Real appeal
January 27th, 2008 Posted in Pets Guide Ellen DeGeneres’ popularity is a testament to audiences’
desire for authenticity, writes Stephanie Bunbury.
OUT THERE in the shock-horror world of entertainment, the latest
news is that Ellen DeGeneres has tipped Oprah Winfrey off her
five-year perch as the most popular television personality in
America. Who’d have thought it?
The fact that a cheerful, warm, home-baked kind of woman who
talks to people on a comfortable couch should become the people’s
best friend is not so surprising, obviously. But you don’t imagine
that, in Bush’s America, everyone’s bestie is going to be an
out-and-proud lesbian.
DeGeneres has certainly made a lot of straight people laugh. Way
back in the ’80s, viewers of the Showtime network voted her the
funniest person in America, which propelled her on to the Johnny
Carson Show, nationwide fame and a hit sitcom. And only a very
likeable person gets to host the Grammys (twice), the Emmys (twice)
and the Oscars, the grand slam of making-smart-with-celebrities
events.
When she was brought on to do the Oscars last year, indeed, she
became only the second woman (after Whoopi Goldberg) to host them
on her own. That’s the second woman in 79 years. Afterwards, a
rival talk-show host said the only thing wrong with the Academy
Awards broadcast was that there wasn’t enough of Ellen, that jolly
dyke in the square-cut trousers who seems to have a thing for
blondes.
Because it’s not as if she hides her love under a bushel; she
and partner Portia de Rossi are photographed in public, holding
hands like any other couple, smiling broadly, and none of the
mall-going masses seems to turn a hair. Jerry Falwell, the
fundamentalist preacher, did describe her from his on-screen pulpit
as “Ellen Degenerate”, but it was not a pun that had any teeth; as
DeGeneres herself said, she had been getting that since fourth
grade.
Because here’s the thing, as they say: DeGeneres is happy and
daffy and accessible. And funny. Most of us are prepared to give
even quite disagreeable people quite a lot of latitude if they are
funny with it.
Yet it wasn’t so very long ago that DeGeneres was out in another
sense altogether. The conventional wisdom was that she went too far
when, in 1997, she talked about her homosexuality on Oprah’s show
and then came out again on Ellen, her sitcom about a daffy
dame not entirely unlike herself. That episode, heavily flagged,
was the highest rating ever. Then, quite abruptly, viewing figures
spiralled down until the following year, when the show was cut.
The funniest person in America thus sank into oblivion. Middle
America, it was said, wasn’t ready to watch a dyke go about her
warped and wicked business, even if she told jokes at the same
time. A new sitcom, The Ellen Show, flopped in 2001. Every
closeted entertainer in Hollywood %26#151; and boy, that is one
crowded closet %26#151; could see that coming out, just like the
publicists said, would mean career death.
A few years down the track, however, the world looks very
different. Homophobia hasn’t exactly gone away. It’s hard to
imagine having an easy life as a gay boxer, for example. But in the
interim, Elton John married his partner, David Furnish, on what
became a day of national rejoicing in Britain, even in the
notoriously homophobic British tabloids.
Boyband hunks Stephen Gately (from Boyzone) and Mark Feehily
(from Westlife) have both come out; against all expectations, polls
showed Feehily’s tweenage girl fans actually loved him more as a
result. In the United States, Michael Stipe has been “sort of
famously polysexual”, as one fan put it, since REM were playing
bars in redneck Georgia, but nobody has ever been too bothered
about it.
The talk-show audience is supposed to be more conservative even
than Westlife fans, of course: we imagine legions of grass-fed
Americans sitting like mountains in front of the box, fulminating
against the pink menace and swearing to boycott anything associated
with it.
Except that they aren’t. In fact, I suspect that a lot of those
legions like DeGeneres precisely for the thing they are supposed to
be merely tolerating: the fact that she’s absolutely up-front about
who she is. Not because she’s gay, exactly, but because she was
true to herself and prepared to weather the consequences.
That doesn’t mean they want to be lectured about it. Most of us
don’t much like having our noses rubbed in anything unpleasant,
such as the nastiness of homophobia, especially if we know we’re at
fault. We don’t like it even when we agree whole-heartedly with the
person doing the lecturing.
