We're in sweeps month now, so everything we see on the tube will be either a season finale, a series finale or a much-anticipated premiere. Even sports has its ratings-grabbers, like the Floyd Mayweather/Manny Pacquiao fight or the Kentucky Derby. Ten minutes surrounded by hours of pre- and post-discourse. Why are people still boxing when we're talking all the time about the brain damage done by football? Haven't years of TV images of Muhammad Ali in tremors, unable to speak, been disturbing enough?
So it's all about the ratings in May, which is why we thought the TV news megalopoly would be doing a better job. A much better job.
CNN was founded June 1, 1980. They've had 35 years to get their 24/7 news gig together. Yet CNN seems not to get how news is done when a story is breaking in the streets and it involves black people. One would think, with the epidemic of police violence against black American men and women, that someone at CNN would wake up and think, "Hmm, maybe we should get some people who know how to address racial issues to cover these stories."
But apparently not. We know we've said this a gazillion times in this column, but networks really have to stop the two-for-one thing for minorities. So we have CNN's Don Lemon being the black and gay voice, and Jonathan Capehart being the black and gay commentator. Find some more black people and some more gay people, yo.
It was quite the embarrassing week for CNN, between white female anchors Erin Burnett referring to sorority sisters as gang members (did they really look like Crips to you?) and Ashley Banfield scolding a black Baltimore councilman for using the word n*gger when describing how "thug" had become a euphemism for the n-word.
"Just call them n*ggers," Councilman Carl Stokes told Burnett on April 28, outraged over media references to Baltimore protesters as "thugs."
Burnett handled it badly, but Banfield felt the need to school Stokes in a follow-up interview on April 29. Banfield told Stokes she was "livid" that he had used the n-word and added, "I have to say, you're a leader and so many people have said don't say it in rap, don't say it so loosely, don't assume you can say it because you're one color and another color can't. It's just so painful to hear it no matter what color we are, and I'm glad you decided not to use it on this show."
Oh. "It's just so painful to hear it no matter what color we are." We. Can't. Even. And then Banfield did not allow Stokes to comment. Oh.
There was no bigger story in America this past week than the killing of Freddie Gray in Baltimore. We wrote for the Baltimore Sun newspaper for 17 years, and one of our friends works with David Simon, creator of the best drama series ever on TV, The Wire, which was the best deconstruction of Baltimore �" or any city �" in the history of television. So we're in touch with Charm City. We've loved Baltimore on the small screen since Homicide: Life on the Streets, which, when it debuted in 1993, was a super-edgy, gritty police procedural (and the first to feature a bisexual male character, Kyle Secor's Tim Bayliss). The show's portrayal of the work of detectives and beat cops in the Baltimore Police Department was landmark TV, and is consistently listed among the best shows ever.
The seven-season series was based on David Simon's book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets. Simon was a Baltimore Sun reporter and was an exec producer on the series as well as series consultant. In a PBS documentary on Baltimore, Simon said he was "particularly interested in the demythification of the American detective," noting that while detectives are typically portrayed as noble characters who care deeply about their victims, Simon believed real detectives regarded violence as a normal aspect of their jobs.
This brings us to Freddie Gray. On May 1, Marilyn Mosby, the Maryland State's Attorney for Baltimore City, announced that Gray's death was a homicide, and also said there had been no reason for his arrest. The 25-year-old black Baltimorean was arrested on April 12, and died April 19 from catastrophic injuries sustained while in police custody, including a severed spine. Protests over Gray's killing had been ongoing, but reached a crescendo the week of April 27, when looting and fires broke out in Baltimore and a curfew was established. And that's when news teams hit the streets to cover the protests. Badly.
When we were still in high school, Geraldo Rivera was a left-leaning investigative reporter uncovering horrifying abuses, like his Peabody-winning series for Nightline on Willobrook. It was Rivera who uncovered the truth about Elvis Presley's death being a drug overdose and not a heart attack. That Rivera has been replaced over the years by an increasingly right-wing champion of Tea Party-style politics. That's the Rivera Fox News sent to cover the Baltimore protests.
