Thursday, 17 December 2009
Viorica has some issues with the first season of "Queer as Folk"
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America has this horrible habit of remaking British television and movies, presumably in order to a) cash in on franchises that have proven themselves popular, and b) make sure that their citizens are watching American-produced TV instead of putting their money into another country's market. It was done to Life on Mars, it's being done to Death at a Funeral, and it was done to The Office. These remakes tend to provoke varying reactions - some, like The Office succeed, and some, like ABC's ill-fated Life on Mars, fall flat. One of the cross-Atlantic success stories was Queer as Folk, adapted from Russell T. Davies's drama of the same name. It ran for five years on Showtime, garnered quite a bit of praise, and has a fairly substantial fanbase. I took the DVD of the first season out of the local library, figuring that since more than one person had recommended it to me, it had to be at least entertaining. The verdict? Well, it is and it isn't.
The show is set in Pittsburgh (which I have no comment on, seeing as I've never been there) and follows a group of gay men (with a couple of token lesbians) who live . . . well, like most evangelical right-wing preachers imagine gay men to live. They go out clubbing every night, engage in frequent anonymous sex in the club's bathroom, and take drugs like there's no tomorrow. The whole thing is rather disconcerting- if you're going to make a TV show that purports to be about the lives of gay men, why would you utilise all of the negative stereotypes that have come to be associated with the gay community? I can understand why a party-hard lifestyle would be the most dramatically convenient - after all, it's more interesting to watch a bunch of hot men dance around shirtless than it is to watch them argue about whether they should get pizza or Chinese for dinner - but all the same, having your characters behave in willfully destructive ways doesn't exactly assay the commonplace prejudices that people hold. Obviously it's not the show's responsibility to explain Why Being Gay Is Not Destructive - it's a soap opera, not an educational program - but the way it portrays the "gay lifestyle" leaves a nasty taste in my mouth.
Of course, if the characters were intelligent, likeable people, their self-destructive behaviour wouldn't look quite as bad as it does. But they really, really aren't. Take, for example, our lead: Brian Kinney, a douchebag of the first order who fucks his way through five people a night, then picks up a seventeen-year-old jailbait virgin and sleeps with him. Now, part of the program's central conceit is that Brian is a douchebag and proud of it, but his friends and lovers don't fare much better. There's the aforementioned jailbait (Justin) who, after sleeping with Brian a few times, steals his credit card and runs away to New York; Emmett, the campiest of campy gays, who never really gets any kind of serious plot; Ted, a certified accountant and certifiable moron, who falls into a drug-induced coma after taking GHB offered to him by the complete stranger he brought home for sex; and Michael, the only remotely levelheaded one of the group. There's also secondary characters, like Melanie and Lindsey, the lesbian couple who are raising a baby together (a baby created using Brian's sperm - for some unfathomable reason, they wanted their child to share his genetic material) only to break up midway through season one. There's no real reason for their breakup - they suddenly started fighting, then Melanie went out and slept with someone else, and then she moved out. Of course, they get back together by the time the season ends, but thanks to spoilers, I already know that they repeat the make-up/break-up cycle several more times before the series is through. What exactly does it say about these characters (and the community they're supposed to be representing) when the one supposedly stable couple are in a state of perpetual warfare? Then there's Michael's mother and uncle, probably the only sane characters on the show, who exist mostly to dispense advice; Justin's mother, who is initially shocked by her son's coming-out but grows to accept him; and various love interests who drift in and out as the plot requires. Again, the main characters all behave in ways that makes the viewer want to yell "What the fuck are you DOING, you morons?" at the screen, whilst the secondary ones have their heads screwed on right. The fact that the sane characters all seem to be the straight ones (with the exception of Michael's uncle) probably owes more to the fact that their actions don't drive the plot; but all the same, having your gay characters behave stupidly while their straight friends advise them seems more than a little hinky.
The storyline that fans of the series seem to be the most invested in is Brian and Justin's tumultous relationship, which I find slightly squicky. When it begins, Justin is all of seventeen, and while a lot of seventeen-year-olds are sexually active, they hopefully aren't out losing their virginity to a twenty-nine-year-old stranger who picked them up off a street corner. While Justin's certainly willing to sleep with Brian, and repeatedly instigates meetings between them, I can't be the only one who finds the age gap slightly icky. I mean, Brian drives him to school for fuck's sake. That's what parents do, not boyfriends. Of course, Justin's father objects, and while his objection is rooted in homophobia rather than parental concern, I have to agree with him a bit. Note to any teenagers reading this: the older guy (or girl) who picked you up for sex does not love you.You are not going to embark on a life-changing relationship with you. They are going to fuck you, and dump you, and you're just lucky if you don't get any souveniers in the form of STDs. And that goes for both straight and gay encounters.
