|
Ellen
Degeneres
brings
her Americana Tour to P-town for one night. Naturally, expect
a houseful of Friends of Ellen.
Arlene
Schnitzer
Concert Hall
1037 SW Broadway,
796-9293
8 pm Wednesday,
June 28
$27-$40
|
|
Feed QW: Send savory
bits of information to Byron Beck at bbeck@wweek.com
at least 10 days prior to publication.
Well, slap my butt and call me Joely Fisher! The local
appearance of the homo world's most het-friendly comic,
Ellen Degeneres, inspired me once again to check out her
major moment of gay truth. With a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos
and my man at my side, I sat down to indulge in one of the
pillars of the gay pantheon: the Ellen coming-out episode.
What a letdown.
What had seemed so daring three years earlier now seemed
like so much ancient history. Hell, in retrospect, the Volkswagen
ad with the interracial male couple picking up smelly furniture
to the tune of Trio's "Da Da Da" seems much more of a cultural
revelation than having Ellen Morgan say she was gay to Oprah,
Billy Bob Thornton (during his Laura Dern, pre-Angelina
Jolie phase) and the rest of the world.
So unimpressive was this second viewing that (no matter
how cute Jeremy Piven, the guy who plays her cousin, might
be) I fell asleep by the end of the tape. Stripped of the
aura of eventfulness that surrounded it in 1997, the show
now seems watered-down and equivocal, a monument not to
gay pride but to network-sweeps hype. Ellen herself, once
lionized for her courage, comes across simply as an entertainer
playing the queer card to save her foundering show.
In a way, she's not to blame: Queer idolatry works like
queer relationships, in which one year together equals three
years for a straight couple. The shelf life for a visibly
queer icon--the flash of fame before staleness and self-parody
set in--is pitiably short.
Take Elton John--please. No longer a purveyor of provocative
lyrics full of double meanings, Sir Elton is a mean little
hellcat with a penchant for Broadway show tunes. Melissa
Etheridge, once decidedly provocative with a slight she-mullet,
now lives all fancy-schmancy and forces us to imagine her
partner getting turkey-basted with David Crosby's Mini-Mes.
Thankfully we have Jodie Foster--or do we? Like The
Big Valley's Barbara Stanwyck, Foster keeps us guessing
about who and what she is, simply by refusing to talk about
it. And while I am not advocating for our gay role models
to politely jump back into the closet, I would like them
to consider a marketing question that Miss Peggy Lee asks
over and over again: "Is that all there is?"
Yes, we want to celebrate your blooming, but we need you
to keep it fresh. God, do we have to hear you talk about
gay stuff so much that all you become is this flat cardboard
cut-out of gay?
Ellen is a funny gal (check out Mr. Wrong if you
don't believe me). I hope that in her current "Americana
Tour," she won't seem so desperate to let us in--over and
over again--on her little secret. Some things are better
left once said.
|
|
