The dawning reality of gay television.
You had to let out a cackle watching George Will spin himself into a little frenzy last week, still grumbling about the Supreme Court sodomy decision. "This is the summer of conservatives' discontent," the stone-faced columnist whined in the Washington Post. For pasty old George, it's always a bummer when groups of people actually attain their civil rights, thereby allegedly subverting what he and the hard-right crowd believe the founding fathers desired. (Don't you love how they often turn into the Psychic Friends Network, channeling the thoughts of the long-dead?)
His crybaby routine may be a complete bore, but Will is right about how Falwell and company must be feeling this season. Here we are, only a month after the high court legalized gay sex, and the sodomites are ready for prime time, literally. Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, the tres gay makeover show that brought the Bravo channel its highest ratings ever?1.2 million viewers in the first night?suddenly found itself on NBC (which owns Bravo) last Thursday for a one-night stand, a successful attempt to give the show greater exposure.
The NBC episode was truncated?from one hour to 30 minutes?but some pretty risque stuff still made the cut on the staid GE-owned network. When "Fashion Savant" Carson Kressley?one of Queer Eye's "Fab Five" who work their homo magic?located the hapless straight slob's jock strap in a pile of clothing rubble, he demanded some boiling water to remove a curious stain. "Looks like soy sauce," he observed of the stain. Then he paused and asked, "Or is it boy sauce?"
This must be the end of civilization that Antonin Scalia warned about in his dissent.
Between commercial breaks on NBC's truncated Queer Eye?which followed Will & Grace?promos were running in prime time for Bravo's even more controversial Boy Meets Boy, a gay dating show. In the show's first episode, to air this week, chiseled leading man James doesn't yet know that some of his would-be suitors are straight guys playing gay in order to make some cash (if one of them fools him and gets picked, toothy James loses and the straight guy walks off with $25,000). So far he thinks he's going to get to pick a dream date and go on a trip to New Zealand?and he just might, if the guy he chooses happens to be a homo.
While Queer Eye is all about playing up stereotypes, Boy Meets Boy is all about breaking them down. Watching a review copy of the first episode, even I?someone with industrial-strength gaydar?couldn't tell for sure who is straight and who is gay.
Needless to say, the social conservatives are not happy about the entire concept, particularly regarding the blurring of distinctions. "What's next? Boy Meets Sheep?" asked the lovely Andrea Sheldon Lafferty, daughter of the acid-mouthed Rev. Lou Sheldon and executive director of the Traditional Values Coalition, which dear old dad once shepherded. (Full disclosure: I once spit on Mrs. Sheldon Lafferty while sitting on the Ricki Lake Show, after which she screamed, "You spit on me!" It was, honestly, a complete accident?though I must say, honestly, that I don't feel sorry about it).
I admit that I can't get enough of Queer Eye?even with its overwrought product placement (from hair and shaving products to evil French wines) and its annoying freeze frames, highlighting five-second fashion and decor tips splashed across the screen ("Don't be afraid to combine patterns. Stripes and checks work together").
Queer Eye is like a new brand of candy: sweet and chock full of sensation, even if the novelty wears off quickly. Boy Meets Boy, on the other hand, is as episodic and melodramatic (and sometimes as monotonous and drawn out) as the straight reality-dating shows to which people stay glued for weeks on end just to get any sort of resolution. On Queer Eye, the resolution occurs in one sitting: Straight guy is transformed into a faux queer (or, as the hip straights are now calling it, a metrosexual).
Both shows have kicked up some silly summer controversy. The debate about Boy Meets Boy centers around the producers' (who are also gay) having fooled the leading man, not letting him know some of the guys are straight. We don't, after all, see lesbian contestants covertly sprinkled throughout The Bachelor or Joe Millionaire (though something tells me the leading men on those shows would like that). Still, I like the idea of the straight guys forced into a closet, playing gay right down to some hot tongue action, so desperate for that 20 thousand bucks and a moment of fame.
The Queer Eye debate focuses on stereotyping of all gay males as fairy godmothers of style?a debate I find to be as dull as dishwater. There are plenty of other gay portrayals on television that offer diversity if you need that kind of reinforcement, from an African-American former cop and a Los Angeles funeral director on Six Feet Under to those humping gay prisoners on Oz and the glam Sapphic soap stars on All My Children.
Besides, Queer Eye's gay guys are real people, not fictional portrayals. And the show doles out stereotypes all around, casting straight women as interesting accessories meant to stay in the background and straight males as just slightly evolved out of the Neanderthal period. I must confess that it's nice to finally see heterosexuals as the butt of all the jokes?"Do you shop at Home Depot?" the frustrated "Design Doctor" Thom Filicia asks one of the het men while glancing around his apartment?not to mention putting straights through our own sort of "conversion therapy."
And there is, of course, the added bonus that Queer Eye too is bothering some of the right people. A commentary on the conservative Cybercast News Service by that icon among far-right activists, Paul Weyrich, is a bizarre testament to that.
"It should come as no surprise that I do not feel compelled to take any fashion or lifestyle tips from the homosexual movement," Weyrich wrote last week, regarding Queer Eye and lambasting Bravo and NBC for airing the show. "I say that as someone who was wearing pink shirts back in the 1960s before the color was seized by homosexual activists and politicized. Nowadays, I still wear a pink shirt every now and then as a sign of rebellion against a movement that expects wearers of that color to be sympathetic to their agenda, which I most certainly am not."
Poor, poor Paul. He actually doesn't seem to realize that from the moment he put on a pair of BVDs, he was being dressed by some homosexual designer somewhere. Weyrich's crowd might be able to keep us from getting married?for now?but there truly is no escaping our powerful design grip. Be very afraid!