AE's Gay Agenda! Everyone! Strip Down to Your Undies and Run For It!

TO SPARTACUS OR NOT TO SPARTACUS? THAT IS THE QUESTION!
One of the trickier, and more challenging, aspects of my job as editor of AfterElton.com is keeping the staff shackled deciding how much to cover a new show with gay or bisexual content, or when an existing show adds a gay or bisexual character. What's tricky about that exactly? Well, if you have to ask, clearly you didn't watch the Spartacus prequel, Gods of the Arena, which wrapped up last week.

If you had, you'd know I made a pretty big deal out of the fact that the prequel was going to give gay gladiator Barca (Antonio Te Maioha) a new love interest named Auctus. Or that after interviewing Spartacus co-creator Steven DeKnight, we decreed that Gods of the Arena might be gayer than the original and that there was a steamy gay sex scene you wouldn't want to miss.

Except that before he got offed in the arena in episode three, Auctus was so barely there he made Uncle Saul look like the star of Brothers & Sisters, the gay scenes were more of the creepy gay kind (though it had some nice Sapphic stuff), and your typical NFL game had more man-on-man action than we saw with Barca and Auctus.

So what the hell happened? Why wasn't there a gay sex scene? Why did Auctus have so little to do? Why didn't Dustin Clare do full frontal?

A number of readers have gone off on DeKnight saying he blatantly lied to our faces in order to get us to write about the show.

Um, not so much. In fact, I disagree flatly with that and think that accusing someone who is so clearly on our side of lying to us only makes it that much less likely that other Hollywood writers will ever bother writing gay/bi characters. After all, who wants that kind of grief?

I've dealt with a lot of television writers and executive types in Hollywood and my bullshit detector is pretty finely tuned (Hi, Gary Marsh of Disney! How are you?) and I'm 100% positive DeKnight wasn't spinning me for publicity. From the very first time I interviewed him two plus years ago, DeKnight was knowledgeable about gays in Ancient Rome, spoke passionately and persuasively about the importance of including GLBT characters on his shows, and most things he promised did come to pass.

"Fine, Michael," you might say. So how did you get it so wrong with Gods of the Arena?

I think it was a couple of things, starting with perspective. From where we sit on our gay perch, Auctus and Barca had very little to do this season, and yet another gay character got offed. From DeKnight's heterosexual point of view, his show had to juggle a dozen different storylines, but nonetheless did give Barca a new love interest, we did see them affectionate with each other, and half the characters on the show got killed. 

Then there was simple miscommunication. In our interview with DeKnight, he described an encounter between Barca and Auctus that he saw as being a prelude to sex, but in describing it to us, made it sound like the sex actually happened.

Plus, I think DeKnight did want us to be excited about Gods of the Arena — not to manipulate us into covering his show — but because he genuinely likes our site, appreciated the positive feedback he got from readers about last season, as well as the support we've given the show.

Finally, we have to take some responsibility as well. There still aren't that many great or even really good gay/bi characters on television, so when we learn about a new one — especially on a show we like and that seems truly groundbreaking — it can be easy to get a little carried away and think it is going to be more substantial than what it is.

I try not to let that happen too often and we usually do match our coverage pretty well to the visiblity and noteworthiness of the character. I'm thinking John Cooper on Southland, Tyler Briggs on Trauma, or Sam Adama on Caprica.

Got it right, got it right, uh oh!

But sometimes the character turns out to be Caleb Brewster on Melrose Place.

So we're not perfect and neither are the folks creating the shows we watch. But I can promise our intentions are always good and we always strive to get the story right. And I think most of the time, the intentions of the folks we interview are good as well and they want to do right by their gay/bi characters and by the gay and bisexual audience.

And that goes double for Steven DeKnight.

Next page! Pucker up!