Originally published by The Huffington Post, 23 October 2012. Wrapped in the "bucket of blood" theme from Brian De Palma's Carrie, intrepid young reporter, Lana Winters (Sarah Paulson), ascends a large wooden winding staircase at Briarcliff Manor, a stereotypical Catholic criminal mental institution in the early 1960s, hoping to get a story on a new inmate, a serial killer named Bloody Face. As she climbs level after level in a spinning, dizzy sequence, she's surrounded by an outcast of "crazies" pulling her into a queerer world -- like Dorothy sucked up into a vortex and dropped into Oz. For those of us familiar with the song's use in Carrie, it feels detached hearing the music without Piper Laurie's haunting words, "they're all gonna laugh at you" underscoring the slow-motion insidiousness of Carrie's classmates. The tension is so tight -- like stretching back a rubber band -- that...

Originally published by The Huffington Post, 31 October 2012.  What would you tell your teenage daughter if you suspected her new boyfriend might be gay? Would you sit her down and explain complicated issues of identity politics? Would you pull him aside and ask him yourself (even if you realize he may not understand what it means to be gay)? Would you tell her nothing and hope she doesn't get hurt? Claire (Julie Bowen) faces this dilemma in tonight's episode of Modern Family (a rough cut of which I previewed last week). Jay (Ed O'Neill) and Gloria (Sofia Vergara) are hosting a yard sale as a school benefit, and each of the families are pitching in. Alex, Claire and Phil's 14-year-old daughter, wants to invite her boyfriend Michael over to help. Claire is hesitant because, as she says, she likes him but she's "90 percent sure he's 100 percent gay" and that he "plays for the pink...

Originally published by The Huffington Post, 6 September 2012.  With little competition, gay showrunner Ryan Murphy (Popular, Glee, American Horror Story) has brought more LGBT characters to American primetime than perhaps any other industry executive in broadcasting. Already during his tenure in Hollywood Murphy has given airtime to several gay men, a few lesbians, at least three transgender folks, and a smattering of other unlabeled non-straight characters. But what is he doing, exactly? In creating shows that continuously push the sexual boundaries of a prudish broadcasting landscape, is he performing activism? Is he, in fact, pushing the boundaries? And if so, is he doing us any favors? Murphy certainly has his fair share of critics: Conservative viewers were upset he was bringing "sexual deviance" into living rooms across America. Gay viewers were miffed that his shows...

Originally published in Antenna from the University of Wisconsin – Madison, 10 August 2012. Thank you, thank you very much, I can’t express it any other way. For with this awful trembling in my heart, I just can’t find another thing to say. I’m happy that you liked the show, I’m grateful you liked me. And I’m sure to you the tribute seemed quite right. But if you knew of all the years, Of hopes and dreams and tears You’d know it didn’t happen overnight. Huh, overnight! I imagine these words whispered back to all the moving tributes from family, friends, and fans of Alex Doty, an influential scholar whose generosity exceeded any metrics of greatness and whose untimely passing will be mourned by many generations of scholars to come. These words I use because they preface a lyric with which Alex introduced himself: “I was born in a trunk at the Princess Theater in Pocatello, Idaho.”...

Originally published by The Huffington Post, 18 July 2012. Last year in an interview with BigThink.com, Jonathan Franzen said, "The world ... divides into people who have one opinion of Oprah Winfrey and people who have ... the diametrically opposite opinion. That's a remarkable thing to achieve, to divide the world in two; it's like parting the seas." Franzen is partially right: Vocally, people seem to express either categorical love or hate for the once "queen" of daytime. As a cultural critic, in my eyes, her supposed polarization is actually unremarkable. Our talking-head, confessionalist media culture, which she admittedly helped create, demands of us a dedication to one-side-or-the-other opinions and perspectives. This seems to hold true for most aspects of our articulated public lives; you're either all in or you're all out: politics (presidential candidates and party devotion),...

Originally published by The Huffington Post, 10 July 2012. From the moment "GOD HATES FANGS" flashed across the screen in the title card of the first episode, True Blood has been accused of being riddled with gay metaphors and analogies. Academics eagerly pounced on the narrative in the first season, claiming, for example, that it is an epic fable meant to illustrate the struggle gays and lesbians face in their pursuit toward "normality." The supposed allegory (vamps = gays) hasn't been lost on many of the show's gay fans, who celebrate its campy melodramatics and fang-in-cheek humor. Sunday night Jessica even consoled Tara, a newly-minted woeful vampire, by assuring her that "it gets better" -- reminiscent of Dan Savage's now-famous campaign. Some of its straight viewers have been less forgiving, like Todd Herremans, who last year tweeted complaints about the show's "barrage of homosexuality"...

Originally published in FlowTV (16.01): 2 July 2012. Before she was Miss Ida Blankenship on AMC's Mad Men, actor Randee Heller was Alice on ABC's hit '70s sitcom, Soap, American television's first recurring lesbian character. Most of Flow’s quality-concerned readers will probably remember actor Randee Heller from her role as Miss Ida Blankenship, Don Draper’s illustrious elderly secretary in the AMC series Mad Men. But long before she was incensing Draper by calling his daughter chubby and announcing his toilet visits, Heller created controversy with a nine-episode arc (( Heller acts in only eight episodes, but her character is referenced twice in a ninth. )) of the half-hour hit ‘70s sitcom, Soap, as American broadcast’s first recurring lesbian character, Alice. I had the opportunity to speak with Heller about the show and her part in it. Soap originally aired weekly on ABC...

Originally published in Antenna from the University of Wisconsin – Madison, 5 July 2012. Anderson Cooper's "outing" this week beautifully illustrates something I have been writing about for a while: the imperative of coming out. The paradox of homosexuality is and has been that one must at once not be gay while at the same time publicly (confessing/admitting/declaring) that (s)he is. But what does that mean, exactly? If the presumption is that we are straight until we say otherwise, then why are the most common reactions to Anderson's outing, "We already knew!" or "It’s about time!" Hollywood legend might describe the alleged homosexuality of figures like Agnes Moorehead or James Dean as an "open secret"--something about which to argue at pretentious dinner parties. But I bracket "outing" with quotations marks because if everybody already knew Anderson was gay, why was he constantly...