Jamal Lyon: The Artist

[SailingBy]

I just now registered here to make this comment, because to me there'd been something off about the portrayal of Jamal, and it took me weeks to figure out what it was. Note: I am saying this as a white male from Europe, so I first thought maybe it was just due to cultural misunderstandings - the whole notion of someone in the entertainment industry being in the closet is a bit weird where I live, and has been for a long time. But then it dawned on me, or at least I think it did, and I was wondering if other people thought the same thing.

 

It struck me when I read that Lee Daniels has put a lot of his own story into Jamal, which is of course perfectly normal for any writer creating a character. But Daniels is 55. Jamal is supposed to be in his mid-twenties or so, isn't he? That would mean he was born c. 1990. His beard marriage would therefore have happened c. 2010. And that timeline is where it all goes wrong for me. I cannot imagine someone of that age group behaving the way Jamal does, at the time he's supposed to be doing it. Not to mention that the whole showbiz beard relationship/marriage thing is long gone as far as I can tell, and is a relic of an era when most of the public was naive enough to think that if a man is married or has ever been married to a woman, he can't be gay. Who believes that anymore?

 

And then there is the problem of Lucious' general homophobia. Jamal warns Obvious Future Boyfriend that Lucious better not find out he's gay if he wants to keep his job. Really? This man built a music empire over the past several decades, while shunning gay people completely? It doesn't add up to me. And his sons didn't grow up in some kind of southern, poor, highly religious environment (where I'm sure nasty homophobic attitudes are still very much around), for most of their lives their dad was already famous and surrounded by showbiz kind of people, who aren't generally homophobic and quite a few of whom are non-straight.

 

So basically, I think Daniels is projecting attitudes and experiences from his own background and era on someone who is 30 years too young for them, AND in the wrong social environment. 30 years is not just one generation of difference, the shift in attitudes towards homosexuality has been so vast and rapid that it can count as several. Yet at the same time, Jamal is in other ways portrayed as a perfectly normal 20-something urban gay guy: out to anyone who knows him personally including all his family, none of whom (except Lucious, obviously) have any problem with it or even think it's remarkable, openly living with his boyfriend, etc. To me, there is just something that jars about that juxtaposition.

 

I'm also glad that other people noticed the problem with Jamal's/Jussie Smollett's equality tattoo. It seems to me that would be just about the last tattoo someone still trying to pass as straight in public would get. But I was told years ago, I'm not sure if it's true, that covering up tattoos on an actor that are clearly inappropriate for the character is nearly impossible. I'd assumed makeup people could just, sort of, paint them over with whatever the stuff that makeup people use is called, but someone told me that's pretty much impossible to do, the large patches of makeup required always clearly show on camera. So trying to keep the tattoo out of shot as much as possible and hoping nobody notices is the better option.

 

And one last general comment, which applies to a lot of similar discussions I've seen over the years: what has Jussie Smollett ever said or done publicly that would lead anyone to the assumption that he is straight?

[Scarlett45]

I just now registered here to make this comment, because to me there'd been something off about the portrayal of Jamal, and it took me weeks to figure out what it was. Note: I am saying this as a white male from Europe, so I first thought maybe it was just due to cultural misunderstandings - the whole notion of someone in the entertainment industry being in the closet is a bit weird where I live, and has been for a long time. But then it dawned on me, or at least I think it did, and I was wondering if other people thought the same thing.

It struck me when I read that Lee Daniels has put a lot of his own story into Jamal, which is of course perfectly normal for any writer creating a character. But Daniels is 55. Jamal is supposed to be in his mid-twenties or so, isn't he? That would mean he was born c. 1990. His beard marriage would therefore have happened c. 2010. And that timeline is where it all goes wrong for me. I cannot imagine someone of that age group behaving the way Jamal does, at the time he's supposed to be doing it. Not to mention that the whole showbiz beard relationship/marriage thing is long gone as far as I can tell, and is a relic of an era when most of the public was naive enough to think that if a man is married or has ever been married to a woman, he can't be gay. Who believes that anymore?

And then there is the problem of Lucious' general homophobia. Jamal warns Obvious Future Boyfriend that Lucious better not find out he's gay if he wants to keep his job. Really? This man built a music empire over the past several decades, while shunning gay people completely? It doesn't add up to me. And his sons didn't grow up in some kind of southern, poor, highly religious environment (where I'm sure nasty homophobic attitudes are still very much around), for most of their lives their dad was already famous and surrounded by showbiz kind of people, who aren't generally homophobic and quite a few of whom are non-straight.

So basically, I think Daniels is projecting attitudes and experiences from his own background and era on someone who is 30 years too young for them, AND in the wrong social environment. 30 years is not just one generation of difference, the shift in attitudes towards homosexuality has been so vast and rapid that it can count as several. Yet at the same time, Jamal is in other ways portrayed as a perfectly normal 20-something urban gay guy: out to anyone who knows him personally including all his family, none of whom (except Lucious, obviously) have any problem with it or even think it's remarkable, openly living with his boyfriend, etc. To me, there is just something that jars about that juxtaposition.

I'm also glad that other people noticed the problem with Jamal's/Jussie Smollett's equality tattoo. It seems to me that would be just about the last tattoo someone still trying to pass as straight in public would get. But I was told years ago, I'm not sure if it's true, that covering up tattoos on an actor that are clearly inappropriate for the character is nearly impossible. I'd assumed makeup people could just, sort of, paint them over with whatever the stuff that makeup people use is called, but someone told me that's pretty much impossible to do, the large patches of makeup required always clearly show on camera. So trying to keep the tattoo out of shot as much as possible and hoping nobody notices is the better option.

And one last general comment, which applies to a lot of similar discussions I've seen over the years: what has Jussie Smollett ever said or done publicly that would lead anyone to the assumption that he is straight?

