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"How a Gay Show Changed TV... and Was Forgotten" Transcript

How a Gay Show Changed TV... and Was Forgotten
09 Jun 2022

The Hit Gay Show We Forgot

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Queer as Folk

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Queer as Folk revolutionized the portrayal of gay and lesbian characters on TV. So why did we forget about it?

PATREON: [link]

00:00 Introduction
03:47 Part One
09:29 Part Two
16:03 Part Three

#Pride #lgbt #queerasfolk

 

this video is brought to you by my patrons if you'd like to support my channel and get access to extras like audio commentaries a patron exclusive podcast and uncut videos you can join by clicking the link in the description it's january 22nd 2001 and 12 year old me is laying in bed unable to sleep flicking through the channels on my tv ceaselessly when i come across this as you can imagine it immediately caught my eye especially considering what happens right after this which i can't show you on youtube and what caught my eye turned into an avid attachment to a certain group of queer characters living in pittsburgh pennsylvania first and most noticeable there's brian the vain sexually promiscuous advertising executive who hides a generous spirit behind a self-obsessed and even cruel personality justin a bright-eyed high schooler who's fallen in love with brian but didn't quite realize that though brian was his first justin was nothing more than a hookup to him at least at first michael brian's best friend still suffering from a teenage crush that never went away stuck in a dead-end job where he has to pretend to be straight around his homophobic co-workers emmett michael's flamboyant roommate who comes across as your typical vapid flaming queen but becomes probably the best character on the show ted a loveless accountant who thinks he's completely undesirable and envies brian's ability to get any man that he wants lindsay brian's college girlfriend who's now a lesbian or maybe bisexual in the very first episode she gave birth to a baby for which brian was the surrogate and thereafter she basically acts as brian's conscience on more than one occasion melanie lindsay's hard-ass jewish lawyer life partner who hates brian with a burning passion and last but certainly not least debbie michael's loving mother who covers herself with p flag pins and acts as a sort of den mother to the guys who eat at the diner she works at where she busts her butt doing double shifts to make the money she needs to take care of her brother vic who's dying of aids the first three episodes were all aired at once as a premiere episode in canada whereas the show had already been out for about a month in the u.s so i wasn't sure if i was watching a new tv show i'd never heard of or a movie i was hoping for a tv show so on that night in january of 2001 i spent three hours getting to know at least a little bit about each one of these characters luckily the three episodes ended on a cliffhanger so i knew i'd be back the next week volume down low glued to my tv screen having never seen any kind of gay media before except will and grace i was astounded at the bluntness of the show's portrayal of sex drugs homophobia being in the closet dealing with disease and friendship specifically adult friendship between queer people the show aired for five seasons with its final episode airing in august of 2005 and for those five years i grew up with the show i laughed i cried i raged and i cheered i even got my mom to watch it and so it shocks me now in 2022 that most of the queer people i talk to have either never seen or never even heard of this show that was a ratings juggernaut for showtime and which the new york times declared was genuinely revolutionary so let's have a look back two decades and see why we queer folk don't tend to talk about queer as folk [Music] queer's folk was based on a british tv show of the same name created by russell t davies when the original uk series of queers folk premiered in 1999 it caused outrage over scenes depicting gay sex extensive drug use artificial insemination and more sex scenes than you can count set in manchester's lively gay scene the series chronicled the lives of three gay men living in and around canal street the show was sexually graphic and unapologetically gay the series pushed the envelope of what could be shown on television the show's slogan even read no victims no murders no role models the show was criticized from all fronts religious leaders demanded it be removed from television conservatives boycotted the network and gay viewers claimed it did nothing but perpetuate the harmful stereotype of the promiscuous gay man all that said the ratings were through the roof watching people be naughty has always been a popular genre of tv from 80s soaps like dallas and dynasty to dramas like shameless and reality tv shows like the real housewives it was like watching a tabloid magazine come to life in the comfort of your living room and nothing succeeds like success so it was no surprise when north american producers daniel lippman roy cohen and tony jonas wanted to adapt the series for the u.s market they had a hell of a time trying to convince a u.s network to pick it up though even hbo which had just seen a massive success with sexually explicit shows like oz and sex in the city turned them down they were convinced a show all about queer characters wouldn't sell in america showcase a canadian network was actually the first to come on board and agree to co-produce the series before they finally struck a deal with showtime in the united states for an initial 22-episode season this meant the show would be a canadian-american co-production with most of the shooting happening in ontario with toronto standing in for pittsburgh the producers wanted to make a show for queer people so they did their best in hiring out-gay actors but since coming out at the time was pretty much a guaranteed career death for an actor the show did end up being made up of a