Code Name: The Puppy Episode
April 28, 2017 10:23 AM   Subscribe

 
DeGeneres can be justly proud of this legacy, which is why I'm so confused and disappointed that she hired the racist, homophobic, misogynist Steve Harvey to host Little Big Shots, which she created and produces. Her association with him goes against every other element of her public profile I'm aware of.
posted by layceepee at 10:52 AM on April 28, 2017 [9 favorites]


"...disappointed that she hired the racist, homophobic, misogynist Steve Harvey..."

I like Ellen and watch parts of her show sometimes but... She puts money-making front and center. Half of her show is product placement (she even jokes about it) to the point where she even has a Las Vegas deluxe "Ellen" casino slot machine.

She has every right to make money, but from what I've seen, she's not real discriminating as to how she makes money.
posted by jeff-o-matic at 11:09 AM on April 28, 2017 [2 favorites]


“She was the girl next door,” Savel said. “Everyone loved her, and we were basically shooting it in the foot and hoping it didn’t bleed out.”

Woo, this sure says a lot about how society has, and does, view lesbianism-it's an inherently sexual identity to most people. (and gayness in general, but it's especially so for modern-day lesbianism. See: lesbian porn, which isn't actually about or for lesbians). It was incomprehensible that Ellen could both be a lesbian and the girl next door. Even though that's who she is in real life.
posted by FirstMateKate at 11:13 AM on April 28, 2017 [11 favorites]


A clarification for the article:
By 1996, Disney’s corporate culture had already become much more LGBTQ-friendly than ABC’s. The company had multiple gay executives. It hosted “gay days at the park,” said Pete Aronson, then an executive vice president at Disney.
Gay Days is an unofficial event that started in 1991, when "3,000 gays and lesbians from central Florida going to area theme parks on one day wearing red shirts to make their presence more visible." Now, GayDays is a registered trademark of Gay Days, Inc., which doesn't focus on Walt Disney World, and apparently at one point, there were "signs at Disney entrances 'warning' others of the presence of large numbers of gay and lesbian visitors."

In short, while Disney may now embrace Gay Days as a pseudo-Disney event and they may have been ahead of the corporate curve (considering Chrysler, J.C. Penney, the Coca-Cola Company and many other regular advertisers didn't want to advertise during "The Puppy Episode"), it's not their event to promote.

All that said, Ellen is over-all a force for good, and I'm a bit excited about how foreign the level of public push-back seems to me now, 20 years later. This fight isn't over, but the tide has turned. J.C. Penny even sided with Ellen in 2012, flipping their position from when this episode first aired. And consumers sided with Ellen and J.C. Penny against hate groups!
The hate campaign launched last week by One Million Moms against JC Penney for its pick of Ellen DeGeneres as the brand's new spokeswoman seems to have backfired. The retailer is winning support from consumers who are taking to the social web to pledge that they'll shop at JC Penney stores more than they ever have before.
posted by filthy light thief at 11:22 AM on April 28, 2017 [8 favorites]


the puppy episode, part 1 & part 2
posted by aniola at 1:02 PM on April 28, 2017 [2 favorites]


It's pretty amazing how far mass media has come in my lifetime. Remember the First Gay Kiss on Will and Grace? Now there are openly LGB* people on daytime soaps, on sci fi shows, horror movies, etc etc and only a small minority gets riled up anymore. And yet those people still manage to pass bigoted laws.

*hold the T
posted by AFABulous at 1:43 PM on April 28, 2017 [7 favorites]


See: lesbian porn, which isn't actually about or for lesbians

While there is certainly "lesbian" porn that isn't for or about lesbians, writing all lesbian porn off wholesale is perpetuating the stereotype that "real" lesbians/queer non-cis-men don't enjoy, consume, and produce lesbian-genre porn, which they/we totally do. There's some mind-blowingly amazing inclusive intersectional sex-positive stuff out there that people work really hard to make and it's worth not being dismissed just because male gaze also exists and muddies the waters. I don't mean that to be a derail, but when we talk about the commodification of identity in ways that are not entirely unrelated to the Ellen DeGeneres Brand, this is also an issue.

I don't know if Ellen really knew in the moment or in the subsequent career reinvention that she was setting herself up to be The Only Lesbian Your Grandma Knows slash Acceptable Lesbian, and I suspect that's not an especially pleasant thing to be and you know it's going to leave you with a weird legacy. I realize the money spends just fine, and somebody has to do it, but given all the ways she doesn't comment on articles like these or anything but what feels like studio-approved topics, and what looked like raw pain at the ceremony with Obama, I don't know that it does much for the sleeping-at-night factor.
posted by Lyn Never at 1:46 PM on April 28, 2017 [1 favorite]


I finally understand what Beau means when he says "the other puppy episode." Beau Mansfield - Ellen
posted by Catblack at 2:32 PM on April 28, 2017 [2 favorites]


I'm watching the Puppy Episode right now. I've never watched the show before (I was too young for sitcoms then). It's so great with all the subtext and awkwardness.
posted by numaner at 2:48 PM on April 28, 2017 [5 favorites]


So, It started out as These Friends Of Mine, and then Friends debuted and they changed the name to Ellen. I watched from the beginning. Simply because I loved Ellen's standup material I'd seen in other places. I loved the show. And then all the other stuff came in. The Puppy Episode was sort of a Watershed Event in LGBT circles. Watching parties were organized. It was a Big Deal. Aired on April 30, 1997.

There was probably no better person to come out on a major television show, both as a character and in real life. She was basically as beloved as Mary Tyler Moore ever was at the time. The foreshortened cancellation of the series and Laura Dern's career crater both stand as evidence of what the culture was like at the time. But for a certain set of America, The Puppy Episode and
Ellen's personal coming out changed minds. Seeds were planted that would bear fruit years later.

In my own personal history of How America Evolved Consciousness About LGBT Issues And Eventually Acceptance, this was a Truly Major Big Deal. 18 months later, Matthew Shepard would be hung on a fence and left to die. I think it was this one-two punch in the solar plexus of homophobia in American culture that really started the change. I honestly don't think that the media would have noticed Shepard's death any more than it had the beating death of any other faggot if not for Ellen.

The entire experience really did some damage though, to Ellen in particular. I think it's probably best to let Ellen tell the story of how it felt to her from her comeback special through interpretive dance. It's how she felt best sharing the story.
posted by hippybear at 4:16 PM on April 28, 2017 [22 favorites]


So, I watched that and came back to fav your comment, but I had already faved it. So, you need to get with the mods. You are down a fav and that is their department.
posted by Michele in California at 4:22 PM on April 28, 2017


I previously shared my personal anecdote about the effect that episode had on at least one person, so I'll tell a joke instead:

How old is the "Ellen's Energy Adventure" ride at Epcot?

It's so old that Ellen makes a comment about how it's not so bad to find a snake in your sleeping bag.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 7:19 PM on April 28, 2017 [1 favorite]


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