Glee Creator Ryan Murphy’s Reign Of TV Terror Is Finally Coming To An End
His other show, the recently cancelled The New Normal, was a new low for gay representation on TV.
Earlier this week, Ryan Murphy’s two-gay-dads sitcom The New Normal was cancelled by NBC. As a fan of quality TV, I’m relieved that it’s over; as a gay man tired of simplified, cartoonish depictions of LGBT individuals, I’m positively fucking ecstatic. Openly gay writer Bret Easton Ellis described The New Normal as a ‘gay minstrel show’, and he was right on the money. In an era when the representation of gay, lesbian, transgendered and bisexual people on television continues to grow in all kinds of interesting ways, the show stuck out like a sore thumb. Each retrograde episode represented a new low, and I’m not going to miss it now it’s gone.
To understand The New Normal, you need to understand its creator. Ryan Murphy is the reigning king of provocative TV programming, which is to say, his shows take hot-button social issues and dumb them down to the level of Twitter hashtags. Take Glee, whose fantastically misjudged episodes on subjects like school shootings, domestic violence and bullying make for a fresh TV train wreck every week. Murphy likes to defend his shows by claiming that they ‘start conversations’. I guess that’s true, in the same way that if you take a dump on a crowded bus, you start a conversation about who the hell pooped in the bus. When all is said and done, you’re just left with something stinky and gross.
All of which brings us to The New Normal. The show tells the story of Bryan and David, a disturbingly clean-cut gay couple who decide to have a baby via surrogate after deciding that infants are must-have accessories. The two don’t have much by way of personalities, but they don’t need them. The show is happy to treat them as gay ciphers as it explores the issue of the week, whether that issue is racism or abortion or homophobia in the Boy Scouts Of America. The two often trade talking points with a mean Republican lady, played by Ellen Barkin, whose politics effectively make her the show’s villain. Any resemblance to actual flesh and blood human beings is purely coincidental.
Like Glee before it, The New Normal is somewhat commendable for bringing gay characters to prime time television; the problem is that these characters are as reductive and downright cartoonish as anything ever seen on TV. The GLAAD Media Awards, which honour organisations and individuals for their positive representation of the LGBT community, presented Ryan Murphy with a trophy this year for his work on The New Normal. Clearly, nobody at the organisation had actually seen The New Normal. If there’s something inherently positive about a show that presents gay men as creepily asexual Ken dolls who are terrified of vaginas because they look like spiders, I’d love to hear what that might be.
Interestingly, Bret Easton Ellis himself was absent from this year’s GLAAD Awards ceremony. He was due to attend as a guest, but was disinvited as a result of several perceived anti-gay remarks on Twitter, including a swipe at Glee. In a furious editorial in Out Magazine titled ‘In The Reign Of The Gay Magical Elves’, Ellis took aim at GLAAD for their hypocrisy. He certainly had a point: for an organisation that claims to be all about tolerance and inclusivity, GLAAD are quick to shun any elements of gay culture that fall outside their bland, positive outlook. He asked: “Where’s the not-famous, slobby, somewhat lazy gay dude who is fine with being gay but just doesn’t care about being PC or being an example of ‘moral uplift’, who just wants to get on with his life, the guy who wants to be himself without becoming a label?”
When GLAAD champion a show like The New Normal, they are throwing their lot behind one of the most embarrassingly retro depictions of gay men in years. “Here is a show that speaks on your behalf,” they say. “Finally, a pair of simpering caricatures to represent YOU and your struggle for acceptance.” Well, I’m sorry, but I’m not buying it. I can’t connect Bryan and David’s character traits with any kind of real, human experience that I or anyone I know has ever had. They resemble no gay person I’ve ever met, hung out with, dated, slept with or otherwise. They are not real, rounded characters – they’re hollow shells.
GLAAD and Ryan Murphy may be out of touch, but out here in the messy, dirty, abject world, we’re doing just fine without them. There are plenty of awesome gay voices in the worlds of film, television, gaming and literature, and plenty of awesome characters in lead and supporting roles. I’m not going to list them… Okay, I’m going to list ONE: Max Blum, Adam Pally’s character from the recently-cancelled and sadly-missed Happy Endings. He was a schlubby, imperfect and hilarious gay dude who messed up sometimes and was okay with his imperfection, who had awesome friends and dated cute guys and still had lots of stories where his gayness had no bearing whatsoever on the plot.
Aside from Glee, Ryan Murphy has one other show on the air right now – American Horror Story. That one gets a pass because, of all his creations, it’s the one that most closely represents real and grounded characters doing recognisably human things. I mean, who among us hasn’t been sliced up by Nazi doctors or impregnated by aliens at some point, right? Glee has just been renewed for a fifth and sixth season, but its ratings have cratered and most people these days seem to watch just so they can blog angrily about it. Ryan Murphy has a new show coming up on HBO — a purported ‘Sexuality Drama’ called Open — but even so, the cancellation of The New Normal feels like a line in the sand.
Murphy’s televisual reign of terror is coming to an end, and that really, really can’t come soon enough.
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Alasdair Duncan is an author, freelance writer and video game-lover who has had work published in Crikey, The Drum, The Brag, Beat, Rip It Up, The Music Network, Rave Magazine, AXN Cult and Star Observer.