Homosexuality in the media
Cinema and television
Cinema
It's not
exactly news that a mass medium like the cinema, has the power to dramatically
influence and change the public attitudes towards minority groups, often making
them accessible and relatable to the mainstream. Sadly, that power works in a
wrong way with the movie industry. In the beginning of the cinematic industry,
homosexual roles were present on the screen, but were often limited to
stereotypes such as the drag queen/transvestite, the degenerate, the depraved
and so on.
When talking about how homosexuality is seen on cinema, one must consider the time/age he is talking about. As everyone knows, the way homosexuality is seen by directors and actors has changed over the course of the years. It is safe to assume that the way homosexual roles were played a few years ago, is not the same as they are now. As the years passed, the iconic movie performances by big names, helped to change the traditional perceptions, slowly changing the idea of a homosexual person. Let's take for example the movie "Fellini Satyricon" that came out in 1969. The homosexual roles present in the movie are still rather stereotyped, having a smaller, more feminine man and a bigger, more masculine man, playing a role of a homosexual couple. On the other hand, when it comes to woman, the same applies. There is usually a lesbian couple where a woman dresses in a more "manly" way than the other and has shorter hair, usually a "manly" haircut.
It is safe to assume of course that the use of these stereotypes has changed over the course of the years, having the homosexual roles being played and follow almost no stereotypes. An example of this is the movie "Brokeback Mountain", a movie that came out in 2005. It is a drama film and it proves that things have changed for homosexual roles. The homosexual couple in this movie is composed of two men who follow almost no stereotype. They both dress normal, they talk and act normal and have what you can consider a "manly job". They are "cowboys" at a ranch.
That being said, when it comes to homosexuality, cinema has come through a long way, having to change things according to times, having to adapt to things. Personally, we believe that cinema has changed hearts and minds when it comes to homosexuality, taking down some stereotypes that people would have and making some feel more comfortable when talking about the subject.
Television
The mass medium that we're going to discuss is the television. It is the largest medium on the group of the mass media. According to internetlivestats.com, there were over 3.1 billion people accessing the internet in 2015. Estimates show that in the same year, in 2015, over 1.5 billion households owned at least one TV set. If you multiply that number for the number of people usually a family holds, you get maybe 3.5 or ever 4 billion people who own and watch television. Television is still, in my opinion, the medium with the most influence in the world. Television has had the power to change people's hearts and minds ever since the beginning of the 20th century.
So, after knowing this, how is homosexuality seen and portrayed on the screen? For sure it has changed with the course of the years but has it changed as much as the way it is portrayed in other media (for instance the cinema)?
Through the early 20th century, homosexuality was uncommon, however, when represented, it was used in a comic way. The 1930's brought a new increased awareness about the LGBT people in the media. In 1934 the Motion Picture Production Code was created in order to set moral guidelines. This was an attempt to reduce the negative portrayals of homosexuality in media. Later on, in 1951 an identical code was created for television broadcasters, the Code of Practices for Television Broadcasters. However, it news media, homosexuality was rarely mentioned and often was referred as a mental illness or even a perversion.
In recent years, there has been some improvements in the representation of homosexual roles on the mainstream network television. The popularity of shows that include such roles, shows that networks are willing to feature homosexual roles in their shows, as long as they produce high ratings and generate an enough amount of profit. Even on the news media, things have changed. The way the broadcasters address this topic is rather different than it was years ago. Nowadays it is normal to see news coverages of LGBT events, gay pride parades and etc. This doesn't happen everywhere in the world. For example, in the beginning of the year of 2016, China banned the depiction of gay people on television, as seen on the guardian website.
With this, we can say that the way homosexuality is portrayed on the television has changed but has it been enough? I don't think so. Do you?
Written by João Cerqueira.
