Two equal and opposite sacred cows:
a) gay literature, music, and film
b) gay people who make literature, music, and film and loudly trumpet how it isn’t gay
Listen, we have a kaleidoscope of cultures and life histories, not to mention people who are, literally, dying to see themselves and their stories reflected in culture. That does NOT mean that it’s sufficient to write/paint/film whatever tedious crap you came up with as long as you stick a gay person in it.
I read the most appallingly bad book, a gay mystery novel, some time ago. The mystery was reasonably competent, but it was apparently themed on food and travel (besides teh gay) so the writer felt the need to drop in an excruciatingly detailed description of whatever yuppie crap the characters ate or, worse, drank; and whenever the character went anywhere, he felt the need to insert what amounted to a Wikipedia entry about the place into the description or, more appallingly still, the dialogue. (“Oh, the plane’s landing! Where are we?” “We’re refueling in the Cape Verde Islands. They’re an archipelago off the coast of West Africa, formerly a Portuguese colony. Did you know their capital is Praia and their primary export is bottle caps?” and on and on and on.)
Not to mention the fact that the characters were excruciatingly dull, unreflective, and disconnected from reality, every inch of their ridiculously toned bodies. (I’m not sure what’s worse: when characters have perfect bodies apparently simply as a condition of existence, or because they work out continually and we have to hear about it.) I’ve never been so unpreposessed by a literary work.
And this shit got a Lambda Literary Award!! What the hell is wrong with us?
By contrast, however, I think it’s pathetic when people trumpet how their art isn’t gay. How is that any different than when a person trumpets that s/he isn’t gay? There’s little I find more frustrating than when a work with an obvious gay sensibility is lauded by saying “This isn’t a gay story, it’s a human story.” Oh, so we’re not human? If this is a queer book or a queer movie, that somehow makes it inferior and blinkered? Because heterosexuality is universal, but a queer sensibility can only be touched by queers, lest it explode.
Alison Bechdel, creator of Dykes to Watch Out For, was once asked why she didn’t write for a mainstream audience. She said, “I thought I was.” If I can sit through fucking Die Hard, Rocko there can watch Edge of Seventeen or read The Heart Laid Bare without his dick falling off, thank you.