I’m probably going to regret this comment but I think “homophobia” is too strong of a world for things like W&G. The people who wrote and acted in the show weren’t “persistently and unreasonably afraid” of Gay people. What the show did was play on stereotypes but it used them in ways that were not meant to be directly and intentionally hurtful. It made the show possible and allowed a wide audience to be exposed to Gays as normal and human. It also gave the many people who didn’t know any gay men a face, Eric McCormack’s, instead of whatever image they had in their head.
W&G wasn’t high art but it was a decent show for its time and it served to advance the cause as it existed in the late 90s and early 2000s.
In fact I’d argue that W&G was done in the same vein as shows like “Sanford and Sons” and “The Jeffersons”! Through their existence and popularity they were able introduce and then humanize a previous out group. It’s easy to view them years later and see them as flat, cringe, or naive but they were the shows that were possible at the time and the good they did far outweighs the decades later criticisms.
I know its tough, as a society we have so much farther to go, but don’t lose sight of how much progress has been made. We’ve come a very long way in the last 35 years.
Homophobia: irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against homosexuality or gay people Merriam-Webster
Homophobia can take many different forms, including negative attitudes and beliefs about, aversion to, or prejudice against bisexual, lesbian, and gay people. - Planned Parenthood
Homophobia encompasses a range of negative attitudes and feelings toward homosexuality or people who identify or are perceived as being lesbian, gay or bisexual. Wikipedia
Negative attitudes towards homosexual people and homosexuality which may be manifested in discrimination, hostile behaviour, or hate crimes. The term was adopted in 1972 by George Weinberg (b.1935), an American psychologist. The use of ‘phobia’ has been criticized as implying a pathological and irrational fear rather than a form of prejudice analogous to racism. The term is sometimes reserved for more extreme forms reflecting hatred and revulsion, the term heterosexism being favoured in other cases. Homophobic attitudes have been associated with conservative ideologies and authoritarian personalities. Extreme homophobia is often attributed to unconscious homosexual desires but it can also be due to ignorance or function as a means of gaining approval from a reference group. Institutional homophobia is reflected in laws, policies, practices, and the history of invisibility of gay people in the mass media. One theory is that the social function of homophobia is to enforce rigid gender distinctions (see also heteronormativity). Internalized homophobia refers to gay and lesbian people themselves adopting negative attitudes about homosexuality from socialization into a homophobic culture, leading to denial or self-hatred because they feel that they cannot live up to dominant cultural gender expectations. Oxford Reference
Categorizing homophobia as simply “persistently and unreasonably afraid” ignores a truly enormous amount of what homophobia actually is. W&G playing on stereotypes isn’t inherently bad. As you point out, there are many sitcoms and other shows which will play on stereotypes. Where the homophobia comes from is how it treated those gay characters. Notably that they were treated almost entirely as set dressing. Will and Jack are completely unimportant to the show. No decisions they make have any lasting impact or importance to the plot. In fact, their decisions are barely followed at all. In Season 1 or 2, Will loses his biggest client and as a result has to shut down his firm and start over at a new one. When he does, his boss ends up getting involved in more of Karen and Graces episodes than he does in any Will episode. When Will has a problem with his brother they do two episodes on it, mention it once in a later season and then never mention it again. Meanwhile Grace has multiple episodes about her problems with her mother. Even the episode where Will comes out for the first time to anyone? It’s entirely about Grace.
How Will felt is used for comedic set dressing while Grace is the only one who’s focused on for any emotional impact. In the later seasons, Will ends up in a relationship with a cop and it goes poorly. Again there is like no time given to this. In fact let’s talk about relationships in general. How many relationships can you remember that Will had? There’s Michael, a character who is only ever seen once but is referenced constantly to belittle Will. There’s Vince, the cop boyfriend that I mentioned. That’s fucking it. At least for the 8 season long original run. What’s insane is that Will has had more female romantic partners than he has multi-episode relationships. Seriously. He dated his high school best friend (who wanted Wills babies which caused a whole thing with Grace being a controlling freak), he dated Grace and then he had a one night stand with a random woman after he told Grace he was gay. Which, of course, Grace immediately makes about her and gets angrier at will.
The Gay characters of Will & Grace are used entirely for comedic purposes and have no depth or important to the show meanwhile the straight characters have endless season long arcs about their relationships (Grace and Leo, Karen and Stanley are just two blatant examples). They are completely flat and two-dimensional and was an outright betrayal to the gay community by repeatedly reinforcing stereotypes and abandoning the gay community for the sake of a laugh. Anything that could be seen as even slightly subversive is immediately washed away as it’s turned into a joke.
I love Will & Grace. I really do. Having that representation was important for me when I was younger and was important overall but it must be equally as important to remember that Will & Grace undercut the gay community at every chance to make straight people laugh.
Will & Grace undercut the gay community at every chance to make straight people laugh.
