When I decided to start blogging around subjects of design, culture, and politics, I hadn’t envisaged dealing extensively with television and film. The moving image, although I find it fascinating, isn’t a medium which I’ve ever had any experience using, or about which I’m particularly expert. Nevertheless, I would argue that since television and film are some of the most widely consumed cultural products, they are highly influential; as conduits of information and ideas, television and film are powerful tools in the dissemination of narratives about our culture and society. As such, we ignore the political and social significance of these forms at our peril.
So although ostensibly outside the immediate realms of this blog’s field of interest, I felt that Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest offering Bruno, and more specifically, the discourse which it has provoked around depictions of gay men in the popular media was important. Newsnight Review’s feature on the portrayal of gay men on the small and big screens http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00lmqbr/b00lmq8x/Newsnight_Review_10_07_2009/ was certainly timely and it was occasionally insightful. (At the very least, they should be applauded for recognising the existence of the issue.) I’ve certainly been shocked over the past five years, by how widespread explicitly homophobic representations of gay men have become (once more) in mainstream television, and at the same time how homophobic language has regained popularity.
In my experience otherwise right-thinking and politically astute people are often puzzled by the perceived hypersensitivity of some gay people to depictions of homosexuality on screen. Nevertheless, it is certainly true that not only positive but any “normal” representations of gay people on television and in film, in which the characters homosexuality is not their defining feature, remain lamentably rare. The phenomenon typified by television programs such as Little Britain, Horne and Corden and The Catherine Tate Show, however, is much more specific and extreme than mainstream media’s problematic, inadequate and one-dimensional depictions of gay people. In these programs, characters are presented as ridiculous, laughable, or disgusting directly as a consequence of their homosexuality; this is the character’s soul characteristic and raison d’ĂȘtre (by extension homosexuality itself is presented as ridiculous and disgusting). Here, Newsnight Review’s critique was sometimes unclear and underdeveloped, failing to recognise that the problem with these representations is not simply that they are stereotyped (although they certainly are), but that they reveal a profound unease with the rejection of heteronormative values that homosexuality inevitably represents; indeed they represent a profound unease and distaste for gay people themselves.
And so on to Bruno, curiously, both the most left wing Newsnight panellist Johann Hari and the most conservative/apolitical Henry Conway saw Sacha Baron Cohen’s film as unproblematic. For me, however, what makes Baron Cohen’s film especially pernicious is the thin layer “irony” which is superficially applied to a portrayal which is otherwise explicitly homophobic. The notion that Bruno, by some complex process of double-think, is somehow debunking the prejudice of others, even as it generates humour from depicting gay sexuality and identity as grotesque and parodic, doesn’t bear scrutiny. And this is a trick which comedians and “personalities” seem to be employing with increasing frequency. Jimmy Carr, Chris Moyles and Jonathon Ross, amongst others, have consistently used derogatory, homophobic language and offensive stereotypes. This prejudice is often tacitly justified in the media, and by broadcasters themselves, using oblique references to “political correctness” and to being challenging. Making explicitly, anti-Black or anti-Semitic statements would be a much more effective way of challenging “politically correct” taboos (although of course it would be equally wrong and offensive). In fact, the reason that comedians and presenters are permitted to mock and attack gay people, is because their attitudes are widely shared and because homophobia is generally seen as a more acceptable form of prejudice than racism, or indeed isn’t considered problematic at all.
For the wealthy, powerful and influential people at the top of media organisations it is possible that homophobia isn’t much of a problem. But attacks on gay people are a daily occurrence. According to a 2008 report for the British Crime Survey, one in five lesbian and gay people have been victims of homophobic hate crime in the past three years, and this is unlikely to represent the true scale of the problem.
“In a free and democratic society, my son’s murder was an outrage. It was an act of terrorism. Jody was not the first man to be killed, or terrorised, or beaten or humiliated for being homosexual –or for being perceived to be homosexual. Tragically, he will not be the last man to suffer the consequences of homophobia, which is endemic in this society. This is unacceptable. We cannot accept this. No intelligent, healthy or reasonable society could.” Sheri Dobrowski, June 2006
Equally depressingly, homophobia is so widespread in schools that secondary education could be accurately described as institutionally homophobic. To quote a report by Stonewall UK,
“Homophobic bullying is almost endemic in Britain’s schools. Almost two thirds (65 per cent) of young lesbian, gay and bisexual pupils have experienced direct bullying. Seventy five per cent of young gay people attending faith schools have experienced homophobic bullying. Of those who have been bullied, 92 percent have experienced verbal homophobic bullying, 41 percent physical bullying and 17 percent death threats.
Less than a quarter (23 per cent) of young gay people have been told that homophobic bullying is wrong in their school. In schools that have said homophobic bullying is wrong, gay young people are 60 per cent more likely not to have been bullied.”
Given the vulnerability of gay people in a society in which homophobia is such a powerful and pervasive force, it seems incredible that hateful and prejudiced representations of homosexuality are so widely and uncritically accepted. And yet, the willingness on the part of broadcasters and others to reproduce such attitudes is a function of a homophobia so endemic that its cultural manifestations are neither censured nor even recognized. Perhaps in a world in which gay people were not routinely victims of violence and discrimination, comedy which tested the boundaries of homophobia might be relevant, but this is evidently not the world in which we live. For the young person who faces a constant barrage of negative attitudes towards their sexuality at school and home, the impact of publicly endorsed homophobia is devastating. The effect of the promotion and dissemination of caricatured, mocking representations of homosexuality is to undermine vulnerable gay people and at the same time to render homophobia including its most extreme manifestations more acceptable.