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Subject: In Defense of Bad TV Sun Jan 15, 2012 11:55 am

In Defense of Bad TV
By Shale
January 14, 2012

First off, I don't watch too much television. Since there are no more Star Trek shows or Futurama I would be hard-pressed to name half-a-dozen shows that I watch regularly. I continue watching a couple of the CSI shows, Bones occasionally and the new show A Gifted Man. The Big Bang Theory is a staple now in syndication. So, I am not a TV snob, I do watch it but since most of the prime-time stuff is now a vast wasteland of unreality shows ... well, guess I can be a TV snob after all.

There was a new show this year, Work It, with a written script instead of just a bunch of strangers put in humiliating situations. I never saw it because it only lasted two episodes. My daughter got a peek at it and confirmed that it was bad and apparently a lot of other people thot so too because not many watched the first ep and less the second. Apparently the only people who watched the show were its detractors - the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) and Human Rights Campaign (HRC).

The premise of Work It was not new. Two guys couldn't find work as guys so they cross-dressed as women. Sounded like Bosom Buddies, which was a TV show for two seasons of 1980-82 where a young Tom Hanks and Peter Scolari played characters dressed as women to live in a cheap, exclusively female building. Or the 1982 movie Tootsie, in which Dustin Hoffman played an actor who could no longer find work as himself so he cross-dressed as the titular character. It seems to me the only difference in all these shows is that the first two were in the early '80s, had top-notch actors and they happened three years before GLAAD and possibly flew under the radar of the fledgling HRC which had formed in 1980 and was perhaps more concerned with real issues facing gay and lesbians of the day.

GLAAD and HRC had spoken out against the series for its potential to cause harm to transgender people. I don't know exactly how that would have worked differently than Bosom Buddies or Tootsie, but they did see the show and I did not.

However, cross-dressing has been a staple in movies and television since the silent black & white days of Charlie Chaplin. I remember watching "Uncle Milty" (Milton Berle) dressed as a woman on TV in the early '50s. If you like, we can see that this tradition of cross-dressing for entertainment goes back to 1600 in Shakespeare's As You Like It, where the character Rosalind, a woman disguised as Ganymede, a man was actually played by an adolescent boy, because women were not allowed to be actors.

I am an active and out supporter of gay rights. Been that way for years and have been a member of HRC since 1995. However, I do not follow any group blindly and in 1996, thru the Gainesville Bisexual Alliance admonished HRC for not openly including bisexuals in their Vision Statement. I even dropped out of HRC over that omission, tho they apparently never take you off their roles. I did rejoin in 1997 after Executive Director Elizabeth Birch acknowledged bisexuals in their focus.

As for GLAAD, we too have history - mostly bad and during the late '80s & early '90s I frequently criticized their antics in the local gay press. Such as the Kellogg's supposed homophobic Nut 'N Honey TV ads in 1988 or their protest against the 1991 movie Silence of the Lambs because one of the psycho's fit a gay stereotype (actually, more a cross-dresser stereotype) or Queen Latifah's one-sided portrayal of a butch lesbian in the 1996 movie Set It Off. There was much more, with me and a few other gay & bi activists taking GLAAD to task for its hypersensitivity to perceived wrongs, which actually discredits the real complaints about anti-gay bigotry. So, GLAAD and I have been nemeses for the past couple of decades but I hadn't seen them in the news so much until this latest attack against a cross dressing TV show (Yes, they protested the other bad, short-lived, cross-dressing show Ask Harriet in 1998 - and I was telling them to lighten up on that one too).

But, this time they dragged (oops) HRC into their silliness and I again am considering not renewing my membership in that organization. I disagree with attacking 'perceived' slights in the entertainment business that may cause 'potential' harm. That is a form or prejudice that I will not support. GLAAD is a lost cause, they are the PETA of the gay rights advocacy and subscribe to the philosophy that there is no such thing as bad publicity. Ironically, they often bolster the very product they condemn for that reason. But I was dismayed to see that HRC had sunk to their level.

Oh, I will still support ACLU and Southern Poverty Law center, both of which do real work in the trenches and in the courts to protect civil rights of all people, including gay, lesbian and transgendered. You may not hear of them so much - they only make the real news not the entertainment section.

My Last HRC Membership Card - 2011
In Defense of Bad TV MemberCardHRC2011

Two essays in one weekend.
I posted another essay in the Writers Chamber, but it looks like no one visits there.

http://www.conversationchamber.com/t15952-in-defense-of-honest-dialogue

I got pissed at this other org to which I belong because of their (in my opinion) misguided activism. The essays explains it for those able to read more than a sound bite.

I am discontinuing support for both, my money can be better spent on other civil rights orgs.

Subject: Re: In Defense of Bad TV Sun Jan 15, 2012 4:13 pm

ACLU is a good cause, but like many good causes it is militant and extreme and has no sense of humor. This high-strung advocate group probably laughs at the You Tube videos of WalMart customers when they're buffering out at their computers.

This all reminds of the Taco Bell chihuahua getting axed because some Hispanic organization found it offensive and degrading. Give me an effing break! And their commercials have stunk ever since.

The issue I have with the ACLU in this case with "Work It", is that many cross-dressers DO exaggerate themselves in clothes and manner. I've had friends who were cross-dressers and drag queens, and they're not hard to recognize out in public because so few of them truly look 'natural'. That is just how it is.

I used to work with a man in his 60's, bald and not handsome at all, but he wore bright clothes and had a bright personality. He was straight but moonlighted as a drag queen at one of the Portland clubs, and he loved to wear women's clothes. He wore lacy camisoles under his business suits (he showed it to me one day). Yet he pursued women of interest (including me), and was an object of. . . uh. . . confusion to the men, let us say. He would have made a good basis for a comedy TV show, and I don't think it would need a lot of exaggeration.

"Regular" people are objects of comedic expense, too. There's the show with the one squirly guy who can't keep it in his pants on "How I Met Your Mother", the nerdy geeks on "Big Bang", the Paris-Hilton dumb-blonde clone on "2 Broke Girls", and the oh-so-flawed individuals (ALL of them) on "2-1/2 Men". Now we have the new show "Rob", with Cheech Marin, and I'll be curious to see if the Hispanic population has a fit (first episode was funnier than hell).

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that TV does NOT discriminate when it comes to creating laughter at human behavior's expense.

Subject: Re: In Defense of Bad TV Sun Jan 15, 2012 4:55 pm

Those are very good points Shale. I didn't watch "Work It" but it had already been done in Bosom Buddies. The show just didn't interest me. Apparently I wasn't alone.

I think some of the sensitivity is well intended. You don't want to do actual harm. Certainly lines are often crossed. But it also does go overboard at times. RuPaul recently wrote an article about in light of the use of the word "tranny" as well. I think I'll trust Ru over Kelly Osbourne on the subject. What I worry about is similar to what you're saying & that some of the people who claim to be an advocate are really doing more harm to the cause rather than advance it.

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