Contents:
BILOXI BLU
"The F Briga": Neil Simon's Gay Characters As a playwright who has achieved popular acclaim as well as artistic succs over the past twenty-five years, Neil Simon provis an stctive example of changg middle-class Amerin attus toward homosexualy. While he sometim employs gay stereotyp the service of an easy lgh, Simon's gay characters are by and large sympathetic and admirable, although somewhat pathetic. If Simon's portrayal of them evc an imperfect unrstandg that rarely go beyond the superficial, the evolutn of his thkg about homosexualy sce the 1970s approximat the earnt, well-meang tolerance of his dienc.
Simon's first gay character appears The Ggerbread Lady (1971). Jimmy is the first character seen onstage when the play opens, and the stage directns scribe him as " his early forti, portly and probably homosexual. The "probably" there seems to refer to whether his sexual orientatn is immediately obv, for the play's dialogue leav no doubt that Jimmy is exclively gay.
" It is typil of the sults to gay characters Simon's plays that exprs ridicule but not hatred or even harsh disapproval. Simon's dienc are more likely to be fortable wh a middle-class gay man than a young workg-class Puerto Rin. Sce Evy's relatnship wh heterosexual men is self-stctive the extreme, Jimmy's homosexualy functns as a way of remdg the dience that the play's heroe n have a posive relatnship wh a man who is not terted her sexually.