carld2
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Post by carld2 on Mar 29, 2015 15:39:08 GMT -5
Wait a minute. Kevin was given the very same treatment. We, the audience saw Kevin through Patrick’s eyes/point of view. Kevin got more scenes, this season, because he was the main guy in Patrick’s life during this time. From all we saw, Kevin doesn't have any friends of his own in San Francisco, outside of what he established with Jon. He's more "isolated" then Richie. We got a glimpse of Richie and his life, through Patrick’s eyes, in this past season. From the two cousins, to his new boyfriend, Brady and to how Agustin realized that Richie and his feelings, shouldn't trivialized/used by Patrick. Also the "tee-heeing" of Patrick's behavior towards Richie was supposed to make you feel uncomfortable. Richie's character is based on human traits and Patrick doesn't know or understand how to speak Spanish, nor did he understand that he was more than an "uncut penis", during their initial flirtation. This is something, that sadly, lots of people of color, regardless if they're straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender or cisgender have gone through, when they date a white person. The thing is for me that the show was based mostly around white people and their experiences (Gus being the exception), so when Richie popped in and his own experiences were so much about how a white man saw him and his culture, then it did make me uneasy, mostly because I didn't feel the show was even fully aware of what they were doing. As one example - they made an issue out of Patrick reacting to uncut men, and essentially reducing Richie to an uncut cock. Yet they (according to the commentary) chose to delete scenes where Patrick reacted to Kevin also being uncut. Presumably this was for time (and maybe they mentioned it in season 2 - I can't remember as I sort of watched that fairly quickly), but it still tells me the two men did not get the same type of treatment. I never felt like we were supposed to be uncomfortable with Patrick's stereotyping and being so patronizing - I thought it was someone's idea of being endearing, and that we were supposed to see this as some happy moment between them that Patrick would go on to ruin because of his own hangups. That's where I feel the show failed. I never saw a reason why Richie should put up with Patrick on any level, as a boyfriend or as a friend, or anything at all. I never got why this relationship was supposed to be special. I just wanted Richie to find someone else and never look back.
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Post by kevvoi on Mar 30, 2015 5:40:51 GMT -5
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carld2
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Post by carld2 on Mar 30, 2015 21:36:37 GMT -5
This is the type of thing fans used to say about Friends or Buffy.
That this is still being said 15 years later is part of the problem.
I think they make some good points about other elements of the show that made it stand out. It's a shame about this whole "It's mostly white, BUT..." derail they had.
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Post by jjose712 on Mar 31, 2015 13:49:49 GMT -5
Sorry but i don't agree. First of all, the percentage of white people in the USA is way bigger than any of the other races together (something that people seems to forget when they talk about minorities underrepresented), second, the show have two prominent latino characters. Sometimes when i hear about the lack of diversity i feel we are always talking about black characters, and blacks are not the only ethnic minority. Latinos have almost as big population as blacks and are way more underrepresented. And given what MO Nique said about the search of the lead character for her film, find a black actor who wants to play gay characters is not that easy.
I'm all for diversity representation but i don't want token characters. Empire has an almost all black cast and it's not a problem because in the context of the show it totally makes sense.
It's like if you want to do a show about sports, if the show is about swimming or tennis it will be a mainly white cast, if it was about basketball it will be a mainly black cast
In large cast like on Shonda Rimes shows, it will be a problem an almost white cast (fortunately Shonda is known for her diverse cast), but Looking had three main characters, two whites and one latino
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carld2
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Post by carld2 on Apr 1, 2015 1:45:58 GMT -5
I would agree if the show were set in the middle of, say, South Dakota. San Francisco is another story. And if the show was saying that it was mostly about white guys, that would be one thing, but instead they seemed to actually think they were diverse. I don't think they were. Just my opinion.
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Post by kevvoi on Apr 8, 2015 9:00:55 GMT -5
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Post by kevvoi on Apr 11, 2015 14:58:04 GMT -5
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Post by kevvoi on Apr 15, 2015 7:15:58 GMT -5
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Post by kevvoi on Apr 27, 2015 16:00:35 GMT -5
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Post by kevvoi on May 13, 2015 7:10:56 GMT -5
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Post by kevvoi on Jun 14, 2015 8:01:32 GMT -5
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Post by kevvoi on Jul 9, 2015 17:51:03 GMT -5
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Post by kevvoi on Jul 30, 2015 19:20:31 GMT -5
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Post by kevvoi on Aug 11, 2015 8:08:45 GMT -5
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carld2
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Post by carld2 on Aug 19, 2015 11:24:55 GMT -5
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Post by vesper on Aug 20, 2015 1:03:26 GMT -5
yeah, I don't have to watch your show just because you have gay people in it.
