
Gay spectatorship: it used to be all about deciphering.
Before True Blood, Glee, Ugly Betty, and Modern Family, gay characters in television tended to be canny in-jokes among writers; the game was to see how far gay signifiers and innuendo could be pushed so as to register with one smaller audience while completely going over the head of another broader one. It’s a certain campy, broad, conspicuous, idiosyncratic, or “colorful” quality that marks these characters as somehow “other.” This is what accounts for the are-they-or-aren’t-they? inscrutability of Crypto-Gay characters — they have to be discerned by those in-the-know, and their natures are channeled through the eye of the beholder.
Mainstays like Dr. Smith from Lost In Space, Batman and Robin, half the cast of Bewitched, hothouse flower Monroe from Too Close For Comfort, and even more contemporary figures like Joey and Chandler from Friends, the Crane Brothers from Frasier, and ball-breaking Xena are likely to come to mind first, but I’ve assembled a gathering of ten characters who’ve hit home with me through the years and remained favorites who’ve largely managed to slip under the gaydar: (read the full article)




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