The Commercial Closet

The Commercial Closet is an online gallery that calls itself the largest collection of TV and print advertisements that include characters who identify themselves as queers (gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender persons). The site gathers approximately 300 hundred television commercials and print ads created around the world during the past 30 years.

Some ads amuse with their gentle humor, such as a 1995 one of man who needs to unwind by drinking a Guinness after he has cleaned up the house cluttered by his boyfriend. (The ad never aired.)

Others appall, such as a 1996 TV ad for Crunch Fitness centers which shows some caricatured gay men who leave a gym to molest young boys. (This ad aired.)

Among the collection, an for Hyundai's Kia automobile, unexpectedly enough, was the most amusing ad with a neutral portrayal to air on national American TV. The ad brings together a truck driver and his stowaway passenger, who discover they are under the same sign of Pisces.

Featuring ads that represent more than 250 brand-name companies, the site thoughtfully categorizes its commercials by company name, year, country, portrayal (defined as "positive," "negative" and "neutral") and subcategory theme, such as "sports stars" and "sissies and queens." The site allows you to use links and a search engine to find ads, most of which can be viewed.

Funded by several ad agencies, gay publications and activist groups, this online gallery is managed by its founder, Mike Wilke, a former reporter for the industry trade magazine Advertising Age. Wilke attaches his sometimes heavy-handed but usually informative commentary to every ad, explaining if it was seen, where it was seen, and any reaction it provoked. His commentary shows he is using the site to further his pro-queer political agenda.

"I want this project to inspire change in how advertising both perceives and reflects the diversity of gay and lesbian lives," Wilke says. He also picks his top 10 favorite ads, and enlists the support of visitors in referring him to any noteworthy ads they find elsewhere.

Almost none of these hundreds of ads for consumer products ever aired on American TV, and the few that did were rarely aired more than a few times. National print magazine ads by beer and fashion sellers were circulated more, but they numbered fewer than three-dozen during the past decade, if the site's collection is complete and accurate.

It's not too surprising, though, that an ad like Ikea furniture's that featured a male-male interior decorator couple was pulled from national TV. After all, advertisements are meant to sell products, and they must present the world in familiar terms to as many people as possible to make sales. Because queers represent a small part of the population they are too tiny an audience to justify an expensive national ad campaign.

Nevertheless, many Americans, mostly under the age of 40, consider themselves hip enough to be unthreatened by same-sex couples or transgender folks. And this straight audience is larger and susceptible to buying lots of Ikea furniture and Banana Republic pants. So activists like Wilke can hope that someday advertisers, in an attempt to impress these open-minded straight folk, will imitate MTV's bold promotional ads that feature openly queer couples acting as affectionate with each other as the male-female couples who typically star in ads for Close-Up toothpaste or Dentyne gum. By including token queer representation, such advertisements might indirectly appeal to the tolerant crowd of heterosexuals by signaling that the product being sold is cutting-edge.

In the meantime, while Americans wait for ads to become more reflective of reality, they can learn from queers who they meet that a person can be gay and happy at the same time, regardless of whether the person advertising soap this week enjoys the same kinds of sex and romance as you do. After all, there's lots of Americans, including drag kings and transvestites, who live ordinary lives. Instead of looking for them on your TV screen, find them around the corner.

— Sean O'Neill (NewsFromDC@cs.com)