Gays and Frankie

Hey Mom. I know when I asked if you could help with my class you recommended that I watch Grace and Frankie. As of 1 AM the night before this blog post was due, I have not yet watched it. I was intrigued by your comment, though. You stated that you wondered how many older men remained closeted until their seventies, or late life. I then read many posts and stories on exactly that. It has proven to be something I had not expected to find much on. Beyond that one man, in a story by the Huffington Post, states that he remained closeted for his adult life due to societal pressures. This man wrote about his coming out in a book called Finally Out, Letting Go of Living Straight. He was a successful psychiatrist with a large family: five grandchildren and a great grandchild. He came out at the age of 95. That’s a little older than the men in Grace and Frankie from my understanding.

Throughout the article Mr. Olsen discusses the social circumstances that faced men if they did come out. It is stated that in the time period Mr. Olsen and others were raised in that being gay was illegal. I recently wrote a paper about this and learned that in some areas it was illegal to be gay up until the late 80’s. You would have been a child around this time mom. Not too long ago. Do you have any memories or comments on how being gay in your adolescence was different on how it is now?

One of the statements made by multiple people about why they did not come out was on the role of church and community. They felt like the church and bible were explicit, stating that if you were gay you were a sinner that should be pushed to the groups exterior. This still holds true. I know that our church The United Methodist Church is currently struggling with this dilemma trying to decide if we, as a faith community, should include LGBTQ+ members and clergy. We have had many conversations on this, since the conference to hold these discussions meets in St. Louis this February. I believe we are both on the same page when looking at this issue as well. It is surprising to me, though, how this men refer to church and the communities rejection of them. They state that these institutions were overly important and not having their support greatly hurt their reasons to come out. I think that we both have the right idea in our church, for supporting these people and giving them a place to come, grow and be merry, should be fantastic for methodism.

So I think I fell into a bit of a rabbit hole. Looking at these stories and the men behind them was quite interesting. I guess I will have to look up the inspiration of your quote and this paper and watch Grace and Frankie to learn more about these phenomena.

Grace & Frankie: Netflix shows Hollywood evolving on representation

Firstly, bravo to Netflix for not creating another network show that centers around beautiful young women working as waitresses or successful men womanizing their way to even more success. This show does something that isn’t common in television, and that is have protagonists that we don’t necessarily see ourselves in. It has become old hat for shows to center around a mild anti-hero or an unassuming everyman who wanders into adventure, these characters are familiar and they skew young.  It is a rarity to see women in starring roles, even more rare to find older women, and rarer still to keep them from falling into the stereotype of gentile senior citizen. That isn’t a problem in this Netflix original because after just half an hour it becomes very apparent that Grace & Frankie aren’t exactly Dorothy & Rose from NBC’s The Golden Girls. Grace and Frankie swear (a lot), they take peyote, they work, they’re political, and they’re not just older women (Betty White is 62 during the first season of the Golden Girls, but her character is stated to be 55) but they are old women. Jane Fonda, who stars as Grace, is 80 years old and Lily Tomlin, who stars as Frankie, is 78. 

         But of course Grace & Frankie isn’t about the age of its namesakes, although age plays a not so insignificant role in the show. The premise of the show is Grace’s husband and Frankie’s husband have secretly been homosexual lovers for years and decide to finally leave their respective wives to be with one another. There was a time in our history when being gay was a punchline, it was slapstick and essentially the beginning and end of a joke. Then at some point we transitioned to a period where homosexuality was treated with a stoicism and seriousness that had previously been reserved for films about war, the apex of which I believe was Brokeback Mountain in 2005. This show straddles a reasonable medium, something Modern Family failed to do with their portrayal of a gay couple. Frankie & Grace’s husbands are gay, but that’s not their defining trait in the same way that age does not define Grace & Frankie.

         There’s a concept that has been floated about in sociological circles called “intersectionality”. Recently it’s been co-opted by -insert overzealous ideological movement- to mean any number of things. Intersectionality is partially defined by Oxford as “The interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender as they apply to a given individual or group.” So just for a moment, I’m going to make the point that with marginalized groups it’s important to have media representation but not if that portrayal is as a caricature. Hollywood, for all the liberal values it claims to espouse, has a penchant for promoting stereotypes that aren’t accurate to life and then pat themselves on the back for including groups traditionally left out of media. What is remarkable about Grace & Frankie is that its characters aren’t that remarkable, and while some are gay, female, latino, black, old, and so on, they’re just people. 

         But I digress, if I haven’t made it clear already, I’m thoroughly impressed at Netflix’s ability to create an entertaining program that incorporates age, gender, and sexuality without relying on those traits as crutches. With that being said, it is important for show runners, critics, and activists alike not to do back flips to try to pick apart how shows aren’t sufficiently progressive and therefore are tools of the patriarchy. For all the praise I’ve laid upon Grace & Frankie, there are still critics who pontificate about “whiteness” or “classism”. The editors of the website ma’yan have said the show is “troubling in its normative portrayal of wealth and whiteness”. That might very well be true, but surely just for a moment we can stop and appreciate art for what it is? Every show and movie doesn’t have to center around a working class family comprised of a biracial lesbian couple with a disabled adopted child from Costa Rica, which probably still wouldn’t satisfy some critics. America is a diverse place, rich people and white people exist, their stories are no less important than anyone else’s. An argument can be made that these stories are over represented, but it’s a mistake to think that representation is a zero sum game. We can tell more than one story, and we should.

