Stereotypes on Screen

"What if a film like "Once" was filmed with gay characters, instead?"

I was at a happy hour this weekend and the new "Sex and the City" movie came up in conversation. A straight guy I was talking to was lamenting the cult-like phenomenon of the show and how his ex-girlfriend obsessively tried to mimic the lifestyle and behaviors of the characters. I made the comment that the show was created and written by gay guys, and a friend retorted that these gay guys were basically selling urban gay male culture to straight women as a lifestyle. It then dawned on me how impressive it was that these gay people created a paradigm of being for straight women by using their own gay culture and personal creativity as inspiration, and media as their medium. It's a testament to the power and talent of gay people, who repeatedly excel when using this formula.

Gay men wield such creative power, yet in spite of our talent at creating culture via media, I’ve seen the same gay formula in both film and television mediums so many times that I’m starting to believe that the entire gay experience could possibly be encapsulated in single tale of a young man who bravely comes out of the closet, enters a life of prostitution, becomes a fabulous drag queen, joins the circuit, has lots of wild sex, develops a drug habit, then dies a tragic death from AIDS. While such a film would no doubt be entertaining, with few exceptions, there doesn’t seem to be room on the screen for stories that depart from this collection of themes.

Considering the level of creative talent in our community and our potential to create culture through media, as this anonymous poster suggested last week, and "Sex and the City" implies, why don't we have programming that provides a broader representation of our lives and reflects the breadth of our non-stereotypical experience? I don’t have an answer.