Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84 exptools; site ihlpl.UUCP
Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!bellcore!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxt!houxm!ihnp4!ihlpl!jtk
From: jtk@ihlpl.UUCP (Kitteredge)
Newsgroups: net.motss
Subject: Re: Trade ya this stereotype for that!
Message-ID: <636@ihlpl.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 24-Feb-86 17:01:29 EST
Article-I.D.: ihlpl.636
Posted: Mon Feb 24 17:01:29 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 26-Feb-86 21:04:49 EST
References: <1265@decwrl.DEC.COM>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 36

> 
> Check out "Consenting Adults," "An Early Frost," "Brothers," the last
> article in NewsWeek about gay people, and many other "gay" media
> events.  In case no one has noticed, we have a new stereotype brewing.
> 
> If your only exposure to gay people is through these shows, you might
> feel that all gay people are highly paid professionals, in particular
> lawyers ("An Early Frost") or doctors...
> 
> Is the media trying so hard to avoid one stereotype (effeminate, drag, 
> leather-butch, costumed, screwed-up, miserable) that they are creating 
> another (mega-professional, preppie, "normal," athletic, tasteful, no 
> problems except coming out and AIDS).
> 
> 			Gerry Fisher
>                         ...decvax!decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-dssdev!fisher

	I agree completely. If you saw the horrible film
"Making Love", you remember that hero in that film was a doctor
a doctor, his wife was high executive in a national television
network, and the guy he had an affair was a successful author.
I think that the problem is that Television and television magazines
like "Time" and "Newsweek", are able to think ONLY in stereotypes,
so that it was necessary to come up in new ones to replace the 
old ones which are now unacceptable.

	Did you ever notice that in all the television movies
about social problems, the afflicted are most always from
upper-middle class families like the one in "Early Frost"?
The kind of families that soap operas are made about.
In those movies they carefully set up the problem in an
artificial way, which is why their characters are plastic.

------------------------------------------------------------

	John Thomas Kittredge