Submitted for discussion: How do you reconcile the popularity of shows like Will & Grace, Queer Eye, Six Feet Under, etc., with this anti-gay marriage movement? Is it backlash? Is it certain elements in this country, seeing how the tide is turning towards greater acceptance of the gay lifestyle, trying to re-establish what they see as “proper morals”? Are Americans as homophobic as the President et al, or is he reactionary?
Is the FCC ruling to stiffen penalties for obscenity related to this same phenomenon? I mean, how many years was Howard Stern doing his thing, to the point where he was passe, only to be booted from Clear Channel now, in the wake over the furor over Ms. Jackson’s boob? Speaking of that, are people really that scandalized by her brief exposure? How reflective of America’s tastes are these incidents?
To essentialize my question: I postulate that the anti-gay and anti-obscenity movements are reactionary backlash against an America that is ready to move forward into a less repressive world by people who think they are “protecting American morals.” Am I right? Or are these movements reflecting what America really wants, while the entertainment industry is pushing people past their comfort zone?
Thanks for any insight. I honestly do not know the answers to these questions; I can only hope I phrased them clearly enough to start a discussion that will elucidate this for me (and others too, ideally).
I dunno about the big questions, but I would say that most of the indignation about Janet’s flashing was not that god forbid somebody saw a tit, but that it happened with no warning during a show that millions of families and friends watch together and have been for thirty-odd years. It was simply out of place. There’s a place for football. There’s a place for flashy halftime shows. There’s a place where you go to see tits. The three are not supposed to be all the SAME place.
How Gays are represented on TV also determines if they are really being accepted or if they are being labeled into specific stereotypes: Decorators, Hairdressers, Comic Relief.
I haven’t seen some of the shows mentioned so I don’t know if they show gays as normal people, with normal lives and in normal relationships. Many of the shows I bet are stereotypical.
So is America accepting gays ? Yes in a way. If gay marriage comes through the US will be ahead of most countries as regards gay rights... which is incredible given their conservative tendencies in politics.
Perhaps I’m wrong… but I suspect if it wasn’t an election year, and if there weren’t a great many politicians furiously pandering to the conservatives, neither gay marriage nor Janet’s boob would be much of an issue at the moment…
The acceptance of gays is so much greater than it’s ever been in this country. I’m amazed at the advances made in just the last few years.
I can’t believe people are complaining about not everyone doing a happy dance about gay marriage. Or complaining about a ‘backlash.’
Change doesn’t happen overnight. It doesn’t happen to 100% of the people at the same time.
The increasing acceptance of homosexual rights has happened VERY RAPIDLY. We have made many huge steps forward. I think there may be a few steps back before we start marching forward again.
But in the grand sceme of thing it is going forward. It is happening rapidly. And soon it will be a done deal.
We’ll legalize it. We’ll grouch and complain about it mightily, but we’ll end up concluding (for the most part), something on the order of “Fine! If they want it that bad, it’s really no skin off our noses, anyway, all the damned news coverage is getting in the way of updates on the latest spinoff of Survivor.”
I can see thinking that Queer Eye caters to stereotypes, but I think the idea that gay men can help straight men be happier and more successful in their straight lives is quite revolutionary. Will & Grace doesn’t rely on the gay guys for comic relief any more than any of the other characters; Six Feet Under’s gay character is portrayed as a regular human being with all the normal life issues. I really think TV has come a long way since Ellen came out.
I don’t notice anyone on this thread complaining that not everyone is doing a happy dance over gay marriage. Surely you can agree that a frickin’ Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage is a far cry from the absence of a happy dance. It is, in fact, an effort to institutionalize prejudice, and that is a pretty serious action to undertake. It certainly makes a statement that there are powerful people in this country who still think gays are second-class citizens.
I also think it’s incredibly patronizing of you to tell gays that they should be content with the acceptance they have and just back off with wanting fully equal rights. If you said that to African Americans: “Be happy you can sit in the front of the bus, and stop expecting everyone to do a happy dance over desegregation,” how would that sound? Gays deserve equal protection under the law, and it IS backlash to go against the tide of popular acceptance to try to prevent that.
This sounds to me like a rationalization for foot-dragging.
I suspect if you were gay and wanted more than anything to marry the person you love, you wouldn’t feel it was so “rapid.” It’s 2004 and they still aren’t treated the same as you or I. Also, you seem to ignore the gravity of a Constitutional ban on gay marriage. Even if it isn’t passed (and I don’t think it will be), the very fact that it has been suggested with a straight face (pun intended) shows how the bigotry still remains strong.
However, the point of my question is not so much will gay marriage happen or won’t it. The question was, is this movement against gay marriage a reaction by a minority of Americans to the increased acceptance of the gay lifestyle , or is it representative of what most Americans feel? Same thing with the boob outrage.
The original question is based upon a bad premise. The idea goes as thus: Why are American’s so opposed to gay marriage (and other gay rights) and yet they are so in love with gays (real or portrayed) in entertainment? A couple of points about the faulty premises in the above question.