Welcome to the discussion. Yes Jamal is in the entertainment industry, but he's a black male in the music industry in NYC, it's a different social milieu than theatre industry in Europe for example. Jamal isn't "in the closet", his family, friends etc know he's gay, know about his relationships with guys, but again that's different than Perez Hilton knowing the middle son of Lucious Lyon is gay.

The sham marriage- Jamal was 18, more likely than not he and this girl were friends, may have even dated, and Jamal may have wanted to be "sure" that he was exclusively attracted to men, or see if he could enjoy being with a woman, combined that from some pressure from his Dad he married her.

I don't think Lucious would've fired the film maker for being gay. He wouldn't have liked it and made some smart ass remark, and may not have hired him again. Also that film maker was attractive and Jamal's age- he wouldn't want them to possibly go out(which they did).

I'm a black female living in Chicago Il, who has a few gay/lesbian friends- Jamal's story isn't that odd to me. Someone may be gay in their personal life but no one at work knows.....

Edited March 1, 2015 by Scarlett45

[SailingBy]

Jamal isn't "in the closet", his family, friends etc know he's gay, know about his relationships with guys, but again that's different than Perez Hilton knowing the middle son of Lucious Lyon is gay.

 

But it isn't just his family and friends he's out to, clearly other people at Empire know too (he's seen joking with Becky in a way that clearly shows that), and his boyfriend is there when he's performing, right from episode 1. Even if he hasn't gone out of his way to tell many other people, it's hard to imagine that in a company that's so focused on its founder and his family, gossip about that wouldn't spread, and quickly also reach outsiders with an interest in such things, given how hugely famous Lyon is supposed to be.

 

BTW, there's something about the huge media storm that supposedly greets Jamal's coming out that is very unlikely to happen that way: the TV coverage explicitly says that he came out as gay. Unless he said something more than just singing the "a man love a man" lyrics, they would not use that word. The media are still scared of using it unless someone has actually used it publicly themselves. A recent real-world example: when Tom Daley (who may not be as famous in the US, but is at an at least Lucious Lyon-level of celebrity in the UK, and more than famous enough to garner wordwide media attention) came out in December 2013 (as an indicator of fame level: this news made the front page of every British national newspaper, except for the Financial Times), he did so without using the word. He just said he'd fallen in love with a guy, and then dropped in the throwaway remark "of course, I still fancy girls". It caused no end of confusion in the media, who he had cunningly deprived of being able to use either of the labels gay or bisexual. Hundreds of journalists had to struggle with the task of reporting that someone had just stated very publicly, on YouTube, that he is in a relationship with a man, but without using the word gay about him directly. When some months later, he was misreported as having said on TV he's gay, the media were so happy that they could from now on stick a label on him that it seems nobody bothered to actually look at the British TV show he supposedly said it on. The word never crossed his lips, it was the program's host (not even a real host, but a comedy character) using it. What made all this terminological hairsplitting even funnier was that his boyfriend did describe himself as gay publicly (I don't think you can get much more public than doing so in an Oscar acceptance speech). That it took all of a few hours for one American and one British publication to each manage to identify who this initially unnamed boyfriend was, also goes to show how difficult it is to keep such things really secret if you have any kind of fame, unless you were to go to absolutely extraordinary lenghts, like making sure nobody will ever see you in public together - which Jamal clearly hasn't been doing.

 

I'm a black female living in Chicago Il, who has a few gay/lesbian friends- Jamal's story isn't that odd to me. Someone may be gay in their personal life but no one at work knows.....

See, this is again something which I'm sure still applies to some people, but which I nevertheless find hard to imagine. Not to mention that this kind of being out selectively almost inevitably breaks down at some point, as Jussie has now found out for himself. If some people in your life know and some don't, you're almost forcing the ones that do know into some kind of secondary closet, and also to keep track of of who they can say what to. In Jussie's case, Malik Yoba (unless he was grossly misquoted) clearly hadn't gotten the memo that Jussie was doing the old "I don't discuss my private life" routine, and just assumed he was openly gay since he's out at work. Even if you're not in any way famous, stuff like that almost inevitably happens. If your friends outside work know but the people at work don't, and then you accidentally run into someone from work while you're with one of those friends - how are they supposed to know whether or not that person is in the know too, and avoid any kind of casual mention of a boyfriend, for instance? It's hard enough to keep up such a double life yourself, let alone expect around you to help you protect it. It's hard enough not to slip up yourself. To use Tom Daley as a real-world example again: there's an in retrospect quite funny video of a fan encounter made by some American fans of his before he came out. They mention that they travelled all the way from San Antonio to Houston to see him, and you can see him just managing to avoid spontaneously saying "oh, my boyfriend is from San Antonio." The filter in his head kicks in, and he starts saying "my friend is from San Antonio". But then the filter kicks in again, and he realizes that "my friend" in the singular like that sounds a bit suspicious too, and what actually comes out of his mouth is "my friend, uhm, one of my friends is from San Antonio". Oh, the pitfalls of not being able to make the most obvious, spontaneous statements without having to go through a content filter. Anyway, the girls who made that video were very happy to discover with hindsight that they'd had a scoop, the first recorded instance of Daley saying something about his boyfriend.

 

Oh yes, before I forget (and before I see episode 9), there's another thing that bugged me. We don't have any back story on Ryan yet, except for one thing: he clearly must be Australian, no attempt is made to have the actor hide his accent (he even says "arse"). Then on his date he implies that his dad isn't happy with him being "a sissy" by ironically saying: "The joys of being the son of a black man". Sorry, but the whole "homophobia in the black community" element in the show is supposed to be about that specific US community and its supposed attitudes. Why on earth would anyone assume that the same thing would hold for someone from a culturally completely different place, apparenly solely because of similar skin pigmentation? At best, this is just American parochialism, at worst inadvertently racist.

 

That scene also has some other really corny stuff in it, and not just corny but leading back to my impression of some of the thinking behind this being at least 30 years out of date. Lines like "This is the way God made me", and "This is just who you are" - used between two twenty-something guys out on a date in NYC in 2015?

