Hollywood's Unholy Love for the Faux-Lesbian Kiss

ANALYSIS

(June 7) -- Among the lowlights of last night's MTV Movie Awards, none was lower than the girl-on-girl action that punctuated an otherwise funny and heartwarming speech by Generation Award winner Sandra Bullock. Largely silent as co-presenters Betty White and Bradley Cooper sang Bullock's praises, Scarlett Johansson's sole purpose on stage seemed sadly obvious as she coyly made her way over to Bullock, saying something about the Best Kiss award that Bullock was up for, but didn't win, with Johansson's husband, Ryan Reynolds.

Bullock took the cue; the audience cheered; and gay rights were set back, again.

Hollywood, for all its equal rights rhetoric, has long called on faux lesbianism as a reliable tool for generating buzz. The now-legendary kiss between Britney Spears and Madonna -- and Madonna and Christina Aguilera -- in 2003 showed up in newspapers around the world and was heralded as everything from "progress" to "PR stunt." Seven years later, the stunt hasn't gotten old. And why should it? If all PR is good PR -- and in Hollywood, isn't it? -- there's nothing more effective than pretend homosexuality. Last week, Miley Cyrus shared a well-publicized on-stage kiss with a female dancer during a taping of U.K. reality show Britain's Got Talent, while Jason Bateman and Dustin Hoffman enjoyed a smooch at a Lakers game. Cyrus eventually denied there was any physical contact, while the man kiss, projected on the Staples Center Kiss Cam, prompted a Deadspin writer to joke that an onlooker became "violently ill." This is progress, all right.

Feminists, in fact, have openly worried that all this mock-gayness serves to trivialize homosexuality, and reinforce the idea that public displays of homosexuality are only "OK" when both parties are committed heterosexuals. When Katy Perry released her single "I Kissed a Girl" in 2008, Feministing wrote that "Perry's lyrics reflect ... the cultural norms which state that female sexuality exists for the pleasure of men." Indeed, Perry's lyrics made a point of describing the act as "an experimental game," and -- don't worry -- she had a boyfriend back home. When former American Idol Adam Lambert pushed a male dancer's face toward his crotch during a 2009 American Music Awards performance, meanwhile, the act was deemed too racy and edited out of the West Coast broadcast. That's because he's actually gay.

If not an avowed feminist, Bullock has presented herself as a strong, self-sufficient woman. She waited to marry, was the major earner in her relationship, and is now a single mother of an adopted baby boy. Surely, she didn't need PR, positive or otherwise: In the wake of a scandal in which husband Jesse James was revealed as a neo-Nazi-dabbling serial cheater with questionable taste, Bullock already had America on her side. While it's hard to know if she was in on MTV's idea of envelope-pushing, by complying, she made it clear to millions that homosexual love is something both experimental and risque. Miley Cyrus is 17. But Bullock should know better.