Badpuppy Gay Today |
Monday, 23 June, 1997 |
GLAAD, The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation asks us to help ourselves by demanding that insensitive companies right wrongs and that sensitive companies get appreciated for wrongs they have righted. This week a summer movie portraying gay stereotypes, a radio contest sponsored by Harley Davidson's macho mini-minds in cahoots with Granny Goose, a PBS-TV funding scandal and a gay films website compete for your immediate attention. In each case there is something you can do. This summer, producer Jerry Bruckheimer brings us a new blockbuster action picture featuring a gratuitous and hackneyed gay character in the current #1 movie in America, Con Air. Last year he brought us The Rock, a blockbuster action picture featuring a stereotypical gay hairdresser. The character, "Sally Can't-Dance," is a mincing, shrieking, cross-dressing effeminate Latino gay man who has absolutely nothing to do with the movie's plot and who appears, it seems, to provide a butt for ridicule and denigration. At one point, as escaped convicts work to get a hijacked plane into the air, Sally breaks into a nearby trailer and maniacally rummages through the suitcases, squealing with delight upon finding a lavender sun dress. The character proceeds to wear the dress through the rest of the film. When super bad guy Virus (John Malcovich) later asks Sally to guard the cockpit, he says, "If anybody tries to get through, you scratch his eyes out." In a brief and senseless struggle with hero Cameron Poe (Nicholas Cage), Poe is about to punch Sally, but reconsiders and instead knocks Sally to the floor with an open-handed slap. When Sally is arrested the officer says, "Hold it right there, lady," to which he replies, "Oh, men in uniform." Despite the considerable screen time that the character has, Sally is never developed beyond this one-dimensional anti-gay stereotype. By including this representation, producer Bruckheimer and Touchstone Pictures have plummeted to new lows, reinforcing stereotypes, and portraying violence against gay people as something humorous. Tell Bruckheimer and Touchstone that their flirtations with bigotry not only fosters stereotyping, it implicitly condones violence. Contact: Donald DeLine, President, Touchstone Pictures, 500 S. Buena Vista Street, Burbank, CA 91521-0001, fax: 818.848.6415, e-mail through the Disney Web site at http://www.disney.com/Mail; Jerry Bruckheimer, Producer, Jerry Bruckheimer Films, 1631 10th Street, Santa Monica, CA 90404. A promotional currently running on Los Angeles radio station KLSX-FM 97.1 has a snively contest entrant defensively asserting he's not a "fagela" (Yiddish for "fag") or a "fem." The contest to win a Harley-Davidson Bad Boy motorcycle, begins with an announcer, saying, "Face it, wuss, you wanna be a bad boy." The contest entrant later states, "Aw, jeez, I could be all done up in leather, like Arnie the Terminator," to which the announcer responds, "More like the wimp-inator." "Hey!" says the entrant, "I'm no fagela!" At the end of the spot, the announcer reels off the call letters, "KLSX-FM." The entrant says, "Hey, who you callin' a fem?" The contest is sponsored by Harley Davidson, the supermarket chain Food-4-Less and Granny Goose, a regional producer of snack foods. By equating being a "wimp" with being gay, the advertisement says, essentially, that being a sissy is synonymous with being a gay man, and vice-versa. The entrant's defensiveness also implies that being gay is a bad thing. In addition, by saying that "bad boys" such as "Arnie the Terminator" are strong and that "fem" men are not, the spot attacks those who transcend gender norms and assumes that being macho is what defines toughness. Such generalizations help to foster ignorance about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. Tell both KLSX and the sponsors of the contest that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and their friends and family will think twice about supporting businesses that support stereotypes of gay people in a lame attempt at cheap laughs. Contact: Scott Segelbaum, Promotion Director, KLSX-FM, 3580 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90010-2501, fax: 213.386.3649; Harley Davidson Motor Co., 3700 W. Juneau Avenue, PO Box 653, Milwaukee, WI 53208; Food-4-Less, 777 S. Harbour Boulevard, La Habra, CA 90631; Granny Goose, 930 98th Avenue, Oakland, CA 94603-9978. PBS's POV recently rejected the documentary, Out at Work , from award winning documentary filmmakers Kelly Anderson and Tami Gold, which tells the story of gay men and lesbians who suffered job discrimination. The film was a finalist for the Public Broadcasting Service series Point of View (P. O. V.), a national showcase for independent documentaries. When reviewed by PBS it was turned down. The reason? "Problematic funding" given to the filmmakers by seven labor unions and the Astrea National Lesbian Action Foundation, comprising only 23% of the film's total budget. Even while turning the film down, Sandra Heberer, Director of News and Information Programming for PBS, called the film "compelling television reasonably done on a significant issue of our times." Considering the millions of dollars given to PBS by private corporations to support programming, it seems ironic that its top brass would use this justification to turn down a movie they themselves found "compelling." The network has aired a documentary funded by The New York Times about its own history, James Reston: The Man Millions Read, and corporations such as Prudential Securities, Met Life and Travelers underwrite the PBS series Wall Street Week and Adam Smith's Money World. Conflict of interest may well be in the eyes of the beholder. Please tell PBS that films like Out At Work are vital to the lives of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. Keeping them off the air due to selectively enforced funding rules isn't just a disservice to our community, but breach of the mission of public broadcasting as a whole. Contact: Sandra Heberer, Director of News and Information Programming, Public Broadcasting Service, 1320 Braddock Place, Alexandria, VA 22314-1698, fax: 703.739.5295. Rough Cut, the cyberspace extension of a daily TNT movie-industry news report, features a number of articles addressing gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender movies and movie history in honor of Pride month. Last week's issue included a listing of 50 "fabulous" gay films, drag diva Lady Bunny's ten favorite drag performances on the big screen, and ten of the best portrayals of the community picked by GLAAD. The page also included a prominently displayed rainbow freedom flag. This week's issue includes an interview with GLAAD Entertainment Media Director Chastity Bono on Hollywood and gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender representations. Please check out Rough Cut's site (http://www.roughcut.com), and thank them for highlighting the Pride of the entertainment media. Contact: Andy Jones, Editor and Chris Brandon, Section Editor, Rough Cut, 1050 Techwood Drive, Atlanta, Georgia 30318, fax: 404.885.0855, e-mail (Chris Brandon): chris.brandon@turner.com.
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