And another thing
Yes, another CoE post. One of the things I found most irritating and unnecessary in CoE was all the "OMG Ianto's GAAAAY!". It threw me right out of the story because it was so unlike anything TW has done about sexuality since Jack's pointless and annoying transsexual story back in Greeks Bearing Gifts. Yeah, like the 51st century is cool with omnisexuality but not gender shifting. Anyway, if his family's reaction had been it then okay, even though I didn't like the "I'm not gay it's only him" line either, but it wasn't, we had to have Clem (and nice way to stick up for your friend there Gwen, smooth) and Andy (which to me made the whole thing even ickier, by putting this reaction into the mouth of a "good" character). Not only does it seem wrong, it seems out of place. The world is ending, and you care who Ianto's sleeping with? It also seems either old-fashioned or American to me - would people really react this way in modern Britain? Captain Jack's been a hugely popular omnisexual character for more than 4 years now, kids are cool with him having a boyfriend. John and Scott are so mainstream a couple they're more normal than Posh and Becks.
Or is this just my nice sheltered Canadian life talking? Yesterday was my 6th legal-wedding anniversary. We've both been out in our workplaces for 20 years. I got my first job with same-sex partner benefits in 1993, when I was finishing grad school. We adopted our first kid as an out couple nearly 13 years ago. The kids' school knows, other parents and kids there, colleagues, pretty much everywhere we do business regularly, neighbours. We do not run into this kind of remark any more. So why did we need a coming-out story, a very stereotypical in some ways coming-out story, and a story in which the "gay" character turns out to have been lying about something to everyone in his life and then dies of a virus in his boyfriend's arms? At some point I'm going to write about all the things that got changed between s2 and s3, how they reflect RTD's decision to "relaunch the show for a new audience" (many thanks to the person who found the newspaper interview in which RTD says exactly that), and what that says about mainstream audience expectations and values. Maybe even get it published, but not today.
Or is this just my nice sheltered Canadian life talking? Yesterday was my 6th legal-wedding anniversary. We've both been out in our workplaces for 20 years. I got my first job with same-sex partner benefits in 1993, when I was finishing grad school. We adopted our first kid as an out couple nearly 13 years ago. The kids' school knows, other parents and kids there, colleagues, pretty much everywhere we do business regularly, neighbours. We do not run into this kind of remark any more. So why did we need a coming-out story, a very stereotypical in some ways coming-out story, and a story in which the "gay" character turns out to have been lying about something to everyone in his life and then dies of a virus in his boyfriend's arms? At some point I'm going to write about all the things that got changed between s2 and s3, how they reflect RTD's decision to "relaunch the show for a new audience" (many thanks to the person who found the newspaper interview in which RTD says exactly that), and what that says about mainstream audience expectations and values. Maybe even get it published, but not today.