Our gut panel of Nancy Goldste, Richard Lawson and Nick Mattos discs whether a ‘post-gay’ culture exists
Contents:
- ‘MORN FAY’ FALE: HOW CAMERON AND MCHELL FOREVER CHANGED GAY FAI ON TV
- STT D. PIERCE: ‘MORN FAY’ SERV PRAISE FOR CLN AND BRICKBATS FOR GAY STEREOTYP
- THE MORN FAY EFFECT: POP CULTURE’S ROLE THE GAY-MARRIAGE REVOLUTN
- FROM MORN FAY TO GLEE: HOW TV ADVANCED GAY RIGHTS
- 'MORN FAY' AND GAY MARRIAGE: IT'S COMPLITED
- GAY AND LBIAN CRICS NAME BRISH DRAMA ‘WEEKEND’ BT FILM OF THE YEAR
- A BRIEF HISTORY OF LBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENR SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
‘MORN FAY’ FALE: HOW CAMERON AND MCHELL FOREVER CHANGED GAY FAI ON TV
The cln of a gay uple “Morn Fay” is a great thg that helped a lot of viewers realize that gay men exist, and that many of them live lovg, monogamo relatnships as they raise children. And, remember, the ABC s buted six years before same-sex marriage was legalized the Uned Stat. * modern family lgbt *
While Sofia Vergara’s Gloria waltzed her way to the hearts of gay men and lbians for wildly different reasons, was Cameron and Mchell’s lovg relatnship that ma LGBTQ viewers feel tly seen and reprented. “The seri has nsistently brought lns of viewers every week for the past 11 years, and let viewers — particularly on who may not have been tung to other clive seri on ble or streamg — get to know and love a gay uple all their ups and downs and trials and tribulatns. Gay uple Cam and Mch (actors Eric Stontreet and Jse Tyler Fergon) have won our hearts and ma lgh dozens of tim, and have also generated ample bate about straight actors playg gay rol (and vice versa).
STT D. PIERCE: ‘MORN FAY’ SERV PRAISE FOR CLN AND BRICKBATS FOR GAY STEREOTYP
* modern family lgbt *
(Photo urty of Gill Mgasson/ABC) “Morn Fay” stars Eric Stontreet as Cameron and Jse Tyler Fergon as cln of a gay uple “Morn Fay” is a great thg that helped a lot of viewers realize that gay men exist, and that many of them live lovg, monogamo relatnships as they raise children.
[Read more: Missn acplished: ‘Morn Fay’ has changed TV]In 2014, out gay actor Tuc Watks (“Dperate Hoewiv, ” “One Life to Live”) ma headl when he posted a Facebook ment praisg “Morn Fay” but addg that he had “a hard time lghg at the gay guys.
When the show premiered 11 years ago, there weren’t a lot of gay characters on TV — so maybe an effort uld have and should have been ma to go beyond the ’s pretty easy to say, “Oh, Mch and Cam are jt two gay guys. Fergon was nomated for five Emmys for his role, and Stontreet was nomated for three, wng two awards for Outstandg Supportg Actor a Comedy uple was much ld for their pictn of everyday married life for a gay uple on an ABC s. They also adopted a dghter, Lily, and later another child, beg one of the most visible exampl of a gay fay on TV for fans might be beggg for the whole st to rne, this cute rnn will have to hold over until then.
THE MORN FAY EFFECT: POP CULTURE’S ROLE THE GAY-MARRIAGE REVOLUTN
Gay dads Kordale Lewis and Kaleb Anthony, along wh their four children, are the new fac of Swedish fashn brand Ae Studs. * modern family lgbt *
ABCIt you look at the trend le for the Gallup poll about Amerin attus towards gay marriage, you’ll see that support for same-sex marriage, after craterg for a year, began to climb toward s now-historic height 2009. A 2012 Hollywood Reporter poll found that 27 percent of likely voters said that pictns of gay characters on TV ma them more pro-gay marriage, and there are news acunts of people credg their newfound sympathy toward gay people to Morn urse, televisn has spotlighted queer people for s, both major rol on shows like Will & Grace and Glee, and mor on on shows like All the Fay and Goln Girls. But the fact remas that each popular pictn of gay life helped enurage works to take chanc on others, and today there’s unprecented diversy reprentatn of sexualy on televisn, as shown programs like Empire and Orange Is the New any of this matter to the Supreme Court, which jt clared gay marriage a legal right?
But speculatg on judg’ motiv is a losg task, and the rise natnal support for gay marriage possibly ow ls to ss than do to mographic shifts and polil anizg efforts followg ballot-box feats to pop culture, ’s probably bt to jt foc on what n acplish now, the wake of Obergefell v. Film and TV has helped popularize the ia that gay upl n be “normal”—as banal as Cam and Mch; as dire need of unselg as Cys and Jam on Sndal; as lovgly parental as Stef and Lena on The Fosters. Same-sex upl, statistics show, often differ om straight on when to divisns of labor, monogamy, and problem-solvg, and many gay people don’t want to get married and won’t after this cisn.
FROM MORN FAY TO GLEE: HOW TV ADVANCED GAY RIGHTS
The show was one of the first to have two openly gay characters—Mchell and Cameron Prchett (played by Jse Tyler Fergon and Eric Stontreet, rpectively)—on prime-time TV. However, her most ser relatnship has been wh on-aga, off-aga boyiend Dylan, played by openly gay actor Reid Ewg, who's appeared episos as early as Morn Fay's pilot. The show featured gay characters promently for eight seasons, leadg US Vice Print Joe Bin to remark 2012: “I thk Will & Grace probably did more to te the Amerin public than almost anybody’s ever done so far.