 

Ah well, that's more than enough. Now I have to wait at least another day before the interwebs bring me episode 9.

Edited March 5, 2015 by SailingBy

[teezy]

My wife, who's much more interested in Jussie than I ever will be, took a look at a few of his photos and said "He's gay".  LOL

 

I guess since my interests don't run that way, I don' t pick up signals others do.  Still matters not a whit to me -- I like living in a world where whether an actor is gay or not doesn't affect their work, or how popular they are.

That would be an ideal world lol but jussie himself obviously doesn't agree he pulls the queen latifah stunt everytime he is asked about his sexuality basically saying he's gay but not saying it , In someone his storyline on empire is ironic seeing as it seems to mirror his real life at least the life of being a clebrity male hiding his sexuality.

Edited March 6, 2015 by teezy

[luckyroll3]

Apparently Malik Yoba put it out there in a recent comment. http://www.theroot.com/blogs/the_grapevine/2015/03/malik_yoba_outs_empire_co_star_alleges_jussie_smollet_is_gay.html

Edited March 6, 2015 by luckyroll3

[Rick Kitchen]

Jussy will be singing on The Ellen Show Monday.

[jhlipton]

SailingBy, welcome to the world of rap and hip-hop.  This genre has been described as "hyper-masculine" -- 9 out of 10 songs are about "going to the club" in the best car, ordering the most expensive drink and having the hottest woman demand that you f**k her.,  I don't think there are currently any "out" rap stars.  It's sad that while most of the rest of the Northern Hemisphere has accepted gays and lesbians as normal, there are big pockets (Southern Republicans and many blacks) who have not.

[Dejana]

Another American here, black, from the South, very religious upbringing but grew up on hip hop. Casual, entrenched homophobia is hardly a thing of antiquity, in some circles. Going to work, the day after Frank Ocean performed at the Grammys that time...not fun. I know a couple of people who are out to some people in their lives but not others, more casual acquaintances from work than BFFs and they both happen to be black men, late twenties, early thirties. I don't know their families and I'm not one to post too many real names on the web anyway, so it's not a huge issue for me personally, having to edit myself as not to out them. Still, these guys aren't remotely famous, so that makes much easier for them to contain information.

 

With respect to Jamal, I could buy that the most mainstream of mainstream media wouldn't say a word about his sexuality, and once he made his announcement, it would be a surprise for people who only casually paid attention to celebrity on that level. Given that Jamal was the son of a supposed hip-hop legend and a recording artist of some celebrity in his own right, the show presenting it like no one outside of Empire knew about him being gay at all, rang false. It would be all over the hip hop blogs and black pop culture forums, that Jamal had a live-in boyfriend and maybe some photos of them in social settings would have leaked. So it would be one of those things that some people "knew" but others who paid less attention, or didn't know where to look, or are generally oblivious to things like that, would have no idea, until his move at the white party. Kind of like what you saw after Anderson Cooper, Matt Bomer or Jodie Foster went public, and some people were very surprised by their news, and others were surprised that anyone was surprised, since they weren't exactly in hiding before.

 

 Oh yes, before I forget (and before I see episode 9), there's another thing that bugged me. We don't have any back story on Ryan yet, except for one thing: he clearly must be Australian, no attempt is made to have the actor hide his accent (he even says "arse"). Then on his date he implies that his dad isn't happy with him being "a sissy" by ironically saying: "The joys of being the son of a black man". Sorry, but the whole "homophobia in the black community" element in the show is supposed to be about that specific US community and its supposed attitudes. Why on earth would anyone assume that the same thing would hold for someone from a culturally completely different place, apparenly solely because of similar skin pigmentation? At best, this is just American parochialism, at worst inadvertently racist.

 

He's Australian? I don't know the actor and was thinking, maybe British (don't they also say "arse"?). I've been having trouble understanding his dialogue in general. I know that some issues can cut across cultural/national lines, like colorism, but with respect to homosexuality, I did find myself wondering if the cultural attitudes toward homosexuality among British blacks were the same or worse than they were historically, among black Americans (not that they are great among all white Americans, either). If he's really supposed to be Australian, and not just a Australian actor using an iffy accent, then it would be very odd, coming from him.

Edited March 8, 2015 by Dejana

[teezy]

Another American here, black, from the South, very religious upbringing but grew up on hip hop. Casual, entrenched homophobia is hardly a thing of antiquity, in some circles. Going to work, the day after Frank Ocean performed at the Grammys that time...not fun. I know a couple of people who are out to some people in their lives but not others, more casual acquaintances from work than BFFs and they both happen to be black men, late twenties, early thirties. I don't know their families and I'm not one to post too many real names on the web anyway, so it's not a huge issue for me personally, having to edit myself as not to out them. Still, these guys aren't remotely famous, so that makes much easier for them to contain information.

 

With respect to Jamal, I could buy that the most mainstream of mainstream media wouldn't say a word about his sexuality, and once he made his announcement, it would be a surprise for people who only casually paid attention to celebrity on that level. Given that Jamal was the son of a supposed hip-hop legend and a recording artist of some celebrity in his own right, the show presenting it like no one outside of Empire knew about him being gay at all, rang false. It would be all over the hip hop blogs and black pop culture forums, that Jamal had a live-in boyfriend and maybe some photos of them in social settings would have leaked. So it would be one of those things that some people "knew" but others who paid less attention, or didn't know where to look, or are generally oblivious to things like that, would have no idea, until his move at the white party. Kind of like what you saw after Anderson Cooper, Matt Bomer or Jodie Foster went public, and some people were very surprised by their news, and others were surprised that anyone was surprised, since they weren't exactly in hiding before.