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HQ75
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Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)
Posts: 4,200
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Post by HQ75 on Aug 20, 2015 13:38:42 GMT -5
QAF was very popular which is why it lasted 5 years.
As for gay men liking Looking the fact is that a network is not going to support a show that its target audience doesn't support. It's really arrogant and kind of presumptuous magical thinking to believe that networks will continue to put money behind shows with gay ensembles or gay leads if all gay media (blogs, print, etc) does is rip them to shreds for not matching exactly how SOME gay men would like to see gay men represented.
The fact is if you ever want to get to a point where there are lots of shows on TV that represent lots of different ways of being gay, you HAVE to support the shows that actually manage to get made. That is how the tv and movie industry work. Every other minority group seems to understand this but gays and lesbians somehow think we are exempt. If a show isn't perfect or exactly what we want/expect we relentlessly slam it until it's not longer there then we obsess over shows that only have 1 or 2 gay characters who have very little screen time.
Right now, at this moment in time, we ARE the beggars when it comes to gay/lesbian/queer ensemble shows and being uppity about what networks, writers HAVE to do to get us to watch is just short sighted, in my opinion.
No one is forcing anyone to watch anything and "just having gay people in it" isn't really the point. It's about supporting shows that are about, by and for our community even if they aren't perfect because that support is the only way we'll change the social and political landscape so that more different kinds of shows with more than a few gay characters get made.
Looking was the perfect vehicle for that. And BTW a lot of people liked Looking, probably millions more than HBO even knows about because they can't access the bootleg, contraband viewing audience. Had it be a non cable show that would have been better reflected but the only viewership of Looking that could be measured by the network was cable subscriber viewers which is not the largest part of an audience for a show like Looking.
It's a lot more complex than just "how dare you expect me to watch a show just cuz it has gay characters on it"
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LadyArmand
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"Fortune favors the bold..." Virgil
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Post by LadyArmand on Aug 20, 2015 16:42:03 GMT -5
Actually the point is that the shows should be good having main characters that are unlikable doesn't help any shows cause. Just because this was a show about gay men doesn't mean it should be supported if for many people the show simply wasn't good or as I've often read many people gay and straight simply found it boring. As an African American woman, I don't watch the show Empire, but I can't say that it's not good or that all the characters are unlikable. It just means it's not my cup of tea and I have the right to say that it's not and not be expected to mindlessly support it because it has an all African American cast. Perhaps the shows creators and producers need to stop pointing their finger at the Gay press and other gay men for not watching and actually take a moment to look at the product they produced objectively and see where they could have addressed some of the issues people of all orientations had with the show.
As for QAF yes it was popular, but not with the gay men I knew. What kept QAF on the air was it was the first of its kind, it was also the only game in town, and it had a very large female following. Looking would still be on the air (regardless of whether gay men watched or the Gay press supported it or not) if it had engaged other viewers. Executives are in the business of making money, and as long as Looking had the ratings regardless of the demographic it would still be on the air.
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carld2
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Post by carld2 on Aug 20, 2015 17:38:44 GMT -5
QAF was very popular which is why it lasted 5 years. As for gay men liking looking the fact is that a network is not going to support a show that its target audience doesn't support. It's really arrogant and kind of presumptuous magical thinking to believe that networks will continue to put money behind shows with gay ensembles or gay leads if all gay media (blogs, print, etc) does is rip them to shreds for not matching exactly how SOME gay men would like to see gay men represented.The fact is if you ever want to get to a point where there are lots of shows on tv that represent lots of different ways of being gay, you HAVE to support the shows that actually manage to get made. That is how the tv and movie industry work. Every other minority group seems to understand this but gays and lesbians somehow think we are exempt. If a show isn't perfect or exactly what we want/expect we relentlessly slam it until it's not longer there then we obsess over shows that only have 1 or 2 gay characters who have very little screen time. Right now, at this moment in time, we ARE the beggers when it comes to gay/lesbian/queer ensemble shows and being uppity about what networks, writers HAVE to do to get us to watch is just short sighted, in my opinion. No one is forcing anyone to watch anything and "just having gay people in it" isn't really the point. It's about supporting shows that are about, by and for our community even if they aren't perfect because that support is the only way we'll change the social and political landscape so that more different kinds of shows with more than a few gay characters get mad. Looking was the perfect vehicle for that. And BTW a lot of people liked Looking, probably millions more than HBO even knows about because they can't access the bootleg, contraband viewing audience. Had it be a non cable show that would have been better reflected but the only viewership of Looking that could be measured by the network was cable subscriber viewers which is not the largest part of an audience for a show like Looking. It's a lot more complex than just "how dare you expect me to watch a show just cuz it has gay characters on it" But all gay media didn't rip Looking to shreds. The show had a mixed response, as many other shows about lgbt people do. There was never this massive hostility toward this program that there was toward something like Da Vinci's Demons, where major gay sites (wisely) stopped covering the show altogether after they knew they were being duped. Looking had tons of social media buzz and hype. It also had a lot of vocal fans. Yet the ratings still cratered in the second season. Is that the fault of a monolith of gay men who scared fans into giving up the show? Or is it just that for a variety of reasons, many viewers lost interest? If a show with lgbt people depended on universal praise and hype from all in the community, then none of them would have ever lasted more than a season. If that. A lot of people would rather just have nothing than to blindly support a show they don't like or does not represent them. And as the years have passed, I've learned to understand why.