Unsurprisingly, it did not go well. Rivera, forgetting how racism tainted his own youth and early career, did all but use the n-word in his description of events. Nor was he interested in the views of actual protestors. Our parents were civil rights workers, but we aren't old enough to remember how the racial unrest of the 1960s was covered on TV. We imagine, badly. But that was 50 years ago. Surely we could do better now?
We were pleased to see CBS News anchor Scott Pelley interview Marilyn Mosby on the May 1 Evening News. Don Lemon also interviewed her later that night on CNN (you can watch here: www.mediaite.com/tv/marilyn-mosby-to-don-lemon-not-a-tough-decision-to-bring-charges).
The Freddie Gray story and the Walter Scott story (Scott was shot eight times April 4, 2015, in North Charleston, South Carolina, after a traffic stop for a broken headlight) raise questions not just about how TV news covers racial issues, but how some of us are portrayed in the news media at all.
We can't remember how many times we saw Walter Scott shot to death on TV newscasts, dozens of times. Nor can we recall how many times we have seen Freddie Gray dragged screaming, with what we now presume was the beginning of his fatal injury, to the police van. And then there was Eric Garner, screaming, "I can't breathe" last summer, on July 17, 2014. He died in front of us, we just didn't know it at the time. We did know that Tamir Rice was being shot in front of us on Nov. 22, 2014. We didn't know he was 12.
Three of these four victims were killed in real time in front of us, videotaped by witnesses or CCTV cameras. But while the witnesses were taping these incidents for a record of events, which have, as it happens, led to arrests, the media has displayed them for what reason, exactly?
There is a fine line between the public's right to know and pure voyeurism, and in the ratings grab that is TV, voyeurism often wins. Somehow the line has been drawn at beheadings and people being burned alive in cages by ISIS, but how long before that line gets crossed? These lines have already been crossed in online news, where one can watch beheadings, the burning alive of the Jordanian pilot, the gay man thrown off a five-story building �" all by ISIS "soldiers."
Real deal
On the April 26 episode of CBS' stellar new drama Madam Secretary, a deal was being struck between the U.S. and Iran. It was a tricky treaty, as is always the case with Iran, and complicating things for Elizabeth (Téa Leoni) was the fact that Iran was set to execute a gay man, Azzad Ahmadi, by stoning on the same day as the treaty was due to be signed.
BD Wong, an out gay actor in real life (Law & Order ), appeared as Brent Rosen, the head of Human Rights Campaign, planning a demonstration in front of the White House protesting the stoning on the day of the signing. (Madam Secretary producer David Grae contributed a blog post on how this came to be a storyline to the HRC website, which can be read here: www.hrc.org/blog/entry/madam-secretary-and-hrc.) The plot plays as pure politics on the Beltway side of the issue. It's inconvenient that the execution is taking place on that particular day. Efforts are made to move the stoning to another day, which is, of course, appalling.
Rosen tells Elizabeth's policy advisor, Jay (Sebastian Arcelus), "You don't get extra points for doing the right thing," when Jay says he'll see what can be done about moving the date. Jay says, "The optics are terrible."
Rosen blows up, noting that "the millions of gay people in Iran and around the world" are doing more than checking optics. "You are just so callous. Trying to postpone it, but not stop it?"
Rosen adds, "The worst part is that somewhere in Tehran there is someone who is having this same conversation." Only that one is about how stoning a gay man sends a message.
One scene in the episode has Jay describing what happens during a stoning to Elizabeth, who listens as he tells her the stones are the size of tangerines for maximum pain, and that they "will lacerate the liver and liquefy the spleen." Jay says, "If he's lucky, he'll drown in his own blood."
Elizabeth listens patiently, then counters Jay, saying women are stoned all the time for adultery and other invented offenses (women are stoned for lesbianism, but that was not mentioned). She says, "They stone women for adultery. Girls as young as 13. I know precisely what they do."
When Jay asks her how she can she go through with the treaty signing, she says, "Because I have to weigh Azzad Ahmadi's life against nuclear war."
Jay then tells her, "Maybe we can't trust people whose values are so different from our own." Maybe.
Elizabeth and Jay work out a complex plan to trade Ahmadi for an Iranian prisoner, but Iran refuses. The execution goes forward.