If you're wondering why I haven't mentioned any bisexual characters, that's because there aren't any. Or rather, there aren't any who identify as such- there are several who could be considered bi, but they all ID as gay. In fact, the word "bisexual" is never uttered at all. I'm not accusing the writers of deliberate biphobia so much as thoughtlessness. "Of course there are no bisexual men; why whould there be?" Never mind the episode where Justin sleeps with his female friend in a plotline of epic stupidity (she decides that she wants to lose her virginity, so she asks him to do it) or the storyline in a later season where Lindsey (the femmier woman, because naturally she's more likely to sleep with men *sigh*) has sex with a man - they're all gay, gay, gay, with no exceptions. The only possible *canon* bisexual character - and he only gets that honour because his sexuality is never defined - is Justin's homophobic classmate, who sleeps with multiple girls, but also allows Justin to give him a handjob. But since the season ends with him cracking Justin over the head with a baseball bat and sending him to the ER, I'd really rather not think about the implications there. Never mind that, as previously discussed, they have the opportunity to show the full spectrum of sexuality here; there are NO BISEXUALS on this show. Case closed. Now let's get back to our not-at-all-stereotypical gay men!
And now I'm going to take off my Cranky Bisexual hat and put on my Cranky Feminist one. The premise is the series lends itself to being a bit of a sausage-fest, so it's to the creator's credit that female characters are included. Unfortunately, they aren't handled very well at all. There's the aforementioned Lindsey and Melanie, who are meant to be something of a stabilising influence on the men (Lindsey is an old friend of Brian's.) They don't share in the hard partying or drug using; they've settled down in a nice house with their baby. As a result, they don't really get many storylines outside of their domestic troubles. The stuff that happens to them tends to be more serious and related to the struggles faced by gay couples - Melanie not being allowed to see her son when he's in the hospital with a fever, for example. They're extremely bound up in their motherhood, to the point where they're practically defined by it. Not only that, but they fall into the traditional butch/femme dichotomy - Melanie, the "less feminine" (she has short hair and wears pants) is the breadwinner, while Lindsey (long hair, skirts, makeup) gives birth and stays home to raise the kid. While the show isn't all that great at portraying anyone, you'd think they would make some effort with the only lesbians on the show. Of course, the non-lesbian women don't fare much better. There's Michael's aforementioned mother, Debbie, who is probably the most awesome character on the show. She exists primarily to hand out advice, and take care of everyone- Justin moves in with her after his parents (and Brian) kick him out, and her HIV-positive brother lives with her as well. Because of this, she never really gets to have her own identity. She's so bound up in her son's life, and the lives of his friends, that she isn't a real person- just a prop for the men to lean on. Then there's Justin's friend Daphne, who stays relatively sane for most of the season only to fall apart when she loses her virginity to Justin (which is just weird in and of itself - how many women think "Hmm, I want to have sex - I'll go ask my gay friend if he'll help!") and promptly starts crushing on him, complete with a patronizing speech from Lindsey and Melanie explaining that women are incapable of separating emotion from sex. No, really. No, really. Lastly, there's Justin's mother, who spends most of the season being tugged between her husband and her son. That's four female characters, and not one gets to have an identity that isn't defined (or at least heavily influenced) by the men in her life. I know this show is about gay men, not women, but they could've at least made an effort.
I rag on this show a lot, but it's entertaining despite (or perhaps because of) its flaws. By the time the season had ended, I was genuinely invested in what happened to the characters, even though they do seem to bring a lot of their problems on themselves. I was even somewhat charmed by Brian and Justin, though I remain squicked at the age gap (he went to his prom. Eurgh, eurgh, eurgh.) I am now anxiously awaiting the second season from the library, which will no doubt be similarily filled with recklessness, stupdity, and stereotypes. It's a bumpy ride to be sure, but damn if it isn't a fun one.
The show is set in Pittsburgh (which I have no comment on, seeing as I've never been there) and follows a group of gay men (with a couple of token lesbians) who live . . . well, like most evangelical right-wing preachers imagine gay men to live. They go out clubbing every night, engage in frequent anonymous sex in the club's bathroom, and take drugs like there's no tomorrow. The whole thing is rather disconcerting- if you're going to make a TV show that purports to be about the lives of gay men, why would you utilise all of the negative stereotypes that have come to be associated with the gay community? I can understand why a party-hard lifestyle would be the most dramatically convenient - after all, it's more interesting to watch a bunch of hot men dance around shirtless than it is to watch them argue about whether they should get pizza or Chinese for dinner - but all the same, having your characters behave in willfully destructive ways doesn't exactly assay the commonplace prejudices that people hold. Obviously it's not the show's responsibility to explain Why Being Gay Is Not Destructive - it's a soap opera, not an educational program - but the way it portrays the "gay lifestyle" leaves a nasty taste in my mouth.
