Gay Images
TV's Mixed Signals

by John J. O'Connor

The message to the medium is blunt: "It is time for the television industry to realize that 25 million lesbians and gay men in America, along with our families and friends, make up a significant share of the viewing audience. We are tired of seeing gays represented only as buffoons or villains."

The subject is images, a crucial one in today's media-drenched world. Homosexuals are demanding fairer coverage on television. Their more vociferous opponents lobby for a blanket of invisibility. New questions are being raised: Should more of an effort be made to portray gays sympathetically, singling them out for special treatment? Or, in an argument gaining momentum these days, should gay and lesbian characters, like heterosexuals, simply be absorbed into scripts with a minimum of patronizing fuss?

Caught in the crossfire are some of the best and most ambitious of network productions: television movies like "Our Sons," on ABC at 9 tonight, and "An Inconvenient Woman," on NBC last week, as well as top series ranging from "LA Law," "Midnight Caller" and "Thirtysomething" to "Roseanne," "The Simpsons" and "Golden Girls."

The statement referred to above, published by the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (Glaad), was part of a recent advertisement that also declared: "Over 7.000 hate crimes against lesbians and gay men were reported last year. We believe the time has come for television to stop promoting bigotry by marginalizing and denigrating lesbian and gay lives."

Attempting to counter what it describes as defamation from "the intolerant agenda of radical right," Glaad keeps close tabs on television, pouncing on what it sees as negative stereotypes while encouraging moves in positive directions. What is negative? An episode of NBC's "Quantum Leap" in which a lesbian uses her stiletto heel to kill her lover, who wants to take up with a man. Positive?

CBS's "Doctor, Doctor," in which the offbeat doctor hero has a warm and loving relationship with his gay brother.

Occasionally a positive can turn negative. More than a year ago, ABC's "Thirtysomething" was cited favorably for an episode in which two gay characters were actually seen in bed together, though not touching; but confronted with threats of boycott from protestors and the withdrawal of some advertisers, ABC did not repeat the episode, despite generally favorable reactions from critics and viewers. (NBC, however, did rerun the offending "Quantum Leap" show.)

For the moment, recurring lesbian and gay characters are scarce on series television. Not too long ago, relatively shortlived series had their gay characters. "Hooperman" had its gay cop, "Heartbeat" its lesbian doctor, and "The Tracey Ullman Show" its gallery of uninhibited homosexuals. Right now, there is C.J.Lamb on "LA Law," who may or may not be bisexual depending on which episode you catch. There are also Blaine (Damon Wayons) and Antoine (David Alan Grier), reviewers extraordinaire, on "In Living Color," but a good many homosexuals still haven't decided whether they are to be applauded or deplored. Next season on "Roseanne" there will be further development of the character Leon (Martin Mull), her boss at the department store restaurant. Leon's homosexuality was matter-of-factly slipped into an episode broadcast last April.

Of course, stereotyping is the name of the television entertainment game. No one is exempt. But the heterosexual stereotypes at least encompass an enormously broad and thorough range of heterosexuals. Homosexuals, on the other had, tend to be defined primarily by their sexuality and are too often limited to a handful of tired depictions, with "sissies" at one extreme and black-leather fetishists at the other. Many of them are bored with "homosexual" movies in which, no matter how good the intention, the inference is that homosexuality is a problem. They want to see themselves as characters integrated into the most ordinary of situation. That, after all, is how most lead their daily lives.

Meanwhile, television can simply decide, quite shamelessly, to keep certain aspects of the gay community invisible. That's what happened for much of the past decade as AIDS began taking its dead- ly toll. A few years ago, the makers of NBC's "Midnight Caller" professed surprise when one episode was roundly criticized for de- picting and AIDS carrier who was intentionally spreading the virus to other sex partners. Given a dearth of AIDS-related stories, television managed somehow to come up with a victim-as-murderer angle. Clearly the subject gets network executives nervous, but there are those who do keep trying. Consider the situation in "Our Sons."