Bibliography
(cinema)
https://www.advocate.com/arts-entertainment/film/2014/06/23/top-175-essential-films-all-time-lgbt-viewers seen on 27/12/16 at 10:32
https://mediasmarts.ca/digital-media-literacy/media-issues/diversity-media/queer-representation/queer-representation-film-television
seen on 27/12/16 at 11:42
Bibliography
(television)
https://www.internetlivestats.com/internet-users/ seen on 29/12/16 at 16 :24
https://www.statista.com/statistics/276748/average-daily-tv-viewing-time-per-person-in-selected-countries/ seen on 29/12/16 at 14 :38
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2016/mar/04/china-bans-gay-people-television-clampdown-xi-jinping-censorship as seen on 29/12/16 at 16:57
Music and newspapper
Music
For several years homossexuality has been a tabu for most media. Nowadays more people have the courage to "come out" to the public. LGBT music ( lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans gender music) is about focusing on performing lyrics about relationships, love, acceptance and most of all "gay pride". This performances started overall in the 2010s and it became more popular in America. This became due to a openly-gay artist Adam Lambert and he hitted the top of the 2012 Billboard 200 chart.
Adam Lambert on na interview says (and quote): " I am gay and I'm very confortable with it".
Also, another artista is Elton John. He was followed by media and his private life was invaded by the media. John on an interview to the rolling stones magazine, over 40 years ago, confessed that he was scared of being recorded or photographed during an intimate conversation. John also said " I crave to the loved. That's the part of my life I want to have come together (...). My life in the last 6 years has been a Disney film and now I have to have a person in my life". Then the reporter asked John if he was bisexual, and he replied by saying that "There's nothing wrong with going to bed with somebody of your own sex. I think everybody's bisexual to a certain degree. I dont think it's just me. It is not a bad thing to be (...)".
Newspapper
After an analisys of several newspapers I found an article that got my attention. The newspaper name is "The new England jornal of medicine" and the article said that "The delection of homossexuality from the diagnostic and statistical manual of the American Psychiatric Association in 1980 marked a dramatic reversal of judgement that homossexuality is a behavioral disorder". The article also says that "Independent studies with diverse designs have failed to find any increased frequency of various forms of psychopathology among homossexual peaople as compared with heterosexual people. If indentify data on projective tests are delected, it is impossible to distinguish homossexual from heterosexual people".
Moving on to homophofia in journals in the 80s and 90s this situation was forbiden to talk, because people didn't had an open mind about being "different" than oter people. The society had the idea that being with someone of their own sex was unacceptable and God created a Woman and a Man to procreate with each other and not with people of the same sex.
To conclude this topic, the article talks about "Suicide and gay youth". "In different areas of the United States have demonstrated an increased frequency of people identified as homossexual among those who commited suicide". In a study o 137 people, 41 of them attempted suicide. This is due to a " (...) common set of predisposing influences (...)".
Written by Joana Rodrigues.
Bibliography for Music
https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainement/american-idols-adam-lambert-sexuality-im-gay-im/story?id=7814466
seen in 31/12/2016 at 01:08
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_music
seen in 31/12/2016 at 00:44
https://ultimateclassicrock.com/elton-john-bisexuality/
seen in 31/12/2016 at 01:57
Bibliography for Journals
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199410063311407#t=article seen in 03/01/2017 at 16:00
Education and work
Education
In the past, at schools teachers and students kept everything that was related with sexuality hidden. It was a taboo. People knew that homosexuality exists but it was something to ignore or forget. Nowadays, we see things in a different way. Moreover, it is transmitted the mainly concepts of sexuality to students, it is not a taboo anymore. Despite of homosexuality be a minority, students and teachers are conscious that this theme is growing up and can become even more important in our society. Teachers have attention to explain and answer student's questions, more than that they improve a "new society", a better one, without discrimination.
