Come on TV Scoopers, let’s don our thinking caps and cogitate on how the gay and lesbian communities are represented on our goggleboxes. Will and Grace is hitting its final stretch in a disappointing graveyard slot on Channel 4 and there are teenage fumblings going on in Hollyoaks, but with news of a gay couple in the next season of Desperate Housewives – how open-minded is the TV industry when faced with the gay issue?
In the US, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation have gone public with their assessment of American TV’s portrayal of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender characters. Network ABC have earned top marks with Ugly Betty and Brothers and Sisters (both picked up by Channel 4) earning special praise, while Fox came bottom of the list. NBC only just scraped ahead of Fox, though was given credit for its cable network Bravo. Bravo is home to the camp theatrics of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy (Living TV in the UK, with star Carson Cressley pictured right) and Project Runway (Sky One in the UK), and so was deemed “perhaps the most LGBT-inclusive of the general entertainment cable networks.” Now there’s an endorsement that just runs off the tongue.
Do we need such things measured and compared in Britain or are we more open and accepting than America? Is there a need to siphon off sections of society and push their profiles on TV shows, regardless of whether it is appropriate or beneficial to the show? Or is this necessary to re-dress the balance and maintain programming which relates to everyone? Would more gay characters on TV mean more stereotypes and clichés or would quantity bring quality? Have your say on the Scoop.
[via IMDb]
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Well, since you ask . . . it appears that there are two different kinds of shows, those specifically about gays (Will and Grace, QEFTSG etc) and those incorporating the doings of gay characters (Brothers and Sisters, etc). (I love Brothers and Sisters, by the way.) I personally couldn’t give a fig and it assumes nil importance in my world. People are people, and it really REALLY annoys me when big deals are made of nothing!! WHY oh why is everyone so obsessed with sexual orientation?? GET A LIFE, PEEPS! I can’t believe that Networks are being graded about this now. Does it really matter? No, I can honestly say that to this viewer, it doesn’t.
Using “peeps” to mean people apart from in a “stavros”context should be illegal.
Anyway, it’d be interesting to see some straight people on british TV for a change, hell you can’t get in Big Brother unless you’ve at least blown your priest in a confessional booth. Or at least some gay men who aren’t screaming hissy-fit throwing camp jessies one step from John Inman and Dick Emery.
The US at least portrays gay men and women outside stereotypes or as a minimum balances the stereotypes (as they no doubt exist)with – Queer Eye & Will & Grace being prime examples.
What is ‘the gay issue’?
If the media was less self-absorbed and lazy, some of it’s ‘thought leaders’ might like to take a peek at the real world. In my corner of the real world, I work and interact with hundreds of different people from across the world. Statistically, many of them must inevitably have a different sexual preference to mine. But, stupefying though it may sound, none of that is of interest to any of us. I don’t care what they do with their sexual organs and they don’t seem interested in what I choose to do with mine. Oddly enough, none of us seems to be defined by our sexual activities (whatever they may be) and none of us seem bothered about defining others by their carnal pastimes. It is as interesting to me as someone’s dietary preferences or their “race”. Not very.