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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Covert or subtle homophobia on TV

08:36 / 12.07.04

Having read Tom's post at plasticbag.org about his disgust with the Muller adverts which include a highly camp and stereotypical gay air steward, I have to say as a straight man I'm also disgusted with it.

But I think it isn't only the Muller advert I find fault with thare are many other instances on television that reinforce a negative stereotype of homosexuality.

Coronation Street has featured a recent storyline with the first gay character in the soap's year history, a great step forward it may have been thought until it developed. The character Todd Grimshaw is a young man discovering his sexuality who has come out despite his girlfriend being pregnant. His coming out is shown as ruining the life of his girlfriend and he faces a lot of anger and hatred from other residents of the street.

The other major soap opera on British television Eastenders doesn't even have any gay characters at the moment.

The latest series of Big Brother also I feel reinforces stereotypes of homosexuality. Obviously the people in Big Brother are real people rather than fictional characters but I think they were chosen by the producers because they fill a stereotypical role.

That's enough of a rant for now.

09:01 / 12.07.04

This is a subject that interests me, and I'll write more on it later - but for now I'll make the point that there are a number of overlapping areas here. Representation in ads (which have a specific purpose ie. selling Product X to Group Y) is probably slightly different from representation in the soap opera format, which is again different from reality television.

In general, I'd say television has moved on in that, while still full of stereotypes, the stereotypes are probably less crude than they used to be, and there's more of them (ie. a wider range within a comparitively narrow band).

I will get back to this, though.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

14:15 / 12.07.04

Fuck, I hope Tom doesn't go to the cinema and see those Travelocity ads "I'm Gunter and I go both ways... Heathrow and Gatwick." I'm more irritaated by the Foo Fighters video set on the plane, where Dave Grohl plays the most prancing effeminate steward on the planet. And then there's the Fox/Sky axis with it's new attempt each month to come up with a 'quiz' show that revolves around queerterosexuals and/or the transgender community.

I think it's getting better in the areas of proper/semi-proper (ie soaps really) drama and documentaries, I think the price we pay is that as it's profile rises it becomes a larger target for those looking for cheap laughs.

That show about 'queer TV stars' the other weekend was, after all, trying to advance the thesis that Graham Norton's high visibility on British TV is a good thing for faggots everywhere. Which is something that makes me go 'hmmm'. We return to the Oscar Wilde question, is it really better to be talked about or not talked about?

16:51 / 12.07.04

Representation in ads is probably slightly different from representation in the soap opera format, which is again different from reality television.

I agree. I think there are different levels of realism in each instance. Reality television by definition is going to be a very realistic portrayal of a person but will be edited and the subject chosen for the most drama. Adverts as well as selling a product have to sell you on the 30 second long narrative in them and so will tend to use stereotypes that allow the audience to fill in details which are explicitly shown. Soap operas are somewhere in between these extremes are operate in a kind of super-reality where realistic events happen but there is a far higher instance of such events than in real life.

Fuck, I think I've got off the major point I was trying to make here.

The Graham Norton thing is interesting as it shows we've moved on to a point where a gay man can be 'out' and be popular and public accepted on TV. However, I feel that he plays up to a role as a kind of comedy gay stereotype that is more readily accepted by the public or those in power in TV that decide what the public will accept. Possibly as a gay equivalent of Lenny Henry's act from 20 years ago.

I think the real problem I have with these televisual portrayals of gays is that it creates a situation in which people still have to modify their behaviour in order to be publicly accepted. We've moved from a time where you would have to hide your sexuality to one where you need to become a comedy stereotype. I know I'm overstating the issue here but it is true to some extent.

17:52 / 12.07.04

Remember, anything that needs to get into society goes through four basic stages:

Revilement, Ignorance/Invisibility, Ridicule (which is where reality tv and ads are somewhat at) and finally Acceptance.

