Cucumber, banana and Perez Hilton...

It's not very often that I find myself feeling so disgusted at a programme that it will force me to turn it off, I am the Queen of trashy TV. However the word "trash" could in no way even come close to defining channel 4's new bid to be current and appealing to the modern viewers. The horrific series is compiled of three phallic named shows; banana, cucumber and tofu. Although I could only stomach the first two shows before vowing to never watch another second of this awful creation ever again. I found myself to be truly appalled at this medieval portrayal of gay men's lives.
 
For years the gay community have battled with the stigma that they are nothing more than sexual predators with uncontrollable and unlimited minds of sexual provocativeness. Of course we know this to not be the truth yet 'cucumber' opens with a suggestive montage of arousal resulting from every attractive young male that this man sees, all inside a bloody supermarket! It's not only exceptionally far fetched but it also does nothing to minimalize the stereotype that people have fought to forget for decades. I think the thing that I found so awful about this programme is that the main man involved has a very respectable job, yet in the first episode he completely disregards it in order to dance around getting ready to an awful kylie song, (see what I meant about stereotype)! This then results in a suicide, yes you read that correctly, an actual suicide of a colleague because he didn't answer his phone in time to solve the problem at hand. Channel four, what are you doing?
 

The disaster only continues in 'banana' where we see the life of a young gay male who has an accepting family that welcome him and love all aspects of him yet he chooses to lie about this to his peers and pretend that they have kicked him out and condemned him to hell. How's that for a role model performance? He then continues to basically have sex with anything and everything and that's about all his life exists off. He leaves work at the drop of a hat to meet a strange businessman for sex in a hotel room. This being a guy he has stalked on social media for months and fantasised about for even longer than that. The cliché is so strong you can literally smell it as it clouds your vision.
 
Just to put this obscurity of this show into further context I watched this ordeal shortly after seeing "Call the Midwife" which featured a story about a gay male living in post-war London and the kind of prejudice he faced. When his wife found out the tell tale signs that she believed she had missed were the fact that he always smelt nice and had clean clothes, whilst the other men were covered in dirt and grease and the fact that he liked the parlour to be clean. These characteristics being not far from the same details portrayed in channel 4's shows. Have we not progressed at all in our portrayal of human life? And to make matters worse the shows barely even have real speech so the characters have no voices at all for us to hear their true feelings and emotions to understand and empathise with.
 

This, I believe, is the reasoning behind why Michelle Visage found herself so frustrated with the actions of Perez Hilton in the Big brother house. She constantly referred to herself as a "voice" for the LGBT community, much to Perez' dismissal. I found this concept of being a "voice" very impacting. She believed in herself being a presence and a verbal support and when I reflect I believe this to be so much more powerful than actions, especially when trying to impact change. At one point in the series I found myself actually weeping for Michelle as I felt I too was part of her quest to bring a voice to the cause. As she wept in the diary room whilst Perez gyrated against the windows of the house in nothing more than underwear I finally understood what she had been trying to express all along. Actions don't always speak louder than words, everybody needs a voice.
 
 
 
We have the ability of our voice so that we can find the true meaning of it and find it's purpose. We are not objects so why do we need to be classified, stereotyped and labelled?


Love Liv x