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Representation of Gay Men in Modern Television – COMM 410

Brian Miseo, Justine Gaines, William Smith, Gaby Breyburg, Melanie Richard

The portrayal and inclusion of gay male characters in American sitcoms such as Will & Grace, The Real O’Neals and The Office, have become increasingly popular due to the evolving societal acceptance of gay people. While many television shows have been incorporating gay characters, specifically male, into their shows to diminish misrepresentation, people still continue to stereotype due to perceived humor and exaggeration on television. There are several instances where television shows have created characters that contribute to stereotypes. While the incorporation of gay male characters in these shows has meant to erase these stereotypes and normalize homosexuality, these particular television shows demonstrate that we must improve and depict a more accurate representation of gay characters.  

The popular sitcom, Will & Grace depicted one of its homosexual characters, Will, in a particularly stereotypical manner. On Megyn Kelly’s formal morning show, she introduced a superfan of the show, Russell Turner, to speak to her about his connection to the show as he related to one of the characters. Kelly passed a comment on her show where she said, “is it true that you became a lawyer — and you became gay — because of Will?” (Canfield 2017). This awkward comment of Kelly’s insinuated that she believed his homosexuality was a choice of his influenced by the show. Fortunately, Turner was able to laugh it off and commented on the luxurious aspects of Will’s life as he has a maid, is a lawyer, has the best apartment in New York City, and is gay (Canfield 2017). Kelly’s comments promoted this idea that homosexuality is a commodity that makes people’s lives easier or more enjoyable, and the portrayal of this character is leading people to believe these things are accurate. This couldn’t be further from the truth, and because of the comments made on Kelly’s show, its clearly demonstrated that there is a stereotype of homosexuality is a choice, and also a wealthy lifestyle.

(Start at 2:30)

Another stereotypical instance of gay men occurred in the sitcom The Real O’Neals, which stars Noah Galvin who plays Kenny O’Neal, a homosexual character. A scene enacts one of Kenny’s Halloween fantasies, referred to as “Gay Halloween”. The scene shows Kenny and a bunch of football players performing a sexually explicit dance, and the football players wearing revealing clothing. Some people of the gay community have expressed their frustration with this scene. Adam Dupuis writes, “what I’m sad about with “The Real O’Neals” clip is that the holiday is portrayed as a stereotypical gay slutfest, a time where circuit bodies come off of the cruise liners and out of the clubs and into our streets” (Dupuis 2016). Dupuis is upset with this scene as it depicts stereotypical desires of gay men that is not accurate. This scene has frustrated many people of the gay community as it promotes this idea that gay men only care about an exaggerated sexualized image that puts some of the simplest events, like Halloween, into a sexual context for no logical explanation.

The popular U.S. Television show The Office stars Steve Carrell who plays the Regional Manager Michael Scott at a paper company. Throughout the show, Michael Scott gives viewers the impression that it is okay to make fun of people based on their sexual orientation through his harsh and stereotypical jokes. One of his accountants, Oscar, is outed as gay by Michael himself during season two of the show. He also gives the impression that is okay to make offensive jokes as long as they are funny. In one scene of the episode “Gay Witch Hunt” Michael kisses Oscar on the lips without consent to try to prove his acceptance of homosexuality. However, this scene is perceived in a humorous manner that doesn’t highlight the actual controversy of this real-life situation. Lauren Garafano, a writer for Decider, states, “It’s a cringy moment for all parties involved. Had this episode come out in 2018, I can promise you that the audience would go ballistic…nobody should be kissing anyone without their consent, even if it’s only to prove a point.” (Garafano 2018). In conclusion, viewers can see how Michael poorly addresses the gay community. He constantly makes jokes that are funny to him and doesn’t realize that what he says is very offensive to the gay community.

(Watch until 1:15)

We have seen many stereotypical perceptions of gay men on these sitcoms, which has prompted viewers to apply these stereotypes to real life. However, these characters should have been represented in an alternative fashion in order to avoid these stereotypes. While these shows are meant to make people laugh, they should not have to make fun of marginalized groups.