”Many other seri to feature posive pictns of gay characters have followed, cludg Six Feet Unr, Glee, The Good Wife, Orange Is the New Black and Morn Fay, which begs s sixth season on US televisn on 24 Brook reports on how televisn has been at the vanguard of changg perceptns of gay people – pecially the US where the proliferatn of gay and lbian TV characters has arguably created a climate more receptive to the ia of gay marriage.
The show, he said, "picts a gay-male marriage which both partners are rehgly dimensnal, believable human 're not flawed the silly, stereotypil ways that once domated such portrayals. " This statement highlights both how far Morn Fay has e—and how far still has to go when to gay upl Stontreet—the actor who plays Cam, one half of the uple Shal prais his lumn—told me he's proud that the show treats his character's fay like an equal rner of the three fai who make up Morn Fay's supportg triangle.
'MORN FAY' AND GAY MARRIAGE: IT'S COMPLITED
But apparently, the lculatn is that, we're jt too jumpy to actually watch a very realistic middle-aged and half-overweight gay uple share even a relatively chaste smooch on the show walks an tertg le on qutns of gay inty and sometim miss out on opportuni to nont homophobia.
But acquired a sour note later the show when Nathan Lane showed up to portray an overdramatilly swishy stereotype of the kd Shal mend Morn Fay for wasn't the first time Morn Fay has mocked one kd of gay performance to showse the normaly of a gay fay.
It's an example of the kds of promis straight Amerins make around sexual orientatn all the time, lovg fay or iends whout fully mtg to their stggl for legal and societal show ma a joke of Mch's rponse to perceived homophobia the earlit mut of the seri' premiere episo. But if he'd been the room when Haley had her slip, the scene uld have validated his fears of homophobia—and challenged his extend fay—by revealg the gap between how much the Duphys love Mch, Cam and Lily, and how much they're still fluenced by larger societal views of gay importantly, there's a factual error Shal' asssment of Mch and Cam's relatnship: they aren't actually married, somethg Stontreet nfirmed for me. But at a time when equal marriage rights are a state-by-state battleground, Morn Fay might nsirg makg Cam, Mch, and Lily legally, as well as socially, equal wh the other fai on the 's no qutn that Morn Fay's gay fay is ft, well-sketched, funny and sweet.
GAY AND LBIAN CRICS NAME BRISH DRAMA ‘WEEKEND’ BT FILM OF THE YEAR
From the late 1990s to the mid-2000s, primetime Amerin televisn dienc grew to embrace two male characters who would e to fe two distct typ of gay male characters. A great example of this was the character of Mch Downe the excellent 2012 film Paranorman, who was arguably the first openly gay character a mastream children’s animated film.
In terms of work that still needs to be done, there are still very few reprentatns of queer people that don’t f the mold of beg affluent, whe, and relatively heteronormative The “gay sikick” role that has acunted for much of what we’ve seen of LGBT reprentatn on TV over the past 20 years hasn’t been much of an exploratn at all.
But My So-Called Life broke ground, not least by reprentg the iendship between Angela Chase and Enrique “Rickie” Vasquez and addrsg bullyg and and the Cy moved the cultural ball upfield by reprentg gay men as a route part of any nice straight sophistited New York Cy woman’s life. But all of the shows foced on the classic straight woman/gay man dynamic, and all of them reprented gay inty narrow and stereotypil ways: as foils, clowns, losers, outsirs, bchy queens or sympathetic ’s no surprise that was a gay man – Alan Ball, the creator of Six Feet Unr – who first thought to move a gay male character om the margs of a show’s plot to s center. At the same time, we’ve yet to see another David Fisher, and Morn Fay lerally featur a gay I want to appld four shows particular for featurg LGBT characters who do more than [wax] angst over g out, disver they’re HIV posive, shtup everyone sight, moon over a straight character, sg and dance, or get bullied or up to Sndal for s pictn of Cys Beene and Jam Novack, whose liv, while distctively gay, whe, male and privileged, aren’t particularly “other” pared to the other mostly whe privileged people their circle.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF LBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENR SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
As my pal Rob Thurman observed, this very smart show is the first to turn an ovesed nventn on s head by havg the bad blood between Owen and Peter Florick be – not about homophobia, as the media speculat – but simply about them dislikg one another. Netflix Photograph: NetflixRichard: I’m still not really sure what “post-gay” means, exactly, but I thk we’ve arrived at a pot where neher borg homogeney nor isolatg otherns are the only two mos of gay reprentatn on televisn.
While I sometim chafe at the way some shows, like Saturday Night Live for example, wd up makg cheap gay jok the name of equal opportuny offensivens, I thk ’s a good sign that TV wrers seem to be growg more fortable pictg gay characters wh as much sympathy and srn and everythg between as they do straight ’s Will & Grace. Somethg really tertg I’m noticg queer reprentatn on televisn the days, though, is the transformed return of some very old trop about queer the 50s and 60s, gay men were often picted as the thoughtful, sad, somewhat tragic characters, wh liv full of longg and stggle; Christopher Isherwood and Jam Baldw e to md as great thors of this trope.