LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth |
Out Right: The Triumph of Will |
by Dale Carpenter
Less than a year after the demise of Ellen, a remarkable triumph for gay civil rights is occurring week after week on national television. The success is both a reflection of improving cultural attitudes about gays and a (sly) contributor to that change. There are lessons in it for the gay civil rights movement that go well beyond presenting a formula for TV ratings success. Yet it seems that almost no one is noticing. Will & Grace, the prime-time sitcom that premiered this season, features Will Truman (Eric McCormack), a gay attorney, who lives with Grace Adler (Debra Messing), a heterosexual interior designer. The show is critically acclaimed because it is smart and funny. But more importantly for its long-term prospects, it appears to be a mild ratings success. It is currently beating its competitors in its Tuesday time slot. Unlike Ellen, this show does not preoccupy itself with scoring hits in the culture wars by emphasizing the lead characters homosexuality and struggle against discrimination. Will is openly gay, and unapologetic about it, but he is not a swishy stereotype and does not live his life in an all-gay milieu. The role of flamboyant queen is left for his hilarious friend, Jack McFarland (Sean Hayes). Will has a normal life with a normal set of problems. He just happens to be gay. But before you dismiss Will & Grace as a bland, do-nothing, soulless sitcom, take a closer look at the impact it is having. In one episode this season, Will baby-sat for the children of a rich Texas friend. In other words, a conservative Texas millionaire entrusts his children to the most responsible person he knowsa gay man. McCormack summed up the implications, telling a newspaper recently: "Thats an amazing thing to tell America. I never thought of it as remotely subversive, and (the producer, who is himself gay) hadnt written it that way. It was only as we were doing it, we realized it was amazing." Compare this sort of unselfconscious shattering of myths (in this case, the stereotype of gays as sexual predators to whom one would never entrust children) to the preachiness that Ellen served up in her final season. Thirteen of the 21 episodes in the final season of Ellen had a predominately gay theme. DeGeneres herself admitted that shed rather be a "pioneer" than be renewed. What started as a witty comedy ended as a weekly civil rights lecture. Although she undoubtedly helped blaze a trail for others, DeGeneres forgot that the rest of the world does not know, or particularly care about, gay concerns. A serious discussion of gay issues has no intrinsic interest for mainstream America. Gay issues are interesting to Americans only insofar as they can be translated into familiar terms. Ellen failed to make gays understandableand therefore likable and therefore funnybecause the show failed to make gays fully human. "Gay," in Ellens world, became a political cause. DeGeneres famously declared on the cover of Time magazine: "Yep, Im gay." Yet, as Ellen, she seemed to say: "Yep, Im gay first and human second." That is backward. It is bankrupt as a political strategy, wrong as a sociological observation, and impotent as a rib-tickler. Will & Grace, on the other hand, succeeds at foiling prejudice because it is not really trying to. It is not forcing the issue on the unwilling masses. Yet despite all of the shows subtlety, I imagine that on the night millions of Americans watched an openly gay man babysit those children there was more erosion of anti-gay prejudice than has ever been accomplished by angry chants of "Were here! Were queer! Get used to it!" So why have gay advocates avoided the show? I suspect there are two reasons. First, unlike DeGeneres, McCormack is not himself gay. That makes him seem less "authentic" to those who would rather see one of "our own" on the screen. Of course, we would hate to see gay actors type-cast so that they could only play gay roles. Why then should straight actors be confined to straight roles? Witnessing a straight person play a sympathetic gay character is at least a step forward from the days of La Cage Aux Folles and Cruising, when straight actors played pathetic or menacing gay characters. Second, the very fact that Will, with his implicit Im-just-an-ordinary-guy message, is thriving where the obtrusive Ellen failed, is a rejection of the in-your-face activism that has dominated gay politics since Stonewall. No doubt it dismays some gay advocates that the producers of Will & Grace have not yet given Will his first on-screen kiss, same-sex date, or frolic between the sheets. But then thats what offers Will & Grace the chance to make a real difference in the long run. Although confrontational activism has had its place in our movement, Will & Grace is pointing towards a new style of politics that can help get us to the next level. Again, McCormack says it best: "We want this show to evolve slowly but surely so that eventually even your mother there in Texas is saying, Boy, I hope that Will gets some loving this week. That would be an amazing step." For a movement that must change hearts more than laws, it sure would be. Dale Carpenter, an attorney, is a national regional director of Log Cabin Republicans. He is the winner of two Vice Versa awards for excellence in gay writing. He can be reached care of LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth or at OutRight@aol.com. |
LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth, Vol. 9, No. 1, February 5, 1999 |