Focus Is Humanity, Not Sexuality

Where was I when they started playing around with the TV ratings? What are they doing now, adding a TV-H for homosexuality, or is it just a TV-L for “Ellen”?

No sooner does ABC agree to the notion of content labeling then it slaps a “parental discretionary advisory” about “adult content” on the only show with an openly gay star. It’s a bit like yelling, “Eek, hide the children, there’s a lesbian in the room.”

The show is getting a warning label because of its sexual identity, not because of its sexual content. And the comedian, who didn’t come out of the closet in order to wear a pink triangle, is threatening to call it quits.

So far, ABC has put up a rather prim defense. “The promise we have made to our audience,” it intones, “is to provide them with as much information as possible so they can decide what is appropriate for their children to watch.”

But Ellen DeGeneres sees it differently, “What I am trying to say is, ‘who I am is OK.”’ It’s a bit hard to feel OK, let alone portray OK, when the network is warning folks that you might be a danger to their kids.

At the risk of taking sitcoms too seriously, let us revisit this certified danger zone. “Ellen” has been a remarkably smarm-free half hour. No flesh is bared, no jokes carry the weight of extraneous dirt.There is none of the routine sleaze that seeps unfiltered into the “family hour” forum.

The success of her coming-out episode was the character’s tentative humanity. The single funniest episode of the last season danced across the terrain from self-doubt to self-discovery. You didn’t have to be gay to travel with her. It was less about sex than identity.

DeGeneres’ character has enough uncertainty and tenderness to carry viewers comfortably further through some new terrain: exploring the relationships between gay and straight friends, experiencing the emotional awkwardness of first love at a later age, and confronting the old truth that anywhere you go - even out of the closet - you take yourself along.

As comedian Ellen said about the character “Ellen,” “I just want her to be a human being. I want her to be single in this world, struggling to get by without huge goals and ambitions.” That modest goal, however, may turn out to be overly ambitious.

The folks at ABC and parent company Disney were already nervous about religious boycotts. What set their teeth on Ellen’s edge appeared to be two kisses and one bedroom door. One kiss - a jokey kiss between Ellen and her heterosexual friend, Paige - was literally clocked by DeGeneres at two seconds. The other was with a girlfriend and apparently included a stroll in the direction of a bedroom door.

Let us compare these moments to that other TV-14 show on ABC: “NYPD Blue.” In the ratings game it appears, one homosexual kiss is the moral equivalent of six dead bodies. A gay stroll toward a bedroom door is weighted the same as eight shots of Jimmy Smits’ naked butt.

In the latest “Ellen” flap, parents are being warned about homosexuality itself. That exposes a serious fault line in the coalition of Americans who have favored ratings, warnings, V-chips, any tool of defense against the overwhelming culture of sex and violence.

For a long time, the religious right and secular left, the puritans and feminists have found common cause in the desire to protect children from messages beamed into our homes.

Beneath the surface, there were always serious differences. One group worried about sin and the other about sexism. One worried about biblical commandments and the other about human relationships. But there was enough media mayhem and sleaze to keep them together.

Now, the controversy over portraying homosexual relationships drives a wedge further into that unified front. There is a huge gap between those who do and those who don’t believe in the possibility of wholesome homosexuality.

If I may steal the title of DeGeneres’ book, “My Point … and I Do Have One” is that the perceived moral danger in this sitcom isn’t really its sexual content. It is rather that the show might actually succeed in portraying a gay woman as a fellow struggler, maybe even a happy one.

Yipes, keep that away from the kids.

xxxx