The Contradictions of Gay Tele-Visibility: A Reaction to Gamson

Abstract

As the 2004 Clark Lecturer at the University of Kansas, Joshua Gamson delivered an accessible and provocative discussion re garding the "gaying of straight men" in the mainstream media. Gamson's lecture addressed the recent media hits "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" and "Boy Meets Boy" as a means to discuss the new "Gay Tele-Visibility." Like the experience of most marginal ized groups, the depiction of homosexuality on television has a torrid past. Suffering from a lack of cultural visibility, cast as vil lains or ill, depicted as full of self-hate, and as sexual predators, media representation of gays, lesbians and trans-gender individu als meant that organizing for basic rights was difficult at best. While these are no longer the primary depictions of gay men, Gamson's point in this piece is to illustrate that cultural visibility is not with out its problems. The celebration of gayness in television in recent years is certainly preferable to being cast as demons, yet televi sion prompts the question "If heterosexuality depends in part on its opposite, and homosexual difference is no longer so reliable, what happens to the straight man and his supposed superiority? " (Gamson, 2005:5) The answer resides in the "difference-game" where determining the sexuality of characters, real or fiction, is the key theme of the show. The answer to the difference game lies in the characterization of gay men as master consumers and in structors of upper middle class status. This "difference," argues Gamson is celebrated by current television programs while simul taneously "normalizing" a particular segment of the gay popula tion. Gay tele-visibility, defined as the presence of gay men/char