Of course, if the characters were intelligent, likeable people, their self-destructive behaviour wouldn't look quite as bad as it does. But they really, really aren't. Take, for example, our lead: Brian Kinney, a douchebag of the first order who fucks his way through five people a night, then picks up a seventeen-year-old jailbait virgin and sleeps with him. Now, part of the program's central conceit is that Brian is a douchebag and proud of it, but his friends and lovers don't fare much better. There's the aforementioned jailbait (Justin) who, after sleeping with Brian a few times, steals his credit card and runs away to New York; Emmett, the campiest of campy gays, who never really gets any kind of serious plot; Ted, a certified accountant and certifiable moron, who falls into a drug-induced coma after taking GHB offered to him by the complete stranger he brought home for sex; and Michael, the only remotely levelheaded one of the group. There's also secondary characters, like Melanie and Lindsey, the lesbian couple who are raising a baby together (a baby created using Brian's sperm - for some unfathomable reason, they wanted their child to share his genetic material) only to break up midway through season one. There's no real reason for their breakup - they suddenly started fighting, then Melanie went out and slept with someone else, and then she moved out. Of course, they get back together by the time the season ends, but thanks to spoilers, I already know that they repeat the make-up/break-up cycle several more times before the series is through. What exactly does it say about these characters (and the community they're supposed to be representing) when the one supposedly stable couple are in a state of perpetual warfare? Then there's Michael's mother and uncle, probably the only sane characters on the show, who exist mostly to dispense advice; Justin's mother, who is initially shocked by her son's coming-out but grows to accept him; and various love interests who drift in and out as the plot requires. Again, the main characters all behave in ways that makes the viewer want to yell "What the fuck are you DOING, you morons?" at the screen, whilst the secondary ones have their heads screwed on right. The fact that the sane characters all seem to be the straight ones (with the exception of Michael's uncle) probably owes more to the fact that their actions don't drive the plot; but all the same, having your gay characters behave stupidly while their straight friends advise them seems more than a little hinky.
The storyline that fans of the series seem to be the most invested in is Brian and Justin's tumultous relationship, which I find slightly squicky. When it begins, Justin is all of seventeen, and while a lot of seventeen-year-olds are sexually active, they hopefully aren't out losing their virginity to a twenty-nine-year-old stranger who picked them up off a street corner. While Justin's certainly willing to sleep with Brian, and repeatedly instigates meetings between them, I can't be the only one who finds the age gap slightly icky. I mean, Brian drives him to school for fuck's sake. That's what parents do, not boyfriends. Of course, Justin's father objects, and while his objection is rooted in homophobia rather than parental concern, I have to agree with him a bit. Note to any teenagers reading this: the older guy (or girl) who picked you up for sex does not love you.You are not going to embark on a life-changing relationship with you. They are going to fuck you, and dump you, and you're just lucky if you don't get any souveniers in the form of STDs. And that goes for both straight and gay encounters.
If you're wondering why I haven't mentioned any bisexual characters, that's because there aren't any. Or rather, there aren't any who identify as such- there are several who could be considered bi, but they all ID as gay. In fact, the word "bisexual" is never uttered at all. I'm not accusing the writers of deliberate biphobia so much as thoughtlessness. "Of course there are no bisexual men; why whould there be?" Never mind the episode where Justin sleeps with his female friend in a plotline of epic stupidity (she decides that she wants to lose her virginity, so she asks him to do it) or the storyline in a later season where Lindsey (the femmier woman, because naturally she's more likely to sleep with men *sigh*) has sex with a man - they're all gay, gay, gay, with no exceptions. The only possible *canon* bisexual character - and he only gets that honour because his sexuality is never defined - is Justin's homophobic classmate, who sleeps with multiple girls, but also allows Justin to give him a handjob. But since the season ends with him cracking Justin over the head with a baseball bat and sending him to the ER, I'd really rather not think about the implications there. Never mind that, as previously discussed, they have the opportunity to show the full spectrum of sexuality here; there are NO BISEXUALS on this show. Case closed. Now let's get back to our not-at-all-stereotypical gay men!