The questions raised in this episode are the same questions that should be raised when news networks show us black men (so far it is just black men) being murdered on camera. But as Elizabeth McCord notes in her rejoinder to her staffer, these things happen to women all the time. One reason why networks have no difficulty showing the actual murder of black men is because in prime time they are depicting the murders �" often highly sexualized �" of women every day. Every. Day. Women of all races, ethnicities, ages.
We have become inured to killing. To torture. To marginalization. It only takes an afternoon on Twitter to see how much of the country hates us �" and by us, we mean women, people of color, lesbians and gay men (there's an amazing amount of support online for trans people, even as homophobia and lesbophobia are on the rise). If we then present rape, torture and murder of women as entertainment on every prime time drama, how far removed is the news room from the pitch room? Aren't all the same people making the decisions? And aren't they all, for the most part, straight, white men?
These are questions we should ask ourselves. Why do we accept all these representations on the tube? BD Wong's character sounds a little shrill, a little hysterical as he confronts Jay in the office of the Secretary of State. But is it hysterical to demand something be done to save the life of a man who is being murdered solely because he is gay?
Equivalently, is it "thuggery" to demand justice for a man, regardless of his rap sheet, who on the day he was brutalized to death was just walking, not doing anything wrong?
These questions are ones we must continue to ask ourselves because whether we are of color or not, marginalized America is the same �" marginalized. And we are among the most marginalized. Gay and lesbian Baltimoreans had been victims for years without the issue being addressed. Two Prides ago, protests were held about gay bashings. But nothing has changed.
One of the big news stories of the week was the marriage equality arguments proffered before the U.S. Supreme Court. It would have been the lead story on April 28, but Baltimore had exploded the night before, so it was buried by that lead. But let us not forget how second-class we are. And that nearly everything we see on the news �" or don't see on the news �" and nearly everything we see in scripted TV stands as a reminder of our second-class status.
Search for us on TV. Even GLAAD is forced to admit we largely remain ciphers to the audience that most needs to see us. So the televising and sensationalizing of the bodies of the marginalized? It doesn't sit well with us as that is our most prominent role on the tube.
Missing lesbians
One of the (other) things making us cranky lately is the dearth of lesbians on TV. Where are they? As trans persons and trans storylines get more prominent on the tube, lesbians seem to be disappearing. Isn't it possible for us to have both? Places where we are used to seeing at least one lesbian couple, like ABC's Grey's Anatomy, have pushed the lesbians to the background or de-lesbianed them. When Callie and Arizona broke up on Grey's, both of them nearly disappeared off the show's canvas, and with them, lesbianism. Ellen DeGeneres' new show One Big Happy is one big not-lesbian show about a pregnant lesbian. And on April 26, Kalinda (Archie Panjabi) made a less than gracious exit from CBS' The Good Wife, where she has played the transgressive bisexual since the show began. If it weren't for Ellen's daytime talk show and Robin Roberts co-anchoring Good Morning America, we might go weeks without seeing any lesbians on the tube at all. Not cool.
Gay men fare much better, though perhaps not in a new Netflix original series which debuts May 8, Grace and Frankie, starring lesbian comedian Lily Tomlin and Academy-Award winner Jane Fonda. Netflix describes Grace and Frankie like this: "For as long as they can recall, Grace and Frankie have been rivals. Their one-upwomanship comes crashing to a halt, however, when they learn that their husbands have fallen in love with each other and want to get married. As everything around the ladies is coming apart, the only thing they can really rely on is each other. This Netflix original re-teams Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin (9 to 5 ) as Grace and Frankie, respectively, bringing their chemistry to the small screen. It's a casting reunion on a grand scale, as Tomlin is reunited with her co-star from The West Wing, Martin Sheen, who plays Grace's husband, Robert. And Fonda is back with Sam Waterston, her co-star from The Newsroom, who plays Frankie's husband, Sol."
Hmm. We're not sure if we're ready for a Golden Girls version of Thelma and Louise, but we'll watch anything with these four stars, and we want to see how Netflix handles two men in their 70s leaving their wives to go off together. We have to give Netflix props, though, for casting so many aging stars in a production. Fonda is 77, Tomlin is 75, and Sheen and Waterson are both 74. The show also stars Joe Morton (Scandal ), 67, and Barry Bostwick (Rocky Horror Picture Show), 70.
