Sunday 22 July 2012

440: Coming Out On Television


Playboy, January 1975

Heartburn, Nora Ephron 1983:

“I picked up the remote control unit and turned on the television set. There was Phil Donahue. He was interviewing five lesbians, who had chosen the occasion of their appearance on Donahue to come out of the closet. I could just imagine the five of them, waiting through the years for the right offer, turning down Merv, turning down Kup, turning down Cavett, watching contemptuously as their friends chose mundane occasions like Thanksgiving with Mom and Dad for the big revelation, waiting for the big one, Phil himself, to finally come clean.”

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With the whole idea of coming out on television, comes the notion that different television programmes have different class associations, and aren't snobbery and self-aggrandisement a natural part of modern life.

1983 was also the same year as Walker Percy's Donohue Show parody which also started off with satire of the tendency to use homosexual rights and lifetsyles as TV discussion show fodder.

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