majority straight cast when the show premiered it immediately grabbed the attention of the gay press but that was it only a few short years prior ellen had been drummed out of hollywood for coming out on her own sitcom and even though will and grace portrayed as sanitized a gay experience as possible the nbc show's ratings were yet to take off the mainstream press simply wasn't interested in covering this gay show with a word that was at the time still considered a slur in the title audiences felt differently though the ratings for the premiere were strong and they just kept getting better every week when the show made its premiere in canada a month later it became the highest rated premiere in canadian history for a show not on the cbc the press started paying attention and just like in england some people were not happy a boycott of cbs was called for cbs being the parent network to showtime and death threats were made against the stars and producers and that was just the reaction coming from the gay audience yes history was repeating itself as the gay community felt disgusted by the show's portrayal of gay men as sexually liberated they hated the casual drug use and felt offended by the main storyline in which 17 year old justin has sex with and subsequently falls in love with 29 year old brian and they loathed that much of the show took place surrounded by the thumpathumpa beats of the gay nightclub babylon conservative groups also called for boycotts sent death threats and demanded the show's cancellation also on moral grounds because you know what they say about war making for strange bedfellows but not because the show's queer characters were not perfect but because they existed at all i thought i'd die fighting sight by sanchez a bigot mary you were arguing on the same side as a bigot naturally showtime and especially their parent company viacom were worried there was a threat that they might drop the show to which canadian production company temple street productions offered to buy them out and make the show a wholly canadian produced project but when the ratings just kept going up and up and up showtime's fears were assuaged the show was garnering far better ratings than well quite frankly better than anyone had ever expected especially since a vocal part of the queer community had sworn off watching the show the demographic that was expected to be the primary audience what the network eventually discovered was that the majority of the viewers were actually straight women who were living for this type of high drama you didn't really get on tv anymore queer as folk was unapologetically soapy a genre for which fans had recently been left starving for with the end of shows like melrose place and beverly hills 90210 it would take a few years before network tv would start premiering shows like desperate housewives so this show about gay men and women in pennsylvania was becoming their main source of entertainment and since women between the ages of 18 and 45 are considered a marketing wet dream it allowed queers folk to start charging more for advertising during the commercial breaks by the end of the first season they were one of the most talked about shows on cable the boycott never really seemed to materialize the show hadn't been renewed for a second season yet though so they used a tried and tested tool that had been used by soap operas since the beginning of time a cliffhanger ending that is dripping with so much suspense that audiences would do just about anything to know how it would be resolved [Music] justin goes to his prom with best friend daphne after begging brian to be his date though brian being brian turns him down he's having a fun enough time but when brian does show up it's simply fireworks they dance to the song save the last dance for me by the drifters it is as brian later quips ridiculously romantic after where justin walks brian back to his jeep before heading back to his prom to spend the rest of the night with daphne he's practically floating as he walks away until chris hobbs a bully who's been torturing him all season appears behind him with a pipe and hits him across the head with justin a bloody mess being rushed to the hospital the season ends the audience does not know if he's alive or dead demand for a second season was loud swift and decisive with showtime renewing it for another 20 episodes within the first week after the season finale in the second season justin is of course alive though suffering from brain damage he'd hoped to be an artist but a tremor in his hand resulting from the attack seems to have put that dream to bed but with the help of a drawing tablet a pretty expensive gift at the time from brian justin can keep drawing defying the will of his attacker speaking of his attacker he's let off with a slap on the wrist and some community service sometimes things never change season two continued to push the boundaries of what had been seen on american television before with michael becoming involved in a romantic relationship with ben an hiv-positive university professor unlike the first season where gay media lambasted the show they were now willing to praise it for its portrayal of living with an hiv-positive partner and surviving trauma because gays will validate themselves only if tragic they weren't thrilled with the character of ted starting up a porn studio and emmett becoming a cam star but they kept their mouths mostly shut regarding those storylines it's harder to threaten to boycott a show that's bringing queer issues into millions of homes each week the show even poked fun at its own gay critics with the in-universe tv show gay as blazes with its cast of hrc approved gay characters that brian loads the second season also dealt with topics like gay marriage with a commitment ceremony between melanie and lindsay intergenerational love when emmett falls in love with a much older man polyamorous relationships and a gay murder victim based on the real life case of billy london whose body was found in a dumpster outside a diner with ratings