If I am being totally honest with you, Will & Grace almost didn't make my Countdown to 40 list. I initially thought it would be all too cliché to pick a show that very clearly spotlights members of the gay community, living in New York City no less. I figured people would read the post and think to themselves, "well, that was an obvious and easy choice." Except, settling on Will & Grace proved anything but obvious and easy for me, and until today, this post was set to focus on The Mary Tyler Moore Show.
As my good friend Erin can attest to, I waffled on which of the two television shows to write about as late as this afternoon and struggled to explain why The Mary Tyler Moore Show and not Will & Grace should be today's feature item. Yes, The Mary Tyler Moore Show was groundbreaking for centering on a single woman establishing a career as well as an identity independent of men, marriage, and children. Mary Tyler Moore's character of Mary Richards confronted several tricky topics in addition to gender roles, like abortion, sex, divorce, and homosexuality...during the 1970s. In so doing, the show truly challenged many of the social norms of the time and helped change the definition of what it meant to be a woman, all while setting a gold standard for television sitcoms. Quite revolutionary, if you ask me. When you think about it, Will & Grace followed much the same revolutionary trail blazed by The Mary Tyler Moore Show. At a time when more and more people were confronting and struggling with the reality of homosexuality, either their own or that of gay family and friends around them, Will & Grace featured two out men, one as a title character. This groundbreaking concept was made all the more groundbreaking by the show's portrayal of Will as a normal, down-to-earth, guy-next-door type. Through the complicated but entirely relatable (and often times hilarious) relationships between Will, his straight BFF Grace, his gay BFF Jack, and his drunk BFF Karen, the show helped to normalize homosexuality and gay people, thereby challenging society's stereotypes of what it meant to be gay. Neither Will nor Jack were creepy, perverted guys who lived on the fringes of society, mired in drugs and sex. Instead, they lived rather mundane lives, just like everyone else around them, trying to find the perfect balance between work, life, and relationships, with one another as well as their significant others. As a young man coming out, I very much needed Will & Grace and its humorous brand of normalizing the lives of gay people, for I felt alone during the early stages of accepting my own homosexuality. Of all the people in my life at that time, I knew no other members of the GLBTQ community and therefore had no one in my inner circles who really understood what I was going through or what was in store for me. I had my friends and family, of course, who surrounded me with nothing but love and acceptance, and I will be eternally thankful for that. (We all know the heart-breaking and horrible realities many people of all ages face after sharing the most beautiful and honest truth about themselves.) What Will & Grace helped offer me to supplement the love and support of family and friends was permission to accept my homosexuality as simply a part of who I was but not solely who I was. After all, I was still the same son. The same brother. The same friend. The same uncle. The same cousin. The same nephew. The same grandson. The same college graduate. The same Janet Jackson fan. The same lover of Christmas and snow. The same connoisseur of popcorn. The same Chris. Actually, acknowledging and accepting my homosexuality as just another part of myself made me a better, truer, stronger Chris. So, at the end of the day, my own life experiences and path of self-discovery connected more with Will & Grace than with The Mary Tyler Moore Show, no matter how much I love them both.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AUTHOR
I am a self-proclaimed pop culture geek and list enthusiast who is celebrating the big four-zero by counting down the most important, influential, and favorite music, movies, television shows, books, and video games of my life so far. Categories
All
Archives |