eveningsout

So who's who, out there in cable's re-run land?

by Anthony Glassman

Current and upcoming LGBT characters and themes on television are good to know. After all, it's what will be keeping LGBT America entertained for the near future, until the shows get canceled or the writers run out of ideas and get rid of the characters.

Of course, they'll be replaced with other queer characters down the road.

However, one cannot simply look in the present and to the future without the question arising: What happened before on TV? What were the forebears of this character or that show?

The Queer Encyclopedia of Film and Television (Claude J. Summers, ed., Cleis, $29.95 trade paperback) is not the first book to examine gays on the boob tube, and it's much farther from being the first to examine gays in movies. However, by bringing the two together and focusing not just on the titles but also on the people, it is somewhat unique.

It also eschews the narrative form that most books on the subject take, instead being a collection of articles. An encyclopedia, in fact, with entries drawn from www.glbtq.com.

There are some fantastic listings, detailing the history of LGBT characters in specific nations' or regions' films or examining in surprisingly minute detail a director's life.

Of course, one could do without the shock of turning a page and seeing a large photograph of Charles Laughton, but some sacrifices must be made for the purpose of scholarly study.

It could be argued that there is a tendency in the book to go for the easy in its individual listings. For instance, Dick Sargent, Agnes Moorehead and Paul Lynde, the queer trifecta

God is still speaking at ..

...

CER ENCYCLOPED OF FILM AND TELEVIS

of Bewitched, all have individual listings, but prolific Japanese director Takashi Miike is mentioned in passing in the listing for Japanese cinema. Miike has already directed 78 films at age 45, while Sargent only had 38 starring roles in his career, although he did have a number of guest appearances. Of course, so does Miike, last seen on-screen in a speaking cameo in the horror film Hostel.

While other books, most notably The Prime Time Closet: A History of Gays and Lesbians on TV by Stephen Tropiano or The Celluloid Closet by Vito Russo, may give more exhaustive studies of queers on screens, neither has the panache of The Queer Encyclopedia of Film and Television, the third installment of Cleis' encyclopedia series. Their previous volumes covered music, dance and musical theater, and visual arts.

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January 27, 2006 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE 9

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