In Will and Grace, the main character Will is depicted as a wealthy, gay man who lives a luxurious lifestyle. He is one of the many gay characters who is depicted as wealthy, which creates a stereotype that social class and sexuality correlate. In reality, a more accurate representation would portray homosexual characters of all social classes.

Another representation in regards to Will and Grace was in Megyn Kelly’s interview with superfan Russell Turner of the show. She assumed that the show made Turner gay. This couldn’t be further from the truth as homosexuality is not a choice. In retrospect, Megyn Kelly should not have made those comments as they were disrespectful and inaccurate.

An appropriate alternative representation of in regards to the scene from  The Real O’Neals would be a less flamboyant and less sexually provocative scene. The scene suggests that all gay men see the world in an oversexualized manner. Should The Real O’Neals not want to be offensive and stereotypical towards the gay community, they would not have shown such a scene.

The Office represents a very hostile working environment for the gay community. Oscar is constantly harassed at work by his fellow co-workers, in particular, his boss, Michael, for being homosexual. A more accurate representation would show a modern working environment where your personal life is private, and members of the community are welcomed and accepted. Most companies today are very LGBTQ friendly, so The Office should do the same.

There are ways to represent groups in a certain manner that don’t belittle or make fun of these groups with stereotypical representation about certain characteristics and behaviours of these groups. Modern television has a large influence on our cultural society, so production companies should be more mindful of how they represent marginalized groups since stereotypes on television can influence the way people think and can affect the way the public views these groups of people.  

 

 

References

Canfield, D. (2017). Megyn Kelly’s ‘Will & Grace’ Comment Criticized Online. Retrieved from

https://ew.com/tv/2017/09/25/megyn-kelly-will-and-grace-gay/.

Dupuis, A. (2016). The Real O’Neals Portray Gay Halloween. Retrieved from

http://instinctmagazine.com/post/real-oneals-portray-gay-halloween-and-i-say-meh-sad-wrong.

Garafano, L. (2018). “5 Episodes of ‘The Office’ That Are Totally Problematic in 2018.”

Retrieved from https://decider.com/2018/02/17/the-office-is-problematic/.

The Office US. (2018). Sensitivity Training [Video File]. Retrieved from

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWzezWq7FkA.

The Real O’Neals. (2016). Get ready for the biggest & best Halloween in the history of

humankind! It’s time for the Gay Super Bowl! [Video File]. Retrieved from

https://www.facebook.com/TheRealONeals/videos/1208582499184560/.

TODAY. (2017). ‘Will And Grace’ Superfan Russell Turner Tells Megyn Kelly How Show

Inspired Him | Megyn Kelly TODAY [Video File]. Retrieved from

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQVwoImSnds.

 

Blog #5 Final Blog

Thomas Kuhn wrote The Structure of Scientific Revolution in 1962 which defined the popular concept of the Paradigm shift. The paradigm shift is a concept that consists of changing one way of thinking to another. It could be a type of revolution or a type of transformation. However, it’s not a change that can just spontaneously occur, but it rather enabled through a series of changes. An example of this would be the invention of the printing press. The printing press aided towards the printing of a large amount of books that was easily accessible to many people. These books contained certain languages that influenced the people’s minds and beliefs. Eventually this cause lead to the giant Scientific Revolution. As time goes and human develop advanced technologies, our society begins to change their ways of thinking. Let’s use our current postmodern society as an example. Social media has become a very popular tool that many people in this generation are using. Through social media, people are able to connect with each and create social networks without having to be physically with each other. Social media can enables practices that link people together through commonality and reciprocity. In the book Technically Together by Michele A. Willson the author quotes, “Commonality enables reciprocal practices to take place and to be understood within a specific context” (Willson 30). Since people can create networks through their phone, we begin to think that face to face interaction is no longer necessary. This is where the Paradigm shift comes into play in our society.