And now I'm going to take off my Cranky Bisexual hat and put on my Cranky Feminist one. The premise is the series lends itself to being a bit of a sausage-fest, so it's to the creator's credit that female characters are included. Unfortunately, they aren't handled very well at all. There's the aforementioned Lindsey and Melanie, who are meant to be something of a stabilising influence on the men (Lindsey is an old friend of Brian's.) They don't share in the hard partying or drug using; they've settled down in a nice house with their baby. As a result, they don't really get many storylines outside of their domestic troubles. The stuff that happens to them tends to be more serious and related to the struggles faced by gay couples - Melanie not being allowed to see her son when he's in the hospital with a fever, for example. They're extremely bound up in their motherhood, to the point where they're practically defined by it. Not only that, but they fall into the traditional butch/femme dichotomy - Melanie, the "less feminine" (she has short hair and wears pants) is the breadwinner, while Lindsey (long hair, skirts, makeup) gives birth and stays home to raise the kid. While the show isn't all that great at portraying anyone, you'd think they would make some effort with the only lesbians on the show. Of course, the non-lesbian women don't fare much better. There's Michael's aforementioned mother, Debbie, who is probably the most awesome character on the show. She exists primarily to hand out advice, and take care of everyone- Justin moves in with her after his parents (and Brian) kick him out, and her HIV-positive brother lives with her as well. Because of this, she never really gets to have her own identity. She's so bound up in her son's life, and the lives of his friends, that she isn't a real person- just a prop for the men to lean on. Then there's Justin's friend Daphne, who stays relatively sane for most of the season only to fall apart when she loses her virginity to Justin (which is just weird in and of itself - how many women think "Hmm, I want to have sex - I'll go ask my gay friend if he'll help!") and promptly starts crushing on him, complete with a patronizing speech from Lindsey and Melanie explaining that women are incapable of separating emotion from sex. No, really. No, really. Lastly, there's Justin's mother, who spends most of the season being tugged between her husband and her son. That's four female characters, and not one gets to have an identity that isn't defined (or at least heavily influenced) by the men in her life. I know this show is about gay men, not women, but they could've at least made an effort.
I rag on this show a lot, but it's entertaining despite (or perhaps because of) its flaws. By the time the season had ended, I was genuinely invested in what happened to the characters, even though they do seem to bring a lot of their problems on themselves. I was even somewhat charmed by Brian and Justin, though I remain squicked at the age gap (he went to his prom. Eurgh, eurgh, eurgh.) I am now anxiously awaiting the second season from the library, which will no doubt be similarily filled with recklessness, stupdity, and stereotypes. It's a bumpy ride to be sure, but damn if it isn't a fun one.
Themes: TV & Movies, Minority Warrior
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The negative stereotyping has two components: the first is to assert that all gay men behave in a certain way, the second is to characterise that behaviour as negative. It's important to challenge the first by showing that most gay men live very different lives. But if you only do that, you haven't challenged the assumption that gay men who DO behave in that way are doing something bad - you're only defending people who conform more closely to what right-wing preachers consider acceptable.
There ARE lots of gay men who engage in frequent anonymous sex, take drugs, go clubbing and have relationships with large age gaps, and while I don't live like that myself, it is a way people really do live that deserves dramatic representation. It's not clear to me in advance that the values and assumptions it entails can just be dismissed out of hand.
It's been a while since I've seen this show and don't seem to remember it much (which probably doesn't say much about either it or me), but I do remember this about Debbie, and that it was one reason I definitely never saw her as the awesome character on the show. I seem to remember finding her insufferably annoying by the end of the series. And I remember thinking Emmett was the best person on it. Did he take drugs? I seem to remember him specifically not doing that.
Well...once. But that was during Ted's addict stage, and he was very against it but kind of gave in to try and make Addict!Ted happy and afterward clearly regretted doing it.
I've seen all but the last season of Queer as Folk, and if you think about it too much, it does make you want to pull your hair out at their behavior. Mostly I feel like you have to take it as a rather crack soap opera that gets more and more ridiculous as it goes on.
You definitely aren't! I always found their relationship somewhat icky. I much preferred Michael and Ben's relationship to Brian and Justin's. Even though Ben/Michael have their own crazy. I even liked Justin and the violin player he dated for a while during the time he and Brian were broken up. They seemed like a much better couple...until said violin player basically screwed up.
I agree with pretty much all the problems you had with the show. I had the same thoughts. I also found the lesbian relationship poor represented. And, it is odd that there are no bisexuals on the show. Part of me wonders if the show is so over the top because of how it came about. From what I understand, someone basically said, "Well, that show [Queer as Folk] would never be able to be made in America!" and the creator of American QaF said, "Oh, yeah?!"
Actually, I found on youtube some time ago clips of the British show followed by the same scene in the American show, and it's rather telling. The American version is much more sexualized and visually provocative while the British version seemed rather more down-to-earth (please correct me if I'm wrong on this - I haven't seen the British version fully).
I thought the weirdest thing about QaF was the end of the Brian/Justin storyline--or Brian's storyline in general.
At the risk of starting a completely off-topic discussion, isn't taking drugs (drugs like ecstacy and crystal meth, that is) kind of always a bad thing?
Did he take drugs?
There's a mention of him taking some sort of drug with him when they all went to New York- some kind of stimulant? I think he snorted it.
