Skin deep

Queer As Folk, plus The Charcoal People

by Robert David Sullivan

'Queer as Folk'

Although not as popular as The Sopranos, Showtime's Queer As Folk (Sundays at 10 p.m.) has been earning ratings high enough to suggest that a fair number of straight viewers are interested in a fleshed-out version of The Joy of Gay Sex -- which, in case you've never seen the book, is not completely joyful. Given the hype surrounding its premiere in December, it's no surprise that a lot of people sampled the series, and the story lines (already tested in the British version of Queer) have been strong enough to hold viewers starved for a good prime-time soap opera. I'm addicted to the series myself, but as a gay man, I can't help wondering whether I'm seeing the same show that straight viewers are.

Because the hype for Queer As Folk began in the gay press almost a year ago, I was already sick of the show by the time most Entertainment Weekly readers learned about it. I managed to work up some enthusiasm for the premiere last month only by ignoring every magazine article about it. For that first episode, I tried to watch the sex scenes as if I had never seen anything like them before (just as, whenever I arrive in Boston by train, I pretend I'm seeing the city for the first time). This experiment was a failure, as I kept seeing body parts that weren't actually there. The scene in which a 29-year-old adonis named Brian (Gale Harold) seduced a virginal high-school student named Justin (Randy Harrison) was particularly confusing. Did straight viewers understand the term "rimming"? Did they even know what the term meant after the episode, given that Brian asked for a rim job while he was sitting on top of Justin? (He didn't get one.) Reviewing the show in the New York Times, Caryn James wrote that a scene involving anal intercourse "makes one man look like a contortionist" -- a comment that made me consider, for the first time in my life, running away to join the circus. So I'm not going to evaluate Queer As Folk as a field guide to gay sexual practices, except to say that the mechanics illustrated therein are quite sound. The multiple scenes of sexual encounters in restrooms are a different matter; getting off in Pittsburgh can't possibly be this easy.

Straight viewers may be getting the chapter on sex ed that was banned from their high schools, but what are gay viewers getting out of Queer As Folk? Not role models. "I don't believe in love, I believe in fucking," says Brian, and though the other major characters aren't as promiscuous or as outwardly cynical, they repeatedly defer to Brian because they fear he's right. In terms of the screen time allotted each character, Queer seems to be set up as a philosophical debate between the hard-edged Brian, who works as a junior advertising executive when he's not prowling bathhouses, and the sweetly romantic Michael, who collects comic books and works as a supervisor at a K-mart-type store. I don't think there's any real contest here, but I may be influenced by my impression that straight actor Hal Sparks, who plays Michael, comes off as a little too pleased with himself for taking on a gay role. It's true that Michael has something of a charmed life, with a mother (Sharon Gless) who can't stop cheering her son's sexuality, but Sparks's gee-whiz attitude quickly becomes grating. Even a good-looking, self-confident gay man (like Brian) has to deal with the fact that 90 percent of the people he finds attractive would be repulsed by the idea of having sex with him. Michael, who supposedly has a fear of rejection, has the unguarded personality of a straight man accustomed to instant acceptance. (Sparks's big break was as host of E!'s Talk Soup, and some of that snarkiness carries over to his performance here.) Gale Harold, who plays Brian, has been evasive about his sexuality in interviews, but he certainly brings conviction to lines like "There are two kinds of straight people in this world: the kind that hate you to your face and the kind that hate you behind your back." Whenever the two characters argue about something, Harold's withering stare -- as if he were saying, "What would you know about it?" -- obliterates Sparks's weak attempts at displaying anger.

A stronger foil for Brian would be Michael's roommate, Emmett, who has a taste for flamboyant clothes and clever quips. (Watching video footage of John F. Kennedy Jr. after his death in a plane crash, Emmett recalls, "I didn't know whether to jerk off or to weep.") As someone who is defiantly gay in every aspect of his life (Michael is closeted at work) and can find a sexual partner without too much angst, Emmett would nicely offset Brian's coldness if he weren't such a secondary character. My guess is that he's too "queeny" for straight viewers -- and too much of a bottom for many gay viewers, who'd prefer lusting after the straight boy next door (the real role for Sparks here). Peter Paige, who plays Emmett, is one of the two openly gay actors in the cast; the other is Harrison, as boy toy Justin.

