Do Ask, Do Tell

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The fact that talk shows are exploitative spectacles does not negate the fact that they are also opportunities.

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What most reporting tended to ignore, however, was that most anti-gay violence does not require a talk show 'ambush' to trigger it. Like the Oakland County, Michigan, prosecutor who argued that 'Jenny Jones's producers' cynical pursuit of ratings and total insensitivity to what could occur here left one person dead and Mr. Schmitz now facing life in prison,' many critics focused on the 'humiliating' surprise attack on Schmitz with the news that he was desired by another man. As in the image of the 'straight' soldier being ogled in the shower, in this logic the revelation of same-sex desire is treated as the danger, and the desired as a victim. The talk show critics thus played to the same 'don't tell' logic that makes talk shows such a necessary, if uncomfortable, refuge for some of us.

Although producers' pursuit of ratings is indeed, unsurprisingly, cynical and insensitive, the talk show environment is one of the very few in which the declaration of same-sex desire (and, to a lesser degree, atypical gender identity) is common, heartily defended, and often even incidental. Although they overlook this in their haste to hate trash, the critics of exploitative talk shows help illuminate the odd sort of opportunity these cacophonous settings provide. Same-sex desires become 'normal' on these programs not so much because different sorts of lives become clearly visible, but because they get sucked into the spectacular whirlpool of relationship conflicts. They offer a particular kind of visibility and voice. On a recent Ricki Lake, it was the voice of an aggressive, screechy gay man who continually reminded viewers, between laughs at his own nasty comments, that he was a regular guy. On other days, it's the take-your-hands-off-my-woman lesbian, or the I'm-more-of-a-woman-than-you'll-ever-be transsexual. The vicious voice -- shouting that we gay people can be as mean, or petty, or just plain loud, as anybody else -- is the first voice talk shows promote. It's one price of entry into mainstream public visibility.

The guests on the talk shows seem to march in what psychologist Jeanne Heaton, co-author of the forthcoming Tuning in Trouble (Jossey-Bass, 1995), calls a 'parade of pathology.' Many talk shows have more than a passing resemblance to freak shows. Neal Gabler, for example, argues that guests are invited to exhibit 'their deformities for attention' in a 'ritual of debasement' aimed primarily at reassuring the audience of its superiority. Indeed, the evidence of dehumanization is all over the place, especially when it comes to gender crossing, as in the titles of various recent Geraldo programs; the calls of sideshow barkers echo in 'Star-Crossed Cross-Dressers: Bizarre Stories of Transvestites and Their Lovers' and 'Outrageous Impersonators and Flamboyant Drag Queens' and 'When Your Husband Wears the Dress in the Family.' As long as talk shows make their bids by being, in Gabler's words, 'a psychological freak show,' sex and gender outsiders arguably reinforce perceptions of themselves as freaks by entering a discourse in which they may be portrayed as bizarre, outrageous, flamboyant curiosities. (Often, for example, they must relinquish their right to defend themselves to the ubiquitous talk show 'experts.')

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