I found this very interesting video on youtube which looks at a few of the gay characters in primetime soap operas and miniseries.
They include (commentary provided by the video's creator):
* CELEBRITY (February 1984 NBC miniseries based upon Tommy Thompson's novel - Joseph Bottoms plays a married and closeted Hollywood star whose son (played by a young River Phoenix) accidentally witnesses his love-making session with a male lover)
* DYNASTY (ABC's #1 program in America in the 1984/85 season - Jack Coleman reluctantly took over the role of the luxe soap's resident gay character Steven Carrington who got to profess his love for a young PR assistant played by William Campbell in January 1985)
* I'LL TAKE MANHATTAN (CBS' March 1987 miniseries based upon Judith Krantz's novel - Adam Storke is powerful Amberville family's youngest child who ends up being manipulated by a male model hired by his evil uncle to set up drugs in his studio - the awkward hug the scene ends with reflects how gay intimacy was shown at the time)
* MELROSE PLACE (Aaron Spelling's outrageously shameless soap opera - unlike his fellow bedhopping heterosexual Melrose complex tenants, the show's resident gay character played by Doug Savant finally got to kiss a man only in May 1994, more than 60 episodes into the show's run. Unfortunately, fearful of advertiser and affiliate backlash FOX censored the scene)
* DAWSON'S CREEK (The WB's teen drama finally broke new ground in 2000 when Kerr Smith who played the show's gay character Jack McPhee shared a kiss with a boy which ended up being the very first prime-time gay male kiss in the history of American television) NOTE: This clip is taken from the episode "Promicide" which aired in 2001 and features a later kiss, not the first gay male kiss which aired in 2000 (and can not be seen in this video).
* DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES (In a post-Will & Grace TV world ABC's immensely popular dramedy continued to show gay characters in lighter tone, sending its troublemaking teen Andrew Van De Kamp proudly out of the closet)
* BROTHERS & SISTERS (ABC's critically-acclaimed star-studded family drama broke new ground in its 2nd season finale aired in May 2008 when its popular gay couple Kevin and Scotty tied the knot in a touching commitment ceremony).
Past Know Your LGBT History posts:
Know your lgbt history - Boys Beware
Know your lgbt history - The Boondocks
Know your lgbt history - Mannequin
Know your lgbt history - The Warriors
Know Your LGBT History - New York Undercover
Know Your LGBT History - Low Down Dirty Shame
Know Your LGBT History - Fortune and Men's Eyes
Know your lgbt history - California Suite
Know your lgbt history - Taxi (Elaine's Strange Triangle)
Know your lgbt history - Come Back Charleston Blue
Know your lgbt history - James Bond goes gay
Know your lgbt history - Windows
Know your lgbt history - To Wong Foo and Priscilla
Know your lgbt history - Blazing Saddles
Know your lgbt history - Sanford and Son
Know your lgbt history - In Living Color
Know your lgbt history - Cleopatra Jones and her lesbian drug lords
Know your lgbt history - Norman, Is That You?
Know your lgbt history - The 'Exotic' Adrian Street
Know your lgbt history - The Choirboys
Know your lgbt history - Eddie Murphy
Know your lgbt history - The Killing of Sister George
Know your lgbt history - Hanna-Barbera cartoons pushes the 'gay agenda
'Know your lgbt history - Cruising
Know your lgbt history - Foxy Brown and Cleopatra Jones
Know your lgbt history - I Got Da Hook Up
Know your lgbt history - Fright Night
Know your lgbt history - Flowers of Evil
The Jeffersons and the transgender community
Keep your eyes peeled for a Scooby Doo episode that shows two male “roommates.”
ReplyDeleteOnce they start telling “the gang” about the spook de jour, it becomes QUITE obvious that they are a couple. The one guy puts his arm around the other guy’s shoulder in a subtle, yet clearly affectionate way. You have to see it to appreciate it.
They were bit players in the episode, living in the coach-house behind the main house. And I believe that the haunting was outside, like in the woods, or swamp, or ranch land. I saw it on the Cartoon Network several years ago and just about fell out of my chair.
I’ve tried every search query imaginable to find it online to no avail. So, just incase you or someone else runs across it, remember the name of the episode, or at least the name of the ghost/haunting for future reference.
And if you’re Peter LaBarbera or Matt Barber (et al) who finds it, perhaps you could publicize it to show just how we gay activists have the ability to travel backward in time to corrupt the cartoon innocence of the Seventies.
Wizard of Wimbledon?
ReplyDeleteMade a boo-boo. I mean to say the Warlock of Wimbledon. That's the name of the episode.
ReplyDeleteI thought you might be kidding about the Wimbledon thing--I Googled it and didn’t get past the tennis results.
ReplyDeleteSo many jokes I had...all for naught.
In regard to your last response, I would have never Imagined that there was an actual tennis episode of Scooby Doo.
Though there are gay elements in that episode, sadly, it’s not the one.
But I hold out hope, that someone out there has a recording of it, and is also upload-literate.
Until then, I press on...
A Menace in Venice perhaps. LOL
ReplyDeleteor it could have been the Diabolical Disc Demon.
Now I'm intrigued. What "monster" was featured in the episode?
John McEnroe?
ReplyDelete“John McEnroe?”
ReplyDeleteNo, he’s the monster from those National car rental ads.
“A Menace in Venice perhaps. LOL
or it could have been the Diabolical Disc Demon.
Now I'm intrigued. What "monster" was featured in the episode?”
I checked out Diabolical Disc Demon on youtube, and that doesn’t seem to be it, and I couldn’t find a clip of Menace in Venice. I’m pretty sure it was set in the US.
Like I said before, it was a rural countryside area, a farmhouse with a lady, and a coach-house behind it with two guys living there. That’s all I got :(
And for the life of me I can’t remember the monster or any other details (despite NUMEROUS searches).
I’m sure it’ll eventually turn up.
Really want to make a splash?
ReplyDeleteHave one of the "Brothers & Sisters" couple die a horrific accident, the living spouse be denied into the room before his husband dies, then get into a legal hard-scrabble with his deceased husband's family over funeral rights as well as with insurance companies.
Screw these ceremonies that don't mean anything legally.