Yes it did and I thank you for expressing it in such a clear way; it’s what I was floundering towards with my own comment. Still, this is the pattern of the early shows centered around minorities; the stereotypes are played like a banjo with the intent of making the show popular with a wider audience. With that exposure comes tolerance and what normally follows tolerance is acceptance.
It would have been fantastic if those shows would have been made to the modern standard but a show built to a 2023 standard would absolutely not have been playing on NBC in 1998. It wouldn’t even have been made let alone been playing in a PrimeTime slot. The wider audience simply wasn’t ready and wouldn’t have accepted such a show.
Homophobia
Respectfully we may have to agree to disagree on this. What you linked are validly sourced but IMO they’ve been updated so far that they’ve lost their meaning. The word “phobia” has a set clinical definition and what we’re discussing simply doesn’t fit.
Harvard Medical defines a phobia like this: "A phobia is a persistent, excessive, unrealistic fear of an object, person, animal, activity or situation. It is a type of anxiety disorder. A person with a phobia either tries to avoid the thing that triggers the fear, or endures it with great anxiety and distress. "
Take that pages example of Agoraphobia - "Agoraphobia is a fear of being in public places where it would be difficult or embarrassing to make a sudden exit. "
In short having a “phobia” requires fear and that fear cannot be temporary nor can it be reasonable. So then Homophobia is when someone has an unreasonable and persistent fear of Homosexuals. Those elements are simply not present in Will & Grace.
To press the point there simply isn’t a grammatically or clinically valid function that downgrades the meaning of the word “phobia” when you prepend it with “Homo”; the word is being misused.
The problematic behavior is real enough but what is often labelled as homophobia is really bigotry or prejudice. Bigotry being intolerance that is inconsistent with facts, while Prejudice is holding a preconceived judgement or conviction. Side note: Prejudice isn’t strictly negative, one can be prejudiced for as well as against.
So shows like Will&Grace were watched by people with prejudice but it gave them exposure that removed their preconceptions. This shifted many people away from their prejudice and what’s left are the Bigots, who know what the truth is and don’t care, and the Homophobic, people who are actually and for real afraid of Homosexuals.
It may seem academic but I think these distinctions matter because grouping all of these people together stymies communication and hinders progress. The Phobic literally cannot control their fear, at least not without therapy and possibly drugs. The Prejudiced are simply ignorant and holding an opinion based on that ignorance, their prejudice can be corrected by educating them and removing their ignorance. The Bigoted are the real problem, they are the ones who’ve been educated but refuse to change their opinions or behavior.
The Bigots are the problem and they need to addressed clearly and directly.
I’m sorry but you are simply wrong on the homophobia aspect and the definition therein. You are hyperfocusing on the ‘phobia’ part of the word and insisting that it only means a clinical fear. This is simply inaccurate and you do not have anything to back you up. You simply say “In my opinion, these extremely credible sources (including one that specifically works with LGBTQ+ folks) don’t know what homophobia means.” You’re just wrong. There’s no discussion to be had here. It’s like you’re trying to say 1+1=3.
I’m having a hard time taking anything you say seriously when you’re trying to supplement a known, agreed upon and confirmed definition with what your personal opinion is. That’s not how reality works (at least for anyone who lives in reality) and I have no interest in rewarding such behavior by continuing any conversation with you. Goodbye.
I’m probably going to regret this comment but I think “homophobia” is too strong of a world for things like W&G. The people who wrote and acted in the show weren’t “persistently and unreasonably afraid” of Gay people. What the show did was play on stereotypes but it used them in ways that were not meant to be directly and intentionally hurtful. It made the show possible and allowed a wide audience to be exposed to Gays as normal and human. It also gave the many people who didn’t know any gay men a face, Eric McCormack’s, instead of whatever image they had in their head.
W&G wasn’t high art but it was a decent show for its time and it served to advance the cause as it existed in the late 90s and early 2000s.
In fact I’d argue that W&G was done in the same vein as shows like “Sanford and Sons” and “The Jeffersons”! Through their existence and popularity they were able introduce and then humanize a previous out group. It’s easy to view them years later and see them as flat, cringe, or naive but they were the shows that were possible at the time and the good they did far outweighs the decades later criticisms.
I know its tough, as a society we have so much farther to go, but don’t lose sight of how much progress has been made. We’ve come a very long way in the last 35 years.
Categorizing homophobia as simply “persistently and unreasonably afraid” ignores a truly enormous amount of what homophobia actually is. W&G playing on stereotypes isn’t inherently bad. As you point out, there are many sitcoms and other shows which will play on stereotypes. Where the homophobia comes from is how it treated those gay characters. Notably that they were treated almost entirely as set dressing. Will and Jack are completely unimportant to the show. No decisions they make have any lasting impact or importance to the plot. In fact, their decisions are barely followed at all. In Season 1 or 2, Will loses his biggest client and as a result has to shut down his firm and start over at a new one. When he does, his boss ends up getting involved in more of Karen and Graces episodes than he does in any Will episode. When Will has a problem with his brother they do two episodes on it, mention it once in a later season and then never mention it again. Meanwhile Grace has multiple episodes about her problems with her mother. Even the episode where Will comes out for the first time to anyone? It’s entirely about Grace.
