Straight From A Gay
By: Patrick Roe
Issue date: 4/24/08 Section: Opinion
One issue which concerns me is how the media portrays gay individuals and gay culture.
I find the portrayal of gays in main-stream media as both superficial and without complexity.
Gay people often are employed as the comedic one-dimensional side show to the more serious development of straight characters.
This introduces gays to straight society as nothing more than television characters to make the audience laugh and does not portray gays as humans facing real issues.
I believe this is a symptom of how society views gays, but more importantly, it reinforces these stereotypes.
There are serious implications with this tendency. Noted author bell hooks has often critiqued mainstream media's portrayal of minorities, and her criticisms are easily applied to gay culture.
hooks noted that the media will often single out members of minorities to play parts which are deviant from our traditional views of acceptable behavior.
By doing so, minorities offer a semblance of edginess and challenge to established society.
Yet by choosing minorities, corporate mass media is able to contain this perceived transgression within a subculture, allowing, in this case, straight people, to access them at their leisure through television and cinema.
Yet once straight people have had their fill of the "crazy homos," they can turn off their television, effectively shutting out any non-traditional challenges to societal norms.
This ability has allowed straight America to remain stagnant and conservative because it creates the illusion of progressiveness but does not force self-examination and progress within the American majority.
We have seen this happen with other minorities in corporate mass media as well. It is the result of the commodification of minority culture within the capitalist system.
Thus, while corporate media makes millions of dollars off the marketing of gay subculture, we in return face continued discrimination and homophobia from the straight community.
I find the portrayal of gays in main-stream media as both superficial and without complexity.
Gay people often are employed as the comedic one-dimensional side show to the more serious development of straight characters.
This introduces gays to straight society as nothing more than television characters to make the audience laugh and does not portray gays as humans facing real issues.
I believe this is a symptom of how society views gays, but more importantly, it reinforces these stereotypes.
There are serious implications with this tendency. Noted author bell hooks has often critiqued mainstream media's portrayal of minorities, and her criticisms are easily applied to gay culture.
hooks noted that the media will often single out members of minorities to play parts which are deviant from our traditional views of acceptable behavior.
By doing so, minorities offer a semblance of edginess and challenge to established society.
Yet by choosing minorities, corporate mass media is able to contain this perceived transgression within a subculture, allowing, in this case, straight people, to access them at their leisure through television and cinema.
Yet once straight people have had their fill of the "crazy homos," they can turn off their television, effectively shutting out any non-traditional challenges to societal norms.
This ability has allowed straight America to remain stagnant and conservative because it creates the illusion of progressiveness but does not force self-examination and progress within the American majority.
We have seen this happen with other minorities in corporate mass media as well. It is the result of the commodification of minority culture within the capitalist system.
Thus, while corporate media makes millions of dollars off the marketing of gay subculture, we in return face continued discrimination and homophobia from the straight community.
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pat
posted 4/24/08 @ 9:20 PM CST
copy for personal records
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