Tinker Belles and Evil Queens: The Walt Disney Company From the Inside Out (33 page)

In another episode, when Ellen Morgan goes for a breast cancer exam, she makes friends with another woman in the doctor’s office, played by Janeane Garafolo. The chemistry between the two women, as they support each other through the period waiting for the test results, seems stronger than any attempted relationship that Ellen has forged with a male character.70

Part of the reason so many homosexuals understood Ellen Morgan as a lesbian character was that many of them understood actress Ellen DeGeneres as a lesbian. Word of her appearances with female partners at various lesbian dance clubs, coffee shops and restaurants around Los Angeles spread widely throughout the homosexual communities of southern California and many other parts of the country. One of the rumors spread among homosexuals reported that, when the series ended, DeGeneres had planned to “out” her character in the last three episodes. Some tellers even reported that such an idea had been written in as a clause in her contract for the series.71 DeGeneres’ standing in the community was such common knowledge that, by the early summer of 1996, many lesbians and gay men were sporting T-shirts that read “Oh Ellen, Just Come Out!”

Yet, even though this “open secret” was being worn on T-shirts in gay communities, much of the United States still read Ellen Morgan as just another in a long line of kooky sitcom single working girls who

“hadn’t found the right man yet.” After all, Mary Richards in
The Mary
Tyler Moore Show
was straight, wasn’t she (although Alex Doty has voiced suspicions)?72 Dawidoff recognized that “millions of nongay viewers appear not to have recognized what made Ellen so endearing and so funny, so angry and self-subverting.”73 In fact, even after the mainstream press began a flurry of reporting that “Ellen Morgan”

might be lesbian, an
Entertainment Weekly
poll found that 41 percent of

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the respondents who had watched the series still considered the character to be straight.74

For a period in the series’ production, it certainly seemed as if the producers were trying to stress heterosexuality. When the series first premiered on ABC as a “summer replacement,” the show (titled at the time
These Friends of Mine
) featured Holly Fulger as Ellen Morgan’s best female friend, who, like Ellen, sported short hair and a fashion style and personality that was not conventionally feminine.
TV Guide
found Fulger to be the most refreshing character in the series and lauded her in their pages as the one character who lifted the series out of its image as a “female
Seinfeld
” (referring to the ultra-popular NBC show about single thirty-something friends).75 Months later, when the series was picked up for the fall season and redubbed
Ellen,
the journal was dis-mayed to find that Fulger was gone, replaced by the more feminine Paige (Joely Fisher). No one seemed able to explain or analyze exactly why Fulger’s character (also named Holly) was eliminated, but a possible explanation might be found by examining the trend in story choices during the ensuing season. After substituting a more “girly” friend for a friend who seemed as potentially lesbian as Ellen herself was, Ellen Morgan jumped into dating a new man almost every week of the 1994–95 season. Just before the season began, DeGeneres co-hosted the Emmy Awards and was convinced to forsake her trademark pants suits and wear a formal dress—a fashion decision trumpeted in the entertainment press.76 During the hiatus after the 1994-95 season, DeGeneres starred in a feature film for Hollywood Pictures,
Mr. Wrong
(1996), a dark romantic comedy co-starring Bill Pullman as her groom-to-be. Although the film turns Pullman’s character into a stalker that DeGeneres’

character desperately tries to escape from, the opening of the film goes out of its way to show her desiring the conventional fairy-tale romance and wedding with the man of her dreams.

Possibly the quick failure of the film when it was released in early 1996 had its effect on the TV series, but the 1995–96 season felt noticeably different almost immediately. The previous season ended with a two-part episode in which it seemed that Ellen had finally found “the right guy”—but concluded with the guy flying off to Italy at the end of the second part. In contrast, this new season was noticeably bereft of romantic entanglements for Ellen Morgan. Rather, the show focused on strengthening her relationships with her friends and her parents. One of the new recurrent characters on the show was Peter (Patrick Bristow).

