I hate gay people.Let me correct that: I hate Gay People. You know, the type who don’t look before they leap into outrage, shock, and righteous indignity at some pariah before proceeding to feast their egos on the crucifixion of the Homophobe du Jour.
For those of you who aren’t following the latest installment of Pop Culture Egos at War, here’s the Skinny Minnie. Newsweek writer Ramin Setoodeh wrote a piece about how gay actors do not play convincing straight characters. Promptly, the creators of Glee, Kristin Chenoweth, and every freakin’ writer at Entertainment Weekly freaked the hell out and threw every piece of mud they could muster. All in the name of tolerance.
The piece itself raises some interesting points. I haven’t seen Promises, Promises and would probably rather jump off the Empire State Building while singing “Defying Gravity” than watch Glee*, but I can definitely understand how Sean Hayes playing straight may be a stretch and how Jonathan Groff’s heterosexual passability may not have the same power under the cold, harsh light of television cameras than it has in the large open theater. There are indeed performances of gay-playing-straight(such as Farley Granger trying to pass in Strangers on a Train) which seem awkward.
*[EDIT: I did watch an episode after writing this entry. Dear God, it was worse than I ever could have thought. And actually quite disturbing in its pandering to its gay audience.]
Furthermore, we cannot deny that actors’ personal lives sometimes do inevitably enter our minds when watching a movie. I thought Rock Hudson was mostly very strong in All That Heaven Allows, but must admit I snickered when Jane Wyman asks if he likes girls or something along those lines. Another Sirk film, Imitation of Life, plays off a scandal in which the star Lana Turner had just been involved. Peter Bogdonavich’s maligned masterpiece They All Laughed seeks to destroy the lines between actor and character and uses current events from the actors' lives to inform the story. Even Entertainment Weekly, the Gaston (or at least the Lefou) of this angry mob, has made jokes about why Ellen’s 90s film, Mr. Wrong, is indeed so wrong.
The natural response is that acting is all about pretending to be someone you are not. True. Straight actors can play gay characters, gay actors can play straight
characters, modern actors can play British accented members of the Roman Empire, skinny actors can put on fat suits, old actors can be creepily deaged via CGI, actors in the thirties can play high school students, and Robert Downey Jr. can play himself were he to own robot armor. Though, in a short (yay word limit!) piece I wrote for the Tufts Daily, I began to investigate the general anxiety one can have around play-acting if one thinks too hard. The locus of this anxiety, of course, is blackface. Without rehashing my complete argument, I will say that the only time we freeze and say “NO!” is when crossing racial lines. Like Green Lantern Corps Members, our illogical weakness is a color. Even if the portrayal were realistic, there would be (hell, there was with RDJ in Tropic Thunder) controversy over the choice. Both now and then I made the argument not to a definite end, but just as food for thought. Maybe the Newsweek writer should have framed his as that as well, though I feel the backlash would be similar. I evoke it now to show that there are limits to how comfortable we feel pretending. So, while unpleasant and certainly unpopular, the point of the article is at least worth considering. It may not be inclusive of every gay actor, but some certainly should not try to play straight. Such attempts are as awkward as when a gorgeous female tries to pass for average or ugly in a movie or an American simply cannot do a proper English accent to save his life. Yes, both of these are also conventions of Hollywood, but I never said I supported them either. I agree that if one goes, they all should go, and please make them all go away. Would you buy Carey Mulligan playing King Lear in a non-modern-twist adaptation? Of course not. Sometimes who you are does impede your option of roles.
To be fair, the options of roles for a queeny gay man or a butch lesbian are scant. Maybe the creators of Glee and Kristin
Chenoweth should attack bigger problems such as that instead of using this opportunity to grab attention for themselves and their show. Instead of using this issue to bring about a real difference, they tell the fans (many of them gay theater people) exactly what they want to hear (“Homophobia is bad!” “You can play any role you want!”) to continue garnering support and iTunes sales. But what about the fact that most gay actors have to play straight roles since there are significantly more straight roles out there? Why not demand more gay roles? Or would that anger the real powers-that-be too much? It's much easier to pick on a journalist who is probably making about 30 grand a year. Or is the larger issue that a gay actor is a “gay actor” while a straight actor is just an “actor?” Gay is still the weird in society. A show with all gay characters (or even three out of over ten characters like Brothers & Sisters) is a gay show, but no one would ever complain that Friendsis a straight show (or a white show, since this issue is also present in race). Instead of trying to ignore that and hush it all under the rug, should this issue be confronted (which seemed the point of the Newsweek article)?
Or should we all just be like Neil Patrick Harris?
In a way, Neil Patrick Harris is the worst thing to ever happen to the gay community.* He’s a modern-day castrati. Don't believe me? Let’s all pause for a minute and try to picture Neil Patrick Harris sucking a cock.
[*Well, after Prop 8, the Holocaust, electroshock therapy and get-straight camps, Iran's death penalty, Leviticus, that annoying line in 300 where Leonidas dismisses the Athenians as “boy-lovers” when the macho Spartans were actually more into pederasty, the Victorian Age, etc.]
I can’t do it either. And I can think of a lot of people sucking cocks. Cary Grant. Ryan Reynolds. Woody from Toy Story 1-3. But I can’t imagine Neil Patrick Harris doing it. Anal sex? Uh-uh. Heck, I tried to google him kissing a man to at least put that image into my head and the most I could find was a chaste peck on his “boyfriend’s” cheek (if you ask me, that’s whatever you call a gay beard…goatee perhaps?). Why can I not match NPH with his sexuality? Because Neil Patrick Harris is the gay you can bring home to Mama, if Mama is a housewife living in a red state. He sings, he dances, but he won’t do nasty things like cum in or on a guy or shove his tongue down some man’s throat.
His continued insistence on (or perhaps requirement to) playing straight characters is a problem. In a need for acceptance and a career, he has forsaken his sexuality even after coming out. He will sing for you and dance for you, but you needn’t ever worry about seeing him locking lips with his boy-toy. He will perform with scantily clad girls in the introduction to the Oscars and it’s oh-so-charming because we needn’t worry about him humping them or even worse running into the audience to straddle Matt Damon or Peter Saarsgard. His gayness extends no further than his superior musical abilities; it has none of that nasty need for sexual gratification or intimacy. People can laugh at his antics on How I Met Your Mother and vote to deny gay people to right to marry and feel nothing wrong about it, because it’s not like Neil Patrick Harris is one of those types anyway.
Perhaps I'm being too hard on ol' Neily. Like I said, he had to enter this Faustian contract so that he can continue to play straight Barney on HIMYM. If anything, he illustrates more than anyone the point of the Newsweek article. Even when out, Harris is on a constant dash back into the closet so that he can have a career. He’s as closeted as an out gay man can be. And you can't truly hate the closetee; he's just a symptom of the problem.
And, even if offensive, the Newsweek article was pointing to a problem. It may not have been phrased the right way and an argument or two may have been a slight bit off, but instead of using it to propel us to true thought, the Gleeks and their gods have ducked, covered, thrown their fingers into their ears while singing "Lalala" in perfect pitch, and then gone about business as usual. After all, it's so much easier to label someone a homophobe in chorus than to delve into some dark and disturbing realities, isn't it? Of course, what can I expect from musical people?
