Why I Hate Abercrombie & Fitch: Essays On Race and Sexuality

6. Ellen’s Coming Out: Media and Public Hype

6 Ellen’s Coming Out Media and Public Hype (I have chosen here to preserve the perspective from which this essay was originally written on April 30, 1997, in Los Angeles on the night of the airing of Ellen’s coming-out episode.) I am quite predisposed toward skepticism. Perhaps a result of being an intellectual , or a black gay man, or a confirmed urbanite whose pose, in part, is not to be in the habit of letting much wow or impress. In fact, just about anything that receives as much public attention and produces as much hype as did tonight’s special episode of Ellen seems a prime candidate in my book for examination and interrogation. Whether we were caught up in the Ellen-induced frenzy or not, this phenomenon—and it was a phenomenon—undoubtedly has much to teach us about the state of the gay and lesbian community . West Hollywood was a scene tonight! I mean, everyone sat perched in front of television sets throughout the city with friends (or in some cases with complete strangers) to watch the airing of Ellen DeGeneres’s “coming out.” Bars all along Santa Monica Boulevard had special showings of the episode. Countless private parties were held in homes throughout the city. Even the neighborhood health club, the Sports Connection (now 24 Hour Fitness) in West Hollywood, rented large-screen televisions and chairs for the 149 event and opened its aerobics rooms and cafe to allow viewers to watch the show together. And certainly not to be outdone, the media was also out in full force to record the event they had created in the weeks and days leading up to it. Television and camera crews were out to gauge “the happening”— and the opinions and emotions of the gay and lesbian community—that everyone had been discussing, planning for, and waiting for weeks to see. They camped out in front of Little Frida’s, a local lesbian coffee house in West Hollywood (since closed), which was featured in the episode, and all along the boulevard. It all began for me a few weeks ago when a friend introduced me to a friend of his who, in turn, very kindly invited me to his “Ellen’s Coming Out” party. Later I heard buzz about Ellen’s coming out among my undergraduate students at UCLA. Finally, today, I ran into my neighbor who came out (pun not intended, unlike the show’s overly cute opening scene) of his apartment to pick some of our communal roses for his house. I asked what was the occasion. He told me that he was having a few people over to watch Ellen. It was then that I decided I needed to go to that party I had been invited to attend. I wanted to know what this event meant to people. I wanted a better sense of what was happening “out there.” And I wanted to see (with an invested audience) how the episode would deal with gay sexuality in what would have to be, as per the genre, a comedic and non-threatening way. So like a good Angeleno, I hopped into my sports utility vehicle and negotiated my way from my Los Feliz home through the urban quagmire that is Hollywood to the primary locus of gay sociality in LA, West Hollywood, my prior home of four years. After finding parking on the periphery of the more precise destination where the party was taking place, I walked several blocks on Santa Monica Boulevard, passing the hubbub at the Palms (the one real bona fide lesbian bar in town), passing the circus that was beginning to convene at the health club (with the lines to get in stretching down the block), and passing the crowd of people beginning to assemble at Little Frida’s as well (the other lesbian stronghold in town). With all of the excitement that was discernable in ELLEN’S COMING OUT 150 the air and on the faces of passers-by, one might have thought that scientists had discovered a cure for AIDS or that it was really, in the words of one enthusiastic lesbian who spoke on the evening news, “gay independence day.” I soon arrived at my destination where I was joined by a host of other gay men and one heterosexual couple—all friends of our host—to celebrate the occasion with champagne and...