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Introduced in one episode of the 1994–95 season, Peter reappeared several times the next season. An overly enthusiastic high-voiced thin man, the show never specifically called him gay, yet his new male “friend,”

Barrett (Jack Plotnick), was also introduced during the season. Some in the popular press wrote that the series seemed to be adrift during this season, lacking focus and cohesion, and pointed to a slight slip in the ratings as evidence that audiences were no longer sure “what the show was about.”77 Supposedly, one executive remarked that Ellen Morgan should get a puppy as a solution to this lack of focus. While finding that idea preposterous, DeGeneres and the show’s producers began discussing an idea that would give the show a definite focus that they humorously labeled as “The Puppy Episode”—and it did not involve a return to heterosexual dating. Instead, it proposed turning the lesbian subtext into the dominant mode of reading the series: rather than proposing a typical “lesbian episode” that would contain and dispel the aura of Ellen Morgan’s lesbian tendencies, they began discussing having Ellen Morgan realize that she
is
lesbian.

TV Guide
’s Sept. 13, 1996 issue previewed the upcoming fall season, announcing almost as an afterthought that talks were going on as to whether or not to have Ellen Morgan be lesbian.78 Without warning (and according to
TV Guide
’s later articles, without understanding the importance of what they had just written), the journal exposed the subtextual reading of the series to the entire nation and indicated that this position may be the “correct” way of watching the show. A geyser of concern, outrage and celebration poured forth from all over the country for the next seven months, as writers and speakers and poll takers weighed in with their views on the possible presentation of the first openly homosexual lead character on American television. Fundamentalist Donald Wildmon of the American Family Association was among the first to call for a boycott of
Ellen
’s sponsors and of Disney itself. Typical in his use of understatement, Reverend Fred Phelps announced, “It’s a sign we’re on the cusp of doom, of Sodom and Gomorrah.”79 Pat Robertson would eventually refer to Ellen DeGeneres as “Ellen DeGenerate.”

Although
TV Guide
reported only that such an idea was being discussed, and that nothing had been supposedly decided (a view that the journal maintained until March 1997), from the moment the new season started, “outing” Ellen Morgan seemed a
fait accompli.
Throughout the season, jokes kept appearing that seemed to be laying the groundwork

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for the ultimate revelation. Peter and Ellen attend a consciousness-raising seminar in one episode and, as one of the exercises, everyone takes turns looking in a mirror and being honest with one’s self. Ellen finishes her turn, but continually asks to return to the mirror while hearing Peter’s turn, wanting to add what Peter is saying to
her
speech. Peter finally finishes his turn by stating clearly that he is gay and happy with it and then pointedly asks Ellen if she wants the mirror again, to her mortification. A joke such as this in any other series would isolate and dispel any potential “homosexual connotations.” (Imagine if this had been a joke in a
Murphy Brown
episode, for example.) Yet, in this instance, the joke only added further credence to the “lesbian rumors,”

evidenced by the raucous reaction of the studio audience to this moment in the episode. In fact, episodes started making jokes specifically about the brouhaha that the rumors had caused across the country. In one episode’s closing credits, Ellen Morgan actually asks her friends if they think the rumors are true about Ellen DeGeneres, with the live audience howling.

Even more amazingly, the mainstream press began pointing out to straight viewers the “inside jokes” within the series, in effect teaching them how to read
Ellen
from a “lesbian sensibility.” After revealing the backstage negotiations,
TV Guide
worked to constantly alert viewers to a subtext that wasn’t so subtextual anymore. For example:

The October 2 episode . . . opens with Morgan standing behind a closet door in her new house. She steps out of the closet and says, “Yeah, there’s plenty of room, but it’s not very comfortable.” Later in the episode, when her parents announce their divorce, a distraught Morgan says, “Put yourself in my place. How do you think I feel? What if I said something shocking to you. Like my whole life has been a lie and I’m really . . . left-handed.”80

By the spring,
TV Guide
’s explanations of these allusions had become so regular that they were turned into a weekly feature titled “
Ellen
Watch”!
TV Guide
was not the only one alerting less-adept viewers to the “clues.” Howard Rosenberg in the
Los Angeles Times
pointed out that in the season’s opening episode, “there were some . . . hints, including a joke about Ellen wearing boxer shorts (reportedly the underwear of choice for all lesbians) and a gag that seemed to imply that she would never have a conventional family.”81
Entertainment Tonight
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also described the season premiere as being “peppered with subtle-as-a-sledgehammer jokes about her sexuality,” such as when Ellen sings “I Feel Pretty” from
West Side Story
in the opening scene, but is startled before saying the word “gay”: “I feel witty and pretty and . . .