Despite its rather grim approach to sex, gay-rights groups haven't complained much about Queer As Folk. It may help that the series bears a superficial resemblance to HBO's Sex and the City, which depicts women as fickle nymphomaniacs and somehow doesn't seem misogynistic. Still, Sex's Samantha obviously enjoys sex, whereas Queer's Brian seems bored with the whole thing as soon as he gets someone new into his bedroom. The sex scenes with the other major characters more often include giggling and kissing, but they're usually interrupted by some plot device (like someone giving birth or lapsing into a drug-induced coma), whereas Brian almost always finishes his business. The closest the series has come to Sex and the City's cheerful hedonism was a quick scene where Emmett was about to be ravished by an undertaker in full leather gear.

So forget the sex, or just rent a Falcon video to watch after the show is over. The more promising aspect of Queer As Folk is how it depicts friendships among gay men. (There is a token lesbian presence on the show, in the form of a couple raising a child after the contribution of Brian's sperm. The fact that we get only fleeting glimpses of the main characters' lesbian friends suggests that the show's writers have little interest in that half of the gay community -- an attitude that reflects that of most gay men in the real world.) The interaction among the five main characters is, of course, filled with more tension than most of us could stand in real life, but the show does make the point that friendship can get a lot more complicated in the gay community.

It's easy enough to show what gay men do in bed; it takes a far subtler touch to explain how seemingly illogical friendships can endure for years. TV's second-gayest show, Will & Grace, is hardly reaching for subtlety, but the friendship between Will (Eric McCormack) and Jack (Sean Hayes) does make sense -- if you think of Will as a sugar daddy (actually played by someone like John Goodman) who's willing to pay for the companionship of a younger gay man. This interpretation, by the way, explains why Jack teases Will about being chubby, even though McCormack has no body fat.

The most obvious complication among the interlocking friendships on Queer is that Ted is secretly in love with Michael, who is secretly in love with Brian. In one episode, Michael says without irony that "Everyone knows you don't have sex with your friends." Ted (Scott Lowell), who represents the self-depreciating, poor-body-image segment of the gay community (a large burden for any actor), responds bitterly, "Right. Sex is something you only have with complete strangers, people you'll never see again. Not people you actually give a shit about." (Lest we think of Ted as the voice of compassion on this series, in next week's episode we see him kick someone out of bed with about as much tact as a Seinfeld character.)

There are, of course, plenty of real-life gay couples who belie Ted's description of gay sex, but I doubt that the producers are ready to introduce any monogamous relationships to Queer As Folk. After six episodes (with 16 more scheduled for this season), little Justin is still pining after Brian, but since the latter's libido drives most of the plots on the show, there's not likely to be a commitment ceremony for them this spring. Anyway, Queer As Folk is far more comfortable with friendship than with romance, as are many gay men in real life.

The irony is that this point may be lost on straight viewers who are accustomed to seeing gang friendships used as a plot device on other TV programs. It's sometimes hard to believe shows like Seinfeld, Friends, and even Sex and the City, where straight people routinely throw away romantic partners in order to spend more time with their brunch companions. But these sit-coms make perfect sense when I think of all the characters as gay -- so perhaps Queer As Folk really isn't showing us anything we haven't seen before on television.

THE SUNDANCE CHANNEL is trying to boost its visibility with several events this month, including coverage of the annual Sundance Film Festival (January 18 through 28) and a free preview weekend for non-subscribers (January 26, 27, and 28). There are also several film premieres on the channel throughout January; among the most notable is Oscar winner Nigel Noble's documentary The Charcoal People (2000), which is about the itinerant laborers who mine Brazil's rain forests for the charcoal industry. The film is fairly slow-moving, but at an economical 64 minutes, it conveys the industry's devastating effects on the land and the health of the workers. The pessimism of some of the laborers is sobering; as a 78-year-old says, "It ain't easy. But you try another job and it gets worse." And it's hard to think about cruising bars and bathhouses after watching this film. (Air dates include January 14 at 2:30 p.m. and January 22 at 9 p.m.)