DEBATE ROOM
In this month's debate column, Teletimes contributors Jon Gould and Paul Gribble will address the question, how much gay content is enough, and how much is too much? Jon will argue that it's acceptable for a TV network to adjust its programming for the taste of its viewers. Paul will take an opposing view and argue that although the existence of gay people in the popular media is an enormously important step forward, the way in which gay people are portrayed on screen reduces them to mere token gay characters, which ultimately amounts to two steps backwards.
Dr. Euan Taylor, Vancouver, Canada
ertaylor@unixg.ubc.ca
In order to fully understand the impact of this kind of depiction of gay people, it is necessary to form an appropriate context by examining the ways in which gay people have been portrayed on television in the past.
The Myth of Non-Existence
Up until the 1970's gay people didn't exist on television at all. Homosexuality was simply not something to be discussed, either in private or in public. Homosexuality was something to be hidden, something to deny. This myth of non-existence was reflected in television programs; gay characters and storylines dealing with any sort of gay issues or themes simply didn't exist. It is important to consider how deeply this kind of denial affects people who consider themselves to be gay.
Wherever you fall upon the gay region of the Kinsey continuum, from completely gay to slightly gay, living in a society that implicitly denies the existence and value or your feelings is emotionally devastating. If you're gay, or if you ever thought you might be gay, you've more than likely experienced the feelings I'm trying to express. If you're not gay, indulge me for a moment in a revealing thought experiment, and consider living in a world that denies the existence of heterosexual people.
Imagine that everyone around you is romantically attracted to people of the same sex. Imagine that everyone on television, in the movies, in magazine ads, on billboards, and in books, have same-sex partners. At the end of the day your father comes home to his husband and they smooch while you watch TV. Your brother goes out on dates with other boys, your sister is married to another woman, and even though you're secretly attracted to someone in your class who happens to be of the opposite sex, you're expected to bring a same-sex partner to your high school prom. The predominant message you get from people around you is that you don't belong. Nowhere do you see heterosexual people portrayed in a positive way -- in fact, you don't see them portrayed at all. The only exposure you get to heterosexuality is when it's the brunt of someone's joke, when it's referred to as a sickness, an aberration, something to be hidden from view until people can be cured of it. Denying your existence in this way judges you without even granting you the consideration of which everyone around you is automatically entitled. You feel very alone. You know that other heterosexual people do exist in the world, but you never see them. They live their lives within an unspoken subculture, separated from the rest of society. At an early age you accept the uncomfortable fact that you have a choice to make as to how to live your life -- to submit to society's pressures and participate in the denial of your own feelings by living life as a perpetual lie, or to separate yourself from "normal" society so that you can live a life you can finally call your own.
Exploitive Comedy
If you begin to understand how this perpetual denial eats away at one's individuality and self-esteem, then you can appreciate how devastating it was when television finally started to acknowledge the existence of gay people in the form of exploitive comedy. Campy and effeminate characters like "Monroe" on Too Close For Comfort perpetuated insulting stereotypes about what it means to be gay. On Three's Company, main character "Jack Tripper" pretended to be gay so that his landlord would let him share an apartment with two female roommates. His charade was a reliable source of humour, but it reinforced the message that homosexual people aren't real, but are caricatures; homosexual feelings aren't real or valid but are surreptitiously funny. While there are notable exceptions, television programs today still exploit gay people for cheap laughs by portraying gay people as campy, effeminate caricatures (for example, "Jules" on Anything But Love). By depicting gay people in this way, homosexuality isn't afforded any dignity or respect but is considered a hilarious act to be laughed at and made fun of.
During this time in history it was much more difficult than it is now for gay people to "come out" and acknowledge their homo-sexuality, so the only gay people most heterosexual people were exposed to were those portrayed in the popular media.
Let's briefly return to our thought experiment and think about what effect this might have on you and your self esteem if the tables were turned and heterosexual people were regularly represented in the popular media by insulting stereotypical caricatures. Being heterosexual in a sea of homosexual people, you feel like you don't exist. You search your environment for other heterosexual people with whom to identify. The message that is conveyed to your friends, to your family, to people that haven't ever met you, and perhaps most damaging, to you, yourself, is that people who are heterosexual are jokes, their heterosexual feelings are funny, and their existence in general is a hilarious circus act to be mocked and exploited for cheap laughs. You've gone from feeling like people won't acknowledge your existence to feeling like people are pointing at you and your emotions and laughing, at the expense of your dignity and self esteem.
