Hollywood’s Negative Portrayal of LGBT Characters

I’m working on a new book where the main characters take on new jobs at a brand new online LGBT media outlet. I’m not totally sure where the focus will lead me yet, but the LGBT media is a business just like all other media outlets and the bottom line is often about money. And rightly so. It’s also why I always support the gay media outlets even when I don’t always agree with them. I remember a time…in the 90s…when the only gay media sources were print newspapers you could pick up in a gay bar.

In doing research for the book, I found this article about Hollywood and gay characters I thought was interesting enough to share here on the blog.

“The lack of substantial LGBT characters in mainstream film, in addition to the outdated humour and stereotypes, suggests large Hollywood studios may be doing more harm than good when it comes to worldwide understanding of the LGBT community,” said Glaad CEO and president Sarah Kate Ellis. “These studios have the eyes and ears of millions of audience members and should reflect the true fabric of our society rather than feed into the hatred and prejudice against LGBT people too often seen around the globe.”

You can check out the rest of the article here.

RuPaul On Gay Cultural Appropriation

I think by now everyone reading this knows what cultural appropriation is in a general sense. I’ve even posted about it here on the blog, several times. I don’t like to get into it too often because so many people don’t even realize it’s happening, and it makes me sound like a whiny, shouty PC blogger. But this article, which is actually an interview at Vulture with RuPaul, is something I thought was worth sharing. 

What do you think of Lip Sync Battle and Jimmy Fallon?
 
Oh, I don’t think of it. It’s a poor ripoff of our show. Regular, straight pop culture has liberally lifted things from gay culture as long as I can remember. And that’s fine, because guess what? We have so much more where that comes from. Take it! That’s why [my new show] Gay for Play is such a fun thing, because we’ve taken the best of the gay sensibility and put it all in one place. And we’re showing these bitches how it’s really done. But it’s funny how that works, even in gay culture. There’s a certain “gay shame.” Gay people will accept a straight pop star over a gay pop star, or they will accept a straight version of a gay thing, because there’s still so much self-loathing, you know?

You can check out the rest here, and there’s a link to the full interview.

Grindr’s Twitter Firestorm Over VP Debate  

It looks as if Grindr let a gay comedian tweet on its account during the VP debate last night, and he set off a firestorm on twitter with a tweet about deportation.

The exercise started out innocently enough, with Branum making middle school jabs at both candidates, first by comparing Pence to “a cartoon turtle” and then by saying Tim Kaine is “1/4 bobblehead on his mother’s side.”

Then he tweeted this…

If Donald Trump gets to deport 16 million people, I want you to think how much hotness would be lost from your @Grindr screen. #VPDebate

That set off some serious replies, which were followed by a disclaimer. And it got even more intense. 

You can read the rest here. The comments are fascinating and I think highly reflective of the way a lot of people feel these days.

Twitter can be a rough place sometimes, where self-censorship is the only way to survive.