On Objects and Affections: Contemporary Representations of the Gay Man/Straight Woman Dyad in Popular Film and Television Page: 13
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13
remain suspect, this trend is certainly positive for gays in the sense that it helps to make a
certain type of gayness visible. Still, another problem emerges for Gluckman and Reed:
But most straight Americans have harbored few ideas about whether gay men and
lesbians were rich or poor, spendthrift or frugal. Past gay invisibility has proved a
blank slate of sorts, a slate that is rapidly filling up with notions that have more to
do with marketing than with reality. (4)
The contention here should not go unnoticed. The ads, through their depictions of gays
promote only that segment of the gay population, which is white, upper-middle class, and
male. It is important to realize that it is seldom prosaic commodities such as dish soap or
laundry detergent being sold to the gay audience. The majority of ads are for luxury
items like designer clothing and expensive furniture or prescription drugs, alcohol, and
cigarettes. Gluckman and Reed's piece helps to explain how this trend developed by
arguing that gay marketing groups and gay publications, in their attempts to secure
advertisers, inflate gay incomes or conflate their readers' incomes with those of all gay
people. What happens is this "data" makes it appear as though gay people earn more
than two times more than the national average.6 This demographic, if as wealthy as
thought, would be of obvious interest to advertisers. However, these inaccuracies
regarding incomes become ammunition for antigay groups in the political arena.
Gluckman and Reed point to several significant instances where escalated income figures
were used to deny gay people civil rights. The group Colorado for Family Values,
Justice Antonin Scalia of the Surpreme Court, and Jonathan Rauch, a gay social critic
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Pillion, Owen L. On Objects and Affections: Contemporary Representations of the Gay Man/Straight Woman Dyad in Popular Film and Television, thesis, December 2000; Denton, Texas. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc2706/m1/16/: accessed April 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; .