AIDS & "Issue" Episodes
In the early 1980's the onset of the AIDS epidemic had a profound impact upon the way gay people were portrayed in the news and popular media. The unknown disease was first identified widely in gay men, and was hence called "GRID" (Gay Related Immune Deficiency) and sometimes "Gay Cancer." The general public was bombarded with news stories about the fatal threat; gay people everywhere were in danger of dying of this new unknown disease. It took a considerable amount of time before the Center for Disease Control in the U.S.A. publicly stated that the disease could be transmitted sexually -- by homosexual or heterosexual contact, and in doing so opened (some) people's eyes to the fact that the disease doesn't discriminate based upon sexual orientation.
By the time the disease was renamed "AIDS" (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome), gay people, gay organizations, and homosexual issues in general had experienced a sudden profound increase in widespread media exposure, thanks mostly to unjustified paranoia and general misinformation. Suddenly the words "gay" and "homosexual," and indeed gay people themselves, were appearing where they had never before seen the light of day -- on the front pages of newspapers, on national news programs, and of course on popular televisions shows.
Weekly series shows like St. Elsewhere and Hill Street Blues, as well as daytime soap operas began to address the "AIDS issue" by centering one and sometimes two episodes around a character dying of AIDS -- usually a gay man. The horrible predicament these characters and their friends and families found themselves in was consistently milked for all the melodrama the screenwriters could squeeze out of the situation. The controversy surrounding the disease coupled with the boldness of including a gay character on screen made airing an "AIDS episode" good sense in terms of ratings.
While these kinds of shows usually accurately depict the hateful intolerances that these people experience daily because of the fear and prejudice surrounding AIDS, they consistently miss the otherwise rare opportunity to explore the many personal and social issues surrounding homosexuality. The implicit message is that homosexuality, and all that it means to live as a gay person in a heterosexual society, is not worthy of our consideration. The gay characters are only revealed as being gay because they have AIDS. Their homosexuality is not aff o rded any validity or dignity on its own. All of the emotions and experiences involved in growing up and living as a gay person -- homosexual life -- are ignored and instead our attention is focused time after time on homosexual death.
Returning to our thought experiment, you find yourself bombarded by the message that "heterosexual = AIDS = death." Craving any form of exposure of heterosexual people and their lives in the mass media, you're suddenly bombarded with melodramatic accounts of the slow and painful deaths of heterosexual people everywhere. Fundamentalist preachers sermonize to you and millions of others that AIDS is God's wrath for the evils of heterosexuality. You witness heterosexual people (irregardless of their "HIV status"), and people with AIDS (irregardless of their sexual orientation) being treated with hateful indignity. Heterosexual people are suspected as contagious harbingers of evil disease, and people with AIDS are suspected as sexually irresponsible queers. Whatever remnants of self-esteem you may have held on to up until now are undoubtedly seriously threatened.
Today's Double-Standard
The past five years or so have witnessed a lot of improvements in the way gay people are portrayed on television. A few popular prime time shows now include gay characters in their regular ongoing storylines. A lesbian couple is regularly featured on the Roseanne show; a recent episode of Northern Exposure featured the wedding of two regularly appearing gay men; a young gay man has been on the regular cast of Melrose Place from the very beginning. However, although it appears that a real effort is being made to portray gay characters on television in a more positive and realistic light, a ridiculous double standard exists that robs these characters of the same dignity and respect automatically afforded to heterosexual characters.
On the season finale of Melrose Place, for example, a scene in which ÒMattÓ, the young gay character, kisses another man was shamefully censored -- the scene was edited so badly, the video and sound slowing down, speeding up, and jumping around, that the sacrifice in image quality probably didn't justify the exclusion of the kiss -- or did it? The embarrassing fact is that it probably did. The new police drama N.Y.P.D. Blue has recently broken new ground in prime time television by including heterosexual love scenes depicting partial nudity. While it is considered acceptable to show half-naked heterosexual characters kissing, fondling, and making love to each other, a simple kiss between two fully clothed consenting adult gay men is out of the question.
This show in addition to many others over the past decade has also broken new ground in terms of depicting violence on prime time television. What kind of message is sent to people -- especially to children -- when murder, rape, assault, and other gory violence is regularly depicted on television, yet beautiful, romantic love between two adults (who happen to be of the same sex) is considered wrong?