Our society has changed their ways of thinking by believing that we no longer need face to face interaction with other people. We find it easier to make a phone call or text someone in order to get out points across while not feeling fully emotionally connected to the person. This practice is deadly to strong relationships and is a huge distraction to millennials. Through the use of technology we are breaking physical bonds between each other and living an emotionless life. Our society has evolved to believe that face to face interaction is okay, but it’s not. Our society is being impacted in a negative way because we are losing our abilities to connect with those around us and losing the ability to process other people’s emotions in real life. It’s almost as if we are all becoming programmed robots, a society that none of us want to live in. Another impact on our society would have to be in the change of thinking with out ways of life. A lot of people in our society tend to believe that there is only a certain way to live a perfect life due to the use of social media. People go on Instagram or Facebook and see what other people are doing, only lower their self esteem. People are becoming more depressed because they see how other people are living their life through social media. Our society is shaping their thinking to believe that we need to live our live a specific way in order to be happy which is has a major negative impact on our society. One last way social media has changed is by how we express ourselves on the internet. We are able to present ourselves as anybody we want through social media. This has caused many problems in our society with people saying who they are when they really aren’t. This creates a facade in our society with fake people. Our society has believed that its ok to show us who we want to show even if it’s not the truth, which is very harmful to our society.

“The social meaning of the technologies is not determined by the technologies themselves; rather, it will be shaped and reshaped by how they are embedded into social life, advanced and transformed by the myriad of individual actors, large institutions, practices, and projects that constitute contemporary reality.” In every type of social life communication must be involved. The type of communication being used affects the structure of the social life. Since our society currently revolves around social media, we embed these “technologies” into our social lives. As we combined social media with our social lives, we begin to see a major change in our communication techniques. For example, we see our friends with other friends on Instagram, or you see your friends at a party on Facebook that they didn’t invite you to. You start to think differently and begin to question if those people are truly your friends. Eventually you start to change your relationships with people depending upon what you see on social media. So while social media isn’t purposely created to alter relationships with other people, they can provided a gateway to how relationships can be changed.

I want to explain the part of the quote that talks about the “myriad of individual actors”. This term refers to individuals who are using social media for their themselves. They use social media in a personal aspect of their life. They decided how they use social media. They can post pictures for themselves, their family, or their friends. It could also used to promote products, businesses, or entertainment. These are the people who change the form of social media. They use social media and change the purpose of social media in a way that our minds couldn’t even imagine. For example, I recently read an article in class written by Michael D. Shaw’s article from the Huffington Post, titled Understanding Social Media’s Data Treasure Trove. The article talked about how large business advertise products on social media in order to promote what they are selling and hopefully make sales. It is quoted in the article, “social media builds an audience of millions.” Social media companies, according to Shaw (as of 2015) have earned “an estimated $8.3 billion from advertising.” This is how business specifically have shaped the use of social media, they have used it as an advertising tool. However there are many other ways people have used social media for benefits. Another example would be the Black Lives Matter civil rights movement. This organization promotes their ideas, people, and experiences involved in this movement on social media in order to gain a lot of attention. Since social media has so many users, many different people will find different ways to gain as many viewers and followers as they can.

As for our contemporary reality, we have many changes to face as a whole society. With technology always advancing to new levels, we as humans will develop new ways to use technology and new routines will develop that affects our everyday lives. As of now, we are seeing positive effects and negative effects of social media. However, we have developed a life that revolves around our phone which may only get worse in the future. In our current society, we have developed a practice of living on our phones and our future generations will not know any better. I predict that the future will still look like today’s society. People will want to be using social media to gain mass attention and many people will want to avoid face to face interactions with each other because they will find it easier to hide behind a phone and say what they want without having to receive a direct response from the other person. However, if we raise awareness for our future generation hopefully we can teach them that they need to live their life in person and not just on a phone. Although social media may seem like the best thing to them, nothing will beat living life in the real, physical moment.

 

Sources

Blog #4

Technology has played a major role in shaping today’s society. One way technology has impacted society is through the use of social media and cyberspace. Social media is one way to connect all different people from all different places. Social media creates a social networks that connects all different people. For example, I use Facebook to connect with my family and friends who do not live close to me anymore. Facebook gives me the opportunity to still be in contact with those I am not with physically, this creates the sense of the absence of departure. Instagram is another example of how I connect with people, I get to see the life of different people through my phone. However, there are negatives to using social media and the internet. A lot of people in today’s society has become attached to using social media. You can look around with a large group of people and it’s most likely that a lot of them are interacting with their phones or social media. This creates a form of alienation and fragmentation. I have also found myself in this situation. I have caught myself several times using my phone when I’m with friends or family. Instead of using my phone, I should be living in the moment and talking to the people I am with. Using my phone and social media has but me in situations where I alienate myself from the people around me.

