Tickled Pink

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Inside TV Land: Tickled Pink, an hour-long special which aired multiple times during July, 2006, chronicled television shows that homosexuals have identified with over the years. The show featured such entertainers as Richard Andreoli, Kelsey Grammer, Sandra Bernhard, Diahann Carroll, Susan Saint James, Bruce Vilanch, Marc Cherry, Lynda Carter, Bob Mackie, Jean Smart, Jason Stuart, Frank DeCaro, Barbara Eden, Carson Kressley, Rue McClanahan, Judy Gold, Thom Filicia, Carson Kressley, and Mario Cantone [1].

Tickled Pink was produced for TV Land by Linda Ellerbee's Lucky Duck Productions.

1 "Gay code": secrets and bonding
2 Shows cited in Tickled Pink
3 Gay and lesbian subtext
4 External links

[edit] "Gay code": secrets and bonding

According to some critics, a "gay code" was embedded in some shows. For example, Ed Vitagliano, a media researcher, says that "homosexuals often view shows about characters with supernatural powers and hidden abilities, such as Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie, and see characters who must keep secrets or lead hidden lives" parallel a "closeted homosexual existence" [2].

Other shows suggested homosexual bonds between characters who enjoyed an unusually close same-sex relationship. Examples of such gay friendly series, according to Tinkled Pink, include The Golden Girls, Batman, and CHiPs. Homosexual viewers saw in these shows a covert affirmation of their lifestyle [3].

Jim Vallely, a Golden Girls writer, said that he and his colleagues were aware that the show's "central characters . . . had struck a chord among gay viewers," on part because the series suggested that a person need not marry and did not have to accept the "straight-world version of what growing old could be" [4].

[edit] Shows cited in Tickled Pink

In addition to The Golden Girls, Batman, and CHIPS, Maude, Xena: Warrior Princess, Will & Grace, Sex & the City, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Designing Women, Friends, Ellen, The Simpsons, The Odd Couple, Laverne & Shirley, Cagney & Lacey, Katie & Allie, Wonder Woman, Dynasty, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer were also cited in Tickled Pink as shows that "became 'homosensational," providing gays with characters who were depicted as "strong, independent and outrageous" and whose "bond with their friends resonated with their own lives" [5].

[edit] Gay and lesbian subtext

According to producers and critics as well as fans of television shows that are perceived to have a sexually ambiguous or homosexual theme, such shows rely upon a subtext created through double entrendres, situational irony, intentional ambiguity, and straightforward gay couplings.

[edit] Xena and Gabrielle

Xena and Gabrielle

According to Liz Friedman, producer of Xena: Warrior Princess, the show's writers played on the ambiguous relationship between Xena and her traveling companion, Gabrielle: "One episode starts with the camera looking at some bushes," Friedman, herself a lesbian, explains. "We hear Gabrielle asking, 'How was that?' Xena answers, 'Very nice!' Gabrielle says, 'Really? I wasn't sure," and Xena replies, 'No, no, you're doing great.' Then we see them, And they're fishing--naked!. . . . They're such a perfect little butch-femme couple." However, the intent is not to afform or to deny Xena's lesbianism; rather, the show maintains an ambiguous position with regard to this question, Friedman declares, "the whole point behind subtext is that people can enjoy the show however they wish" [6].

The Odd Couple

[edit] Oscar and Felix

According to some critics, the television situation comedy The Odd Couple, starring Jack Klugman and Tony Randall, also played upon the ambiguity of "two divorced, heterosexual men sharing a Manhattan apartment, where they cooked, cleaned (or refused to clean), bickered, and negotiated the dilemmas of everyday existence together," and "Randall's uptight, opera-loving Felix" may have "functioned as a 'stealth gay stereotype' in the still-closeted world of '70s prime time." Alternatively, some critics contend, "if slobhood is code for heterosexuality and neatness for homosexuality (a trope that persists today in shows like Queer Eye for the Straight Guy), The Odd Couple might be read as an unconsummated love story between a straight and a gay man." Even during the airing of the show, "executive producer, Garry Marshall, remembers that Midwestern focus groups were turned off by The Odd Couple because "they thought it was about homosexuals," and Klugman says that the show's outtake reels contain "a lot of scenes of us kissing and hugging . . . because the network was concerned people thought Oscar and Felix were gay, and we were trying to make them nervous" [7].

[edit] Wonder Woman and her Amazon tribe

Wonder Woman has long been popular among lesbians because the character lives in an all-female society of Amazons and bests men in combat. "Wonder Woman repeats" are scheduled for frequent broadcast on France's "first [television] station aimed at homosexuals" [8].

[edit] Batman and Robin

Batman & Robin

According to George Clooney, Batman is gay. In an interview with Barbara Walters, Clooney said that, as Batman, he wore "a rubber suit" with "rubber nipples" and, although he "could have played Batman straight," he preferred to portray the character as being homosexual, and the 1997 film Batman & Robin, in which Clooney starred, was directed by Joel Schumacher, who have been "praised by gay groups for giving Clooney and Batman Forever star Val Kilmer pert nipples, tighter buttocks and an extended inflatable codpiece. The portrayal of Batman as gay could have derived from psychiatrist Fredric Wertham's 1954 observations about the comic book character and his partner, Robin the Boy Wonder [9].

[edit] Willow and Tara

Buffy the Vampire Slayer's lesbian couple, Willow Rosenberg and Tara Maclay

The television series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, also had an extensive gay following because of its inclusion of a lesbian relationship between two of its characters, Willow Rosenberg (Alyson Hannigan) and Tara Maclay (Amber Benson). However, the portrayal of them as witches [10] and the violent manner in which their affair ended, with Tara's being shot in front of her lover, created controversy among straight and gay viewers alike and garnered a good deal of criticism concerning executive producer Marti Noxon's handling of the show. According to some viewers, the lesbian relationship between Willow and Tara "reinforced negative stereotypes" about lesbians and was characterized by "tokenism and sensationalism" [11].