Queer Identities

With the ever increasing amount of gay representation shown on television today, there has also been a dramatic shift in the way the gay or lesbian character has been showcased on prime-time television. In the beginning of gay representation, the gay character was stereotyped as "tragic," having gone through a major "coming out" moment full of initial rejection (such as Jack McPhee on Dawson's Creek) and eventually coming to terms with this "plague." It's nearly impossible to find LGBT characters that are already out and proud by the time their character is introduced in the storyline. However, this is changing in today's medium. Television is working towards "normalizing" the gay character and has been trying to do so through shows like Modern Family as well as coming out with programs targeted towards gay audiences such as Queer as Folk and The L Word (although these shows were never aired on network cable television) and networks geared specifically towards gays such as Bravo and LOGO. However, there is still need for improvement in queer representation (specifically in the gay male character). There are only two types of gay characters: the first being the witting, feminine gay and the other is overtly masculine. This said, the masculine gay is usually seen as a "special" character that only appears every so often or on a single episode. The overtly feminine (often described as "bitchy") gay is usually a regular and reoccurring character who is often seen as a pawn for setting up jokes regarding his sexuality. He is predominately laughed at and not with and therefor makes homosexuality a character flaw leaving the character powerless.