Doug PollardHomos Away in Summer Bay storm
March 29th 2009 05:28
"Take the lesbian below, Mr Christian!"
Two female characters snogging in a disposable bit of moving wallpaper called ‘Home & Away’ created a tsunami of manufactured outrage last week, redoubled when Channel 7 ‘caved in’ and censored the lezzo liplock.
First a pseudo-Christian nano-group decried the promotion of homosexuality, then gay groups leaped in berating the TV station for its spineless capitulation. Channel 7’s publicity department must be creaming their jeans.
The two soapy characters are called Charlie and Joey, a policewoman and a trawler deckhand: subtle hints that these two ladies might have interests other than those motivating the rest of the women in Summer Bay.
With jobs like that they ought to be quite strong, but their clingy singlets reveal no hint of the muscles needed to haul in nets full of prawns, or subdue determined criminals. And surely their attractively tousled shoulder length manes would be a safety hazard? Not to mention those nails . . . .
No, Charlie and Joey are fantasy porno-lezzos, the sort Mr Hetero imagines sliding between for a hot night of conversion therapy.
Not that the show is exactly a beacon of social realism anyway. Summer Bay is very bleached-blond, Anglo-Saxon and heterosexual – dubbed into German it would have been all the rage in 1940’s Berlin.
It’s annoying to find oneself forced to defend this sort of stereotypical trash, especially when the whole story is just a media beat-up.
The only person truly ‘outraged’ by Charlie and Joey was one Angela Conway, the ‘spokeswoman’ for a previously little-known organisation “Pro Family Perspectives”. Ms Conway is also a leading member of the Australian Family Association, the National Civic Council, and the Festival of Light – all minuscule Christian front groups who big-note themselves with grandiose names, when in reality they are just threadbare Australian glove-puppets spouting the shop-worn bigotry of their American parent organisations.
Conway complained of the sexualisation of the storylines in Home and Away. Clearly teen romance, stalking, unplanned pregnancy, elopement and illicit affairs don’t count. Either that or she doesn’t watch the show.
I don’t watch the show either. In the words of a close friend, I am ‘not the target market’. So why should I care?
In the first place, I detest censorship, of which there is already far too much in Australian television. Programs you would see around 8.30 pm in any civilised country are here banished to the small hours or to pay TV. And if Senator Conroy gets his way, there’s soon to be even more censorship, this time of the internet.
Secondly, a million Australians, not to mention millions more around the world, do watch Home and Away. The program is particularly popular with young people. Even a soft-focus, unrealistic, depiction of love between two members of the same sex would be an improvement on complete invisibility.
Though for a really good storyline, I reckon the producers ought to pop Alf Stewart into Xavier Austin’s bed. Now that really would be worth talking about!
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