Here's an excerpt
from an interview with Soledad O'Brien who was promoting CNN's
Gay In America series which debuted yesterday with "Gary + Tony Have a Baby,"
There have been many rumors and many calls for a Gay in America special. Is there still hope for an in-depth CNN documentary about the LGBT community?
Soledad: I probably started that rumor, because we have really considered doing that. In a way I think of this documentary as one piece of that. One of the challenges I find in doing a Gay in America or a Women in America or a Black in America is that it is just impossible to tell stories of 51 million people, in Latino in America for example. It’s just impossible, so you end up telling a handful of stories and one of the criticisms which I actually agree with is “well, you didn’t get my story.”
So what I decided to do is to tell stories about individuals. This is a great story — they aren’t every gay couple in America and they aren’t every gay person in America. They’re not meant to be. I guarantee that if I did a survey on gay in America, you would be the one calling me up saying “well, how come it didn’t have this and why did you pick that?” I think it is a valid question. My own mother after the first Black in America said “No Caribbeans? Where are my people?” She is right, but you can’t tell stories well that way. There is no conspiracy going on, this is the start of Gay in America. The marketing people may tell you something else, but to me this is the start of Gay in America.
1 comment:
I viewed the program last evening. There are two issues here; one is the rights of homosexuals, the other is overt behavior. The first is the concern of the consenting adults involved and their pursuit of equal status in society. The second is what the general public perceives and reacts to. In the case of this documentary, that overt behavior will be the son’s role model and will become the butt of his school peers’ ridicule. The cliché hand-to-the-breast, weepy (wimpy), smoochy emotionalism that was demonstrated is much more representative of high school drama queens than it is of matured women. As gays rightfully clamor for recognition as viable members of society, they need to be able to be identified as a legitimate third sex, not as feminine or “girly” men. The latter label may be more technically accurate, and while men displaying such behavior may be attractive to other gays, they will not be taken seriously by the non-gay culture and will forever be relegated to “La cage aux folles.” This is a point that should be addressed is any forthcoming documentaries on the subject of gays in America as it is the elephant in the room.
Adair T.M. Gasparian
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