hey!”82

The mass media worked overtime to stress that the rumors were that “Ellen Morgan” might be lesbian, attempting to distinguish the character’s sexual orientation from the actress portraying her, and initially DeGeneres refused to confirm or refute any of the rumors about her or her character. On a number of talk shows, DeGeneres made jokes about Ellen Morgan’s being revealed to be “Lebanese” or that a new male character named “Les Bian” was being introduced. It was not until

“The Puppy Episode” had finally been approved by Disney and filmed that DeGeneres finally admitted to a mass audience that she herself was lesbian (in TV interviews with Diane Sawyer on ABC’s
PrimeTime Live
and with Oprah Winfrey on her talk show, as well as an interview for
Time
). These later interviews link DeGeneres’ struggle with her own identity to that of the character she played. Using an
auteur
viewpoint,
Time
reported that it was DeGeneres’ desire to stop Ellen Morgan’s dating merry-go-round in the third season, claiming that she “wasn’t interested in doing a show that focused on relationships.”83 She also declared, “This has been the most freeing experience because people can’t hurt me anymore. I don’t have to worry about somebody saying something about me, or a reporter trying to find out information.”84 Consequently, the decision to “out” Ellen Morgan was deeply tied to Ellen DeGeneres’ growing desire to live an open life herself.

In March of 1997, the press reported that all signals were go, and that Ellen Morgan would declare herself as a lesbian on an hour-long episode to be aired on April 30th, after meeting an open lesbian played by Laura Dern and recognizing her attraction to the woman. Although bomb-sniffing dogs had to inspect the soundstages where the episode was filmed, and some advertisers decided to pull out of sponsoring the show, the episode encountered little resistance.85 In fact, the episode itself pulled off its biggest joke by responding to worries that exposure to a lesbian lifestyle would somehow corrupt the population. At the end of the episode, after Ellen has come out, she is introduced to singer Melissa Etheridge by Laura Dern’s character. Etheridge has Ellen sign a number of forms before presenting Dern with a toaster oven for “converting” yet another woman.

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Even though a
TV Guide
poll reported that over half of those questioned announced they would not watch the episode, and the ABC af-filiate in Birmingham, Alabama refused to air the episode, 30.6 million people tuned in on April 30th—more than double the average audience for the series during the 1996–97 season—and easily ranking first in the Nielsen ratings for the week. In the last two episodes of the season, as Ellen came out to her parents and to her boss, ratings went down from this noticeable spike, but viewership remained higher than it had been before the coming out, giving an encouraging sign to DeGeneres, the ABC network and Touchstone Television. Of course, by this point, Touchstone Television and ABC were connected not just through their interest in
Ellen.
In 1996, Disney announced its acquisition of the American Broadcasting Company from Cap Cities, thus making Disney doubly involved in delineating Ellen Morgan’s sexual orientation. The massive press coverage was consistently intrigued that the Walt Disney Company would be tied to the development of the first openly gay lead character on an American television series. Although Disney executives refused to OK the “outing” of Ellen until they saw a finished script, there is no indication that Disney created any road blocks once the show’s creative staff decided to pursue the issue, allowing both Ellen DeGeneres and “Ellen Morgan” to step out of the shadows of “subtextual readings” and into the bright spotlight of denotation.

CONCLUSION: MANIFEST REPRESENTATION

AND SUBVERSIVE POTENTIAL

As
Ellen
and the various other texts made since the late 1980s ably show, the “gay sensibility” of Disney’s product no longer lies submerged and hidden from mainstream understanding. Whether due to the increased visibility of lesbians and gay men in American society in general or the larger presences of openly gay and lesbian employees working for Disney, film and television critics have noted more and more the homosexual spectator position in their reviews. As a consequence, the “typical”