Lucas Entertainment

Kudos to Lucas Entertainment’s efforts in providing young gay males with films that incorporate the reality of the use of a condom; condoms are always required; no drug/alcohol scenes; treatment of the actors. Lucas Entertainment gives viewers a feeling of belonging – somewhere to go when there is no where else real time where they can mingle with like-minded people. Lucas’ films also give their viewers a model to follow in their own lives.

I also wanted to address the sitcom Will and Grace mentioned in the Yale article. The article criticized the sitcom’s gay characters for being clownish. I would have to disagree. This show, along with Ellen were the first of their kind at their time to include gay characters. The last episodes of a very successful eight year run of Will and Grace aired on Thursday nights at 9:00 p.m., the show was meant to be light, it did address some touchy issues, but the majority of the show was very light.

The network seemed to flirt with Will and Jack’s ‘gayness’ never really showing anything, playing both sides. Here’s a thought, maybe the show’s popularity was with straight people rather than gay; or the network was testing the waters to see what viewers would accepts, if they were ready yet. Apparently, they were. These shows paved the way for other gay themed shows such as Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Queer as Folk and The Wire. Viewers accepted the shows and they were popular.

Since the Yale article considers the gay characters in Will and Grace as clownish In order to show a comparison between sitcoms that were in the same time slot prior to Will and Grace, I had to go back quite a few years given the sitcom is quickly becoming extinct. I came up with Cheers circa 1982 and Seinfeld circa 1990′s. Both heterosexual sitcoms were about nothing and there really wasn’t anything sexual about them, from what I recall. Pretty much all of the actors were clowns, not much difference from the characters portrayed in Will and Grace.