Oh how things have changed on my TV. For these days not only are there shows featuring gay characters but I am now forced to watch them in relationships as explicit as it once used to be only with straight characters.
In fact, there was no TV character I enjoyed more than the flamboyantly gay Mr Humphries in the British comedy, Are You being Served? However, in not one of the many episodes over the years was I made to watch him French kissing another man, far less making naked love with one.
Today that has all changed.
After refusing to go and watch Brokeback Mountain on the big screen because breaking men’s back is not my thing, Hollywood trapped me on my own small screen with a fast-paced exciting series like Scandal which made it almost impossible to miss a single moment of the intriguing plot, top-class acting and multifaceted cast of characters.
But at the bottom of it all was White House Chief of Staff Cyrus being married to another man, James. Disgustingly for me, they were not only married to each other, with which I had no problem, but showing me their most intimate and steamy moments of passion in and out of bed is definitely not what I enjoy watching over dinner.
In the wake of Scandal came the highly publicised How to Get Away with Murder written by the same writer. So why was I shocked as I excitedly watched the premiere to see two having passionate, suggestively explicit sex on screen in my living room.
But worse was to come. For halfway through the first episode, viewers like me watched in awe as a law student seduced an unsuspecting fellow and gave him what was believed to be a “rim job” in bed before having sex with him.
In the midst of all this scandal and murder came the gripping new series Empire, exploring and exposing the good, the bad and the ugly about the American music business. It also exposed Jamal, one of the son’s three sons of mogul Lucious Lyon, as being the least preferred by his father because of the most unmanly ways in and out of bed.
Prior to any of the above and others in between, I had periodically watched episodes of Game of Thrones, which depicts extreme decadence as noble families fight for control of a mythical county. So, two or three weeks ago when the new series was advertised to begin, I decided to get into the story from the start to see what it was really going on. Imagine how my jaw dropped almost to my knees when within minutes Hollywood showed me a young woman walking into her young brother’s bedroom and finding him and his boyfriend in bed, fully clothed in nothing by their birthday suits and really getting it on.
Do you know that even comic characters have been coming out of the closet and I recall a few years ago when Marvel Comics’ Rawhide Kid, who was around as a real man when I was a boy, made his first appearance as a man’s man. I definitely will not be surprised if I turn on by TV one day and see him or Spiderman or Superman breaking backs on a mountain as well.
Al Gilkes heads a public relations firm. Email algilkes@gmail.com
