Book
Hi Honey, I’m Homo: Sitcoms, Specials, and the Queering of American Culture by Matt Baume
Synopsis
A collection of essays about American television sitcoms, from Bewitched to Modern Family, that were notable for their inclusion (or their conspicuous lack of inclusion) of queer representation.
Notes
Similar to Baume’s YouTube videos, each chapter takes a single sitcom and explains how its LGBT characters were significant in the history of representation on American television, putting them in context of what was going on in politics at the time, and giving details about the making of these series to explain the motivation behind the representation. And much like his videos, I find it comforting on some level to be reminded that resistance to LGBT equality is nothing new, that most of us have dealt with it all our lives, that we’ve had victories in the past, and we’ll have them again.
A side effect of the organization is that some of the same key events in the gay rights movement — like the Stonewall riots, or the lawsuits for marriage equality in Hawaii — are mentioned over and over again, as if each chapter were its own self-contained book.
Another side effect of the book’s focus is that it gives the impression that the options on American TV were gradually improving representation, or nothing at all. The series that are chosen for focus are, understandably, the ones who struggled for a benign or positive depiction of gay characters. As I was growing up, though, most of these series were considered too “adult” for me to watch, so I got whatever was left. A few of these are mentioned in the book — Three’s Company, WKRP in Cincinnati, and a gay panic episode of Cheers — and they made a clear impression on me that being gay was something weird and contemptible. On WKRP, simply a misunderstanding about being queer was bad enough to make Les Nesman consider suicide!
Verdict
In addition to the great title, this is a really solid survey of a segment of American TV history, praising the artists who went out of their way to improve the image of LGBT people in the media. It makes a strong argument about the value of representation, and at least I believe it’s a comforting reminder that equality tends to win out as long as people stand up for it.