I remember those days and how annoyed I was with the token black person-ness on most shows. Mission Impossible had it right using Greg Morris merely as the smart guy, not the BLACK smart guy. And on Star Trek the only person who noted Uhuru’s blackness was Abe Lincoln. And I was only a smidgen discomfited this afternoon. I got over it and regret creating this thread.
And yes, I have mentioned my wife when it was essential to the plot. And I worked with a guy who was surprised when he met her, having thought I was gay for several years, but he was an idiot.
Thefirst interracial kiss on TV was broadcast in 1959. The first interracial kiss in US television was broadcast in 1960. The Star Trek episode you reference (Plato’s Stepchildren) was broadcast in 1968. (It was mind-control, not a love potion, btw). Granted, Shatner (Kirk) and Nichols (Uhura, not Uhuru) did muff the alternate takes on purpose so the kiss would be shown, but it was still eight years after the first one. I’ll grant it was probably the first interracial kiss shown on a popular tv show.
I say this as a huge Trekkie, forgive me.
That said, I can empathize with Iggy’s post. I had a roommate in college that moved in with us because he came out, and his previous roommates thought he was Satan incarnate (this was circa-2006), so he moved into the duplex I was renting at the same time as our mutually best friend couple moved in. He then proceeded to make everything he came in touch with related to his orientation. Like, dude, we support you as much as we can, but the way you heated up the canned peas has nothing to do with your sexuality. Also, the overdone lisp and limp hand motions got annoying fast. We get it, you like dick. That’s cool. Can we go back to watching Firefly without talking about how gay Shepherd must be (he was not, btw)?
Well, let’s assume that *someone *on Firefly is gay. Zoe and Wash are ruled out, as are Kaylee and Simon. I don’t think River even has a sexuality. Inara is probably somewhat omnisexual, but I’m not sure if she counts. Mal has the hots for Inara, so no. Which leaves us with Jayne or Shepherd…
You know what? You’re right. It’s Jayne. He even has a girls’ name.
I think that if someone prefers TV shows that do not have gay characters then they should feel free to limit their viewing to the (many) TV shows that do not have gay characters. I’d appreciate it if such people would keep this preference under their hats rather than throwing it in my face, though.
I’m old enough to remember when the only kind of visibility we had was when we were arrested for having a beer in a gay bar. Yeah, just for being there. Some of us were beaten up, sexually assaulted, or worse, and hauled off to jail. And some of us got our names and photos in the paper, along with our addresses and places of employment, usually losing our friends, families, homes and jobs. Is that the kind of visibility the OP would approve of?
The bar I occasionally frequented, back in the 60s, was furnished with psychedelic art and black lights. But high on the ceiling was a plain white light bulb. Everyone was warned that when the white light was on, it meant the vice squad had shown up at the door. We had to stop dancing (ALL dancing, not just touching), put down our drinks, and sit there and talk. The music changed from the Supremes to Sinatra. The air conditioning came on strong, and only legal cigarettes were allowed. Nobody in the outside world knew that what normally went on in that bar was the same shit that went on in any other bar. Until our bloodied faces showed up in the paper. Then we were suddenly visible.
It was too early, back then, for “normal” gay people to be visible to the general public. As far as that public knew, we were just a bunch of degenerate sex fiends who got exactly what we deserved.
That was 50 years ago. Today, as then, we’re just normal people who want to be ourselves and get on with out lives. And that means that sometimes, just like the OP himself, our orientation comes out pretty soon after you meet us. Big deal.
Please note that I’m me, your friend for 17 years. My point is not anti-visibility! The more visibility the better. I simply do not want to know a TV character’s preferences–straight or gay–if it does not advance the plot. There needs to be a reason, because otherwise having anybody’s–straight or gay–preferences is gratuitous.
Everyone must be chaste and asexual unless plot-relevant? So if a character, say, happens to be in a heterosexual relationship, or is shown as expressing an interest in the opposite sex, without it directly advancing the plot, that counts too? Otherwise, this sounds awfully close to Chekhov’s Lesbian:
There is no shortage of characters who happen to be straight. Surely it must be possible to have a character who just happens to be gay?
I disagree. As long as there are so damn many homeless LGBTQ youth out there as well as the suicides, it’s damn nice to have “gratuitous gayity.” I’ve heard that it’s similar in other fundamentalist religions, but Utah gets in increase in homeless LBGTQ youth who are kicked out of their Mormon homes every time a church leader makes a stink about single sex marriage or whatever the latest thing is. It’s estimated that over half of the homeless youth are LGBTQ.
Bring on the gratuitous gayity. Let the kid in Salena Utah (population 2,300) know that she’s not alone and if she can hold on for a couple more years she can get the hell out of Dodge.
I know Dropzone (well, as well as I know any of the posters here) and he’s no bigot. But I don’t think he was looking at the big picture.
I’m sure that the complaint is that it’s not essential to the plot, but it first takes better acceptance and then we’ll get more characters who just happen to be gay.
My own mother had her will written as a passive aggressive slap at my gay sister. She’s adopted her partner’s last name and my mother wouldn’t write that in the will. And this is 2017.
Thank you, and I have. My problem is that I live where it’s no big deal, even boring. I have lost sight of the big picture and apologize to y’all who live in the hinterlands.
Oh, wow. I hate to be the one to tell you this, but I think you’re restricting yourself. You’re certainly not maximizing your viewing pleasure for those binge-sessions of Friends.
As a straight guy, I really like modern TV and movie portrayals of alternative sexualities as being a normal standard thing that we shouldn’t be surprised by. Obviously this is something a lot of people are still getting used to, there will be teething problems, but it’s finally going in the right direction. Being gay is no longer a defining character trait, it’s just a background fact.
I guarantee that there are children in your community who are being abused for being gay, or who won’t come out because they know there would be abuse. It’s not something that’s only a problem in “the hinterlands.”
But look at your thread title. It strongly implies that you’re perfectly ok with a male character who has a girlfriend or wife, even though there’s no reason in the plot why he couldn’t have a boyfriend or husband. There are a lot of “gratuitous” things that simply act to flesh out a character, make him more real and more interesting, that have no bearing on the plot. Yet you’ve focused on sexual orientation as the one thing you find objectionable.
A lot of gay porn from the 70s and 80s involved guys who drove CJs, rather than, say, Toyotas.
