Comments | pocochina: hey, anyone noticed that television is kind of weird about gay men?

pocochina

hey, anyone noticed that television is kind of weird about gay men?

Oct 28, 2013 22:12

This is something that I think about a fair amount, but various media/fandom developments of the last few weeks have brought it to the front of my mind. The first half of this post is about ~stuff generally; the second half is specific to how it's apparently the Dean/Cas week of our ~cycle in Supernatural fandom.

( some observations about trends in depiction of male sexuality ~generally )

to/tvd: rebekah is the mf'ing princess, scandal, masculinity, orphan black, lgbtq, spn: dean what even, sexuality

Comments 31

myfriendamy October 29 2013, 03:37:48 UTC

I don't know about Supernatural specifically, but I do find this conversation interesting because I wonder about what's not being talked about? Like I mean currently you're right, I can't think of any gay male couples besides Scandal, but I also feel like I'm not watching much TV at the moment ( ... )

pocochina October 29 2013, 04:23:25 UTC

Yeah, premium cable dramas are pretty decent about this? Certainly better than network or basic cable. True Blood is also good on this, as was The Wire. Game of Thrones is noticeably more explicit than the source material wrt Loras and Renly. And that's good news, for sure. But that's still really hinky, that the prestige/adult/risque dramas are willing to take the apparently terrifying plunge of showing gay men as fully-rounded people. Cable is where you go for bloody warfare, for ever-more-titillating sexposition, and for....totally normal m/m relationships.

You're the second person to mention Six Feet Under this week! I'm going to have to watch it some day.

But also like the CW showed the LA Complex which had a really interesting story about a gay rapper struggling to come to terms with his sexual orientation and I felt like no one talked about it? And I don't know if that's because it was this show that barely anyone watched on the CW (and in Canada) or what, but it frustrates me when people are like, THERE ARE NONE OF THESE ( ... )

goldenusagi October 29 2013, 05:31:23 UTC

Ugh, I have so many thoughts on Supernatural, but I don't really want to type them out, because I feel like been there done that, and also I haven't watched the show in years. I suppose in summary, I feel like the writers are sort of queerbating. If they just told the story that they were telling and it happened to include intense looks between Dean and Cas, fine, but when they start adding actual wink wink nudge nudge into the show itself and then state outside the show that nothing is happening, I get annoyed ( ... )

waltzmatildah October 29 2013, 06:15:05 UTC

I think your whole second paragraph ties in neatly to Poco's Willa Paskin point right at the top that female sexuality in general still doesn't carry the same 'weight' as male sexuality and so Television People (whoever they might be) feel like they can be more flippant with it, like it doesn't have the same impact as male sexuality. Female homosexuality is also more likely to be treated as little more than indulgent titilation. Have I understood that correctly? So yeah, contrast this attitude regarding female sexuality with attitudes regarding male sexuality and what equals masculinity, and you get, well, you get modern television, I guess ( ... )

goldenusagi October 29 2013, 15:25:17 UTC

I think your whole second paragraph ties in neatly to Poco's Willa Paskin point right at the top that female sexuality in general still doesn't carry the same 'weight' as male sexuality

Yeah, I just got a bit rambly with it, but that's basically it.

the ONLY network television characters I've seen treated with the Suddenly Gay trope have been female

Ditto for my TV watching. I was actually going to make a post about this, about how it only happens to women, but I thought I'd better look it up first, and TV Tropes tells me it happens to men, too, though not on any of the shows I've watched, and not with as much regularity, I don't think. And not being familiar with any of the shows where a man was Suddenly Gay, I can't say how much of a main character they were or not.

waltzmatildah October 29 2013, 23:54:41 UTC

I just went through that Tropes page and I'm not familiar with any of the male Suddenly Gay characters, so I can't help there either.

Thread 6

waltzmatildah October 29 2013, 06:31:00 UTC

I really wish I had something ~intelligent to add to this post, but I don't! I nodded my head A LOT during the first part though (I don't watch SPN, so that part was a little more lost on me), and I really enjoyed reading the whole thing ( ... )

nrgburst October 29 2013, 10:39:36 UTC

Really? Because I got the whole : "BISEXUALITY IS REAL" vibe from her LECTURE to Hahn, who INSISTED she be Gay or Not. and Callie was very much: but it's not clearly one or the other, it's a SCALE. While Erica was all, MY GLASSES ARE ON: CHOOSE.

And Callie was like, BOTH. And I got both perspectives? She had sex with Mark and was like, no, it still feels just as good, something clearly is wrong with me that i'm not NOT turned on. BUT ERICA HAS GLASSES ON ALL OF A SUDDEN, WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?

