This summer
brings a slate of new reality shows featuring gay
participants, but forget about positive representations. As
Choire Sicha finds out, it’s all about the
crazies, and in the end, that’s the real
progress.
Back in the 1980s
and early ’90s, gay people used to talk a lot about
“representation” in the media. Depictions of
gay people were considered “good”
(employed; adopting children) or “bad”
(murdering; slutty). The Gay and Lesbian Alliance
Against Defamation -- founded back in 1985 -- made a
regular fuss about “negative portrayals” of
gay people. Then America became a reality show utopia
and that whole good gay/bad gay structure blew up.
Yet still we turn
to these old ideas as a reflex. Jackie Warner, the Los
Angeles fitness impresario and star of Bravo’s
Work Out, has gotten heat this season --
the show’s third -- for firing a mouthy trainer
and for going along with a joke about a client’s fake
breasts; the latter incident supposedly caused
Gatorade to drop its ads from the show. (It should be
noted the show is shot in Los Angeles, where mocking
implants is a part of daily life.)
Never mind that
Warner is an accomplished businessperson who mentors
overweight, self-esteem-challenged clients as part of the
show -- and one of the few lesbians on TV. Some gay
viewers were still appalled by her behavior; she was
branded a “negative icon” for the LGBT
audience, and a petition even circulated for the
show’s cancellation. Clearly, someone forgot
that reality TV is only a simulacrum of reality!
“This
season has been bizarre,” Warner tells me by phone in
mid May, on her way to O’Hare airport after
doing publicity in Chicago, including an appearance at
a gym where the line of autograph seekers was out the door.
“I gave more passion and energy to this [season] than
I have in the past, so it’s really odd the
producer went down a negative route. Ninety-nine
percent of the work I did was left on the cutting-room
floor. It was a bad decision.”
Not that
she’s totally surprised. “The producers are
constantly trying to mess with me,” she says.
“They betray you over and over. It’s all about
the content of the show. They want the most dramatic and
crazy show at all expense to anybody else.”
The producer who
went all negative on her? He’d better watch his back.
“Oh, his ass -- he’s lucky I don’t hunt
him down,” Warner says. “I’m
beyond disappointed in his work, in every way.”
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