 

 

He's Australian? I don't know the actor and was thinking, maybe British (don't they also say "arse"?). I've been having trouble understanding his dialogue in general. I know that some issues can cut across cultural/national lines, like colorism, but with respect to homosexuality, I did find myself wondering if the cultural attitudes toward homosexuality among British blacks were the same or worse than they were historically, among black Americans (not that they are great among all white Americans, either). If he's really supposed to be Australian, and not just a Australian actor using an iffy accent, then it would be very odd, coming from him.

well the black british and black australians tend to be directly from Africa as in they can name the tribe, ethinicity and area their family is from and since  the european conversion  of western africans to christinaity lol they are ten times worse.  From my what i've seen Africans and blacks in the carribean have attitudes toward homsexuality that  would make some of the most die hard antigay republicians cringe.

 

They embrace some of british culture but are still very traditional especially Nigerians , Ethiopians,Somalians, etc  the younger ones may be a little more open minded but  only to a point.

 

I agree with everytihng you said at the top due to media gossip a large amount of people would already known about jamal's boyfriend michael probably had photos of him in a fictional people magazine , national enquirer ,  and there would be some naive people who say oh there just friends but others would know they were a couple. So that kind was unrealsitic to me  everyone being shocked he was gay

[Timetoread]

That would be an ideal world lol but jussie himself obviously doesn't agree he pulls the queen latifah stunt everytime he is asked about his sexuality basically saying he's gay but not saying it , In someone his storyline on empire is ironic seeing as it seems to mirror his real life at least the life of being a clebrity male hiding his sexuality.

 

Alot of it, I think, is their own personal fear of response but not necessarily the reality of other people's feelings.  In the episode where they were in Ghetto Ass Studios and the guy said something like, I know you're into the gay thing but your music is tight.  I thought then that that would pretty much be everybody's non-reaction.  Momentary surprise because they didn't know, then over it.  Same for Jussie, he shouldn't bother to hide it, nobody cares.  The only way he'd have a problem is if he faked straight and then came out gay.

 

I get it, however in hip hop community because it walks hand in hand with a gangster or thug image and those who identify with it.  Gay males are seen as effeminate or softer.  Not necessarily disliked but not really the guy you're going to call to go do a drive by with.  It's the image that drives it, not necessarily the politics.  The same people who have straight male dominated hip hop in their houses also make love to Luther Vandross songs.  And yes, people in the black community, like Cookie, will drop a slur in a New York second, but like Cookie, at their heart they are accepting and do NOT take kindly to open discrimination.  Not being black.  Lucius is a fictional character.  Lee Daniel's father no longer has a voice in current society.   Jamal and Jussie being gay isn't that much of a thing.  My friend and I are upset about it though because Jussie is fine and should he decide that he wants a woman, I'll be standing in line. 

[SailingBy]

So, Jussie has, thankfully, ended the silly little "I don't talk about my private life" thing on Ellen. Now he can start not talking about his private life for real. Because what always irritates me is how it is somehow assumed that saying you're gay is talking about your private life, but saying you're straight isn't. Nobody believes they know anything about Terrence Howard's private life because they know he's straight, just as we don't know anything about Jussie Smollett's private life now that he's officially out of the closet. And that's the way it should be.

 

You know, I have to give some credit to my own predictive powers here. When last week I saw he was going to appear on Ellen on Monday I thought, oh, he's going to do it, good for him. But then I saw that the show was taped on Friday, and I thought, drat, he can't have done it, because that news would have leaked from the studio audience immediately, and I was really disappointed. And then just now I became really, really happy when I saw he'd found a way around that problem, by having a one-on-one sitdown with Ellen, without the audience. Clever boy.

 

What is in retrospect also funny is that Malik Yoba first inadvertently outed him, then made an attermpt to back-pedal and claim that he was misquoted, and hadn't been talking about Jussie but about Jamal. Obviously, he was quite correctly quoted. Edited to add: I actually was about to comment on how silly Yoba's claim was, since his whole comment made absolutely no sense unless he was talking about Jussie, not Jamal. But then I saw Jussie had just beaten me to it.

 

Ah well, it's all water under the bridge now, and we can return to discussing Jamal in this thread as we should, rather than Jussie. Although I doubt Jamal would have become as popular a character as he did if he hadn't been played by Jussie. But that's perhaps one of the saving graces of this show in general: however over the top and soapy and unrealistic a lot of it is, it's saved by great casting.

Edited March 10, 2015 by SailingBy

[Kendall]

I do think that Jamal needed to be played by a gay actor that was not only comfortable with being gay, but also had a need and desire to portray the character with some dignity.

 

There is no point in having an actor that wants to act well enough to get the role, but not "too well," because he doesn't want people thinking that he's gay.

 

I think that's why I like the most about how Grace Gealey and Taraji play their parts, they know those black women, they respect black women like them and I feel like I can see in their choices that they want the audience to respect and accept those women.

 

Jussie is naturally talented, but the bulk of the cast is walking around with the burden of having to be "twice as good" with this show and not one has faltered, but rather, it seems to be driving them.

[jhlipton]

I do think that Jamal needed to be played by a gay actor that was not only comfortable with being gay, but also had a need and desire to portray the character with some dignity.

 

I'm not sure about the bolded part.  I think it helps immensely, but the "need and desire to portray the character with some dignity" is the driving force.  

 

If Jussie had gone on Ellen and said "I'm straight, here's why you might think I'm not...", would it diminish the fine acting that he's doing?  [NOTE: This could be my straight privilege talking -- if you think it is, please let me know.]

[Kendall]

I'm not sure about the bolded part.  I think it helps immensely, but the "need and desire to portray the character with some dignity" is the driving force.  

 

If Jussie had gone on Ellen and said "I'm straight, here's why you might think I'm not...", would it diminish the fine acting that he's doing?  [NOTE: This could be my straight privilege talking -- if you think it is, please let me know.]