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HQ75
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Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)
Posts: 4,200
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Post by HQ75 on Aug 26, 2015 20:31:12 GMT -5
I have been Black and a lesbian all my life. If I only supported shows that represented me I'd never watch television. As for ratings, premium cable shows ALWAYS have lower ratings than network shows but there are literally less of us so if we don't take a stand and support a show that might not be perfect we will never get shows like Looking made. And no, people aren't happy to have nothing because if they were they wouldn't complain 24/7 about the lack of gay characters on the non gay shows that exist. Good is relative and subjective. I thought Looking was Great. Not good, GREAT. But that's just my opinion. There is nothing objective about whether or not a show is good and success had very little to do with "quality" or shows like Married With Children wouldn't have lasted 10 years. It's about viewership. Looking was, for me, a million times better than Girls or Pretty Little Liars or any number of other ensemble shows. That speaks to my taste obviously. But as a queer person, I could relate on a personal, knowing level to everything happening to the characters on Looking which is something that I rarely get to do with television.
Having said that, there are PLENTY of movies I have paid to see and TV shows I've watch to show my support. We are not yet at the stage in the LGBT fight for representation where we can be so precious about what a tv show had to do to get gays and lesbians to watch it. It would be nice if we were but it's just unrealistic to think otherwise. The stakes are higher for us that a show like Looking succeed because we are not part of the dominant culture and we can't assume that we will be represented at all (forget about well).
It's strange because as gays and lesbians we are used to watching and enjoying shows that do not reflect our experiences and we manage to relate to the characters but a show comes on about a group of gay friends and unless we can see our exact carbon copy represented we suddenly can't relate? Hegemony is The Devil.
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Post by vesper on Aug 26, 2015 23:55:56 GMT -5
I have been Black and a lesbian all my life. If I only supported shows that represented me I'd never watch television. As for ratings, premium cable shows ALWAYS have lower ratings than network shows but there are literally less of us so if we don't take a stand and support a show that might not be perfect we will never get shows like Looking made. And no, people aren't happy to have nothing because if they were they wouldn't complain 24/7 about the lack of gay characters on the non gay shows that exist. Good is relative and subjective. I thought Looking was Great. Not good, GREAT. But that's just my opinion. There is nothing objective about whether or not a show is good and success had very little to do with "quality" or shows like Married With Children wouldn't have lasted 10 years. It's about viewership. Looking was, for me, a million times better than Girls or Pretty Little Liars or any number of other ensemble shows. That speaks to my taste obviously. But as a queer person, I could relate on a personal, knowing level to everything happening to the characters on Looking which is something that I rarely get to do with television. Having said that, there are PLENTY of movies I have paid to see and TV shows I've watch to show my support. We are not yet at the stage in the LGBT fight for representation where we can be so precious about what a tv show had to do to get gays and lesbians to watch it. It would be nice if we were but it's just unrealistic to think otherwise. The stakes are higher for us that a show like Looking succeed because we are not part of the dominant culture and we can't assume that we will be represented at all (forget about well). It's strange because as gays and lesbians we are used to watching and enjoying shows that do not reflect our experiences and we manage to relate to the characters but a show comes on about a group of gay friends and unless we can see our exact carbon copy represented we suddenly can't relate? Hegemony is The Devil.I have a hard time enjoying shows that only portray straight cis white characters, actually. The thing about Looking is that the characters weren't just unlikeable, apart from Richie, they were also not very interesting.
