The
Outstanding Men
in Brett Martin's book (published in Spain by Ariel) gave rise to
a panoply of magnificent series that mostly revolved around middle-aged men
facing dark moral dilemmas.
From
Breaking Bad's
Walter White
to
Mad Men's
Don Draper
, those difficult men created by equally complicated gentlemen are the core of
that golden age of series that, thank goodness, we quote less and less
.
Because it is a reductionist cliché.
But, like all simplifications, that of the series' golden age helps to structure an attractive discourse, in this case the canon of
the great series of recent decades
.
The presence of Alan Ball in Martin's book makes more sense than it seems:
the creator of
Six
Feet Under
was behind one of the great cinematographic references of "manhood"
, the Lester Dunham of
American Beauty
played by a Kevin Spacey with just turned 40.
Six feet underground, so opposite in so many ways to
Breaking Bad
or
Mad Men, it
finds its place in
Out
of Series
Men
thanks to
American Beauty
.
There are no chapters dedicated to women in the book.
To understand us: Shonda Rhimes, one of the most brilliant creative minds on TV of all time, does not appear in Out of Series Men.
The justification is surely that
Grey's Anatomy
is not comparable to
The Wire
or
Deadwood
.
Being able to agree with that statement,
denying Rhimes his place of honor in any tour of the creators and creators of series is downright daring.
Especially if one considers that series like
Dexter
, another fiction with a dark forties at the center, are indeed major works.
Nor can we ignore that,
among so much hetero-testosterone, Alan Ball attracts attention.
He is a visible homosexual man and that in his iconic series shows.
Everything that surrounds David Fisher (Michael C. Hall) in
Two Meters
is a statement of intent about the portrayal of homosexuality in a series: David is neither a villain nor a saint, nor a mascot nor an outburst, nor a joke
per se
nor a tragedy
per se
.
David Fisher is one of the best characters I have seen on television.
It's funny that Michael C. Hall went from that unique role to the haunting but formulaic Dexter Morgan from
Dexter
.
And he has balls that in the world of difficult men on TV
the latter is more conspicuous than the wonderful middle brother Fisher.
David Fisher is not usually the first reference when talking about gays in series.
It is what has not been created from television activism.
Or not having been born endowed with a victim's armor that makes you indestructible.
However, David Fisher is fundamental in the history of the representation of gay men in the audiovisual media.
As much as the characters of
Will & Grace
or
Queer as Folk
.
The difference is that David
did not threaten to tell the teacher that you had called him a fag
if you had called him ... something else.
Queer as Folk
creator
the huge Russell T. Davies is behind
It's a sin
, one of the latest gay TV phenomena.
The series, available in Spain on HBO, plunges us into the AIDS crisis in England in the 1980s through various homosexual characters whose destiny is, unfortunately, marked.
Hence, the genius Russell allows himself the luxury of moving his series into sometimes very comical territories
.
The drama will come alone.
And it comes, it does come.
The scriptwriter's concern is in
It's a without
another much more subtle:
to make that journey towards tragedy entertaining and light for the viewer
, without ever losing the perspective that what he is telling is absolutely devastating.
It's a sin
begins
with the contextualization-decontextualization of a wildest possible musical theme:
OMD's
Enola Gay
sounds
because it belongs to the time portrayed by the series and because its title includes the word "gay".
And because it talks about a nuclear bomb.
At other times in the series
, the perfect selection of musical themes will also lead to similar games.
In that aspect,
It's a sin
is a joy.
In others, seeing her is
an act of masochism
.
It is not the first time that television has told us about the crudest of AIDS
: Ryan Murphy, another notorious Hollywood homosexual, has done it directly in
Pose
and
American Crime Story: the murder of Gianni Versace
.
The stubborn optimism of the first and the sophistication of the speech of the second give them personalities of their own that another Murphy work on the same theme does not have.
And this is where this very long column is going to stop liking many of you.
The Normal Hear
t, the television movie with which Murphy adapted the now classic theatrical text by Larry Kramer, was
the perfect example of an armored gay product
.
At the time, pointing out the flaws and softness of the film was a bit of a gamble.
The Normal Heart
, with its star-studded cast (many of them openly gay, too) was nominated for nine Emmys in 2014 and won Best TV Picture.
Kramer himself, one of the greatest symbols of the fight against AIDS,
went up along with the entire film team to collect the award.
He was wearing a cap from
ACT UP
, the priceless organization created in 1987 to draw attention to the pandemic.