 

 

Well, it could be my straight privilege talking, but I think if Jussie as a straight person, felt the need to go on a publicity tour qualifying his performance on the show with a bunch of "by the ways," then yes it would diminish the acting as the focus would be divided between the character and the actor's insecurities. This guy wants you to know that he's kissing this other guy on TV, but most definitely not off-screen, ew no! Cooties!!!

 

It's really no different from when Rupert Murdoch came out, a lot of people didn't buy him as a straight lead anymore, but I think they may have had more to do with Rupert "being in the closet" for so long. People do get offended when it feels like you were lying to them to get ahead.

 

I think Jussie will be able to play straight roles in his future now that he's come out, but I don't think it would've been as smooth if he were outed.

[BoogieBurns]

It's really no different from when Rupert Murdoch came out, a lot of people didn't buy him as a straight lead anymore, but I think they may have had more to do with Rupert "being in the closet" for so long.

 

Say what now? Do you mean Rupert Everett? 

Edited March 10, 2015 by BoogieBurns

[Kendall]

Ha! Yeah. My bad. But, as much turmoil and havoc that Murdoch has wreaked on various people's lives with his news outlets, it would serve him right for a day of "say what nows" as he scrambles to explain his life.

[jhlipton]

Well, it could be my straight privilege talking, but I think if Jussie as a straight person, felt the need to go on a publicity tour qualifying his performance on the show with a bunch of "by the ways," then yes it would diminish the acting as the focus would be divided between the character and the actor's insecurities. This guy wants you to know that he's kissing this other guy on TV, but most definitely not off-screen, ew no! Cooties!!!

 

I think Jussie will be able to play straight roles in his future now that he's come out, but I don't think it would've been as smooth if he were outed.

Yeah, but I wasn't thinking of it like that, more like Ellen asks a question like "A lot of people think that you're gay..", he answers it, they move on. Just as the focus of his current publicity tour isn't (or shouldn't be) Jessie's sexuality (cuz, ya know, none of my bidness) if he's gay, it shouldn't be the focus if he's straight.

(One of the things How I Met Your Mother did that was fun was have Neil Patrick Harris play the straight guy and Wayne Brady play his gay brother.  Of course that was in the early seasons before they wrecked the show.)

Edited March 11, 2015 by jhlipton

[darkestboy]

Just caught the first episode. Already love Jamal and Good Enough was bloody brilliant.

[Chicago Redshirt]

In response to SailingBy: 

 

I think the African-American community has its own special twist on homophobia and heterosexism. I think part of it is rooted in the black church, and part of it is rooted in seeing being gay as more of a white thing, if that makes sense. 

 

Even in 2015, there are plenty of people in the sports and entertainment industries who are not openly gay. I also think it would be more acute in some segments of those industries. Apparently real-life rappers would include "no homo" in their lyrics and videos and such to deny what could be construed as gay behavior was in fact gay behavior.  http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/music_box/2009/08/does_this_purple_mink_make_me_look_gay.html 

 

I'm sure Lucious has hired and worked with people he knew to be gay in various contexts. But probably not too many who he wanted to document his own greatness, and not too many who are obviously a potential love interest for his son. I'm sure in real life there are some famous entertainment figures who are privately or publicly homophobic. 

 

I haven't noticed the equality tattoo, and I could imagine that people who had wouldn't necessarily translate it to be about equality for LGBT folks, since (without the proper context) it could be about equality for blacks or other groups that still are discriminated against.

 

Hetero people probably have a default presumption that absent stereotypical behavior people are straight, which is somewhat fair since roughly 90 percent are.

[biakbiak]

One of the things How I Met Your Mother did that was fun was have Neil Patrick Harris play the straight guy and Wayne Brady play his gay brother.  Of course that was in the early seasons before they wrecked the show

 

It was also before NPH came out to the general public.

 

I don't think that the role of Jamal needed to be played by a gay actor anymore than Barney Stinson needed to be played by a straight actor but they should know how to talk about the experience in public without acting as if people thinking they are gay is an insult/ridiculous. IE like Eric Stonestreet who if asked if he is gay simply states that he is not but also isn't bringing up how straight he is and how awful it is to kiss a dude think he was like Kerr Smith did when his character on Dawson's Creek came out.

[jhlipton]

It was also before NPH came out to the general public.

Taking this to Small talk

[SailingBy]

Two final (I promise) additions to the Jussie coming out thing, just for the record and because they're funny.

(1) I'd seen it mentioned several times that Terrence Howard had already outed Jussie before Malik Yoba did, but without specifics. I came across it only yesterday. It's in a promo interview that was made before the pilot had even aired, and which can be seen at [http://globalgrind.com/2015/03/09/terrence-howard-jussie-smolletts-sexuality-chappie-box-office/]. There is no way he could have tried to use the "I was misquoted" escape, or the "I was talking about the character not the actor" escape, since it's on video, and he says, i.a.: "He’s homosexual in his real life". It's amazing that this interview was sitting right there out in the open while the "Has Malik Yoba just outed Jussie Smollett?" thing was going on, yet it seems to have flown under almost everyone's radar.

(2) The best one-line comment I saw on a website somewhere about Jussie's rather awkwardly worded appearance on Ellen is this (I forgot to note where it's from, so I can attribute it properly, but it's a direct cut-and-paste):

"There's an annual Sound of Music sing-along???"

That, to me rather unfortunate, reference to the musical theater stereotype does remind me of something Nathan Lane once irritatedly said in an interview when he was asked why he, at the time, also refused to "say anything about his personal life". To paraphrase from memory, his reply was: "Look, I'm over 40, I've never been married, and I work in musical theater. What do you need, flashcards?"

 

Now on to other stuff.

 

Given that Jamal was the son of a supposed hip-hop legend and a recording artist of some celebrity in his own right, the show presenting it like no one outside of Empire knew about him being gay at all, rang false. It would be all over the hip hop blogs and black pop culture forums, that Jamal had a live-in boyfriend and maybe some photos of them in social settings would have leaked.

