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While I'm not one of those who believes Everything Means Something on a television show or in movies - sometimes, a cigar may just be a cigar - the fact is, seeing things you know little to nothing about onscreen does educate you for good or ill. Responsible filmmakers and showrunners and producers make a world of difference in some people's lives.
As a child growing up in a predominantly white Midwest town (oh hell, let's just say what it was: there were like three non-white people in the entire county, so far as I knew), I didn't have much opportunity to interact with people of color or know anything about their problems. Dad is and always has been racist about black people, and while Mom tried to counter some of that, the fact was she probably harbored some racism herself - unexamined, because if you don't have opportunity or reason to examine faults in yourself, why would you want to? Seeing Norman Lear's TV shows, like "All in the Family" and "Good Times" and "The Jeffersons" while I was small was critical, in my considered later-in-life opinion, to helping me resist most of Dad's diatribes and mindset about the issue of black-and-white. The humor helped, too, because even Dad liked most of these shows and I like to think some of the lessons sunk in at least partway, lessening his hard-shelled prejudice.
I don't think there was a mainstream show that did the same for gay people until Ellen DeGeneres tried in the mid-90s. That show failed once she and her character came out to a wide audience, and it was around the same time or much later that "Will & Grace" emerged, featuring two gay and one bisexual character in the main cast of four. (Back in the 70s, I will give credit that "Soap" starred Billy Crystal in one of his first roles as a gay man that most viewers learned to see as human and like themselves in some way, despite the show being a satire of a genre - or maybe because every character in the show was "odd" in some way.)
And that was the thing - I watched the concept of gay struggling to become more accepted through the 80s and even up to now, but for much of my life it was seen as "not normal" or odd. That's how I grew up; that's how I saw it on the TV shows I watched. "The Golden Girls" had three episodes I can recall with gay or lesbian characters and, for the time, treated the subject pretty well - but there's at least one other episode I can recall in which a male wedding planner had a few jokes written around his coded-obviously-gay lines of dialogue and behavior. I also remember jabs at gay people being common in stand-up comedy for the time, even into the 90s, in ways I don't think would be accepted now.
My point is, I was never anti-gay rights - but neither was I in a position to be for them. I knew a handful of gay people in college, but it didn't impact MY daily life. So when I encountered the concept of slash - fanfic and fan art about same-sex relationships - in fandom, I wasn't bothered but I did have to shift my thinking on relationships. Seeing tons of TV shows and movies and reading books featuring straight relationships, and just seeing those couples around me every day of my life, had normalized the concept of female/male in my mind ... but I hadn't thought much about what two men or women might do together.
And yes, thinking of sex came first. I mean, when your first piece of slash exposure is fan art featuring one guy kissing another, the mind follows along. I also learned from Joan about Kirk/Spock fanfic and how it dated back to the very early days of Trek fandom - as well as the fact those two actors were apparently aware of it. I never did get into any particular type of Trek slash pairings, but by the time I started watching A-Team reruns in 2000 I was neither surprised by nor averse to reading it there. In fact, Face/Murdock is among some of the best slash fanfic I remember reading, both for the written porn and for the depiction of just their daily relationship and how they would have to cope with each other, the others on the team, people they were trying to help or fight, and their situation as fugitives. It was the first time, perhaps, that I realized two same-sex characters romantically involved didn't have to fit "male" and "female" roles.
Much as I learned to enjoy reading slash, I didn't feel up to the challenge of posting anything I wrote about it. That wouldn't happen for a few more years, and in another fandom altogether.
As a child growing up in a predominantly white Midwest town (oh hell, let's just say what it was: there were like three non-white people in the entire county, so far as I knew), I didn't have much opportunity to interact with people of color or know anything about their problems. Dad is and always has been racist about black people, and while Mom tried to counter some of that, the fact was she probably harbored some racism herself - unexamined, because if you don't have opportunity or reason to examine faults in yourself, why would you want to? Seeing Norman Lear's TV shows, like "All in the Family" and "Good Times" and "The Jeffersons" while I was small was critical, in my considered later-in-life opinion, to helping me resist most of Dad's diatribes and mindset about the issue of black-and-white. The humor helped, too, because even Dad liked most of these shows and I like to think some of the lessons sunk in at least partway, lessening his hard-shelled prejudice.
I don't think there was a mainstream show that did the same for gay people until Ellen DeGeneres tried in the mid-90s. That show failed once she and her character came out to a wide audience, and it was around the same time or much later that "Will & Grace" emerged, featuring two gay and one bisexual character in the main cast of four. (Back in the 70s, I will give credit that "Soap" starred Billy Crystal in one of his first roles as a gay man that most viewers learned to see as human and like themselves in some way, despite the show being a satire of a genre - or maybe because every character in the show was "odd" in some way.)
And that was the thing - I watched the concept of gay struggling to become more accepted through the 80s and even up to now, but for much of my life it was seen as "not normal" or odd. That's how I grew up; that's how I saw it on the TV shows I watched. "The Golden Girls" had three episodes I can recall with gay or lesbian characters and, for the time, treated the subject pretty well - but there's at least one other episode I can recall in which a male wedding planner had a few jokes written around his coded-obviously-gay lines of dialogue and behavior. I also remember jabs at gay people being common in stand-up comedy for the time, even into the 90s, in ways I don't think would be accepted now.
My point is, I was never anti-gay rights - but neither was I in a position to be for them. I knew a handful of gay people in college, but it didn't impact MY daily life. So when I encountered the concept of slash - fanfic and fan art about same-sex relationships - in fandom, I wasn't bothered but I did have to shift my thinking on relationships. Seeing tons of TV shows and movies and reading books featuring straight relationships, and just seeing those couples around me every day of my life, had normalized the concept of female/male in my mind ... but I hadn't thought much about what two men or women might do together.
And yes, thinking of sex came first. I mean, when your first piece of slash exposure is fan art featuring one guy kissing another, the mind follows along. I also learned from Joan about Kirk/Spock fanfic and how it dated back to the very early days of Trek fandom - as well as the fact those two actors were apparently aware of it. I never did get into any particular type of Trek slash pairings, but by the time I started watching A-Team reruns in 2000 I was neither surprised by nor averse to reading it there. In fact, Face/Murdock is among some of the best slash fanfic I remember reading, both for the written porn and for the depiction of just their daily relationship and how they would have to cope with each other, the others on the team, people they were trying to help or fight, and their situation as fugitives. It was the first time, perhaps, that I realized two same-sex characters romantically involved didn't have to fit "male" and "female" roles.
Much as I learned to enjoy reading slash, I didn't feel up to the challenge of posting anything I wrote about it. That wouldn't happen for a few more years, and in another fandom altogether.
