LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth |
CAMPTalk: Avoiding a listless feeling |
by Bill Sievert |
Uninformed people used to say that most gay people speak with lisps. Today, for information, we seem to do much of our talking with lists. It's not just homosexuals who communicate in such shorthand, of course. In an age of national attention deficit encouraged by MTV's fast paced video editing and USA Today's quick-bites of "factoids," it seems that almost everyone prefers to digest information in easy-to-swallow capsulesparticularly listings of the 10, 20 or 100 best or worst of anything.
A quick skim through several current magazines demonstrates the point. Esquire, which once prided itself in high quality writing of both fiction and nonfiction, this summer lures us with a list of "47 Things to Do Before Labor Day," including burying pennies in the sand and laughing at the people who find them with metal detectors. (Now we're having fun!) Cosmopolitan grabs our minimal attention with "The Five Secrets of Sexual Touch," including the admonition that when in doubt about the best way to lay a hand on a man, "press harder." (Who doesn't know that already?) Even such a bastion of healthy living as Prevention is taking the fast-food approach to fitness with "265 Feel Good Tips." I'm not sure that any of us can afford to feel that good, let alone have the patience to read all of the magazine's suggestions. If we could find enough time to study Glamour's "347 Dirt-Cheap Fashion and Beauty Steals," we'd probably spend a weekend at a spa instead. USA Today is still a master at keeping its lists concise, and everyone in Rehoboth should be proud of the community's first-place ranking in May's charting of the Five Best Beaches for Gays and Lesbians. Leading the pack is our own Poodle Beach. According to the accompanying in-depth blurb, "The gayest beach in the button-down mid-Atlantic attracts a mainly younger, club-y crowd. It really lets down its (long luxurious) hair once a year on Labor Day Sunday for a head-turning day of drag volleyball." What more would you ever want to know about Rehoboth before deciding it's an ideal place for a vacation? The runners up, in case you're looking for a getaway to someplace else, are South Beach in Miami Beach, West Street Beach in Laguna Beach, Ogunquit Beach in Maine and Little Beach in Maui. I must concede that I've been a closet fan of lists since long before they took over American media. As an adolescent, I studied the weekly pop music charts to see how my favorite rock and roll songs were doing, and I've long compiled my own list of the year's best films. But today's lists are taking us places I never before considered. Surfing the Internet, I have discovered a list of the "Top Ten Recording Artists that Make You Gay." Madonna, Abba and Streisand are numbers one through three respectively. I have also learned that The Coors Light Colorado Climax, a hockey team, has made the list of Outsports.com's "Top Ten Gay Sports Teams." (Coors actually put out a press release boasting of the accomplishment. Back in the old days, that never would have happened.) I was also fascinated by Gaywired.com's "Interactive Top Ten Celebrity List," updated by online voters each month. The current top superstars are David Fumero, the Carlson Twins and JP Pitoc. I've never heard of any of them, though I am aware of Hugh Jackman (#4) and Colin Farrell (#5). More my speed is the list of gay characters on series television in the last 30 years. Compiled by David Wyatt at the University of Manitoba, it is an impressive piece of decade-by-decade research. The earliest recurring gay character charted was Daniel Serrano (played by Daniel Massey) on the 1970 BBC/1971 PBS series The Roads to Freedom, based on Jean-Paul Sartre's trilogy set in Paris on the eve of World War II. In the 1970s, American television offered such groundbreaking (albeit sometimes stereotypical) characters as Jodie Dallas (played by Billy Crystal) in the sitcom Soap; Craig Plager (Howard Hesseman), a patient on The Bob Newhart Show; and several characters on the 1976-77 comedy Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, including Ed (Larry Hadon) and Howard (Beeson Carroll) who were more than just roomies. As he reminds us of gay characters on programs ranging from The Nancy Walker Show to Are You Being Served? Wyatt shows us how a listing format can be put to good use in reporting history. But most such lists simply seem like mindless filler, and many don't even seem to understand their subject matter. On its Website, About Inc. lists the "Top 10 Gay Rights Movies" for men. The winners: 1.) Absolutely Fabulous and 2.) Queer as Folk. Not only aren't they movies, but very few of us would describe them as telling "gay rights" stories. Maybe number-five Beautiful Thing (which it is) could be termed a gay-rights movie, or such classics as Strawberry & Chocolate and Torch Song Trilogy, which was rated number one on Amazon.com's list of Gay Theme Films. But Ab Fab? P-u-l-l-e-a-s-e! Bill Sievert may be reached by e-mail at allforthecause@aol.com. |
LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth, Vol. 13, No. 8, June 27, 2003 |