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So EastEnders have finally done it! Killed off Pat Butcher? Gone to seven episodes a week? Drowned Ian Beale in a vat of stale cooking oil? No - they’ve only gone and introduced a believable gay man! I know, hard to believe, innit?
After all these years, after all the attempts to bring in lesbian and gay characters, only for queer viewers to stare at them in disbelief, shouting at the screen ‘But they’re nothing like any poof or lezza that I’ve ever met!’, Jane’s brother Christian- who’s come to live with the Beales after falling out with his boyfriend - actually looks and acts ‘gay’: he works out and he’s bothered about how he looks (and has already started to drag Ian out of his chip-fat chic); he has a fag-hag friend already, in the shape of Roxy, and he flirts and twinkles at the attractive men surely it’s only a matter of time before him, Jack Branning and Steven Beale end up in bed together...? Now, don’t get me wrong - I abhor stereotypes as much as the next Piscean. But when we’ve had the succession of dreary, cardi-wearing, N/Sc, S/A (can you tell I’ve been reading too many classified ads recently?) gay men, it makes a refreshing change to have a bitchy, waspish, clubbing one.
Stereotypes are only a problem when we only ever get one: the Camp Queen. But if you get enough different queer stereotypes on TV, then they cancel each other out, and what you end up with is a range of characters that each show us something about the lives and personalities of queers. The big question, considering how many gay men and lesbians work in the media, is why it’s taken EastEnders quite so long to give us someone at least vaguely recognisable. I wouldn’t want every gay man on TV to be like Christian, but mixed in with the others, I reckon it’s - finally - a step in the right direction.
Bertrand Twisted
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