It was “jaw-dropping” according to the Huffington Post, or “eyebrow-raising, to say the least.”
“Inflammatory” wrote Queerty: “the dish just gets dishier and the shade gets shadier.” Well, like any homosexual, I couldn’t wait to read all the acidic and graphic things that Noah Galvin said in his now-sort-of-infamous-for-a-day-on-gay-Twitter interview with Vulture. What could he have said that would shock me so? Had he outed a closeted celebrity? Revealed the penis size of a Hollywood actor he had slept with? Discussed the politics and mechanics of fisting? I couldn’t wait to find out.
Talk about a disappointment. In case you missed it, the “controversy” essentially boiled down to the following opinions expressed by Galvin: that being famous gets you laid; that there might have been better gay actors than the straight ones who were cast on Modern Family; that Bryan Singer is a creep; and that being closeted makes you a coward (although he used a colorful and misogynistic word to express this particular point).
This is what passes for a “controversial” story in today’s gay media? Girl, please. Whatever happened to Divine eating shit in Pink Flamingos? To Robert Mapplethorpe sticking bullwhips up his butt? To Liberace hiring a plastic surgeon to make his young lover look more like him? I’m not advocating for any of these practices (except the bullwhip up the butt--think of the space you’d save if every household appliance you had doubled as a dildo!). But in the context of our storied and deliciously subversive gay history, a 22-year-old gay man being a little bit bitchy should not a scandal make.
Unfortunately, in the context of our current gay media Noah Galvin’s comments may be the most interesting thing that someone has said in an interview since Dusty Springfield said she was “bent” in the Evening Standard in 1970. Peruse any interview with a gay celebrity and you’re likely to hit on a few major plot points, namely “I met the love of my life! We were married in a small ceremony at his dad’s house on Martha’s Vineyard! Everyone was so nice on the set of ‘Flustered Coworkers’! I’m so honored to be the celebrity ambassador for a charity that raises awareness of the blandest elements of gay rights.” Sorry, I nearly nodded off just from writing that.
So, sure, in the context of our sanitized coverage of gay celebrity, I guess someone actually speaking the way gay men speak to each other is newsworthy. But instead of collective pearl-clutching, shouldn’t we be celebrating the fact that the Vulture interview is actually an honest portrayal of how many of us converse? And in light of that, shouldn’t this wake us to the fact that when gay media outlets avoid publishing authentic representations of how we interact with each other, they’re in effect silencing us and erasing our culture and history? Shouldn’t we at the very least be praising Noah Galvin for talking to the media the way we talk to each other at brunch?
Well, maybe not. My friend Daniel Franzese, a gay actor who is a de-facto expert on the intricacies of being out of the closet in Hollywood saw things a bit differently. “The biggest problem was the forum he was using,” Franzese said. “If he said the same stuff on a mic at the Improv he would be applauded. But honest opinion shouldn't be included in an article promoting a sitcom. Amy Poehler once said to me about doing interviews, ‘No one cares what your favorite color is just tell jokes.’”
Well, fair enough. Lord knows I’m not an expert in the art of promoting a sitcom, so maybe I’m just a gay rube who doesn’t understand how to properly play the game in Hollywood. But even if Galvin’s interview was in poor taste within the culture of television promotion, I’m still disappointed that I’m being told by the media to be shocked by Galvin’s comments when they were so mundane in the context my actual lived gay culture.
There is hope here. Both the prissy responses and the forced, generic “apology” that Galvin was presumably coerced into regurgitating leave no mistake at how boring most gay media coverage really is. And history teaches us that when gay media becomes boring, something wonderful will come along that actually speaks to our culture in a funny and honest way (see: Diseased Pariah News, Straight To Hell and BUTT Magazine).
Maybe Galvin’s interview and the reactions it inspired are a bellwether for an impending paradigm shift in text media aimed towards gay men that will lead to stories and articles that actually speak to our values, accurately mimic our speech patterns, and honor our grand tradition of simultaneously coming for each other and supporting one another. Now that’s something that would really be--to borrow a phrase from this website’s reaction to the Galvin interview-- “eyebrow-raising, to say the least.”