Celluloid Reflections

If Madison Avenue has been flirting heavily with LesBiGays as of late, surely Hollywood has climbed enthusiastically into their beds. Contemporary films depict more LesBiGays than ever before, and the characters are increasingly positive, charming, and life-affirming.⁵⁶ The guilt-laden pathos of the "invert," portrayed in sporadic, earlier films like The Children's Hour⁵⁷ and Boys in the Band,⁵⁸ has surrendered either to the high camp of comedic figures such as the transvestite Zaza in La Cage aux Folles⁵⁹ and the drag queen, Arnold, in Torch Song Trilogy,⁶⁰ or to the higher taste of stylish and sensitive LesBiGay friends so often found at weddings, as in Four Weddings and a Funeral⁶¹ and My Best Friend's Wedding.⁶² Importantly, production companies now realize that there are sizeable audiences for art films and bigger-budget pictures that celebrate the productive lives and self-accepting loves of LesBiGays, whether the run-of-the-mill types in Trick⁶³ and The Incredibly True Adventures of Two Girls in Love,⁶⁴ or the extraordinary icons in Personal Best⁶⁵ and Wilde.⁶⁶ The fantasy machine of modern filmmaking is fueled by images of LesBiGays: more ecstatic, more unconditional, and sexier images than could have been thought possible twenty-five years ago.

Not to be left out in the cold, commercial cable and network television corporations have entered our living rooms with their own mainline versions of the humpy, happy queer. Showtime's rave-reviewed 1993 experiment with Tales of the City,⁶⁷ the hilarious and poignant chronicle of San Francisco's gay-friendly life in the 1970s, appeared to stiffen the spines of network television producers. Within a very short time, they have moved from tentative to bold in their delivery of LesBiGay programming. Ellen DeGeneres's timid declaration of her lesbianism on ABC, heard sotto voce during the "coming out" episode of Ellen on April 30, 1997,⁶⁸ was soon overwhelmed by the screaming "queeniness" of actor Sean Hayes, who plays the flamboyantly funny Jack McFarland of Will & Grace (a role for which he received an Emmy Award in 2000).⁶⁹ Yet, nothing quite outdoes the most recent cable television foray into LesBiGay mass entertainment: Queer as Folk, Showtime's titillating series of "sexploits" involving a tight-knit circle of gay and lesbian friends. Hyped by a promotional blitz exceeding $10 million, the largest ever for a Showtime series,⁷⁰ Queer as Folk consciously and unapologetically assumes the LesBiGay perspective.⁷¹ In a real sense, then, today's commercial television culture is eager to be radical--to "walk on the wild side."⁷² The Village Voice critic Richard Goldstein sums it up well: "Homophobia may still be a currency in Congressional politics; gay rights bills may be stalled in many states . . .; but in the land of Oz, where the American imagination plays, something has definitely changed."⁷³