Title: Fabulous Accessories: The Function of Gay Male Sidekicks in Popular Media

Author: Justin Maher

Primary advisor: Rachel Rubin

Secondary advisor: Judith Smith

Graduation date: 6/05

Abstract:

When Vito Russo first published The Celluloid Closet in 1981, homosexuality formally entered the ongoing conversation about representation in popular culture. Since then, there has been a fair amount of scholarship arguing the perceived negative and positive aspects of queer visibility and portrayals. One aspect of queers onscreen that has yet to be explored is the representation of gay male sidekicks and their female companions. This paper explores the various incarnations of the gay/straight friendship utilizing a broader discussion of the history of queers and queer sensibility in popular media.

Much of the entertainment media has embraced the proliferation of gay male characters on television, sometimes going so far as to announce the end of homophobia in film and television. Clearly, in a society still steeped in a battle over gay and lesbian civil rights, such idealistic notions seem vastly overstated. A more helpful approach to understanding the implications of this popular convention is to examine the characteristics of these representations. The primary method of this study involved the analysis of numerous films and television shows that contain variations of the "gay sidekick" character. I also examined "independent" films that centered on a gay male protagonist and his straight female "sidekick." In addition to the texts themselves, I looked at reviews of the films and shows that appeared in mainstream nationally distributed periodicals People Weekly, USA Today, and Entertainment Weekly. These publications offered some insight into the reception of the texts in the culture at large. In order to suggest alternative readings, I also included reviews and articles from the gay and lesbian national monthly magazine The Advocate.

The texts discussed were all produced from 1995 to the present. The time period was chosen for its spike in the proliferation of gay male sidekick characters and also because of the social and political climate that existed in under the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations. The struggle for gay civil rights in the last decade has seen huge victories such as Clinton's courting of the gay vote and the Massachusetts SJC ruling legalizing gay marriage and a conservative backlash seen in the compromised "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" military policy and numerous state ballot initiatives banning gay marriage.

To better contextualize the chosen decade, I have also examined the rise of the gay male character (whether implicit or explicit) in popular media going back as far as the studio films of the 1930s and 1940s. Similarly, the paper gives a brief history of American culture's alternate (and sometimes simultaneous) flirtation and condemnation of gay male culture as seen with Oscar Wilde, New York drag balls of the 1930s, playwrights in the 1950s and 60s and the disco craze. Viewing how gay male sidekicks are considered valuable is better understood as a continuing repulsion/fascination with queer subcultures.

Starting with the 1997 romantic comedy blockbuster My Best Friend's Wedding and continuing through the kitschy 2004 remake of the feminist thriller The Stepford Wives, this paper suggests what audiences find appealing about gay men and why these characters continually appear in narratives tracking the quest of women's professional, and sexual fulfillment. Most often, gay men appear as sidekicks to female protagonists in films such as My Best Friend's Wedding, The Stepford Wives and the HBO television series Sex and the City. They signal modernity and style and allow for a limited amount of sexual transgression. When gay male characters fill more substantial roles, as in the situation comedy Will and Grace and films such as The Object of My Affection and The Next Best Thing, they offer alternatives to the frustrating disconnect between straight women and men. In all cases, these opportunities are contained within traditional conceptions of romance and family.

The dynamic between gay men and straight women has also been represented in a variety of "independent" and "art-house" cinema. Though queer men have played a vital role in the production of more mainstream film and television, there is a greater freedom to explore the lives of gay men in independent film. In these texts the protagonists are men and their straight female friends are relegated to the role of the sidekick. The female sidekicks, as with the gay sidekicks in mainstream media, are used to advance the gay male narrative and usually represent threatening symbols of an ignorant heterosexual society that must be overcome. In Edge of Seventeen, trick and the television drama Queer as Folk, straight women are pathetic, unable to aid the protagonist in the development of his gay identity.

Who might be interested in reading this work?

People interested in popular culture, film studies, queer history, queer representation, issues concerning gender, and the construction of difference in popular culture