Queer Shows for the Straight Joes

Allison Luthy

Arts Journalism

3/2/08

Queer Shows for the Straight Joes

`“Whatever I don’t get, I just figure is gay,” Will’s Texan client, Harlan, comments when he sees Will and Grace make an inside joke on the hit sitcom, “Will and Grace.”

This is not a bad assumption to make on the sitcom featuring two gay men and their female counterparts. Premiering in 1998, “Will and Grace” marks a change in television history when NBC created a show about gay men that became a hit.

Shows like “Will and Grace” and 2003’s “Queer eye for the Straight Guy” brought a new awareness to the American public of the gay community. Television as never before represented people from different backgrounds.

This new diversity in television gave the gay community a voice, but came at the expense of perpetuating gay stereotypes. The majority of the characters on these shows are portrayed as shrill, high-maintenance men who spend their time hitting on every other man they meet and rearranging throw pillows.

In one episode of “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” Carson, the host, sniffs his sleeve, and squeals to the man whose wardrobe he is about to remake, “I’m starting to smell like butch. You’re clothes are rubbing off on me.”

Tom Seiler, board president of the Kalamazoo Gay Lesbian Resource Center said of the television characters, “I did not find them to be very probing representations of ‘real’ people; rather, I found them superficial, flighty, offensive in a mild sort of way. The show was very popular, though, and perhaps did much to persuade people to be rather more comfortable with the idea of gay people than they might otherwise have been.”

This technique of presenting homosexuality with a quip at their expense effectively brought the issue into American popular culture, but staying with the image of the silly gay man failed to do more than provide the basis for more serious work to follow.

In Ang Lee’s 2005 film, “Brokeback Mountain,” the homosexuality is carried out of New York and San Francisco and placed in rural Wyoming. The film contrasts traditional gay stereotypes, making the main characters gay cowboys, who are anything but feminine, riding bucking broncos at rodeos and speaking in grunts and terse single-word responses to one another.

Real issues of the gay community—ostracization and violence—are conveyed through the main characters’, Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist’s, struggles to define their relationship in a homophobic society.

When Jack and Ennis return to Brokeback Mountain years after they met there, Jack gets frustrated with Ennis’ fear of being open about their relationship and yells, “Tell you what, we coulda had a good life together! Fuckin' real good life! Had us a place of our own. But you didn't want it, Ennis! So what we got now is Brokeback Mountain!”

The emotionally-charged film went on to win an Oscar for best picture that year, Ledger winning best actor.

Incredibly realistic in its portrayal of the cowboys, “Brokeback Mountain” excited so much controversy that even three years later, after Ledger’s death, religious extremists protested the heterosexual actor’s gay role outside the Screen Actor’s Guild Awards, carrying signs reading “Heath’s in Hell.” Ledger’s family opted for a private service after receiving threats of similar disruption to occur at his funeral.

The Church’s spokesperson, Shirley Phelps released a statement about Ledger, saying, “You cannot live in defiance of God. He got on that big screen with a big, fat message: God is a liar and it's OK to be gay.”

Television and movies may not be denouncing God as the WBC claims, but the message that it is OK to be gay has indeed permeated the mass media.

The Kalamazoo Gay Lesbian Resource Center’s president, Tom Seiler, commented on the public’s reaction to the television shows and movies produced so far about homosexuality, “Statistics seem to indicate that there seems to be a clear age gap between older folks who are less accepting of LGBT matters and younger folks who seem to take LGBT matters in stride as nothing special to remark on. Maybe the media, oriented as it is to a younger audience, reflects this gap. If so, then one would need to argue, I suppose, that some attention paid is better than none, and that the more attention paid the better.”

While the American public seems to be more accepting today of serious gay men in the media, Seiler does make a valid point. Without the groundwork laid by the earlier television shows featuring gay men, it would not have been possible to create a work as monumental as “Brokeback Mountain” and expect the audience to be receptive to its message.

Carson Kressley of “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” may sport hot pink argyle sweaters on the show, so flamboyant even preppy high school girls wouldn’t dream of wearing them, but even with the generalizations of gay behavior, the show does expose the public to a successful gay man.

