Pink TV

I watched "Tickled Pink", a documentary of sorts presented by TV Land on gays and lesbians and television. Well, it's a documentary only in the manner of innumerable VH1 shows -- that is, get a bunch of talking heads to pontificate, and hope that they say something clever. The format honestly annoys me.

Be that as it may, I liked the show well enough. The breezy tone of the show was mildly distracting. And it had a habit to simply enforce stereotypes, declaring, for instance, that all gay men watched Dynasty. I never have: when I watched nighttime soaps, it was Dallas and Falcon Crest, because that's what my mom used to watch. It also said something about gay guys shunning "youth-oriented dramas," whereupon they flashed Gilmore Girls on the screen. First, I have a problem describing it as a "youth-oriented drama"; Lauren Graham actually has top billing, and her character is in her mid-30s. I'm well aware that I'm not the only queer who watches the show, too: the pop culture references, the Rosalind Russell-style dialogue, and the underlying message of the show (basically, that family is more than the people that are related to you), plus the eccentric population of Star's Hollow, all give it a sort of queer sensibility. And the assertion that gay men skew towards more adult dramas (ala Desperate Housewives) is undercut by the fact that a lot of gay guys were fans of shows such as Dawson's Creek -- a series that was created and developed by a gay man, and that featured a gay male character. The show was popular enough to even get a nod of respect from Will & Grace (as well as Buffy) when it left the air a couple years ago. I wonder if this had anything to do with the fact that, at least by the look of things, the gays they spoke to seemed to be around my age of older, in which case the preference for an older protagonist would seem perfectly natural.

I actually have had trouble enjoying Desperate Housewives, because I always get the feeling that it was engineered to appeal especially to gay men. Like we've been identified as a demographic, and a show was developed with enough camp to keep the queens quoting it around the water cooler Monday morning. Maybe it's just me, but that sort of feeling puts me on the defensive.

The show was also weighted heavily towards gay men, leaving Liz Friedman, Judy Gold, and Sandra Bernhardt to represent for the lesbians. It's odd, because even now, there always seem to be a lot more shows that feature lesbians than there are gay men, presumedly because lesbians are titillating to straight men, whereas gay men are considered repugnant. When gay men are represented, they tend to be "straight-acting" (the actors always seem to be straight) and celibate (because no straight man wants the stubble-burn that results from gay kisses). See Will & Grace: Will is terminally sexless, a fact that I know has really bugged the actor who plays him. Jack is a hyper-sexual screaming queen, but the sex is always implied or off-screen. Not that I care to see Jack boffing some muscle mary in a locker room or anything.

With this all said, I thought it was really neat to see the program, all the same: I never would have thought I would see a program like that when I first started to come out (it's a constant process, not something you ever really finish) fifteen years ago. Back then, there seemed to be no gay folks on TV. There were no gay characters in movies, except if the movie was one of the insufferable AIDS dramas that seemed to reach its apotheosis with Philadelphia. There weren't openly gay musicians, although you could always tell who they were, because they always addressed their love songs to "you", rather than ever using a gender pronoun. It was just a different time, and the thing is, I never really realized how much things were changing.

The first time that I ever saw a gay man on TV, that is, a character was openly identified as gay in the show itself, was back when Nick@Nite was first showing reruns of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. (I used to watch the network all the time back then, and had developed quite a crush on Dobie Gillis.) There was an episode called "My Brother's Keeper", where Phyllis's brother comes to visit. Phyllis tries to set him up with Mary, except he ends up spending all his time with Rhoda. Phyllis is horrified, owing to the animosity between her and Rhoda, and by the end of the episode confronts them about it. At which point Rhoda tells her that the brother is gay. The first time I saw that, my heart leapt, because I had actually been thinking that it would be funny if it ended that way, but never expected it to. The character, while not played feminine, was a pianist, and relatively soft-spoken, which can often be seen as "queer coding". What I especially liked was that none of the characters seemed to have a problem with it -- compared to the idea of his dating Rhoda, her brother's homosexuality became a sweet relief to Phyllis.

Song: Ella Fitzgerald, "Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead"