61 Frames Per Second by John Constantine Today in Hooksexup's videogame blog: Street Fighter. The movie. A new one. With that chick from that Superman show. Don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about!
The Remote Island by Bryan Christian Mad Men's January Jones struts her stuff in Vanity Fair. Plus: Damages returns, the latest Gossip Girl guest star and Donna Martin capitulates.
On Monday, May 17, the New York Post reported that a gay man was brutally attacked after he mistakenly entered a Chelsea club called Pure, a watering hole that he had frequented for "gay soirées," on "straight night." Pure, indeed. The Post's semantics aside — apparently straights have "nights" while gays throw "soirées," something to do with an unspoken homosexual alliance with those epicene French weasels — this incident could be the reverse pitch for
promotion
a brand new Fox reality TV special called Seriously,Dude, I'm Gay, scheduled to air June 7th. In this new contribution to what the Toronto Globe and Mail describes as "the burgeoning TV subgenre of gay-themed reality shows," two straight men infiltrate the gay community and try to pass as gay, sharing apartments with swishy roommates and attending, well, gay soirées. Hey, wait a minute, isn't that what homosexuals used to do in the straight world, except not really by choice? Something is seriously askew.
This isn't Fox's first foray into the murky world of identity politics. A previous reality series called Playing It Straight, in which a hard-bodied, large-breasted woman had to weed out the gays from amongst her fourteen hunky male suitors, raised the stakes of the gaydar games by awarding a huge sum of cash to the homosexual who could trick her into choosing him, leaving her with neither love nor money. Those damn sneaky fags! Both programs predictably claim in their press releases that their altruistic aim is to dispel stereotypes about homosexuals, but what really seems to be at work here is the assumption (hope?) that gays have specific, identifiable characteristics, habits and mannerisms that can be either imitated or detected by astute straight
Straights really do seem to covet what was previously thought to be the domain of gays.
observers. (Perhaps more easily identifiable are the characteristics, habits and mannerisms of reality TV show contestants, gay or straight: over-developed bodies, under-developed minds, service-industry backgrounds, and an unparalleled greed for money and fame.) Wouldn't it be nice, though, for a change, if each and every one of the contestants had a broad range of masculine and feminine traits and access to the full spectrum of their bisexual potential? But that would be bad television.
What may be most frightening about shows like Seriously, Dude, I'm Gay (besides the title) is that straights really do seem to covet what was previously thought to be the domain of gays taste, promiscuity, hygiene while the current predilection for gays is to want what straights have traditionally had monogamy, marriage, and children. The tables have turned with a vengeance.
The real culprit here, though, may be GLAAD, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, which has condemned the show without having seen it, as is their habit. After having micro-managed the popular image of homosexuals in the media to the point of pure blandness and mediocrity benevolent, kind, decorative, and maybe just a tad over-sexed one almost welcomes the return of over-the-top sissy stereotypes, the more murderous and violent the better. After all, one has to defend oneself on straight night. Bruce LaBrucen°
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