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Take
this passage from a March 30, 2003 article in the San
Francisco Chronicle:
"Five
years after network television's much-debated coming-out party,
when Ellen DeGeneres' sitcom alter ego famously declared her
sexual preference, gay characters are so prevalent in the world
of arts and entertainment that the debate may well have been
won. NBC's Will & Grace, now in its fifth season,
is a routine ratings leader, and programs such as Six Feet
Under, Queer as Folk, Oz and Showtime's
forthcoming Earthlings [now The L Word] are
depicting gays and lesbians with candor and complexity."
Of
the five shows the reporter cites, only two include lesbian characters--the
first (Queer as Folk) has lesbian characters who only
get about three minutes of screen time each week, and the other
show (The L Word) hasn't even aired yet. Yet the reporter
concludes that the debate about lesbians on TV "may well
have been won"?
This
same mistake is made by USA Today in a June 2, 2003, article entitled
"It's 'in' to be out these days, TV, films and stage now
feature gays in unprecedented ways," in which she posits
that "suddenly, without much fanfare or backlash, mainstream
entertainment has fallen head over heels for gays and lesbians."
The
article then proceeds to examine in detail the gay male characters
(real or metaphoric) in X-Men 2 and Sweet Home Alabama.
In fact, although there is one sentence about Willow and her girlfriend
on the now-extinct Buffy,
Julianne Moore's suicidal married housewife from The
Hours, and BBC America's much-edited showing of the UK
lesbian movie Tipping
the Velvet, the author devotes only 83 words to examining
lesbian representation, and a little over 600 words are used to
talk about gay male characters--in an article claiming to be about
gays and lesbians.
When
she examines some of the challenges gays and lesbians still face
in terms of visibility in entertainment, the USA Today journalist
literally makes no mention of issues related to lesbian
representation:
[GLAAD
spokesperson] Seomin says that the real acceptance test ''will
be when a Vin Diesel comes out of the closet after making
a huge film that opens at No. 1. Let's see how that career
does.'' There are other notable hurdles, such as the lack
of diversity among gays portrayed (white males dominate, as
is typical in most mainstream entertainment) and the perceived
uneasiness among viewers when two men get sexually physical.
What
does Vin Diesel coming out of the closet or an increase in America's
comfort with images of male intimacy have to do with lesbian and
bisexual visibility?
About
as much as the success of the African-American drama Soul Food
has to do with the visibility of Japanese-Americans on TV.
In
a November 30, 2003 article in the Washington Post titled "Gay
Characters Gaining TV Popularity," only 189 out of 1008 words
are specifically about lesbian visibility--and even then, most of
those are about Ellen Degeneres.
The
article does quote GLAAD's Scott Seomin as saying "We don't
have more lesbian characters because we don't have more lesbian
writers and creators knowing how to make them real." But why
doesn't the journalist mention any of the lesbian characters we
DO have, like Det. Greggs on The Wire, Liz on Nip/Tuck,
Bianca and Lena on All My Children, or even the entire
cast of The L Word?
Instead,
we get even more discussion of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy
and Will and Grace, which has what to do with lesbian visibility
again? That's right: nothing.
The
majority of the sources journalists interview
for their articles about gay visibility in entertainment
are male, as well. Of the people quoted in the USA Today article,
for example, five were men and only two were women; in the San Francisco
Chronicle article, only one woman was cited alongside four men.
The Washington Post didn't even bother rounding up a single women,
relying on two gay men from GLAAD instead.
So
now not only are reporters routinely using examples of gay male
characters to cite improvement in lesbian visibility, but
they're using gay men to speak for us, as well. Forget
"Which show is the gayest?" The real question is, since
when did journalists decide it's acceptable for gay men to represent
lesbians? And when did we decide to let them?
There
certainly isn't a shortage of gay women who can comment on lesbian
visibility in entertainment, so why the imbalance? The only explanation
is journalistic laziness, or the belief that a balance of men and
women isn't necessary because gay men are the same as gay women
and are allowed to be used as stand-ins for us. Meanwhile, you never
see an article about gay and lesbian visibility that only talks
about lesbian TV and film characters, or that only quotes women
as sources.
To
be fair, not all journalists use gay men to represent lesbians,
and there have been some mainstream articles about gay visilbility
in entertainment that do reflect a balanced approach. But
in the overwhelming majority of newspaper and magazine articles
that claim to be about both gay men and gay women, gay
men are clearly the focus and lesbians just an afterthought.
All
minority groups, from gay men and lesbians
to African-Americans to the disabled, have in common the desire
to see our lives reflected in the entertainment our culture produces,
and our status as minorities means some of the obstacles we face
are similar--but it is in understanding where these obstacles differ
for each group that we can truly start to effect change.
Glossing
over these differences serves no one in the end except the majority.
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