MAINSTREAM EXPOSURE: It's A Double-Edged Sword (Brett) [DELETED SCENE]

James: What is your opinion of the Showtime shows like Queer as Folk and The L Word? Do you think they are more honest portrayals because they show the ugly side of gay life?

Brett: The Showtime shows are good at dealing with things that are messy. I believe that life is messy at the end of the day, no matter who you are. To me, that's a good thing. But the flipside is, once you put it out in the public sphere--it being anything that's not clean and perky and FRIENDS--then there's this real problem that people start to use those characters as ways to stereotype you. So The L Word just becomes, "Oh! All lesbians do is screw each other... and like, make charts." And so, it's a double-edged sword.

It's interesting to me because I've seen both really good gay & lesbian films that handle those problems well and try to undercut them. The Broken Hearts Club, which is one of my favorite gay films, plays with the stereotypes and is well aware of the limitations and how it can become a type of entrapment. But you have to put it out there, right? Heterosexual, white upper middle class people have the privilege of not feeling like anything that's slight off-kilter is somehow problematic about their identity. And so it's gotta get out there and it has to keep getting out there, so that people just go, "Oh! People have problems." So then it brings on the hope that maybe we'll be humanitarians someday...(laughter) ...rather than trying to treat everyone as discreet categories of why you're disenfranchised.

James: Lastly, I'd like to ask your opinion of the LOGO network.

Brett: I don't get cable. Rather, I don't get LOGO because I have the most basic poor academics package. Yes, so it's actually disgraceful that I have this class on queer media and I have not yet done the time with LOGO. And for that, I deserve to be eternally damned. But I'm glad it's there. Sometimes I get a little worried that it could turn out like the LifeTime network, which had a good potential message (to empower women) but then it has gotten to the point where practically every female character on LifeTime is a victim of rape from her husband.

But I haven't seen the programming on LOGO. I don't actually know, I guess that's my project for Summer 2009. I've gotta get cable that is sufficiently sophisticated, i.e. not in South Central Pennsylvania. Does Gettysburg get LOGO?

James: No.

Brett: Of course not. Yeah, so right now I just get the hetero-normative channels. (laughter)