August, 1997
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TEllenvision

by Yvonne Zipter

I will admit to very few vices. Not because I'm a dishonest person, mind you, but because I just don't have that many vices to admit to. I don't smoke, I don't do drugs, and if I say I have a beer a month, that might be an exaggeration. It's not any kind of Puritanist streak that keeps me from these things (although I may, in fact, have such a streak); I just don't enjoy them anymore. What I will admit to are an obsession for fried foods - which, for the sake of my arteries and clothing budget, I try to stay away from - and a love of television.

I spent years downplaying this love because of the apparent stigma attached to being a devotee of the small screen. But now that Rosie O'Donnell has been so open about her devotion to that medium, I feel that the time has come for me to say it loud, say it proud: I love TV. And now that Ellen-the-character has come out, I am especially eager for the new season to start. Only a few more weeks to wait.

No doubt I am setting myself up for a fall, but I figure now that the closet door is open, who knows who or what else will come tumbling out when the season premiers hit the air waves. I'm sure the writers of all the other shows have been hard at work trying to come up with Ellen-rific story lines, but I have a few ideas of my own, natch.

3rd Rock from the Sun. They touched on the gay theme a couple of times, evanescently, once with guest star Phil Hartman thinking Harry was gay. Harry mentions Dick to Hartman, a cosmetics salesman in the episode. "Who's Dick?" Hartman asks. "My High Commander," Harry answers with a whine. "Oh. I had one of those," Hartman responds knowingly. Another time, Sally was mistaken for a transgendered person by a gay man. But I think they've missed a whole untouched avenue on that show: have Sally, that marvelous amazon of a woman, explore newly discovered feelings for women. Maybe the WNBA could recruit Sally and she could be stricken with desire for one of those amazons. I suspect, though, that the WNBA, with all of their emphasis on Lisa Leslie-the-runway-model - as if that were her full given name and as if no runway models are lesbians - might not go for that story line. So how about hooking her up with Nina, the wisecracking secretary? That would break new ground all over the place: an interracial liaison between two women, one of whom is bisexual - Sally still being smitten with Officer Don, you see. This plot makes perfect sense in terms of the premise of the show: the aliens want to experience everything earth has to offer, and bisexuality is definitely one of those things.

Frasier. With the capable Joe Keenan - author of a couple of delightfully campy gay novels - in place as executive producer and sometime writer of this show, there shouldn't be any trouble with the story line I have in mind: the Crane boys, those effete, often nearly effeminate snobs, must repeatedly declare their heterosexuality. Frasier had to do this once, when the new station manager assumes he's gay like himself, and interested, but frankly I don't see why this doesn't come up much more often with these two fussy, opera-loving, gourmet, interior-decorating fellows. Daphne could explain that she never took any interest in Niles because she thought he was gay; Roz could try to fix Frasier up with one of the men she'd been after but who turned out to be queer; a gay contractor, doing work for Frasier, could make disparaging remarks about how men like Frasier, with all their stereotypically pansy-like pursuits, give gay men a bad name; even Frasier and Niles could question their own sexuality after weighing all the evidence, including their failed marriages.

Many more scenarios from a multitude of other shows have occurred to me: Bobby on King of the Hill could exasperate his father Hank by insisting he's gay, for example, or Mulder could pursue an X-File in which he suspects that the aliens turned Scully into a lesbian (which, I'm pretty sure, is in line with how Jesse Helms and his ilk figure we all got this way).

However, I thought it might be good to simply start with a clean slate - that is, a brand new show. In the show I'm envisioning - a sitcom called Skirting the Issue - the main character would be a femme who must come out over and over again, often to the same people, because no one can quite believe she is actually gay. Or what about a revival of that old show Queen for a Day? In this '90s version, though, men of all persuasions would dress up like women and strut their stuff for prizes. Apparently, if we can tell anything from, for instance, movies like Tootsie, Mrs. Doubtfire, and To Wong Foo and skits of all kinds on television, this is an ardent fantasy of men everywhere.

Believe me, I've got dozens more ideas for how to queerify TV! And this isn't the first time I've put into print my own queer spin on prime time, either. But when I first did this, nearly 11 years ago, it seemed like only so much silliness. Now, however, it's entirely possible that Skirting the Issue or something similar actually could turn up on the fall lineup.

The Southern Baptists might not be ready for us, but television clearly is.

Columnist Yvonne Zipter can be reached via e-mail at yzipter@journals.uchicago.edu.

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