Ellen's Outing and What it Means to Us
Dateline: 05/09/97
This week it seems appropriate to focus on Ellen, after all, everybody else is. Make that two Ellens - Ellen DeGeneres (the "real person") and Ellen Morgan (the "character").
Let's look at Ellen (the real person) first....Ellen's outing raises several questions - not the least of which is "Why'd she wait so long?" It's not as if Ellen's orientation was a surprise, at least not to anybody with at least a room temperature IQ. Yet, somewhere there must be an unwritten rule that provides "If they don't say it, we won't mention it."
Ellen's official biography at Touchstone Television has yet to be updated to reflect her acknowledgment of her orientation (even while they're hyping the "coming out" episodes on their "Ellen" home page). Perhaps they're waiting to see "how the public reacts" before they update the bio. Then again, maybe it's the fault of Ellen's publicist - the ABC site has the same bio.
Regardless, there's no doubt but that until Ellen said it, it wasn't reported or discussed by the "traditional" press. This is something that needs to change and an issue we'll delve in to more deeply at another time.
The positive aspects of Ellen's outing include yet another still much needed role model and resource for young men and women who are so isolated in their communities that they have no point of reference to understand what their feelings, so different from those of their friends, means, and that it doesn't have to be a negative experience.
So what about Ellen (the character) - what makes her so special? The obvious answer is:
She's the First Queer Lead Character on TV
There have always been gay and lesbian characters on T.V. We knew them in our hearts, even if the shows didn't confirm it for us. Sam was clearly a male beard for Alice on "The Brady Bunch," and if Jane Hathaway of "The Beverly Hillbillies" wasn't a dyke, then I've never seen one.
Openly though, the stigma against anything gay was so strong that Meg Foster lost her role in "Cagney and Lacey" to Sharon Gless because Foster was perceived as "too butch."
Yet, over the years the fantasy gay and lesbian characters became intentional, and more recently, out. There are 31 gay and lesbian characters currently on television at last count.
But a secondary character can be written out of a show, or pushed into the background.
A lead character is there, episode after episode, scene after scene, act after act. The character's coming out has the potential of showing middle America that gays and lesbians are not sex-centric. Ellen Morgan will continue to be the same person, we'll just know more about her. Her "lifestyle" will not change. She'll still work at a bookstore. Still socialize with her friends. Continue to comment upon life's little inanities. She'll be the same Ellen whom people loved. But now, instead of being heterosexistly presumed to be straight, Ellen will be known as a lesbian.
Also, as with the real life outing, Ellen Morgan being out will let young men and women who are wondering why they don't feel the same way as their peers know that they are not the only ones.
Ellen Morgan is in a unique position, which is why this outing scares the "right" more than any lesbian or gay content to date on Television or in the movies - a subject we'll revisit in more depth in the future.
For this moment in time, I'm just going to revel in a television first, and looking forward to a future where there have been so many "firsts" that there are none left to occur and we're all just people.
In Pride,
Deborah
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