Ever the vanguard of truly trashy television, the Fox network waded into hitherto unimaginably tasteless ground with a show that was to be called “Seriously, Dude, I’m Gay.”  

Bowing to pressure and a startling sense of decency, last week Fox cancelled the two-hour show — which was to be aired on June 7 — ostensibly for “creative reasons.”

The now cancelled reality show featured two heterosexual men who would compete for the $50,000 prize by convincing a “jury of their queers,” that they were gay. According to a press release that incensed the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamations (GLAAD), the two contestants were to plunge head-first into the “the gay lifestyle,” by moving into two separate apartments in West Hollywood and inhabiting some sort of gay space by living with gay roommates. The contestants would feign homosexuality by coming out to their closest friends, frequenting gay nightclubs, and going on a blind date with a man. Lest the men be unable to appear convincingly gay, promotional material for “Seriously, Dude, I’m Gay,” advertised that the men would also be allocated three “gay coaches.”  

The grand finale of the show was to be a judgment, pronounced by a “jury of their queers,” — according to the Fox press release — of which of the two straight men was actually gay, with the winner pocketing the $50,000 prize for his convincing gayness.

Fox was clearly developing its programming based on the financial and popular success of shows such as “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” which captivated three million viewers during the summer 2003 season. Metrosexuality has been welcomed into common parlance, and gay-themed shows, such as “Boy Meets Boy,” have enhanced the Bravo network’s ratings. For a brief and superficial moment, being gay is now hip.  

The popular success and drawing power of such gay-themed shows has probably raised some sort of awareness of the gay community. The important question, however, is whether these shows have normalized homosexuality, or whether these programs are instead an “exercise in systematic humiliation,” as GLAAD described the now cancelled “Seriously, Dude, I’m Gay.” It may be the case that far from blurring the dominant lens of hetero-normativity, such shows have made a fabulously packaged commodity of an identity at the cost of stifling any serious conversion or progress.    
  

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Mimi Hanaoka