Matthew's Three To Tango in an Iceland column

08/05/2005 12:06
When Good is Bad

At the beginning of Reykjavík Gay Pride weekend, it seems like a good time to reflect on how far gay rights have come, and a good time to celebrate the gay community’s many achievements, but the event was born from struggle and oppression – and it needs to retain some of its fighting spirit:

Icelandic television has this week shown two (maybe more) American offerings that I have found to be double-edged.

Firstly, the Matthew Perry film ‘Three to Tango’ was about an architect who had to pretend to be gay in order to retain a lucrative contract, because the boss heard he was gay and assigned him as resident spy on his mistress. Of course, had the boss realised the central character was actually straight and a threat to his relationship, trust would have been broken and the contract lost.

While the overwhelming message of the film was “Hey, it’s okay to be gay”, it didn’t always seem to be saying that. The message seemed to be that if you ‘come out’, your life will be more difficult, you stand to lose friends and your father will handle it very badly, and while it’s fine to be gay, you should expect people to treat you differently. The eventual mixed message seemed to be: “if you ‘come out’ society will tolerate you, but life ain’t so good as if you were straight.” Even though this viewpoint may be true in some people’s cases, it only serves to reinforce stereotypes – and Matthew Perry’s character’s reaction to this news was hardly progressive: “Oh my God…how could anyone think I'm gay?!! AAAAAARGH!”

Hey, maybe I’m grabbing the wrong end of the stick – I mean it was generally a harmless and fairly funny movie.

The real crown jewels to the argument are from a recent episode of ‘The Precinct’. The moral dilemma for the episode was: as a police officer, would you give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to your critically injured partner who happens to be a gay man? Throw into the equation that this man is your best friend and godfather to your daughter and is also in a long term committed relationship, making him less likely to have HIV than some of your more promiscuous straight friends. The officer in question decided not to give CPR, and the gay officer died. It was later proven that he did not have HIV.

The fact that the other officer lost his job over this seems to prove that the programme makers were saying “yes, you should give him CPR”, but the reality is that they have put a doubt into people’s minds that may not have been there to start with.

Television is an incredibly powerful medium, and while healthy to address contentious issues, programmers should also realise the far-reaching implications of their work. The programme ended up doing little more than reinforcing stereotypes (again with the stereotypes).

It is frankly scary that someone (fictional though he was) would sacrifice the life of his best friend based on the theoretical possibility that he could be carrying a disease that could kill him over the course of several decades – a disease that anyone of any sexuality could be carrying.

On the other hand – what would the life of an opinion columnist be like without controversial television programmes to dissect?

Happy Gay Pride weekend.

AE alex@icelandreview.com