1987: Murdoch media’s hypocrisy over gays on TV
“EastEnders is turning into “EastBenders”…with two gays joining the soap’s line up.”
“A homosexual love scene between two yuppie poofs…”
Such was the response of Rupert Murdoch’s British tabloid The Sun, to the appearance of two gay characters in the BBC soap EastEnders.
The first quote appeared as a front-page headline in 1986, when it was announced that gay characters would be joining the soap. The second was part of their response to an on-the-lips kiss between the two men, screened in January 1989.
In between these two outbursts there was also an additional apoplectic episode in 1987 when one of the men kissed the other on the forehead.
Gays joining soaps?! Yuppie poofs?! Clearly The Sun didn’t think this sort of thing should happen on TV.
A bit like the couple of yuppie poofs in the clip below.
But these ones aren’t from the BBC’s “EastBenders” and it’s unlikely that you would have heard about them outside the USA. Nor, indeed, would you have read any outraged comments from the Murdoch media within the USA. Even though these two homosexual men are not only raising a daughter but also sharing the same surname – McDowell – which suggests they’re living as a married couple.
Perhaps the lack of outrage has something to do with the fact that this particular couple of poofs were a staple part of The Tracey Ullman Show. And the Tracey Ullman show – ‘married’ poof parents included – aired from April 1987 on the Murdoch-owned Fox cable network.
By sheer coincidence that’s right in the middle of the period when The Sun was taking every opportunity to condemn the BBC’s queers.
I’m not entirely sure that the Sun (& its flabby-arsed journos) were being hypocritical. They really were as stupid as they seemed. Modern journalism does not entail going out in the real world and gathering information. Info comes streaming in by e-mail, and fax in prehistory, and it is only rendering it into gibberish that needs work. Journos.despite having Big Ideas about themselves are usually pretty dim. And don’t get to see the real world anymore.
1987 was also the year that the first affirmative, mainstream gay film with a happy ending (a rarity even today!) – Jame’s Ivory’s Maurice – was released in the US and UK, after winning a Silver Lion for Best Director, a double Best Actor award and the Golden Osella soundtrack award at the 1987 Venice Film Festival. Knowingly timed to provide LGBT audiences with hope in a dark decade, Maurice ran in UK cinemas for more than half a year – coinciding with the Clause 28 debates and legislation, which in turn made the film a rallying point among its audiences.