Looking back, the problem with DeGeneres’ sitcom was not the
fact that it was about a gay character, exactly, but that it became
so painfully earnest that Oscar Wilde himself would have had
trouble raising a chuckle. Week by hair-shirted week, Ellen
conscientiously addressed the issues she had glossed over in her
closeted days. Watching it in its decline was a kind of
penance.
When she came back to chat to the likes of Lynyrd Skynyrd,
however, DeGeneres had turned back into the jolliest and
friendliest lesbian anyone could imagine. People liked that. Like
Oprah %26#151; who beat poverty and abuse to become not only rich and
powerful, but endlessly, visibly caring, even with people whose
problems seem pretty small fry compared with hers %26#151; Ellen had
persevered and triumphed against the odds. She was almost mythical.
They liked that, too.
And they liked the way %26#151; even if some of the television
commentators didn’t %26#151; that she was reduced to crying into her
hands on television by the dog shelter that came to take her dog
back. Her great sin, apparently, was to breach her contract with
the shelter by giving the dog to a little girl (her hairdresser’s
daughter) who fell in love with it. Kids, pets and real tears: no
wonder they love her.
Because what really wins hearts %26#151; all kinds of hearts
%26#151; is authenticity. Heaven knows, it’s in short supply. In our
age of spin, when politicians stay so resolutely on message that
even their closest advisers wonder whether they actually have any
real opinions, when Hollywood stars as gay as jonquils appear in
public with their arms around their “beards”, someone who just
bowls ahead without bothering is immediately appealing.
The same applies in politics. South Australian senator Nick
Xenophon’s publicity stunts with giraffes and mules may be
ridiculous and his fracas with Ann Bressington may show he is
probably more trouble than a sackful of monkeys, but people voted
for him because his passionate opposition to pokies was somehow
inspiring and because the giraffe thing was good fun: for the whole
kit and caboodle, in fact, that is unmistakably Nick Xenophon.
It’s not just about eccentricity, although that certainly helps.
Barry Jones, for example, has never lost his quizmaster’s
triumphant cleverness; he always seems a bit like a character from
the Molesworth books. The British Conservative Boris Johnson, with
his perpetually tousled blond hair, bicycle clips, Latin quotations
and muddled affairs, is a caricature Tory who brings delight to
voters of all persuasions. He’ll never be prime minister, but
people will always invite him to parties.
What is really crucial, however, is that we know exactly who
these people are. Tony Benn, an unrepentant Old Labour stalwart
famous for his pipe, endless cups of tea and unwavering socialist
principles, is probably the most popular polly in England %26#151; on
both sides of the house. At least, say his opponents, you know what
he stands for. People used to say that about Peter Garrett; the
fact that they don’t feel they can any more is a disappointment
more profound than anyone has yet acknowledged. And has anyone ever
said it of Kevin Rudd?
It’s not that these well-managed people’s representatives have
no opinions. Any opinion is dangerous once voiced, however, because
someone out there with a vote may disagree with it, so they have to
be treated carefully. It’s rather like movie publicity, where
celebrities in films about supposedly alienating subjects %26#151;
usually political ones %26#151; are coached to avoid those subjects
in interviews, protesting that “it’s really a love story”. Of
course, everyone knows that everyone knows they’re lying, but it’s
surprisingly hard to discuss something if nobody will acknowledge
it’s there.
The problem here is that all these organisations (TV networks,
movie studios and political parties) seem to be running way behind
the public.
Anyone surprised by DeGeneres’ success, for example, should go
and see Middle Australia emerging happily from the musical
extravaganza version of The Adventures of Priscilla. Men in
frocks and false eyelashes, with all that extravagance and
exuberance and in-your-face determination to have a good time, are
OK by the people out in swinging-vote territory. They’re fun.
It took a while, true, for DeGeneres’ old sitcom fans to get
used to a queer-and-here Ellen, but once she was out of that
closet, nothing could put her back into it. And in the end, people
found they liked it that way.
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