The Cutprice Guignol

“It’s a heterosexual male’s worst nightmare: turning gay overnight.”

At least, that’s what the press release for the 2004 Fox TV special Seriously, Dude, I’m Gay claimed. But it was a nightmare that two straight men would undergo in the hopes of winning a $50,000 prize – or, at least, that was the plan, before backlash accusing the show of homophobia got it pulled from the schedule. Let’s talk about the Fox TV special that was canned before the first episode aired.

The special was first posited as a part of a growing trend of LGBTQ-centric TV in the early 2000s. These shows came at a time when homosexuality was only just beginning to gain a secured legal foothold in the USA – it was only in 2003 that the landmark Lawrence v Texas case saw the Supreme Court rule that the criminalization of consensual same-sex intimacy was unconstitutional, while several states upheld bans on same-sex couples adopting children and gay marriage would not be enshrined by the Supreme Court till 2015. Culturally, though, LGBTQ-centric stories had begun to gain more prominence in mainstream pop culture. TV shows such as Queer as Folk and The L-Word focusing explicitly on gay and bisexual lead characters, to hits like Buffy the Vampire Slayer navigating a lesbian romance plot in its later seasons.

But the uptick in LGBT programming wasn’t limited to scripted TV shows. Reality TV was in its imperial era in the late nineties and early noughties – genre titans that would come to define the reality competition world like Survivor, America’s Next Top Model, and Big Brother made their debut during this period, while those more focused on the real world – such as The Real World – ran for seasons on end. When it came to LGBTQ reality TV, the Bravo network broadcast the lions’ share – from the iconic lifestyle hit Queer Eye for the Straight Guy (which ran between 2003-2007) to the self-explanatory dating show Boy Meets Boy, there was a marked interest in capturing the reality (well, at least reality TV) of LGBTQ people in America. But, for all the relatively well-intentioned attempts to explore these stories through the lens of the freshly-minted world of reality television, there was also a very strange sub-genre on the rise – the premises of which I can only describe as “attempting to successfully fool people into believing you were a different gender or sexuality than you actually were”.

It sounds almost too specific to have been any kind of actual trend, but, in the run-up to Seriously, Dude, there had been a few shows that had taken on this bizarre idea. In 2004, TBS broadcast He’s a Lady, a six-episode series that followed a group of eleven cisgender men (who were initially led to believe they would be competing in fitness competition called All-American Man) as they competed to convincingly perform as women. Contestants had to take on traditionally-gendered roles like being a bridesmaid or modelling bikinis after being put through a “lady boot camp”, with the winner taking home a quarter-million dollars after sharing with a celebrity judging panel (and I’m using “celebrity” in the loosest possible terms here, as we’re actually talking about Morgan Fairchild, John Salley, and Debbie Matenopoulos) what they had learned about gender roles over the course of the show. Seriously, Dude wasn’t even Fox’s first attempt at the weird niche, with Playing It Straight hitting their Spring 2004 roster – it followed a woman, Jackie Thomas, who was faced with fourteen male suitors, half of whom were gay. To win a share of a million dollars, she had to successfully eliminate the gay contestants and ensure that her final choice of partner was, indeed, heterosexual. The show was pulled from air after just three episodes due to low ratings.

But that didn’t stop Fox from making another attempt to capitalise on what they clearly believed was the outrageous entertainment value of people pretending to be a sexuality that they weren’t. Enter Seriously, Dude, I’m Gay – which was slated for release in June 2004 (during Pride Month, of course) – which blended elements of competition reality TV with the gay makeover slant that had grown so popular thanks to productions like Queer Eye, and was to be presented by Amanda Byram. Produced by Rocket Science Laboratories, which had previously put out such classics as Joe Millionaire, the recently-revived Temptation Island, and My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiancé (also hosted by Byram), the premise for the two-hour special was as simple as it was ridiculous: two men would compete to successfully pass as a gay man, with $50,000 on the line for whoever could perform more convincingly as a dude who liked dudes, as judged by a group of gay men. They would be guided through the attempt by a group of “Mantors”, who would help them through the week-long process where they would have to immerse themselves in gay culture and even come out to close friends and family.

