are there, and continue to see them on screen. And often it is just one character per movie acting out the stereotypical faggot or dyke in an otherwise straight story. These hurt too. (I can think of one counterexample to my point--Cher's lesbian character in Silkwood.) Besides the fact that supposedly outdated movies are still very much with us, notice too that TV series and movies showing LGBT life as something to be enjoyed, even celebrated, rather than endured or ridiculed, appear on specialty channels like HBO, Showtime, and OUTtv--safely away from the eyes of most who might risk changing their mind if they watched them.
It is difficult for me to point to specific examples of TV shows in the US that you have seen, because Canadian TV is perhaps behind US television in when we see a particular show, if at all. And we have our own shows that may not reach US audiences. I just don't know. The brother/uncle in Good Wife seems OK. I have no idea how LGBTs are treated in magazine shows like Rosie O'Donnell or Ellen DeGeneres. 1Girl 5 Gays is my pet hate up here--and Homorazzi. Now the Big Bang Theory: They never utter the word "gay," but that is the most disgusting parody of a gay man (well, of most of the male characters) I have seen. Geez, Mary, butch it up just a little!
I can't believe that one would suggest that the stereotypical LGBT portrayals are not there, even if they have changed from being psychopathic to slightly less dangerous figures. This brings me to the 3rd and 4th questions. Basically, what effect do these portrayals have, and whom do they have an effect on? I have to begin with something that I know will press your buttons, but I have to.
... think of gay people as funny agreeable folks to invite into their living rooms once a week. It might have made gay men look silly, but it didn't make them look ominous or deviant or horrible.
I know you don't mean it that way, but consider how these words sound to LGBTs. We don't want to be "funny agreeable silly folks to invite into ones living rooms once a week." These are just the kind of words I remember hearing from enlightened people in the 1950's about "Step-'n-Fetch-It/Amos and Andy blacks. As I remember blacks were not very amused by it at the time, then came to send it up with biting humour. This, in turn, reminds me of Queer as Folk. I am, it seems, the only fan of QAF in BetterMost, but I want to cite one example from it: Two of the main characters, gay, buy a house in the straight suburbs. They are immediately invited to meet the liberal neighbours at a cocktail party, and basically, to "entertain the white folks." The scene is a cleverly cruel parody, and terribly funny. I used to get very angry about this kind of thing, now I think humour is the best way of dealing with it.
[quote author=serious crayons link=topic=51966.msg654904#msg654904 date=13911790 Those attitudes aren't shaped by problematic portrayals out of Hollywood. They're shaped by conservative religions and ancient prejudices and ignorance, none of which stem from Western entertainment products[/quote]
I agree with you here that the roots of prejudice lie in conservative religious and ancient prejudices. They may not "stem from" Western entertainment, but they do, whether in NA or in the rest of the world, derive energy from those prejudices being played out on the screen. In Canada and Western Europe the battle has been largely won, and we must be grateful for that. In the US the battle is slower. (I suspect this may be due to your Constitution giving all "residual rights" not specifically given to the Federal Government to the States, so that human rights issues have to be fought out state by state. In Canada, residual rights revert to the Federal Government, so issues like equal marriage and other sexual freedoms are dealt with all at once by Ottawa.) It is slower in the US, but your main point--that it is indeed moving, and perhaps faster than anyone would have dreamed in spite of dubious media portrayals of LGBTs, I don't deny, although I am impatient for LGBT rights everywhere.
What I want to get across is that homophobic outrages do not necessarily begin with someone seeing a LGBT being depicted as dangerous, criminal, psychopathic perverts. All that is necessary is for us to be viewed as people not to be taken seriously, to be discounted, to be "light in the loafers" as the anti-gay saying goes. This is how it starts. This makes us "other." As we know from sociology, to be "other" leads to attempts to bring us into the fold, and when that doesn't work, it leads to isolation and exclusion. (Sound familiar?) Apply this paradigm to the LGBT situation worldwide, and it fits ominously well.
This brings me to the question of whom does stereotypical portrayals of LGBTs affect anyway? You will tell me that my paradigm does not fit America. I wonder if, in your posting, you were doing something you used to accuse me of doing--slipping in a change of point of view and then proceeding as if it had been there all along. Isn't that what you were doing when you suddenly switched from talking about the "mainstream" world to the US mainstream? There is a big difference between the situation in, say, Africa or Brazil, and the situation for LGBTs in America, I will in a moment suggest that homophobia in America is at least partially responsible for the horrors in Africa and Brazil (and other places). I would agree with you that the paradigm of discounting to otherness to isolation and then exclusion seems to be working in reverse in the US. Well, it is amongst certain parts of the population, not all, and that's the problem.
I suggest that in NA such things as the Matthew Shephard case and those like it, media depictions of LGBT people do play a part in feeding into the basic insecurity some people, especially some straight young men feel about their own sexuality, and give licence for them to torture, maim, and kill those who are, of course, just what they secretly fear in themselves. Thus I am not as willing as you are to let "harmless" examples of media homophobia go by. I know where it can and does lead. Tied into this is my final point ("At last," I hear you sigh.) that media-reinforced LGBT stereotyping in the US does affect the situations in Central Africa and Brazil. I am talking about the fact that the anti-gay frenzy in Africa and Brazil is being caused and promoted by evangelical missionaries from the US. The clergyman who was instrumental in getting Uganda to introduce life-imprisonment for being gay acknowledged his role proudly, but did say that a life sentence was perhaps a bit harsh. These religious crazies are for certain working out of "conservative religions and ancient prejudices," but they are the ones who saw the movies you suggest are "outdated" and saw them as "suspicions confirmed."
You will probably tell me to lighten up, to be glad my own country is as enlightened as it is, and that NA and my cultural world are making great advances in LGBT rights It's just that every night on the news I see increasing LGBT oppression and suffering around the world.
BTW:
Any of you who have seen my postings in the past may have noticed that I no longer use the word "gay" so universally, but have switched to LGBT. I have always been focused on and aware of the "G" but the rest of the alphabet never meant anything to me. Then a few months ago I began subscribing to OUTtv, Canada's only LGBT television channel. With the programs there, especially some excellent documentaries, I suddenly became aware of the LBT part. I learned that their problems and struggles were the same as mine,however different our lifestyles might be. So I throw in my lot with them, and from now on it is LGBT where appropriate. I am not suggesting this is more politically correct, or that anyone else should follow me--but it is right for me.
SC, the way you referenced "Looking" was cute. I wonder, in my "review" of it, who came off sounding more trashy--the show or me? I hope it was me.