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Monotonous Diversity

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Clarissa

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Since I’m on the subject, the entire portrayal of gay men in American entertainment is screwy. Gay men don’t get together to be “like” heteros. They get together specifically to be not hetero. That’s kind of the whole purpose. But the only type of gay couple you see portrayed any more is a dude who acts like a very stereotypical wife and another dude who is a very stereotypical hetero husband. They usually have a gigantic number of kids and it’s constantly underscored that they are so busy with the kids that they never have sex anymore.

I look at this, and I wonder, have the scriptwriters ever met any gay men? It’s the entertainment industry, so it shouldn’t be that hard.

The diversity we are being constantly lectured about isn’t really all that diverse at all. It always tends towards the hoariest, most boring stereotypes. Even hetero couples don’t live according to these stereotypes.

17 responses to “Monotonous Diversity”

  1. Alex the Physicist Avatar
    Alex the Physicist

    Who said entertainment has to be completely realistic? It never has been.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      Not completely realistic is one thing. But the exact opposite of reality is quite another.

      Liked by 2 people

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  2. methylethyl Avatar
    methylethyl

    No, it’s not realistic. But if you portrayed gay male culture realistically for normal audiences, you’d be seen as propagandizing against them. Normies don’t want to know that stuff. They want the nice fiction that gay men are just like middle-class hetero people.

    Liked by 3 people

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    1. Avi Avatar
      Avi

      @methylethyl
      If only people knew… Fact is, they do not want to know, they prefer to believe the stories they tell themselves and the stories others tell them of a fantasy world in which gay people are just like home, only… better!
      The idea that male homosexuality is just the same as heterosexuality, except without women in it, is very widespread but it does not conform to reality. Male homosexuality is male sexuality gone rampant, precisely because there are no women in it.

      Liked by 2 people

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      1. methylethyl Avatar
        methylethyl

        It was very much a part of the gay marriage campaign propaganda, back in the day. They had to convince normies that it was just the same as hetero marriage, so that gay couples could get the same tax breaks and insurance coverage as hetero married people. People are weirdly nostalgic about that totally-made-up propaganda image of the nice almost-straight family. The PR guys on that one did a damn fine job of it. Snookered all of middle-class america.

        Liked by 2 people

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      2. Clarissa Avatar
        Clarissa

        Gay men get together to have crazy, boundless sex, and lesbians get together to engage in crazy, boundless domesticity.

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  3. cliff arroyo Avatar
    cliff arroyo

    “have the scriptwriters ever met any gay men?”

    I end up asking “have the scriptwriters ever met any real human beings?

    It’s like that with everything, nothing has any connection with reality…

    I remember Community (loved the first three seasons). Abed is supposed to be Palestinian but the actor clearly had South Asian ancestry….

    Hollywood… product is clearly made by people who don’t know or care anything about cultural or genetic differences (beyond ensuring a pleasing visual diverstiy of skin tones and hair textures….).

    Despite the surface difference in looks the characters all act exactly the same and have exactly the same values….

    Soooo stupid. I can barely watch anything from the US anymore (unless it’s old… I’ve been going through Malcolm in the Middle and King of the Hill lately).

    Liked by 1 person

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      There was Queer As Folk back in the early 2000s. Very well-made, realistic, and it was mega popular. Today, of course, it wouldn’t be possible because reality is too hard for us to deal with.

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      1. cliff arroyo Avatar
        cliff arroyo

        “Queer As Folk “

        I thought that was British… where until recently they were not as adverse to reality as Americans are… Was there an American adaptation?

        Wouldn’t the title have to change since the expression makes no sense for most (all) NAmerican pronunciations?

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          Yes, it’s an American remake. It’s set in Pittsburgh but it was very obviously shot in Toronto. And the actors are mostly Canadian.

          I still remember it fondly.

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  4. Demotrash Avatar
    Demotrash

    Funnily enough, the “heteronormative” butch/femme lesbian couple, which is quite common, doesn’t seem to get that much media representation, I assume because it’s a working class phenomenon.

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    1. cliff arroyo Avatar
      cliff arroyo

      “butch/femme lesbian couple …. doesn’t seem to get that much media representation”

      Right? And back in the day even Agatha Christie had such a pair in one of her novels…

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      1. Demotrash Avatar
        Demotrash

        This is now considered reactionary

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    2. methylethyl Avatar
      methylethyl

      One does wonder about this. 

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    3. Avatar
      Anonymous

      There is one butch/femme couple in The Wire, but its portrayal may not have aged well. Surely there is something in The L Word, but this is a very niche series.

      Ol.

      Liked by 1 person

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      1. Clarissa Avatar
        Clarissa

        The L Word was great. And it was among the very first to timidly suggest that if lesbians are really men, that will mean the end of lesbians.

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  5. Post Alley Crackpot Avatar
    Post Alley Crackpot

    How very strange …

    There was a restaurant near my old place in Miami where the gay men would take up either one big table or a cluster of several tables, meeting as if they were one large family.

    It never seemed all that stable because over time you could see different arrangements and new people for old.

    But I suppose Hollyweird wants us to think it’s stable because it’s not about them, it’s about us, and to think anything but happy thoughts about these people means we are somehow horrible people, which of course is the desired destination for Hollyweird’s writers.

    It’s this need for Hollyweird to guilt its audiences into struggle sessions that I find the second most unlikeable thing about it in general, right behind having to find some way to get some prurience for propaganda purposes smashed into the proceedings.

    Maybe Hollyweird is merely a hypertrophic cancer upon entertainment that Americans have to endure because if they talk openly about it, they reveal they are horrible people?

    Confidence tricksters and drug pushers also do well with this Ouroboros Pretzel Logic for what it’s worth.

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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