How Four Groundbreaking Television Shows Played The Role in Gay and Lesbian Representation, Introduction and Part 1

 

From A White Cis Male

Who Loved TV

 

I've always been incredibly open-minded when it comes to television shows even if I as a white, cis male am not always the intended demographic.  My problems with Shonda Rhimes have nothing to do with her being an African-American woman, its because she's a terrible writer and her shows demonstrate it. Conversely in the past decade I've found characters I recognize in series I as a white cis male should not, whether they are in Ramy, Reservation Dogs or Pose.  Yet I've ranked all of these shows among my ten best of the years they aired because I truly believe great storytelling is universal.

Those of you who've read my reviews over the last few years in particular know how inclusive I've been to series that should, by any definition, be outside my comfort zone. These include such extraordinary limited series as Fellow Travelers, Capote Vs. The Swans and Ripley.  But while I've talked a lot about how much gay and lesbian representation in current TV can lead to extraordinary television, I've rarely looked backward.

So in celebration of Pride Month I thought I would do just that and take a look at how four series that helped usher in the Golden Age of TV were groundbreaking because they looked at something that America had never seen before – and who many had a lot of trouble adjusting to.

It's said that the era of Peak TV was one of Difficult Men. As those of us who came of age during that period (I was one) one of the most radical things they did was make many of these difficult men homosexuals and in many cases complicated – and in several cases, truly monstrous. This could not have been a pretty picture for the gay and lesbian community. It was one thing to want representation on film and TV but I remember how so much of it was trying to prove they weren't a threat. It could not have been fun to suddenly get representation and then wonder: "This is gonna confirm everything the Moral Majority thinks of us."

Perhaps that was true. I'd argue that these characters were a vital step forward. If representation matters it is important to illustrate that you can be more than the model minority. This has always been true, even if in recent years some shows like Euphoria and Scandal have taken it to an extreme few would willingly follow. But they are necessary, not just to paint a fuller picture but to tell truer and more real stories.

So let's begin in the beginning. And that starts in the darkest place imaginable.

 

Part 1

"OZ Didn't Make You A Bitch"

Dealing With Queerness and Love in the Darkest of Places

 

Everyone wants to argue that the era of Peak TV began with The Sopranos in January of 1999. I have always argued that it really began in June of 1997 when OZ debuted. Critics like Matt Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz acknowledge that shows like The Sopranos couldn't happen without OZ but they still insist that didn't begin there.

Because I was there I understand why. Critics and awards shows immediately responded to the later show. The reaction to OZ was decidedly mixed. Some magazines like Entertainment Weekly always had it on their ten best list; TV Guide never really liked it at all. But considering that by the time OZ came to an end in 2003 and so much of what critics found repulsive at the time – the horrible, brutal deaths usually in graphic detail, the endless horrible profanity, no characters to root for, no real sign of progress – would become the kind of things that were praised in The Wire and Deadwood and to an extent in The Shield, I still can't understand why so many critics look down on it even now.

Now with the benefit of the time I think I know what one of the biggest issues was. The nudity and the openly gay relationships that dominated every episode. I mean the media of TV criticism was dominated, even more so then today, by straight white males. And in the dim dark days of the 1990s  - which trust me were far more homophobic then today – to have a show where in the Pilot you see Beecher, who Tom Fontana said represented the HBO viewer, getting raped by a member of the Aryan brotherhood – well, let's just say it might have been easier for them to deal with a mobster who yearned whatever happened to Gary Cooper as the show that brought on the Golden Age.

For the record I don't blame those critics one bit: OZ wasn't an easy watch even if you could somehow removed the gay undertones that were present in almost every episode. I won't lie: the open nudity for someone in college on a regular basis was disconcerting in the first season and Fontana and the cast kept pushing it with each new one. (Lee Tergesen would say in the commentary that the cast would start to work out more when they realized just how much nudity they were going to have to do.)

But based on what I read at the time (which wasn't much) OZ's willingness to put homosexual relationships so front and center was something that was immensely respected by what was then called the gay and lesbian community. And I honestly don't think Shonda Rhimes or any of the many LGBTQ+ series that have followed in the past decade in particular could have happened without OZ showing these kinds of relationships in the most brutal and horrible way imaginable.  Who knows? Maybe it even helped. Once you've shown the twisted love story of Beecher and Keller, any other gay relationship has to look like a Harlequin romance.

I need to be clear that on OZ there was a division between openly gay men and those who didn't admit even to themselves they were gay, if not sexual predators. There were quite a few examples of the former during the series but understandably they got buried under the latter who were the series regulars. Still I respect Fontana for what he did.

Early in Season 2 we meet a character named Richie Hanlon (Jordan Lage). He's overheard a conversation about the rape of Leo Glynn's daughter. He goes to see Father Mukada. This is how it opens:

Hanlon: I like to take it up the ass. Some people think it's perverse. But it's my choice so fuck them.

Ray is puzzled by this.

Hanlon: I choose to take it up the ass. But rape…that's something else.

In what is almost a throwaway exchange Ray asks Richie if he was raped. Hanlon says  casually. "Yes. But that's not why I'm here." There's an entire saga told in that line, not the least of which is Hanlon's resignation. He knows that there's nothing to be gained by telling the horrible thing that's happened to him; it’s a reality the warden and the hacks are unwilling to even try to solve.

Just as tellingly Hanlon is seen as inferior to the Aryan brotherhood who we know regularly rape and sodomize other prisoners and feel no disconnect when they say they're not f---ts. This is particularly true for Vern Schillinger who we will see sodomize the brain damaged Cyril O'Reilly later than season and completely deny it years after the fact.

