The Politics of Fandom

I normally don't pay much attention to actors, singers, and other "stars." I don't mean to come off as a big elitist snob; just try to pry me away from West Wing on Sunday nights and you'll know I'm as susceptible as the next person to getting addicted to a TV series. We won't even discuss my previous obsession with Xena: Warrior Princess. But I rarely know the names of any of the actors on shows I watch, or any details about their real lives.

But I admit to being curious about which of the actors in the Showtime series Queer as Folk was actually gay and which was just playing gay. I had never heard of any of them before and literally knew nothing at all about the show until I started watching it on DVD in December. (Yes, I live under a rock.)

I asked my friend Travis, who is normally my instant conduit to all things related to film, being as he's an actor living in West Hollywood, but while he knew some were gay and some were straight, he couldn't remember which was which. So I went where I go when Travis lets me down, Google, where I discovered that my gaydar is absolutely perfect: Of the five main male actors, I had accurately identified which ones were gay and which ones were just acting. (I didn't do this, by the way, based on how naturally they kissed or had sex with men onscreen. No, my criterion was something else entirely: Could they dance? The two actors who could dance were in fact gay men, and the three actors who couldn't dance for shit were straight. Travis had known that both actors who played the show's token lesbians were straight women, which was unfortunately painfully obvious to me already. But I digress.)

What I also found out in this rare excursion into celebrity googleville is that it's not the dancing ability, sexual orientation, looks, or even talent of an actor that makes me like them. No, it's their political beliefs. Two of the actors on the show turned out to have supported Howard Dean in the last election, and so suddenly I became their biggest fans. (For the curious, those two were Michelle Clunie and Robert Gant.) Which really cracked me up, because this isn't the first time that happened to me.

My mom is George Clooney's biggest fan. In fact, she's such a fan of the guy it's almost scary. And I did know that he's a liberal, because my mom told me. But one night I was watching him on a talk show, promoting his film about Edward R. Murrow, Good Night and Good Luck (which deserved all the great reviews it got, and you should go see it), and he smiled lazily at the interviewer and called himself "a big old liberal." All of a sudden I was struck with a sudden urge to watch hours of re-runs of ER.

I was talking about great horse movies with a straight female friend last night, and we got onto the subject of Robert Redford in the Horse Whisperer (pretty good movie if you mentally edit out the idiotic and unbelievable romance subplot). I mentioned to her that although I'd always known Redford was a liberal, I'd really become a big fan when he campaigned for Kerry in the last election.

Same thing happened with Bruce Springsteen. When I went away to college in 1978, I'd only heard of Bruce Springsteen once, as the co-author of Patti Smith's song Because the Night. Arriving at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL, from San Francisco, where I was born and grew up, was an experience of culture shock in more ways than I can count, but one of them was learning that Bruce Springsteen was some huge rock and roll star, and no one had ever heard of Patti Smith. Nonetheless,  watching him sing No Retreat, No Surrender at a Kerry rally on CSPAN turned me instantly into a fan, and I actually went out and bought one of his CDs just to hear that song.

I'm sure my admiration of stars based on shared political beliefs isn't going to boost their ratings or sales any more than my vote got a liberal into the White House, but it does still kind of crack me up that I'm so easy.

Oh, and if anyone finds out Lucy Lawless, who played Xena, is a right wing Republican, PLEASE don't tell me. Because this works in reverse, too, and I just don't want to know.

Comments

[Nancy]

I can relate I think. I never gave Matthew McConaughey much thought, every movie I'd seen him in sucked, IMO. But when I watched him work his butt off in New Orleans, my mind was immediately changed. Hugging dogs and helping a man reunite with his beloved pet. Same regarding Harry Connick Jr. He just plain annoyed me, until I saw him lifting an elderly man off of his water laden porch into a boat, wrapping a blanket around his shoulders and hugging him tight.

Okay sure, they're actors, it is good publicity for them. But I think of it this way: How many of the famous helped just by signing a check or singing a song? More than were down there getting wet and dirty!!! Singing for charity is great and every check helped, but when you're willing to get in a little boat and lift a stranger or a dog out of a disaster, you're a hero in my eyes.

I also have a deep appreciation for Hollywoodites willing to step out on a very small limb and not hide who they are inside and out. I cried for joy when I watched Elton John stand up in front of the world and married the love of his life. I've been a devoted fan of his since I was 12 years old and all I could think was, "Finally, he's happy. Screw the world, screw the anti-gay assholes, screw them all!"