Are you ready, panel?
Here we go…I read to you from Mediate:
As the controversy continues over the white-washed pool of actors nominated this year for the Oscar awards, gay British actor Sir Ian McKellen has stated that homophobia is just as prominent in the film industry as racism.
McKellen, perhaps most prominently known for his work in the Lord of the Rings and X-Men series, spoke with Sky News today about why he felt sympathetic to the minority actors who felt like they were being overlooked by the Academy. While McKellen said that the concerns had merit, he also stated that black people were not alone in feeling disenfranchised by Hollywood.
“It’s not only black people who’ve been disregarded by the film industry, it used to be women, it’s certainly gay people to this day,” McKellen said. “And these are all legitimate complaints and the Oscars are the focus of those complaints of course.”
In a separate interview with The Guardian, McKellen also said that actors have won Oscars for playing gay characters in the past, and yet despite being nominated himself, no openly homosexual actor has ever won.
Now, you need some background for this round, panel.
It is almost certain that a very large proportion of Hollywood is gay, and it has always been this way. The exact percentage is open to question, but those who have worked in other areas of show business encounter a large percentage of gay men, and also women, among designers, producers, directors, and actors, at all levels of the theater. In most college theater programs, there is a clear predominance of gays among both faculty and students. It would be strange indeed if the dominance of gays in the other aspects of show business was significantly different from the demographics in film. This suggests that there must be a strong contingent of closeted or privately gay men and women among the voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
So now your question, panel: Was Ian McKellen’s bold assertion…
“Ethical, Unethical, Stupid, Or Tongue-In-Cheek?”
You have…30 seconds!
Time’s up!
The answer is…………………………………………………………….TONGUE IN CHEEK!
Yes, Sir Ian has been around a long time, and no dummy he. He knows that many nomination and awards have gone, do go, and will go to gay actors regularly, because you can hardly throw a rock in Hollywood, Broadway, or London’s West End without hitting one. Just as he knows that the Academy isn’t racist, he knows that the members aren’t homophobic—going into in show business if you are homophobic is like joining the circus when you are afraid of clowns, or becoming a good critic with colitis. So McKellen is puckishly satirizing the current howls about diversity from Spike, Al and their acolytes in order to tweak the Academy and his many, many, fellow gay actors who haven’t been willing to risk outing themselves as he has. It’s not enough that gays have been winning awards and ruling Hollywood since the silent movie days of heartthrobs Rudolph Valentino and Ramon Navarro—both gay, by the way. Now Sir Ian wants to lobby for a quota for openly gay actors…like, well, him, and a handful of others, like Neil Patrick Harris, as if there was a genuine stigma attached to being gay in Hollywood, other than the presumed stigma at the box office.
Except that many of these gay and lesbian actors—lets not even include the bi-sexuals, like Cary Grant, Spencer Tracy, Marlene Dietrich, Randolph Scott, Marlon Brando, Steve McQueen, Tallulah Bankhead, to keep the number manageable—were openly gay among their colleagues. Charles Laughton, Robert Taylor, Robert Reed, Brad Davis, Raymond Burr, Barbara Stanwyck, Tyrone Power, Vincent Price, John Gielgud, James Dean, Rock Hudson of course, Maurice Evans, Mary Martin, Alec Guiness, Michael Redgrave, Roddy McDowell, Franklin Pangborn, Tony Randall, George Maharis, Montgomery Clift, Katherine Hepburn, Monty Woolley, Garbo, Tom Drake, Richard Deacon, James Coco, Wally Cox, Sal Mineo, Anthony Perkins, Paul Lynde, Lawrence Harvey, Janet Gaynor, Claudette Colbert, Caesar Romero, Clifton Webb, Marjorie Main, Sherman Hensley, Edward Everett Horton, Farley Granger, Capucine, Denholm Elliot, Will Geer, Van Johnson, Dick Sargent, Raymond St Jacques, and Agnes Moorhead are just some of the better known—and deceased— examples.
Sir Ian knows this, knows that Hollywood is the least homophobic workplace on earth, and knows that what he said is ridiculous and that everyone in the business knows it too. So he is gently, humorously, puckishly urging the hundreds, probably thousands of his gay colleagues to be courageous and announce themselves, or risk watch him split Oscars with Neil Patrick Harris every year after the Academy is intimidated into putting in quotas.
