Alternate Channels: The Uncensored Story of Gay and Lesbian Images on Radio and Television, 1930s to the Present Review

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Alternate Channels: The Uncensored Story of Gay and Lesbian Images on Radio and Television, 1930s to the Present ReviewThe first striking thing about this book is the amazing amount of research that would have been necessary to have written it. Just how does a person master this much material, run down particular episodes of "Medical Center" from the early 1970s or "Hill Street Blues" from the 1980s, and dozens of more obscure programs? I don't know, but Steven Capsuto has managed to do it.
The result is a singularly fascinating book, and a worthy companion to Vito Russo's The Celluloid Closet. And since television plays a more important role than movies in shaping public perceptions of gay people (and in helping young gay people to understand their places in the world), Capsuto's project is arguably even more important.
For gay readers over 40, this book is likely to produce some strong nostalgic feelings. Reading the author's accounts of such significant broadcasts as "That Certain Summer" (with Hal Holbrooke and Martin Sheen) or "A Question of Love" (with Gena Rowlands and Jane Alexander), one can't help but reflect on memories of a former self and how the world was then.
For younger readers, this book will fill an important gap in their cultural knowledge--what happened many years before Ellen and Will & Grace, "lesbian chic" and heightened gay visibility. It also tells the story of lesbian and gay media activism, of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) and its forerunners. And Capsuto covers television and radio depictions of bisexual and transgendered people in his thorough account.
Perhaps most important, the book also helps to illuminate a continuing flaw in television depictions of gay life: for all the progress of the past decade, there continues to exist a kind of unwritten Hays Code that bars most expressions of affection or sexual desire between persons of the same sex from American network television.
Will & Grace continues to depict what may be the only attractive, witty, smart and successful gay man in Manhattan who has no sex life. In its own way, this show is as deficient today as was "The Andy Griffith Show" in depicting (during the height of the civil rights movement) the only town in North Carolina with no black people.
Television provides a crucial window through which we see our lives and our society. Capsuto's book helps us to remember how skewed that vision has often been, and to realize the important changes that are still needed. This is an important work of cultural and social history.Alternate Channels: The Uncensored Story of Gay and Lesbian Images on Radio and Television, 1930s to the Present OverviewDefinitive, vibrant, and utterly fascinating, Alternate Channels traces the monumental growth of gay, lesbian, and bisexual images on radio and television from the 1930s to the present. Splashed against the tumultuous backdrop of the McCarthy witch hunts, Stonewall and the gay liberation movement, the birth of the 700 Club and the religious right, the outbreak of AIDS and the arrival of in-your-face queer activism, this chatty, authoritative broadcast history tells the stories of such notorious and noteworthy moments as- 1947: Radio gays--A bitchy fashion photographer throws fits at the drop of a designer hat on the adaptation of Moss Hart's Lady in the Dark- 1967s: Monkey business--The Monkees flick limp wrists while caroling "Don we now our gay apparel" for a Christmas special- 1974: Pepper in the wound--A notorious Police Woman episode depicts a gang of deadly lesbians who rob, torture, and murder senior citizens- 1977: Wash your mouth out--Billy Crystal portrays Jodie Dallas on Soap, the first hit series with a gay character in a central role- 1991: L.A. Law breaks 'em--Amanda Donohoe and Michelle Greene share a two-second kiss . . . and start a storm of controversy- 2000: The last laugh--Featuring not one but two gay male characters, Will & Grace skyrockets to the top of the ratings chartsFrom mocking banter between Bing Crosby and Bob Hope on '50s radio to a historic peck between women on '90s television, from the stereotyping of gays, lesbians, and bisexuals as sissies and psychopaths to their widespread acceptance as real people, Alternate Channels is a compulsively readable chronicle of lesbian, gay, and bisexual images in the media--packed with unthinkable shows, bizarre personalities, unlikely heroes, and some of the strangest protests ever staged in the name of civil rights.

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