Television has been getting more serious recently about realistically portraying homosexuality in its programs. Perhaps someday soon there will be a sitcom featuring gay men who can be funny without being made a caricature of their sexual orientation.

Batman Critical Response

The article “Batman’s Burden: A Director Confronts Darkness and Death” brings an interesting approach to the movie that has not yet been released. It affords the reader a look into the making of the film without actually describing any of the movie’s plot. Halbfinger provides details about the director’s habits and how he goes about creating the movie with so much depth that the piece at first seems like a profile of Mr. Nolan. The article begins to feel a little fake when Halbfinger discusses Heath Ledger’s death. His mention of Heath Ledger sometimes seems to be an attempt to lend more credit to the movie. While Ledger could have been using the narcotics he overdosed on for any number of reasons, the article pushed the theory that he did so because of how complex his role was in “Batman” and how wonderful he was making it. He used a quote from a cinematographer saying, “It was like a séance, where the medium takes on another person and then is so completely drained.” Rather than lending importance to the movie, I thought that this approach to Ledger’s death detracted from the article as a whole and left it feeling fake in an otherwise strong piece of writing.

"Dead Man's Cell Phone" Review

Charles Isherwood’s review in Wednesday’s Times, “A Nagging Call to Tidy Up an Unfinished Life,” is very creatively written, using a cell phone as an underlying theme to tie his entire article together. I thought his lede was great, starting out by describing cell phones as the thing that you have to turn off before you go to the theatre, in his review of a play about a cell phone. Since this was a very new play that not very many people have heard of yet, Isherwood made the wise decision to start of his review with a plot summary and saved the majority of his commentary for the end of the article. I think that Isherwood generally liked the play, but he didn’t mention his “but” until about halfway through the article. He used a lot of really good imagery in his writing and described Mary Louise Parker’s clothes and the way she was standing on stage so well that it was easy to imagine exactly what the show was like. The reference to Dickens at the end of the article gave it a good sense of closure and tied the kicker back in to the theme of cell phones he used for the whole article.

Final Article Draft

Allison Luthy

Arts Journalism

3/2/08

Gay Stereotypes in the Media

`“Whatever I don’t get, I just figure is gay,” Will’s Texan client, Harlan, comments when he sees Will and Grace make an inside joke on the hit sitcom, “Will and Grace.”

This is not a bad assumption to make on the sitcom featuring two gay men and their straight female counterparts. Premiering in 1998, “Will and Grace” marks a change in television history when NBC was able to create a show in which the stars play gay men and have it become a hit.

Shows like “Will and Grace” and 2003’s “Queer eye for the Straight Guy” brought a new awareness to the American public of the gay community. Television as never before represented people from all walks of life.

This new diversity of television gave the gay community a voice, but came at the expense of perpetuating gay stereotypes. The majority of the characters on these shows are portrayed as shrill, high-maintenance men who spend their time hitting on every other man they meet and rearranging throw pillows.

In one episode of “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” one of the bystanders jokes to the man being made over, “If I were you, I’d tuck in that pocket before he does.”

This technique of presenting homosexuality with a quip at their expense effectively brought the issue into American popular culture, but failed to do more than provide the basis for more serious work to follow.

In 2005, Ang Lee’s film, “Brokeback Mountain,” the gay community is carried out of New York and San Francisco and placed in rural Wyoming. The film contrasts traditional gay stereotypes, making the main characters gay cowboys, who are anything but feminine, riding bucking broncos at rodeos and speaking in terse, single-word sentences.

Real issues of the gay community—ostracization and violence—are conveyed through the main characters’, Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist’s, struggles to define their relationship in a homophobic society.

When Jack and Ennis return to Brokeback Mountain years after they met there, Jack gets frustrated with Ennis’ fear of being open about their relationship and yells, “Tell you what, we coulda had a good life together! Fuckin' real good life! Had us a place of our own. But you didn't want it, Ennis! So what we got now is Brokeback Mountain! Everything's built on that! That's all we got, boy, fuckin' all. So I hope you know that, even if you don't never know the rest!”

I am going to finish writing the body after I have my interview material.

Kicker: Perhaps someday soon there will be a sitcom featuring gay men who can be funny without being made a caricature of their sexual orientation.

