What’s the Problem? Let Her Do Her Job

A big aftershock hit the entertainment world last week in the wake of Ellen DeGeneres’ decision to come out on her TV show, “Ellen”: Actress Anne Heche decided to come out publicly as DeGeneres’ lover.

In the week leading up to the opening of her new hit film, “Volcano,” there were rumblings that Heche was about to be unwillingly “outed,” which turned out to be untrue. Many of her agents and handlers advised her against any public announcement or display, envisioning the premature crash of a talented actress who they feared would never again be accepted in a heterosexual role.

Heche’s decision to come out has threatened not only the right-wingers who had a field day with the name “DeGeneres,” but some of the hippest liberals in Hollywood, who not only embrace but sometimes profit from screen renditions of various cross-sexual behaviors.

For these people, Heche flies in the face of their expectations and fantasies of lesbian behavior. It’s OK for a woman like DeGeneres or k.d. lang to come out. This kind of lesbian (epitomized by the character Laurie Metcalf played in “Internal Affairs”) is one of the guys, the kind of woman guys can look at girls with. For these women, coming out is often a major political statement, often a career vocation.

But when one of the “girls” comes out--not as a grand political statement, but because she happens to have fallen in love with another woman--it’s acceptable only if it’s for the vicarious pleasure of men.

What seems to disturb everyone is that Heche came out with DeGeneres--one of the “boys”--not that Heche had an affair with another woman. No one would have had a problem if Madonna and Sharon Stone met at the Vanity Fair Academy Awards party and started a torrid affair.

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Half the men in America would have gotten excited just imagining the two women in bed, just like they got off on Stone’s “performances” with the gorgeous femmes in “Basic Instinct.” They would have been equally interested in imagining Stone and Heche together.

But that’s the idea of lesbian “shows”--it’s lesbian sex for the purpose of turning men on. This culture has no problem with “lipstick lesbians” or the cavortings of cute twentysomethings whose same-sex explorations seem charming interludes between their crushes on guys.

But Heche, herself a beautiful twentysomething, has fallen in love with a lesbian whose choice to be with women is serious and committed. Guys seem to be upset because the bedroom door has been slammed in their face.

Men’s fantasies about lipstick lesbians are evident in the current movie “Chasing Amy,” about a cartoonist pursuing a “lesbian.” “Lesbian” because the character was a bit of a tramp who turned to women to regain her sexual power and self-esteem. Underneath it all, she’s really just looking for someone (read: a man) to love her in that special way.

Kevin Smith has made this all very funny and asks all the dumb questions about lesbians that guys really do ask. But his film is the ultimate male fantasy, since the heroine’s dalliances with other women are sexy “shows” for the viewer and she falls in love with the man/hero at the end.

This isn’t necessarily what happens in real life and that’s why Heche’s future in films is perceived to be at risk. But why should it be? Acting is acting, and often based on personal experience. Heche has had her share of heterosexual relationships. How does an alliance with a woman make her lose her ability to portray heterosexual love on screen?

Look at Heche’s movies: She brought credibility to the otherwise outlandish relationships with Christopher Walken and Joan Chen in “Wild Style”; she had chemistry with the psychopathic killer played by Alec Baldwin in “The Juror”; she even brought out a tender side of Tommy Lee Jones over rivers of lava in “Volcano.”

Studio executives are afraid that knowledge of Heche’s relationship with DeGeneres will make audiences reject her, but I think they should give audiences more credit. Certainly there was a lot of spin control in the case of actors like Rock Hudson, but awareness even back then about the sex lives of top stars only made those actors more intriguing.

If Hollywood skeptics stop assuming a problem and gay activists resist the urge to politicize the situation for their own purposes, I’m willing to bet that Heche will create such magic on screen with men that everyone will think her relationship with Ellen is a stretch.