Wonderful Dallas Voice Article: Gay & Lesbian Characters On Television Still Too White Lacking Racial Diversity.
Rainbow families in TV and film still lack color
NBC’s sitcom The New Normal breaks new ground this week as the first mainstream show starring same-sex parents — two gay dads. ABC’s Modern Family, which features two gay dads in its ensemble cast, won an Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series last year. Yet these shows, for all the tremendous good they are doing to raise the visibility of lesbian and gay parents and our children, follow a tradition of mainstream depictions of LGBT parents as upper middle class and white. When will we see LGBT parents of color, or LGBT families in lower income brackets?
Most of the best-known regular or semi-regular gay and lesbian parents on TV are white and at least reasonably well off. They include: Melanie and Lindsay of Showtime’s Queer as Folk, Michael and Ben of the same, Carol and Susan of Friends, Leslie and Maureen of Showtime’s Nurse Jackie, Abby and Kathy of ABC’s NYPD Blue, Laurie of Ellen (the ’90s ABC sitcom), Fran and Kal of the HBO movie If These Walls Could Talk II, Janine and Sandy of the Lifetime movie What Makes a Family, and Nora and Anne of ABC Family’s The Secret Life of the American Teenager, as well as Cam and Mitchell of Modern Family and Bryan and David of The New Normal.
The new lesbian mom on TV this fall, Anne of NBC’s Go On, is dealing with the death of herpartner — a fresh and worthy plotline. But she, too, adds no color to our palette.
We have seen just a few lesbian and gay parents who are people of color or multiracial. They, too, are always solidly middle class — and always one half of a couple with a white person: Sandy and Kerry of ER (Sandy is Latina; Kerry is white), Callie and Arizona of Grey’s Anatomy (Callie is Latina; Arizona is white), Keith and David of HBO’s Six Feet Under (Keith is black; David is white), Bette and Tina of The L Word (Bette has a white mother and a black father; Tina is white), and Hiram and LeRoy (Rachel’s dads) of Glee (Hiram is white; LeRoy’s race is never specified, but actor Brian Stokes Mitchell, who plays him, is African-American, German, Scottish and Native American).
Gay and lesbian parents in mainstream movies are also a white bunch. They include Nic and Jules of the Academy Award-nominated The Kids Are All Right (2010), Robert of The Next Best Thing (2000), Armand of The Birdcage (1996), Renato of La Cage aux Folles (1978), and Tick of The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994). A rare exception is Wai-Tung of The Wedding Banquet (1993), who is Taiwanese (but whose partner, Simon, is white).
The only fictional same-sex parents on TV who are both people of color are Kima and Cheryl of HBO’s The Wire and Eddie and Chance of Noah’s Arc. Noah’s Arc did not run on a general-interest network, however. It was broadcast first on LGBT-focused network Logo and rebroadcast one summer on BET J, a spinoff of the Black Entertainment Network.
The truth is far different. Researchers at UCLA’s Williams Institute have found that black and Latino/a individuals in same-sex couples are roughly twice as likely to be raising children as white ones. (There is little data on transgender parents or single gay and lesbian parents.)
And children being raised by same-sex couples are twice as likely to live in poverty as children being raised by married, opposite-sex parents. We rarely see those aspects of our community on TV or film, however.
On a possibly promising note, though, singer and actor Jennifer Lopez is producing The Fosters, a pilot for ABC Family that features a lesbian couple with a “multi-ethnic mix” of four foster, adoptive and biological kids. It is unknown what race or ethnicity the parents are. Lopez, who is Latina, will not be one of them, but perhaps her influence will mean they show some variety. Deadline.com has also reported that one of the mothers is a cop, and the other is a private school teacher — moderate-paying jobs that could mean it is hard for them to support their large family.
The problem, of course, is not just with depictions of LGBT parents, but of LGBT people in general. But gay and lesbian parents are a hot item right now, as witnessed by the success of The Kids Are All Right and Modern Family, and the buzz about The New Normal and The Fosters. I hope their success leads to more new shows — shows that highlight even more facets of real LGBT families.
I welcome The New Normal and know it will help people continue to see lesbian and gay parents as part of the tapestry of American life. Such representation is vitally important. But until mainstream America can see LGBT people in all our diversity — and not simply as LGBT reflections of the White, upper-middle-class American ideal — we will not have made progress toward true equality for our whole community.
In fact, insofar as media images of LGBT parents continue to reinforce being white and upper-middle-class as the ideal, they may be hindering progress towards the broader goal of inclusion for all people.
The problem is not with any one show or film — but collectively, they create an image that is not that of our multiracial, multiethnic, economically varied America.
Dana Rudolph is the founder and publisher of Mombian (www.mombian.com), an award-winning blog and resource directory for LGBT parents.
This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition September 14, 2012.
Interesting Article: Are Gay Black Men The New Mammies On Reality Television?
Source: uvtblog.com
So I finally got around to watching the pilot episode of “Hollywood Exes” and let me say, zzzzzzzzzz.
