Popular Culture Review Vol. 13, No. 1, January 2002 | Page 30

26 Popular Culture Review which these struggles were incorporated into his art. The creators of The Simpsons offer what I think is a perfect parallel for the relationship between Smithers and Bums by combining Williams’ two most notable male characters and their defining characteristics: the suppressed homosexual desire o f Brick and desperate dependence of Stanley. I also believe that this scene is significant in that it provides viewers an allusion to past experience, not fantasy. We are meant to read this scene literally, as one of Smithers’ memories; it is, in effect, a moment from Smithers’ ‘Teal” life. I think it important to keep in mind that these overt references to Smithers’ sexuality did not appear on the show until rather recently. We must remember that The Simpsons first appeared when Ronald Reagan was still in the White House, and it became the phenomenon it is now during the Bush administration. Thus, the show premiered on the heels of a highly conservative decade, one in which much of the ground made by various political movements in the 1960s and 1970s was lost. This is particularly relevant when we consider the current gay representation on television. Today, despite the demise of Ellen, there seems to be a widespread faith in the media’s liberalism, and gay characters have lately appeared on television with great frequency. Fred Fejes argues that such visibility is due to the advancements made over the past twenty years by gay activists, whose political organization led to demands for increased and more accurate representation (400). However, in the same essay, which was published in 1993, Fejes also avers that homosexuality remains as a subtext on television, that gay characters exist on the periphery, and that “A regular network program with a gay or lesbian main character is far in the future” (402). Queer TV Have things changed so dramatically in a scant few years? In October of 1996, Entertainment Weekly published yet another cover story on “Gay TV,” this time in direct response to the “controversy” surrounding Ellen and the sexuality of the main character, played by comedian Ellen DeGeneres. As is well known, there had been much talk at the time about her character coming out as a lesbian in the season finale, talk that stemmed in part from speculation about DeGeneres herself in the tabloids. By the second week of the season, DeGeneres made herself visible on various daytime and nighttime talk shows discussing the issue. Notably, she appeared on The Rosie O'Donnell Show, where the two women joked at length about Ellen’s character being “Lebanese.” O f course, there had been similar speculation in the media about the sexual orientation of O ’Donnell herself, thus adding an interesting double layer to the joke. The significant point, however, is that they made light of the issue, wanting to admit it without admitting it. This approach is funny, but it is also safe. The question thus remained: was America