 

I hadn't even thought of the obvious role uncontrollable online gossip plays in such matters these days, and in an age where nearly everybody has a camera on them at all times. Until recently, I didn't even know there were whole websites solely devoted to reporting celebrity sightings by random members of the public - and the level of celebrity required to be mentioned on them seems very low indeed. You're right, it has become pretty much impossible for anyone with any level of celebrity to hide to such an extent. It can be a matter of interpretation though. To use the Tom Daley comparison once more: when he came out, it was retroactively discovered that there were lots of pictures and even videos of him and his boyfriend together already out there, mostly just selfies taken by fans, but one, from his 19th birthday party, even put on Instagram by himself. It's just that nobody had connected the dots and concluded that that guy he was with when they saw him at the shopping mall, or in a parking lot, or at the swimming pool where he was training, and who discreetly stood a way back in those pictures, was his boyfriend. After all, there are many, many more similar pictures of him around with other guys who aren't.

 

So it would be one of those things that some people "knew" but others who paid less attention, or didn't know where to look, or are generally oblivious to things like that, would have no idea, until his move at the white party. Kind of like what you saw after Anderson Cooper, Matt Bomer or Jodie Foster went public, and some people were very surprised by their news, and others were surprised that anyone was surprised, since they weren't exactly in hiding before.

 

The phenomenon known as the glass closet, which irritates some people tremendously. Which also often leads to the inadvertent outing phenomenon, when somebody else talking about them just assumes they're already publicly out. And as you said, a lot of people are just oblivious to things like that, and couldn't care less. I think that's actually the problem with a lot of the closetedness that is still going on in the entertainment industry: a lot of the people who work in that industry IMO tend to vastly overestimate the interest most people have in the sexuality of the people who entertain them.

 

He's Australian? I don't know the actor and was thinking, maybe British (don't they also say "arse"?).

 

They do. When I first heard him in a preview teaser, I thought too: what is that supposed to be, a British accent done very badly by an American actor? It took his first scene to identify it as Australian. I can understand that to American ears it sounds British, it's much closer to that than to American English. I once had to sit through a very boring lecture on the genesis of the Australian accent, of which I've forgotten almost everything, except that it arose very quickly after the first convict settlers arrived in Australia, and that a lot of its features can be traced to specific British dialects - those convicts weren't a cross-section of people from across the British isles, some areas were strongly overrepresented.

 

I've been having trouble understanding his dialogue in general.

 

Listening to an unfamiliar accent is always difficult. I have the same problems with some variants of American English, which I know are widespread but I simply don't get to hear that often. If it strays too far from let's call it Standard Middle American I'm sometimes left straining too.

Eka Darville can do an American accent though, although I'm not placed to judge how well he does it. If you want to judge for yourself, just search on YouTube on "Originals Diego" (the name of his character on The Originals), to listen to some snippets of him pretending to be an American vampire. Which is why the character must be Australian too, since they let him use his native accent. It actually fits in nicely with the general portrayal of Ryan's personality: he's obviously an ambitious guy who's already made a name for himself in his field, and ambitious enough not to remain in Australia but try to make it in the US entertainment industry.

 

I know that some issues can cut across cultural/national lines, like colorism, but with respect to homosexuality, I did find myself wondering if the cultural attitudes toward homosexuality among British blacks were the same or worse than they were historically, among black Americans (not that they are great among all white Americans, either).

 

Which I'll combine with something from another poster:

 

well the black british and black australians tend to be directly from Africa as in they can name the tribe, ethinicity and area their family is from and since the european conversion of western africans to christinaity lol they are ten times worse. From my what i've seen Africans and blacks in the carribean have attitudes toward homsexuality that would make some of the most die hard antigay republicians cringe.

They embrace some of british culture but are still very traditional especially Nigerians , Ethiopians,Somalians, etc the younger ones may be a little more open minded but only to a point.

 

The vast majority of black people in Britain aren't directly from Africa at all, but Afro-Caribbean, and they have no more connection to any tribe, ethnicity or area in Africa than any African-American. After WW2, labor was needed for rebuilding, and that involved importing workers from the West Indies. The symbolic moment that marks the beginning of that wave of immigration is the arrival of the Windrush Empire in 1948, the ship that brought the first large group of immigrants from Jamaica to Britain. Hence those people are called the Windrush Generation. We're now on the third or even fourth generation from then of course, and how that group has developed is markedly different from anything in the USA.

 

For starters, while I don't have any numbers at my fingertips, I'll go by something said by the geneticist Prof. Steven Rose in an interview on population genetics several years ago: of all the babies born in Britain at that moment, just over half with an Afro-Caribbean parent had just one of them. IOW: over half of those children are, to use that horrible term, "mixed-race" (and of course that one Afro-Caribbean parent might already be too). If that trend continues and accelerates, and there's no reason to presume it wouldn't, within a very few generations more, a mere blink of an eye in terms of population genetics, they will have ceased to exist as a somewhat identifiable sub-population. Those African-by-way-of-the-Caribbean genes will have been absorbed into the general British gene pool, with as its only remaining trace a somewhat larger variety in skin pigmentation and kinds of hair. Just as happened with earlier immigration waves that introduced small sub-populations, such as the Vikings or the Normans (who were also of course originally Vikings-turned-Frenchmen).

