Popular Culture Review Vol. 13, No. 1, January 2002 | Page 32

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Popular Culture Review

that the greatest inroads of late have been made by straight women sympathetic to
gay rights, by gay women themselves, and by men masquerading as women
(witness, respectively, Roseanne, Melissa Ethridge, and the films Mrs. Doubtfire,
The Birdcage and To Wong Foo). Mainstream images of gay men who are not drag
queens or of successful gay male relationships are still rare. Most recently, the
method of handling homophobia in the popular media has been to pair gay men
with straight women, thus offering visibility in a “safe” manner, since pairing a
gay male with a straight female effectively erases the male’s homosexuality. The
formula was very successfully employed in My Best Friend's Wedding (1997),
which paired Rupert Everett with Julia Roberts, and then repeated with similar
levels of success in the films As Good As It Gets (1997), The Object o f My Affection
(1998), and The Opposite ofSex{\99%). More significantly, this formula was also
used as a premise for the new NBC sitcom Will c&Grace, which has two gay male
characters, one of them in a lead role. Considering what happened with Ellen only
a year previous, it seems a bit surprising that NBC would risk losing both advertisers
and viewers by placing an openly gay character in a lead role. It also seems surprising
that Will & Grace did not meet with the same harsh criticisms as Ellen nor ignite
another national debate over homosexuality. But upon closer inspection, it becomes
clear why and how this is the case. Although Will and Grace have a platonic
relationship and live together only as roommates, their living arrangement provides
a pretense of heterosexuality. Not surprisingly, members of an NBC-sponsored
focus group who watched the series pilot had no idea that Will was gay until told
that he was (Jacobs [1998] 23). In this sense. Will and Grace are an idealized
couple, free of the pains associated with a (hetero)sexual relationship and benign
enough to appeal to the largest demographic. In short, NBC has taken an approach
that packages gay men in a non-threatening—and thereby still lucrative—way for
middle America. Thus it is that the praise for the increased representation and
apparent attitude of acceptance needs to be tempered by an acknowledgment of
the still sad state of affairs for gay men and women. In response to Entertainment
Weekly's glowing portrayal of the gay 90s, one must stop and ask “What is so gay
about the 90s?” Indeed, we have recently witnessed the passage of the Defense of
Marriage Act; heterosexuality still dominates, and the pressure to remain closeted
is still strong; many gay men and women a re still fearful of coming out to family,
friends, and coworkers; gay bashing and hate crimes continue unabated in many
US cities; and negative and regressive images still abound.

Oppositional Politics
Perhaps in response to such a cultural climate. The Simpsons has become,
in recent years, more openly political regarding homosexuality. The show clearly
has a leftist political vision, but it regularly presents and juxtaposes both liberal