Kelsey Grammer sounded curt this morning when he brusquely told a BBC Today program interviewer that he still supports Donald Trump but, according to his interviewer, this curtness doesn’t tell the full story.
Grammer’s interviewer Justin Webb said the Frasier star was “perfectly happy” to go on talking about his support for the former POTUS, “the Paramount+ PR team, less so.”
Grammer has previously expressed support for Trump – a relatively rare position for a TV and movie star to take – and he also used his BBC interview to back Roseanne Barr, another self-confessed Trump supporter.
Schitt’s Creek was a pretty big deal in the LGBT community. It was among the first shows that portrayed LGBT people and relationships in a purely positive light.
The Levy’s main concept for the show was to show a town that was without prejudice - an aspirational perspective to make more palpable what it could be like if there wasn’t strong undercurrents of ideologies like racism and homophobia.
A frequent criticism of the portrayal of black Americans in American media is that there’s frequently a negative narrative that shares the storyline. While it’s important to surface those uncomfortable aspects of our culture, it doesn’t have to be everywhere. It’s the same with the LGBT community.
As a queer person who has been politically involved since the days of ACT UP, I’m very aware of how our community is portrayed in media. Homophobia was very much a part of mainstream American entertainment throughout most of my life. It was played up for laughs with either straight characters being scandalized that they were perceived as gay, or gay characters who played to uniformly campy stereotypes, or making homophobic politics and violence an integral part of the storyline. That’s not to say that shows like Queer as Folk weren’t also landmarks, but that was more of a for us by us kind of thing. Schitt’s Creek is a sitcom that’s intended to be enjoyed by everyone.
I mean, I grew up in a time when people like Elton John and Boy George felt like they couldn’t be fully out, and Rock Hudson was completely closeted. I think that shows like Schitt’s Creek help with the perception and normalization of the LGBT community and relationships.
The Levys were following an uniquely Canadian comedy tradition about not punching down people in small towns. If Schitt’s Creek had been American there would be a strong chance that there would have been homophobic character who becomes the butt of the joke, who’s there to make the audience go “Haha, stupid hick.”
Dan Levy said in an interview with Vulture:
If the Levys had gone the way of punching down onto small town people, I don’t think Schitts Creek would have been as effective in getting people to re-evaluate the beliefs.
Isaac Cabe’s article As ‘Schitt’s Creek’ Ends, Let’s Appreciate Some Canadian Comedy, Eh? really highlights this uniquely Canadian comedy tradition.
I absolutely agree, and thank you for explaining it better than I did.
LMAO, I say it all the time when shitting on Disney virtue signaling, stopping a show to get up on a soapbox just makes the show worse and convinces no one of anything they don’t already believe, and making them a trope doesn’t really help either
If you want to actually reduce bigotry, you normalize it… And apparently they succeeded, since the only time I remember thinking about it was going “oh wait, is he bi?” When they introduced that (I remember it being slightly ambiguous for a couple scenes)
Ok, the show deserves some credit when you put it in this context… Looking back at what I remember from the show, they did it very well.
Like at first, he’s stereotypical and super flamboyant, but they’re all caricatures anyways. Playing into the tropes probably made his orientation less threatening for someone a bit homophobic. They just let that sit for a while without any romance on his part
Then I think brought up he had an ex gf after a season or two? Which is a nice curve ball to make people question their assumptions, and then they eased into it and made the plotline with the ridiculous sitcom love triangle, and they made it about that while having very little actual pda on screen…I remember a kiss or two, but it was pretty overshadowed by the awkward situation… An amazing way to desensitize someone (it feels weird because it’s awkward sitcom nonsense, so a good person a little weirded out by seeing guys kiss doesn’t feel called out, and the emotions get triggered and directed to an appropriate target)
I binge sitcoms over a few days while I work or game, so I remember less as the seasons go on… It was good on the surface, I’m going to give it a rewatch looking deeper
Thanks for sharing. My biggest passion is the way technology could shape us for the better, so I find this very cool