The 44-Minute Coming-Out Party

Miss Garment Bag of 1997 has finally come out of the closet. Thank God. The hoopla attached to this episode in Ellen DeGeneres’ public and private life will either amuse, thrill or enrage you, depending on your sensibility.

The media attention devoted to this moment dazzles. After all, she isn’t Jonas Salk conquering polio. Nor is she William Faulkner illuminating the subtext of our lives. She isn’t even Lucille Ball, indisputably the greatest television comedienne of all time.

Therein lies the hook. She’s the girl next door. Of course, she’s talented, but her talent doesn’t make you feel wretchedly inferior. Quite the reverse. The more she displays her special gifts, the closer you feel to her. After all, she’s funny. Humor disarms.

In that respect, Ellen DeGeneres follows a tried-and-true Hollywood tradition where sexually ambiguous situations or characters are used for comic relief. “Tillie’s Punctured Romance,” the 1914 silent comedy starring Marie Dressler, Mabel Normand and Charlie Chaplin, has the two women used by Charlie dumping him and going off together. The ending is deliciously tantalizing: Are they or aren’t they?

Edward Everett Horton in the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movies wasn’t exactly straight, wasn’t exactly gay, but he was an amusing counterpoint to the heterosexually perplexed Fred. The greatest example of this technique is Billy Wilder’s “Some Like It Hot.”

Occasionally negative gay portraits would leach out of Hollywood, as in the 1962 film “Advise and Consent,” in which the gay male bar scene bore resemblance to a Dantean circle in hell. The most recent negative example in a major movie was the portrayal of King Edward’s swishy son in “Braveheart.” The king defenestrates his son’s lover for laughs.

The underlying assumption in these portrayals, whether positive or negative, is that heterosexuals lead the significant, important lives. Gay people, the bit players or comic relief, are superficial. Think of this as the dire straights phenomenon.

The straight character commands center stage whether it’s King Lear, Hedda Gabler or Rosalind. Now we’re asked to let a lesbian take center stage for a whopping 44 minutes. Believe it or not, that’s progress.

A lesbian took center stage once before. Well, OK, she wasn’t 100% true blue as a lesbian, but she was considering the issue. In 1986 ABC aired “My Two Loves,” produced by Alvin Cooperman and written by me. Mariette Hartley played a recent widow who falls in love with her boss, played by Lynn Redgrave. She was also in love with her deceased husband’s medical partner, played by Barry Newman. Bruce Salin, the ABC executive in charge of the show, surprised both Alvin and myself by not soft-pedaling the bond between women.

Alvin, never one to shy from convincing drama, had the director shoot the kiss scene as written in the script. Neither Redgrave nor Hartley died as a result of kissing each other. ABC, however, suffered an attack of the vapors. Out went the kiss scene despite a spirited defense by Alvin.

The good thing about this battle was that ABC and the censors were so focused on the physical contact between the women they forgot to pitch a fit over the ending. The more things change, the more they stay the same. ABC and Ellen herself have reassured us that there won’t be any kissing. That symbol of affection, lust, love remains largely sacrosanct and heterosexual.

The safe ending would have been for Mariette’s character to ride off into the sunset with the man. The realistic ending would have been for the lead to understand that her loss was too recent to make a decision that big. The shock was not that she could love a woman, the shock was that grief can’t be supplanted by a new love. She had to mourn her losses. We ended the show by having Mariette’s character retreat from both lovers, choosing to be alone until she was stronger.

This kind of ending is not favored in movies of the week, where everything is supposed to be resolved. If the main characters can’t do it for themselves, trot out the therapist, that answer to all woes.

Fortunately for Ellen DeGeneres, she stars in a sitcom, not a movie of the week. As long as the show lasts, she has the opportunity to develop the repercussions of accepting that she is not going to be elected president of the local PTA. In fact, she might not even be allowed near some of her friends’ children. It seems odd that a format as reductive as a sitcom can actually provide us with more depth of character than a movie of the week, but if properly done, it can.

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The victory for “Ellen” is that the progress of the character mirrors real life. The public knew her for herself before they ever knew her sexuality. They’ve already made the connection to Ellen DeGeneres.

If the show had presented the lead up front as the Good Gay Girl Scout, assuming it would have even made it onto ABC’s lineup, the public’s perception of Ellen would be quite different. The cruelty of prejudice is that it robs people of their individuality.

As I said, Ellen is the girl next door. That’s her salvation. Her coming out may be a jolt or a ripple, but we know her as an individual. We’ll deal with it.

So will she.

She’s already learned that the reward for conformity is that everybody likes you except yourself. I hope she likes herself. I like her. That’s two people in her corner.

And it’s her life. She will do with it as she pleases. I remember once when my mother was yet again despotically improving my lot, I said, “Mother, God gave this life to me, not to you.”

Therein lies the problem with the Christian right and its response to Ellen DeGeneres’ coming out. How dare she live her own life? Or you? Or me? God keeps emerging with opinions remarkably like their own. Not one of them seems to have read the passage in Matthew: “Judge not lest ye be judged.” When it comes to the Bible, Robertson, Falwell, et al practice selective reading.

Don’t worry about them, ABC. Don’t give them a second thought, Ellen DeGeneres. Don’t fret, dear reader.

Let’s throw the Neo-Christians in the Pacific Ocean. If they can walk on water, then we’ll believe them.

In the meantime, enjoy the show.

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* “Ellen” airs Wednesday from 9 to 10 p.m. on KABC Channel 7.