Breaking Down LGBT-Themed Oscar Nominations
With the Oscars almost upon us, the folks at farsite foreast, where Nate Silver’s statistical formulas are applied to the entertainment world, have broken down LGBT-related Oscar, SAG and Golden Globe wins and nominations from years past
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The Ultimate Gay TV Timeline
From mincing, high-pitched uncles and villainous cowards to debauched British aristocrats, high school lovers, and Real World gays, sodomites have come a long way since the dawn of television.
Check out our TV timeline: We start in 1967 and include clips, photos, and factoids to remind you how much things have changed in the past several decades. (Just be warned, it’s addictive!)
GLAAD Reveals “Where We Are On TV”
This morning GLAAD released their annual Where We Are On TV report, a review of scripted GLBT primetime characters in the upcoming 2012-2013 television season. After a decrease last year, the number of regular GLBT characters on broadcast networks has risen to the highest ever recorded, while the overall GLBT character count also increased on cable television.
“This year’s increase of LGBT characters on television reflects a cultural change in the way gay and lesbian people are seen in our society,” said GLAAD President Herndon Graddick. “More and more Americans have come to accept their GLBT family members, friends, coworkers, and peers, and as audiences tune into their favorite programs, they expect to see the same diversity of people they encounter in their daily lives.”
You can see the entire report here.
From Anderson Cooper to Frank Ocean, the Closet Door Opens - But Where are the Gay Movie Stars?
Are there no gay movie stars?
From Anderson Cooper to Jim Parsons, gay celebrities have been gently pushing open the closet door with shockingly little fanfare over the past year.
Their statements have been so understated that a recent piece in Entertainment Weekly on the new politics of being publicly gay noted, “What was impossible 60 years ago and dangerous 40 years ago and difficult 20 years ago is now becoming no big deal.”
That may be true, but there is one big exception.
In the nearly a decade since Tom Cruise won his second of two “I’m not gay” lawsuits in 2003, Hollywood movie stars remain uniformly heterosexual even as American society and public perceptions of sexuality have visibly changed.
Before the “Puppy”: Early Landmarks in Gay TV
It seems like you can’t swing a dead cat these days without hitting a gay character on American TV. From the gaggle of gays on Glee to the selection of “sisters” on Smash, gay characters are all over the airwaves. Even stodgy old CBS, which we’ve criticized in the past for its dearth of gay representation, is getting into the act with the upcoming Partners.
“The Puppy Episode” from the fourth season of Ellen is rightly considered a watershed moment for gay representation on U.S. television, but not everyone remembers what it was like before that turning point. Fifty years ago there was no such thing as a gay person on TV. For many of the years since, when gay people were included at all, it was as the butt of the joke, the sociopath or the victim. But even dating back to those very earliest days, there were occasional television episodes that set new standards (good and bad) for gay representation and in some instances changed our culture. Some of these episodes were leaps forward; others were harmful and dangerous. Some are more correctly thought of as reflections of the culture as it existed at the time. All are significant to the history of gay representation on American television.
Still, it’s a good idea to watch out for the type of humor we’re using, and whether we’re using it more to talk about gay sex than straight sex. The television network TLC recently pulled an episode of its popular Cake Boss reality series, before it aired, once it was revealed (to considerable public uproar) that the show planned to depict a transgender woman as the punch line to a prank setup. That decision came in time. But what if others don’t? And what of the messages we’re sending about gay love when we make a big deal out of same sex relationships on TV? On most networks, it’s still considered somewhat provocative to show two men kissing — less so, for some reason, for two women. But either way, episodes that feature same sex kissing often come with parental warnings, even when programs that feature the same level of passion between a man and a woman do not.
TRAILER: Pitch Perfect
A comedy set in the middle of a war between rival a cappella groups and centered on a rebellious girl who joins one of the groups as an escape from her unhappy life at school.
