VH1
achieves this "sexy, fast-paced take" by interspersing
clips from gay moments in the media with odd but amusing puppet-like
animation and interviews with celebrities, journalists, and gay
rights leaders.
While
it professes to be about advancements for gay visibility,
the special is really about how straight culture
has been affected by gay visibility, and more specifically, how
the lines between gay men and straight men are beginning to blur.
As
is typical of programs claiming to address both gay and lesbian
issues, a majority of the people interviewed are men (like Billy
Bean, Chad Allen, Peter Paige, Michael Musto, and John Cameron
Mitchell), and most of the issues explored are related to gay
male visibility, not lesbian: considerable time is devoted to
boy bands, (male) homoeroticism in advertising, shows like Queer
Eye for the Straight Guy, and how straight men are starting
to mimic gay men when it comes to issues of grooming and how to
behave around women (the "metrosexuality" trend). The
show highlights a few issues or moments related specifically to
lesbians--like Gina Gershon's movies Bound
and Showgirls, pop duo T.A.T.U.,
the kiss on Roseanne in 1994, and the recent kiss
on All My Children--but these
get far less coverage than issues related to gay or straight men.
There
is also an overwhelming number of straight people featured or
discussed on a show that's supposed to be about gay culture; Eminem,
Justin Timberlake, Jordan Knight, and Christina Aguilera are just
a few of the people featured because of their gay following. Among
the dozens of celebrities interviewed, only a handful are gay,
and only three of them are women (Melissa Etheridge, Jenny Shimizu,
and Sandra Bernhard).
If
gay and lesbian sexuality is as mainstream as the show proclaims
it to be, why couldn't the producers find more than a few out
gay and lesbian celebrities to interview or focus on?
Which
brings us to the most interesting aspct of this special:
what is left out of it. Mariel Hemingway's lesbian kiss on Roseanne
is highlighted, for example, but not the first lesbian kiss on
television in 1991 on L.A. Law--or the controversy and
advertising fallout surrounding both.
Actress
Amber Benson is interviewed, but her role as the lesbian witch
Tara on Buffy the Vampire Slayer
isn't mentioned (neither is the controversy over her character's
death). Eden Riegel from All My Children is interviewed
briefly in the context of her character Bianca's ground-breaking
lesbian kiss earlier this year, but there's no mention of the
fact that the characters have not been allowed to kiss again,
or that it was immediately followed by a storyline (in which Bianca
was raped) that has divided the gay
community.
The
special does address the division in the gay community over Queer
as Folk, but doesn't even mention the lesbian characters
on the show or the upcoming series The
L Word.
In
short, Totally Gay provides a highly selective
take on advancements in gay visibility.
The
show also presents gays and lesbians in a way that largely
reinforces rather than challenges existing
stereotypes, particularly around diversity within the
gay community. There is no mention of the fact that almost all
of the images of gays and lesbians in the media are of white,
conventionally attractive, upper-middle-class men and women. The
only TV characters the special chose to focus on, for example,
were white men and women, despite the fact that there has been
an increase in gay characters of color on television in the last
few years (including Det. Greggs and Omar on The
Wire, Original Cindy on Dark
Angel, Sandy Lopez and the lone Asian male nurse on ER,
Keith Charles on Six Feet Under, and Iyari Limon on Buffy
the Vampire Slayer).
In
the segments devoted to how gay culture has influenced heterosexuals,
there is also no attempt to examine how it might have affected
straight people of color--the focus is squarely on how gay culture
has affected White Middle-Class America. Among the dozens of people
interviewed for the special only a few (Shante
Smalls, Jenny Shimizu, and Trya Banks) were not white.
Also
glaringly absent from the special is the topic of bisexuality,
which is skipped right over in favor of the whole post-gay movement
in which sexual orientation doesn't really exist and sexual fluidity
is the trend that's sweeping the nation.
There
is a short, funny segment on Anne Heche, who according to the
special is a "hasbian" (which the show defines as "a
lesbian who segues into a heterosexual relationship"), but
no mention of all the female celebrities, like Drew Barrymore,
Angelina Jolie, and Megan Mullally,
who've come out as bisexual
in the last few years.
The
information VH1 does provide to the audience is mostly
divorced from its context, creating a dichotomous viewing experience:
while a heterosexual person may still learn from and enjoy the
special, s/he will not have nearly the rich and contextualized
viewing experience that a gay person (or a straight person familiar
with gay culture) will have watching it.
The
average straight viewer, for example, will have no idea that Jenny
Shimizu (simply labeled "model" on the special) is Angelina
Jolie's ex, or that Sandra Bernhard is Madonna's. They
won't know that Jaime Pressly has played a lesbian twice on television
(Fastlane & The Twilight
Zone), or that Mariel Hemingway played one of the first lesbians
in a mainstream movie in 1982's Personal Best.
Melissa
Etheridge is prominently featured in the special, as is her success
after she came out in 1992. But her girlfriend Tammy
Lynn Michaels, an actress who has struggled to land roles
since she came out two years ago, is conspicuously absent despite
a section about how coming-out doesn't hurt an actor's career
anymore (an assertion which they support by citing Ellen Denegeres'
coming-out, glossing right over what has happened to her career
since then).
In
this way, the special functions similarly to Ellen's
show before she came out: there is the superficial reading of
the text, and then there is the subtext; there is the official
storyline that is understood by the masses, and then there is
the real storyline underneath, accessible only to those in the
know (gay people).
If
being gay was really as mainstream as VH1 purports it to be, such
a sharply split viewing experience of the special wouldn't exist.
But
such a critical analysis of the special is only relevant
if you believe that its primary function is to educate, when in
reality, VH1's only goal is to entertain--and here, Totally
Gay mostly succeeds. As a Cliff notes version of gay visibility
with a pop music soundtrack, it's a fun (if skewed) viewing experience.
And in an an hour-long special (forty minutes after commercials)
that is supposed to cover 15 years and multiple trends, how comprehensive
can we really expect it to be?
The
special is also worth watching for the sheer entertainment value
of hearing the perspective of various celebrities on these topics,
like Gina Gershon on her lesbian icon status ("it was kind
of scary at first, then it was kind of amazing--girls just throwing
themselves at me."), Jaime Pressly on Gershon's character
in Bound ("tomboys are the sexiest"), and Eden
Riegel on kissing Olga Sosnovska ("she's just got the softest
lips").
In
the end, there are as many ways to analyze this special as there
are to watch it, and while from a critical and
historical-accuracy standpoint it's problematic, as entertainment-with-a-message
it succeeds.
The
real value of Totally Gay to the gay community
is not as a historically accurate documentary anyway,
but as a marketing vehicle for the "gay is cool"
campaign (since apparently, as the narrator of the special proclaims,
"gay is the new black!"). Given all the anti-gay backlash
we're currently experiencing in politics right now, we need all
the support we can get, even if it's more style than substance.
Yes,
this special conveniently glosses over the messier side of the
struggle for equal rights and representation, and makes it all
look way too easy. But for closeted or questioning teenagers and
young adults who are bombarded daily with overwhelmingly negative
views of "the gay lifestyle," this may be just the antidote
they need.
There's
plenty of time for them later to find out that being gay is not
all T.A.T.U. videos and roses.
