Date: 17 Feb 94 22:16:09 EST
Subject: Gay Kisses on TV and Screen
From: anon@queernet.org (Anonymous Sender)

Culture Stays Screen-Shy of Showing the Gay Kiss

By Frank Bruni

(c) Feb. 11, 1994, Detroit Free Press

As popular television shows and movies slouch toward greater inclusion of
sympathetic gay characters, the step they seem most reluctant to take is the
candid portrayal of same-sex desire or intimacy.

They recoil from kisses.

"Philadelphia" does not have one, an omission that has triggered widespread
debate and disappointment among gay audiences.

"Six Degrees of Separation" does - sort of. It suggests two men kissing, but
the smooch is obscured from view because star Will Smith refused to pucker
up.

And the TV show "Roseanne" may or may not have one, depending on the outcome
of Roseanne Arnold's battle with network executives. She says they have
refused to air an episode in which her character ventures into a gay bar and
brushes lips with Mariel Hemingway.

Whether or not Arnold wins, this much is already clear: On the big and little
screens, a kiss is not just a kiss when the lips engaged belong to two women
or two men.

"I think it really is the flashpoint," said gay playwright and screenwriter
Paul Rudnick, who scripted "Addams Family Values" and writes a monthly column
on the film industry for Premiere magazine.

Rudnick and others note that this taboo reflects the feelings of many
Americans who believe it's OK for gays to do what they want behind closed
doors, but not to "flaunt" their sexual orientation in public. Asked to
define flaunting, many of these people mention kissing.

Seeing a same-sex couple kiss makes it impossible for an observer to think
about homosexuality only as an abstraction or to interpret warm interaction
between two men or two women as something else - something less disturbing.

"It's indisputably real," said Martin Duberman, founder and director of the
Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at the City University of New York.

"If you hear two people talking affectionately, you can still fit that into
your brain in one of a variety of categories - these people just have a
friendship, or just care about each other," Duberman said. "But if you see
two people romantically kissing, you can't avoid thinking about where that
may lead - genital sex."

Such kisses have indeed been shared in the past, both in movies and on TV.

In the 1971 British film "Sunday, Bloody Sunday," for example, Peter Finch
kissed Murray Head; he said in interviews at the time that he got through the
scene by closing his eyes and thinking of England.

There have been gay kisses or clear intimations of gay sex in a host of other
films as well, from "Personal Best," with Mariel Hemingway, to "My Own
Private Idaho," with the late River Phoenix; and from "Cruising," which
plumbed sadomasochism, to "Midnight Express," which journeyed into a Turkish
prison.

But nearly all these films either served up their gay and lesbian characters
as eccentrics, put them in exotic milieus or were marketed, at least
initially, to a limited audience, usually the sophisticated art-house crowd.

One of the few exceptions, 1982's mass-marketed "Making Love," couldn't
recruit a big-name star - Michael Douglas and Harrison Ford turned down the
lead role ultimately played by Michael Ontkean - and did a belly flop at the
box office.

Mainstream TV shows that have dared to broach gay physical affection have
beat quick retreats.

One episode of "thirtysomething" opened with two men in bed together sharing
post-coital thoughts; protests from viewers and sponsors made ABC pull the
episode from syndication, never to be broadcast again.

A bisexual attorney on "L.A. Law" planted a kiss on a confused but excited
female colleague's lips; after, the storyline abruptly stopped.

Although last month's TV miniseries "Tales of the City" went further than
these programs, showing a prolonged deep kiss between two gay men, it was
broadcast not by one of the four big networks but by PBS - and some local
affiliates declined to air it.

The reluctance of those producing mainstream commercial entertainments to
show lesbians or gay men kissing has plenty of precedents and parallels.

Even to this day, it's rare to see an interracial couple kiss on-screen. It's
not all that common, either, to see an elderly or ugly couple kiss.

Hollywood traffics in idealized fantasies, and the ideal that contemporary
American culture has developed for romance and passion is "youth, beauty,
Caucasian skin and heterosexuality," noted Rudnick.

Images of gay and lesbian affection, though, carry the extra baggage of
homophobia, which the entertainment industry is confronting and battling at a
slow pace, careful not to get too far ahead of its public.

"It's certainly getting better," said Scott Robbe, founder of a Los Angeles
group of openly gay writers, producers, directors and actors called Out in
Film. Robbe notes that "Philadelphia," as a big-budget, big-star vehicle
focusing on a gay character, marks an impressive milestone with or without a
kiss.

Robbe said the next test was to see what happens with "Interview With the
Vampire," an adaptation of Anne Rice's book now filming in New Orleans.
According to published reports, star Tom Cruise has demanded that the story's
homoerotic content be toned down; Cruise has denied this.

One of the heads of production happens to be Hollywood titan David Geffen,
who is openly gay.

"Geffen has been fabulous in the past few years," said Robbe. "'Interview
with the Vampire' will be a good indicator of how mature Hollywood has become
in regard to gay and lesbian themes."

Gay cultural critics and activists say putting same-sex kisses on-screen -
and giving those kisses to respectable, appealing characters in unremarkable
settings - is a vital step toward full acceptance of gays in society at
large.

Unlike bizarre scenes of gays in strange underground bars, which movies have
seldom hesitated to show, a simple kiss affirms not how different gays and
lesbians are to everyone else, but how similar.

"It's proof," Rudnick said. "It's proof of our humanity."