celebrity gossip, academic style

(Note: The following post is another ‘co-production’ with my friend Alaina Smith,with whom I have debated the subject of many a blind item.)

“If every closeted actor in Hollywood came out, now, that would be something…
since I can count all the straight leading men on one hand.”
-Commentor BugMeNot on Deadline Hollywood Daily

Gay rumors in Hollywood are as old as the proverbial hills - from Cary Grant’s roommate to John Travolta’s apparent disregard for the conventions of the man hug. Any given week, Gawker’s blind item roundup includes at least one item about a closeted gay actor, and many of Lainey Gossip’s blind items address gay rumors (check out Cuba and Chocolate, Trailer Visits, and Two Boys in the City. And then there’s the one about the Flying Star.)

In light of this recent article in in the LA Weekly, and Nikke Finke’s response, we thought we’d take another look at gay rumors in Hollywood, some notable comings-out, and ask the questions: Do the rumors really matter? Is coming out career suicide? Or is America finally ready for its girls-next-door, action heroes, and/or certain well-known Scientologists to come out of the closet? (Hint: the lawyers don’t think so.)

Before we begin, we might take a step back and consider how rumor plays into the formation of star image. A few years back, I (Annie) published a piece in Jump Cut on Perez Hilton and celebrity gossip blogging. In addition to exploring the role of gossip blogging in the “new” game of star production, I considered how Hilton’s dissemination of rumor (especially concerning homosexuality) functioned: does speculating something about a star have the same weight as asserting it? Put differently, how do certain rumors potentially alter what that star signifies or “means”? A star may not, in fact, be gay - but how does hinting at homosexuality damage (or elevate) his/her image?

Cruise’s “accuser” Kyle Bradford

If gossip and rumors weren’t powerful, they wouldn’t be prosecutable. As multiple defamation and libel suits have claimed, associating someone’s “good name” with “bad behavior” may damage his/her potential as an earner. This argument was most forcefully articulated in Tom Cruise’s 2001 defamation suit against Chad Taylor, aka Kyle Bradford, who sold his story of a homosexual encounter with Cruise to a Spanish tabloid. Cruise’s lawyers claimed the following:

“Bradford’s defamatory remarks are of the kind calculated to cause Cruise harm in his profession and his ability to earn [...] Losing the respect and enthusiasm of a substantial segment of the movie-going public would cause Cruise very substantial sums. While the plaintiff believes in the right of others to follow their own sexual preference, vast numbers of public throughout the world do not share that view and believing that he had a homosexual affair and did so during his marriage, they will be less inclined to patronize Cruise’s films…” (Complaint is available in full at The Smoking Gun.)

Cruise and his lawyers thus construct rumor - and rumor of homosexuality in particular - as economically damaging. Cruise sued Bradford not only because Bradford’s story, according to Cruise, was not true - but also because even the implication that it might be true could damage Cruise’s career.

Perez Hilton and others have attacked this standpoint, arguing that it represents an antiquated and anachronistic understanding of society and its growing tolerance of homosexuality. Indeed, some celebrities are arguably more famous and successful after they come out of the closet than before: Ellen DeGeneres, Neil Patrick Harris. Additionally, some celebrities seem to be unaffected by admission or rumors of homosexuality - see the examples of Cynthia Nixon and Jake Gyllenhall.

Cynthia Nixon, most famous for her role as Miranda Hobbes on Sex and the City, was married to a man and raising children during the early part of the series (while her character, a ball-busting lawyer with short hair and tailored suits, was commonly mistaken for a lesbian).

Miranda before Nixon entered a homosexual relationship … and after

Nixon began a relationship with a woman in 2003, which became public in 2004, shortly before the end of the series. Arguably, Nixon’s personal relationship has had no major impact on her career; Sex and the City: The Movie (2008) had the biggest recorded opening for a film starring all women, and Nixon has played both homosexual and heterosexual characters since the series ended. Nixon has said she felt more stigma revealing her battle with breast cancer than her homosexual relationship.

Jake Gyllenhaal made his name in the early part of this decade play brooding, sensitive (heterosexual) types in films like October Sky, Donnie Darko, The Good Girl, Moonlight Mile and Proof. In 2005, he won popular and critical acclaim playing a gay cowboy in Brokeback Mountain. He has been in serious relationships with actresses Kirsten Dunst and, recently, Reese Witherspoon.