The show first drew criticism from its very first press release – where they not only framed it as a straight man’s worst nightmare, but referred to the men who’d be judging the contestants as a “jury of their queers”. The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), with Stephen Macias, GLAAD’s entertainment media director commenting on the “inflammatory” nature of the press release – “without having seen the show yet, it raises some red flags for us,” he told Reuters. The network offered a swift apology for the language in the release – describing it as a “failed attempt at humor” – but a representative insisted that the special would actually serve to “dispel stereotypes” around gay men, as those involved came to understand that being gay was more than just a collection of tropes . As a show of goodwill, the network offered to allow representatives of GLAAD to view the special before broadcast, and, in May, just a few weeks before it was due to hit screens, GLAAD had some harsh words for Seriously, Dude.

Macias, in a scathing article for Variety, took issue with the show’s framing of homosexuality as some nightmare inflicted upon the heterosexual contestants – “trapped in gay hell”, according to a quote from one of the contestants. He took issue with the way the show framed certain stereotypes as essential to creating the convincing facade of a gay man – “the contestants had to try on and model swimsuits before a group of gay men. James had to tell a former teammate that he liked wrestling because he enjoys “close contact with sweaty boys.” He had to fork-feed dinner to a blind date and later get the man to spank him. And the final contest before an all-gay jury involved one contestant’s making “a gay face” and hinged on, among other things, naming a favorite male porn star.”. This “ludicrously sophomoric” approach to homosexuality, he argued, “were about to — consciously or not — put real gay people in harm’s way”. Quoting ongoing legal and social discrimination against gay people in America, he suggested that “the entertainment industry has a responsibility (and, I would submit, an opportunity) to create programming that advances — rather than undermines — understanding of [their] lives”.

Upon feedback from GLAAD on what they perceived to be the harmful nature of the special, Fox arranged a meeting with representatives from the group – but wound up pulling Seriously, Dude from the schedules on 26th May, replacing it instead with a far more tasteful re-run of American Pie 2. But the show’s swift shelving did not come without backlash, and, in an article with the Advocate, several people involved with the show came to its defence.

Christian McLoughlin, a creative consultant on the show, took issue with how GLAAD had characterized it – “the whole thing is a joke,” he said. “But the notion that it is hateful and dangerous, as GLAAD said, is absurd”. He also drew attention to the LGBTQ people involved behind the scenes, and how the backlash against their work had undermined the sly digs that the show was making against straight male culture and the stereotypes and toxicity therein. “I am gay; I have a boyfriend; I live in West Hollywood, I have gay friends,” executive producer Ray Giuliani remarked. “The idea that I would do something I would consider homophobic is crazy…are the two guys homophobic? Yes. But that’s the way people are. Ignorant”. He also pointed out how the climax of the show – where straight men would compete for the approval and acceptance of gay men – served as a contrast to the traditional masculine standards they were usually expected to fulfil. Straight men, he argued, were rarely given reason to value the opinion of gay men,

But what of the contestants themselves? Well, Larry Anderson, twenty-eight at the time that he filmed the show, expressed a positive view of his experience on the show – acknowledging that it had helped him unpick some homophobic beliefs he had carried about the way gay men “should” act. “I realised there is no way to act gay,” he said. “You are just your normal self”. He also felt like much of the more impactful content he shot for the show – such a conversation about coming out with his “mantors” – had not made it into the final cut, leaving potentially meaningful moments without context.

While there’s no doubt that media that boils down the LGBTQ experience to a set of stereotypes is profoundly unhelpful when it comes to furthering authentic representation, there is still a part of me that wishes we could have seen what Seriously, Dude, I’m Gay would have done with its premise – if it was the attempt at subversive commentary that some involved claimed, or if it was the trope-laden, homophobic mess that GLAAD declared it to be. Let me know your thoughts on the special in the comments below, and feel free to share your memories of queer reality TV from this era and beyond!

Check out my other writing on reality TV below:

“Love Island with Trench Foot”: The Disastrous Reality TV Experiment of Eden

The Rise and Fall of Drag Race España: An Analysis

The Reality TV Disaster of NYC Prep

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(header image via Wikipedia)