Let's take a look at the logic -- or lack thereof -- a recent argument that gay actors n't play straight characters.
Contents:
- GAY ACTORS, STRAIGHT ROL: A LSON IN MAKG SURE YOUR ARGUMENT IS LOGIL
- SHOULD GAY ROL BE PLAYED BY GAY ACTORS?
- STANLEY TUCCI IS PRETTY FE WH STRAIGHT ACTORS PLAYG GAY CHARACTERS
- WHY DO ALL THE OPENLY GAY ACTORS PLAY GAY ROL?
- SHOULD STRAIGHT ACTORS STILL PLAY GAY CHARACTERS? 'IT'S PLITED'
GAY ACTORS, STRAIGHT ROL: A LSON IN MAKG SURE YOUR ARGUMENT IS LOGIL
Jam Corn's performance as a gay man "The Prom" was lambasted, but Ewan McGregor's turn "Halston" has been acclaimed. * should gay actors play straight characters *
"Acrdg to GLAAD's annual Stud Rponsibily Inx, 22 of 118 films released by major movie studs 2019 clud characters who were lbian, gay, bisexual, transgenr and/or queer (18. Anrson not that a movie like "Love, Simon" avoid cricism for stg a straight lead actor bee was the first film by a major Hollywood stud to foc on a gay teenage romance. "All of those issu are important to me at once, and I thk that we n advote for all of them at once bee ultimately we want our media to be an accurate reflectn of the world which we live, " they Billy Eichner, who is gay, told Deadle earlier this year that Hollywood was "so hypocril" how treats LGBTQ actors, that many attend fundraisers for the muny but fail to tell LGBTQ stori wh LGBTQ actors.
SHOULD GAY ROL BE PLAYED BY GAY ACTORS?
I thk we need to stop unrvalug that, the feelg that if a gay person plays a gay person ’s not actg but if a straight person plays a gay person, we give them an Osr. "I don't thk that a cis person uld ever tly unrstand the trans experience, or what means to be trans and the amount of opprsn that we go through on a daily basis, " Cassata qutn of thenticy appli to lbian, gay and bisexual people, too, though the letters of LGBTQ are more accepted inti, Cassata says.
In the se of gay actor Wentworth Miller of "Prison Break, " he said an Instagram post earlier this month that he isn't terted playg straight characters anymore and has ntued to discs the need for better reprentatn. "Roger Ebert wrote: "He plays the role not as a man pretendg to be a woman, and not as a woman trapped a man's body, and not as a parody of a woman, and not as a gay man, but as a drag queen, perd: Lola, a tall, athletic performer thigh-high red boots who l the stage of a drag club as if she were born there, and is a pretty good sger, too. Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, both straight, were both Osr-nomated for their performanc (Ledger lead, Gyllenhaal supportg) this film about two men fallg love and ntug their affair for film sred 87% on Rotten Tomato, wh the se's cril nsens readg: "A betifully epic Wtern, 'Brokeback Mounta''s gay love story is imbued wh heartbreakg universaly, helped by the movg performanc of Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal.
Look, I'm not here to argue the motiv of Ram Satooh, who recently wrote the lightng-rod lumn that started wh a crique of Sean Hay Promis, Promis and somehow arrived at the ia that never really works when out gay actors try to play straight romantic leads.
STANLEY TUCCI IS PRETTY FE WH STRAIGHT ACTORS PLAYG GAY CHARACTERS
It would also be a feat to expla why this would only work one directn -- why dienc wh prenceptns about sexualy would be more likely to enjoy and accept Tom Hanks or Sean Penn as a gay person than they would be to accept Hypothetilly Gay Gee Clooney Guy as a straight person? I am assumg, however, that a lot of men who have played oppose Krist Chenoweth -- the gay on and the straight on both -- have not actually been love wh her, and have not need to be.
He has spent the last 10 years beg Sean Hay, and Sean Hay was on televisn for many years playg a very particular, very broadly drawn gay character, and not dog a whole lot of other high-profile work. In other words: To turn Sean Hay to a nvcg tt of a possible HGGCG, you have to image that addn to beg known to be Hypothetilly Gay when not on the clock, Gee Clooney Guy spent eight seasons on work televisn playg a very famo gay character. If an actor projects beefy bravado on-screen, but you n't al wh him takg a bubble bath bee your bra is settg off some kd of WHOOP-WHOOP-WHOOP gay-person alarm that is specifilly stimulated by bubbl -- and if the only reason that alarm go off is that you're wag for to go off bee you already know he's gay -- then I would venture to say that is not Rock Hudson's problem.
And if you uld watch the same scene five mut before you found out Rock Hudson was Not Hypothetilly Gay and see entirely different subtext -- a subversn of and a tweak of machismo through the takg of a bubble bath, for stance, rather than GAY GAY GAY -- then there's absolutely no reason you n't ntue to see that way five mut later.
WHY DO ALL THE OPENLY GAY ACTORS PLAY GAY ROL?
Setooh's efforts to disunt existg gay actors who currently play straight characters -- actors whose succs would seem to knock every possible leg out om this already rickety hypothis -- clu wrg off Neil Patrick Harris, bee the womanizer he plays on How I Met Your Mother is a riture. I watch this show, I watch Jonathan Groff on this show, and I had no ia he was gay, and I thought he was sexy, and I still thk he's sexy, so perhaps he only "seems more like your average theater queen" if you're lookg for .
Do this suggt that would make the character seem ls distractgly maybe-gay if the character were sgg "Like A Virg" and wrhg around on a bed, but Groff hadn't e out? In 1993, Tom Hanks played a gay man dyg of AIDS "Philalphia, " and 1999, Hilary Swank gave a movg performance as a transgenr man "Boys Don't Cry. Kane said she has worked wh some patients who felt nfed bee they intified as gay but didn't act like the gay characters they saw on problem here, she said, is that some of the actors lean to stereotyp, perpetuatg them.
She remembers when Matt Bomer – a cisgenr man who intifi as gay — was st the small budget film "Anythg" as a transgenr woman 2017, replacg a trans actrs who was origally st the role before the stud wanted a bigger name. "It's almost rctive to say straight actors n't play gay characters bee that impli an 'otherg' of gay people, or that gay people are so fundamentally different than straight people that one uld never play the other.
SHOULD STRAIGHT ACTORS STILL PLAY GAY CHARACTERS? 'IT'S PLITED'
However, there needs to be a distctn between actors who put effort to takg the LGBTQ rol serly, and the actors — like Corn "The Prom" — who perhaps jt relied heavily on stereotyp to portray a gay character. Shows and movi that st queer actors queer rol have been celebrated by fans, cludg Jasm Savoy Brown’s stg as a queer teen on Yellowjackets and as the Scream anchise’s first openly gay character.