Have you been following the brouhaha over Newsweek's recent article "Straight Jacket?" If not, you can get an inkling of what people are so pissed off about from its gay-baiting subtitle: "Heterosexual actors play gay all the time. Why doesn't it ever work in reverse?"
Shame on you, Newsweek. Click your heels three times and say "Raymond Burr."
The writer of this faux think piece, Ramin Setoodeh, began it reasonably enough by dissing Sean Hayes' performance in the Broadway revival of Promises, Promises. Setoodeh claimed that gay actor Hayes ( famous for his TV portrayal of gay character Jack in Will & Grace ) failed to believably play a straight man in love onstage.
I haven't seen Promises, Promises, so I might have been willing to take Setoodeh's word on this, but then he coughed up his first wad of disingenuous sputum: "It's weird seeing Hayes play straight," he says. "He comes off as wooden and insincere, like he's trying to hide something, which of course he is." And right there we can all hear the sound of the deck being stacked. Because actually Hayes—however good or bad his acting in this show—is not trying to hide anything. One might just as well say that when Jake Gyllenhaal plays a gay cowboy, he's "hiding" the fact that he's not gay and not a cowboy.
Then his shit really hit the propeller: Setoodeh implied that gay actors in general cannot credibly play straight roles. "It's rare," he opined, for gay actors "to pull off the trick." Justifiably irate Newsweek readers, commenting on this remark, pointed out the splendidly obvious: that since time immemorial, gay folk have successfully been playing straight in a once-popular vaudeville act called "The Closet." No Emmys or Oscars there, but no rotten tomatoes or angry mobs either.
Setoodeh waffled his way between the plausible idea that audiences may perceive actors differently when they know they're gay, and the rubbish idea that gay actors are simply unconvincing as straight people. As evidence of the latter, Setoodeh stopped beating up on Hayes and moved on to besmirch the young, gay, supertalented Jonathan Groff, who is currently guest starring on the TV show Glee. Setoodeh didn't buy Groff as straight in Glee either. Never mind Groff's previous sensational run as leading man in Spring Awakening and his pitch-perfect portrayal of straight hippie icon Michael Lang in Ang Lee's charming movie Taking Woodstock. Setoodeh snarked: "In half [ of Groff's ] scenes [ in Glee ] , he scowls—is that a substitute for being straight? When he smiles or giggles, he seems more like your average theater queen." Among the flood of angry responses to these remarks, many Glee fans mentioned that they were not at all aware that Groff was gay until they read it in Setoodeh's article.
In a remarkably off-base attempt to construct a historical parallel, Setoodeh said that this gays-can't-act-straight phenomenon he's uncovered is "not, in fact, a uniquely gay problem. In the 1950s, the idea of 'color-blind casting' became a reality, and the result is that today there's nothing to stop Denzel Washington from playing the Walter Matthau role in the remake of The Taking of the [ sic ] Pelham 1-2-3." WTF? I don't even have the space here to tackle all that's wrong with these musings from a parallel universe. But how such crazytalk ended up in Newsweek is something they may be investigating now as they ponder their stack of cancelled subscriptions.
Here in the real world, not only can talented gay actors believably play straight roles, but straight actresses can recognize anti-gay sentiments disguised as armchair pop philosophy. Promises, Promises costar Kristin Chenowith responded to the Newsweek article eloquently and at length, calling Setoodeh's remarks "horribly homophobic" and small-minded. "No one needs to see a bigoted, factually inaccurate article that tells people who deviate from heterosexual norms that they can't be open about who they are and still achieve their dreams," said Chenowith. You go, girl!
Setoodeh responded to Chenowith and the groundswell of criticism by playing the innocent. "I was hoping to start a dialogue that would be thoughtful," he said. Sure. Because "Why can't gay actors ever play straight roles convincingly?" is a question perfectly crafted to spark a thoughtful dialogue. Then Setoodeh played his trump card: He can't be anti-gay because he's gay himself. And how naively hilarious is that? Considering the number of right-wing gay-hating clergymen and "conversion therapists" who have likely been trolling Rentboy.com for "travel companions," Setoodeh really needs to rethink his argument.
Setoodeh claimed he'd been earnestly exploring "why, as a society, it's often hard for us to accept an openly gay actor playing a straight character." His article might have been worth reading if that's what it had actually been about. Finally, Setoodeh asks, "If an actor of the stature of George Clooney came out of the closet tomorrow, would we still accept him as a heterosexual leading man?" The answer depends, of course, on who the "we" is. Most people I know would say Yes. Maybe there will always be some homophobes who are going to perceive gay actors as gay no matter how well they act. Setoodeh doesn't seem to realize that that's exactly what he's been doing himself—and that a more honest subtitle for this Newsweek article would have been "A case study in internalized homophobia."
Jorjet Harper is the author of Lesbomania and Tales From the Dyke Side, and a senior editor and contributor to Out and Proud in Chicago.
