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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
I can't really speak to whether Showtime has been able to "nurture" shows that are not gay-themed, since I am not in the U.S. and can't watch the channel (you can't even get on the website from outside the country).
However, the Wikipedia article lists almost 50 items under original programming. So three of them have gay themes; I'm not sure why that's a problem.
Also, Weeds is a show that comes to mind that's great, on Showtime, and doesn't have gay themes. (I hope it's still being aired!)
Perhaps the success of these shows and the failure of those that don't have gay themes (if that's what not being able to nurture them means) just means that there's an audience for these shows, even if they are bad? If it bothers someone that there's an audience for shows that are racy and are about gay people.....
Also, I think it's pretty clear that more than just gay people watch The L Word. I was responding in part to the idea that only gay people would want to watch a show about gay people, which doesn't really make sense and is a little offensive to me.
Regarding The L Word, some of my lesbian friends won't miss it (and some don't like it because it is not an accurate portrayal of the lesbian community they know), but I can tell you some of my straight male friends won't miss it either. Hot women having sex with each other? That doesn't sound like it would have a small niche market. :)
Ok, funny, if neurotic, show. Which is exactly why so much of our social circle is gay. Gay Men? Outside of fashion speak, funny and concerned about interesting things. Gay women? Love to get out and always on our social calendar.
One thing though…, with rare exception, lesbians I encounter aren’t quite so “bisexual-hetro-babes-gone-wild”. Where are the short haired, big-boned girls with their adopted Asian girls? It suggests that a large portion of the audience is guys looking for sneak-peak of attractive girls grinding, or L-girls wishing their partner wasn’t a large beastie…..I know, TV is fantasy meant to entertain, but how about one, small bridge to reality? If it’s just fantasy, why not just give them wings and make small, furry lesbian hobbits….?
Showtime's buzzier shows the past few years have been "The Cell," "Weeds," and "Dexter" -- and while Michael C. Hall played gay on "Six Feet Under" before "Dexter," I don't think you'd really call any of those shows "gay." Bravo is the cable network most aggressively courting the gay audience (it cancelled "Queer Eye" -- thank god -- but launched "Project Runway" and now "Top Design" and before that, "Boy Meets Boy"). And, you know, good for Bravo.
Not sure what TomReed's point is -- never really am, actually, or why he insists on being such a Havrilesky parasite -- but this seems particlarly sorta dumb. Go away, TomRingWorm.
Please.
It's just soft-core porn for ugly people to get off while watching...men who love the whole female bi/lez stuff and your typically fugly dykes who only wish their truly lesbian partners looked that hot.
Da-DUM!!!!
Law and Order's A.D.A. Jack McCoy would wipe the floor with Jack Bauer or Jack Osbourne?
Sam Waterston is a god...
P.S. If the "I already have a life" away from the computer person is so smugly occupied, why exactly is he/she commenting in the ONLINE letters section of an ONLINE magazine. Unless he/she is posting from a mobile internet device while soaking up nay-chuh out in the great outdoors, I smell a self-satisfied yet strangely delusional hypocrite.
There are a million and one shows about straight people, so any shows at all about gay people stand out. And, unfortunately, they command loyalty for the same reason. Even when they suck, in the grand tradition of 99.999% of all gay-themed literature.
The L Word's first show of the new season was spine-tinglingly, hair-rendingly, AWFUL. It's been going downhill anyway, but last Sunday managed to reach new levels of making the characters into cardboard cutouts. My willing suspension of disbelief works only so well.
Bette's sister manages to track her down at this hotel precisely how?
Marina shows up out of the blue and Jennie and her new gf suddenly end up in an almost-threesome with her? (Somehow, I think we're supposed to feel sorry for Jenny. Somehow, I'm failing.)
We dispose of Lara with two lines of dialogue?
Carla abandons her sleeping stepchild to the tender mercies of her unstable other-stepchild?
...and so forth.
Before the show, my partner observed to me that every gay woman we know was settling down to watch. After the show, I observed to her that that collective shriek was the sound of every gay woman we know yelling, "WTF was that crap?!" at the TV.
There are good storylines that the show could pursue, but it's ignoring them. Even the sex scenes were wooden and awful. If we're going to watch this dreck, can we have some good sex scenes?
But the shameful part is that we're watching the damn show tonight. This is the only show with gay female main characters on it and we want to see ourselves, even though it's seeing ourselves in a funhouse mirror with pink light. And because we keep watching, it can continue to suck.
There's no point in putting up disclaimers like "I don't kill gay people at night" or "Some of my best friends..." because, if you're determined to hate me, it won't matter.
My point is that these Showtime shows are simply "branded" as being gay. If they were about straight people they'd be cancelled in ten minutes over on Fox. From what I've seen, there's nothing very special or very good about them; it's only the "gay friendly" label that keeps people watching.
On the old Quinn Martin series "The Invaders," one episode was the Black People episode. For the most part the series had been all caucasian, and someone must have shamed Martin into doing something with black people. So he had a couple of black actors appear on this episode, and produced black aliens. (Besides the un-bendable pinky finger, the black aliens' palms were not pink-colored; they were the uniform brown color of the rest of their skin.)
That episode closed with some yadda, yadda, yadda about brotherhood and how the few black humans who survived now knew there was an "alien race" out to kill them. And that was that. I don't believe there were any more black characters in any other episodes, alien or human.
So, by doing an episode which contained some stuff about black people, did Quinn Martin prove himself not to be a racist? Did he break the color line in mid-60's dramatic television? I'll bet all he did was get a grumbling notice of approval in "Jet" or "Ebony" about it. ("Hey, David Vincent comes up against black aliens. We're so appreciative.")
Meanwhile, an earlier Showtime series, "Brothers," was the first series to have gay characters on a regular basis. It even had a "flaming" character, Donald Maltby, who was more than just a rimshot joke; he could become deadly serious. This show was forgotten, perhaps because it did something that the current Showtime "gay shows" don't do; they showed gay people as people, interacting with the whole world, not just other gay people.
But that isn't what Showtime wanted. So they ghettoize gays and lesbians. They're pursuing them as a niche audience, an audience which just happens to spend a lot more on entertainment (pay cable channels included) than the hetero audience. Hey, there's a whole night of shows that do a lot of gay stuff! None dare call it exploitation.
Hey, "Weeds" has its characters encountering a gay drug dealer and a gay FBI agent. We're so appreciative.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