Take for instance “Will and Grace.” How come so many Americans like this show if they disapprove of the lifestyles portrayed within? – Do so many Americans like the show? The evidence says NO. According to Neilsen ratings “Will and Grace” is watched regularly by about 7 million Americans with its highest rated episode (the one with Kevin Bacon) at 20 million viewers. So what? That means that about 258 million Americans DO NOT watch “Will and Grace” and it can be assumed that they do not like it. So (giving the show its 20 million viewers and assuming they liked the show when they watched it) about 15% of Americans like “Will and Grace.” Not exactly a cultural revolution.
But even in that 15% we can not assume that the viewers approve of the lifestyles portrayed by the characters. I watched Seinfeld and Friends for years and they were two of my favorite shows. But I certainly didn’t think that Jerry and Rachel were in any way role models for society. In fact if I had known a real world equivalent of one of them I would think that person a complete loser.
So in closing the stats for shows like “Will and Grace” support the idea more that Americans do not approve of the normalization of homosexuality more than the opposite. Just because the media goes nuts for something does not mean that Americans as a whole do so as well.
Your point is well-taken; however, surely you can admit that there has been a proliferation of gay-themed shows and shows with gay characters of late. Someone on another message board pointed out that many of the characters on these recent shows are exploitative and serve only to reinforce the stereotypes of gays, negatively for many. If so, could shows like Queer Eye actually be part of the backlash?
I haven’t checked your facts, but I’ll trust you. That doesn’t account for the popularity of many other gay-themed shows or shows with gay characters. They’re everywhere.
Also, do folks think the increased penalties for obscenity in broadcasting are linked to the Janet Jackson incident? Or are they just using that incident to further a censorship agenda?
I lived in Poland during the fall of the iron curtain. In the months following the first democratic election, I heard a lot of complaints from the people that the changes to their daily lives weren’t happening quickly enough. “We’re a democracy now, why isn’t our standard of living as high as it is in the US?”
On the one hand, when it’s your life, improvement can’t happen fast enough. On the other hand, big changes take time. Historically, the changes in that country were happening incredibly rapidly.
I see it the same here. I think people will look back and this time and wonder how such monumental changes swept over the society so quickly.
In one way, I see the proposed constitional ammendment as a positive sign. No one pulls out such a big gun to try to fight a weak opponent. I think it’s a sign that Bush understands that the gay marriage movement is very strong and has a huge chance of becoming wide spread law very soon. There was no need for this ammendment 50 years, 20 years, or even 5 years ago since there was no chance of same-sex marriage becoming legal.
I agree with you, in that I wondered the same thing myself. I see a lot of the finger pointing involved with the politicians’ discussion of family values and morals, as a way to misdirect from some of the glaring problems. The economy, education, health care.
Actually the marriage amendment is needed (wanted) because gay marriage can’t get passed into written law. The two most liberal states in the union, Mass & Cali passed laws against gay marriage. There was no mention of an amendment until the Mass. court made a decision to force the Mass. Legislature to make gay marriage legal. And that brings us to the relevant point to this thread:
Yes - it is a cultural backlash, but its not gay marriage that has driven that issue – it is the method by which gay activists have undertaken in thier quest to force Americans to accept them.
Just face it - Americans as a whole do not want same sex unions to be classified as marriage - whether that is right or wrong is a matter of opinion.
Gay activists can’t succeed in changing American’s minds on the merits of the issue so they have resorted to forcing Americans to accept them. They do this by having sympathetic courts issue decisions that stretch the limits of state constitutions and by breaking the law by getting married (and issuing licences) anyway.
If gay marriage is so close being culturally accepted then why not get a congressperson in Washington to sponser a bill that will allow it? Because it would be defeated soundly and gay activists know it.
By Rubystreak:<snip> "Or are these movements reflecting what America really wants, while the entertainment industry is pushing people past their comfort zone? " (italics mine)
I think you are close there. In my daily comings and goings, the only comments I hear about these shows are negative. People stumbled across them, didn’t like what they saw and say they wished “those shows” weren’t taking up perfectly good time-slots.
Me, I’m too busy either reading books or on the SDMB to watch telvision (except for sports), so I’ve never actually seen any of the shows you mentioned.
When prop 22 passed in California, 4.6 million people voted in favor of it… out of 15.7 million eligible voters. Let’s see… that means that less than one third of voters actually voted in favor of it… Not even close to a majority of Californians…
To respond to Rubystreak’s question about a conservative backlash in the media, I would add the trend of religiously oriented material. The most obvious example would be the Passion, and we’ll probably be seeing more of that kind of stuff now that people have noticed how profitable that is. Even beyond that though, is it just me or did there not used to be shows like Joan of Arcadia, where (presumably Judeo-Christian) religion is taken for granted and God is part of the plotline? It seems to me that not that long ago that kind of thing would have been laughed off the air. Add to that the introduction of another conservative national news station, probably lots of other things that I’m not thinking of (I watch too much TV)…I just get the sense that the media is headed in a conservative direction, despite shows like Will and Grace. The cultural backlash Rubstreak was talking about isn’t just happening outside of and against the traditional media outlets, but they’re also learning how to work within it.
Time to just bend over and take our punishment for the 70’s, I guess…