The message that this double standard sends to people is that although it is acceptable to acknowledge the existence of gay people, their lives should be hidden away. This reduces these characters to token gay characters whose existence, while intended to reveal the "progressive" sensibilities of the TV networks that produce the programs, ultimately send an implicit message to television viewers, both gay and straight, that although gay people exist, their interests, their loves, their fears and joys, indeed their entire lives should be hidden from view.
Let's delve into our thought experiment one more time, (and if you're getting tired of it, just imagine living it every day of your life!). After many years of disappointment in watching heterosexual people depicted as jokes and "issues," you finally observe heterosexual characters being depicted simply as everyday people who happen to be heterosexual. You eagerly tune in every week expecting to finally watch the comedy and drama of these characters' lives explored with the same frankness and openness afforded to the lives of homosexual characters.
Before you know it, however, it's the end of the season, and although the other (homosexual) characters have each experienced crises, loves, injustices, and soul-searching angst in all its melodramatic glory, the only thing you know about the heterosexual characters is that they are heterosexual. Although the homosexuality of the gay characters constantly played an integral role in the storylines surrounding them, (who they fell in love with, who fell in love with them, who dumped them, who they surreptitiously slept with, what jealous lover threatened to kill them, their changing relationship with their parents and friends), the heterosexuality of the heterosexual characters did not play any part whatsoever in their on screen lives.
You wonder what people are afraid of. You wonder what it is about your heterosexual feelings and experiences that makes people so vehemently opposed to acknowledging them in the same open, honest environment in which gay issues are so regularly explored. You reflect on the unfortunate fact that the answer is wrapped up in the complex social history of public attitudes toward heterosexuality over the past few hundred years. Then you realize that the answer is not so complex after all. The answer is simple. The reason behind the history of the portrayal of heterosexual people on television is identical to the reason behind today's outrageous double standard: simple, unacceptable prejudice -- narrowÑminded discrimination because of the gender of the person you love. You wonder what possesses people to embrace this unjustifiable bigotry and reject so much sincere, honest, romantic (heterosexual) love in a world that seems to be so devoid of harmony.
It has been said that television is a reflection of our society. It is clear then from both the (often recurring) history of the treatment of gay people on television and the present insulting double standard that until gay characters are depicted with the same levels of candor and honesty automatically granted to heterosexual characters, gay, lesbian and bisexual people in the real world will have to continue the painful daily struggle, both privately and publicly, for equal dignity, equal respect, and most importantly, equal treatment.
Paul Gribble, Montreal, Canada
gribble@motion.psych.mcgill.ca
Sources
"Queer Resources Directory" (QRD) - accessible by electronic mail, BBS, FTP, WAIS, gopher, and WWW (lynx and Mosaic). For details e-mail qrdstaff@vector.casti.com or ftp/gopher to vector.casti.com (149.52.1.130) and look in "/pub/QRD."
Paul and I don't agree with the result desired -- we both seek a society in which heterosexuals and homosexuals alike are accepted and tolerated. The difference is how we get there Paul believes that the media has an affirmative obligation to expose more viewers to gay lifestyle. I don't. Television is a mirror of life; it depicts the values and appeals to the tastes of its viewers. If we want to see more gay characters on television, we shouldn't expect the television producers to take the initiative. We need to change social attitudes, from which television will follow.
To be sure, there is a bit of a chicken and egg ques- tion here. Television can play a part in changing social attitudes, but its responsibility should be limited to news coverage. If gay and lesbian issues are newsworthy, they should be covered. But there is a big difference between the media's reacting to news-worthy events and its affirmative decision to depict gay lifestyle in entertainment programming. The difference is viewers. Television survives only to the extent that it attracts viewers. If viewers want to see gay characters, television should have more of them. Conversely, if viewers want Christian broadcasting, a television executive would be foolish to ignore their wishes. This is exactly why we see organised protests over television programming. Parent groups who want to reduce sex and violence, educators who argue against sophomoric programming, housewives who petition for a soap opera -- all are trying to tell television executives what they want, and the producers ought to pay attention. Run croquet three times a day and you are likely to lose your station.
In the end, the question is whether viewers want, or are willing to tolerate, gay lifestyles on television. My sense is that we're beginning to see inroads, but viewers aren't ready for the kiss that Northern Exposure avoided.
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe CBS was off. But you have to convince them that their read of society was wrong. Write letters. Protest their sponsors. Start a cable station dedicated to gay and lesbian programming. But don't expect them to buck general sentiment. Changing viewers' preferences is not the responsibility of the broadcasters.
Jon Gould, Chicago, USA
