Hi Honey, I'm Homo!

Brief but entertaining and informative look at how American television sitcoms have portrayed queer characters since the 1960s. Starting with Bewitched and ending with Modern Family, Baume illustrates how the gradual upward trend in queer characters' number and visibility mirrored history, and helped normalize and personalize the average American's experience of queerness.

I'm an Old, so I remember watching Bewitched as a young child. It never occurred to me that Samantha's need to hide her witch status from the neighbors could be queer coded. I also had no clue that Paul Lynde's outlandish behavior as Uncle Arthur meant anything beyond the fact that it made him a witty Hollywood Squares celebrity (look it up, kids).

Reading about the evolution of Marty Morrison on Barney Miller in the 1970s made me glad that the police sitcom was one of my favorite shows at the time (and yes, it looks different in the face of the “Abolish the Police” movement). The writers took a cliched mincing homosexual, a petty thief at that, and over the years turned him into a well-developed character with a business suit-wearing partner. As Baume notes, even though Marty was a minor recurring character, television viewers had a chance to see for themselves that gay people were not deviant predators. As public perception changed, television adjusted, which then fed into more pubic acceptance.

The book highlights the sitcom directors, producers and writers who pushed back against network suits who feared retaliation by conservative groups. And at the same time they faced criticism from the queer community for not moving far enough or fast enough (e.g., Modern Family's gay couple were not allowed to kiss each other in earlier seasons).

Baume's breezy writing style belies the seriousness of the topic. Writing this review in mid-2023, I worry that the latest backlash against LGBTQIA+ and trans persons will reverse the progress and send queer characters back into the shadows. They may only be sitcoms, but if we're headed back to shows with only white cis-het characters like Leave It to Beaver, we will lose an important avenue for queer visibility.

ARC received from Net Galley in exchange for objective review. Thanks to: Bookshire Cat's review for letting me know of this book's existence.