Well, ecstasy is considerably less harmful than crystal meth for a start. But I think the question of whether drugs ARE bad is slightly irrelevant. A sympathetic portrayal of people in good literature or film involves doing due justice to what is positive and legitimate about their choices and values, without necessarily heavy-handedly endorsing them but certainly without making didactic judgements. Drug use is a part of many hedonistic lifestyles and there are stories to be told about those people that don't involve their lives being irrevocably ruined by drugs.
But doesn't this also entail being honest about the downsides to their choices? I have not seen either the US or the British version of Queer As Folk, but if either of them actually do present crystal meth use as a big lark which doesn't have damaging consequences for anyone involved I find that more than a little alarming. (I'm pretty confident that Russell T Davies wouldn't write such a thing, actually, but I don't completely trust American TV writers to do the same.) Crystal meth is a fucking menace, and presenting it on a par with ecstasy is downright irresponsible, whether it entails overhyping the risks of ecstasy or downplaying the risks of crystal meth.
There was a long arc about Ted getting addicted to crystal, and it showed how incredibly destructive that addiction was. He lost everything due to his addiction and had to work very hard to get over it and regain the trust of his friends - in particular Emmett, who was the most hurt by his addiction. And in the first season, he does OD and almost die, and everyone made a big deal of that.
I did get the feeling from the series however, that drugs are okay if you use them responsibly - including things like ecstasy. Which I'm not sure I can totally feel okay about. There is a lot of danger in using ecstasy too. It may not be quite as destructive as crystal, but it sure as hell isn't a safe practice. And it's irresponsible to show it as such, in my opinion.
I am pleased that Queer As Folk US is disapproving of meth though.
In the words of Peep Show, I think you need to be honest but not necessarily brutally honest. As neither of us have seen the show, it's pretty hard to tell if it gets it right, but I do think in principle a show can feature (dangerous) drug use without having to punish the characters with consequences.
The kind of thing I have in mind for instance: it's OK to show characters in a 1940s period piece smoking and looking a bit glamorous, and not necessarily getting lung cancer. Or a film about hedonistic 70s rock stars which made reference to their drug use as part of the portrayal of their lives, but didn't show any of them getting addicted or hurt.
As it happens, I think someone actually dies of a drug overdose in the British version. I believe in the American show he doesn't die but it's still a traumatic event. So the consequences are in fact shown. I guess even sympathetic portrayals need to show downsides to the lives/choices/values in any case, otherwise there'd be a distinct lack of drama and plot.
Actually, now that I think of it, I'm pretty sure the recreational drug use really subsided after Season 1. (Maybe as a reaction to Ted's OD?) If I remember correctly, Brian (and maybe Justin sometimes) were the only recreational drug users in the later seasons. And even those instances seemed few and far between. But it's been a while since I saw the series so maybe I just deluded myself into thinking this...
It's all slightly beside the point which I was originally trying to make - I don't think that just because gay men are shown using drugs, this automaticaly qualifies it as a portrayal of a negative image of them. Even if on balance they'd probably be better off not doing drugs.
For the vast majority maybe, but there are people who have died from their first ever hit of ecstasy because they bought it from people who didn't make properly/added something to it that they shouldn't have. (This is speaking from internet research rather than personal experience).
While I agree that it doesn't necessarily have to be a negative portrayal, I feel like you'd be hard pressed to find drug-users (and I mean those who use harder drugs like ecstasy/heroin/coke/meth) who will tell you how much drug use enhanced and enriched their lives. Most of the time drug use leads to badness, and that's why people quit. So it seems like if you're going to have drug users in literature/media, they should at some point either suffer from the usage or mature out of it somehow. But perhaps this is just my straight-edge-ness talking.
Erg, sorry for the off-topicness.
I often think about something like this, the best way to present it. Because I often feel like the way TV usually shows drugs is just as unhelpful. Like where someone tries pot, and by sweeps they're out of control, but in a still-attractive way, and their friends are all concerned (but not angry or fed up the way you can quickly get with an addict). Mackenzie Phillips guest stars as a therapist and then he goes into rehab for a special ep and he's okay.
Because the problem with the idea that doing a single hit of anything makes you an addict is if a kid tries something and that doesn't happen they're navigating the reality on their own. The reality is more complicated--there are people who have done drugs at times but don't become addicted--but addiction is real and everyone should seriously fear it. Unfortunately it's also bad in a way that a lot of TV doesn't want to do too realistically because it makes characters unlikable. (Note: Certain drugs can't really be recreational. If you're doing crystal meth, for instance, you're in trouble, period.)
I would like to distinguish between two things though:
a) A positive portrayal of people who use drugs. It is possible to honestly show that these people use drugs without that necessarily equating to a negative portrayal of those people.
b) A positive or negative portrayal of their drug use.
The objection I had to the article was that it assumed (a) was impossible and that presenting the mere true fact that a certain subculture of gay men have anonymous sex, use drugs etc. amounted to a negative portrayal of them.
