Jim Parsons may be the most well-known gay actor in Hollywood today, having played Sheldon Cooper in Big Bang Theory and voicing adult Sheldon in Young Sheldon. Among his other projects The Boys in the Band, in which he played a character named Michael in both the Broadway play and a movie adaption.
The play is a story of a group of gay men who gathered for a birthday party in New York in 1968, the year the play debuted. Parsons says that when he was researching for the play, he was struck by the language used to describe gay men in the New York Times, which he describes as “animalistic and disgusting.”
Everyone in the play (and the forthcoming movie) is gay–including Parsons, Zachary Quinto (Spock in the newer Star Trek movies), and Matt Bomer (Neal Caffrey in White Collar). But when The Los Angeles Times asked Parsons whether only gay men should play gay roles, he said, “I think the fight…is not about having only gay people play the gay parts but to ensure that all parts are open to all actors. It’s important that gay characters are portrayed as well-rounded and completely human individuals…I think Brokeback Mountain is one of the most touching gay movies and love stories I have ever seen, and those two straight actors [Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal] were the best choices for those roles.”
USA Today also tackled the subject, expanding the question to whether cisgender actors should play transgender parts. Its article said, in part, “[a]ll actors should be able to play all roles, in theory, but actors and industry experts are speaking out about the need for queer and transgender actors to play roles that represent these communities.”
Tre’vell Anderson, a writer for Out magazine, says, “We want our media to be an accurate reflection of the world in which we live.” Actor Bill Eichner says, “I don’t have to go sit with 30 gay people and try to find out what it’s like to be gay. I know, and no one knows better than me and my friends. I think we need to stop undervaluing that.”
The article also notes that while there aren’t a lot of transgender parts, transgender actors don’t get the chance to play cisgender parts.
If there’s a shortage of parts, as would be the case for transgendered actors, that complaint seems valid and reasonable.
But if there’s not a shortage of parts, insisting that any type of character (gay, straight, hearing-impaired, etc.) play those characters, it takes away from what acting is–literally the process of becoming someone you aren’t. It’s similar to writing. I’m currently writing a first draft in which one major character is lesbian and one is bisexual.
As a straight man, I don’t have the experience that those people would have, if they were real. Nor do I have the experience a woman or a person of color would have.
A few years ago, many works were held to the Bechdel test, involving women in fiction. To pass the test, there have to be at least two women, they must talk to each other, and they must talk about something other than a man. Although it’s not a perfect test (nor is it intended to be), it’s a guideline to try to get creators to dig a little deeper and do a better job representing people who are different. Bechdel variants sprung up about people of color, gays, and other minorities.
To be truthful, I set out to make the lesbian character that way, but the bi-sexual character more or less decided that for herself. I’m working to do a good job with these characters–to keep them from being two-dimensional stereotypes. We’ll see if I pull it off. (I’m also curious about my writing includes non-straight women characters, but not men.)
Ultimately, one of the purposes of art is to push the creator and consumer out of easy comfort zones. Sometimes that’s done in spectacular fashion (Brokeback Mountain). Sometimes it’s done in remarkably mundane ways, such as an early episode of Cheers that dealt with homosexuality.
But the key is, whether you’re gay, straight, transgender, or cis, is to create multi-dimensional characters that force you outside yourself.
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