As some of you know, my upcoming web series production revolves around two roommates, one of which happens to be a lesbian. That simple fact got me to thinking as I was journeying through that period of structuring and restructuring this series. To this point I haven’t done much film work that has dealt with gender issues or gay-relation issues and I wanted to make sure that I thought it all through before I just leaped into incorporating a gay theme into this production (as I feel I would have done with any project in which this issue arose). I’ve sought out being very reflective on this issue not only with regards to being respectful, but because I’ve spent the better part of the last several years feeling frustrated at the way film has made use of gay characters.
Most major Hollywood productions are relatively directionless when they place gay characters in their films. When I say that what I mean is that they often place gay characters in their film for the sake of having a gay influence of some kind in their picture, even if the film itself has relatively nothing to do with homosexuality. In the end, unfortunately, like any other business, they place these small gay elements in film to get attention. They want gay people to buy tickets for the film and so they stick a gay character in there for appeasement. And if that wasn’t often the case then why are some many of these gay characters so comparable and one-dimensional. Often times they’re always secretaries or hair dressers or any other style of job that traditions of the past have presumed to be jobs for women (or “feminine” people). And how many times has the gay character been there to interject some sensitivity into the insensitive straight man. That particular stereotype has become so infused into our media culture that it’s presumed to be a truth by some people. More than once I’ve been presumed to be gay simply because I responded with sensitivity to a given situation. Now while there are plenty of sensitive gay people out there and lots of insensitive straight people out there as well, the fact of the matter is that regardless of sexual persuasion, people are people. We are all the products of whatever specific background we had. Some of us are nice and some of us are jerks. Straight people can be wonderful and they can be jerks, same goes for gay people, or bisexual people for that matter. None of us are perfect and we are all unique, striving for different things. So why so much emphasis on forcing gay film characters to be overtly feminine if they’re guys and overtly masculine if they’re women. It works both ways. The number of times I’ve seen the “lesbian truck driver” character in films is astounding. Personally I know lots of gay people, both men and women. In that regard, I’ve yet to meet a gay man who has wanted to be a hair dresser, or a secretary, or the the big one: interior decorator! And if they do choose to go that way then I wish them all the luck in the world. That’s one of the purposes of life is that we are given the opportunity to do what we want with it instead of being forced into some niche because we find that dude more attractive than that girl, or vice versa.
I guess what frustrates me the most with regards to how most high level movie productions portray homosexual characters is that I always seen people close to the media and movie directors and film actors all talking about how progressive they are and how they support the rights of everyone (gay rights then obviously included) but then we see this nonsense being bore out in the productions they get involved in. And then, as is almost always the case, they talk about how special, unique and different whatever that production is that they worked on. Most of the time it’s all just promotional nonsense. In that vein I don’t want to be too pessimistic because there are films out there that treat gay characters more as real people as oppose to living, breathing symbols and stereotypes.
Overall then, in deciding to employ a gay element into my new series has led me to stop and think about what these characters are going to be like. More than anything else, I want them to be portrayed as real people because then they’re given the opportunity to be multi-faceted and not just what we’re always used to seeing. In creating that style of character, and I’m talking primarily about the character of Talyor, the lesbian roommate, I did my best to make her a real person. She’s entertaining, you like her often bizarre personality, but she is still an imperfect person. She can be very self-centered and when her roommate Jake goes off on one of his rants she is quick to divert her attention from him. She is also a somewhat introverted character, which allows her to come full circle as the series progresses and she finds she has feelings towards Cary’s character (whom for the most part she doesn’t know whether Cary likes men or women). Emotions seem to be something she tries to keep in check early in the series and we see those emotions and that expansion of her personality grow as time passes, without completely breaking and altering her character to a point where she’s not credibly the same person anymore. And certainly Jake functions in much the same way, but in most regards he functions in the opposite direction. Throughout the series we see him letting out his feelings and emotions endlessly and it’s more near the end that he realizes he needs to slow down and examine himself to best discover why he’s such a loser with girls and why his life has become so erratic. Thus, they are both realistic people dealing with the experiences of life. Straight Jake is no more unique than lesbian Taylor and she is no more unique that he is either. Neither one needs to worry about that because the objective is for them to be two very different people without one being more humanistic or original than the other. And that is a struggle when you’re trying to make a wild and appealing comedy series where you have to be willing to raise the bar with the level of antics you allow your characters to engage in. But in the end I’m really glad that I had cause to take pause and examine this aspect of my series before leaping into structuring and shooting it. It makes everyone in the series stronger and the ride will be just as wild!
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