Not that I would or do use ecstasy. I don't even drink alcohol. But I really don't think it can be categorised alongside crystal meth.
I've just remembered the Oxford LGBT Soc was accused in one of the student papers of being a sordid den of crystal meth addicts.
Oh I remember this - I was most annoyed, not least because not only was I NEVER offered crystal meth while at LGBT (or rather LGB as it was in my day) events but I didn't even get laid =P
I was quite intrigued by this article actually as I've only seen the British version - which I remember rather enjoying, as soapy fun anyway.
This snags at me slightly - in an interested way, I mean, not a critical one. I suppose, perhaps, it depends on who we establish as the target audience of QaF. I mean, yes, possibly a straight person would watch it and read out of it a confirmation of their worst 'fears' about the so-called homosexual lifestyle. But presumably it's *also* perfectly possible to read it as nothing more than sexy hyperbole - I mean there's nothing *inherently* wrong with taking drugs and having anonymous sex, is there? And I think it's an aspect of the culture that we've all brushed up against, maybe even partially participated in at certain times of our life ... again I'm talking about the British version here but actually it's both fun and meaningful to see its excesses explored 'safely' on TV.
To be more specific, like Sister Magpie I *really* enjoy The L Word. I think I even I wrote an article to the effect that it's a *terrible* portrayal of lesbian relationships and I think it's also fairly easy to argue the target audience of it is straight men BUT actually I do find it rather titillating. It's about hot women behaving badly, having lots of sex, and living a super fantasy lesbian lifestyle that does actually appeal - even if we know it's not necessarily 'realistic' - to a lot of gay women.
Yes! That's exactly it.
On the one hand, obviously the portrayal of gay people (or any minority) on TV has to be dealt with sensitively, because it is very easy to mistake a statement about a gay character or a set of gay characters for a statement about homosexuality in general, whereas there are a vast plethora of different portrayals of straight people on TV so one particular take on the straight clubbing scene carries less baggage with it. On the other hand, people like watching shows about young sexy party people doing young sexy party things. Anyone who objects to depictions of gay people doing that sort of thing either a) is the sort of person who just plain objects to that sort of thing in the first place, in which case they're just prudish or b) simply doesn't like gay people, in which case they're bigoted. I don't think any TV show ever stopped people being prudish or bigoted, and I don't think the Queer as Folk or L Word writers have a special responsibility to worry about how genuinely hostile people would view their shows, because people who want to find things to object to will find things to object to.
As long as that doesn't mean timidly.
Here's the problem with ecstasy, and this is the last I'll say about it. What most people buy as "ecstasy" is not pure ecstasy, that is the say the chemical compound of MDMA, which in itself is not very dangerous. MDMA is very difficult to find/make, so many ecstasy sellers are actually giving you either a) a little MDMA mixed with things like amphetamine, methamphetamine, ephedrine, caffeine or b) something with no MDMA in it at all. Caffeine might not be dangerous to you but amphetamines and methamphetamines certainly are.
As for whether a drug user can be portrayed positive or negatively, Andy G., I actually agree with what you said here:
I do think it's possible to have a character who does drugs and isn't portrayed negatively, but I would be a little nervous if his "drug use" wasn't portrayed negatively. Though this would also relate to how hard of a user he is, what kinds of drugs he uses, etc. Like, I have no problem with a bunch of high school slackers being shown to use pot. It's realistic and not very dangerous. But if someone starts taking pills or snorting something up his/her nose, I think you have to be more careful.
As far as QaF goes, the drug use bothered me in the beginning, and then it seemed to become less of an overwhelming factor in their behavior so I kind of ignored the few references to it.
Sorry if this all sounds rambling; I may have a fever....
Is it? I'd thought it was relatively simple -- I've read that crystal meth is relatively easy to 'cook' up, for instance.
Unfortunately, I'm definitely not a scientist so I can't totally understand the difference in the chemical compounds that make up the two. If someone else has a better grip on it, I'd love to hear it explained in layman's terms. I think it has something to do with the fact that ecstasy requires "safrole" (sassafras extract) and that the safrole has to be manipulated to make MDMA by using piperonyl acetone. I don't really know what all that means, personally, but it's apparently difficult to do or at least it's difficult to obtain the materials needed to create MDMA. A quick skim of the internet tells me that there are a lot of stories about failures to make it. Maybe it's not so much that it's difficult to make, but that it's difficult to make for someone who's not a good chemist. All I do know for sure is that what most people are buying on the street is not going to be pure ecstasy.
Here's a link to the wiki article about MDMA
I'm impressed to see that we've all been well-educated by the "It's cool to say NO to drugs" campaigns, though :-)
Ah, I wondered whether to include that or not. Shows how little I remember of my chemistry, lol.