Or, of course, he might be an idiot.
Now, for the next round…
Ethics Alarms 
Oh thank God !! I was beginning to fear that my beloved Gandalf wasn’t as wise as I’d wanted to believe.
I was about to say “stupid” , and post this:
Stupid is clearly the alternative answer, but I can’t believe he’s THAT stupid. Maybe it’s the accent.
Olivier? I know the list isn’t definitive but I’ve always considered Olivier pretty much the archetypal gay actor.
http://www.examiner.com/article/damn-you-scarlet-o-hara-reveals-bisexuality-of-laurence-olivier-vivien-leigh
I’ve also wondered whether “bi-sexual” is a totally legitimate term. In the case of people like Olivier, didn’t he only pursue women to keep up appearances and not hurt his box office? Are bi-sexuals simply homosexuals succumbing from time to time to societal pressures to conform? Maybe Dragon Dragon or other psychologists can shed some light on this for me.
I acted in a play early in college and enjoyed it and was encouraged to do more but didn’t feel comfortable not understanding all the in-jokes and in-behavior among the fabulously gay NYC director who was in residence for the year and his adoring girl groupies. I was eighteen, not from the northeast and naive and had no idea what to make of all the sophistication. I’ve always loved live theater but just didn’t feel comfortable being part of it. Too much of an outsider. I guess I should have demanded a safe space somewhere backstage.
Wouldn’t it be funny if a straight actor insisted more straight actors get nominated for Academy Awards?
I left off Sir Lawrence intentionally, since so much of the gay stories come from the last biography that claimed Danny Kaye was hs frequent and dominant partner. That was the big revelation in the book, and Danny Kaye’s last biographer, who was determined to get as much dirt out on Kaye as possible, couldn’t confirm it. Meanwhile, my friend who was a close travel partner and confidant of the Kayes for 25 years was an eye-witness to several incidents in the Olivier book, and he told me they were misrepresented. I asked him point blank about Danny. He said, and he never lied to me, “Jack, all I know is that I saw Danny fooling around with many, many women, and not a single man. I’m not saying he didn’t, but if he did, he sure fooled me.”
Interesting. Thanks. A high school buddy of mine was pursued vigorously by Olivier when my buddy was backpacking around Europe and in London while in his early twenties.
“Help! Sir Lawrence Oivier is chasing me!!!’
“I’ve also wondered whether “bi-sexual” is a totally legitimate term. In the case of people like Olivier, didn’t he only pursue women to keep up appearances and not hurt his box office? Are bi-sexuals simply homosexuals succumbing from time to time to societal pressures to conform? Maybe Dragon Dragon or other psychologists can shed some light on this for me.”
I’m not a psychologist myself, but I am bisexual, and in a happy, monogamous heterosexual marriage. In my case, it simply translates to anyplace where a heterosexual person might notice someone of the opposite gender (attractive movie stars, or people at the beach or in revealing clothing) I’m just as likely to have my head turned by an attractive woman as a man.
I’m not that old, I was a teenager in the late nineties, and even flirted with some women in college. But I’ll admit the combination of me being shy and the traditional roles of men as the ones that ask women out probably made it more likely I’d end up in a heterosexual relationship than a lesbian one. And I’m sure in the past (and maybe even some places today) some closeted gay people might explain away their relationships as being bisexual, but it’s not the same thing. I mean, I would assume, by definition, strictly gay people wouldn’t be as happy as I am with all aspects of a heterosexual marriage.
That comports with my understanding of bi-sexuality, Emily. It does confuse the discussion for gays who are fighting the “sexual preference” label, trying to explain that they were programmed this way. But if someone so programmed can “choose” to in Seinfeld terms, to play on the other team now and then, why can’t they just “choose” to be straight? And does a being married, and even having children, mean that an individual is really just bi-sexual, or is he or she a gay individual who will do what is necessary to conform, but hates every minute of it? Some of those I listed under bisexual were pretty clearly hetero men with an adventurous streak. Interesting. But so what?
This actually reminds me, I’ve often wondered how many anti-gay politicians might be bisexual. If they’re starting from the idea that being gay is a sin, and they themselves are attracted to men but can also be perfectly happy in a relationship with a woman, it would make sense that they wouldn’t want to accept that this isn’t the case for everyone. Both because that would mean everyone doesn’t experience the homosexual attraction that they do, and it would mean that for some people there’s no option to be heterosexual.
