According to Salon, Hollywood’s not gay enough. Although entertainment TV has plenty of gay themes and characters, some are now demanding movies toe the line.
“Why can’t movies do as well as TV when it comes to LGBT characters?” Salon’s Scott Timberg lamented on June 29, just three days after the Supreme Court declared marriage (and the 14th Amendment) meaningless. Well, there’s always one more thing to complain about.
This appalling deficit of sexual minority characters on the big screen, Timberg continued, exists “despite the fact that the nation as a whole has become more progressive on issues of sexuality,” and “Hollywood is supposedly, erm, ‘liberal.’”
Timberg pointed out that although many movie executives give “lip service” to the LGBT movement, many of those “holding the real power in Hollywood are gutless weasels.” Referencing a Variety piece, Timberg wrote that movie moguls resist including LGBT characters for financial reasons. Because they might alienate a segment of the audience or they are afraid of trying something new, executives don’t bother to experiment.
“Small-mindedness,” Timberg solemnly opined, “is allowing an important part of the American experience to be overlooked.” Indeed, as one Washington Post reporter put it, “The reason that legitimate media outlets routinely cover gays is because it is the civil rights issue of our time.” Why can’t Hollywood step up its game?
Timberg quoted GLAAD president Sarah Ellis as support. “The film industry,” she said, “must improve its track record on diverse representations if it is to stay relevant to a wide audience.” Yes, it must catch up to TV, which, according to Ellis, has evolved “to more accurately reflect its audience and our culture.”
“Accurately?” Not so much. But if movies want to become as focused on LGBT themes as the small screen, practically every movie is going to need a visibly gay character.
Just so we don’t think he’s unreasonable, Timberg allows that “it’s not as if every movie needs to have a gay subplot or a visibly gay character.” (Big of him, no?) “But,” he concluded, “given the huge number of films Hollywood churns out every year, the movie industry reminds us just how irrelevant and out of touch it’s getting.”
After all, making films for the tastes of 2.3 percent of the population is a sure-fire formula for relevance.