            Nevertheless, I don’t know that Grace & Frankie will be the show that moves us towards a more open society or if television can even have that effect on us. I can say that Grace & Frankie says a lot about our aspirations for society, and shows the maturation of media as it relates to sensitive subjects like race, age, gender, and sexuality.

Two Halves of an Unusual Whole

Two Halves of an Unusual Whole

Dear Classmate,

For this blog post, I watched Grace and Frankie, I am not really sure what I expected but I really enjoyed it. I usually watch animated shows and romcoms but I decided to watch a live-action show in light of our recent chapter reading. I really enjoyed the way they tied two very different characters together as they went through the same obstacles. There was a constant compare and contrast that was really telling of the characters. It was very opposite but there was almost a subtlety to the differences. I thought it was interesting the way the audience was brought back and forth very smoothly and yet with very little interaction between the characters. It was challenging to connect to what they were experiencing as a whole but there were little bits and pieces that were very easy to relate to. I was surprised with the characters’ usage of profanity and drugs. I thought it was daring but realistic and a very important aspect to include. The show was a big mix-mash that was held together by emotions. There was a very large disconnect and yet there was a very clear connection if that makes sense. I really enjoyed seeing the different ways the women responded and it made me wonder which of the two I would more likely replicate. This particular blog is pretty challenging because I don’t want to dive into the plot. I think that Grace and Frankie, was really well done and the way the episode concluded really made me want to watch the next one. There was one scene that was really interesting and powerful to me. Grace was sitting at her bathroom vanity, removing her false eyelashes, her hair extension, and two objects that I didn’t even know what were. I don’t even know why I felt that scene was so important but I could feel it somehow. Like the equivalent of a tired soldier that has just come home and removed all his armor. I thought it was interesting how it felt like the characters’ were acting outside of their respective norms yet still within their characters’ personas. It must have been challenging for the actresses because of the line between abnormal for the characters’ and just unrealistic for the characters’. I feel like this show is geared for a female audience. It is difficult to think about when Netflix was producing this what audience did they have in mind. There is almost a young progressive millennial kind of feel to it but the characters’ are elderly women. It is a daring mix, considering the stereotype for the typical American senior citizen. Especially, considering politics in this day and age. Netflix has gotten pretty ballsy. It was kind of interesting it felt like the show was supposed to be comedic but with very serious undertones. I would highly recommend this show simply because it is so unique in content. This show is not typical in any way. I am very curious how the show will continue from where it stopped. Anywho, sorry I was a little late this week this was one of my more challenging posts.

Thanks,

happylittlepenguin

Grace and Frankie

This week’s selection from the vast list of Netflix original content was Grace and Frankie.

The creative introduction shows a large multi-tiered wedding cake, with two sets of wedding toppers. These figures provide a generic backstory, showing the two couples, Grace and Robert, and Frankie and Sol’s symmetry in their lives, getting married, having kids, and the progression of the soon to be revealed relationship between the two husbands, Robert and Sol. There is a lot movement between the figures as well as the movement of the camera spinning around cake to showcase the individual scenes. At the end of the introduction, the cake breaks apart potentially prefacing the ”collapsing” their lives are about to endure.  The wedding cake scene shows the surface differences between wives, one being very business like with a very formal personality (Grace) and the other being more of a calm free spirit and artist (Frankie). This helps implant the background of the characters and general story flow in your mind before the character development really starts.

The opening scene shows the couples meeting for dinner, dominated with high tension between Grace and Frankie. You can tell they aren’t friends but are cordial to one another because their husbands are friends and business partners. This one scene where they greet each other, the tension, body language and tone that they use with one another is exceptionally forced. At the dinner, the husbands announce they are gay, and have been in a relationship for twenty years and then the camera angles begin to build anxiety and drama before the characters start to react. They flip back and forth between all four characters very quickly, where you barely get a glimpse of their reaction before it changes to another character. This plays very heavily with your emotions as you are also feeling lost and confused with what is happening, as Frankie is having an asthma attack, and Grace is chucking food at Robert.

Another scene that is worth some discussion is when Grace and Robert return home and Grace is talking about their relationship, saying that she thought they were normal. She is sitting at a vanity in the bedroom, so it seems she is looking into the mirror and back at her husband to have this conversation. Upon deeper reflection, you can interpret it as she is talking to herself, trying to comprehend their situation and solidify her emotions about the relationship between her and her husband, rather than talking to her husband. Seemingly parallel to this, later in the show this scene is referenced again as Robert watches his wife in a reflection of his computer

screen. She is walking around his home office, noticing details she has never noticed in there before. This seems to signify the attitude of their relationship, her not noticing what he was doing with his life.

Robert and Grace have a weekly brunch with their daughters and their families. Grace asks that it not be cancelled, so they can have one last brunch together as a normal family. The scene starts as they are both seated in their dining room, in silence with all of the food on the table already. Anticipation builds from the silence as you hear the doors of the car open and shut outside. The daughters burst into the house and the anticipation turns into instant drama. They rush in yelling about the situation, making Robert and Grace, and frankly even yourself feel attacked. As they are sitting around the table discussing the situation, I noticed that everything on the table for brunch is a circle. I then went back to the initial dinner scene and saw that everything on the table during the dinner that they told their wives was also a circle. This could be merely a coincidence or tie into what may be the most memorable sentence in the entire episode was as Frankie was crying near the end, Grace pulled a tear off of Frankie’s face and said “Wow, there’s a whole world in here”.