So Newsweek oddhead Ramin Setoodeh, as many people already know, wrote an article stating that he found Sean Hayes unconvincing in Promises, Promises and that it is merely the most recent example of gay actors being unconvincing in straight roles. Many intelligent people have already poked holes in the article, because it appears to have at least a one-t0-one brainfart-to-fact ratio, but the part that I think is the most appropriate for me to draw attention to in this particular blog is that it implies that gay actors are just less talented than straight actors. (Dustin Lance Black, the ridiculously intelligent screenwriter of Milk, also touches on this in an interview in which Newsweek attempts to cover its ass.)
Straight actors (and actors we believe to be straight but are closeted) play gay people all the time; Meryl Streep was gay in The Hours, Colin Firth was gay in A Single Man, Sonja Sohn was gay on The Wire...you get the idea. Did Setoodeh say that no one can play against "type" when it comes to sexuality? Nope, just gay people. Why? He doesn't give a reason, but his argument certainly plays into the homophobic idea that gay people are much more controlled and defined by their sexuality than straight people.
If it were easy to tell (by their terribleness) who was gay in the movies, guess what: we wouldn't have closeted actors. Everyone knows that we do. We are also fortunate enough to have had the work of great gay actors like Ian McKellen, Cherry Jones, John Gielgud, Lily Tomlin, Graham Chapman, and others it would be pointless to name here (to say nothing of bi actors like Brando and Garbo and Josephine Baker). Wikipedia has a pretty good set of lists to start on. Suggesting that those people are not good enough to go up against straight actors is just absurd.
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6 comments:
The article is especially stupid when you consider that his two examples are from MUSICALS (the gayest field of acting in general) and one of them is from GLEE (one of the least realistic shows on TV, where ALL the characters, gay and straight, are pretty "theater queeny" as he puts it).
@rubi-kun:
I've also been reading that one of the actors currently on Glee was in Spring Awakening, where he played a straight kid (he's gay) and was widely praised. Spring Awakening's whole plot HINGES on sexual attraction making everything a huge mess! Why would Broadway producers take the Enormous Risk of casting a gay actor if everybody knew that gay actors were just way too gay to portray straight characters?
Interstingly, when I first read about this article, before I learned the gist of it, I sympathized with the author, because I thought it was just about how he didn't buy Sean Hayes playing the lead in "Promises, Promises." I have to admit that before I heard about all the controversy, I didn't know Sean Hayes was openly gay; I thought he was still sticking to the "I'm not saying because it's better for my career" line he'd been using for years. I did know, however, that playing the lead role in a show based on Billy Wilder's The Apartment seems to require an actor who can be a believable nebbishy (and, yes, straight) Everyman, and I couldn't (and can't) see Sean Hayes doing that -- not because he's actually gay, but because my image of him was created by his portrayal of a stereotypical gay man on a long-running sitcom.
I think there's an interesting article to be written on the subject of actors who entered the public consciousness via sitcoms (or long-running TV series at all, really) and their success, or lack thereof, at being believable in roles beyond the ones that made them famous. I myself have a serious prejudice there, and would love to see somebody explore it in-depth (and am planning to use this whole flap as a jumping-off point for such an article, though I worry I'll come off more as an apologist for the guy). Unfortunately, the Issues of this author (who is gay himself, and somehow still deems himself sufficiently equipped to review shows with straight characters) go deeper than that.
@Pat:
I think there's an interesting article to be written on the subject of actors who entered the public consciousness via sitcoms (or long-running TV series at all, really) and their success, or lack thereof, at being believable in roles beyond the ones that made them famous.
Definitely. I think sitcom actors are particularly susceptible to this (the two major examples of this phenomenon I always see are Friends and Seinfeld actors failing to have sustained careers) but it's definitely true outside comedy, too. Since I started watching The X-Files pretty recently, I've been thinking about how it was true for Anderson and Duchovny. I'll keep an eye out for your article!
@Will:
Aah, but he was IN THE CLOSET at the time! The writer's point is that gays can act ONLY if people don't know they're gay! So get back in the closet!
Yeah, that point just makes the article even more hateful.
@rubi-kun:
WHAT? Are you kidding me? Does this guy realize when he makes sentences they have implied meanings?
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