Overall: I agree to the points of this post. Being Gay/OTHER is Not Comfortable in network television (or television in general). But I think Grey's was/is trying to trailblaze.

waltzmatildah October 29 2013, 11:05:18 UTC

Callie was very much: but it's not clearly one or the other, it's a SCALE. You make excellent points. I think maybe I feel like you're giving them too much credit (in my opinon, because I don't feel like the Callie/Mark stuff was ever about Callie exploring her bisexuality and was more about either providing opportunities for Eric Dane to get his kit off, including steamy heterosexual sex scenes on a show where the actor/actress for the main couple refuse to get naked, and/or creating ~tension between Callie and Arizona etc), and I'm not giving them quite enough credit? I DON'T KNOW, MAN! Although, I do also like that Callie's sexuality is not her ~defining feature. I DON'T KNOW!

I just think I might want to have my cake (realistic portrayals of bi women) and eat it too (where their sexuality is front and centre so they can Teach Me All The Things) so, ignore me!

But I think Grey's was/is trying to trailblaze. You know what? Another factor I totally have to take into consideration here is my absolute tendency towards cynicism when ( ... )

nrgburst October 29 2013, 11:19:57 UTC

the Callie/Mark stuff was ever about Callie exploring her bisexuality and was more about either providing opportunities for Eric Dane to get his kit off, including steamy heterosexual sex scenes on a show where the actor/actress for the main couple refuse to get naked, and/or creating ~tension between Callie and Arizona etc), and I'm not giving them quite enough credit? I DON'T KNOW, MAN! Although, I do also like that Callie's sexuality is not her ~defining feature. I DON'T KNOW!

AND I UNDERSTAND YOUR NOT KNOWING. Because I think the show TRIED to have its cake and eat it too! And was therefore not satisfyingly one way or the other- just WELL IT'S PROBABLY BISEXUALITY BUT MAYBE HE'S *MAN ENOUGH* to STRAIGHT HER QUEER WE WON'T SPELL IT OUT THAT WOULD LOSE US ADVERTISING DOLLARS

I think in the following ep she did say it aloud that she thought she was bisexual to Erica though. And was therefore dumped. It is on the HD though, and a while ago!

Thread 15

abigail_n October 29 2013, 08:29:21 UTC

I had a vague memory of him being mentioned in the Paskin article, but it looks like not: it might also be worth talking about Revenge's Nolan Ross as an example of a queer (in his case, bisexual) character whose queerness is handled not only with respect but as part of the normal spectrum of existence. This should be taken with a huge bunch of asterixes because a) Revenge is a pretty trashy soap where everyone is fantastically beautiful and constantly scheming against one another, so the value of "normal" applied to Nolan and his relationships is pretty far off the actual definition of the word even if your frame of reference is something like Scandal, and b) both of Nolan's previous partners (a man and a woman) turned out to be evil, and later died, which among other things means that there was little chance to see him in a long-term relationship (his current partner, another man, also seems to be up to no good).

But where I think Revenge's handling of Nolan works is first because his queerness is always present, in his self- ( ... )

pocochina October 29 2013, 17:07:11 UTC

Nolan! Revenge lost me a while back, not for any ~reason, I just got bored. But that's really encouraging.

abigail_n October 29 2013, 22:00:09 UTC

Yeah, I pretty much skipped the second season, and came back this year because I heard it had gotten better. Which it has, in the sense that there are fewer extraneous evil conspiracies muddying the waters and making the plot boring as well as ridiculous, but it's definitely not the compelling viewing it once was. I'm coming around to the view that the show should have been a limited event series, because the writers clearly don't know how to take their characters out of their holding pattern, and instead plump for a see-saw - this week Emily and Daniel are together, next week they're broken up; this week the Graysons are at each other's throats, next week they're side by side.

Which is why I'm not entirely hopeful about the direction the show is taking Nolan - it would be nice to think that his latest paramour will make for a different story for him, but that doesn't appear to be how this show rolls. I do think he's an interesting representation of a bisexual man, but I wish he were in a better show.

(The comment has been removed)

pocochina October 29 2013, 17:41:32 UTC

Yes. I think there's this implicit sense that a girl can "turn gay for a night" but then go right back to heteronormativity the next day? I feel like Katy Perry's, "I Kissed A Girl" sort of sums up ALL these issues: "I kissed a girl just to try it, hope my boyfriend don't mind it" and "It felt so wrong, it felt so right, don't mean I'm in love tonight." It's just ~experimentation, it's just for this one night, and it's all done with a view to the straight male gaze of the "boyfriend."

Yeah. This is a no-win situation for pretty much everyone. Arguably, insecure straight men have their egos momentarily soothed by being able to self-insert into the Matt-role, but IMO they're pretty poorly served by reinforcement of the "masculinity as constant dominance death match" paradigm. (THE POOR DEARS, SO BENT OUT OF SHAPE OVER THEIR ~FALSE CONSCIOUSNESS.) (But...for real though.)

You can see this even in the scene with Rebekah and Nadia, where we pan up from the girls to Matt literally observing them with a smug look on his face, and END the ( ... )