At the same time, he is most famous for a role where he played a gay man, and he is strongly associated with E! Online columnist Ted Casablanca’s four-year-old blind item Toothy Tile, about a young, up-and-coming actor who pretends to be straight by maintaining high-profile relationships with women, but is secretly dating a man/men. There are entire blogs devoted to guessing the subject of this blind item - and Gyllenhaal is often the only, repeated guess. Yet, his star is also undoubtedly on the rise - he is up next in the eagerly-anticipated Brothers and the big-budget Prince of Persia, and appears weekly in tabloids with Reese Witherspoon and her children.

So why don’t revelations like Nixon’s, and the rumors like those surrounding Gyllenhaal, matter? Let’s look again at the underlying assumption of Cruise’s lawyers’ claims, namely, that insinuating gayness = defamation. That such an argument stood in court - and would most likely continue to stand - speaks loudly as to how far we haven’t come in terms of tolerance and acceptance. But it also implies that what’s really scandalous about ‘maybe gaybe’ rumors is not only the implication of homosexual sexual activity, but the revelation that a star has duped his/her public.

There’s an interesting tension here: the stars most fearful of gay rumors or scared to come out may be those with traditional (read: hetero) sex-symbol status, like male action stars or women who star in romantic comedies. This tension seems to have everything to do with the implicit contract negotiated between stars and fans, e.g., “I am what my image says I am.” When that contract is based on sex appeal (rather than talent or identification) and it is broken — usually through some sort of scandal, generally sexual — fans rebel, renege their fandom, or become generally disillusioned.

What’s at stake with ‘maybe gaybe,’ then, is not only the suggestion of “non-traditional” sexuality, but whether a star has duped or defrauded his/her public. Thus the reluctance of the anonymous celebrities and stars cited in the LA Weekly article: they’re scared not only of the massive task of renegotiating their images (even with the help of coming-out facilitator Howard Bragment), but of how such a renegotiation would compromise their relation to fans.

Neil Patrick Harris hosts the Emmys, to popular acclaim

But let’s be clear: more than anything, these stars are scared. Scared of losing roles, of the new labor that would be required to establish themselves (and their lifestyles) as the type of ‘gay’ that’s palatable (think Ellen), of losing their livelihood altogether. And that fear is justified, as much as we’d like to believe it isn’t. For Neil Patrick Harris and Ellen are in many ways the exceptions that prove the rule: Americans have not yet demonstrated their willingness to financially endorse a homosexual actor in non-niche, non-television roles.

But who knows? Maybe a star could announce his or her homosexuality and continue to play diverse, entertaining, and profitable roles. Fact is, we don’t know how the public would react if one of our leading heartthrobs announced that he was gay - whether that be Cruise, Travolta, Will Smith, or Zac Efron - because no one ever has.

American Idol winner Adam Lambert’s new album cover

In other words, it’s one thing for a niche star like T.R. Knight or Neil Patrick Harris, or a new star like Adam Lambert, to announce or confirm his homosexuality. It’s quite another, as underlined above, to admit to inveigling your audience for years. Thus, it’s this fear of the unknown - of what could happen when that contract between star and fan is so brashly broken - that reinforces and sustains the culture of silence and secrecy in Hollywood.

So, does ‘maybe gaybe’ matter? Gossip theorists believe that talking about the lifestyles and personal choices of stars and celebrities is a way of talking through our own identities - in other words, we displace issues and anxieties that have bearing on our day-to-day lives onto the lives of those in the magazines, making it easier (and less threatening) to work through sensitive issues. While rumors of homosexuality are by no means novel, they have certainly become more salient, and, to a certain extent, more audible, as the internet facilitates both the proliferation of blind items and potentially incriminating photos and the speculation they generate.

Maybe we talk more now about ‘maybe gaybe’ stars because we talk more about gayness and its place in society in general. And while it’s still somewhat dismaying that public opinion and public action don’t always correlate - as evidenced in Tuesday’s election - we may nevertheless think of how stars, and rumors about them, open up space for discourse and potential, if plodding, social change.