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and the generally low-quality of television programming. Why try to be creative when you can just pickup a newspaper and create a script from real life? These tawdry examples are of the recurring theme of "The Other." Societies must always have: "The Other." And in them you'll find the components of society's current fixation, with the taboos and titillation being linked together: homosexuality, violence, death.
Earlier in TV history, people of color were the main "Other." We went from Indian "savages" to the untrustworthy coloreds -- alternately described as "inscrutable" "wily" "sexuality deviant with massive genitals" and the raping of white women was always central to this theme. They were made into "the ogres," the "unknown madmen" who couldn't be trusted and would kill if given the opportunity and must be watched at all times and kept in their places.
And now gay people have been shoved front and center into this role, now that its no longer exactly PC to do this with people of color. Gay people have been made fair game by the Religious-Right and conservatives. So now they're the new ogres who must be watched and controlled or society will fall apart. And these programs have all the elements in which those who support gay people can and say, "see this is what happens when gay people are ostracized -- they're driven to homicidal madness." And those who don't support gay people can say: "see this is what happens when people are allowed to flaunt their unnatural sexuality without government control and/or punishment."
A similar occurrence happened in the 70s when the movie "The Burning Bed" portrayed a beaten and abused wife. There were at the time, a number of cases around the country (and since then) which resulted in women being imprisoned for killing their husbands after having endured years of psychological, emotional and physical abuse at their hands. Such women briefly became "The Other" having deigned to break the chains of matrimony with homicide. Such an assault upon white male dominance could not go unpunished. At the time there was much discussion of just what justifies killing someone. You could kill someone who breaks into your home to steal your TV and you claimed you "feared for your life." But not someone who systematically tortured and beat you for years. That kind of fear you just have to learn to live with, I suppose. The only positive thing that came from it all was that domestic violence laws began to be written so police couldn't continue to simply walk away from what was then described as "a petty marital argument."
So these so-called writers, producers and the networks and cable companies meanwhile, use topical issues in the struggle of gay people to obtain full equality for financial gain, while arguing that their screenplays are prescient and vital to the national dialogue on the issue.
Here's what I think of that: :puke:
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