sweetnpetite
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By Matthew Gilbert, Globe Staff | July 1, 2004
Claire Fisher is straight -- or is she? As season four of "Six Feet Under" unfolds, the show's caustic art student is fanning her fires for a slamming lesbian poet named Edie. Meanwhile, Claire's terminally bummed ex-boyfriend, Russell, is chasing after her, despite his gay tryst with their bombastic professor, Olivier. And by the way, Olivier is now having a full-on hetero affair with the HBO show's mother from Freudian hell, Margaret Chenowith.
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Talk about switch-hitting. These days, it's getting harder to hang sexual-orientation labels on TV characters, particularly in the backroads of cable. Writers on "Queer as Folk," "The L Word," and "Nip/Tuck" have been boldly creating men and women who fall somewhere between the extremes of the Kinsey scale -- exclusively homosexual and exclusively heterosexual. They're pushing their series and their viewers beyond the more familiar black-and-white portrayals, the either/or sexual construct. Think of the unique Arthur, also on "Six Feet Under," who behaves more like an elderly auntie than a young man. The show has been amusingly noncommital about his sexual identity, leaving the Fishers and the viewers to wonder whether the funeral assistant is straight, gay, or simply "A" -- as in asexual.
This blurring of the lines of sexual orientation is a step beyond "Gay TV," the trend that has ridden a few waves of buzz in the past decade, first with the "Ellen" coming-out episode in 1997 and again recently with "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy." The sexually indefinite characters aren't closeted gay men and lesbians, running from their true selves, struggling to accept the inevitable. They're more curious-seeking than that, and less tortured. They're "Questioning," as a number of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender organizations have put it. Yep, TV is beginning to include the LGBT and Q community in its electronic embrace.
The most notoriously unresolved character may be Jenny on Showtime's "The L Word," who ping-ponged shamelessly between men and women throughout the series' first season. First, she cheated on her boyfriend with an exotic cafe owner; later she courted both sexes, deeply uncertain about her desires. But the most unexpected fence-jump came a few weeks ago from a lesbian on Showtime's "Queer as Folk," Lindsay, who had an explosive extra-relationship sexual experience with a man. Lindsay was as surprised by her hetero dalliance as the show's viewers, who'd experienced her as a "committed" lesbian and one of little Gus's two mommies.
Indeed, this kind of sexual ambiguity asks more of viewers, who've grown comfortable with the sort of gay-straight split embodied by "Will & Grace." We can become disoriented watching a character's sexual dis-orientation. On Internet boards, fans of "The L Word" have been critical of Jenny's ambivalence, impatient with her flighty back-and-forths, wanting her to land. She's viewed as the Anne Heche of TV's lesbian clique. And her psycho-sexual vagueness challenges gay people as much as it does straights, as it suggests that the separatist, "we're-completely-different" paradigm may not be iron clad. That's why it's especially provocative to find "questioning" characters on gay niche series such as "The L Word," which are geared toward affirming community and not unsettling it.
Another ambitious plot on "Queer as Folk" this season involves its untamed teen character, Hunter. Adopted by a gay male couple after surviving on the streets as a hustler, Hunter appeared to be as homosexual as the men who paid him for sex. He even had a crush on the show's hunky top dog, Brian. But Hunter had a difficult announcement to make to his parents: He had a girlfriend. It was played for sweet drama and mild comedy, unlike the teen sexual shiftings on FX's "Nip/Tuck," which featured an over-the-top and overwrought lesbian-bisexual-straight triangle last season between Matt, Ridley, and Vanessa. It was hard to keep track of who wanted whom in the angstful teen menage a trois, which made "My So-Called Life" look like a laugh riot.
One of the funniest and strangest sexual-orientation riffs occurred this spring on "The L Word" with Lisa the "male lesbian," a straight man who fully identified as a lesbian. Further twisting expectations, the very sincere Lisa has an affair with Alice, a bisexual character who, in a meta-twist, is played by openly lesbian actress Leisha Hailey. Can you keep all that straight?
There have been one or two un-boxed-in characters on the networks, too, including Judith on CBS's "Two and a Half Men," who remains unsure of whether she's a lesbian while those around her try to guess. When they deliver an ambiguous character, the networks generally play it for comedy, most cleverly with actor David Cross's sexually nebulous husband on Fox's "Arrested Development." But the cop drama "Homicide: Life on the Street" broke new ground in the late 1990s, when Detective Tim Bayliss found himself drawn to both men and women, calling himself "bi-curious." It was one of those admirable network moments where the writers rejected conventional definitions. Confidently, they put aside their cardboard cutouts in order to admit the wonderful shadings of real life.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/li..._identity_getting_difficult_to_keep_straight/
Claire Fisher is straight -- or is she? As season four of "Six Feet Under" unfolds, the show's caustic art student is fanning her fires for a slamming lesbian poet named Edie. Meanwhile, Claire's terminally bummed ex-boyfriend, Russell, is chasing after her, despite his gay tryst with their bombastic professor, Olivier. And by the way, Olivier is now having a full-on hetero affair with the HBO show's mother from Freudian hell, Margaret Chenowith.