Most of that Windrush Generation arrived in an early-1950s Britain whose social attitudes in general weren't all that different from their own, and that was also deeply homophobic. Don't forget that gay men were criminals in Britain until 1967, and that even in the 1980s the then Thatcher government still thought it necessary to pass the vile piece of homophobic legislation known as Clause 28. Britain moved on to a society where same-sex marriage was introduced in 2014, on the watch of a Conservative-led government. The Afro-Caribbean community (in so far as it can still be called a community, with such high rates of intermarriage it is clearly already dissolving) simply evolved with the rest of society. That also includes the rapidly declining influence of religion. It's also important to remember that, while there was a lot of racism and discrimination in practice, initially quite severe, there was never any legal discrimination on the basis of skin color in Britain or anywhere else in Europe, and no segregation. The children of the Windrush Generation all went to the same schools as their white neighbors' children, and most of the initial racism seems to have dissipated pretty rapidly. Two great-uncles of mine worked in the manufacturing industry at the time these first black workers arrived. Since they were both considered "foreigners" by most people (despite being white, and British citizens from birth - I won't go into details), they had a keen eye for such things. They both told me that after an initial frosty reaction (to the working-class people from the North of England we're talking about, someone from London already qualified as pretty suspicious), it took a very short time for almost everyone to realize that there was nothing particularly distinct about these new arrivals. The class thing was much more important to them than anything to do with skin color, and a black doctor or lawyer (once they began to appear) was just as much of a disliked toff as a white one to them. And I have only second-hand reports to go on here, being neither British nor black, but black people from Britain visiting the US are often stunned by how segregated it is, and how many black people seem to live their lives in an almost exclusively black environment, with no white relatives, or even friends. That's inconceivable in Britain.

The much more recent immigration directly from Africa, people who are still at the first or at most second generation, is a whole different matter, and also one that cannot be generalized about. It's pretty absurd to think that, say, a Nigerian immigrant from an evangelical Christian background would have similar attitudes (not just about this one topic, but in general) to an Ethiopian from a Christian background, or a Somalian from a Muslim background. The whole concept of family, or clan, or tribal ties is also vastly different between all of those groups (with clans or tribes being as non-existent to Afro-Caribbeans as they are to white Britons).

The whole point is that talking about a "black community" really makes no sense. The African-American community, and the way the term "black" itself is defined in the US, is absolutely unique to the USA. So is the huge influence of a particular brand of Christianity on the history of that community, where the churches for a long time were the only form of formal social organizations. You can't just lump people together on the basis of similar skin pigmentation, or purely genetic links to parts of Africa from centuries ago. While those British Afro-Caribbeans, just like African-Americans, are descendants of initially the same kind of slave population, they came from countries were they weren't part of a minority, and into a country where they were but with no history of slavery or segregation on its own soil. And they came as immigrants of their own free will, determined to make a better life for themselves and for their children in their adopted country (which many of them had already considered their country all along - they were, after all, British subjects). They understood the importance of education in that, and the Windrush Generation were almost notorious for pushing their children as hard as they could in that regard, much harder than white working class parents at the time usually did. Most of them to begin with already had a schooling back in the West Indies that wasn't all that different from what white working class people of the time would have had (since most of them started out as working class, that's why they had been brought in in the first place). That made for a lot of upward social mobility within one generation. None of those things, happening within living memory, are part of the African-American experience. The experience of growing up as part of a clearly defined minority, rather randomly defined on the basis of skin pigmentation and a past in slavery, whose ancestors have been living in the country for centuries longer than the ancestors of many white people, and yet still dealing with all kinds of issues that should have been resolved ages ago, doesn't translate directly to anywhere else in the world.

 

I'm sure Lucious has hired and worked with people he knew to be gay in various contexts. But probably not too many who he wanted to document his own greatness, and not too many who are obviously a potential love interest for his son. I'm sure in real life there are some famous entertainment figures who are privately or publicly homophobic.

There obviously are. Even Lucious is smart enough to know that you can't let it show too much in public anymore, or with certain people. When he's meeting with Delphine in episode 9 (I haven't seen the last one yet), and she innocently tells him how proud he must be of Jamal for coming out (assuming what to her would be the normal feeling of any parent), he knows he can't let his true opinion show, and comes up with a half-assed compliment instead. Which is why I though Jamal's warning to Ryan, on their first meeting, that his dad might fire him if he found out, so odd.

 

Hetero people probably have a default presumption that absent stereotypical behavior people are straight, which is somewhat fair since roughly 90 percent are.

 

The statistical assumption would apply to gay people just as much, since they're also surrounded by mostly straight people. But what is the need to make assumptions about anyone's sexual orientation? There are vanishingly few situations in which it's relevant to anything. I have learned over the years though that it's not safe to assume anything about sexual orientation on the basis of someone exhibiting stereotypical straight behavior. Like, for instance, marrying someone of the opposite sex. (See how I SUBTLY brought this back to the topic of Jamal?)

Edited March 12, 2015 by SailingBy

[Chicago Redshirt]

I think there is a deeply ingrained tendency to categorize people and things to help us attempt to predict and understand them and their behavior. Whether that's human nature or a cultural construction is an open debate.

 

Putting Jamal or JS in the "gay" category rather than the default "straight" category shouldn't matter to any but the handful of people who might have/want to have the opportunity to sleep with him.

 

But it does.

 

For some people, it reinforces the notion that there are more people like them out there than the dominant group might have you believe, and it gives a representation that they can take pride in.

 

For some people,.it might serve as a symbol of how decadent American culture is becoming, or the entertainment industry has always been.

 

Etc. Etc. 

[Telechy]

(Thanks to everyone for their insightful comments on this thread...I've been looking for somewhere to talk about my new favorite show beyond "OMG did you see that!" and it looks like I've found it!)

 

I agree with the comments that Lee Daniels may be working off an older set of assumptions, including his personal experience, in portraying Jamal's journey, but in addition to not being beyond the realm of possibility in the NYC music world, I think it works in-universe. The sons' lives have been dominated by their powerful, generally absent father. There's a reason we see the flashback to poor baby Jamal being stuffed in the trash can multiple times--even though he's moved past it in his personal life, he's obviously haunted by it, and it may have been holding him back, along with the fact that although he's inflexible about his orientation with Lucious, he's still taking Lucious's money. That's how we see him in the beginning--living a comfortable but somewhat aimless life in his beautiful Lucious-funded apartment, singing at hipster dive bars and going to Fire Island with Michael for the weekend. He may feel he's being independent, but Lucious definitely holds the strings, keeping Jamal out of sight and away from the business. 

