Popular Culture Review Vol. 13, No. 1, January 2002 | Page 25

“The Whole World’s Gone Gay!”

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solved; the incident was inevitably isolated and the story line focused upon a straight
character trying to deal with and/or accept someone else’s homosexuality. During
the 1980s there was a strong shift back towards the genre’s conventional family
center and its hermetic, middle-class lifestyle, a movement that coincided with the
conservative Zeitgeist of the Reagan years. The erasure of gayness from everyday
life led to the erasure of gayness within the television world. When it was there, it
was increasingly equated with the AIDS epidemic of the late 1980s, which helped
reinvigorate the proscribed “roles” for gay people in film and television: namely,
victim and villain (Gross, “Out” 30). However, in the 1990s, things seemed to
have changed, and “gay” appeared to be back in vogue. In 1995, Entertainment
Weekly published a special issue on “The Gay 90s,” claiming that entertainment
has “come out of the closet.” In the cover story, John Cagle discusses “gay-ffiendly”
entertainment, which he sees evident everywhere in the 1990s— in advertising,
music, and film, and on television and Broadway (20). In light of all this, Cagle
quite optimistically crows: “In 1995, the gay stream flows freely into the
mainstream” (23).
I think that Cagle’s claim is somewhat naive in its assumption of wide
acceptance for this “gay stream.” The media may have ha d a change in attitude,
but I think the public at large has not. As John Leo more perceptively notes, although
the media have opened up significantly in recent years, they have done so out of
necessity. This is particularly true of television: faltering network ratings and a
loss of revenue due to competition from cable and video have led to a state in
which “what used to be censored as controversial is now welcomed as sensitive
theme programming” (39). Leo’s assessment is more accurate since it acknowledges
the capitalist interests underlying this apparent change in attitude: gay sells, and
the media capitalize on this. In some ways, yes, things have changed, and one
cannot deny what both Cagle and Leo point out: gay characters abound on television.
The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) operates a web-based
project that records the number of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered
characters on television. According to the GLAAD TV Scoreboard, as of November,
1998, there were 24 gay characters on television. This seems encouraging in the
post-£//^« era. However, most of these characters are still in minor and/or non
recurring roles. How, then, are we to categorize The S i m p s o n s Smithers?
As noted above, I contend that The Simpsons has placed a gay character into a
major recurring role, and that this is a significant political move. However, in
doing so, I am thus compelled to ask: Is the representation of gay life on The
Simpsons merely another example o f well-intentioned liberal sentiment, a
sympathetic lip service akin to what was happening 20 years ago, or is it something
more? To begin answering these questions, we need first to examine the show’s
origins.