You Aught To Know

Whatever you call this decade (the aughts? the naughts?), it was the time when more-complex images of gays and lesbians — both good and bad — popped up in the most unlikely places. Our list of the decade’s best celebrates the greatest movies, TV shows, music and books that also deepened the way Americans see gay life.

 

Movies: Brokeback Mountain — The aching sadness and undeniable emotion of forbidden gay love met a broad audience. Beautifully crafted, with haunting performances, made even more poignant by Heath Ledger’s death. Runner up: Moulin Rouge — An audacious melding of musical theater and pop music. Exhilarating.

 

TV: Six Feet Under — For five seasons, the Fishers welcomed us into their funeral home for a complex and authentic experience of grief, mental illness, gay relationships…in other words, life. By the time its stunning finale fast-forwarded through decades of lives and deaths, we felt we’d lived them, too. Runner up: Reality TV — Starting with Survivor’s Richard Hatch, we saw the good, the bad and the ugly gays (don’t get us started on Big Brother’s Joshuah Welch) parade through our living rooms, on Project Runway, Amazing Race, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, American Idol…often confounding — but nearly as often fulfilling — stereotypes. 

 

Song: "Crazy," Gnarls Barkley — Its pulsating beat entered our consciousness and played on a loop for two summers from Fire Island to Palm Springs and everywhere — gay and straight — in between. With a celebrity-parodying name and appearances dressed up as Star Wars characters, the collaboration of Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo helped performance art enter ‘00s pop music (a torch now carried by Lady Gaga). Runner up: "Hey Ya," Outkast — Now it’s a bar mitzvah staple, but this infectious debut made us shake it in a whole new way.

 

Album: The Emancipation of Mimi, Mariah Carey — Americans (not to mention the gays) sure like to tear down our heroes. The only thing we love more: a juicy comeback. And this was it.  After Glitter and a breakdown of sorts on Total Request Live, Carey shed her husband and her old ways to give us "It’s Like That" and that voice. Runner-up: FutureSex/LoveSounds, Justin Timberlake — His mouse ears long forgotten, the singer-actor-SNLer brought sexy back bigtime.

 

Books: Dry, Augusten Burroughs — When he first revealed his outlandish life in Running With Scissors, we were riveted by this Sedaris-sister-in-spirit. When he laid bare his addiction in Dry, we were hooked on him for good. Runner up: Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides — A sprawling, surprising tour of Greek lineage and transgender identity.