Donald, a 28-year-old architect, is dying of AIDS complications in San Diego. He was kicked out of his Arkansas home 11 years earlier by his mother, a bar waitress played by Ann-Margret who firmly believes that homosexuality is an offense against God, man and nature. Now, apparently succumbing to her maternal instincts, the mother arrives to effect a reconciliation, conceding that "it was a waste, all those years, but I couldn't help it."

In the movie, Julie Andrews plays the sophisticated mother of James (Hugh Grant), who has been living with Donald (Zeljko Ivanek) for three years and is now tenderly seeing him through his final days. This is a very carefully constructed and classy production, written by William Hanley ("The Kennedys of Massachusetts") and directed by John Erman ("An Early Frost"). It's a rare instance of a major network movie dealing sympathetically and movingly - keep the tissues at hand - with homosexuals and AIDS. As it happens, the last effort was "An Early Frost," and that was in 1985.

"Our Sons," then, might be expected to leave the gay community reasonably pleased. Perhaps even a little gratitude would be in store. Don't count on it. Many homosexuals today are not about to be satisfied with occasional crumbs from the groaning board of popular culture. They are fed up with seeing their very existences viewed primarily as "controversial." Even the occasionally more sensitive films use distancing ploys, exploring not the lives of homosexuals but the anguished fretting of their parents or friends.

The new attitude among homosexuals can be found distilled by Vito Russo in an afterward written for the revised edition (1987) of "The Celluloid Closet," his exhaustive and perceptive history of homosexuality in the movies: "Mainstream commercial films and made-for-television movies that have as their subject the allegedly controversial issue of my existence may be necessary evils but they're not for me. They're for mothers in New Jersey, aunts in Kansas City and frightened 15-year-old gay kids in Mississippi who buy Christopher Street magazine from a blind newsdealer. I'm tired of trying to figure out whether the latest well-meaning soap opera has succeeded in convincing America that I don't have horns and a tail."

In fact, homosexuals are discovering that the old restrictions are no longer as formidable as once thought. Certain religious groups may still deem homosexuality to be a sin, but other churches and synagogues, very much in the mainstream, openly welcome homo- sexuals not only as members but also as officially sanctioned celebrants. Homosexuals can also claim continuing gains in legal areas regarding, among other thins, apartment leases and hospitalization coverage for their partners.

Inevitably, homosexuals are exercising political clout. By far the most startling turn of events recently in New York City politics took place on St. Patrick's Day when David N. Dinkins, the city's first black mayor, insisted that a group of Irish homosexuals be allowed to march, over the objections of the parade's organizers. He then marched with them, stunning a number of old-line members of the Roman Catholic clergy and the Ancient Order of Hibernians.

Some of that same clout is being felt in television and among advertisers. GLAAD and other groups are encouraging their members to speak out and write letters when their interests are at stake. Such organizations see themselves as providing balance in the public arena when the networks run up against fundamentalist groups like the Rev. Donald Wildmon's American Family Association.

In actuality, however, the Wildmon group has been considerably less successful than headlines might suggest. None of the product boycotts announced by the American Family Association seems to have been very successful. Not surprisingly, the association invariable condemns precisely the shows that Glaad will commend. Some examples from recent series:

- "The Simpsons" (Fox). Homer hires a male secretary (voice provided by Harvey Fierstein, the author and star of "Torch Song Trilogy"), whose mannerisms are clearly intended to suggest homosexuality.

- "Cop Rock" (ABC). A gay reporter's plan to reveal that the mayor's top aide is homosexual collapses when the mayor learns that the reporter's lover is an illegal alien and threatens reprisal against the reporter.

- "Doctor, Doctor" (CBS). Richard, a homosexual observes his brother Mike's desperate love life and thanks God he is a homo- sexual.

- "The Hogan Family" (CBS). An episode promotes safe sex for teenagers.

