First appeared Jan. 26, 2000, in the Chicago Free Press.
YOU HAVE PROBABLY ALREADY SEEN the news reports that comedian Ellen DeGeneres will soon be shooting a pilot for a CBS television series about a woman who hosts an "old-fashioned variety show."
The series, and DeGeneres' character, will also have a fictional behind-the-scenes component along the lines of the "Larry Sanders Show."
Would the character be gay, everyone wanted to know? CBS said it did not care one way or the other and it was up to DeGeneres. As for DeGeneres, she told inquiring reporters, "I'm playing me, so I will be gay. Because as you've heard, I am. Yeah, there was this whole thing about it."
DeGeneres' return is excellent news. She is talented, charming, funny, and pretty. And-a relief after too many years of "Seinfeld"-she seems genuine, authentic. She is the kind of person you would be happy to have as a neighbor.
The new CBS series is a vindication of sorts after ABC canceled her earlier series. But the new program also provides a fresh start, an opportunity to use what she learned about what works and what does not.
It is a little late to do an autopsy on the earlier "Ellen" but perhaps two points are still relevant. People said the earlier show was not funny. That is not fair. It was very funny.
But the humor, like the show itself, ended up focused on the character's lesbian life rather than on Ellen Morgan as a lesbian who is leading a life. That was not enough to draw large audiences. Not yet, anyway.
Second, the studio audience harmed the show by laughing uproariously, excessively, at every gay or lesbian reference -- as if to prove that they "got it." Yet the humor itself was usually very gentle and understated.
The disproportion between the humor and the raucous audience reaction may have had an alienating effect on viewers and given them the uncomfortable feeling that they had intruded into a private performance for an invited audience.
The new program, by contrast, will not focus on DeGeneres' being gay, but on the plot situation: problems running the variety show, managing the staff, coping with guests, conflicts between DeGeneres' life and her program, etc.
The fact that the character is herself gay will be part of the background most of the time but will get noticed once in a while -- a reference, a conversation, even a source of occasional conflict. That is enough to make an impact but keep a larger audience watching so long as the show also entertains them.
Will the fictional audience of the fictional variety show be supposed to know DeGeneres is gay? That is, will she be "out" on the fictional show? There would probably be more opportunity for humorous and illuminating conflict if she were not.
What we are seeing here, in any case, is the triumph of "Will and Grace." Just as DeGeneres' earlier series made "Will and Grace" possible by pioneering an openly gay lead character, now "Will and Grace" makes DeGeneres' second series possible by showing how such a program can be popular and successful if you handle it right.
Almost surely, this is the recipe for future gay characters in the mass media. The homosexuality is there, but not obtruded; the character is gay, but his character is not about being gay. "Entertainment, not preachment" is the motto.
Remember those earnest shows not so long ago where the only thing gay characters did was come our or die of AIDS. Now gays are being shown with rounded lives in which being gay is an aspect but not the whole of our existence. That is a truer and more positive message to communicate. One-dimensionality is crippling in art, as in life.
In a way, the treatment of gays on television recapitulates the four phases many individual gays go through in their own lives. Phase one was total invisibility. Phase two was similar to Tony Randall's short-lived "Love, Sidney," in which people were vaguely aware of the homosexuality but no one ever talked about it.
Phase three, like "Ellen," was a gay person newly out, coping with being gay and trying to discover what that meant for her. Phase four is now to be about gay or lesbian characters who are (more or less) comfortably out of the closet and living their lives -- which may or may not include coping with occasional hostility and looking for a relationship.
What the mass media are now able to depict are the different kinds of lives gays lead, at least the interesting ones. No doubt, most of our lives, like most heterosexuals' lives, are not all that interesting. So there is always going to be some exaggeration, some stylization, some distortion of gay lives, just as there is exaggeration and distortion of everything else on television.
But the gain is that the media will be displaying a variety of gay lives so instead of having just one template for understanding and relating to gays, heterosexuals will have several different ones available to offer a slightly better fit for each new gay person they meet.
This may have little impact on adults who already have a template by which to understand gays and lesbians and are not likely to change.
But young people tend to accept as normal whatever they grow up experiencing. By seeing a variety of gay lives even at second hand through the media, young people will be less likely than their parents to think of gays solely in terms of their sexuality or a fast-lane lifestyle.
By overcoming those one-dimensional stereotypes, we come closer to being viewed as individuals worthy of respect and equal dignity.