TV & Film: Positive Prejudice

Psychologists at Anglia Ruskin University are exploring the issues around “positive prejudice” towards gay men in the UK.
Due to popular TV shows Sex and the City and Will & Grace, and movies such as My Best Friend’s Wedding, the common stereotype of gay men is that they are stylish, witty, and emotionally available.
Academics believe even seemingly positive stereotypes have the potential to be damaging as they paint gay men as one dimensional figures and prevent people from seeing someone’s true personality. 
The study is being led by Ashley Brooks, a PhD student at Anglia Ruskin University under the supervision of Dr Daragh McDermott, Principal Lecturer in Social Psychology.

Brooks said:

“We commonly see the ‘gay best friend’ being played out in popular media, and this is also becoming increasingly prevalent in real life interactions between heterosexuals and gay men.
“Because these attitudes appear positive on the face of it, they gain widespread acceptance and remain unchallenged despite their potential to cause long-term damage.”

The research team are aiming to survey 1,000 people in order to measure the extent of these attitudes, which may be expressed in a positive way but may transmit stereotypical or negative messages.

Dr McDermott said:

“On the face of it, stereotypes associated with gay men, such as being fashionable or witty, appear positive and may even hold some truth to them.  
“However, by their very nature these stereotypes pigeonhole what it means to be gay and lead to unrealistic expectations of how gay men are expected to behave."...

Anglia Ruskin University. 

Who knew??! etc etc.

PS Slightly smug 'My fantastic life!' virtue signalling Independent Voices piece.

PPS And a quite good Guardian piece by Andrew McMillan (that's actually about the report). Also see Joe Stone on TV's changing representation of gay men, from Will & Grace to Empire.

Hollywood: Hooray For What?

'Personally I think the depiction of gay men in Hollywood is horrible...

'In Dallas Buyers' Club and Philadelphia there's there's this idea of a straight saviour. In both cases the lead character is not only a straight man but a homophobic straight man who saves the day and saves gay men.

'There are two things that really bother me about it; the first is that when the Aids crisis started gay men didn't really get much help from the straight community, and so they had to mobilise themselves and that is not honoured by those films. 

'And the second is that the characters are not just straight they're homophobic, and so there's an assumption on the part of the filmmakers that viewers need a homophobic character as a point of entry and I don't think that's true anymore.

'And of course there are other narratives - I mean now HBO made The Normal Heart, which is a great counter-narrative to those. So there is great stuff being done, but when you look at it on the whole, especially in feature films, I think it's a very sad depiction of gay culture.'

Screenwriter Abdi Nazemian talking to HuffPost Live.

Nazeiman first wrote about this last year in an essay for Hollywood Journal, Save Me, Straight Man.

Update: The Virtual Closet, Abdi's Op-Ed for The Advocate on the headless torsos of Grindr, and our 'online dating' shame/shaming.

Film News: It's No Biggie

This weekend sees the UK release of A Magnificent Haunting, the latest film by Italian-based Turkish-born director Ferzan Ozpetek. The publicity material from its distributor, Peccadillo, describes how its lead character, Pietro, encounters ghostly apparitions after moving into a new apartment and refers to the story as a "fantastical comedy that explores themes of love, friendship, and mortality". It makes no mention of the fact that Pietro is gay.
"It's just not that important, really," says Tom Abell, chairman of Peccadillo Pictures. "The sexuality of the main character is incidental to the story. Stranger By the Lake [which Peccadillo will release in the UK next year] is very much a gay film, whereas A Magnificent Haunting really isn't."
Whether a film's publicity campaign should explicitly refer to a leading character's homosexuality may seem a subtle question, but it represents a deeper point: asking whether advertising should emphasise difference or assume commonality is another way of asking whether gay people are still considered "other"...

There are even hints in the right direction in Hollywood's output. Gay characters still tend to be swishy clowns when they're best friends, preening queens when they're villains (Javier Bardem in Skyfall) or sainted martyrs on the rare occasions that they're the lead (presumably Cumberbatch as Turing). But there are some impressively so-what characterisations too, including Kieran Culkin's clued-up roommate in Scott Pilgrim Vs The World, Tom Wilkinson's retired judge in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and the dumb-jock brother in animated movie Paranorman. Lee Daniels has even declared his ambition to create a gay action-hero couple whose sexuality would be revealed at the film's end. (Personally I'm not sure how progressive it would be to watch a couple of closet-cases kick ass, but I suppose we'll have to see.)...

Liked this piece by Ben Walters for The Guardian.
Fagburn particularly liked the phrase "impressively so-what".

PS The Guardian online has also run this historical overview of British drama queens by Thomas Hescott, director of The Act and Tory Boyz.
Gay theatre is at a crossroads, apparently.

Fagburn Fillum Club: Rambo, But Gay!

"Gay subtext always makes every movie better" - Quentin Tarantino.

Have a wonderful and super masc weekend, dudes!

Thought For The Day: Hooray For Hollywood!

"This is the year of the gays in entertainment, in media in general, and frankly with the White House. We are being forced a pro-gay agenda [that exclaims] We must convert. They don't even want tolerance; they won't accept it -- and they're going to force it. People in Hollywood don't know Christianity, they don't know traditional values, they don't know faith, they don't know family. They know depravity, debauchery, perversion - that's what they're good at. So that's what they're trying to force the American public to accept and embrace."

US Media Research Center loon Dan Gainor, speaking to OneNewsNow.
Via Joe My God. 
Remember the good old days when it was "Jews have taken over Hollywood"?

Oscars Night: And The Winners Weren't...

To celebrate some big important film awards thingy going on tonight, The Advocate draws up a shortlist of some of "the scariest and darkest portrayals of LGBT life" from the talkies.
Not that there's anything with that etc.
Fagburn loves a lot of these fillums - The Killing Of Sister George and The Boys In The Band especially.
And what no Cruising or Nighthawks?
We was robbed!

Update: Congratulations to Christopher Plummer on winning Best Supporting Actor for Beginners.
Though a straight actor playing gay often proves to be OSCAR GOLD.
So brave etc...