WHAT GAY MAN on the prowl wouldn't love to go to a bar called "One Night Stan's"? No clever entrepreneur has snatched up this idea. But if you lived in Springfield, that animated netherworld where "The Simpsons" reside, you could visit such a bar.
"The Simpsons," on the Fox network, is one of the longest-running sitcoms in television history -- and with good reason. The show is hilarious. Every week (and if you catch it in syndication, every day), this four-fingered, yellow-skinned family dishes out some of the best satire and social and political commentary on TV.
Last Sunday, April 12, "The Simpsons" made a prolonged visit to the gay world when Homer left Marge and the kids to move into an apartment with a gay male couple. The couple immediately began teaching Homer how to dress and drink, and what to do in his relationship.
As regular viewers already know, the cast of characters who live in Springfield includes Waylon Smithers, a semi-closeted gay man in love with his decrepit, ruthless boss, Mr. Burns. And every now and then, for many years, "The Simpsons" has given "gay culture" a well-deserved lampooning.
WHILE THIS PLOT about gay folk teaching straight people about our lives has been done more than a few times in TV land and tends to be stereotypical, it's hard to get mad at "The Simpsons." One reason we stick around to hear the jokes is that they seem less harmful coming from cartoon characters. Perhaps we also don't get as mad at Homer because anyone who watches the show, even sporadically, knows that there are no sacred cows on "The Simpsons."
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The show mocks right-wing conservatives as well as Utne-reading liberals on the left. "The Simpsons" points out the absurd and peculiar, regardless of sexual orientation or political points of view. And there are plenty of outlandish things to point out about the gay world, many of which were magnified in last week's episode.
The show depicted flannel-shirt-wearing lesbians with mullets, as well as muscular gay men in skimpy military uniforms. Homer runs into Smithers in a gay neighborhood, and the gay character appears wearing a tight white tank top, a rainbow colored belt and roller blades. How many times have we seen that same outfit, or something depressingly similar, floating down 17th Street after Memorial Day?
The funniest moment, however, was when Homer decides to live with the two gay roommates, and they welcome him by saying, "Here's the key to the lotion cabinet."
NBC's "Will & Grace" serves up another brand of gay humor, but the show's characters are so embedded in our gay life that they can't afford to mock us like "The Simpsons" does. And Showtime's "Queer as Folk" presents a gay world it wants to pass off as real but, increasingly, the show is becoming more cartoon-like than "The Simpsons."
The cartoon's campy jokes are just biting enough to make viewers take notice of the more absurd and frivolous aspects of gay life. And because the dialogue and plot are not really mean-spirited, it's OK sometimes to sit there and just smile. |