doing better than ever the show was renewed for a third season halfway through season two's run but because of the canadian dollar rising in value and therefore production becoming more expensive the episode run was cut from 20 to 14 for the third and fourth seasons and 13 for the final season season 3 broadens its narrative scope as michael and justin begin publishing an explicit gay superhero comic as brian becomes the pr manager for a homophobic politician who used to be a cop as ted loses his porn company when it's discovered that one of his employees a production assistant was underage much to his shock and horror and michael and ben adopt a homeless teenage sex worker and help him get back to a normal life season 4 goes darker than any before it exploring ted's descent into drug abuse and recovery justin joining a vigilante group that violently attacks homophobes giving justin the opportunity to finally confront his would-be killer brian being diagnosed with cancer and debbie's beloved brother vic passing away due to complications from aids season four also deals heavily with the current political state of the u.s referencing the real life event of president george w bush calling for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage the season ends with most of the main cast going to canada for a charity bike ride and having to reckon with how they're treated in their home country compared to the great white north season 4 also saw the show's run time extended from 1 hour to 1 hour and 15 minutes not because an extra 15 minutes of story was added but because advertising spots on the show were in such high demand that they could add extra commercials to each broadcast great for the show but not so great for me a then high school student who's already staying up well past midnight to watch the show season 5 explored dating a closeted person the domestication of queer couples as michael and ben buy a house in the suburbs and move away from the gay village with its sex clubs and gay bars growing up as they call it while brian fights against gentrification which i think it can be a little condescending to ascribe your chosen lifestyle as grown up and implying that others need to grow up just because they want something different all while a statewide bill proposition 14 threatens to remove what few rights the gay community has managed to accumulate the final act of the series begins as a fundraiser is bombed leaving many of the main cast in mortal danger in the final episode aptly titled we will survive melanie and lindsey move to canada in order to attempt to escape the growing homophobia of their home country michael who has always been a bit shy of even talking about being gay begins actively fighting for gay rights and the on-again off-again relationship between brian and justin which could be described as the emotional through line of the series firmly switches to off the show ended its run after 83 episodes not because of bad ratings but because showtime didn't want to be known as the gay network since they were also airing the l word at the same time the network would eventually say that the cancellation was due to rising production costs as the canadian dollar increased ever more in value but the cast vehemently disagreed showcase was willing to produce a season six to air in canada since they were making so much money from advertising on the show but due to ownership rights at the time showtime wouldn't allow it and so queer as folk hailed as groundbreaking dynamic-shifting must-see tv came to an end not with a bang but a whimper as the show's straight audience moved back to network tv which had picked up the torch for soapy primetime dramas and its gay audience to my surprise was glad to see it go although the gay criticisms of the show had died down over the years especially after it became a rating success ire toward the series from gay groups looking to assimilate into the straight culture never ceased they argued that since the show was made up of almost entirely queer characters that it was ghettoizing lgbt representation with the much preferring the appearance of gay characters in mainstream straight shows [Music] upon the announcement of the show's final season extra magazine wrote about why queer as folk was no longer needed gay tv characters are now so common that their sexual preferences have become invisible to most viewers there have been gay parents on roseanne gay undertakers on six feet under gay doctors on chicago hope and er gay prisoners on oz gay teens on degrassi and even gay cartoons on south park depictions of gay people on tv don't seem to upset viewers the way they used to gay cartoons on south park fantastic representation others in the gay press agreed though who needed a show all about gay people when we could be supporting straight people on normal shows smile mary the straights are watching and they're judging you the underlying argument and sometimes not even underlying being that a show like queer as folk with its abundance of sex casual drug use swearing and generally being not safe for family viewing could only hurt the community as it fought for the right to be seen as just like the straits and normal getting straight america on our side so that we could have gay marriage legalized was more important than representation of queer characters who don't dream of suburban life with two and a half kids that was the gay agenda and a show like queer's folk could only hurt that agenda because it dared to show that not all of us actually wanted it the goal of assimilation was only achievable if we acted as a united body if one of us spoke out in support of lifelong promiscuity there was a fear that some anita bryant knockoff would point to that gay circa queen and say see you don't deserve to be treated like us because at least one of you is not like us interesting then that approval of same-sex couples in america was growing throughout the run of queers folk but according to gallup polling and this is hilarious in a sad make you want to bang your head