1. Gay/lesbian TV characters are often described as commodified; what does this mean?
In the realm of media, sexuality is represented and commodified. It wasn’t until the 90s when the mainstream entertainment started to showcase gay characters. In television or film, gay male characters are usually chaste and often played by a straight actor. Typically, they rely on verbal and nonverbal cues to signal their sexual proclivities. In the hit television series, Will & Grace, really showcases commodification of the gay and lesbian characters. Commodification often means sanitized form of homosexuality. In other words, commodified means one that appeals to straight as well as gay audiences.
2. What is heteronormativity? Heteronormativity is
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In the television and movie industry, gay characters started to emerge onto the screen. Often, gay characters were placed into a television series to be depicted as something to laugh at or often to have fear of. If gay characters weren’t being depicted for something, they were also used to shape the AIDS pandemic.
In the 1990s: The 1990s was the decade that broke the stigma and stereotypes for anyone who identified as member of the LGBTQ community. Many breakout television shows such as Ellen and Will & Grace allowed the audience to learn and be politically correct about homosexuality. The direction that television and film with homosexuality was to make it campy while creating a lesson in tolerance.
6. How are gays and lesbians a different kind of minority group than people of color?
Unfortunately, one of the similarities between race and sexual orientation is that both are consider being a minority group. When a man or woman is label as a ‘homeosexual’ is by her or his behaviors. Therefore, labeling someone as a ‘homosexual’ can be difficult. Whereas, a person who is non-white race or ethnicity does not have the ability to blend or conform to the idea of a ‘master status’.
7. Apart from homophobia, how can we explain the failure of Ellen after the main character came
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It wasn’t until the 1990s when an increase of gay representation on national television. Living in a world surrounded by television and all sorts of other media is an important part of our American lives. If a character that was considered to be gay or lesbian within a television show was often used for just one episode. Popular culture has made it difficult for gay characters and politics to be placed in a sitcom because for the longest time it wasn’t apart of the stereotypical culture. When Ellen DeGeneres decided to come out in the 1990s as herself and her character, it allowed a door to open for gay representation within our popular culture and
Sex and Gender was the subject of the two movies Dreamworlds 3 and Further Off The Straight & Narrow. In Dreamworlds 3 Sex is portrayed as a status of life and happiness in the media. This media displays people as objects that can be manipulated for sexual pleasure. As the media is populated with sex it tiptoes around gender, specifically that of gays or lesbians. The film Further Off The Straight & Narrow emphasized the movement through media gay and lesbian topics. This text analyzes iconic television programs and how they reflect the societal stance during that time. As a member of a generation that has had the topic of these issues prominent I believe they are important but are banal. In this reflection I will be responding to two questions, what would woman driven Dreamworlds look like? And Do you agree with the statement that if you are not on television you don’t exist?
On television, I watched characters such as Marco del Rossi and Paige Michalchuk on the Canadian teen-drama Degrassi. These were the first positive experiences I had of what gay culture was like. Of what I saw, I did not feel like I fit into that lifestyle/group. On the other hand, the movie The Matthew Shepard Story shared the violent side of homosexuality’s history in the retelling of Matthew Shepard’s murder.
To begin with, ‘Down Low’ is a phrase that was coined by members of the African American urban culture during late 1980’s which defines gay men who appear to be straight (Hamilton, 2009). Many characteristics of men living on the down low include individuals (who appear as though they are straight) who are sometimes married with children, members of the clergy, elected officials, ex-convicts, and most notable in a number of low-budget and often overlooked films – straight acting thugs (Hamilton, 2009). It is almost virtually impossible to be appreciative of the drama “Angels in America” without having an understanding about the history of the AIDS crisis as well as a more extensive story of lesbians and gays in the United States of America. While men and women have engaged in homosexual conduct in all times and various cultures, it was only in the twentieth centu...
