More on "Queer Eye"
Oct. 5th, 2003 02:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beandelphikiThere was an article in our paper yesterday on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. I would never have seen it, except that Mom pointed it out to me, so then I had to see what the Calgary Herald had to say about it.
(I'd provide a link to the text of the whole article, but I've been unable to find it on canada.com.)
"There are a lot of people who watch this show who filled out the 'no' column when surveyed about same-sex marriages," Thompson says. [Robert Thompson, founder of the Centre for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University.] "These are gay characters that can be consumed across the board, not only by people you would expect to watch, but by people you would not expect to."
That's fabulous, Robert. I know you're trying to make it sound like a wonderful thing - ooh, look, even 'phobes watch this show! Yeah, let's all feel the joy, they're watching it to see the fags dance in their little pre-assigned roles as fashion designers and interior decorators.
Except that some gay guys are interior decorators, so that's okay. Subversive, even!
"On one level, it's an incredibly conservative show, because it's about these guys helping some other guy reach some sort of heterosexual triumph. Not helping each other or themselves. The only justifiable goal in the end of this is the straight slob who then becomes transformed and is able to propose to his girlfriend or get her to move in."
So what you're telling the class here is that this show actually reinforces heterosexist attitudes?
Gotcha.
"This is a conservative show that doesn't ask much of you."
Like most of what's on television, I suppose. And people ask why I almost never watch TV.
"It doesn't ask that you accept gay marriage or complete legal equality for your fellow gay citizens."
Because television is best when it doesn't ask anything of you other than to sit on your ass with a beer or this months Cosmo and feel secure in the fact that you don't need to think.
"It's by no means a revolutionary show. If you have cable, you can find a number of shows with gay characters these days."
Like Boy Meets Boy?
"Does that mean we've reached this sort of Utopian point in our history where total equity has been reached? Absolutely not."
Evidently.
This is why I hate to see this show compared with Queer as Folk. I will certainly admit that QAF has its flaws. It's not a perfect representation of the gay community; nothing ever could be. And of course, it's taking some of the most sensationalistic aspects to put on television. (Well, yeah, it's TV.) But one thing it's doing that QESG is NOT is challenging its viewers. It puts issues out there, including some that are currently of vital importance to the gay community; drug addiction, HIV, poz guys and negative guys being committed to each other and what that entails.
Mom had a lot to say about how Carson Kressley is color blind. I mentioned to her that I'd read an interview where he said he designed his sister's prom dress, and all she could say was, "Oh dear. Oh my. Oh dear."
(I'd provide a link to the text of the whole article, but I've been unable to find it on canada.com.)
"There are a lot of people who watch this show who filled out the 'no' column when surveyed about same-sex marriages," Thompson says. [Robert Thompson, founder of the Centre for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University.] "These are gay characters that can be consumed across the board, not only by people you would expect to watch, but by people you would not expect to."
That's fabulous, Robert. I know you're trying to make it sound like a wonderful thing - ooh, look, even 'phobes watch this show! Yeah, let's all feel the joy, they're watching it to see the fags dance in their little pre-assigned roles as fashion designers and interior decorators.
Except that some gay guys are interior decorators, so that's okay. Subversive, even!
"On one level, it's an incredibly conservative show, because it's about these guys helping some other guy reach some sort of heterosexual triumph. Not helping each other or themselves. The only justifiable goal in the end of this is the straight slob who then becomes transformed and is able to propose to his girlfriend or get her to move in."
So what you're telling the class here is that this show actually reinforces heterosexist attitudes?
Gotcha.
"This is a conservative show that doesn't ask much of you."
Like most of what's on television, I suppose. And people ask why I almost never watch TV.
"It doesn't ask that you accept gay marriage or complete legal equality for your fellow gay citizens."
Because television is best when it doesn't ask anything of you other than to sit on your ass with a beer or this months Cosmo and feel secure in the fact that you don't need to think.
"It's by no means a revolutionary show. If you have cable, you can find a number of shows with gay characters these days."
Like Boy Meets Boy?
"Does that mean we've reached this sort of Utopian point in our history where total equity has been reached? Absolutely not."
Evidently.
This is why I hate to see this show compared with Queer as Folk. I will certainly admit that QAF has its flaws. It's not a perfect representation of the gay community; nothing ever could be. And of course, it's taking some of the most sensationalistic aspects to put on television. (Well, yeah, it's TV.) But one thing it's doing that QESG is NOT is challenging its viewers. It puts issues out there, including some that are currently of vital importance to the gay community; drug addiction, HIV, poz guys and negative guys being committed to each other and what that entails.
Mom had a lot to say about how Carson Kressley is color blind. I mentioned to her that I'd read an interview where he said he designed his sister's prom dress, and all she could say was, "Oh dear. Oh my. Oh dear."
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(no subject)
Date: 2003-10-06 12:21 am (UTC)I actually had a day where I put it on to give it a chance, I could not watch it longer than 5 minutes before I started scrambling for the remote to escape my seething cauldron of anger. I love when people are asked about gays (or any so-called 'alternative' so-called 'lifestyle' both a misnomer) they don't have a problem with it so long as they don't have to see it. So as long as it doesn't exist, they have no problem with it. How quant. I watch Queer as Folk and marvel at it for entertainment purposes and it's a well-written and put-together show in my opinion. Although, it reinforces already negative sterotypes against the 'gay community'. Hypocrisy at it's very best.
I mean it's like walking up to a gay person and being like, "oh I love QAF, Will and Grace, QESG, etc..." would you also walk up to a black person and say "Oh I love Family Matters, The Jeffersons, The Cosbys etc..."
It all boils down to ignorance and indifference. People shuffle trans persons into the category as 'people playing parts' like some elaborate farce of a lifestyle. People shuffle myself as immoral, and against some deity I don't even believe in. Silly little children, clammoring all over themselves attempting to make themselves somehow more moral or better overall than the next person. Ridiculous. No foundation whatsoever.
I had things I want to say, but they're not coming across in what I'm writing and I lack the focus now to think about it. I liked your opinions greatly. ;-)