Kramer, who died in May of last year at the age of 85, was
an exemplary personality
in that
, a key figure in the fight for the rights of people with HIV
.
His
The Normal Heart
was, long before Ryan Murphy gave it his usual paint varnish, a prop of LGBT culture since before acronyms began to agglutinate to make visible so many different identity and sexual realities.
The Normal Heart
was sacred without being so good and the sacred, when it is not so good, always ends up giving problems.
Russell T. Davies is well aware of the existence of that protective shield, a
mixture of retroactive justice, decency and a certain victimhood
that one can acquire for free when he decides to tell
a story with the words "gay" and "AIDS
.
"
Especially if you choose to set the story in the years in which those two terms were inevitably associated with a third: "death."
Pointing out the flaws and softness of this type of work is risky, since
criticism of fiction is often equated with a lack of empathy for the reality it seeks to reflect.
Two other important words here: fiction, reality.
It is precisely this belligerent reaction that arouse criticism of -especially- gay-themed dramas that makes these dramas, however mediocre, are often received with
adjectives as diplomatic as they are alien to the quality of the work: committed, brave, daring, hopeful.
Or worst of all:
necessary
.
One of the most terrible and at the same time laughable consequences of this phenomenon is that in few film festivals the average quality is lower than in those dedicated to LGBT-themed films.
At those contests
, Andrew Haigh's
smug
Weekend
was the pretty girl of its year, 2011
.
Three years later Haigh wrote and co-produced the all-gay
Looking
, created by Michael Lannan for HBO.
At the time, criticizing
how pretentious, posh and self-indulgent this series
was was synonymous with confronting its dedicated fans, who with the argument of
"this series represents me"
equated the attacks to a series (we repeat: fiction) with attacks on them (we repeat: reality).
The reasoning is the same that makes a Nazi a Nazi who considers
Life is Beautiful
a ridiculous movie.
In that case, I am a Nazi.
And I must also be homophobic, because
Looking makes
me feel ashamed.
The Haigh and Lannan series obviously had occasional finds.
And her insistence on
showing other worlds on "high television" that was still (and still) obsessed with the crises of the forty heterosexual, male and violent
, was, yes, perhaps necessary.
But no more necessary than the glamorous black-centrism of
Empire
, the post-
Sex and the City's
televised femininity
of
The Good Fight,
or the cashmere and Pilates lesbianism of
The L Word
.
The visible and to a certain extent combative gay series could not exist when what they were telling was news.
That should be ashamed.
However, to pervert that fact and make it the safe conduct of any current project is also abject.
In the
Cucumber
universe
, Russell T. Davies' splendid (this yes) LGBT series from 2015
, AIDS is no longer synonymous with death.
Nor is it, therefore, the center of the series.
In
It's a Sin
, logically, it is.
The quality of his writing is indisputable;
its relevance not so much
.
Russell T. Davies has always been able to narrow down his stories very well.
In this way, when he himself decides to leave the set route and then resume it, the viewer enjoys
the mastery with which the scriptwriter leads him by the hand.
In
It's a Sin
, the British continues to use that system: the viewer, who knows the reality that the series reflects (let's be crude: he knows that the characters will die),
easily falls trapped in the theory of "what matters is the trip
.
"
We also knew how Jeremy Thorpe would end up in
A Very English Scandal
and that didn't stop us from watching Hugh Grant's wonderful miniseries.
It's a Sin
that continues to succeed
because its creator does it better than anyone.
But in this case,
Russell T. Davies can't help but use that shield of protection that gay, AIDS, and death stories bring as a gift.
.
He does not dare to manufacture saints (well, one does) but neither to explore something that we know he does well too.
I miss in
It's a Sin
the bravery (here yes) of Alan Ball in
Six Feet Under
,
making us hate David Fisher at first to gradually get on his side.
And I miss Russell T. Davies who in
Cucumber
places
the midlife crisis above the trauma of a minority sexual orientation.
Cucumber's
Henry Best (Vincent Franklin)
could well be one of those men at the crossroads who star in the series of the screenwriters who star in
Men Out of Series
.
His drama, like that of Walter White or Tony Soprano, is also called "getting old."
Surprisingly (or not) nobody defends these series because "this series represents me."
Maybe it is because they are extraordinary series.
Series out of the ordinary.
It's a Sin
, very sorry, it isn't.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
Know more
See links of interest
Messi contract
2021 business calendar
Leganés - Lugo
Real Betis - Osasuna
Sabadell - UD Logroñés