I’m not sure if this is the right forum for this; it might end up anywhere.
My boyfriend and I have been watching the Gay Weddings show on Bravo in a mixture of horror and relief, mostly because we recently decided to elope, and not deal with the wedding ceremony at all. This show is a real validation of that decision; the weddings being planned all look like nightmares, with the exception of the one wedding involving really rich people. Go figure.
But it seems like the show is a real “we’re just like everyone else” kind of PR spin; all it’s focusing on is the wedding ceremonies of four really mainstream gay couples. None of the legalities, none of the controversy behind gay marriage is addressed, even tangentially. If the couples were heterosexual, the show wouldn’t have been changed substantially at all. Besides which, it was filmed in Southern California, the most accepting area of our great bigoted nation; there’s been one incident of homophobia recorded. It would have been nice to see the same show set in Nebraska.
I just feel ripped off, really. It’s a meaningless fluff show, about people seemingly picked for inoffensiveness alone, focusing on nothing but the uppermost layers of the surface of one event in their marriage.
Anyone else catch this? Am I way off base here?
Well, to me (a reasonably straight southern man living near San Francisco) it did seem like Gay PR & Propaganda. In the one episode I saw, it seemed to me that they were desperately trying to get some drama and conflict into the documentary but were blocked either by what they couldn’t show or by everyone’s apathy. It’s probably because it was filmed in California, as you mention, but most people they ran into didn’t seem to care all that much, and any objections they might’ve had were probably pushed aside once the cameras turned on. In the other cases, like the lesbian couple who were told they couldn’t have their ceremony at that country club/whatever it was, I imagine they couldn’t get “the juicy bits” just because the owners of the club refused to appear on camera lest they look like bigots.
A couple of other things I noticed: 1) Almost all the couples seemed to be as stereotypically homosexual as they come. I mean, to each his own, and I don’t expect anybody to act differently on camera than they would off, but some of these people were straight out of Will and Grace. Since the vibe of the show is so much one of PR, I have to wonder why they chose couples who are so much like the charicatures that many straight people have in mind when they think “gay wedding.” b) For something that comes across as a PR piece, I found it odd to see it on Bravo. I mean, really – aren’t you preaching to the choir? Especially when it seemed to be relegated to their “gay block,” followed by The Crying Game. I wonder if they’re going to rerun it with Tales of the City anytime soon?