And yes, we're digressing...sorry about that, everyone.
So, making methamphetamine is fairly simple, as far as chemical synthesis goes; you have several options for starting materials and the ways you can go about it. But MDMA is more complex, so your options are more limited.
This is what makes bigots so frustrating to debate against, because in a sound-bite confrontation it's almost impossible to reject one without appearing to accept the other.
In fiction though, it seems perfectly sufficient to rebut one or the other in a given story. So I think there's probably a place in the world for a story that gave a poignat and sympathetic portrayal of crowd of stereotypical swingin' hard-partyin' musical-theatre-lovin' fashion-conscious gay guys. Besides being entertaining and ideally a reasonable portrayal of a subculture of the gay community, it might convince one or two people that gay men aren't really that bad.
It sounds like this isn't that show, especially as destructive and unlikable as the characters sound, and with the writing apparently uneven, but I don't think making a story about stereotypical gay men is necessarily negative. (Though it should still have female characters).
The easiest way to pull it off would be for your hard-partiers to be lovable rogues of the dashing, rascally sort that gets a pass in fiction for plenty of ill-advised heterosexual adventures. There is, admittedly, a risk of lapsing into a kind of gaysploitation--if one glamorized the association of drugs and queerness, for instance, I imagine that would be as offensive as similar tactics in blaxploitation.
That said, blaxploitation is (and here I risk major racefail by opining on something I know little about) especially problematic because one audiences "celebrate" aspects of black life that aren't necessarily chosen by black people as good in themselves, but rather a consequence of the poverty and systematic discrimination that many black people suffer. I'm not aware of similar issues with gay stereotypes (though I'm sure they exist). To the extent that, say, gay men really do become designers and hardressers, for instance, (I assume much less than the stereotypical, but more than the general population), it's not because they were historically forced out of other industries.
One thing to remember about QaF is that it is written from within a gay perspective for a gay audience to celebrate (a certain aspect of) gay life. I think that's an important distinction from the way that other shows appropriated images of black or gay people.
If anything, one of the problems I had with the British QaF was that it just didn't engage with homophobia - all of the homophobes were cardboard cut-outs with transparently bigoted views. But possibly it's because the aim was to create a fantasy world into which those kind of views couldn't get admittance.
I'm not sure I found the characters destructive and unlikable, though it's hard to tell how much that applies to the American version. I think the fact that it wasn't concerned to pander to homophobes made it defiant and unapologetic, which perhaps means there isn't much of a "way in" if you disapprove of certain aspects of what's going on (e.g. drug-taking).
Switch the pronouns, and that's a pretty accurate description of QAF. Which is my main issue with it- even leaving out the stereotypes, it's a dreadful portrayal of gay men and their lives. That, and there's nothing to balance the characters who act in extremely destructive ways (BRIAN); there isn't anyone who manages to have any kind of stable life, except maybe Michael. And without any stable characters, it kind of fails on the representation front.
Not to put words in anybody's mouth or anything but I think that's Andy's point - it's probably a terrible portrayal of gay men and their lives to a bisexual woman but that judgement comes from being *way outside* the target audience.
Feel free to put words in my mouth! You generally manage to say what I want to say far more eloquently and less pompously.
I guess QaF is just not trying to *justify* the type of lifestyle it portrays to people for whom that justification might not be obvious - it takes the fact of the existence of a certain kind of gay lifestyle as a starting point, as a world in which certain behaviours and assumptions are naturalised. It isn't making an argument for those assumptions but presenting a confident picture of that world to assert an identity.
Of course, I haven't seen the American version of QaF, so all I have to go on is what you said in your article. I'm not really sure how much more I can say that isn't vacuously hypothetical!
Very true, and I do freely admit to coming to the show with some- privilege, I guess I'd call it?- since I'm not actually a gay man. It just feels kind of uncomfortable for a show what purports to be a representation of gay men and their lives to have those lives be frequently messed up. It's sort of like what I feel (to a far greater extent, seeing as how QAF is fictional and dosn't try to claim otherwise) about Tila Tequila. But I am sorry if I've offended anyone.
I guess there are similar issues with The L Word - in that a show that's supposed to be about the lives of gay women, you think they'd be less PSYCHO about everything.
Interestingly, I really don't remember drugs featuring to any significant extent in the British version. Now let's bear in mind it's been, what, at least ten years since I watched it, so there may have been drugs, but the fact that I've completely forgotten any such element suggests to me that I didn't register drug-use as an important part of their portrayal of the gay 'scene' in Manchester in the late '90s.
I also don't remember the lesbian couple breaking up; but on the other hand they were, as in the US series, utterly peripheral and so it's quite possible that they did and I just don't remember because it didn't matter to the plot. Nor, though perhaps for just the same reason, do I really remember one being noticeably more masculine than the other. But I do have a sort of recollection that one of the two was portrayed as a very stable and down-to-earth character who disapproved of Brian's (if that was his name in the British version also - at any rate the one played by the dark-haired chap who later played the Irish politician in The wire) behaviour.
