Page 170 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

Gay, Lesb an, B sexual, Transgendered, and Queer Representat ons on TV | 1

A much more significant attempt occurred in 1992, when One Life to Live
(ABC) launched a critically acclaimed storyline featuring Billy Douglas (played
by movie-star-to-be Ryan Phillippe), a teen struggling with the coming-out
process and the acceptance of his family and friends. While clearly written as
a problem-centered narrative, Billy’s story was an important TV milestone in
that he was depicted as a well-adjusted and functional gay teen. Once the homo-
phobia around which his story centered was resolved, however, Billy faded into
the background of the show and eventually exited in 1993. Daytime’s fourth gay
character, high school teacher Michael Delaney, was introduced on All My Chil-
dren (ABC) in 1995. Linked to one of the show’s core kinship networks, Michael’s
story featured homophobia and the occupational barriers faced by GLBTQ per-
sons in the United States. More significantly, the narrative also revealed at least
three other gay residents of Pine Valley, suggesting that a whole gay community/
subculture (rather than isolated characters) might actually exist in the world of
daytime soaps.
Without question, the biggest GLBTQ milestone in U.S. soap opera history
was the revelation in 2000 that All My Children’s (ABC) Bianca Montgomery was
gay. This story stands out from the others because Bianca was a long-term core
character who viewers got to know “before” she was gay, she was the daughter of
the single most famous character/actress in daytime history (Erica Kane/Susan
Lucci), the revelation of her sexual orientation took place in a lesbian bar, a setting
never before depicted on daytime (Jill Sobule’s “I Kissed a Girl” was playing in the
background), her desire for a sexual partner was made explicit on screen, and over
time she was successfully mainstreamed by the writers, transformed from “the les-
bian on soaps” to just another character looking for love, sex, and happiness in
Pine Valley. While polls in magazines like Soap Opera Digest or Soap Opera Weekly
indicated that viewers were nervous about seeing same-sex intimacy depicted on
screen, they accepted Bianca’s lesbian identity and her search for a partner.
Part of the difficulty in telling GLBTQ stories on soap operas is that the genre
has unique constraints. Soaps are designed to air for decades (ABC’s General
Hospital, for example, debuted in 1963), and their whole reason for being is to
celebrate romantic hook-ups, match-ups, break-ups, and make-ups. One or two
gay characters cannot survive on a soap opera the way they can on a weekly
primetime sitcom or drama. On soaps, gay characters must have a relationship
in order to last on the show. In a personal interview, Michael Logan, the resident
soap opera critic for TV Guide, explained:

A new hot chick comes on to The Young and the Restless and she could
be with Victor, she could be with Jack, she could be with Joe and Schmo.
There are any number of potential possibilities and that’s the way that
the writers weave their stories. But you don’t have that kind of thing
going on with a gay character because there just aren’t any other gay
characters on that canvas for that character to match up with. [A new
gay character would obviously be] for the gay character that we [already]
have on the canvas, so the mystery of who so-and-so’s going to hook up
with . . . kind of get[s] tossed out.