NYT: Gay-Themed TV Gains a Wider Audience
Sam Damon
that gay-themed TV is gaining acceptance. Ironically, today's USA Today
has a poll indicating almost the opposite: that Americans are less
accepting of gay issues. Of the apparent contradiction, ABC reporter
Don Dahler quipped that Americans may be less tolerant of gays but they
sure like to watch them on TV.
Of note in the article are two upcoming shows, "The L Word" and "Gay
Hollywood." The former, a show about a group of lesbians in Los
Angeles, premieres on Showtime in January. The latter airs on August 11
at 10pm on AMC.
I hate to sympathize with the Georgia NBC affiliate that delayed airing
"Queer Eye" until 2:35am, but even I was surprised by some of the things
that got by NBC censors. For example, in describing some stained
underwear, one of the gay men quipped, "Is it soy sauce or boy sauce?"
Don't forget that it aired at 9:30pm, not the racier 10pm-and-later
slots. Expectedly, they edited out the jockstrap sniffing and skid
marks comment which aired on Bravo.
-----Original Message-----
Subject: NYTimes.com Article: Gay-Themed TV Gains a Wider Audience
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2003 04:40:13 -0400 (EDT)
Gay-Themed TV Gains a Wider Audience
July 29, 2003
By BERNARD WEINRAUB and JIM RUTENBERG
Thirty years ago, prime-time television series often
depicted homosexuals as suicidal or psychopaths. In an
episode of "Marcus Welby, M.D.," the
doctor tells a tormented patient to "win that fight"
against his homosexual feelings. An episode of "Police
Woman" centered on three lesbians who murdered the
residents of a retirement home.
If American television audiences could have seen then what
viewers can see now.
Tonight the Bravo cable network will present the first
episode of "Boy Meets Boy," in which a gay bachelor will
choose a potential partner from a field of 15 men, some of
them straight.
That will be followed by "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,"
in which a team of gay men with expertise in designer
clothing, food and wine, and in the arts save aesthetically
challenged straight men from their own warped senses of
fashion.
These shows join a growing prime-time roster of gay-themed
programming - "Queer as Folk" on Showtime, "Will and Grace"
on NBC - that reflects a major shift in attitudes about gay
subjects. Several network and cable television executives
said the Supreme Court's 6-to-3 decision in June,
overruling a Texas sodomy law and legalizing gay sexual
conduct, underlined what they already knew: that the
nation's attitudes toward gays and lesbians are radically
changing.
"Finally, television is catching up with society at large,"
said Max Mutchnick, the co-creator with David Kohan of
"Will and Grace," "These new gay shows are a reflection of
what everyone sees now in their jobs, in their families, in
their schools."
But the trend has already come under attack. A. William
Merrell, a vice president on the executive committee of the
Southern Baptist Convention, said the new shows were a sign
of the growing influence of gays in Hollywood. "I believe
that the net effect is to forward an agenda making
homosexuality appear first normal, and then desirable," he
said.
At the same time, some scholars and writers specializing in
gay issues said the current crop of gay-oriented shows
served only to trivialize and stereotype gay men.
In many ways the new shows are trying to capitalize on the
popularity of "Will and Grace," which was the
third-most-watched sitcom on network television last season
behind "Friends" and "Everybody
Loves Raymond," with an average weekly audience of 16.8
million people, according to Nielsen Media Research.
The shows are also a measure of the hunger among television
executives to offer new, even daring shows in a highly
competitive industry.
Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, the executive producers of
"It's All Relative," a new ABC sitcom about a star-crossed
engaged couple - the daughter of two upscale gay men and
the son of a blue-collar couple - said the television
landscape had shifted significantly in the eight and a half
years since their first gay-themed television project, the
NBC movie "Serving in Silence." The movie was based on the
story of Col. Margarethe Cammermeyer, the officer
discharged from the Washington State National Guard in 1992
for acknowledging she was a lesbian. (She was later
reinstated.) "It was a really difficult experience," Mr.
Zadan said.