 

The first step in Jamal's journey of artistic liberation is telling Lucious to take his money and stuff it. It's more than just the trash cans of Bushwick and Ghetto-Ass Studio, it's that he finally fees free of Lucious's influence and also has a kick in the pants to change because he has to support himself as an artist. After that his ascent is pretty quick--the well-received performance on Sway's show, and his breakthrough performance at the White Party, where he really comes into his own as a charismatic performer as well as an artist. I loved the juxtaposition of the trash can flashback with that performance; hopefully it's the last time we'll have to see it, and it was a real "It Gets Better" moment when we see that he not only survived but thrived and was finally able to put it behind him (and how great was the simultaneous salute to/screw you to Lucious with the Roman salute?)

 

It's a nice bit of character development that although Jamal can be hesitant with his choices (holding back from his music career, his mom and Lola at the beginning), he's the truest to himself and bravest of the three boys (how often does he have to stare down a gun barrel??). His struggle has obviously given him a lot of inner strength, whereas poor Andre seems to have been exhausted by it.

[Skyline]

Cookie was right. He's just like his daddy.

[wanderingstar]

I've felt for a while now that Jamal is the son who's most like Lucious. So when Lucious told Jamal he had to prove that he had the monster inside of him who would do whatever it took to get the Empire for himself, I was in no doubt. Jamal has a ruthless streak to match his father's 

[Lillybee]

I have to use an old saw but it is true; Jamal/Jussie has a smile that can light up a room.

[darkestboy]

I'm on episode 8 now and damn, Jamal was sexy as hell during that coming out perfomance of You're So Beautiful.

 

Really glad he did come out in such a fashion too.

 

Not sure if I prefer him with either Michael or Ryan just yet though. Michael was cute but very cypher-ish as a character and it's early days with Ryan yet.

[wanderingstar]

I was back and forth on whether I preferred Michael to Ryan. But then,

that hot scene where Jamal and Ryan have sex in Lucious' office happened in the finale.

I think I'm sold on Ryan now-lol.

[darkestboy]

I think I'm swaying towards Ryan too. I have episodes 10-12 to go to first but after seeing Ryan filming Jamal in his shirtless loveliness for All Of The Above (very Prince like that song) and then the Jamal/Delphine duet of Conqueror, oh yeah.

[TrizzyMarx]

I started to have this concern for a while now, but do you guys think that Jamal is singing a bit too much this season? In the beginning of the first season, I didn't mind it because I loved the music, but I'm a bit more indifferent about his music this season. He's performed a lot more than Hakeem and Tiana has, and I believe that the songs he sings are superfluous and unnecessary to the episode. Out of the few songs he's performed, also, they aren't as great. They're actually quite generic.

 

What do you guys think?

 

Do you guys think that Empire should give Jamal less solos?

Edited October 24, 2015 by TrizzyMarx

[CofCinci]

Asked no one ever.

[tmelange]

Yes. He's singing too much of the emo crap. I like his voice best on the uptempo stuff, and I also prefer when they break his songs up with parts done by Hakeem. I'm not really all that happy with Jamal generally this season. 

[mack6986]

Totally. I just don't care for his voice- every time he sings, it's seemingly coated in Auto-tune and pitch correction, much more so than any of the other musicians on the show. And I don't think he has much charisma as a performer. I'd rather they give more performance time to the actors who actually do, like Hakeem or Tiana.

[LydiaMoon1]

YES! Jussie seems like a nice enough fellow, but he doesn't have the singing or the acting chops necessary to justify Jamal being the focus of so much storyline.

[Aethera]

Note - I just merged the topic about Jamal singing too much into this one, since this is the Jamal topic :) Let the discussion continue!

[wanderingstar]

I am actually loving Jamal's songs this season (along with all the other music). And while Jamal is singing more this season, I have no complaints about that at all.

[Daddie]

Jamal is the reason I watch empire. Everything he does is just sweet. Seriously, o can't fault that guy. Empire believes in him as an artiste . a real artiste....  He might not be a ball of fireworks when it comes to performance on stage but that's the kinda music he does .... He sings a sing that actually means something to someone... Something that most people can relate to... He's an artiste... And hey... His songs doesn't necessarily need match the topic of the episode... They're trying to make it believable... So as a 

Regular artiste, you can't like all his songs.... And he mustn't sing to your feelings all the time... Cause everybody is entitled to their own emotion at any particular time

[Grace19]

The actor has a beautiful voice, but he is not a great singer, just an average one, but i love his voice. Most songs he did this season were not great, the only one i liked was the ones he did with Hakeem in the first and fourth episode. he's not a great performer, the stage performer is Yazz/Hakeem. I prefer when they sing together, its a shame they are not as close as they were last season, I miss Jamal and Hakeem's friendship.

[Actionmage]

I have enjoyed listening to Jamal sing this season, but the songs haven't grabbed me as much as last season's did.  I'm bad with song titles, but  there hasn't even been lyrics I like enough to quote/sing.  I am hoping this is supposed to be a mirror to Jamal really drilling down and finding his voice as an artist. He's changed since last season and the music seems to be reflecting the different ways he's been influenced.

 

I watch Arrow before this. Stunt crews and above the line folks have often stated that fights further the action/story, if done right. I think the music is the same for Empire. It's another way of getting into the characters. So, I'm just waiting for next week. Per the preview, Cookie is asked for her take by Jamal and Lucious is not happy about that. (Big surprise, right?*g*)

[strongoxman]

Every time Jamal starts singing this season I roll my eyes and get up to load the dishwasher.  Seriously, I just can't with Smollett.  The next Usher this boy ain't.

[wanderingstar]

All Jamal Lyon's (Kinda Trifling) Boyfriends Ranked