I definitely don't remember Justin and Daphne (again I can't remember whether the names were the same in the British version) sleeping together, and I'll go so far as to say that I'm pretty sure that didn't happen. That just sounds bizarre.
My recollection of the end of the series (er, spoilers, if we haven't already passed that stage long ago) is that Brian is eventually persuaded that his relationship with Justin isn't healthy and redeems himself a bit by deliberately showing himself to Justin as a bit pathetic and past-it, which empowers Justin to get over him and make his own way as a more self-confident 'out' young gay man. I don't really know whether that's a good message or not. In a way it's a bit of a cop-out: it does acknowledge their relationship as problematic, but it also shows it as a positive thing in as much as it ends in Brian becoming a better person and Justin being empowered. Hmm.
Stuart (Brian in the American version) isn't in a relationship with Nathan (Justin) at the end, but Nathan has a crush on Stuart that's holding him back, so in a weirdly altruistic act he finally agrees to sleep with Nathan and pretends to be pathetic and past-it.
Weird fact: Stuart (Justin) is played by Aidan Gillen, a.k.a. Tommy Carcetti in The Wire!
I'm pretty sure the British and American shows veer off from each other quite a bit. There might be some plot lines in the first season/series that match up, but like the American version of The Office, it becomes its own show after that. Brian and Justin's relationship is not really treated the same, it sounds like.
Gosh, no. There's an old phrase from Northern England, originating before the 'gay' connotation of 'queer', that runs 'There's nowt as queer as folk' ('There's nothing as strange as people', i.e. 'People are strange'). It's the sort of thing you'd say at the end of a gossipy conversation about your odd friends or neighbours.
My school-friends and I used to call the TV series 'Half a Yorkshire phrase'. I dare say we thought that was rather witty, but I guess really we were embarrassed to say 'queer' frequently in conversation when we chatted about each weeks' episode.
Haha, yeah, so whoever told me that was majorly confused. Though apparently "Queer as Fuck" (according to the internets) was the original idea for a title to the show so maybe that's where the confusion came from.
Sorry, I reposted that comment to edit it...
The Stuart/Nathan line definitely ended differently. The ending of Brian is one of the oddest things I could imagine. He basically seemed to have gotten to the point where he was ready to bow out gracefully and then his friends convinced him that no, he could be Brian forever! Except that of course he couldn't. So it was like it ended with him becoming pathetic because of peer pressure. Very bizarre.
The entire series is on 4oD for anyone else who wishes to procrastinate!
I didn't mean to suggest your criticisms were inappropriate or invalid, or anything like that.
Oh, I didn't think you were- I just figured that talking about Why This Is Bad when the show isn't aimed at me/my demographic could potentially annoy someone.
Re: Brian and Justin. They do eventually end up together, no? As I recall (from spoilers, as I haven't gotten to season five yet) they decide not to get married, but to stay together as a couple.
What on earth do people in North America make of the title?
Honestly, I'm not sure. Most people probably figure that the point of the title is to have "queer" in there and just leave it at that.
one of the two was portrayed as a very stable and down-to-earth character who disapproved of Brian's behaviour.
Yep, that's Melanie. The butch/femme dynamic between them is relatively subtle- they haven't got one of them as a drag king or anything- but Melanie's got short hair and dresses sensibly while Lindsey had long hair, and is a bit dressier.
******Spoilers********
Epsiode 1: Stuart takes "ecstasy" and it is spiked. He wrecks his flat (to comic effect admittedly).
Episode 3: Stuart and Vince take coke. Phil takes coke and dies.
Episode 4: Phil's mother delivers stinging comments about drug use in the gay community at his funeral.
I think that gives a rather fair portrayal of the consequences of drug use without being too preachy or didactic, and without condemning the people who use it (while still being critical). I don't know how this compares to the US series.
Maybe I'm just completely tasteless and missing the point but I actually think the portrayal of the sex and the relationship (such as it is) is pretty balanced between the positive and the negative. I see it neither has overly fantastic, nor overly condemnatory if that makes sense - I mean, yes, there's an element of fantasy there but it's largely the fantasy of the two involved parties - Stuart gets off on it because it helps him re-affirm both his youth and transgressiveness, especially after the birth of his son (notice he only gets 'properly' into Justin after he learns his age) - and for Nathan you *bet* it's a fantasy - he loses his virginity to a hot, 'sophistcated' older man. Even the dropping him off at school sequence feeds into this - it's still part of the joint fantasy.
I know they are, to an extent, exploiting each other but that mutuality, to me, it what de-squicks it.