For many generations, especially in North America, homosexuality was not accepted in any way, shape, or form. Many believed that it was a medical illness that was curable, when in reality, people were, and still are, ignorant and could not come to terms that everyone in this world is different from one another. For many instances of being treated unjust, many individuals in the gay community did not want to “expose” themselves and remained in the “closet”. As means to make gays and lesbians proud and take a stand for who they are, a movement spread across internationally. This movement is known as “The Gay Liberation” movement which occurred between the late 1960s and the early to mid 1970s (“Gay Liberation”). The Gay Liberation movement urged individuals of the gay community to “come out,” revealing their sexuality to their loved ones as a form of activism, and to counter shame with gay pride (“Gay Liberation”). The Stonewall Riots are believed to have been the spark that ignited the rise of the Gay Liberation movement; it influenced the way the gay community is viewed socially and how their rights are politically present day.
"The American Gay Rights Movement: A Timeline." Infoplease. Highbeam Research, n.d. Web. 01 Mar. 2014.
Pop culture has largely ignored "different" or "minority" groups, especially gays. However, during the 1980's new support/ religious and action networks arose (Mondimore 173). These groups did two important things of many, a) made noise b) fought for gay and lesbian rights and therefore screentime. From the shock of AIDS to the recently publicized hate crimes people are stepping out of the closet in record numbers. A friend described it to me as, " A choice between the devil and the deep blue sea, you can either let your fear eat you up inside or face it," he shrugged.
Beginning in 1975, the first gay couple was shown on television. After that a variety of other programs included the ideas of homosexuality until 1991 when the first kiss between a same-sex couple was shown. This was on L.A Law and advertisers threatened to pull their ads after the scene. In the late 90s with the popularity of shows like Will and Grace and Queer as Folk.
When television first appeared back in the 1940's, times were very different. What we would consider completely normal today would have seemed quite taboo just a few decades ago. For example, in 1953, Lucille Ball was not allowed to say the word "pregnant" while she was expecting baby Ricky and it wasn't until the 1960's show Bewitched, that we saw a married couple actually sharing the same bed. Considering how conservative the television networks were back then, it is not hard to deduce that something as controversial as homosexuality would be far from discussed or portrayed at any level. It was only in 1973 that television premiered its first homosexual character. Over the next three decades the emergence of gay and lesbian characters in television has increased and decreased as the times have changed. Due to the resurgence of conservatism that came back in the early 1980's, homosexual topics were again reduced to a minimum. Since that time though, as many people can see, there has been a rise of gay and lesbian characters on television. One might think after a first glance at the previous sentence that there has been progress among gay and lesbian communities to have a fair representation in the media. However, if one looks hard at the circumstances surrounding their portrayal, many people may start to believe that if there has been any progress then it has been quite minimal.
The other can be defined as, “one whose differences and experiences are judged to be “too alien” to be understood,” (Oppression, slide 8). People often consider those who are not like them to be inferior others. Thus, it is easy to discriminate against them if their gender identity, ethnicity, sexuality, or culture is different than one’s own. In the article “Are Emily and Greg more employable than Lakisha and Jamal,” an experiment is performed to see if employers are biased towards people with names that sound anything other than white (Bertrand and Mullainathan, page 428). They found that people with names that sounded more African American tended to get fewer interviews and were disregarded easier (Bertrand and Mullainathan, page 433). This experiment proved that, as a society, we tend to think people of color are less qualified to do the same job as people who are white. Thus, people who fall into this racial ethnicity are the “other”. Sexuality is often a concept that people cannot grasp past the typical heterosexual relationship. People who identify as any other sexuality on the spectrum are lesser people. In the article “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference”, Lorde says, “Lesbians and gaymen are expected to educate the heterosexual world,” (Lorde 78). There are many heterosexual humans that support and understand the whole spectrum of sexuality. But, instead, they remain silent which makes it
