When We Went Gay
MORE
The Observatory
Ten years ago, CHARLES KAISER wrote The Gay Metropolis, the landmark portrait of 20th-century New York viewed through the eyes of gay New Yorkers. A lot has changed since then, from the murder of a Wyoming teenager named Matthew Shepard that reanimated the gay political movement, to the Supreme Court decision that is the most important event in the gay-rights struggle since the Stonewall riots in 1969. Later this month, Grove Press will publish a 10th-anniversary edition of the book. This article is adapted from the new afterword, in which Mr. Kaiser guides us through the amazing changes in gay life at the dawn of the new millennium.
At the dawn of the 21st century, gay life’s imprint on everyday life exploded as America embraced everything from the first gay mega-hit in prime-time television to the first gay Hollywood movie to capture universal acclaim—and collect $178 million at the box office.
When Will and Grace debuted in 1998, there was no indication that it might change the cultural landscape. As America’s first almost completely gay sitcom, it got off to a slow start, despite the presence of two straight women as two of the main characters. Even office workers in hip Manhattan were a little nervous about it: What would people think if they started to laugh at those jokes in front of the water cooler? But the quality of the humor gradually won them over. Beginning with its third season, the program attracted more than 17 million viewers every week, and it became the second-highest-rated sitcom among young adults for five years in a row. With the even more popular (and equally gay-friendly) Friends as its lead-in on Thursday nights, Will and Grace gradually appropriated a larger space in American pop culture than anything gay ever had before. Some critics carped that its characters were clichés, but many more decided that the show’s sharp writing placed it within the pantheon of great American sitcoms.
The success of Will and Grace opened the market up to all kinds of gay entertainment; it also gave a few celebrities the courage to finally proclaim who they really were. In 2002, Rosie O’Donnell confirmed one of the worst-kept secrets in show business when her autobiography revealed that she was a lesbian. Ellen DeGeneres had made the same revelation about herself on her own show, Ellen, five years earlier, but the mini-media event she created around her announcement (which included the cover of Time) was not enough to prevent the cancellation of her sitcom a year later. But her TV career began to take off again after she hosted the Emmy Awards following the attacks of 9/11.
She reminded the audience that they were supposed to go on with their lives as usual, because to do otherwise “is to let the terrorists win—and really, what would upset the Taliban more than a gay woman wearing a suit in front of a room full of Jews?” (Imagine someone saying that in prime time, 30 years ago.)
Will and Grace didn’t just change the landscape of American TV—by the end of its original run it had also been broadcast in more than 30 other countries, including France, Germany, Croatia, Pakistan, Sweden and Bosnia and Herzegovina. But just five months after its American debut, a new show started across the Atlantic which made Will and Grace look almost as tame as The Love Boat.
Created by veteran English television writer Russell T. Davies, Queer As Folk inspired a tsunami of criticism when it burst out from Britain’s Channel Four in 1999 with an opening episode which showed a 29-year-old man making very explicit love to a beautiful 15-year-old boy. The same installment featured the same 29-year-old at the birth of his son to a lesbian friend. After the 29-year-old bragged about his teenage conquest in front of the mother of his child, a woman friend observed: “So: You’ve both had a child this evening!” Next Page >
Ten years ago, I found "The Gay Metropolis" superficial in the extreme, endlessly obsessed about the famous. Leonard Bernstein's dalliances covered in exhausting detail.
George Chauncey's "Gay New York"- now THAT was a landmark, sociologically vast in scope, superb scholarship of what gay life was , at every social strata, meticulously researched.
In comparison, I thought "Gay Metropolis" was gossipy and shallow, utterly unconcerned with gay life as lived by poor non-celebrities.
And now, this article, where Will & Grace, Queer Eye and Brokeback are seen as civil rights triumphs, rather than the mere entertainments of varying quality they are.
As a gay man, I find it distressing to be "represented" by a writer who thinks "Queer Eye's" minstrelsy is a significant cultural achievement. Gays seem to be more accepted, especially in the precincts of Manhattan writers, but I do think such acceptance is at the moment, an inch deep.
Oh, and if LOGO tv is representing gays with its mediocre, pandering programming and utter lameness, can i please hand in my gay card now?
In response to the comment by "Deschanel," I just want to point out that nowhere in Charles Kaiser's extraordinary "The Gay Metropolis," does he refer to "Will & Grace" or "Bareback, I mean, Brokeback Mountain" as "civil rights triumphs." Kaiser is keenly aware what constitutes a real civil rights triumph, but he is equally aware of how important it can be for gay culture to penetrate, so to speak, the borders of the mainstream. And while it's true that he describes Leornard Bernstein's fascinating dalliances with boys, the vast majority of his book, just published in a new edition with a terrific new afterword handsomely represented in the Observer's laudable center spread, is taken up with such non-celebrity, mostly prole, all interesting personages as Philip Gefter, Stanley Posthorn, Sandy Kern, Stephen Reynolds, Murray Gitlin, Roy Strickland, Storme Delarverie, Howard Rosenman, John McCarron, David Bartolomi, Jack Fitzsimmons, Sarah Waters, along with founders of the gay movement such as Jack Nichols and Frank Kameny. Among many other things, Kaiser's crucial history brilliantly covers the American Psychiatric Association's change of position on homosexuality, the transformation of the NY Times from one of the most homophobic to one of the most gay-friendly institutions on the planet, and the major Supreme Court decisions that have done more than anything else in the public realm to advance the cause of gay rights in America. Morons who accuse Kaiser of obsession with celebrities have either not read his book, or are simply obsessed with celebrities themselves (and thus can see nothing else in the book), or are purposely misrepresenting the book. Bravo to the Observer for publishing Kaiser's terrific essay so handsomely. I recommend the book wholeheartedly (and why shouldn't it be more fun to read than George Chauncey's fusty, boring old tome?).
Rick Whitaker
Is Kaiser's discussion of gay celebrities and TV characters just irrelevant fluff? If you think it is, you need to take another look at the civil rights movement. In much less than a generation, racial equality went from a fringe idea to conventional wisdom. That's a remarkable change, and a central cause was the shift in the place of black entertainers in popular culture. If you and your husband dance to Nat King Cole, or your college buddies get down to Chuck Berry and Little Richard, there's a limit to how interested you'll be in perpetuating racism. You need political action or the laws won't change, but there's nothing as strong as the intimate familiarity of mass entertainment to insinuate tolerance into the national culture.
True, there may be a longer-lasting hardcore, religious anti-gay fifth or quarter of the population who will be more recalcitrant than overt racists have been. But there are millions of mildly homophobic Americans who until ten years ago had little prompting to question their homphobia (and its influence on who they voted for), but who now adore Ellen DeGeneres, know she's gay, and don't give a damn. That doesn't mean they're going to become big allies, but you'd be crazy to think it means little, or nothing. Knowing someone who's gay, and getting along with them, is something that very many, perhaps most, straight Americans now think of as a common experience, and publicly expressing homophobia is something they know might not go over well with other straight folks. That's a big deal, and a huge part of this change is due to gay entertainers and characters on television and in movies.