We do like the idea that men of that age could decide decades of playing straight are enough, and with sunset in the foreground, happiness is worth pursuing. Grace and Frankie was created by Marta Kaufmann, co-creator of Friends and Veronica's Closet, so funny it should be.
But, Fonda told Hollywood Reporter, "It doesn't just make it funny. It makes it real. It's not the stereotyped view of what it is to be an older woman, which is why I like doing it."
Meanwhile, as we noted, the trans visibility is ratcheting up. Laverne Cox won a Daytime Emmy last week (so did Ellen, again). CBS soap The Bold and the Beautiful also won an Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series Writing Team, an award thought to be won largely on the current ground-breaking trans storyline featuring African-American actress Karla Mosley as fashion model Maya Avant, who has been revealed to be trans. (We still want to know when the show is going to deal with how Maya arrived on the show �" searching for the daughter she gave birth to.)
TB&TB made another huge announcement this week: it's adding daytime's first out trans man to the show. Scott Turner Schofield debuts during sweeps, and will play a friend of Maya's who knew her back before she came to L.A. and met the Forrester clan and got involved with a series of men she hid her trans status from, including the one she married. Schofield's character is supposed to make her feel good about herself again.
Schofield told the New York Daily News on April 28, "I'm Maya's best friend, and I come from her world when she first landed in Los Angeles before she became the huge success that she is. We met in the trans community together. I'm her friend that comes in and kind of helps remind her that she is beautiful and whole and authentic exactly as she is."
He added, "And as things start to happen and discrimination mounts, she can stand strong in who she is and how she made the right choices for herself. So in that sense, it feels like playing myself in a certain way."
Schofield was acting as a consultant to the show, but was asked to audition for the trans friend part along with Candis Cayne, whom we loved in Dirty Sexy Money.
Meanwhile, ABC Family, home of some of the only lesbian characters on the tube in The Fosters and Pretty Little Liars, is set to debut a new trans series this summer, Becoming Us. The reality series focuses on the life of 17-year-old Ben Lehwald of Evanstan, Illinois, as his father Charlie transitions to become Carly. Entertainment mogul Ryan Seacrest is producing the series, which was heavily promo'd during the Bruce Jenner interview with Diane Sawyer. The show will be told from Ben's POV as his father divorces Ben's mother, Suzy, in preparation for gender reassignment surgery. The "twist" in the series is that Ben's girlfriend Danielle has a father who is also transitioning into a woman.
And Jazz Jennings, trans teen, will be starring in her own TLC reality series this summer. All That Jazz is a docu-series that will follow 14-year-old transgender activist Jennings. According to TLC, the 11-episode series will feature Jennings, whom they dub "The New Face of Transgender Youth," living her life, and as TLC notes, "entering high school while navigating how a transgender teen approaches dating and sleepovers, all while avoiding male puberty."
Finally, the topic of transformation is at the heart of Showtime's Penny Dreadful, in which the lead character is Oscar Wilde's iconic Dorian Gray (Reeve Carney). We can't say enough about how good this period piece is. The second season premiered April 19, but since it's on-demand, you can see it anytime. And must. The series also stars the brilliant Eva Green, who is every lesbian's heartthrob, and the most underrated of the James Bonds, Timothy Dalton. It was created by John Logan, out gay writer, playwright, screenwriter, producer who has several Academy Award nominations to his credit, as well as having won a Tony, and who deserves an Emmy for this show.
Logan said in an interview for Slate that the topic of monsters always intrigued him because as a gay man he felt monstered himself. Logan said, "My process of coming out was a process of accepting that the thing that made me alien and different and monstrous to some people is also the thing that empowered me."
Dark and creepy, Penny Dreadful is transgressive and gay, and raises all sorts of moral questions. We hate paying for premium TV ourselves, but this is so worth it. (You can watch a long clip of the season 2 premiere here, which also includes a re-cap of season 1: www.sho.com/sho/video/full-episodes#.)
So for questionable media ethics and aging queers, sexy British demons and the rise of trans TV, you really must stay tuned.