How Will felt is used for comedic set dressing while Grace is the only one who’s focused on for any emotional impact. In the later seasons, Will ends up in a relationship with a cop and it goes poorly. Again there is like no time given to this. In fact let’s talk about relationships in general. How many relationships can you remember that Will had? There’s Michael, a character who is only ever seen once but is referenced constantly to belittle Will. There’s Vince, the cop boyfriend that I mentioned. That’s fucking it. At least for the 8 season long original run. What’s insane is that Will has had more female romantic partners than he has multi-episode relationships. Seriously. He dated his high school best friend (who wanted Wills babies which caused a whole thing with Grace being a controlling freak), he dated Grace and then he had a one night stand with a random woman after he told Grace he was gay. Which, of course, Grace immediately makes about her and gets angrier at will.
The Gay characters of Will & Grace are used entirely for comedic purposes and have no depth or important to the show meanwhile the straight characters have endless season long arcs about their relationships (Grace and Leo, Karen and Stanley are just two blatant examples). They are completely flat and two-dimensional and was an outright betrayal to the gay community by repeatedly reinforcing stereotypes and abandoning the gay community for the sake of a laugh. Anything that could be seen as even slightly subversive is immediately washed away as it’s turned into a joke.
I love Will & Grace. I really do. Having that representation was important for me when I was younger and was important overall but it must be equally as important to remember that Will & Grace undercut the gay community at every chance to make straight people laugh.
Yes it did and I thank you for expressing it in such a clear way; it’s what I was floundering towards with my own comment. Still, this is the pattern of the early shows centered around minorities; the stereotypes are played like a banjo with the intent of making the show popular with a wider audience. With that exposure comes tolerance and what normally follows tolerance is acceptance.
It would have been fantastic if those shows would have been made to the modern standard but a show built to a 2023 standard would absolutely not have been playing on NBC in 1998. It wouldn’t even have been made let alone been playing in a PrimeTime slot. The wider audience simply wasn’t ready and wouldn’t have accepted such a show.
Respectfully we may have to agree to disagree on this. What you linked are validly sourced but IMO they’ve been updated so far that they’ve lost their meaning. The word “phobia” has a set clinical definition and what we’re discussing simply doesn’t fit.
Harvard Medical defines a phobia like this: "A phobia is a persistent, excessive, unrealistic fear of an object, person, animal, activity or situation. It is a type of anxiety disorder. A person with a phobia either tries to avoid the thing that triggers the fear, or endures it with great anxiety and distress. "
Take that pages example of Agoraphobia - "Agoraphobia is a fear of being in public places where it would be difficult or embarrassing to make a sudden exit. "
In short having a “phobia” requires fear and that fear cannot be temporary nor can it be reasonable. So then Homophobia is when someone has an unreasonable and persistent fear of Homosexuals. Those elements are simply not present in Will & Grace.
To press the point there simply isn’t a grammatically or clinically valid function that downgrades the meaning of the word “phobia” when you prepend it with “Homo”; the word is being misused.
The problematic behavior is real enough but what is often labelled as homophobia is really bigotry or prejudice. Bigotry being intolerance that is inconsistent with facts, while Prejudice is holding a preconceived judgement or conviction. Side note: Prejudice isn’t strictly negative, one can be prejudiced for as well as against.
So shows like Will&Grace were watched by people with prejudice but it gave them exposure that removed their preconceptions. This shifted many people away from their prejudice and what’s left are the Bigots, who know what the truth is and don’t care, and the Homophobic, people who are actually and for real afraid of Homosexuals.
It may seem academic but I think these distinctions matter because grouping all of these people together stymies communication and hinders progress. The Phobic literally cannot control their fear, at least not without therapy and possibly drugs. The Prejudiced are simply ignorant and holding an opinion based on that ignorance, their prejudice can be corrected by educating them and removing their ignorance. The Bigoted are the real problem, they are the ones who’ve been educated but refuse to change their opinions or behavior.
The Bigots are the problem and they need to addressed clearly and directly.
I’m sorry but you are simply wrong on the homophobia aspect and the definition therein. You are hyperfocusing on the ‘phobia’ part of the word and insisting that it only means a clinical fear. This is simply inaccurate and you do not have anything to back you up. You simply say “In my opinion, these extremely credible sources (including one that specifically works with LGBTQ+ folks) don’t know what homophobia means.” You’re just wrong. There’s no discussion to be had here. It’s like you’re trying to say 1+1=3.
I’m having a hard time taking anything you say seriously when you’re trying to supplement a known, agreed upon and confirmed definition with what your personal opinion is. That’s not how reality works (at least for anyone who lives in reality) and I have no interest in rewarding such behavior by continuing any conversation with you. Goodbye.