The Perils Of So-Called Straight Talk

This article offends me because I am a human being, a woman and a Christian. For example, there was a time when Jewish actors had to change their names because anti-Semites thought no Jew could convincingly play Gentile. Setoodeh even goes so far as to justify his knee-jerk homophobic reaction to gay actors by accepting and endorsing that ‘as viewers, we are molded by a society obsessed with dissecting sexuality, starting with the locker room torture in junior high school.’ Really? We want to maintain and proliferate the same kind of bullying that makes children cry and in some recent cases have even taken their own lives? That’s so sad, Newsweek!

And that’s the key here. Instead of examining his own assumptions or society’s expectations and prejudices surrounding gay men and anyone who challenges heterosexual norms, Setoodeh enshrines them as immutable fact. Chenoweth continued,

We’re actors first, whether we’re playing prostitutes, baseball players, or the Lion King. Audiences come to theater to go on a journey. It’s a character and it’s called acting, and I’d put Hayes and his brilliance up there with some of the greatest actors period. 
Lastly, as someone who’s been proudly advocating for equal rights and supporting GLBT causes for as long as I can remember, I know how much it means to young people struggling with their sexuality to see out & proud actors like Sean Hayes, Jonathan Groff, Neil Patrick Harris and Cynthia Nixon succeeding in their work without having to keep their sexuality a secret. No one needs to see a bigoted, factually inaccurate article that tells people who deviate from heterosexual norms that they can’t be open about who they are and still achieve their dreams.

Aaron Sorkin weighed in too:

I don’t think Setoodeh was being homophobic. Just wrong.

The problem doesn’t have anything to do with sexual preference. The problem has everything to do with the fact that we know too much about each other and we care too much about what we know. In one short decade we have been reconditioned to be entertained by the most private areas of other people’s lives.

This is convincing to some extent — who could not have been distracted, for example, by Angelina Jolie’s very Angelina Jolie-ness in A Mighty Heart, regardless of how good she was and how heartbreaking the story? That said, it’s willfully obtuse to act as if the scrutiny affects every actor in the same way, gay or straight.

Yesterday, Newsweek responded by saying, “We’d hoped to stir discussion of why there are still so few openly gay performers in Hollywood, but that message was overwhelmed by readers who thought we were being hurtful and small-minded in our assessment. When a story is so widely misinterpreted, it’s obvious we failed at making our point,” and hosting a discussion between Milk screenwriter Dustin Lance Black and GLAAD president Jarrett Barrios. As apologies go, it was rather “I’m sorry you’re offended.” But the respondents did their best to school the magazine.

Black disputed that Setoodeh’s sentiments reflected the public, even as he located them within a particular worldview of femininity and masculinity:

I’ll take it a step further, too- this idea of femininity and sexuality, which I think we also have to confront. I’m from the Mormon church-I’m not active anymore-but [in that church] heterosexual men are encouraged to be not stereotypically masculine. So a lot of Mormon people are often called very, very feminine, and people mistake them as gay….I don’t know this writer, but it felt like this writer had a lot of issues with femininity and heterosexuality, and the connections between masculinity, femininity and sexuality. It started getting blurred to me. The heterosexual people in America don’t seem to be having that problems with these performances, or seeing that, but this writer did. And to me it felt like it became more about this writer’s issues with sexuality and masculinity than it did the success of these performances.

Barrios said he thought that progress had actually been made on this front, that the American public was more open than ever to seeing gay performers in a variety of roles, especially on television. “The trend seems to be going in exactly the other direction from what this writer has asserted,” he said.

“But we’re not talking about leading men in big budget movies that are in fact the role models for so much of what goes on in Hollywood,” Newsweek culture editor Marc Peyser responded.

Black said that while actors like Neil Patrick Harris were making great strides, the agents and managers of Hollywood were helping maintain the status quo when it came to big budget leading men. Why? “Well, because they worry that their client will be outed and that will somehow hurt their career. They worry that articles like the one in Newsweek will say a gay person can’t play a straight role and people will believe it.”

In the end, Barrios said, “We can’t predict when it will happen but our job is to create an environment in which it can possibly happen.”

The assumption that airing your prejudices uncritically and as empirical fact is somehow brave straight talk — see Grace, Stephanie — is really the problem here. It provides a more intellectual patina to the same old shit, a more acceptable refuge for people, gay or straight, who want to see their laziest suppositions confirmed. None of which, to borrow Barrios’ words, creates an environment in which change can possibly happen.

Gay Rights Group Demands Apology From Newsweek [CBS News]
Kristin Chenoweth Attacks Newsweek Article On Openly Gay Actors
Straight Jacket [Newsweek]
Straight Talk, Continued [Newsweek]
Now That You Mention It, Rock Hudson Did Seem Gay [Huffington Post]

Earlier: Hollywood’s Gay Paradox: Ever Onscreen, Ever In The Closet