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Post by Difficult Diva on Aug 27, 2015 6:10:28 GMT -5
I have been Black and a lesbian all my life. If I only supported shows that represented me I'd never watch television. As for ratings, premium cable shows ALWAYS have lower ratings than network shows but there are literally less of us so if we don't take a stand and support a show that might not be perfect we will never get shows like Looking made. And no, people aren't happy to have nothing because if they were they wouldn't complain 24/7 about the lack of gay characters on the non gay shows that exist. Good is relative and subjective. I thought Looking was Great. Not good, GREAT. But that's just my opinion. There is nothing objective about whether or not a show is good and success had very little to do with "quality" or shows like Married With Children wouldn't have lasted 10 years. It's about viewership. Looking was, for me, a million times better than Girls or Pretty Little Liars or any number of other ensemble shows. That speaks to my taste obviously. But as a queer person, I could relate on a personal, knowing level to everything happening to the characters on Looking which is something that I rarely get to do with television. Having said that, there are PLENTY of movies I have paid to see and TV shows I've watch to show my support. We are not yet at the stage in the LGBT fight for representation where we can be so precious about what a tv show had to do to get gays and lesbians to watch it. It would be nice if we were but it's just unrealistic to think otherwise. The stakes are higher for us that a show like Looking succeed because we are not part of the dominant culture and we can't assume that we will be represented at all (forget about well). It's strange because as gays and lesbians we are used to watching and enjoying shows that do not reflect our experiences and we manage to relate to the characters but a show comes on about a group of gay friends and unless we can see our exact carbon copy represented we suddenly can't relate? Hegemony is The Devil.I have a hard time enjoying shows that only portray straight cis white characters, actually. The thing about Looking is that the characters weren't just unlikeable, apart from Richie, they were also not very interesting. What made these characters not interesting, other than you thinking they were unlikeable, other than Richie?
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Post by Difficult Diva on Aug 27, 2015 6:38:06 GMT -5
I have been Black and a lesbian all my life. If I only supported shows that represented me I'd never watch television. As for ratings, premium cable shows ALWAYS have lower ratings than network shows but there are literally less of us so if we don't take a stand and support a show that might not be perfect we will never get shows like Looking made. And no, people aren't happy to have nothing because if they were they wouldn't complain 24/7 about the lack of gay characters on the non gay shows that exist. Good is relative and subjective. I thought Looking was Great. Not good, GREAT. But that's just my opinion. There is nothing objective about whether or not a show is good and success had very little to do with "quality" or shows like Married With Children wouldn't have lasted 10 years. It's about viewership. Looking was, for me, a million times better than Girls or Pretty Little Liars or any number of other ensemble shows. That speaks to my taste obviously. But as a queer person, I could relate on a personal, knowing level to everything happening to the characters on Looking which is something that I rarely get to do with television. Having said that, there are PLENTY of movies I have paid to see and TV shows I've watch to show my support. We are not yet at the stage in the LGBT fight for representation where we can be so precious about what a tv show had to do to get gays and lesbians to watch it. It would be nice if we were but it's just unrealistic to think otherwise. The stakes are higher for us that a show like Looking succeed because we are not part of the dominant culture and we can't assume that we will be represented at all (forget about well). It's strange because as gays and lesbians we are used to watching and enjoying shows that do not reflect our experiences and we manage to relate to the characters but a show comes on about a group of gay friends and unless we can see our exact carbon copy represented we suddenly can't relate? Hegemony is The Devil. The stakes will always be high, because sadly it'll always be down to viewership/demographic numbers, because the GLBT demographic is small. I loved Looking and there is a straight female fan base and we still wants more episodes/seasons. We're just not the huge numbers that had followed/watched QAFUS. I don't think that there will be another gay themed series, that will ever capture the huge numbers of straight female viewers, like how QAFUS had done during its time on cable and that show had also been put through the fire by critics and gay male viewers. I also don't think that any potentially new GLBT series, should have to try and seek us out as that particular segment of audience, in the hopes of staying on the air. The support could be there and from what I see, all the time, is this need to judge, before an episode is aired and then if it's not 100 percent perfect (which nothing will ever be), the need for others to down the show, until it's eventually canceled. What was particularly striking, was the utter glee that I saw from some, about the series cancelation.
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Post by vesper on Sept 1, 2015 11:49:26 GMT -5
I have a hard time enjoying shows that only portray straight cis white characters, actually. The thing about Looking is that the characters weren't just unlikeable, apart from Richie, they were also not very interesting. What made these characters not interesting, other than you thinking they were unlikeable, other than Richie? They were boring. Please Like Me has a lot of asshole characters but they are interesting.
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Post by kevvoi on Oct 9, 2015 16:49:26 GMT -5
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