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Saturday, Nov 21, 2009
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Hollywood shapes public opinion |
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| Hollywood shapes public opinion | ||
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by Gerald Libonati -
Special to the SGN Was the road to Barack Obama's presidency paved by Hollywood's entertainment machine? The movie and television industry may have had a hand in shaping public opinion about electing a black president by depicting African-Americans in the role of America's number-one guy. Seeing situations on screen allows viewers to get used to a new idea. As early as 1972, a movie about the first black president hit the silver screen. Based on a novel by Irving Wallace, The Man starred James Earl Jones. Ironically, the screenplay was written by Rod Serling, as if to suggest that such a scenario could only be seen on The Twilight Zone. More than two and a half decades later, Morgan Freeman played the lofty role in the 1998 comet-smashing film, Deep Impact. It appeared in theaters at a time, not that long ago, when no one in the real world seriously entertained the idea of a black president. Dennis Haysbert took the role on the Fox television series 24 which premiered in 2001. In fact, Haysbert was voted "Favorite On-screen President" by a Blockbuster poll. "If anything, my portrayal of David Palmer, I think, may have helped open the eyes of the American people & to prove the possibility there could be an African-American president, a female president, any type of president that puts the people first," Haysbert told reporters in a July 2008 teleconference. If Hollywood could change the way Americans think about having a black president, could it also influence the way Americans look at Gay and Lesbian people? It already has. The younger you are, the less you will be aware that movies and TV shows have dramatically changed. They've evolved over the years to include Gay and Lesbian characters. It wasn't always like that. For most of the 20th century, there were virtually no Gay/Lesbian personalities on the big or the small screen. Gay people were sometimes interviewed on edgy television documentaries hidden behind screens like seedy criminals. The first time I personally saw a Gay man interviewed out in the open was on the Virginia Graham talk show in the 1960s. This brave soul sat right there on her studio couch in front of a live audience. No screen, no mask, no garbled voice. It was revolutionary. Ellen DeGeneres' sitcom premiered in 1994 as a lukewarm comedy show. It had a supporting cast member who was Gay. But her character, Ellen Morgan, didn't turn up the heat with her coming-out episode until 1997. It was a history-making event but not without its pitfalls as some sponsors, like Wendy's, dropped their support. The show was cancelled the next year. Since The Ellen Show, other entertainment venues made their stand. Will and Grace debuted in 1998 and became a romance-free staple. Rosie O'Donnell got off to a closeted start with her Daytime-Emmy-winning talk show in 1996 but made her impact after coming out and later spoke proudly as a Lesbian woman on The View. The popular Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, which brought stereotypes to a new level, popped up in 2003. A smattering of Gay characters now populate mainstream shows, not as devious villains, but as ordinary people. The horns are still being removed from Gay and Lesbian heads, but, who knows, when the process is done, maybe we'll even see a Gay or Lesbian president. Gerald Libonati is the author of the new novel Peter Wolf, about a famous Gay rock star who goes incognito to find love. (Windstormcreative.com) Libonati is an award-winning journalist in South Florida working for the Sun-Sentinel newspaper. He has also written for The Miami Herald, The Advocate and freelances for Gay/Lesbian newspapers around the country. |
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