According to the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, television is still under-representing homosexuals far out of balance to actual population ratios. This is for scripted and network broadcast shows only; otherwise the Bravo channel alone probably makes up the difference.
In its annual report, GLAAD estimated that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) characters represent less than 2 percent of all characters in the 2005-06 television season on the broadcast networks, and most of those are in "wacky" neighbor roles.
It has reason to be disappointed, I think. Homosexual and transgendered people do live among us and, amazingly enough, also have troubles and issues and challenges and triumphs. The complaint that LGBT characters are almost always unfair and insulting stereotypes is a completely valid one.
Or it would be if gay people were the only ones being stereotyped. Thing is, they're hardly alone. Pretty much everyone is stereotyped on television. Let's look at the new television season and try to find the following people:
Posts: 7790 | Registered: Aug 2000
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posted
Well, one of the alleged reasons Showtime cancelled Dead Like Me was that it wasn't "gay enough" for the new demographic they were going for.
Although it is interesting to note that the individuals who may, in the end, have turned out to be the most succesful family unit in HBO's Six Feet Under was the gay family.
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That was pretty funny, and reminded me why I don't watch tv.
quote:Pregnant women who give birth without sweating or messing up their hair: 2 percent
This one didn't seem to fit in with the list. Are you saying that 98% of the pregnant women you see on tv sweat and mess up their hair while giving birth? How is that a stereotype? I think you meant to reverse that...
posted
I caught that too and was gonna post it. Good thing I hit "refresh" before posting.
quote:However, they might try what I do. Whenever I watch TV. I imagine that one out of every five straight people depicted really is gay, they're just denying it to themselves and their loved ones. I don't know if GLAAD is considering the possibility of utterly closeted, self-fooling characters, but that might up the percentages a bit.
I agreed with your point that everyone is stereotyped from the beginning, but that part was really funny and made the whole article for me.
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quote:Originally posted by Taalcon: Well, one of the alleged reasons Showtime cancelled Dead Like Me was that it wasn't "gay enough" for the new demographic they were going for.
That's sad, considering that George's father was originally supposed to have been having an affair with a male grad student, and it was changed at the last minute. <sigh>
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posted
Good catch, and thanks. It has been changed to:
Pregnant women who actually sweat and may even, in extreme medical emergency circumstances, muss their hair during childbirth: 2 percent
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That one may have been why I wrote the article. I'm fairly proficient with computers, but I couldn't hack into my son's City Of Heroes account. How come everyone else can access city records and military bases from their laptops without any trouble? Is there a program I'm missing? iHack?
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quote:Originally posted by Taalcon: Well, one of the alleged reasons Showtime cancelled Dead Like Me was that it wasn't "gay enough" for the new demographic they were going for.
Although it is interesting to note that the individuals who may, in the end, have turned out to be the most succesful family unit in HBO's Six Feet Under was the gay family.
I didn't realize it was cancelled. I've only just discovered it on DVD. Speaking as a gay man, who the hell cares if the character is gay if it's good TV?
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Is it just me or are gay guys overrepresented on TLC? Also Australians. I don't get it. My impression is often, "Yes, there are people who are homosexual. No, 25% of the population is not homosexual like you make it appear."
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posted
How about this: I think that gays are overrepresented in reality competition shows. On this season of Big Brother, for instance, you have two gays, one male and one female. Survivor always has at least one; first season winner, Richard, is gay. The Great Race. Heck, even Cowboy U on CMT had a gay guy that won during a past season.
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Because the reality shows want easily-described character archetypes that will guarantee viewership. So you get The Gay Guy, the Black Guy, The Feminist, The Jock, The Jerk, The Blonde, The Nice Guy, etc. Chuck Osterman wrote a great column once on the history of MTV's reality shows and how you could chart the archetypes season by season.
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posted
I did not read the article, but from the title of this thread I can already say I disagree. What about Will and Grace, Queer Eye, Sex and The City, Queer as Folk, TLC's many makeover shows, Many many reality shows, not to mention all of the shows that had gay issues on many episodes.
It might not be the majority of Television, but why does it have to be?
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posted
Maybe I should have read the article first...but I was not saying I dissagree with the article. I was dissagreeing with GLAAD.
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quote:Pregnant women who actually sweat and may even, in extreme medical emergency circumstances, muss their hair during childbirth: 2 percent
Yes, but are *any* portrayed with blood-drained complexions and dark circles under their eyes?
You should've seen Brenda giving birth on Six Feet Under. Sweat, bolod-drained complexion, dark circles, looking generally puffy - the whole nine yards, and nothing glamerous about it.
posted
There have been exceptions to (I think) every one of my examples at one time or another. And the shows with those exceptions tended to be the good ones.
