HBO’s LGBT History: Television Period Dramas
Wednesday, February 10, 2016 at 3:30PM
Manuel is working his way through all the LGBT-themed HBO productions.
Last week we looked at the oh-so-boring if earnest doc The Case Against 8. This week we’re taking stock of three of HBO’s period dramas to see how the network has tackled LGBT characters in robes, frocks, and spurs.
When putting on shows (or films) set in the past, you always have to walk a fine line between keeping it “period” — you want to stay authentic — while also making a case for its existence today — you want it to resonate today. Mad Men is to me, the standard in this regard, ably walking that fine line; never shying away from the rampant sexism of the time, for example, but also never arching its eyebrow to audiences and smirking to itself saying “Can you believe this?” This is particularly tricky when it comes to LGBT issues and even more so when the shows are not about issues of sexuality. Do you push contemporary understandings of gays, lesbians and trans people and risk being called out for anachronisms, or do you simply feed into a narrative of heterosexism that states that gay desire was somehow always hidden and tragic and risk instead being called out for regressive ideas?
Of course, those need not be mutually exclusive. After all, it’s not like gay people didn’t exist until Stonewall, or that they lived no semblance of productive lives despite their sexuality (they can’t all have had unhappy endings!) but people rarely want to reframe their historical context when it comes to gays, lesbians and trans characters. Sure, having Romans talking in British English is perfectly understandable but somehow thinking in terms of so-called “modern” labels has creators and audiences balking at the historical inaccuracy of it all. (And yes, I was going to go into yet another fawning tangent on Carol but perhaps that's best saved for another day).
Deadwood, “Unauthorized Cinnamon” (July 23, 2006)
You’ll notice that the three period shows here represented skew heavily male, with homosocial bonds and all-male communities taking central stage whenever HBO looks back. (Actually, if you look closely at HBO’s output, you’ll notice that female-driven shows tend towards the comedic, somewhat implicitly inscribing very gendered ideas of what makes something a “cable drama”). This is no slight on Deadwood though its thundering critical acclaim was never enough to get me excited about this wild wild west drama. In “Unauthorized Cinnamon,” in between various meetings between the men of Deadwood, South Dakota, we get a rare glimpse of tenderness: tough frontierwoman Calamity Jane (played by underrated actress Robin Weigert), lets Joanie Stubbs (played by the also underrated Kim Dickens), who runs a brothel, give her a bath. There’s clear chemistry between the rugged Jane and the tender Joanie, with the former distressed about showing her breasts growing increasingly curious. Eventually she says she’ll keep her eyes close should Joanie want to kiss her, which she does. It’s a moment that had been seasons in the making with Joanie’s latent same-sex desire bubbling here and there but only really making itself known opposite hard-drinking Jane. Their storyline is an unusual example of bisexuality and masculine femininity, two things we’ve not encountered too often in our forays into close to 40 different movies and TV shows showing us that before Orange is the New Black we really were starved for a variety of queer female characters.
Rome, “These Being the Words of Marcus Tullius Cicero” (January 28, 2007)
Do you enjoy oppressively masculinist shows with casual homophobic subplots sprinkled with gratuitous male full frontal nudity? Have I got an episode for you! I knew Rome wasn’t quite the banner series HBO always hoped it could be, but boy was this 2007 episode tough to watch. There’s something to be said for historical accuracy (Romans weren’t exactly the paragons of civilization they saw themselves to be), but when an hour episode of your show features an effeminate male threatened by a man pissing right by his wine goblet, a subplot about sodomy (and alleged sexual assault) that gets avenged with castration and some more forced anal rape alongside a portrayal of a young and pretty scheming boy (the lovely Rafi Gavron) who takes it in the ass all the while plotting a murder, you have to look at the types of storytelling beats you’re pursuing. I mean, showing me James Purefoy’s ass will only appease so much. I have often championed the idea of not solely wanting LGBT representation to focus on positive potrayals of gays and lesbians, but it's shows like these which force GLAAD and other organizations like it to plead for a more evenhanded treatment of LGBT characters on television.
Boardwalk Empire, “Home” (October 31, 2010)
“Why you’ll have no trouble getting a man at all!” That the line is delivered with a delicious sense of warmth to a little girl perfectly encapsulates the gendered norms that the women in this Martin Scorsese series have to grapple with. Surprisingly, the Atlantic City based drama showed great interest in its characters’ sexualities: in “Home” which centers on Nucky (Steve Buscemi) exorcising his father’s influence, we get a brief scene of Angela Darmody (Aleksa Palladino) and Mary (Lisa Joyce) in bed. You see, while they are both married, the former to Michael Pitt’s Jimmy, the latter to a photographer, they have been having an affair for a while. Just as the brief scene in Deadwood, this moment of domestic intimacy is a welcome departure for a show that thrives in broader settings, fascinated as it is in the intricate allegiances that govern the illegal liquor business in the Jersey city.
Fun Awards Fact: All three of these HBO period dramas share wins in three Emmy categories that are particularly fond of period dramas:
Outstanding Hairstyling
Deadwood in 2005, Rome in 2006 & 2007, and Boardwalk Empire in 2013
Outstanding Cinematography
Deadwood in 2005, Rome in 2007, and Boardwalk Empire in 2011, 2012 & 2015
Outstanding Art Direction
Deadwood in 2005, Rome in 2006 & 2007, and Boardwalk Empire from 2011 to 2014, as well as in 2015 when the category (much like the Oscars did in 2012) changed its name to Outstanding Production Design.
Next Week: The Oscars are coming! The Oscars are coming! And so for the next two weeks HBO LGBT will be playing one of TFE’s favorite games: Oscars What If… where we’ll be trying to figure out what might have happened if some of these prestige “TV movies” had gotten the theatrical release they surely deserved. In the meantime, any fans of these shows care to share what other LGBT tidbits I might have missed?
Reader Comments (3)
I think of Deadwood as perhaps the best HBO drama of all time, it had the period setting, small moments between characters, and that incredible dialogue. Kim Dickens was indeed stellar in this subplot with Calamity Jane, and throughout the series.
I loved Rome but it was a bit too graphic at times. I bailed on Boardwalk Empire because of that season with Bobby Carnavale chewing the scenery and everything in sight.
Angela Darmody and her subsequent lover suffer one of the old school Hollywood LGBT fates (no spoilers here) in the following season of BE, however.
To be honest, I just kept watching Boardwalk Empire to admire the work of production design team.
Now that The Good Wife ends, I'll start Deadwood and Carnivàle.