Coming hot on the heels of James Gavin’s best-selling GEORGE MICHEAL:  A LIFE considered the definite biography of the gifted tortured iconic singer, comes a new Channel 4 TV series GEORGE MICHAEL: OUTED.

This new documentary from Michael Ogden (The Nilsen Files on the British serial killer of young men)  lays bare the grim attitudes of the British press towards gay people in the ‘90s – and reveals that nothing much has changed since George Michael was outed. Ogden’s research included speaking to some of the journalists involved in the frenzy chasing the headlines at the time, and he also interviewed other Brit gay men who were also outed in a blaze of incessant and very public coverage.

Typical of the view held at the time, Neil Wallis, former deputy editor at The Sun. (the UK’s most rampant homophobic tabloid newspaper)  explains to Ogden why he thought the toilet incident at the center of the outing ‘was justifiable’. He actually goes on further to outrageously add that he saw George’s story as any other heterosexual celebrity sex scandal.

However Ogden very effectively explains why George’s forced coming out and the moral panic over AIDS – which many tabloids dubbed a “gay plague” – are intrinsically linked.  He said  “It’s about the language used, isn’t it? Because it’s all about shame. And the language about how being gay is seen as a shameful act. That was always there with the AIDS crisis, it was a moral judgment made against gay people,” 

The unavoidable issue of George Michael: Outed is a damning reminder of how the British press betrays LGBTQ+ people.  Even now 

George Michael: Outed airs on Channel 4 https://www.channel4.com/programmes/george-michael-outed on Monday 6 and Tuesday 7 March at 9pm.   It can be streamed worldwide via a VPN

 

 

P.S.  You may also like to see when Queerguru sat down to talk with James Gavin about  his biography GEORGE MICHAEL A LIFE …. filmed in Provincetown last summer

https://queerguru.com/james-gavin-talks-about-george-michael-life-the-definitive-biography/