IA! I always think it's funny/depressing/irritating when someone says something like "Why can't two guys (or girls) just be friends? Why does there have to be an attraction?" As though we are so saturated with LGBT characters and couples in entertainment.
If I'm understanding you correctly, your rant is about television's queer-baiting? The topic cropped up on the internet around June and got a lot of attention.
Television is the last holdout. Off the top of my head I can think of a book, a play, and a movie that introduced seemingly hetero characters that had wonderful chemistry. By the end of the stories the audience/reader was paid off with a glimpse of a budding physical romance. Television, at best, makes it clear from the outset of a show whether a character is LGBT or not, as if it were a warning label for viewers, and will never diverge, except to have a character flirt with heterosexuality.
Oh, good one! I forgot about Willow. No showrunner is in Joss Whedon's league. I had pretty much given up on television until I discovered BtVS reruns.
I'm unsure if you've heard of "Torchwood" but from what little I know of it, I think that the characters could be considered as examples of bisexuality on television.
This is one reason why I don't watch typical television. In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Willow dated a guy (Oz) for a while, and then, to everyone's surprise including her own, befriended and eventually established a romantic/sexual relationship with a girl (Tara). But I agree that it's rare.
Because I am a cynic as well as a snob, I consider typical television to play to the lowest common denominator - in other words, to appeal to the largest possible target audience, which rarely includes me. It can't be too smart, too original, too offensive to traditional white male Christian values... you get the idea.
I agree with everything you all say! Just want to make the point that as well as the possibilities of any pairing (m/f m/m f/f) becoming romantic it annoys me when they so often write (most male/female relationships) with added sexual tension! Why can't a guy and a girl just be really close friends? Why do they always have to fall for each other? My best friend is a man and we are both married to other people and have no interest in each other like that! At the end of Law & Order criminal intent, Goren starts seeing this psychiatrist who starts going on about how perhaps after working with her 10 years his feelings for his police partner Eames might be more than just friends. I was like yuk! Nooooo they have a great friendship don't take it there! But then Goren was like "ffs, nooo she's my friend, nothing more- shut up you stupid woman" (well it wasn't in those exact words but you get my drift!!) so anyway id just like to thank Criminal intent for recognising that close friendship between and male & female can be just that:
I felt the same way about Brennan and Booth on Bones - why couldn't they just be partners and friends instead of getting together? But it was obvious that the show was going to go there, even if they took their sweet time about it.
I've only seen one episode of Bones, but I do think it would have been interesting if that duo had stayed friends. (The only episode I saw was the nativity-based birthing episode and I just sort of gave up on the series after that.)
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WORD. Oh, man, so much WORD.
Sorry...I just really agree with that statement. :)
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Television is the last holdout. Off the top of my head I can think of a book, a play, and a movie that introduced seemingly hetero characters that had wonderful chemistry. By the end of the stories the audience/reader was paid off with a glimpse of a budding physical romance. Television, at best, makes it clear from the outset of a show whether a character is LGBT or not, as if it were a warning label for viewers, and will never diverge, except to have a character flirt with heterosexuality.
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It truly does, unfortunately. *sigh*
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