|
Thursday, September 26, 2002 |
"TV is a Medium, because it is neither Rare nor Well Done"
When I was a kid watching the original Star Trek, the Enterprise bridge crew, which featured both an African-American female and an Asian-American male* was considered quite revolutionary.I didn't think that it would still be revolutionary, more than three decades later.
The funniest and saddest comment on the new TV season I've seen comes from the reviewer in USA Today, who wonders how "two shows set in San Francisco can come up with only one Asian character between them, and no gay ones at all", the two shows being "MDs" and "Presidio Med".
Meanwhile, "CSI: Miami" has only one Hispanic character, while being set in Miami-Dade county, which has a Hispanic population of nearly 60 percent.
And there are fewer gay characters on television this season, according to Come out, come out wherever you are, which also contains this appalling comment from an analyst for Focus on the Family:
"Fewer gay roles are more accurate with the actual percentage of homosexuals in our population, rather than the high number of gay writers and producers in Hollywood that have an agenda to advance," says John Paulk, the homosexuality and gender analyst for public policy for Focus on the Family, a conservative think tank, who believes that, while the number of gay characters has gone down, the way that the networks deal with homosexuality doesn't mesh with Americans beliefs. "Parents continue to remain very concerned that their children are being spoon-fed propaganda by television programs. They feel their teens are being forced to accept a "born gay" theory and that homosexuality needs to be accepted by people."
*Yes, George Takei is frequently described as an "Asian actor", but he was born in American, and got stuck into an interment camp during World War II, and I don't feel like forgetting that he's an American just because it's stylistically awkward; there are worse things than hyphenated Americanism.
