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When it comes to "High School Musical 3" is the gay glass half full or half empty?
Thanks to the $42 million dollar opening weekend box office take for Disney's High School Musical 3, it's finally safe for that last oppressed minority group to express themselves without fear of humiliation and social opprobrium. Yes, that's right — it's now okay for super popular jocks to sing and dance. Did you ever think this day would actually come? Yes, I'm a little bitter and you can find out why, after the jump. We already covered how the character of Ryan is still coded-gay in HSM3 (see his ever changing and colorful wardrobe of hats and shoes above). I thought I was over it until I noticed AfterElton.com reader afhickman posted a link to Stephanie Zacharek's review of the movie in Salon.com. Said Zacharek about Ryan's apparent gayness:
And I actually get that; the High School Musical franchise is an entire herd of cash cows for Disney and they aren't about to endanger that. Buy saying Ryan is endearing or giving Disney credit for coding him gay instead of just saying he's gay, makes me ill. (And not everyone sees the character as gay including this reviewer who thinks the movie puts those gay rumors to rest "despite those pink pants".) Imagine if Disney did this with a character's ethnicity or gender. Would Zacharek be think it so "endearing" if there were no real female characters in the HSM movies? If their existence was just hinted at? How about if a multiracial character could be interpreted as black but no one would come out and say it? (And for the record, when we contacted Disney for a comment, a publicist told me quite firmly they would have none.) Yes, I know. This is one step along the road to an actual gay character. But forgive me for thinking with 2009 hurtling toward us, we were a little farther along than this. And how ironic is it that theater, often the one safe haven for many a gay boy, has now been co-opted as the stomping grounds for high school jocks who get to be athletes and singers and dancers. Meanwhile, the gay boys get to be "coded". Hopefully, in the real world straight jocks and gay theater boys have learned to appreciate one another and straight boys have learned there are all kinds of masculinity.
As for this being a preteen movie, Zacharek sounds just like the idiotic Gary Marsh, president of the Disney Channel, who told us his network included characters (Ryan) that could be interpreted as gay and that they couldn't include actual gay characters because they don't do sex. And would Zacharek say that preteens are too young to learn about racial tolerance? Should twelve-year-old boys not learn little girls can do anything boys can do until they are thirteen? Does she really think social mores and beliefs aren't already well-ingrained by that point? Anyway, enough about what I think. What do you think? Submitted by on Tue, 2008-10-28 15:10. |
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For many Americans
Being gay isn't about romance, they see being gay as sex only. We saw this in comments from Gary Marsh about this movie: "Disney doesn't address sex in it's family films". See, Troy and Gabriella going out on a date isn't about sex, but two boys holding hands means they're going to drop trou and screw right then and there. Until people wise up and see that gay people can actually experience love and just not lust, we'll continue to see this attitude reflected in fare oriented towards children.
I think that if this film was actually oriented towards people in high school though, and not pre-teens that there'd be a lot more creative freedom with it, such as seen in the musical stage version.
There's also a hell of a lot of people being frightened about portraying gay people under the age of 18. The idea being that gay children don't exist - gay people spring fully-formed from some gay bar in San Francisco. Anybody who has come out before they were an adult has no doubt experienced having their sexuality being shrugged off as "Just being confused/experimenting". When a boy dates a girl, nobody questions his sexuality. When a boy dates another boy, everyone's certain that they'll grow out of it.
Until these issues are resolved, we're going to see more and more of this in teenage faire that tries to be inoffensive as possible.
If anyone wants to know of more instances of this cliche in recent years, take a look here:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AmbiguouslyGay
"Wise up?"
"Until people wise up and see that gay people can actually experience love and just not lust, we'll continue to see this attitude reflected in fare oriented towards children."
Homophobia has no interest in wising up. Ever. We shouldn't neuter ourselves in the hope of winning over those who hate us and always will. People who can't see that we're fully-rounded individuals with complex and multi-faceted lives are hopeless.