The movie, And the Band Played On, portrays a current issue the U.S. health care system face: the effects of societal perceptions of people who should receive health care support. Those perceived as undeserving are disregarded. Homosexual men were the first to be affected by AIDS in the US, and because of this, the stigma of homosexuality prevented developing health care policy to control the epidemic. Homosexuality was, and to a lesser extent now, not widely accepted. Marginalizing gay individuals was seen in the movie at the beginning, when media coverage on AIDs would not include “homosexual” within the news title (Pillsbury, Sanford, & Spottiswoode, 1993). This represents how media has to be marketed; the broader public will not be interested if a new disease only affects an undesirable population. Another example of this negligence is seen when Phillip Burton is asked to introduce a bill on AIDS. He agrees, but does not hesitate to retort, “They couldn’t get a dime out of this administration with the name gay on it” (Pillsbury, Sanford, & Spottiswoode, 1993). Finally, in order to change the perception, at the CDC conference with blood agencies, they renamed gay related immune deficiency (GRID) to AIDS, and the film cuts to news segments finally covering
“The unprecedented growth of the gay community in recent history has transformed our culture and consciousness, creating radically new possibilities for people to ‘come out’ and live more openly as homosexuals”(Herdt 2). Before the 1969 Stonewall riot in New York, homosexuality was a taboo subject. Research concerning homosexuality emphasized the etiology, treatment, and psychological adjustment of homosexuals. Times have changed since 1969. Homosexuals have gained great attention in arts, entertainment, media, and politics. Yesterday’s research on homosexuality has expanded to include trying to understand the different experiences and situations of homosexuals (Ben-Ari 89-90).
The 1990s saw a surge of gay characters in both television and movies. From Ellen Degeneres and her character Ellen Morgan coming out under much scrutiny on the TV show ‘Ellen,’ to Julia Roberts and Rupert Everett comedically playing off each other in the motion picture ‘My Best Friend’s Wedding.’ Sure, gays and lesbians have been around forever, especially in Hollywood. But never has there been a time to be more out. With the popularity of shows like Will and Grace, which feature leading gay characters, as well as Dawson’s Creek
In order to discuss the biology of gender identity and sexual orientation, it is necessary to first examine the differences between multiple definitions that are often mistakenly interchanged: sex, gender, sexual orientation, and gender identity. Sexual orientation is defined by LeVay (2011) as “the trait that predisposes us to experience sexual attraction to people of the same sex as ourselves, to persons of the other sex, or to both sexes” (p. 1). The typical categories of sexual orientation are homosexual, heterosexual and bisexual. Vrangalova and Savin-Williams (2012) found that most people identify as heterosexual, but there are also groups of people that identify as mostly heterosexual and mostly gay within the three traditional categories (p. 89). This is to say that there are not three concrete groups, but sexual orientation is a continuum and one can even fluctuate on it over time. LeVay (2011) also defines gender as “the ...
Gender and sexuality can be comprehended through social science. Social science is “the study of human society and of individual relationships in and to society” (free dictionary, 2009). The study of social science deals with different aspects of society such as politics, economics, and the social aspects of society. Gender identity is closely interlinked with social science as it is based on an identity of an individual in the society. Sexuality is “the condition of being characterized and distinguished by sex” (free dictionary, 2009). There are different gender identities such as male, female, gay, lesbian, transgender, and bisexual that exists all around the world. There is inequality in gender identities and dominance of a male regardless of which sexuality they fall under. The males are superior over the females and gays superior over the lesbians, however it different depending on the place and circumstances. This paper will look at the gender roles and stereotypes, social policy, and homosexuality from a modern and a traditional society perspective. The three different areas will be compared by the two different societies to understand how much changes has occurred and whether or not anything has really changed. In general a traditional society is more conservative where as a modern society is fundamentally liberal. This is to say that a traditional society lists certain roles depending on the gender and there are stereotypes that are connected with the genders. One must obey the one that is dominant and make decisions. On the other hand, a modern society is lenient, It accepts the individual’s identity and sexuality. There is no inequality and everyone in the society is to be seen as individuals not a part of a family unit...
Adam Sharpiro, Megan Schultz, Christina Roush, Cassandra Schofar, Emily Shilling, Tawnia Simpson, Natalie Sampiller. Portrayal of Homosexuality in Media. 26 March 2014 .