Final Project Proposal

I am going to research gay and lesbian stereotypes in the media and how they are changing. I am going to try to conduct an interview with the head of an Oregon homosexuality awareness group this weekend. The television shows and movies I am planning on using to support my argument right now are “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” “Will and Grace,” and “Brokeback Mountain.” While I am writing my article, I am going to keep in mind the Index for an audience, so I can be clear about whom I am writing to. I want to write about this topic because I have been noticing over the last few years that gay people are being taken more seriously in the media, and I want to explore why that is. I plan on reviewing the movies and television shows I mentioned above to try to find ideas and quotes to bring up in my article and I will discuss them with people on campus.

Oscar's Critical Review

I thought that Eric Wilson’s article on fashion, “The Red (Can’t Go Wrong) and the Black (Sober is so 2008),” was generally clever and well-written. There were a few moments that seemed awkward or like they shouldn’t have been included, though. In an article about Oscar fashion, the entire paragraph devoted to a reporter mistaking the name of Heidi Klum’s designer did not belong at all. The detail about Klum making “a sour face” and saying that her dress had been made by Galliano might have belonged in an article about Heidi Klum, but it had no place in an Oscar fashion review. Wilson also compared Tilda Swinton to Dobby the House Elf, presumably because her dress was shapeless like Dobby’s costume in Harry Potter, but he never explains this reference. I did agree with Wilson in most of the other things that he said—the actors who showed up to the Oscars this year did seem to be lacking in most of their usual daring. Even Cate Blanchett, who can usually be counted on to wear something strange, if not pretty, turned up in a normal-looking blue dress. This year’s Oscars could have been much more exciting if some of the star’s had worn more interesting clothes.

A Thousand Splendid Suns Review

Allison Luthy

Arts Journalism

2/25/08

Women’s Rights in Afghanistan Neglected

In his latest novel, “A Thousand Splendid Suns,” Khaled Hosseini tackles the difficult issues of life in wartime Afghanistan, with clarity and poignancy. Where his previous book, “The Kite Runner,” focuses mainly on male relationships, a complex web of women’s relationships with each other drives the plot of “A Thousand Splendid Suns.”

Born in Kabul, Afghanistan in 1965, Hosseini moved to the United States in 1980 after the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. He attended medical school in the United States and began writing his first novel, “The Kite Runner,” in 2001 after he had started practicing medicine.

“A Thousand Splendid Suns” is set in Hosseini’s birthplace, Kabul, during wartime Afghanistan. The main characters of the book, Mariam and Laila, are both women who are victims of the terrible circumstances they live in.

Forced to wear burqas in Afghanistan’s sweltering heat and beaten by the Taliban if they are caught outside by themselves, they become fast friends in order to endure the intolerance. The novel follows the progression of their relationship, protecting each other from their husband’s irrational hatred of them, who at one time forces Mariam to chew on a handful of pebbles until her teeth break because she undercooked his rice.

While writing “A Thousand Splendid Suns,” Hosseini picked the title from a Farsi poem about Kabul by Saeb-e-Tabrizi, a Persian poet. “One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs,/Or the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls.”

Hosseini uses the same themes of guilt and betrayal in “A Thousand Splendid Suns” that he used in “The Kite Runner,” but creates a deeper connection with the characters by showing the psychological effects of what they have witnessed.

The characters are much more realistic because the reader understands their background, elucidating the audience as to why they might do seemingly hateful things. This solidarity with the characters that lacks strength in his previous works becomes overwhelmingly apparent through his vivid descriptions. Hosseini relates scenes, such as the one of Mariam being forced to chew pebbles with painful directness creating the sensations of her teeth cracking. “Then he was gone, leaving Mariam to spit out pebbles, blood, and the fragments of two broken molars.”

Since the 2001 overthrow of the Taliban, Afghanistan has ratified a new constitution, and allows women to vote or participate in elections as candidates. There are still millions of Afghan refugees trying to get resettled or leave Afghanistan. The United Nations Refugee Agency and Hosseini as one of the UNHCR’s US envoys are continuing to give aid to these victims of the war.

Like the political situation of Afghanistan, Hosseini’s writing is only improving with time. Released in May of 2007, “A Thousand Splendid Suns” is still currently in the top five of the New York Times’ hardcover fiction bestseller list.