Personally, I have no problem with the idea that it’s a spectrum, with some people totally straight, some people totally gay, and other people being anywhere from leaning one way or the other to totally 50/50. That people who are bisexual exist doesn’t prove that everyone is bisexual.
I agree.
Thanks. Emily, for what it’s worth, I think the spectrum analogy is the soundest way to view human sexuality, but sometimes I wonder.
I’ve always assumed many of the politicians who are virulently anti-gay are in fact gay, often bearded, in denial, and in the closet. There was the big scandal in the 1960s about the Congressional pages who were evidently being treated as toys by too many of the members of Congress. For some reason, I think politics ranks somewhere not far behind the theater in terms of a strong gay demographic. The closeted gay politicians posing as anti-gay remind me of a closeted gay friend who felt compelled to open almost every conversation with a fairly nasty gay joke. It was kind of painful to see.
My mid-20s son, who of course knows everything because of the great research resource The Interweb, claims that there is recent research to suggest that an individual’s sexual preferences bounce around throughout an individual’s lifetime like a lovesick ping pong ball. Has anyone else heard such claims?
Also, I am familiar with at least one person (in the arts), called bi-sexual, who had numerous same-sex affairs over his lifetime and yet deeply loved his wife.
What does it all mean? We are all just wandering around and occasionally we find someone else wandering around who makes the darkness tolerable, for a while or for a lifetime.
“Has anyone else heard such claims?”
Sexual fluidity, where preferences change over the course of a lifetime, is something that they’ve known about for a while, and has traditionally shown up more in women than men. I have seen it gaining popularity as a concept these days, but… I have to say that the places I’ve seen it becoming popular have been among teenagers and young adults who might not be totally sure of their own sexuality yet. (These days it can go both ways: gay kids who are in the closet, or straight kids who want to seem edgy and identify as gay or bi.)
I totally think it’s a thing, but I tend to be suspicious when the person claiming it happened is young and doesn’t have much relationship experience.
Paul Lynde was gay??
No way, look right here, he has his arm around a woman.
https://youtu.be/4psTeRpQ-1o?t=1345
Paul Lynde? No way. Whodathunkit?
jvb
it seems the timestamp didn’t go with the url. 22:25
Comment of the day.
i Know. Who would have believed it? Him, and Charles Nelson Reilly….
Since homophobia is not prominent in the film industry this was clearly tongue in cheek!
Whatcha wanna bet that activist trying to promote the fallacy that there is racism running wild in the film industry will latch on to this statement, twist its intended meaning and present it as fact that there is wide spread racism in the film industry.
My Observation of Modern Day Activists
When a person makes a statement, any statement, that can be twisted to support a particular focus of activism, it cannot be unsaid and the repetition of statement will be presented to the world as fact regardless of truth. To a modern day activist, it doesn’t matter if what they say is based on supportable facts or truth as long as their is an emotional connection to influence the public and the end goal of the activism is achieved.
Building fallacies based on hyperbole and presenting that as fact to emotionally influence the public is one of the predominate verbal tactics used by modern day activists. They know that a big chunk of the public will blindly believe their hyperbole without checking the validity of the claims and the more people they can get on their bandwagon to spew forth their hype the more likely they will accomplish their goal.
Lies, damn lies, and activism.
When Sir McKellan attempts to set the record straight, those words will likely not be brought to you by any large MSM outlet.
I could easily see a graphic representation misrepresenting his words with a neato Gandalf photo background going viral on Facebook.
I’ve seen many similar activist things misrepresenting the truth go viral on Facebook.
Hollywood is homophobic? Hmmmmm. I guess I have been watching the wrong movies and television shows, since a ton of them have overtly gay-friendly themes, plots, and characters.
jvb
Jack, I think you too easily discount McKellan’s experiences. Hollywood and the theater are famously gay-friendly by our society’s standards; but then, our society is pretty homophobic. It’s possible that McKellan has seen anti-gay discrimination in a way that you, as a straight man, wouldn’t necessarily notice. Not saying this automatically makes him right, but on this matter, he has a stronger ethos than you on this subject.
In theater, Chris, the discrimination runs the other way.