ADVERTISEMENT
Talk about switch-hitting. These days, it's getting harder to hang sexual-orientation labels on TV characters, particularly in the backroads of cable. Writers on "Queer as Folk," "The L Word," and "Nip/Tuck" have been boldly creating men and women who fall somewhere between the extremes of the Kinsey scale -- exclusively homosexual and exclusively heterosexual. They're pushing their series and their viewers beyond the more familiar black-and-white portrayals, the either/or sexual construct. Think of the unique Arthur, also on "Six Feet Under," who behaves more like an elderly auntie than a young man. The show has been amusingly noncommital about his sexual identity, leaving the Fishers and the viewers to wonder whether the funeral assistant is straight, gay, or simply "A" -- as in asexual.
This blurring of the lines of sexual orientation is a step beyond "Gay TV," the trend that has ridden a few waves of buzz in the past decade, first with the "Ellen" coming-out episode in 1997 and again recently with "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy." The sexually indefinite characters aren't closeted gay men and lesbians, running from their true selves, struggling to accept the inevitable. They're more curious-seeking than that, and less tortured. They're "Questioning," as a number of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender organizations have put it. Yep, TV is beginning to include the LGBT and Q community in its electronic embrace.
The most notoriously unresolved character may be Jenny on Showtime's "The L Word," who ping-ponged shamelessly between men and women throughout the series' first season. First, she cheated on her boyfriend with an exotic cafe owner; later she courted both sexes, deeply uncertain about her desires. But the most unexpected fence-jump came a few weeks ago from a lesbian on Showtime's "Queer as Folk," Lindsay, who had an explosive extra-relationship sexual experience with a man. Lindsay was as surprised by her hetero dalliance as the show's viewers, who'd experienced her as a "committed" lesbian and one of little Gus's two mommies.
Indeed, this kind of sexual ambiguity asks more of viewers, who've grown comfortable with the sort of gay-straight split embodied by "Will & Grace." We can become disoriented watching a character's sexual dis-orientation. On Internet boards, fans of "The L Word" have been critical of Jenny's ambivalence, impatient with her flighty back-and-forths, wanting her to land. She's viewed as the Anne Heche of TV's lesbian clique. And her psycho-sexual vagueness challenges gay people as much as it does straights, as it suggests that the separatist, "we're-completely-different" paradigm may not be iron clad. That's why it's especially provocative to find "questioning" characters on gay niche series such as "The L Word," which are geared toward affirming community and not unsettling it.
Another ambitious plot on "Queer as Folk" this season involves its untamed teen character, Hunter. Adopted by a gay male couple after surviving on the streets as a hustler, Hunter appeared to be as homosexual as the men who paid him for sex. He even had a crush on the show's hunky top dog, Brian. But Hunter had a difficult announcement to make to his parents: He had a girlfriend. It was played for sweet drama and mild comedy, unlike the teen sexual shiftings on FX's "Nip/Tuck," which featured an over-the-top and overwrought lesbian-bisexual-straight triangle last season between Matt, Ridley, and Vanessa. It was hard to keep track of who wanted whom in the angstful teen menage a trois, which made "My So-Called Life" look like a laugh riot.
One of the funniest and strangest sexual-orientation riffs occurred this spring on "The L Word" with Lisa the "male lesbian," a straight man who fully identified as a lesbian. Further twisting expectations, the very sincere Lisa has an affair with Alice, a bisexual character who, in a meta-twist, is played by openly lesbian actress Leisha Hailey. Can you keep all that straight?
There have been one or two un-boxed-in characters on the networks, too, including Judith on CBS's "Two and a Half Men," who remains unsure of whether she's a lesbian while those around her try to guess. When they deliver an ambiguous character, the networks generally play it for comedy, most cleverly with actor David Cross's sexually nebulous husband on Fox's "Arrested Development." But the cop drama "Homicide: Life on the Street" broke new ground in the late 1990s, when Detective Tim Bayliss found himself drawn to both men and women, calling himself "bi-curious." It was one of those admirable network moments where the writers rejected conventional definitions. Confidently, they put aside their cardboard cutouts in order to admit the wonderful shadings of real life.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/li..._identity_getting_difficult_to_keep_straight/