And the best response to Lucas Gabreel in the HSMs was Gus casting him as a REAL gay guy in Milk.
I'm not saying that we should neuter ourselves in real life
As far as media, we don't neuter ourselves because mainstream media and production executives will do it for us. If we like it or not. We can complain about offensive gay stereotypes and people will listen but if we complain about a character "not being gay enough" people will just tune us out or think we're crazy or demanding hardcore porn or something.
And my comment wasn't about homophobes. It was about people who are simply ignorant about how actual gay people live and just believe whatever they see on television. I don't consider people like that homophobic, just uneducated.
In the same way that I don't know about racial or ethnic subcultures I don't know much about because I'm not a part of them. It doesn't mean I hate them, I just don't have the time in my day to learn about every single one of the thousands upon thousands of cultures that make up the US alone. Neither do I have the time nor desire to educate every straight person I meet all about gay people and gay subcultures and attitudes.
half full but it's time to melt that ice and fill the cup up!!!!
In an ideal world, I would've liked to have gone into Toys R Us this afternoon and found a RyanChad prom 2-pack. I've assumed same-sex marriage must exist since I was no more than 7 years old. So I have had to greatly lower my expectations and slash it up in the 2 decades since. Ryan is basically a more modern version of Martin "Spin and Marty" Markham, who my dad grew up watching. Depending on how BFF-y he is with Kelsi as opposed to being any sort of credible boyfriend to her... That would be some progress. It's called consistency, and he wouldn't be the first Disney character
http://s8.org/gargoyles/askgreg/search.php?sid=213997&qid=8065
Coded gay characters wouldn't be as bad if only...
... gay kids didn't still kill themselves in the USA, but they do. And they still get beat up, harassed and killed by other Americans. So coding a character, especially a gay teen character, is rather pathetic and brings up the historic Hayes Code that Hollywood, including Disney, created to suppress positive representation of various minority groups. No doubt the supremely-evil MPAA - the industry's self-generated virulently-homophobic censorship board - would have slapped the film with NC-17 if it had actually had an out and proud gay teen character who wasn't the punchline of jokes and who dared hold hands with another gay teen.
Homophobic adults like the so-called "pro-family leaders" who line their pockets making money violating human rights of gay human beings never like to be reminded that they are violating the human rights of millions of gay children.
Who are you kidding?
No offense, but you really need to update. If they're a typical teen that watches MTV or VH1 they're already seeing way more real gay people than I ever did when I was that age!
At least one episode of Parental Control featured parents trying to find a better boyfriend for their son than the one he had. Next has done more pairings of same-sex couples than I can count. Gas pop up rather all over the place on these channels now.
Sure it would be nice to have an openly gay character in one of these trendy movie phenoms. But I don't think there's really a correlation between the gay teen suicide rate and a coded gay in the High School Musical movies.
Most Americans do not have cable
Actually, they do.
Almost 9 in 10 do
Nearly 90% of Americans receive cable or satellite broadcasts and that percentage keeps growing. I'm way in the minority as I still use rabbit ears and get all of 4 channels (usually poorly).
From BroadcastEngineering:
"Following equally critical comments to the ATSC, CEA President Gary Shapiro told Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), chairman of the House Commerce Committee, that the number of Americans without pay TV is now less than 13 percent and is shrinking as cable and satellite penetration grows 3.6 percent annually."
The thing is that the girls
Corporate fare is always
Corporate fare is always going to be the slowest to come around. Do you guys know that it'll have been a forty year gap between Hanna-Barbera's initial plan for an all-white "Josie and the Pussycats" cast being revised and Disney's first African American princess being introduced next year? It's fits-and-starts, cautious steps forward with the stock price in mind, etc.
I think it's entirely plausible Ryan's followed up in the next 10 years with an uncoded character, mass-marketed just as much and maybe even 2-packed with a guy
Well having seen Lucas play a REAL gay in "Milk" --