Entertaining Gays Can Do No Wrong And May One Day Help You Too

I've noticed a trend recently in television: as society becomes more accepting of gays, we are seeing a lot more gay characters. In films, homosexual characters have been standing in as the Supportive Wise Ethic/Gay Friend whenever Alicia Keys can't be reached, but since Will & Grace, a host of new shows have picked up token gay characters, including Mad Men, Modern Family, and Glee, with shows like 30 Rock and The Office featuring less dominant gay characters. Yanic Truesdale played the ultimate character: a gay, black Frenchmen on Gilmore Girls. Of course, the fact the more characters on television happen to be gay is less than spectacular. What I've noticed, more than their presence, is the roles they happen to assume, which seems to reflect a desire to demystify homosexuals, and portray them as Fun People Who Help Heteros, rather than deviants of some sort. The overcompensation is, well, painful.

In most of these shows, the hetero characters are much more developed than the homosexual characters, with the story lines conducive to their development, often walking the line between a good/bad character status through a complex set of morals or a misplaced sense of integrity (Don Draper). The gay characters tend to serve as comic relief from the travails of the straights. Take The Birdcage (1996). Old homophobic white guys like this movie. It's really funny. More importantly, it upholds heterosexual families as the norm. Nathan Lane and Robin Williams, the gay couple, pose as a traditional couple with Nathan Lane as the woman, so as not to upset the parents of their son's fiancée. Not only do they apologize for their homosexuality by rearranging themselves, they make the movie funny by being their hilarious homosexual selves, because, um, all gay people are funny (?). Essentially, they serve to ensure the comfort and entertainment of straight people, within the film and beyond the fourth wall.



Susan Sontag said, “Jews and homosexuals are the outstanding creative minorities in contemporary urban culture. Creative, that is, in the truest sense: they are creators of sensibilities. The two pioneering forces of modern sensibility are Jewish moral seriousness and homosexual aestheticism and irony.” In film and television, gays are characterized by their creativity, aestheticism, and irony which acts as a barrier to keep heteros safe and entertained long enough to be deterred from thinking about what being a homosexual actually means beyond the now-expected camp and fanfare. Television reinforces the idea that the state of being homosexual is a much more...exhaustive state than being heterosexual. Straight people are allowed to be comfortable with just being themselves, since being straight isn't exactly considered an alternative lifestyle choice. If someone introduced himself to you, describing himself as straight as he listed his interests, it would seem needless and uninteresting. But because most homosexuals have acted in certain ways, and been portrayed in certain ways in the media, the state of being gay bring along a whole caboose of implications. If you're gay, you must be entertaining and campy! And, if you're a gay in television, a sacrificial lamb.



Sal of Mad Men is the most obvious example of the gay sacrificial lamb. Unfulfilled in his marriage to a woman, he nonetheless turns down the advances of a high-paying male client, citing his marriage as the reason. Yet he is the one who gets fired when the client demands it, even though his boss knows what happened. How can you not feel sorry for this guy? He tries to deny his gayness to save face in his personal life and career, but it ultimately leads to his undoing. But if he isn't fired, the company will lose the client. So, once again, the homosexual character takes it for the straight people, to ensure their continued comfort and success.



Kurt of Glee is another perfect example. How heart-rending, when he gives up the part he wanted to protect his incredibly understanding father from hearing people make fun of his gay son for singing a song from Wicked! I can practically see the crown of thorns on his head. What if he just made his dad deal with it? What if he just 'stayed true to himself', which, I believe, is the overwhelming theme of the High School Musical-esque show? Why does the gay character always have to give up his needs and dreams for the comfort of the straight character? Just like in The Birdcage, Kurt apologizes for his homosexuality and denies himself the 'chance to shine.' I don't think Rosa Parks would be proud. Aside from all that, Kurt is the most accessible, typical gay stereotype imaginable. It's easier to have a gay character who walked right off the set of The Producers than it is to have a gay character who considers his gayness one of the least interesting things about him.

Essentially, whenever things are going a bit awry for the straight people, we cut to a shot of the gays, who give us a healthy dose of comic relief! Take Modern Family, which has essentially treated the gay couple, Cameron and Mitchell, as a humorous backdrop to the antics of the two straight families. While Phil and Claire are having a heartfelt parenting moment, Mitchell is whining about Cameron trying to comfort their baby all the time instead of letting her cry. Or Cameron is recanting some awful Christmas present Mitchell's mother gave him. Don't get me wrong, they are totally hilarious, but I'm afraid that might be all they are. Mitchell is obviously the less-funny one, but he still serves as a sounding board to give (funny) Cameron or the the straight people opportunities to be funny with his incessant whining.



My problem with all of this is that the Entertaining Gays Can Do No Wrong And May One Day Help You Too message that networks are trying to cram down our throats is completely counterintuitive to what the intended outcome is. You want society to accept gays as they are and not alienate them? Then don't pigeonhole them. Don't try to pass off gays as harmless, campy entertainers as though they have something to apologize or compensate for. Here's an idea: create gay characters who are not completely consumed by their gayness, characters whose sexuality is as unassuming as that of the straight characters.