Modern Family: Conservative Family Values

The show is a significant one for more reasons than simply audience numbers and critical acclaim. Created by Steven Levitan and Christopher Lloyd, the team behind Frasier, it’s a show that is pushing television boundaries and, in its own quiet way, changing political viewpoints. Right wing conservatives, including Mitt Romney and his wife, are said to be fans and, in a recent survey, Republicans ranked the show third in a list of their top 15 shows, while Democrats didn’t rank it at all. All rather surprising, given the inclusion of a gay couple with a baby as one of the family units.

“This is probably a little overwrought, but I do actually think the writers are making the world a better place,” Burrell says earnestly. “It’s one of my favourite things about the show. I love it when I talk to conservatives and they’re describing all three couples, and they never mention that one of them is gay. That’s the brilliance of the writing. In a completely unaggressive, apolitical way, they are showing this couple as completely normal dealing with ordinary stuff. The banality of it is the most revolutionary thing.

“I think if you turned around and asked that same conservative person how they felt about gay marriage, that probably hasn’t changed for them, but the seed has been planted none the less. It’s progress and it’s the coolest thing.”

Daily Telegraph interview with Ty Burrell, who plays 'cool dad', Phil Dunphy - and won an Emmy for it last night.

Have I got this right? A TV show that stars a heteronormative gay couple - 'married with child', clearly defined 'him and her' roles - is more popular with American Conservatives than Liberals? 

You amaze me!!

PS Modern Family won its fifth consecutive Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series yesterday.

And The Normal Heart won the Emmy Award for Best Televsion Movie, somewhat predictably.

PPS Half a decade of Modern Family's upper-class fantasies, Mic.

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.

The Normal Heart: Kramer Vs Streisand

His [Larry Kramer's] efforts to get a movie made of “The Normal Heart” were delayed by jousting with Barbra Streisand, who had the film rights for years. He admitted to demanding “a lot of money” and that the story be told his way. Ms. Streisand has said she couldn’t raise the money; in Mr. Kramer’s telling, she also expressed discomfort about the subject of gay sex.

“I said, ‘I really think it’s important that after eons of watching men and women make love in the movies, it’s time to see two men do so,’ ” he said. “I bought her a book of very beautiful art pictures of two men making love, and she found it very distasteful.” In response, Ms. Streisand released a statement saying her intention for the movie was “to promote the idea of everyone’s right to love. Gay or straight!”

“Larry was at the forefront of this battle and, God love him, he’s still fighting,” she said. “But there’s no need to fight me by misrepresenting my feelings. As a filmmaker, I have always looked for new and exciting ways to do love scenes, whether they’re about heterosexuals or homosexuals. It’s a matter of taste, not gender.”

Referring to the gay couple at the center of “The Normal Heart,” she added: “I was trying to reach a large audience, and I wanted them to root for these two men to get married.”

Mr. Murphy initially used his own money to buy the rights, Mr. Kramer said, “which shows how much he wanted to do this, and how tacky it sort of is that Barbra never would think of something like that.”

New York Times.

The famously curmudgeonly Mr Kramer, there.

Fagburn wouldn't be surprised if his account is a complete distortion. 

The Normal Heart airs in the US on HBO Sunday.

The Normal Heart: Beats At Last

Here's the full trailer for HBO's adaptation of Larry Kramer's play The Normal Heart
Directed by Ryan Murphy of the rather different Glee fame, and starring Mark Ruffalo, Matt Bomer, Jim Parsons and Julia Roberts, it airs on May 25th in the US.
Awards ceremonies here we come!

• And here's a very thorough article from Hollywood Reporter on the 30-year saga to get the movie made.

An Open Letter To Larry Kramer: Shut The Fuck Up

Dear Mr. Kramer,

First off, let me personally and sincerely thank you for your art, activism, and anger. I want to congratulate you and everyone involved with A Normal Heart on its success and your much-deserved Broadway run. As a young high school student from Wyoming, I used a monologue from A Normal Heart for college scholarship auditions. The scholarship I received from Whitman College allowed me to get the hell out of Wyoming in 2000. In more ways than one, your life’s work has without a doubt saved my life. Thank you for that.

With that being said, I respectfully ask you to shut the fuck up about the tragedy of my generation. I have listened to your speeches, essays, and interviews over the last decade and while I agree with so much of what you say about the joy of being gay, about the hatred that exists for people of difference, about the nature of our oppression, I cannot sit idly by as you continue to ignore my generation’s contribution to the history of LGBTQ folks...

J Ricky Price writes an open letter to Uncle Larry in The New Gay.
Here's the recent Salon interview with Kramer it was written in response to - though "It's not as good as the olden gays" is a long-running riff from Kramer, who often comes across as a terrible snob.
It was announced today that the Broadway revival of Larry Kramer's Aids play, The Normal Heart, has received five Tony Award nominations.