Indeed one of the more uncomfortable truths about OZ – which have to make it tough watching even now – is just how clearly so many of the prisoners are not just sexual predators but how freely they abuse much younger men. This is true of both Schillinger and Adebisi, who we will see multiple times molesting teenagers. We never see it as graphically (OZ had almost no sex scenes and the few that were televised were heterosexual) but the viewer saw just enough. It's hard to forget a scene where Adebisi has tied a naked Kenny Wangler (JD Williams) to the bed and unties him every morning, only to tie him back up the next night.  Kenny is just eighteen at the time and its very important to note he's far from innocent. In fact in the episode prior to this he's ordered the murder of his wife for stepping out on him and has laughed about it to his friends before going to her funeral. Nevertheless seeing him during this scenes is horrifying in its implications.

During the third season Adebisi has started to work at the AIDS ward for an elaborate plan of revenge. He's drawn the blood of a dying man so he can infect one of his tormentors with it, which is honestly horrible enough. During it the man he's infected (though he doesn't know it) asks why he wants to leave the cafeteria to work with a bunch of "f—s".

Adebisi: "Out there, I hate them. But in here, sometimes you need your dick sucked."

You get the feeling this compartmentalizing is far from uncommon in OZ and that Adebisi and Schillinger have just taken it to an extreme. Sister Pete (Rita Moreno) will make it clear to Beecher that there are some men who do this.

Beecher, of course, is a special case by this point. I actually remember the first episode he and Keller met: it was the first episode of OZ I ever saw.  It was the episode that introduced Keller – or as Augustus Hill put in the narration: "Boy meets boy."

When they first start sharing a cell this is their first exchange:

Beecher: Are you a f--?

Keller: I do what I have to do.

By the end of that episode we know that Keller knows Schillinger and that he's working a plan to manipulate Toby so that he and Vern can destroy him emotionally and then physically.

During the first season and a half of their, shall we say, complicated love story we're not sure if Keller is the first man Beecher had sex with. We know that Schillinger saved Keller previously and while its assumed they had a similar relationship Fontana never tells us one way or the other. Keller has been married three times ("Four if you count Bonnie, who I married twice") and during the first season we see all three of his exes. We're honestly not sure that Keller was even bisexual before he came to Oz.

And then in Season 4 we learn about his past. He is the suspect in the killings of three homosexual young men in the year before he was arrested and sent to prison. (This storyline will form the backbone of Beecher and Keller's relationship in the final two seasons.) It's only later in the season that he confesses he killed those three men after he had sex with them. Mukada asks why. "I didn't want them to tell," he says simply.

Chris Meloni's work on OZ is one of the three or four best performances on the entire series. He would start work on Law & Order: SVU while OZ was still on the air but the producers were more than willing to allow Meloni to keep acting on as Keller. (There's a certain irony in this as you can see that this is exactly the kind of case that Eliot Stabler would be trying to solve on the show at any time during its run.) What's fascinating is that for much of his tenure Keller was a man tormented by some of the horrible things he did. At one point he would tell Sister Pete that "We don't choose God. He chooses us." And he made it very clear that it was too late for him. After that decision he promptly decides to kill two men that Beecher has slept with, theoretically to upset the applecart under the new management but mostly out of revenge.

Beecher spent the entire series knowing that his love for Chris Keller was by far the best and worst thing that ever happened to him. He didn't want to love him, not just because he knew what a horrible person Keller was, but because the two constantly brought out the worst parts of each other.

Complicating things was Beecher's spiritual journey during this same period. In one of the more inspired storylines of OZ during Season 3 Beecher would form a friendship with Kareem Said that was very close to a conversion to Islam. The decision would temporarily cost Said his leadership of the Muslims in Em City but neither man regretted it. But because homosexuality is against the preaching of Islam Said disapproved and made this very clear.

There were many inspired discussions of this between the two men on the subject. At one point Said told Beecher that this 'thing he has for Keller' was hurting his growth. Beecher was painfully honest: "I don't want to love him but I do. And as for Allah, I'll deal with him when the time comes." It is a measure of both men's growth that this was not a dealbreaker for Said and he would try to lead Beecher through it.

The sad part is Said was right: Beecher's relationship with Keller was toxic. The most horrible touch came in the final season. Keller would be convicted of the murder of Bryce Tibbits, one of the gay men he was accused of killing and sent to death row. Beecher, who was paroled earlier that season, worked pro bono and got him off. But Keller was so jealous of Beecher's freedom that he ended up tricking Toby into picking up an illegal drug that would violate Toby's parole – and then called the cops to make sure it happened. When Beecher returned he said: "Same old story. I got fucked in the ass."

And yet when the show is over, when the bodies have fallen, one of the last scenes is of Beecher talking to Sister Pete about love:

"When God was making the Universe why did He make something so wonderful so fucking painful?"

Sister Pete, who's had her own struggles with the question says: "I think He thought we could handle it."

It's an exchange that could just as easily serve so many queer relationships beyond TV – maybe even being gay itself.

And I've never forgotten one of the earliest episodes of Six Feet Under. David and Keith are sitting at home watching OZ with a kind of fervor. During it Keller recites one of his most famous lines and both Keith and David mouth it:

OZ didn't make you a bitch. You were born one.

Considering that Six Feet Under debuted just a few weeks after Season 4 ended in the wrong hands this could have seemed like selfless promotion of the network. I never looked it at the way.  Alan Ball, it's worth remembering was a gay man himself perhaps the first openly gay man to become a showrunner in TV history. And given how much of his real life would influence that show I find it easily to believe that there were watch parties like this among his community for much of the late 1990s.

Of course it was because of Alan Ball that gay men would have a more realistic and slightly healthier relationship to see on HBO in the near future. That will be the subject of the next article in this series.