Portrayal of Homosexuals in Mass Media

The increased visibility of manifestly homosexual characters on television in recent years has brought to the fore the question of the impact of portrayals of members of a traditionally marginalized social group on both society and members of that group. As of the late 1990s, manifestly homosexual characters have been cast in leading roles on series television. Homosexuals have been portrayed as both leading and supporting roles in motion pictures and fiction; however, as has been observed of the NBC-TV sitcom Will & Grace, which had a debut in 1998 and which continues to air as of the 2002-2003 network season, that it was "the first example of gay subject matter going totally mainstream, for there is nothing so mainstream--not Broadway, not movies, not novels--as The Box" (Holleran, 2000, p. 66).

Will & Grace was not the first sitcom to depict a homosexual as

e" (to women) queen whose engendered sensitivity is to be favorably compared to the stereotypically sexist insensitivity of heterosexual men toward women (Dreisinger, 2000). Such a presentation sidesteps direct presentation of nonthreatening intimacy between homosexual men, which we have seen is considered a frontier not yet breached by Will & Grace. The situation for Ellen, which Schenden says "paved the way" for Will & Grace and other shows on which homosexual characters were portrayed sympathetically, was rather different. In that sitcom, multiple episodes developed action in which the lead character Ellen Morgan discovered, then revealed, her lesbian orientation. Evidence of audience acceptance of this plot line can be found in the fact that the "coming-out" episode in the Spring of 1997 measured 36 million viewers--more than the top-rated Seinfeld and ER--and the following two episodes more than 16 million (Pekurny, 2001). After that, general viewership fell off dramatically, to some 10 million. Although Ellen was renewed by ABC for 1998's fall season, it was canceled midyear. Schenden attributes this in part to creative problems that surfaced once Ellen had "outed" herself: [T]hroughout its last two seasons, Ellen struggle