Bore-ring! This show lacks all the waywardness and flat out ratchet-ness we have come to associate from a reality show on VH1. There are no fistfights. There are no petty fights and name calling (thus far). No former strippers turned bougie housewives. And more importantly, the show has yet to exhibit the negative stereotypes of us that many black women have cried foul of as of late. That might be a good thing. For the most part, Nicole Murphy and the crew are pretty tame and chill. Yet, strangely I don’t care about any of these women – well, not enough to watch their boring lives play out for an hour on television.
Anyway, I’m like five minutes into the show and Kells’ (R. Kelly) ex-wife is in her bedroom, talking about her big move to LA. She’s meandering about with her personal assistant – a bald headed gay black man. As they fold clothes and pack stuff in suitcases, the man listens to how Andrea wants to start over and get an image away from Kells and how excited she is about…zzzzzzz. Now there is nothing out of the ordinary about two people sharing a heart to heart with one another, even if it is with a “personal assistant.” But I’m sitting here, watching their interaction, thinking to myself: Why does everyone have a gay black man BFF? And why are all of their gay black BFFs in service to them in some way?
I mean, am I the only one who has noticed that most of these women-led reality TV shows features the quintessential gay manservants? These men do everything: furnish apartments, do hair and makeup, personal shop for clothing, carry purses and luggage and act as a shoulder to cry on. In most of these situations, we know nothing about the gay black man other than that he is sharp-tongued, stereotypically effeminate, and basically says “Gurl” and “Chile” a lot. Oh, and he is a loyal worker to his woman. Evelyn Lozada had one to help run her TV shoe “store.” Tyra Banks had an army battalion of gay men to help her weed through her search for the next top model. And on the “Housewives” series (pick one, any one), there are like 2.5 gay sidekicks to every female character, doing makeup, training them at the gym and tossing their wigs for them. It’s like the gay sidekick has become hot new accessory on reality TV – like the new pocket dog or a Louis Vuitton knockoff.
Source: blogs.cofu.edu
Heck, I’ll even go as far as to say that the gay black man has become the new housemaid “Mammy” to these women’s Scarlett O’Haras. Think about it for a second: most of these gay characters harken back to a time in cinematic history where the white rich women in the antebellum South needed their “sexually non-threatening ” black female maids to nurture and basically make them feel good about themselves. If the black maids weren’t “fussin’ after the mistress of the house, making sure her dress fitted properly and her hair was tight, she was in the kitchen, dancing, smiling and singing Go Down Moses as she whipped up for her mistress a big ole’ mess of her famous fried chicken and sweet potato puddin’. The gay male characters of today act very much in the same vain. But instead of shucking and jiving for the approval, and favor of rich white women, these gay best friend characters trade on their non-sexual “companionship” for heterosexual legitimacy.
In real life, it is not uncommon for homosexual men and women to make friends. If two people, regardless of gender or sexual orientation, share the same personality trait than there is no reason why they shouldn’t form a bond. The issue I have with these characters is that more often than not, it is assumed that since the men are gay, he is there for the sole purpose to entertain or serve these women in some way. I have watched on several of occasions, characters from these shows not only proudly proclaim their affinity for “The Gays” but then go on to declare the gay character as “one of my girls.” Well they are not girls. They are men, albeit gay, but still very much intact with their men parts.
Moreover, on these shows, ALL gay men are into the same thing (i.e., fashion, hair, makeup, electronic music and listening to the women banter about their heterosexual sex life). And because all of these gay male characters are the same, it gives an unfair expectation of how gay men are in real life. I mean, what is to happen to the straight-laced gay guy that rocks tailor made suits, a briefcase, has a boring 9 to 5 like an accountant or lawyer and doesn’t speak with a lisp? I tell ya what happens: he is unfairly stereotyped into the roll of what society, and more accurately television, says a gay man is supposed to be.
Like so many other reality TV show watchers I have began to notice the casting on these shows seems to be on reinforcing our expectations of a certain group. The loudmouth, angry black woman is probably the most notable – if not talked about – of these memes. But there are many, many others, including the non-threatening gay sidekick, which are just as pervasive. The irony is that the gay male sidekick is supposed to show how progressive and completely accepting of homosexuality these women are. However, watching these reality TV show characters tote these men around on their arms like latest handbag would be just as bad as watching a character in an old black and white film, saying that she loves Negro people because, “I have a Black maid.”
It is tokenism at its most egregious. And even Andy Cohen, Bravo TV executive and creative force behind the Housewives series, acknowledges as much in an interview, when he stated that while the gay sidekick character on his reality shows are his favorite, he could never see them headlining a show of their own as, “I think it could be a little relentless. I love them, you know, but I think sometimes when a sidekick gets their own show it becomes too much.”
Too much for who? Those who can’t seem to see people outside of what they feel comfortable with? Outside of a few drinks at the latest posh nightspot, what real connection do we ever see with their gay companions? They don’t champion causes. They never ask them about who they are seeing or their families. Heck, we are not even invited into their homes. Another irony is that rarely, and I mean almost never, will you see a woman befriend a lesbian. I guess that would mean being a little “too” accepting of homosexuality.
Gayblackcanada 