A Gay Soap (and Soapbox) in The Bronx

[mcscajun]

The subject line is the headline as is from the NY Times (except I corrected the "the" being in Lower Case. :) Nobody from The Bronx I grew up would ever have done otherwise. :)

Every Saturday evening, one of the longest-running programs on Bronx public access television entertains and confounds viewers with a 30-minute burst of gender-bending camp and low-budget intrigue. The television show is called "Strange Fruits," and it is everything the Bronx is not — flamboyantly irreverent, unabashedly gay and teeming with men in high heels and pantyhose. It is like "Dynasty," if "Dynasty" starred mostly untrained, unpaid actors and followed the exploits of a transsexual Southern belle turned Bronxite with a knack for stealing babies, poisoning people and cursing.

(snip)

"Strange Fruits," which first went on the air in 1997, has become one of the few public displays of homosexuality in a blue-collar borough that is a bastion of Latin machismo. None of the borough's movie theaters bothered showing "Brokeback Mountain." There has not been a gay pride parade here in years. Yet, each Saturday on Channel 68 on BronxNet, the public-access station, "Strange Fruits" pops up on television screens, courtesy of Eric Stephen Booth.

(snip)

Cablevision, the cable provider that hosts BronxNet, reaches about 270,000 households in the borough. But it is anyone's guess as to how many watch Mr. Booth's show, because BronxNet has no way of tracking a program's viewership. The show's cast members say they are occasionally recognized by strangers, and Mr. Booth, whose show won two BronxNet awards in 2001, said he had received a number of comments and phone calls over the years from random fans. Nonfans, too.

Mr. Booth was at home one Saturday night a few years ago when his phone rang, he said. "You should be ashamed of yourself," the caller said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/07/nyregion/07access.html?pagewanted=2&ei=5094&en=62e8f025fcd6fd80&hp&ex=1146974400&partner=homepage

The article doesn't bother to follow up on that comment with what happened after Mr. Booth received that hateful comment. Perhaps his retort wasn't "fit to print"? Also, not paying intense attention to where Brokeback Mountain played and didn't play, and having been exiled from The Bronx for a couple of decades now, I was surprised to see it played nowhere in The Bronx. Perhaps the Times missed something? :shrug:

[UncleSepp]

1. "A blue collar borough..."

I see too much of this. "A blue collar borough" of course wouldn't have gays in it. Nope, there are no working class gays, and it's only natural that working class people hate gays. It's a subtle thing, but it irks me this morning.

[xchrom]

2. nope -- no gay folk in blue collar neighborhoods.

:crazy:

[Smarmie Doofus]

3. Hard to see how the Times could cram more inane...

stereotypes into one article if it had taken a solemn vow to do so.

1. Is this Cablevision's ( a supremely well-connected quasi legal monopoly) idea of serving the Bronx gay/lesbian community? Jesus. No wonder people are so ignorant about LGBT issues.

2. I had no idea that we were a "bastion of Latin machismo." I thought of us as a pretty diverse borough of all kinds of folks including lots of non - one dimensional Latin males. Who knew?

3. Re. Movies: I think we're down to basically three mega-multiplexes in the borough all of which cater to violent exploitative cinematic Hollywood trash. It's probably not that Brokeback didn't play as much as few if any adult-mentality flicks ever play within the borough.

Most grown-ups go just over the city line to Yonkers and New Rochelle, 10 minutes by car, to see grown-up movies. I saw Brokeback there, and so did lots of other Bronxites.