Wow, where to start. First, I don't find Sharone's (O'Malley's) line "so you're treating a gay man who used to be a female diva in a past life and you're surprised" offensive at all. I found it funny and perfectly in character. A) As wise, hip modern Dr. Sharone would know, many gay men idolize female singers and actresses and there is nothing offensive or wrong about this or acknowledging this, and B) Sharone is making a point that Melinda is David's associative hypnotic fantasy, not his past incarnation.
I, as a gay man, would say the same thing if a psychiatrist friend told me that he believed that his gay male patient had been Billie Holliday or Dolores Gray in a former life because the patient had become one of those ladies during hypnosis. How many of us wouldn't? Would that make us homophobes?
Second, there is nothing wrong with Melinda being David's past incarnation. Nor is there anything saying that a straight woman had to be David's past incarnation, or that David is gay because Melinda was his past incarnation. There is no pathologizing of sexuality going on here. And, as in the original, there is no karmic cause and effect between Melinda and David's personas on any level. Although it is curious that in the original, Daisy and Melinda shared a common throughline trait. They were both psychic. Here, neither David nor Melinda are (therefore, David really doesn't have superpowers, Blaxx, just an ordinary garden variety green thumb).
Finally, turning to Whizzer's proposal: "I suppose one could find the mincing and prancing around the stage offensive if one wanted."
Why should anyone want to find that offensive (and, don't get me wrong Whizzer, I'm not suggesting that you were suggesting that one should)?
Some people - and yes, some of them gay men - mince and prance. Why shouldn't their stories be told?
This On A Clear Day may not be working for a great many people (judging by this thread, clearly it's not). But one would hope that should it fail, the reason would not be that it dares to present as a leading romantic character an effeminate gay man.
I might feel quite differently about David Gamble as he's being played in On A Clear Day if I felt that only effeminate gay men's stories were being told in the commercial theater when a gay man's story is being told. I don't see any evidence of that of late at all. Otherwise, I would have had that "here we go again, he has to be flaming because he's gay, why can't they for once...." But that is simply not the case today.
Somethingwicked, perhaps we should agree to disagree; while David is clearly effeminate, I don't find his flamboyance, that is, his having an uninhibited sense of style (as Daisy Gamble certainly did) contradicts, or even masks, his numerous professional and personal doubts or insecurities. Nor did I find him at all obnoxious (although, interestingly, I remember some of my mother's friends saying the same thing about Streisand's Daisy).
Updated On: 11/27/11 at 08:21 AM
