Jack = The New Benson?
Term Paper for WST3015 with Alison Smith
20 October 2004
If you watch television, it’s kind of hard to miss the character Jack on the TV show Will & Grace. Jack could be considered a sidekick, comic relief, or an incredibly harsh stereotype of the “gay man.” Though you may be familiar with this character, chances are you may not recall a similar character from the 1970’s television show Soap. This character was named Benson, who became so incredibly popular that he spawned his own television show. Benson was not gay, but rather he was black. And he was played for laughs from the common stereotype of black men in the way that Jack is played for laughs today.
It’s also hard to miss the current onslaught of gay related media. From Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Queer as Folk and The L Word, to characters like Jack from Will & Grace, Ellen on Ellen, and random “temporary” characters on other popular television shows, like Friends, Golden Girls and Sex and the City, to reality television shows like the ill-fated (and cruel, in my humble opinion) Boy Meets Boy, gay culture is all over the media. This is not abnormal, however, as situations like this have happened before. The 1970’s brought an onslaught of black media. From Benson on Soap to Benson on Benson, to Good Times, and The Jeffersons, television started focusing on programming that catered to, yet exploited black people. The film industry also brought forth an entire genre of movies classified as blaxploitation flicks. There is one key difference, however. The blaxploitation flicks and television shows were generally made by blacks for blacks, in order for black viewers to associate with and at the same time laugh at and distance themselves from the stereotypical portrayal of their race.
Benson is a particularly good example of this. Though the show was made by a white creator for a primarily white audience, the stereotype that actor Robert Guillaume was playing up to (belligerent, uppity Negro) empower him at the same time. Benson, as a character, helped show white people that black people could hold their own in white society, even being considered intelligent and superior to some characters. Even though Benson was a servant (hired), he was as much part of the family as a blood relative. It was Benson that the entire family turned to in a crisis, it was Benson that was recruited to find characters when they were missing, and it was Benson that was sorely missed when the show continued on it’s third season without him. (The replacement of Benson with another black butler name Saunders just did not cut it for me or most other viewers.) This quote, though a little bizarre, appropriately explains Benson, “Even though Benson is French, he's still just "Benson." If Benson were Jewish, he would still be Benson. If Benson liked MicroSoft, he would still be Benson, he would be stupid, but that doesn't matter because Benson likes Macintosh. If Benson smoked crack, he would still be Benson, he'd be fried, but nevertheless, he would still be Benson.” (Benson)
Current gay media is not always made by gays for gays. While some television shows are created for gay audiences by gay producers or directors, it seems that the majority of gay related programming is aimed towards straight people who want to be able to say, “I get it, it’s cool!” much as they did with the black related media of the 1970’s. Or maybe it’s to provide a non-threatening version of homosexuals, so that straight homophobes can say, “I’m not judgmental, I watch Will & Grace and love Jack!”
The Fox television show In Living Color had a certain sketch called “Men on Film” or “Men on Vacation” or “Men on Books”, depending on what the two characters had decided to review at that point. Actors Damon Wayans and David Allen Grier played the two gentlemen as effeminately as possible, but audiences reacted differently to the stereotypical portrayal of homosexuals. One gay viewer remarked on watching the show in a bar with some of his friends, that while they were laughing at what people thought they were all like and the amusement they felt about Wayans and Grier so flamboyantly portraying and to them, deflating the stereotype, the other viewers in the bar (heterosexual) were laughing because they thought it was an honest portrayal of homosexuals. *
In this manner, programming for specific races, religions or sexual orientations sometimes miss the boat. All of this programming is dependant upon the audience. While some white viewers in the 1970’s understood that although the stereotypes were played up for laughs, the television shows and movies did not define blacks as they all were, just as current gay programming does not define homosexuals as they all are. There is one other thing I’d like to mention. The television show Soap not only brought us a realistic (although definitely stereotypical) portrait of a black character, but it also brought us a homosexual character named Jodie, played by Billy Crystal. From the beginning of the series, Jodie faced discrimination (mainly from his stepfather Burt (played by Richard Mulligan of Empty Nest fame)) and pandered to the common stereotype of the artistic, decorative gay man. Jodie was a commercial director involved in a gay relationship with a famous football player. Soap did a very good job of portraying Jodie as a person in a dysfunctional relationship, not as a gay man in a dysfunctional gay relationship. Jodie was presented as “a human being, just a human being who like[d] to sleep with men” (Soap). Soap did, however, in the end bow down to pressure from above to make Jodie heterosexual, implying that sexuality was something that could be flipped like a switch. At the beginning of the series, Jodie insists that he is gay, that he always will be gay and that everyone had better just accept it. By the middle of the second season, however, the writers had Jodie sleeping with women, then becoming involved in a heterosexual relationship, thus negating the characters previous vehement statements about his sexuality. After Soap, it was a while before a homosexual character took center stage on a major television show. The 1970’s television show All In The Family also played up to many stereotypes, from confronting Archie Bunker’s homophobia with a gay drinking buddie to skewering his racism with an appearance from Sammie Davis Jr, All In The Family tried to give us a lovable bigot. But again, this show was produced by a white producer/director for a white audience, making it biased to being with.
Moving back to today’s current fixation with gays and gay issues, Will & Grace attempts to diffuse certain stereotypes while perpetuating others. Both the characters of Will and Jack are homosexuals. It seems though that Will is played as a “straight” man to Jack’s comic relief. While Will shows the strong, masculine professional gay man of today, Jack still enforces the belief that gay men are flamboyant and showy with such lines as “That little tartlet,” exaggerated hand gestures and the ever present lisp. Jack’s presence on the show serves to undermine a lot of the work that Will & Grace has been attempting to do simply by being a decently long running show on the air. (Brandsma)
This actively mirrors the state of blacks in the media circa the 1970’s. Though positive, iconoclastic characters did exist in the media, more often than not stereotypical views on blacks were still in the forefront. For proof of this, look no further than the 1974 debut of the television series Good Times. Though the show was supposed to focus on current issues from an African-American perspective, the writers of first season the show were all white and Jewish and continued to perpetuate the stereotypical depiction of blacks.
The over exposure of blacks in the 1970’s did end up breaking the stereotype eventually however. The massive amount of television shows and movies dedicated to portrayal of stereotypical characters slowly gave way to a realistic presentation of blacks in the media. One can only hope that after the current over exposure and exploitation of gay stereotypes on TV and in films, the same leveling can occur and allow for the gay community to produce realistic and non-stereotypical presentation of gays in the media.
Works Cited
Benson, hmmm???? Just Benson. 1997. 20Oct2004 < http://www.mia.net/rasputin/Rasputin/benson.html >
Brandsma, Rachel. “Gays in the Media.” Talking Back: Student Writers Speak Out. 1997. 20 Oct 2004. < http://writing.colostate.edu/gallery/talkingback/issue1/brandsma.htm >
Internet Movie Database. 2004. 20Oct2004. < http://imbd.com >
Soap: Season 1 and 2. Susan Harris. DVD, 1971 – 1973.
*I cannot provide a reference for this. I read it in an article many years ago and though I have completely scoured the internet as best I could, I cannot find the original source of this quote. I believe it was on a usenet group that I originally read it.
All contents copyright Elizabeth Tibbert 2005.