Sponsors chafed at the movie - some refused to advertise -
some conservatives protested and even some of NBC's
affiliated stations expressed discomfort with a kiss shared
by the movie's stars, Glenn Close and Judy Davis.
"Look where we've come now, where the opposite has
happened, where the chairman of ABC comes to us two years
ago and says, `I want to do a show on gay parents," Mr.
Zadan said.
Lloyd Braun, the ABC Entertainment chairman, said that when
he came up with the idea for "It's All Relative," "I just
thought it was funny," he said.
The sitcom, he said, seeks to discuss "some of the
ridiculous stereotypes that exist in our society." For the
last two and a half years, Showtime has offered "Queer as
Folk," a fairly explicit portrait of a group of gay men and
women in Pittsburgh. Next January, Showtime will present an
original series, "The L Word," about the lives of a group
of lesbians in Los Angeles.
Then there is "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" on Bravo. It
has won good-natured reviews from critics for its universal
theme: Who doesn't want to be made over to look better?
The show drew roughly 1.6 million viewers on its first two
outings on Bravo in July, the largest audiences in Bravo's
history. After that success, NBC, Bravo's corporate
sibling, decided to broadcast the show itself last
Thursday, a rare instance of a broadcast network following
cable's lead.
The show drew an audience of 7 million and was the
second-highest-rated show in NBC's Thursday 9:30 p.m. slot
since mid-June.
The program did not seem to want for advertisers, either.
"Advertisers have gotten past the point of resistance,"
said Jack Myers, editor of the Jack Myers Report, a media
industry newsletter heavily subscribed to on Madison
Avenue. "If audience is there, the advertisers are there,"
he said.
Still, the broadcast of "Queer Eye" did not go off without
a hitch. One NBC affiliate, WAGT in Augusta, Ga., refused
to show the episode until 2:35 a.m.
John Mann, the station's president and general manager,
said he did not object to the gay theme but rather to
scenes that he believed crossed the line of decency with
blunt sexual innuendo.
"If that appeared in `Friends,' and we knew about it in
advance, we would have moved it, too," Mr. Mann said.
"Queer Eye" has offended some people. In his weekly opinion
column earlier this month, L. Brent Bozell, president of
the Parents Television Council, called it "The Gay
Supremacy Hour."
Such programming "may be acceptable for that element in our
culture that's already earning an advanced degree in Sin
Acceptance," he wrote. "But it's also acceptable to the
gang at NBC, and the suits upstairs at General Electric?"
For different reasons, some scholars who have explored gay
life and issues are not entirely pleased at the new
phenomenon, either. One is Martin Duberman, professor of
history at the City University of New York and author of "Stonewall,"
about the June
1969 uprising that helped give birth to the gay rights movement.
"You're not seeing diverse images on these shows," he said.
"You're seeing primarily middle-class white men with a lot
of discretionary income. Well, a lot of gay people are
poor, a lot are working class. These people are not seen on
these shows."
Eric Marcus, the author of several books on gay issues,
including "Making Gay History: The Half-Century Fight for
Lesbian and Gay Rights," said: " `Will and Grace' was a
breakthrough. People love it. But it's as demeaning to gay
people as heterosexual sitcoms are to heterosexuals. It's
so painfully clichéd."
Mr. Mutchnick, the co-creator of "Will and Grace,"
expressed anger and frustration at such criticisms. "I
don't think it's our job to write about the hardships of
life in this format," he said. "While I don't want to
suggest that the plight of, say, breast cancer patients
isn't important, I don't think the audience sitting down to
an episode of `Murphy Brown' wanted to hear that."
Randy Barbato, a filmmaker who, with his partner, Fenton
Bailey, created a documentary, "Gay Hollywood," about a
group of five gay men in Hollywood, to be broadcast on AMC
on Aug. 11 at 10 p.m., said: "There are a few visible
stereotypes right now. That'll open the door for different
kinds of characters."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/29/business/media/29GAYS.html?ex=1060468013&ei=1&en=27b962d8e8a0f228
Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company
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