Sometimes Gentlemen Just Prefer Gentlemen

We have come a long way since the release of The Celluloid Closet in accepting gay people in general and also in portraying them as normal, functional humans who grapple with the same mundane problems straight people deal with. Clearly, this is a recent development. The Celluloid Closet opened my eyes, and wide. I had not realized that gay characters were so consistently portrayed as isolated psychopaths, suicide-cases, or at their best, campy, dancing sidekicks. My favorite part by far was Gore Vidal’s retelling of pitching the secret gay subplot to Stephen Boyd in rewriting Ben Hur, but keeping it secret from Charleton Heston, thus igniting a decades long enmity between the super uptight Heston and the super experimental Vidal. My second favorite scene from the movie is of course, the hilarious weight room musical scene in Gentlemen Prefer Blonds. It indeed looked like those gentlemen preferred blonds, ahem, blond gentlemen.

It is a victory for all people, gay and straight, when we have stories told in books, on tv, and in film where the “gayness” of the character is not necessarily the point. This USA Today article about this summer’s box office hit The Kids Are Alright portrays a lesbian couple in a committed relationship raising children. The story would work just as well if the characters were straight. We as a culture have luckily moved past the Will and Grace overtly gay characters where homosexuality was partly what made the show funny at the time. The best way to de-marginalize gay characters in media is to show that they usually are just like the rest of us in relationships, connecting with family members, and striving to find our place in the world. Fortunately Hollywood has followed the cultural trend of increased acceptance of gay people, but it did not itself blaze the way. Stephanie Coontz, a history professor at Evergreen State College in Washington is quoted in the article saying “The overarching movement is in the culture. Hollywood never had the courage or strength or ability to get positive portrayals of gays until things began to change in the culture at large.”

Certainly digital cinema, interactive media, social networking, and You Tube have contributed massively to this cultural change. This website Queerty addresses relevant (or hilariously irrelevant) news topics through a decidedly pro-gay lens. And this website After Elton focuses on pop culture stories that affect the LGBT community. This week the website’s question and answer column How Should Straight People Talk About Gay Issues? was enlightening for me in preparing this blogpost. I appreciate consciousness of not only “what” to discuss but “how” to discuss various sensitive issues. This is the legacy of interactive media. In promoting tolerance and acceptance of LGBT people in the media, both the mode and the method are important.

-Lindsay Newlin