Issue date: 2/26/09 Section: Editorial/Opinion

While watching Sunday night's Academy Award telecast, I noticed something different that hasn't been shown in years past. When presenting clips of the films nominated, there were not one, but two clips of men kissing, both from the movie "Milk."

"Milk," which was nominated for Best Picture, portrays the life of the first openly gay political leader, Harvey Milk.

Sean Penn, who won an Oscar Sunday night playing Milk, was shown kissing James Franco, who plays his partner, Scott Smith. Later in the evening, in a sketch directed by Judd Apatow, James Franco and Seth Rogen revisit their "Pineapple Express" characters, sat on their couch, watched more clips and commented on them. One of the clips shown was a scene in "Milk" where Harvey and Scott kiss passionately for quite some time.

While sitting in a room full of people watching The Oscars, one half of the room gasped, and one person even said "can they show that on TV?"

It's interesting to see someone get so upset over gay men kissing on TV. But, even in these contemporary times, television viewers have not really been exposed to a lot of gay characters on primetime television.

Many may automatically think of "Will and Grace" as a show that depicted homosexual characters and was on NBC's coveted Thursday night lineup for many years. Yet, "Will and Grace" ended almost three years ago and since then, no other sitcom has really filled its void.

It's interesting to point out too, that the character of "Will," who was an openly gay lawyer, never had a long-term relationship until the end of the eight season series. Meanwhile his best friend, Grace, who happened to be a heterosexual woman, had many boyfriends, and eventually was married and had a baby.

I think "Will and Grace" was a great show, but NBC played it safe by not giving "Will" a romantic life of his own. Instead, he supported Grace in hers.

In 2007, a study by The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation showed that ABC featured more gay characters than any other primetime network. Because of shows like "Ugly Betty" and "Brothers and Sisters," the network has taken risks in portraying gay characters, unlike its primetime counterparts.

According to their Web site, GLAAD states that at the beginning of the 2008-2009 television season, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender characters represent 2.6 percent of all series' regular characters on the five broadcast networks; ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC and The CW. It is also stated that LGBT series' regular characters have dropped from 40 to 32 in the last year.

The two networks that received GLAAD's lowest scores of percentage of gay characters were CBS and FOX. The study showed that for the most part, CBS portrayed homosexuals as either victims or villains in police dramas while FOX includes the least amount of homosexual characters out of all the primetime networks.

While it was on the air, "Will and Grace" was funny and definitely played on the stereotypes, but I think it's also important to have more shows like "Brothers and Sisters" that portray gay characters in a more realistic tone. On the show, the character of "Kevin," played by Matthew Rhys, is openly gay to his family and his work. He even marries his partner in the second season finale.

But shows like "Brothers and Sisters" are rare. Sure, there are television shows that have gay characters, but they are usually the comic relief, or they play the victim or even the villain. Rarely do viewers see homosexual characters as leads or in a dramatic role. Although, it's fair to note that cable television does depict homosexuals in these types of shows. "Queer as Folk" and "The L Word" have demonstrated that gay leads can work and have a following. However, both these shows are on Showtime, a cable station that has to be paid for unlike networks like ABC.

So, it's no doubt that on Oscar night many might have been surprised at the "Milk" scenes.

This telecast of the Oscars definitely had change written all over it. Even three years ago when "Brokeback Mountain" was nominated, they didn't show Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal kissing.

This year The Oscars were on ABC, the network that GLAAD said had the highest percentage of homosexual characters. Is ABC reaching out to make their network more represented? Possibly.

Hopefully, networks like ABC will continue in their endeavor to have more gay characters in their programming, and maybe other networks will follow suit. Homosexuals have the right to be represented on television, and not just as the buffoon, the victim or the villain.

Proite is a senior print journalism major and scene editor for The Spectator.

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