Not That Big a Deal

By Neil G. Schloesser
Contributing Writer

A recent article in Newsweek magazine asked a somewhat insulting question. Can an openly gay actor play a convincing straight character? Writer Ramin Setoodeh said no, an openly gay actor cannot play straight convincingly. He cited Sean Hayes of Will & Grace fame for camping it up as a straight man in a Broadway show and went on to say that actors like Neil Patrick Harris and Portia De Rossi play straight stereotypes, so their portrayals don’t count.

There’s no merit to Setoodeh’s argument. If Hayes can’t play straight it’s because he’s a bad actor not because gay can’t play straight.
While Setoodeh’s argument is poorly constructed, I do see the dark corner in which his logic originated.

Annoyingly, part of the gay experience in this world is the coming to terms with the label of “gay,” the self-identification aspect of accepting one’s difference. Even if one rejects the label of “gay” and all the baggage that comes with that term, a person still has to accept a new and foreign definition into their psyche so that they can be at peace with theirself and the world.

Being a homosexual in a world that openly disparages homosexuals requires one to act forcefully in a way that is unknown to other people. The idea of “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it” sums up the act of self-identification that a gay person must go through. We must consciously create our identities within ourselves and then (again annoyingly), announce it to other people, so that we feel that we are living a true life. A black person doesn’t need to announce they are black. They have no opportunity to deny their true self, but a gay person can deny their identity at every point throughout the day. Even though being gay is a miniscule part of one’s identity, it is because of this society that it is also quite a large part of a gay person’s identity. We are forced continuously, constantly, to act out, to affirm our identities, or live a lie.

Being gay itself, a simple state of same-sex attraction, is also a much larger act of constant affirmation. If Setoodeh of Newsweek cannot believe a gay person can convincingly play straight, then maybe it is because Setoodeh identifies with being gay too much. Gay people necessarily create an identity that allows for their sexual identity, and must constantly proclaim it to achieve equality, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t also as inconsequential to us as a heterosexual’s identity is to them. Yes, we must constantly affirm but that doesn’t mean it is all we are, and that, I think, is where Setoodeh’s logic originates, from an extreme of too much identification.

Let it go, Setoodeh, the actors are gay, not giant flames at the end of a matchstick. If you can’t forget an actor is gay, it’s either because the actor is bad or because you, Ramin Setoodeh, have your own hangups.

Read Setoodeh’s article, “Straight Jacket,” and decide for yourself. Newsweek, April 26, 2010, http://www.newsweek.com/id/236999.

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