Here's how
the ad should read: "GAY COMMUNITY DESPERATELY SEEKS
DIVA. Seeking genuinely inspiring performer with loads
of raw talent and a real pedigree for turning tragedy
into triumph. No perky D-list actresses or strung-out
heiresses need apply."
The "diva
drought" first became apparent to me this year as I
sat in the opening night screening at Outfest, Los
Angeles's gay film festival, listening in mild
shock as Tori Spelling told a string of off-color jokes
implying most of the attendees planned on having sex with
each other in the bathroom--or right there in
their seats if they were content to stop at oral.
Those of us who were there to see the beautifully wrought
drama Save Me or cheer on director Bill Condon as he
was honored with an Outfest Achievement Award were at
a loss for words. (How the numerous lesbians in
attendance felt about Miss Spelling's monologue is
fodder for another column.) How can it be that the
minority that rioted in the streets in large part over
the death of Judy Garland is now content to get giggly
and grateful when a pretty young actress, reminiscent of one
of the popular girls in high school, makes seemingly urbane
jokes at our expense?
Don't get
me wrong. Miss Spelling has had some good turns in her
gay-friendly career, most notably her portrayal of a wildly
self-obsessed aspiring actress in the gay indie film
Trick.
That said, we shouldn't
underestimate our power as an audience for pop
culture, and we shouldn't pretend that we are shallow
and easily satisfied just because we think it will
ingratiate us to straight celebrities who have deigned
to show us their approval. It's fine to have
fading pop stars perform at our clubs every now and then,
but the stages of our pride festivals are becoming way
stations for every has-been female vocalist looking to
make a comeback. Their ill-advised single typically
has a name that seeks some new combination of the words
higher, joy, heaven, your arms, sweat,
and
swimming pool,
and they usually open their act
with some patronizing comment about how we gays have always
stuck by them, even though most of the crowd
doesn't have a clue who they are.
Paris
Hilton's appointment as grand marshal of the 2005 Los
Angeles LGBT Pride Parade in West Hollywood was an
insult to anyone who has so much as distributed a
pamphlet on behalf of gay rights. Gays responded quickly
and resoundingly, and since then Hilton has failed to find
the kind of loyal gay following that might have
insulated her image during her criminal travails.
(Indeed, when a squadron of news helicopters parked
themselves in the sky over West Hollywood at the crack of
dawn on the day she refused to return to prison, it
seemed entirely possible that a mob of gay men would
tear her limb from limb--myself included.) I bring up
Paris Hilton because she's a great example of what a
diva is not--an absurdly privileged young woman
who has downright solicited all the negative attention
she can get, as if she is convinced that each brick
thrown at her by the media will cover her expansive
shallowness with layers of permanent celebrity.
Perhaps she could have groomed herself as more of a
gay diva by showing an emotion besides wounded pride or by
struggling through a personal tragedy created by something
besides her avarice, but instead she chose to turn
herself into stroke material for frat boys, a fickle
bunch once they start drinking and hardly the kind of
guys you can count on to keep you out of jail.
Regardless, too
many gay men are content to leer at the exploits of
Hilton and her ilk rather than seek out a new generation of
genuinely talented women whose struggles dramatize and
illuminate the emotional turmoil that many gay men
feel defines their own lives. This is what a true diva
is, and we owe it to society not to give up any ground when
it comes to this definition. We belong at the leading
edge of pop culture. We have no business comforting
the losers in back.