Obviously, in terms of soaps a demon gay character is fuel for the fire, and it matches what the producers think the Corrie middle britain fanbase want to see - to not cause too much reality-friction. See also, the Daily Star/Mirror's treatment of Nadia. 'Portu-geezer' indeed. You cunts.

23:44 / 12.07.04

Coronation Street has featured a recent storyline with the first gay character in the soap's year history...The character Todd Grimshaw is a young man discovering his sexuality who has come out despite his girlfriend being pregnant. His coming out is shown as ruining the life of his girlfriend and he faces a lot of anger and hatred from other residents of the street.

Welll...That sounds entirely plausible to me. It's not subtly or covertly homophobic for a soap to have a gay character experience homophobia, is it? As for the suggestion that the storyline matches what the producers think the Corrie middle britain fanbase want to see, well, possibly there's some false-consciousness at play, but Corrie's fanbase is not exactly un-gay, and Jonathan Harvey and Daran Little - writers of those episodes - are....you guessed it.

I'm not arguing that gay people are never badly portrayed on TV, just that perhaps we should pick our fights.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

01:03 / 13.07.04

Corrie had the first transsexual character...

06:30 / 13.07.04

fightpicking; totally agree.

Dave Grohl plays the most prancing effeminate steward on the planet.

like that, for example.
he plays several horrendously cheesy aeroplane stereotypes in that video, and he overacts terribly in all of those parts.

dave grohl is just a fucking terrible actor with a limited imaginiation. i mean, that much shows through the foo's music, y' nah?

the muller ads do suck, though.

10:46 / 13.07.04

Yeah, but they always have. "this is the captain of your ship" anyone?
The product is awful, too. Have you ever tried eating one of those hypersweet youghurt things? Ewwww...

11:03 / 13.07.04

Some interesting points here, and amusingly echoing thoughts I had just the other day when I was watching the first series of Six Feet Under; I realised that the main plot arc for the David character is connected with him deciding whether or not to come out to his family. Which seems to resonate with what’s being said about the Coronation Street storyline elsewhere, and it occurs to me that a large number of plotlines – I would suggest the majority - for gay characters in non-comedy TV and film relate to this. Which is … I dunno, not necessarily indicative of anything, but the decision to come out or not seems to be a rather well-worn path. Granted, like a wedding plotline or a college plotline, it brings with it an inevitable narrative structure (the wedding does/doesn’t take place, the student does/doesn’t pass), if one with less of an immediate timeline, but it does seem to me to have been done a lot, and underlying it seems to be a certain suggestion that it’s the sexuality which in itself creates the conflict or drama, which I feel vaguely uncomfortable about. Other people’s thoughts on this would be welcomed, though I appreciate that the above may not be entirely coherent…

The mention of Graham Norton by electricinca as playing a certain stereotype is, I think, a good one; much as I like Norton (I’ve seen him hosting a comedy night, where his quickness of wit was impressive, and held together the disparate acts very well; though I feel his TV show is effectively the same show every week), I do think he’s just the new Julian Clary, who was arguably the new John Inman, etc, etc. Again, the sexuality, whether couched in soft-edged comedic terms or hard-edged drama, seems to be the basis of a lot of the material - in a way that wouldn’t be tolerated nowadays on, say, racial issues.

07:18 / 14.07.04

Julian Clary and Graham Norton are safe stereo types. They do nothing to help the generalization of 'mo's the world over (I can say 'mo cause I have one of my own, his name is Theo. He's good at shopping for handbags). We were watching that amazing race the other day. We watch it because they have what the show calls "a married gay couple". They are called reichen and chip. They act like brothers and look un-gay. If they are really gay, then they are the first masculine gay "characters" that have ever appear on TV ever. The one is far to beautiful to really be gay, is he an actor hired by the pink big-wig at CBS? Are they real? Theo would like to know why all gay me look like those little pug doggies (ie Graham Norton), he's pretty and he can't find an equivalent lover. Is it just him and reichen from amazing race that are straight-boy beautiful? And I'm generalizing as I speak?

