Adam Lambert and Performance Porn at the AMA Show

It's no surprise that Adam Lambert's sexually charged performance Sunday night on the ABC-televised American Music Awards (AMA) generated an eruptive orgy of passionate cheers, Middle-American indignation and a salsa brew of outraged calls and molten emails to ABC.

Or that it took up so much oxygen in the blogosphere.

Nor, frankly, was the precipitous cancellation of Lambert's live morning show concert on ABC's "Good Morning America" (GMA) out of left field. After all, who owns ABC? The Walt Disney Co., that's who).

Did it all surprise anyone in "the biz"? Didn't Lambert know he was taking a chance by performing his racy, homoerotc number on prime time television? Did he really expect no audience-cum-network blowback?

If so, then he needs to get a new manager, one more media and culture savvy. Yes, ABC's pulling the cancel trigger so fast was a little excessive. They could have vetted Adam's GMA game plan and let him know what's GO and what's NO-GO on morning telly. They could have-but they didn't... or did and didn't trust him not to do some more envelope-pushing.

Whatever, the deed was done and Lambert had to retreat to his scheduled CBS appearances and a roundelay of press interviews.

The openly gay Lambert has reportedly said the backlash against the performance and the GMA cancellation were "a form of discrimination and a double standard" because, for decades,"women performers have been pushing the erotic performance envelope." He said the powers that be were notified in advance his number was "about energy, about going to a club, about feeling sexy, about flirting..."

Obviously language couldn't manage the heavy lifting of what's called communication. Somebody didn't send it right or somebody didn't get it right.

But Lambert is absolutely right. There was some form of unfairness, discrimination, even, prejudice going on with the cancellation. Not "for sure," but probably. Yet TV has become a fairly eroticized playing field of late. Why the double standard here?

Maybe it's the difference between what is judged as bad taste or obscene and what qualifies as a moment of "ewwwww," as several critics expounded in blogs and comments to blogs and columns. "Ewwwww" expresses disgust, I wish I hadn't seen that, take it away-now!" It is a statement of value, of what passes and what doesn't pass the envelope test

At this moment in time in the mainstream media, straights can and do get away with much more performance erotoplay than gays. Madonna, Britney Spears, Beyoncé, even Tom Jones (still grinding it out in his 60s for the "ladies" in places like Branson and Vegas) ooze simulated sexuality. Heteros Britney, Madonna and Christina Aguilera performed a French kissing menage at the MTV Video Music Awards back in 2003. Shock and awe yes, but show cancellations? Non. Double standard? Oui.

Heterosexuality in music or musical performance is, of course, not without critics, even in the case of infamous accidents such as the Janet Jackson Superbowl nipplegate "wardrobe malfunction." But there was no "ewwww" heard ‘round the country. Double standard? Si, si.

In my blog about the film, Milk and about homosexual passion in American film, I noted that for much of middle-aged middle-America, it's not so much about homosexuality per se (a stereotype, an abstraction), so much as it's about homo-SEXUALITY, (the up close and personal, concrete stuff). It's that sexuality, that onscreen kissing stuff,

that humping, simulated oral stuff that really gets ‘em riled up.

On the AMA show, the dancer simulating going down on an enabling Lambert in that now-notorious number, didn't just push heterosexual, Middle-America's envelope for popular culture, it set it on fire.

So, really, who should be shocked at the reaction on all sides of the Adamgate affair except his devoted posse? We no more live in a post-homo-hostile world because of the popularity of open (albeit on-camera, sexually neutered) lesbians talk show hosts like Ellen DeGeneres (are there any openly gay male talk show hosts on mainstream American broadcast television?) then we live in a post-racial society because of the election of Obama as president.

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Double standards abound. This IS a White, Christian, heterosexual country, whether or not you or I like it. Those demos hold the power and their values hold sway until further notice (which may be just around the proverbial corner).

Research studies, including my own small sample surveys in my classes over the past 30 years, rather unmistakably suggest two things: heterosexual males, and females, to a lesser extent, find lesbian (female-female) sex and sexuality less off-putting than gay (male-male) sex and sexuality. In fact, men and, to a lesser extent, women, frequently find lesbian as compared to gay sex, mild to very sexually arousing.

Secondly, on average, both heterosexual men and women find males less masculine if they participate in homosexual sex but generally do not find females less feminine when they engage in homosexual sex.

Double standard? Yeah. Chalk it up, perhaps, to socialization in a male-valued society with males defining gender roles and standards.

There's also this, however: Among the many demographics to parse, age is a big influence here. Young people are more accepting of homosexuality and homo-SEXUALITY in the public and entertainment spheres. Youth devours, indeed mainlines edgy. Adam Lambert is a gay performer looking to make his mark with the youth demo, looking to strike while his iron is hot. Risqué is edgy. Risqué is also risky. And gay risqué in ABC prime time is edgy-risky.

Risk is not just a word. There really is risk in risk taking. Adam took a risk in prime time and went bad boy gay. He says it was spontaneous; that the spirit moved him, however well conceived and/or spontaneously executed; and that he's unapologetic. In his spontaneity, he went beyond hip hop tropes and Michael Jackson's crotch-grabbing masculine protests. He impulsively recruited someone else to provide the crotch focus, an onstage dancer, a male someone else. And there was the deep, lingering, hair-grabbing, "spontaneous" consuming kiss with the keyboardist, Tommy Ratliff, which birthed the viral still photo. There were bound to be consequences. Some good, some bad - but, felicitously for him, all providing Lambert with gushers of erotoplay publicity.

Maybe that's just what he and his manager wanted and expected from the get-go. Let's face it: Adam Lambert has established his persona and his audience and being the dangerous, bad boy is clearly one of his chosen tickets to ride. Just consider how fruitful that game can be? Mick Jagger's been riding it for 40 years. In his own way, so has Sir Elton John.

But Adam can't expect there to be only an upside. Not in these times of culture wars and polarized passions. Pushing boundaries is walking on razorblades. The bad thing is that, indeed, it is a mad, mad world. The good thing is the times they are a-changin.'