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On
This Date [pending task: finish coding so this
column updates daily]
Jan. 9...
A gay man and his wife: Steven on Dynasty (Jack Coleman,
right) spent much of the series involved romantically and sexually with
women. On the episode of this date in 1985, Claudia (Pamela Bellwood,
left) ended their relationship.
1/9/1978
THE MacNEIL/LEHRER REPORT (PBS)
This forerunner to the PBS News Hour explores how sexual
orientation is being reconceptualized as a civil rights issue..
1/9/1983
60 MINUTES (CBS) Included:
a report on gay people fighting to stay in the military.
1/9/1985
DYNASTY (ABC) Steven tries
to make things right with Claudia, but she refuses to take him back.
1/9/1995
CYBILL (CBS) One of the
recurring minor roles on this sitcom is the gay waiter at the restaurant
where Cycill and her best friend usually have lunch. In this episode,
he hits on Ira, one of Cycill's ex-husbands.
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On
this Web Site:
Radio:
Audio clips from the 1930s to 1960s prove that queer characters
were on the air long before Stonewall.
Television: An
ever-growing illustrated history of GLBT-relevant shows, browsable
by country, decade or topic.
Articles:
Go beyond mere descriptions of shows, and learn the uncensored,
behind-the-scenes history.
Links: GLBT-relevant
web sites that deal with the mass media.
Contact: Send
an email to Steven Capsuto.
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Upcoming
Lectures:
Media
historian Steven Capsuto
presents lectures with video clips that trace a half-century of "queer"
images from television. A version focusing on U.S. broadcasting is available,
as is a talk about British television, and a new overview lecture that
includes clips from many countries.
Upcoming
lectures are listed on the home page of Stevecap.com.
New
in the British Section:
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 PLAY
FOR TODAY: "PENDA'S FEN" (March 21, 1974, BBC)
British, gay-relevant TV plays and telefilms changed drastically
in the late 1960s and early 1970s, as the movement for gay equality
became increasingly visible in society. By 1974, seven years
after Parliament partially decriminalized male homosexuality,
the BBC was willing to air this relatively gay-positive, coming-of-age
TV movie, in which a gay teenager was front-and-center as the
protagonist.
David Rudkin wrote and Alan Clarke directed the
unusual "Penda's Fen," an arty, cerebral drama about the pious
son of a country parson, struggling through spiritual and sexual
conflicts on his 18th birthday. The film is filled with
symbolic dream images that envelop young Stephen (Spencer Banks,
top photo) as he wrestles with questions of conformity versus
individuality, professed faith versus profound belief, good versus
evil, modern society versus traditional village life, heterosexuality
versus homosexuality, and modern Christianity versus Britain's
Celtic Pagan roots.
Early on, it becomes clear that Stephen is uncomfortable
with the desires he feels toward a muscular, straight young milkman.
Stephen's parents realize their son is homosexual, and are waiting
for him to figure it out. In one scene (lower photo), the
very repressed lad has a vivid wet dream that allows him to acknowledge
consciously the urges he had suppressed as "unnatural."
At the height of the dream, the camera cuts back to the sleeping
Stephen, whose body twitches twice convulsively, causing him to
awaken in a sweat. He then imagines facing his sexuality:
it appears to him in the form of a smiling demon, which he reaches
out to touch. Later, in a conversation about adoptions,
a married neighbor assures Stephen that gay men can be fine parents.
This assuages one of the doubts he had about his options for the
future.
This is one of the few BBC one-shot dramas that,
decades later, is still shown in film festivals and in repeat
telecasts. It also forms a notable point of contrast for
the tame dramas that were appearing at the time in other countries.
For example, unlike American teen dramas of the era, "Penda's
Fen" leaves no doubt as to the boy's sexual orientation, and acknowledges
his homosexuality as something erotic, not just conceptual or
theoretical. It deals with a teenager's gayness matter-of-factly,
without marginalizing it as an "issue of the week."
Stephen's sexuality is just one of many elements in the story
of a very complicated young man -- a drama about ideas and philosophy
as much as about growing up and national identity.
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About
ALTERNATE CHANNELS:
Alternate
Channels is a book, a web site, and a series
of lectures. The project began in
1987, when Steven Capsuto was a
graduate student who volunteered with Gay & Lesbian Peer Counseling
of Philadelphia. Time and again, distraught teenagers would
phone the crisis line, saying they had realized they were gay and
were contemplating suicide. When counselors asked the callers,
"What do you think gay people's lives are like?" the answer
was almost always the same: "I only know what I see on TV."
This
was a stark contrast from the uniformly gay-positive shows Steven
remembered from the late 1970s, when he was a gay teenager
in search of role models. He set out to learn what had changed,
what social developments had traditionally affected the quality of
GLBT media images, and what portrayals had been available to previous
generations. Over the next eleven years, he gathered information
about some 4,000 relevant radio and TV broadcasts from the 1930s to
the early 2000s. Most of the findings can be found in his acclaimed
book, Alternate Channels, a semifinalist for the American Library
Association's 2001 Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Book Award.
He has since broadened the scope of his study and now takes an international
approach in exploring how this highly influential medium reflects
a traditionally marginalized part of the population.
To understand
today's televised GLBT images and their impact, it is crucial to know
what images appeared in the past, how they came to be, and how they
were discussed and challenged in each era. This project explores
the nature of those depictions and - more importantly - reveals how
the portrayals got on the air in the first place.
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