This observation is perhaps more profound when compared with television or films portrayal of coming out in the past. A comparison could be to Dawsons Creek... When Jack is forced to come out of the closet by reciting a revealing poem in front of the class. The show from the 90's portrays a much more difficult time expressing ones sexuality. Is Glee sugar-coated or just moving with the times?
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Has anyone been watching Glee?! There is a character on the show named Kirk who is very androgynous looking and came out to his father on the last episode. His father said something like "I love you just as much as I always have, thank you for telling me." Kirk had said that he just realized that he could be whatever he wanted to be and so, his father should know that what he is is gay. Kirk also had a similar reaction from his friend at school who told him that people would accept him for who he is and he should not be scared of that. Not that Glee is necessarily a good barometer for societal opinion, I thought it was interesting how easy they made coming out for Kirk. There was little judgement from his peers and his parents, the only judgement was from Kirk himself.
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Let me prompt this comment by stating that I have not seen Glee. I did, however, do a bit of research on the internet about the character and the program. After reading the description of the character’s happy “coming out” story, I was not surprised when I found out that this program airs on FOX: a commercial broadcasting company.
ReplyDeleteWhile it is exciting to see an increase in the number of queer characters on television, the production apparatus of the commercial broadcasting system limits the ways in which queerness can be represented. Commercial broadcasting networks, such as FOX, rely heavily on advertising revenues to fund their programming; in order to avoid alienating audiences and advertisers, producers of commercial programs are forced to make representational concessions (Gray 138), which may be why the happy “coming out” story portrayed in Glee failed to probe the complications of being “out.”
In contrast to the commercial broadcasting system, private and speciality channels like Showtime and HBO receive much of their funding from subscription fees as opposed to advertising dollars (Gray 34). As a result, there is less of an economic incentive to make representational concessions in favour of the bottom-line. For example, The L Word, which aired on Show Time for six seasons, focused entirely on a multiplicity of women’s experiences within a fictional lesbian community in Los Angeles. Unlike many commercial broadcasting programs which tend to represent queerness within a token homosexual character, The L Word attempts to capture diversity by including trans, bisexual, and “questioning” characters, in addition to lesbian women both of colour and with a disability.
Although The L Word does has its own series of representational issues worthy of a entire blog post in itself, this show exemplifies the ways in which profit motives can influence the ways in which homosexual characters are represented in television.
Works Cited
Gray, Jonathan. Television Entertainment. New York: Routledge, 2008.