Guilty Pleasures and Lost Opportunities

For those who are just starting to get to know me, I am about to admit something that will may cause your jaw to drop or possibly induce heavy heaving. One of my guilty pleasures are certain soap operas.

The main one is British, Coronation Street. I have been following this serial since the 80’s. When I was young, it was Another World. Then it was All My Children and most recently As The World Turns.

But this post is about lost opportunities I’ve seen in my guilty pleasures and the visual media in general. Another World, I don’t remember too much because it was on because of my baby-sitter. I’ll focus on CS, AMC and ATWT.

This post is prompted by an episode I watch of ATWT on Wednesday, a couple of weeks ago. Because call volume is low, I got the afternoon off. I was doing some research in the middle room, and had the TV to see what I have missed over the past couple of months on ATWT.

To my surprise, one of the main young characters, Luke, is coming out. For the briefest moment I got excited and then reality kicked in.

Years ago 1995-1996, AMC decided to tackle gay issues. The plot line started with one of the characters, Michael Delany who taught at the high school, was gay. Because of him being outed, one of the students, Kevin Sheffield came out.

The whole plot line was typical soap opera, but they did tackle aspects of homophobia, and a young man trying to come to terms with his sexuality. It was a valiant attempt.

The problem was, once that major plot line was done, they did nothing with the two characters. Michael Delany faded off into the sunset and Kevin Sheffield went to university and also just faded away.

The same happened on CS. One of the main young characters, Todd, came out, which was a good plot line. They even gave him an on again/off again boyfriend. But once the plot line was gone, the character left the Street.

So now ATWT is starting up a gay plotline. Why am I worried? CS and AMC had meaty plotlines for the primary gay character. But once the plotline was finished, they did not know what to do with the character.

It is as if the only thing that defined these characters was their homosexuality. And once that was explored, there was nothing more to explore. These characters did not have enough dimension to interact on other levels with the other characters. They could not be secondary characters in other plotlines.

I saw great potential for characters like Kevin and Todd. They were young characters which could be active in so many other aspects of the fictional places of Pine Valley or Weatherfield. But the writers wrote themselves into a corner making the only defining feature their sexuality. Yet they had so much to work with.

For course, I am not naive. These shows are run by ratings and the sponsors. And especially in the States, sponsors are generally conservative. They don’t like it when a conservative Christian group threatens to boycott their products.

So the gay character is relegated to a rating sweep, a focal point for a potboiler plotline and then sweep them away. A long term gay character trying to find love does not pull in the ratings.

So now ATWT has jumped onto the gay bandwagon. Over the next few weeks, I will watch to see how the plotline pans out. But I do not have high hopes.

The Luke character is in his late teens. His coming out and interest in another character will be in the forefront for now. How will his parents deal with it? Other family members? The rest of Oakdale, Illinois?

But once that is done, are they going to relegate Luke to the background and then ship him off to a faraway university? Or will there be a voice over announcing a new actor playing the character of Luke and make him straight? Anything is possible in soap opera land.

Yeah, soap operas are over the top, exaggerated story telling but amidst the absurd stories, they do tackle important issues like rape or domestic violence. And I loved some of the silly plotlines. There was Janet from Another Planet. Rose & Lily and the desert island. Derek and his paper-clip car.

Yet soaps like Coronation Street brought in characters like Hailey, who is a transsexual. These soaps have shown the violence and devastation of an act of violence like rape. They have dealt with issues like depression, addiction, suicide and grief because of lost ones. Amongst the silly bedhopping, doomed love affairs, business deals going bad and age long rivalries, real issues are tackled. The missed opportunity still, for me, is someone who is gay.

Now for those who have that slight sneer reading this. Soap operas are not a modern mode of story telling. You want to see a soap opera or two, read Shakespeare. He wrote for the masses and his stuff is no different. Only time and ivory tower scholars have now elevated him to literature and beyond.

Commercial films and TV still have a way to go when it comes to the portrayal of gays in our society. There have been advances and set-backs. We are still not at the point where a gay character is just an ordinary character amongst straight characters.

You get shows like Will and Grace that play it safe. Especially with the Jack character. C did the same thing by getting rid of a normal character like Todd and bringing in a flamer like Shawn.

I suppose most of the straight audience out there still isn’t ready for a normal man or woman who just happens to be gay. But maybe, slowly with guilty pleasures like the soap operas, things might slowly change and echo into the main stream. All I can do is hope.