Amy Zimmerman

Left Out

In the Article “It Ain’t Easy Being Bisexual on TV” by Amy Zimmerman, Zimmerman does a good job getting the point across that there are too few bisexuals in the television industry. The few bisexuals on television are put into one of two clichés, a man’s fantasy or an experiment, and this story does a great job documenting this with evidence throughout the article. However this article seems outdated, with facts like, there have only been two shows in the recent years with bisexuals, and this seems like an unbelievable statistic, only two in all of television. In today’s society that statistic is changing, what this article leaves out is the point that the world of television is working to make changes. With time there will be more and more bisexuals in modern television and they will be

represented very well.

An example the author gives is movie Dodgeball which is a relatively older movie and at that time, the bisexual community was not as open as much to speaking their mind and demanding respect, so the fact that a comedy like this may show some sort of disrespect toward the bisexual is no surprise. The surprise is, is that the author would use such an outdated example and one that is not completely relevant. The reality is, even the LGBT characters are getting more and more roles in television today and not always as a fancy cliché for example the show Modern Family, the gay couple on the show are not portrayed as a very flamboyant couple they are portrayed as a normal couple. The author blames the world of television too much and maybe one degree to high, saying the writers and producers lack creativity. Today people are still fighting for a change in a lot of areas, areas like gender equality, and sexual orientation rights a lot of this new respect is coming for the LGBT community, who did not have respect before. The world around us is constantly changing and the television networks are now at this time in a learning

process. It’s not easy to just cast your first ever bisexual part in a show and do an amazing job of representing the bisexual community on your first try, it is going to take some time until the bisexual community is going to be portrayed as respectfully as they deserve. There are going to be a lot of shows that try to introduce this type of character and fit him or her into the mold of either, a man’s fantasy or a man or woman experimenting but eventually going back to heterosexual ways. That is all just part of the learning process and the author really lacks the ability to show that society is changing all around us and so are the major industries and that this change is going to take time. That is why this article is outdated and does not give the television industry any credit of trying to adapt bisexual people into films.
What the author does not seem to give us information about is the steps to get to a place where all people are represented fairly in the world of television, and how to make these changes. This article was very outdated and showed no appreciation for the change that is going on behind the scenes and how some television series are working to adapt to today’s world. So one day all people can be respected and represented fairly in the world of movies and television. Some things take time to change I know that one day all members of the LGBT community will be well represented in television.