Social media has changed society as a whole. Social media and cyberspace brings social networking to a whole new level. Technology and social media have become part of so many people’s lives due to their advantages. I can relate to this statement because I use social media and technology a lot to benefit me. One example of this would be the use of my iphone. I use my iphone to call and text my family members and friends who are far away from me. Being at college makes me miss them and I like to keep in touch with them. My iphone makes it easy for me to instantly text my family or friends right there in the moment. I also like to use Facebook a lot. I like to use Facebook because I can send people messages who are very far away at anytime. For example, my stepmom goes to Portugal a lot and I like to message her through Facebook because my message will easily be sent to her and she can easily respond. I also like to use Snapchat because I can communicate with my friends quickly using photos. This involves the idea of sending a message to a person through time and space and having the other person receive the message in an instant. According to the book Technically Together by Michele A. Willson it states, “Online communities come in very different shapes and sizes, ranging from virtual communities that connect geographically distant people” (Willson 62).

Technologies have become a major aspect of many peoples lives. Our society has found different ways to incorporate technologies into our everyday routines. One way we incorporate technology into our everyday routine is when we first wake up. Most likely, everyone wakes up in the morning and checks their phone. We like to check our phones to see what we have received while we were sleeping. Tristan Harris performed a Ted Talk and quoted, “Every time I check my phone, I’m playing the slot machine to see, what am I going to get? What am I going to get? Every time I check my email, I’m playing the slot machine, saying, “What am I going to get?” Tristan is explaining a routine that most people do everyday as well. We check our phones on a daily to see what we will get. This has impacted our routine by constantly distracting us from the world around us. This is just one minor routine, another routine that has been changed is transportation. Transportation is a major aspect of technological advancements. The automobile made it easier for people to travel long distances and live in further locations. This invention of the automobile impacted the lives of millions by providing a source of transportation that can get  person to a location is a shorter amount of time. Personally when I was home, I used my car all the time. Driving everywhere has became a routine in my everyday life by providing me with a source of transportation that can get me place to place easily.

Having knowledge and information does increase the potential for control. Knowing how to obtain power and having the information to accomplish this goal can be very beneficial in the process of gaining power. In today’s society a lot of information and knowledge through the internet. Using reliable sources, a person can expand their knowledge tremendously by applying the information they learned from the internet to their previous knowledge. However, finding too much knowledge or too much information on the internet can create conflict with trying to obtain information. According to the book Technically Together by Michele A. Willson it states, “…information overload is an automatic result of entering cyberspace; the world of information is the world of too much information” (Willson 78). To relate this to myself, I can say that I have ran into many problems with trying to find information for a research paper and having way too many sources to choose from to gather information from. The process of going through all the sources and trying to find the right information can be a very tedious and stressful process.

Technology has influenced the possibility of twenty- four- hour communication by providing different access to communication. Just using an iphone you can text someone, call someone, email someone, and even facetime someone just using your cellular device. There are good and bad sides to this. This is good because it gives people the chance to communicate with anyone at anytime no matter how far apart these people are apart from each other. This gives people access to communicate with each other in any situation in an event of communication being needed. A bad side to this would have to be with alienation. Having the ability to communicate with anyone at anytime gives anyone the opportunity to separate themselves from the people they are with in person. For example, if someone is at a family gathering they can call or facetime a friend and not talk to their family members at the gathering. This can be good because it provides easy effective communication with anyone but can be bad when alienation occurs.

Works Cited (MLA)
Willson, Michele A. Technically Together: Re-thinking Community within Techno-society. New York: Peter Lang, 2006. Print.

