A Place of Safety
I expect simple behaviours here. Friendship, and love.
Any advice should be from the perspective of the person asking, not the person giving!
We have had to make new membership moderated to combat the huge number of spammers who register
















You are here: Home > Forum > A Place of Safety > General Talk > Comedians help homosexuality become acceptable
Comedians help homosexuality become acceptable  [message #50455] Sun, 18 May 2008 08:36 Go to previous message
timmy

Has no life at all
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13818



I'm putting this up for discussion.

For a long time I've held the view that a great deal of the acceptance of homosexuality has come about, certainly in the UK, because of popular figures, though not celebrities, being "funny and thus inoffensive" and acting in outrageously camp ways on TV or radio.

I'm thinking here of people including:
  • Kenneth Williams
  • Charles Hawtree
  • John Inman
  • Frankie Howerd
  • Kenny Everett
(forgive incorrect spellings, I'll look them up later.

In the US the awful "Will and Grace" does a similar job, by making Will look inoffensive, a figure of ridicule. It's hard to laugh at one character and then despise a group. Thus we make progress through humour, perhaps more progress than we can make through our own voices.

As an example, UK husbands and housewives used to laugh at and adore Kenneth Williams in "Round the Horne" and "Beyond our Ken" on the radio in the 1950s, and started tacitly to accept homosexual characters. His routine included an amazingly camp and pretty explicit scene with two outrageously queer characters, Julian and Sandy, with awful double entendres. Each 30 minute radio variety show included on such extravagant scene.

So, tell me what you think...

[Updated on: Sun, 18 May 2008 08:41]



Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
 
Read Message  
Read Message  
Read Message  
Read Message  
Read Message  
Read Message  
Read Message  
Read Message  
Read Message  
Read Message  
Read Message  
Read Message  
Read Message  
Read Message  
Read Message  
Read Message  
Read Message  
Read Message  
Read Message  
Read Message  
Read Message  
Read Message  
Read Message  
Read Message  
Read Message  
Read Message  
Read Message  
Read Message  
Read Message  
Read Message  
Read Message  
Read Message  
Read Message  
Read Message  
Read Message  
Read Message  
Read Message  
Read Message  
Read Message  
Read Message  
Read Message  
Read Message  
Read Message  
Previous Topic: If you wish your identity to be secret
Next Topic: I need some help understanding...
Goto Forum:
  

[ RSS ]
We support Ukraine — Мы поддерживаем Украину — Ми підтримуємо Україну
We support Ukraine We support Ukraine We support Ukraine We support Ukraine
We support the Palestinian people in their struggle against oppression
We support Palestine We support Palestine We support Palestine We support Palestine

Please read our Copyright Statement, Disclaimer, and Privacy Policy , which opens in a new screen.
There are no age checks on this forum. If the law says you need (eg) parental consent to post here then you need that consent.
Frankly, we think such laws are silly. They do young people more harm than good. How can you possibly ask questions on a gay forum without coming out to your parents if you need consent?
So it is up to you. If you post here we assume that you are of legal age to do so or have consent if not, and we do not want to know any different
We treat everyone as having good sense and mature judgement.