- "L.A. Law" (NBC). C.J. and Abby participate in what is being called the first lesbian kiss on network television.

- "Golden Girls" (CBS). Blanche's brother arrives for a visit with his homosexual policeman companion. Initially, Blance is appalled but in the end she embraces both men as part of the family.

Clearly, the basic thrusts of GLAAD and the Wildmon group are diametrically opposed. One wants to open up television in its portrayals of homosexuals; the Reverend Wildmon is for continuing and indeed strengthening the old practices of concealment (homo- sexuality isn't his only target; "Murphy Brown" was chided for "bitchiness").

Perhaps the most significant development for homosexuals over the past couple of decades had been an increased visibility that has shattered the myth of a monolithic community made up of two or three dominant types. Homosexuals as a group, it seems, are at least as diverse as heterosexuals. They can be found among teachers and policeman, performers and composers, priests and professional athletes, doctors, lawyers and probably even Indian chiefs, not to mention an occasional umpire. There are liberals and conservatives, and there are fierce communal rifts, the most recent centering on the controversial question of "outing" - publicly revealing the names of supposedly gay celebrities without their permission.

Some of this diversity has indeed been reflected in prime- time. A recent episode of ABC's "Thirtysomething," written by Richard Kramer and Paul Monette, sensitively described the reactions of an ad-agency art director on learning that his AIDS test was positive. And one episode of NBC's "Law and Order" carefully explored the volatile subject of suicide among people with AIDS, most of them young and otherwise leading quite ordinary lives.

Not too many homosexuals, however, were likely to be thrilled with "An Inconvenient Woman" and its portrayal of Hollywood homosexuals as gossipy twits hanging out in a gay bar featuring dreary Marily Monroe-clone singers. In a magazine interview, Mr Fierstein said he turned down the role of the viperish newspaper columnist because the character was so horrible, like all the other homosexuals in the film. But, countered a producer, all the het- eroosexuals are horrible, too. "Fine," said Mr. Fierstein, "but there are nice heterosexuals on television all the time."

It is finally a matter of balance, and the networks have occasionally succeeded. Movies like "That Certain Summer" (1972) with Hal Holbrook and Martin Sheen as lovers and "A Question of Love" (1978) with Jane Alexander and Gena Rowlands as lesbians in a child-custody suit are respectable forerunners in a genre that includes today's "Our Sons."

But the American approach is obstinately cautious and timid. Certainly viewers will look in vain for the candor and honesty that leapt out of such British productions as "The Naked Civil Servant," with John Hurt as the flamboyant writer Quentin Crisp; "My Beautiful Laundrette" (1986), with Daniel Day-Lewis and Gordon Warnecke as working-class lovers; and "Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit" and its coming-of-age story of a girl discovering she is a lesbian. All three films were made for, and shown on, television. ("Laundrette" was also released in theaters in this country.)

American television is probably less constrained outside the precincts of standard network prime time. Public television has offered everything from Terrence McNally's "Andre's Mother," about the reconciliation between the mother of a dead homosexual and his lover, to outstanding documentaries, the next major offering being Peter Adair's "Absolutely Positive," an account of how he and 10 other people cope with testing HIV positive. Home Box Office has presented "Common Threads: The Story of the Aids Quilt," and Showtime for several seasons carried the sitcom "Brothers," one of whose characters was homosexual. On the schedule next season for WNYC in New York: "In the Life," a monthly show about gay and lesbian life, promised as a "Cross between '60 Minutes' and a gay version of 'The Ed Sullivan Show.'"

One thing seems certain: if homosexuals continue to find themselves portrayed in mainstream television as somehow suspicious outsiders forever relegated to society's fringes, they will simply pick themselves up and take their business elsewhere - to other areas of television (there is a gay Cable Network, a small-scale operation based in New York) or to their own documentary and film festivals (the Third Annual New York International Festival of Lesbian and Gay Film opens on June 7; its theme this year is "Decent Exposure").

© 2005 LINQ Communications