Blog #3

Chapter one of the book Technically Together by Michele A. Wilson discusses three concepts: community, technology, and intersubjectivity. The concept of community is introduced within  the first page of the chapter. It is stated how some sociologist could not make a clear definition for the word community. The author talks about how learning and understanding the different forms of communities can help create solutions to communal conflicts. The author argues that communities could be looked at from all different aspects according to structural differences that make up different communities.

One topic I found interesting in the book was bonding and connection. This section of the chapter discusses how a community is more than just people living in the same space, and that it is people living in the same space who interact with each other. A bond is created through people being a member in a community and sharing common interests with others. Stronger bonds between the people in the community can create a more stable community which can lead to confidence and sentiment within a community. It is discussed at the end of the section how communities consist of natural social interactions where the people see themselves as part of a whole community.

Another topic in the book I found interesting was Reciprocity and Identity. I find this concept interesting because I can relate it to my personal experiences. Reciprocity is a major part of the bonding process. It involves the exchange of different interactions between two different people. These interactions can be then identified and analyzed by the receiving person. These actions can be identified which can cause a mutual response. The act of receiving and understanding an action could be symbolic, spiritual, or social. I like reading about this kind of topic because it gives me a better understanding of how humans have this ability to communicate and understand each other’s motives.

One last topic I thought was interesting was the different types of communities. The two types of communities discussed in the chapter were assent communities and descent communities. The contrast in these two communities help me realize the two types of communities that exist. Assent communities have to do with choosing to be part of a community. Meaning that you are not born into a community, you can chose to be a part of a community. The author uses the idea of Christianity. In this religion you are not born a Christian but can be converted to become Christian. In a descent community, a choice is not an option. You are born into a community and expected to follow the communities practices. You do not get to chose which community you get to be part of. The author uses the example of Jewish communities. If you are born into a Jewish family than you are jewish too, you do not have the choice of what religion you practice. Therefore a child born into a Jewish family is expected to practice the Jewish family rituals and religion.

Response to TedTalk

The Ted talk we watched in class was one of the more interesting ones I have viewed in a long time. One point that I was fascinated by was the connections we individuals have with so many people. Nicholas displayed many graphs to the audiences to show how people were connected. These graphs supported his idea of how human behaviors and ideas spread to people in the network. One statistic Nicholas presented proved that a person has a 45 percent higher chance of becoming obese if they have an obese friend. This statics made me realize how a person can change just by who they are surrounded by. Nicholas touched upon this stating that our minds try to conform to who we are surrounded by.  Nicholas used the example of how our idea of the norm body image can change, leading to changing the size of our bodies. As our minds change to conform to the idea of one body image, it creates a large network of people who all have the same body image.

Another point that was talked about was how there are different structures of social networks which create different implications on our lives. In order to understand this concept, Nicholas used the element Carbon and how this element can be used to created two different structures, ones structure will create graphite and the other structure will create diamond. Carbon is used in both compounds, just in a different configuration which forms a different product. This idea can be applied to humans. Humans display emotions that could communicate a feeling and possibly transfer that feeling to another person. It depends what emotion is being portrayed that affects the connections between the people in the network. Nicholas used the example of collective emotions. He explained how people with same emotions can spread what they are feeling to the people around them, forming a large connection of people with the same emotion. For example, a group of people who are angry with a rising social issue could transfer their emotions to other people, forming a network of people who are angry about the same social issue. Since the structure of this network revolves around anger, this network specifically could result in these people creating a riot. The idea of the different structures in each network dictates what the implication of the network is.

The last point I thought was very intriguing was the idea of how our genes could dictate what social network we create or are a part of. Since every human has a unique set of genes, there are so many different social networks that could be produced from the variety of genes between each individual. Nicholas used the example of how some people introduce their friends to other people and how some people don’t introduce their friends to other people. People who introduce their friends to other people will create a larger social network with more variety as opposed to someone who doesn’t introduce their friends to other people, which will result in smaller network. This also has to do with the idea of connecting different social networks. The idea of connecting social networks has to do based on a person genes which dictates whether or not they connect other networks together. The importance of this point is that we humans should be more aware of these networks and use them in a way that could be helpful. These networks tie a large amount of individuals together and if sustained could be a very useful tool in any community.