Nevertheless, education is not only at school. Education is mainly made at home, with family. People before educated their kids by following the rules of society, a man should have an education directed to become a strong man and a woman should have an education to take care of home and kids. The fear of having a son/daughter homosexual was big, because of the shame. So it was all controlled by the parents. Currently, this situation is different because our society in more open mind, so the perspective of parents is different. They want to make sure their kids understand why other people have a different sexual orientation, they are able to answer and explain any doubt, in order to make their kids treat homosexuals with all the respect they deserve.
Thus, even at home or at school homosexuality is a theme that is discussed and analyze to avoid stereotypes or discrimination from others.Work
Work can be considered a way to transmit information like media are. At work people are always in touch with each other and changing ideas, values and opinions that are different ideologies.
First, it was not always acceptable the homosexuality in labour society. The fear of the bosses in hiring someone with a different sexual orientation and lose their customers was enormous the possibility of their workplace become a joke to others was a scared possibility too. In most cases, the main reason was the discrimination from the chief himself and not from the customer, depending on the behavior, appearance and attitude of the individual the leader could make a judgment and consider him or her a homosexual person.
Actually, in the 21st century we can watch some progress when it comes to this topic. In truth, the struggle of homosexuals for equal opportunities in heterosexual societies, has given results. Increasingly, we can observe a great diversity and acceptance of any kind of sexual orientation, in places of conviviality, companies and any type of job. Studies indicate that employers are proud f employing homosexuals, defending the end of homophobia. Discrimination decrease and the differences increase. Right now, our society is being carved to accepted all human beings as well their capabilities for the job they want, despite of sexual orientation.
In fact, it can be observed stereotypes in relation to work, mainly in men when it comes to the choice of work. Even today it is possible to watch it, if a man is hairdresser, babysitter or dancer is considered homosexual by some, just because they do not follow "society rules". On the other hand, this has been changing men become great professionals in jobs that are "for women" and vice versa also happens.
To conclude, society is constantly changing and if people want to be part of it they maybe should accepted those changes, in order to make the world a better place.
Written by Débora Ferreira.
Internet and radio
Internet
In my opinion the mass medium that most changed the opinion of the population was the internet. The internet has power to change the mind of the users, and homosexuality is seen as something not be ashamed of but as a pride in the Internet.
Homosexuality is seen as a disease by some but not in the most of the Internet, when the US Supreme Court announced that they were ruling in favor of same-sex marriage Mark Zuckerberg, the creator of Facebook announced a new feature, a feature that allowed users to use a filter of a rainbow flag (symbol of homosexuality) in their profile picture. It gained a lot of popularity but not everybody liked the filter. For example in Russia several filters were created which the colors of national flags rather than rainbow banners across a picture. However the reactions were mostly positive as an Egyptian TV presenter Muna Iraqi commented in support of "right to live and love freely, without any persecution".
This example is just to show how the homosexuality is seen on the Internet, the internet can be very important to this subject mostly because of the high number of users.
When a lot of people get behind the same idea at the same time it makes everyone else pause to think: "what is this about?" and then "where do I stand?". It might not change minds but it will make you think.
To conclude, homosexuality in the internet is seen as a normal thing now, for the most part of the users, and the homosexuals feel comfortable making their beliefs clear for everybody.
Radio
Radio is one of the mass medium with higher reach to the population. According to a survey from Nielsen about 65.2 million people in the U.S. aged 18 to 34 years listen to traditional broadcast radio each week. Radio continues to be a big mass medium, reaching nine out of 10 people aged 12 years and up in the U.S. each week, according to Nielsen. That's roughly 242 million people.
With this fact how is homosexuality portrayed in the radio? Well there's not much to say about that. There are some talk shows where homosexuality is the main theme and normally it's accepted by the radio community, it is not seen as a disease or something like that it is seen as a normal thing.
Written by Carlos Gonçalves.
Bibliography
https://www.dnaindia.com/world/report-facebook-s-gay-pride-rainbow-flags-face-backlash-2100299
18h:38m 04/01/2017
https://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/digital-and-mobile/5908249/65-million-millennials-listen-to-radio-each-week-study
19h:01m 04/01/2017