Thinking of the delivery in the Heart of Gold episode of Firefly, when the delivering mother was told to be strong and she gave the person talking such a look of pained indignation and barely-buried outrage...
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posted
Also remembering scenes from The X-Files when Scully was in the hospital and looked terrible. Even at the time Teres and I remarked on the courage of the actress to play it the way it should be played.
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posted
Unless you're talking about after Scully's abduction, when G.A. looked terrible because she was still recovering from her c-section ten days before?
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Just about every time she was sick or injured, she went with the no-makeup, beat-to-heck look.
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Actually, I could dispute that. But obviously you weren't as obsessed with that show as I was, so I'm going to let it drop. Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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Fair enough . Let's say I noticed it more than I'm used to on TV shows, where even people on the edge of exhaustion or death look, at worst, kinda tired. But tan.
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Salt isn't SALTY enough guys. Air isn't AIR enough.
TV is what it is. There isn't enough 'good' programming as it is.
Why don't they start a TV station? They can get an FCC permit. Then they can subject viewers to whatever they want to.
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B. advocate the opinions and lifestyles of Religion?
C. aim for the highest ratings and gain the highest sponsorship of advertisers.
If GLAAD thinks that media needs to do anything, they can take a number and get in line behind the religious folks who have been whining about the media to deaf ears for much, much longer.
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posted
It's all about money and market share. You focus on where you'll make the most money, the Majority. Most people aren't gay / lesbian.
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Monkeys lighting off blue darts would be a great show.
And I recall a very in-earnest thread about the portrayal of Mormons on TV.
Was anyone on "Cooking under Fire" not gay? I think Matthew and Russell had families. I guess Ming is married. Well, my secret is out. I actually followed most of a reality show.
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quote:Why don't they start a TV station? They can get an FCC permit. Then they can subject views to whatever they want to.
TBN style would work. I thought there was already in the works a Gay and Lesbian Cable TV station? Unfortunately the only "GAY" show I've watched from time to time is "Will and Grace" which has stereotypes but an obvious positive portrayal of homosexual lifestyles.
Plus it's funny on a heterosexual and homosexual level.
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"People who stop and clear up misunderstandings by talking instead of concocting zany schemes involving window-washers' scaffolding to discover the truth: 0 percent"
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posted
Wow, that station's logo must be the Platonic ideal of a logo. The ultimate logo. In fact, so much concentrated "logo" in one place may, in fact, cause a pinch in the fabric of reality and suck the world into a gravitational vortex.
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Haha. CStroman- you brought up TBN. The TBN broadcast center is in my town, used to be called Twitty City (that was before my time though- never figured it out)
I think that gays are fairly represented, especially because of reality shows and Bravo. Half of whatever Bravo produces is full of gays it seems like. (the new Kathy Griffin show- full of gays. The show about the hair stylist- full of gays, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy... need I say more about that one?)
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quote: Half of whatever Bravo produces is full of gays it seems like. (the new Kathy Griffin show- full of gays. The show about the hair stylist- full of gays.
Okay, just to clarify, you're saying that gay culture is "fairly represented" on television because it seems like one cable station airs a lot of gay-themed programming?
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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In my opinion, there aren't enough engineering shows/engineers on t.v. The only show I've seen that catered to this was Junkyard Wars, but I haven't seen a new episode of that in a very long time.
Engineers make up a good portion of the population, why don't WE get any recognition on t.v.?
posted
So -- how about the religious community demand that TV characters adhere to the religious demographics of the country. That way we could have 24.5% of the characters be Catholic -- let's see, how many times have we seen anybody go to mass on TV this week? 16% would have to be Baptist, 6% Methodist, 4% Lutheran, 2% Pentecostal/Charismatic, 2% Presbyterian, 1% Mormon and 1% Jewish. It will be a cold day in hell when those demographics show up Posts: 780 | Registered: Jul 1999
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As for demographics of the characters on TV, I think the entertainment value of that which already surrounds us is fairly limited. I mean, how many of us would go to the zoo to see cats, dogs and parakeets?
The familiar is not as entertaining as the rare.
Also, different is more entertaining than "same." So the differences are emphasized.
And I don't know if the dramatists among us would agree, but it seems to me that there are two types of works that we are willing to pay to see:
Drama = when things go badly even when the people do all the right things.
Comedy = when things go well even when the people do nothing right.
I think back on shows like All in the Family where there was more to the characters than just their stereotypes and wonder why we don't get more of that. But really, it could just be that we had a rare glimpse of great writing and great acting coming together for a brief shining moment. It's a rare author who can take off from the stereotypes and give us something entertaining and "real" at the same time.
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