Two days after
being lavished with Emmy nominations for Desperate Housewives, series creator Marc Cherry appeared before an
especially appreciative gathering: Outfest 2005, the
Los Angeles gay and lesbian film festival. The ABC
satire on suburbia that emerged as the runaway hit of
the past TV season has a solid queer pedigree, even if
the show's gay sensibility is more sly than overt:
Cherry is gay, and so are several of his writers. At Outfest
he and the series were celebrated with a panel
discussion, billed as "Queer Is Just a Frame of Mind
on Wisteria Lane," that included star Marcia Cross and
members of the writing and producing staff. That
Desperate Housewives carries what one audience
member called "a gay vibe" wasn't the goal, Cherry said, but
he conceded the show inevitably reflects his
personality.
"The moment you
put a woman in an evening gown mowing the lawn, it's
just gay," said Cherry, referring to a slapstick scene with
actress Eva Longoria. "It's kind of just what makes me
laugh. A lot of my gay brethren get the joke." But
fans hoping to hear Cherry and his staff revel in the
power of producing a hit reaching 24 million viewers might
have come away disappointed. Yes, a teenage boy tried an
experimental kiss with another boy, and, yes, a
lesbian likely will come into the mix at some point,
Cherry said. However, the real mission for Desperate Housewives, set on tidy but dysfunctional Wisteria Lane,
is uncomplicated, said Cherry, who wrote for sitcoms
The Golden Girls and The Five Mrs. Buchanans.
"My obligation,
first and foremost, is to entertain," Cherry told the
Associated Press. "If the stories I do have some kind of
emotional resonance for the viewers or perhaps some social
significance, that's great. But I don't start with
that. I don't start with an agenda." It's a position
echoed by the creators of a more explicitly gay-themed
show, the long-running NBC comedy Will & Grace, which like Desperate Housewives pulled
in 15 Emmy nominations last week to top all other
series. Both will vie for best comedy at the September 18
awards.
"He stole our
line," Will & Grace executive producer Max
Mutchnick said jokingly of Cherry's assertion that his
show is designed to amuse, not lecture. "We never set out to
change minds and attitudes," fellow Will &
Grace creator and executive producer David Kohan told
the AP. "We set out to make a romantic comedy with an
insurmountable obstacle. I think you set out to write
about themes and ideas or to express a political
point, and your characters die on the page."
There's nothing
new about gays as a creative force in Hollywood. But for
the Outfest crowd Cherry's control of a vast TV forum was
obviously heady. One man told Cherry he may be the
"most powerful influence we have to talk about gay
issues" on-screen ("Oh, that's frightening," Cherry
quipped in response). Another asked the panelists if
they felt they were pulling off "the biggest joke on
America...and they're just eating it up," drawing a demurral
from consulting producer Katie Ford. "I don't think we
feel like we're pulling anything over on anybody,"
Ford said. "There's a level of compassion for all the
characters.... Rather than pulling something over, I
think it's that we're including everybody. That's kind of
the key to its success, that it's universal."
But not
universally, or at least unconditionally, acclaimed. Josh
Aterovis, a novelist (Reap the Whirlwind) and
columnist who is gay, said he welcomes Cherry's success as a
sign that gays "don't have to stay in the closet" to
make good. But his enjoyment of the series is tempered
by reservations about its depiction of gays, he said.
"Almost all of the portrayals of gay people are on the
negative side," Aterovis said. Among the examples he cites:
the teenager who is exploring homosexuality also
killed a woman in a hit-and-run accident and expressed
no remorse.
Ed Vitagliano,
spokesman for the American Family Association, a
conservative Christian group, said he recognizes
Desperate Housewives to be well-crafted but
criticized it for what he called its pervasive and misguided
sexuality. "The problem we have with programs that
exploit sexuality of any variety--bisexual,
heterosexual, homosexual--is simply that they are
substituting sex for legitimate relationships," he told the
AP. "We would have a problem with homosexuality as
well as adultery. These are all signs of human
brokenness." Even producers who claim entertainment as
their only goal, he said, cannot avoid implicitly
portraying their view of the world. But in an article for
the association, Vitagliano conceded there is a "form
of morality" in the series, such as the negative light
in which sexually active divorcee Edie (Nicollette
Sheridan) is cast.
During Outfest,
Cherry himself pointed with apparent pride to the show's
moral code. When single mom Susan (Teri Hatcher) confronts
Gabrielle (Longoria) over an affair, "it wasn't, 'I
understand,"' he said. "It was, 'What the hell are you
doing cheating on your husband?' There's a lot of soap
operas that never have someone take the high moral
ground, go, 'This is wrong, this is adultery,"' he said.
Even if shows
like Will & Grace and Desperate Housewives
claim to studiously avoid the soapbox, their viewers
may be sending their own message about attitudes
toward gay Americans, Mutchnick said. "If people were so
petrified or repulsed by this subject matter or this style
or this sensibility, we wouldn't see the [audience]
numbers we see on these shows," he said. Kohan agreed
with his producing partner, to a point. Accepting gays
or any minority as entertainers "might be the biggest
and easiest hurdle to get over," he said. "It's like maybe
the first step is saying, 'Hey, they make good
minstrels. Maybe they're not such bad people after
all.' And then change comes gradually," Kohan said.
(Lynn Elber, via AP)
