Rather, my point is that a long history of excluding same-sex affection from public view and the refusal to see or reveal queer lives has had specific effects on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people. I certainly don’t mean to suggest some causal link between American sitcoms and the acts of a mass murderer. In light of the horror of Orlando, discussing Will and Grace seems trivial. Then they go home to their wives and girlfriends. The camera zooms in as the pair writhe against each other's naked bodies eventually, someone gets on top and full-on anal ensues. It’s just shocking imagery and I didn’t want to shoe-horn it in. Two men with six-pack abs passionately embrace and begin kissing. Director Jonathan Demme argued that a kiss might have repelled audiences, telling Rolling Stone in 1994: The lovers dance together and hug, but they never kiss. But the arrival of that first gay screen kiss didn’t mean that things had changed forever.Īs late as 1993, the film Philadelphia focussed on a gay male couple, one of whom was dying of AIDS. In cinemas, the first gay kiss seen in Australia may well have been in the British film Sunday, Bloody Sunday (1971), released locally in 1972. Long-running soap opera Neighbours (1987-) waited 27 years before showing two of its male characters kissing.Ĭam and Mitchell kiss for the first time on Modern Family, in the second episode of the second season. Australian television has been equally reticent. Modern Family’s Cam and Mitchell live together and have adopted a child, but it wasn’t until season two that they exchanged even the most innocent of kisses. Sit-com Will and Grace (1998-2006) went several seasons before gay character Will ever kissed a male partner.
Whenever it looked like he might be about to kiss, the camera panned away discreetly.
Popular 1990s soap Melrose Place (1992-1999) was known for its steamy romances, but gay character Matt only ever participated in an occasional manly hug. The growing presence of gay characters on television has not necessarily indicated growing comfort with displays of same-sex affection.
But similar acts between two men continue to be framed as something from which audiences must be shielded. This is accepted as appropriate children’s entertainment because the desire these kisses convey is heterosexual. The entire premise of stories that became films like Snow White and The Little Mermaid is that a kiss from a man will save a woman (or girl).