LGBTQ columnist, Aldwin Era discusses the representation of the LGBTQ community on TV, starting with the show that launched it all…
I remember watching the original British version of Queer as Folk for the first time. I was about sixteen, had already come out of the closet, but really hadn’t any idea what it meant to be gay. I knew that I was gay, had always known in fact (I have the doodles of hairy-torsoed men in an old colouring book to prove it). But I had no clue how real gay people lived. ‘Where did they work? What did they do? How did they meet?’ Like the Lochness Monster or Bigfoot, gay people seemed a dreamed up myth to me — until that fateful Friday night. I had never been more enthralled by a television show in my life. I sat on the brown laminate flooring of my tiny bedroom riveted by the gratuitous images whirring before me: the gyrating naked male physiques, the Day-glo and sequined hot-pants, the seizure-inducing strobe lighting, the aloofness of one-night chance encounters with very young strangers…
‘This was it,’ I thought. ‘This was how real gay people, or at least men, lived.’ I had been exposed, for the first time that I could remember, to a representation of myself on TV. This was how my gay life was going to look, disco ball, feather boa, and all.
Boy, was I wrong. I could not have been farther from the truth. Sure, I’ve had my Church Street outings , seen my fair share of leather chaps and denim cut-offs, but my gay life, in terms of television, turned out to be more reminiscent of The Golden Girls than Queer as Folk. And that got me thinking, more than ten years later as a gay man in my twenties, and with even greater representation of the LGBTQ community in the media, what does it mean to be lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, and/or queer in today’s society? Are we seeing true reflections of ourselves or are we playing into the stereotypes that many of us have struggled to eradicate?
One can’t flip a channel these days without coming across at least one LGBTQ person or character on television. With the historic outing of Ellen DeGeneres on her mid-nineties sitcom Ellen releasing the proverbial flood gates, there are now a plethora of LGBTQs reaching millions of homes internationally. From the bisexual hijinks of MySpace star Tila Tequila on A Shot at Love to the antics on the transgendered/transsexual reality competition RuPaul’s Drag Race, one can’t argue that our community has no visibility on television. In fact, it seems very à la mode these days to have an LGBTQ character as part of one’s ensemble cast. How could the newly re-launched Melrose Place garner more attention than by writing in bisexual character Ella Simms? Nothing says big ratings these days than an on-screen girl-on-girl kiss. Are these characters serving as mirrors for the LGBTQ viewing audience? Is that really me as the recently out, mad for musical theater, Kurt Hummel on Fox’s new hit show Glee? Are those really my lesbian friends swapping saliva on The L Word? I asked a couple of my 20-something rainbow flag comrades to find out.
Laura, a dear friend and co-worker, posits that although the heightened presence of the LGBTQ community on television is generally a positive thing, the one-dimensional portrayal of its characters is what bothers her. “You have to have a balance,” she says. “What I don’t like is that when we are portrayed on television it’s usually as these promiscuous people whose only concerns are going out, doing drugs, and having sex. We’re more than that. We’re real people who want to have normal relationships, normal jobs, and want to lead a normal life.”
Vince, my first gay friend and only other openly gay male at my high school echoes Laura’s sentiments. “In a post Ellen/Will and Grace era, mainstream TV hasn’t progressed much beyond presenting the token gay characters as mostly just stereotypes. Characters are usually based on generalized truths that have been boiled down to a couple of signature traits, failing to represent the complexity of who ‘we’ are.”
How many times have I personally been told that I reminded someone of Jack on Will & Grace? Countless. Not to say that I’m bothered by such a comparison (I am pretty damn funny) but I am mostly disturbed by the conviction with which many of those who have “complimented” me in such a way believe that, Jack, this caricature, is who I really am. And so the natural line of questioning ensues: “So, have you seen Cher in Las Vegas?” or “How many people are you seeing right now?” Actually, a) I don’t like Cher and b) no one. It’s the categorizing that is at issue, the fitting ideas of people into small, easily contained boxes, with clearly marked labels that is detrimental.
In the end, television will what television wants. It’s a numbers game and as long as networks vie for viewership the sorts of things one will find on the airwaves will be of that over-the-top, shock-value, and up-to-the-minute kind. Hopefully one day representation will achieve the sort of clarity Vince describes as “a representation of gay people, as individuals, with individual histories, who function both within and [outside] what you call ‘the [gay] community.’”
The truth is, I do see a little bit of myself in characters like Kurt Hummel. I see the hiding, the secrets, and the wanting to please one’s parents (particularly one’s Dad) and these are all things I’m sure everyone can relate to. So, until we get to that place where we are a more “integral” than “visible” community, I don’t feel so bad that I’m singing and dancing along with the cast of Glee from the privacy of my own home.