NEW YORK (AP) â€" Viewers might find ABC's new sitcom "Work It" to be cringingly awful from an entertainment standpoint.
But a show, that depicts dual out-of-work chaps who dress as women to land jobs in a tough economy, has drawn glow from groups with a conflicting complaint: They contend "Work It" mocks a transgender community.
"Though a uncover is not about transgender people, it's about a idea that group presenting as women is funny," pronounced Herndon Graddick of a Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.
"It re-enforces false and sleepy stereotypes that are damaging to transgender Americans," pronounced Fred Sainz of a Human Rights Campaign, a polite rights classification operative on interest of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans.
HRC is fasten GLAAD in propelling supporters to ask ABC not to atmosphere a series, that is scheduled to premiere Jan. 3.
On Wednesday, a dual organizations placed a full-page ad in Daily Variety whose title declares: "'Work It' will mistreat transgender people.'" The ad continues, "By enlivening a assembly to giggle during a characters' attempts during womanhood, a uncover gives permit to identical diagnosis of transgender women."
But is a debate that targets "Work It" also, by extension, a extended libel of one of entertainment's many fast devices: cross-dressing for comic effect?
This is a tradition that includes a late actor-drag black Divine appearing in vast womanlike roles in "Hairspray" and other John Waters films. Robin Williams played a masculine who adopted a persona as a Scottish nanny in a 1993 comedy "Mrs. Doubtfire." In 1982, "Tootsie" starred Dustin Hoffman as an out-of-work actor who dresses adult as a soft-spoken singer to land a woman's purpose on a soap opera.
The 1959 film classical "Some Like It Hot" starred Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis as dual true guys who costume themselves as women to find retreat in an all-girl rope after witnessing a host hit.
The play, films and Broadway low-pitched "La Cage aux Folles" etch a crazy domestic life of a nightclub manager and his regretful partner, a star captivate in a club's drag performance. And on TV, Tom Hanks seemed with Peter Scolari in a 1980s sitcom "Bosom Buddies," that decorated masculine roommates posing as women to benefit entrance to a budget-priced unit building that certified usually womanlike residents.
Flash brazen to "Work It," that pairs what a network calls "two unrepentant guy's guys" (Lee Standish, a family man, and Angel Ortiz, a ladies' man) who mislaid their jobs during a automobile dealership and have left a year though employment.
"It's not a recession, it's a man-cession," says a commiserating friend. "Women are holding over a work force."
Soon, Lee (Ben Koldyke) hears of openings for sales reps during a curative company. But a association is looking for women, not men, to fill a slots.
The association has hired guys in a past, Lee learns, though they didn't work out: "The doctors seem to wish to spike them less."
Lee knows what he contingency do: He dresses adult as a woman, however preposterously, and wins a pursuit from a gullible firm. So does his buddy, Angel (Amaury Nolasco), who is likewise costumed.
With their linebacker physiques, squeaky voices and bungled makeup, conjunction masculine would dope a 5-year-old, that is meant to be partial of a fun â€" whereupon laughs occur (at least, from a show's high-decibel giggle track).
But while painfully unfunny, is "Work It" staid to inflict genuine repairs on a transgender community?
On Wednesday, ABC declined to criticism on a brewing controversy, and declined to make anyone accessible from a uncover to plead it.
"There's been an bargain that to make other minority groups seem absurd on a basement of coming alone is not supposed in complicated media," Graddick said. "If a net outcome of this uncover is that it creates it easier to giggle during transgender people or negates their knowledge in a society, it's something that's not value continuing.
"GLAAD's position is not that nobody can ever do cross-dressing again as a form of comedy," he added. "In a past, it has been finished as a form of amicable commentary. But that doesn't seem to be a box with 'Work It.' In fact, utterly a opposite."
HRC's Fred Sainz draws a pointy eminence between drag humor, an art form prolonged a range of a happy community, and a cross-dressing uncover like "Work It" or "Tootsie," a film that, however well-regarded in a day, he views as a vestige of a less-enlightened era.
"Humor of this inlet continues to disgrace transgender Americans and serve confuses a existence of a situation," he said. "As we know better, we have a shortcoming to do better."
Both organizations have stressed that ABC, overall, has a good record for certain portrayals of a gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender village (with such shows as "Modern Family" and a new coming of Chaz Bono on "Dancing With a Stars").
"ABC has always been a good corporate citizen," Sainz said.
But even as talks continue with a network, "Work It" is still on a report and being promoted by ABC.
"We're holding this open position since there don't seem any skeleton by ABC to lift 'Work It,'" GLAAD's Graddick said. "But we're anticipating they will do so. Our wish is that this uncover will tumble by a wayside."
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Online:
http://www.glaad.org
http://www.hrc.org
http://www.abc.com
News referensi http://news.yahoo.com/abc-sitcom-gets-detractors-worked-195733804.html