08:16 / 14.07.04

Other people’s thoughts on this would be welcomed,

I think you've summed it up pretty well, DaveBCooper. That's my thoughts on it.

(I once heard, at a paper on coming-out narratives at a conference, that there's a gay self-help book called something like Now That I'm Out, What Do I Do? - it's as if 'coming out' is the only gay experience and hence the only conceivable narrative throughline for a gay person/character.)

Maybe it's because I'm a slash fan from way back, and most of my favourite 'gay' characters on TV aren't characterized as gay (Blake and Avon; Harry Potter, Severus Snape, Sirius Black, Remus Lupin; Frodo and Sam; Manny and Bernard), which means that they escape the usual grid laid down over characters who are supposed to be "representing" homosexuality in some way, but the thing that annoys me most about TV is the heterocentrism rather than the homophobia. Like there's an advert for Velux windows at the moment which shows two teddy bears cuddling down cosily together under the new window, and the bears are clearly marked as being of different genders (one has a pink hair ribbon, etc). Now, obviously, Velux windows have nothing to do with sexual orientation and they are not aimed specifically at heterosexuals qua heterosexuals. So this advert is equating cosiness and affection with heterosexuality for no reason to do with the product they're selling and for no reason to do with the symbol they've chosen to represent cosiness and affection. I mean, if they'd used human actors they would have to be gendered one way or another, but teddy bears don't actually have a gender. So, to me, that advert is deliberately effacing any possibility of same-gendered affection, by imposing heterosexuality on a non-heterosexual symbol.

And almost everything on telly does that. If you start looking not at what the telly says about open queers, but at what it says about heterosexuality, that's when it starts getting (more) depressing. It's harder to write letters about (and I applaud Tom's letter to Muller very heartily), so it's harder to see how to campaign about it, but it seems to me to be more pernicious and annoying.

Ex

08:51 / 14.07.04

DaveBCooper - I agree also and wholeheartedly (that's what my last chunk of research was on). You can see how coming out stories are useful for young queer people. But there's something creepy about the endless repetition - it's as though the only narrative about queer people is their relation to heterosexuality - how one becomes queer, how do you get there (queer) from here (normal) - or if you're feeling very negative, 'where did it all go wrong?'. I think you're right that the drama is the sexuality, and once that's sorted out/explained through narrative, the audience/writers lose interest.

I have a general sense that people in soaps come out and bugger off, but that's based on entirely subjective and patchy viewing with no statistics. I was quite pleased to see Derek on Eastenders - older, gay, coming out story all done and dusted years ago.

On Clary/Norton: a fan I spoke to said that Clary was a lot more confrontational in his early TV and standup stuff, whereas Norton is a kind of facilitator allowing straight people to show off their 'perversions' - less directly challenging. He thought it showed a falling-off of nerve by TV companies preferring a less threatening stance. I was too young to stay up for vintage Clary, though, so can't judge.

Adverts: all fucked. Alongside the manic gendering and straightening to sell everything you mentioned, Deva, it's also (I think) the thing where everyone's expected to identify with the white middle-class nuclear family (and white middle-class straight people are rarely expected to identify with anyone else). So if one advert introduces an element outside the unmarked categories, people apparently think - oh, that's the rice for gays. Or - that car is ideal for black families. Or that's the single-parent cheese. Insane.

Did anyone catch the Ikea gay table ad? I'm interested in how it was presented.

11:20 / 14.07.04

I was quite pleased to see Derek on Eastenders - older, gay, coming out story all done and dusted years ago.

Shit, I'd totally forgotten about Derek in Eastenders, so it isn't totally devoid of homosexuality like I said it was. But then again he and Pauline Fowler are like an old married couple that doesn't have sex which isn't abnormal in soap operas.

Tryphena Absent

14:40 / 14.07.04

I kind of like Derek and Pauline. Their relationship is very much born out of mutual loss. They're just lonely people who hang out together. Your interpretation might say more about the way you've been trained to read the show than the image the show presents.