off of the kitchen cabinet kind of way approval dropped by five points the year after the show ended maybe not having that regular supply of queer characters being unapologetically messy actually hurt the cause it's hard to see us as the kind of people you'd start up a chat with at the water cooler if we're all made out to be saints and murders and all too easy to see his massive [ __ ] when we don't live up to that lofty expectation i'm making copies move i'm gay support continued to drop reaching a boiling point in 2008 with the passage of proposition 8 in california of all states a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage after it had been legalized for a short time in 2004 in the years following queer as folk lgbt characters continued to pop up in more what we can qualify as straight tv shows though rarely in lead roles and never sexually explicit this has been changing more recently of course with shows like how to get away with murder and any number of streaming shows but in the decade after queer's folk ended queer characters existed in a sexless wasteland and in many forms of mainstream media still to this day remain trapped there as gay networks like logo and otv began cropping up we did start to see more sexually active gay characters but those were far from the mainstream networks like showtime and usually required you to subscribe to them individually in your cable package so a household filled with straight people wasn't likely to come across noah's ark or x's and o's it wasn't until 2014 with the release of looking on hbo that another gay-centric scripted drama made its way to mainstream cable but looking never came close to the raiding success of queer as folk and only lasted for 18 episodes and a tv movie to tie off the loose ends it just didn't have the must-see tv quality that queer as folk did and quite frankly seemed to lack a lot of the emotional punch that kept viewers tuning in the feeling that you need to keep watching because you never know what you'll see next queer as folk made you care about each and every one of the characters their lives their struggles their victories and as a gay guy in a small town these characters were my only gay friends queer as folks started airing just as i started coming out yes twelve-year-old me was very excited to let people know that i was gay i was weird like that and because i had this support group of fictional gay characters to hang out with every week it made coming out easy for me even seeing the stresses and traumas of the gay community like hiv gay bashing and homophobic families i felt like it would be okay because i saw that there were other people out there just like me should i have been watching queer's folk as a 12 year old maybe not but it's not like there were any kid-friendly shows about gay people on tv now were there and if there had been disney probably would have found a way to cancel them it also acted as my sex ed class since the show featured frank discussions of sexually transmitted diseases and why condom use was so important during the show's run every gay person i met all online mind you was obsessed with the show but then when it ended it seemed to be completely forgotten by everyone fans critics people who praised it for pushing boundaries so i couldn't help but wonder when shows like sex in the city which one could argue is the straight version of queer's folk have gone on to have long lives after their final episodes with movies and a revival series why did queer as folk fade away into the history of cable tv was it really just that it wasn't needed anymore the gay characters were appearing in straight shows now so why would we need a show just for them with it being a raiding smash why wasn't it until 2014 that another network made a show about a group of gay friends was queer's folk perfect no it's definitely a product of its time with an almost entirely white cast little to no trans representation and with even bisexuality being an afterthought but it was as the new york times said genuinely revolutionary it changed the way gay characters could be portrayed on tv we didn't have to be sexless side characters hanging around the periphery of the main cast in order to be a punchline we could be complicated we could have friends and families of our own we could have issues that weren't just related to aids and gay bashing though those were covered in detail it showed the audience that there was so much more to being gay than just loving cher and madonna though on june 9th a new version of queer as folk did premiere on the streaming service peacock with a much more intersectional cast of characters this might be the modern update that we need because in my opinion as queer people are harassed out of more and more spaces be they schools or locker rooms or libraries or entire states it's becoming clear to me the queer inclusive spaces simply aren't enough despite what the gay press said in 2005 we really do still need exclusive queer spaces too places where we don't need to feel like we need to put on a mask for the cisgender heteros who judge us for being the right kind of queer or not who watch our every move to decide whether or not we deserve rights those spaces are still required and that includes media spaces we do in fact need shows and movies just about us because we need to see ourselves outside the sis hat norm we might feel forced to adhere to we need to see ourselves when we're with other people like us and i think with the new queerest folk and the new movie bros coming out this fall major queer media producers might finally be realizing this they might as well make more shows and movies just about us because it's not like we're going anywhere the thumpa thumpa continues it always will no matter what happens no matter who's president no matter who hates us no matter what idiot politicians say no matter what [ __ ] comedians say because as our lady of disco the divine miss gloria gaynor has always sung to us we will survive you

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