Sex change makes TV viewers yawn

NEW YORK -- Producers of "The Education of Max Bickford" anticipated a fuss after casting the role of Erica, a college professor who used a sabbatical for a sex change operation. Never before had such a character been a regular in prime-time television.

The conservative American Family Association alerted its members, and CBS got a handful of protest letters. But no advertisers expressed concern, and moral watchdogs have been quiet.

"I think the lack of comment is an indication that there is an acceptance," said Nicole Yorkin, a creator of the drama. "It's not something they see as so shocking or horrifying that it requires a great deal of discussion."

Erica is not alone.

Television story lines that probably would have provoked morality debates only a few years ago have passed by unnoticed, either because the public has become used to them or the country is preoccupied with more important news.

Four years after Ellen DeGeneres' sitcom coming-out party was front-page news, a doctor played by Laura Innes on "ER" is quietly coming to terms with being a lesbian. The story began last spring and is continuing this fall.

And less than a decade after former Vice President Dan Quayle complained about Murphy Brown delivering a baby out of wedlock, an unmarried character on "Friends" -- television's most popular show -- is pregnant. Her friends even turned the idea of marriage into a joke.

"People are jaded," said Ed Vitagliano, spokesman for the American Family Association. "You can see just about everything on national television that this just doesn't seem so new."

Vitagliano's Tupelo, Miss.-based organization has all but thrown in the towel.

"Our basic perspective is that Hollywood is a lost cause when it comes to promoting traditional views of marriage and sexuality," he said.

Erica's acceptance is even more remarkable considering it airs on one of television's busiest nights, Sunday, on CBS, the network that generally has the oldest, most conservative audience. It starts at 8 p.m., during what used to be known as the family hour.

Dawn Prestwich, co-creator of the series with Yorkin, said she was a little nervous presenting the character to CBS. To her surprise, network executives not only approved it, but encouraged the producers to make Erica more prominent.

A woman, Helen Shaver, was cast as Erica. "Bickford" creators said they didn't seek an actor who had been through a sex change because there weren't many to choose from.

Shaver took the role, she said, because it was well-written and offered the chance to work regularly with star Richard Dreyfuss. She researched the part by reading books and talking to people who had undergone a sex change.

Any indications that her character had once been a man are very subtle: Shaver will make certain movements with her hands, or slightly alter her walk or voice.

"The narrow view is that a transgender woman looks like a man in a dress," she said, "but that's not true. Yes, there are some transgender women who look like men in dresses, but that's just a tiny, tiny part of the whole community."

Dreyfuss' character has a hard time accepting Erica. He pouts that his old drinking buddy, with whom he used to ogle women, is now a woman. Bickford thought it ridiculous when Erica got a new birth certificate, and angrily told her.

"Erica is wonderfully flawed and human," said Scott Seomin, entertainment media director for the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. "Helen Shaver and the writers are really doing this character well. She has integrity, she doesn't make an apology for who she is, she's living her life openly and honestly. It's very reflective of how it can be for people who transition into a different gender."

Previous depictions of such characters were used for temporary shock value, he said. They were crime victims, objects to be pitied or shown trying to fool others about their sexuality, he said. GLAAD considers Erica's casting a breakthrough that can help people struggling with their sexuality.

GLAAD sent a glossary to journalists with suggestions on how to address Erica. It prefers the term "transgender," and also advises that Erica be referred to as "she," never "he."

The American Family Association resists this, calling Erica "he" in the magazine it sends out to 200,000 subscribers.

"No matter how many surgeries a person has, their chromosomes determine their sex," Vitagliano said. "Once you've kind of detonated the male-female model, anything goes."

Still, the American Family Association considers Erica more of a distraction than an outrage. Vitagliano said her presence is "weird" in a show that otherwise has much to recommend it: he praises the program for the complicated, yet tender, relationship between Bickford and his daughter.

The character has attracted little attention because it's not really a controversy in society, said Robert Thompson, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University. Murphy Brown and Ellen became issues, but by the time they went on the air, many in American society had come to grips with single motherhood and homosexuality, he said.

"Television never pushes envelopes," he said. "It licks envelopes."

Thompson said "culture war" attacks on Hollywood aren't likely to resonate post-Sept. 11 because they echo the criticism Islamic fundamentalists have of American society -- and domestic critics don't want to be associated with the enemy.

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Elsewhere in television ...

ONLY ANDY: An overtime National Football League game last Sunday left viewers in many parts of the country with a dramatically brief version of "60 Minutes" that contained only Andy Rooney's commentary. Normally, CBS would push back its full prime-time schedule to show the newsmagazine in full, but couldn't because of the live Emmy Awards telecast. So "60 Minutes" this Sunday will repeat the segments that East Coast and Midwest viewers missed, while producing a different show for the West Coast, where the show appeared uninterrupted last Sunday.

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EDITOR'S NOTE -- David Bauder can be reached at dbauder"at"ap.org