Reality check – reader forum
I loved your story on Bravo channel’s new reality show Boy Meets Boy [“The Dating Game,” July 8]. At least a cable channel is willing to take a chance for its homo viewers. I am so tired of how gay men are depicted on network TV. They rarely show us as it is, but when we are depicted, we are nelly bottoms who have sex all the time and love to shop. For the first time I can finally watch a show and be like “Wow!” instead of “Ewww!” because of the grotesque sex, like what they show on Showtime’s Queer as Folk.
Torres Shumpert
Clinton Township, Mich.
While the creators of Boy Meets Boy may say this and that about its sociological impact in order to justify the show, the truth is that some people wanted to make some money from an element of society thus far unexploited by “reality TV.” While one may say that the show will help erase myths and stereotypes of gays in our culture, the reality is that the show must appeal to heterosexual viewers in order to be profitable. In what “reality” does a man live where he believes that heterosexual viewers will be elated to see blossoming love between two gay men? Reality is that heterosexual men would be placed in the mix to give the gay man the opportunity to illustrate to the world that even gay men prefer straight men. There is no other reason for Billy Bob and his buddies to view such a show.
Will gay men watch it? Yes. Some will laugh at it for the hoax that it is. But there will be impressionable teenagers whose hands have not opened closet doors who very well may watch a gay man choose a straight man and come to believe that even in their own gay world they will never have the value a straight person would. For those closeted men who have lived their lives with such feelings already, the “proof” will be there for the world to witness. If programming has such potential for harm, why is it being aired? Oh, yeah, for the money!
When looking at the pictures of the men, it became obvious that they don’t represent the reality of gay life–or anyone’s life. One black man, no Hispanics, no Asians. And if any one of them has counted 35 candies on a birthday cake, it was done as a joke. Common sense says these men were chosen for ratings.
I was pleased to read of the concerns already expressed about this programming. I am sorry, however, that the show received free advertising in this magazine.
Atticus King, Phoenix, Ariz.
I am sick and tired of hearing the word “reality” used to describe such television programs as The Real World, Survivor, and Boy Meets Boy. There is nothing “real” about these shows, what is real about taking a group of strangers out of their usual environment, placing them in a contrived situation, and then gleefully filming their every move, emotion, and peccadillo? The fact that the programs’ producers inevitably edit out all the mundane interactions and air only the salacious is testimony to the unreality of such shows.
I think it’s time to call a spade a spade. I won’t be satisfied until such television programs are properly referred to as “exploitative TV.”
Robert Warren, West Seneca, N.Y.
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