The Problem is the Closet, not Who's Out of It

Newsweek is an apologist for the closet; Kristin Chenoweth issues a stern STFU.

Ugh.  Memo to Newsweek: gay and lesbian actors in straight roles "works" fine.  It's no more of a technical issue than a monogamous actor playing a prostitute, or someone who's never sat for the bar playing a lawyer.  It's called acting.

If you can't get past the actor's known sexuality to find him or her believable in a straight role -- and that is the issue here, given that the essayist is talking about actors known to be gay, whether out or outed -- either the problem is with you, or he or she is not a very good actor.  If you watch Rock Hudson and snicker about seeing him in a bubble bath instead of appreciating that "straight" was a role he felt he had to play his entire working life, not just on screen, then you're part of the problem.  If knowing Jonathan Groff is gay makes his Glee performance feel "off" ... well, again, that's on you, because I didn't know he was gay until you told me I should have found his sexuality so obvious as to be "distracting".  Was Matthew Morrison or Cory Monteith "writhing to" Like a Virgin equally testament to their sexuality?  Or did you only think it seemed gay when the openly gay man did it?  Guess what: you might be part of the problem.

And if the author thinks the problem only goes one way -- "It's OK for straight actors to play gay ... it's rare for someone to pull off the trick in reverse" -- then he hasn't been paying attention.  Both Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal faced massive speculation regarding their sexuality after they were cast in Brokeback Mountain, and Gyllenhaal continues to.  The supposed "problem" with gay and lesbian actors in straight roles is the conception, illustrated amply by the Newsweek piece claiming to bemoan it, that homosexuality pervades every aspect of a person so thoroughly that he or she cannot realistically play straight.  The source of wild speculation or wild adulation when straight actors are convincing in gay roles is a corrolary to this -- that somehow it's either extra-magical or suspicious when a straight actor convinces us that he or she is attracted to someone of the same sex.  And yeah, that's kind of the author's point.  So why is he combing through the performances of gay and lesbian actors for evidence of their supposedly essential gay-ness in order to make it?