Madam, - Donald Clarke points to Hollywood's bizarre hesitancy in depicting relationships between people of different races without the interracial nature of the relationship influencing the narrative ( The Ticket, July 18th).
Mr Clarke writes that mainstream film-makers are more comfortable depicting romances between people of the same sex than those of different race. He asks us to consider "all those gay best friends who hang around the female leads in contemporary romantic comedies".
I am loath to point out that a gay male best friend "hanging around with female leads" does not constitute the depiction of a same-sex romance. Very often such "gay best friends" are characters with no depth or character development, serving merely as a mouthpiece for punchlines. Same-sex relationships rarely feature in mainstream cinema unless the nature of the relationship is central to the narrative, as in Brokeback Mountain.
The highly successful mainstream TV show Will and Gracefeatured a gay lead character but only depicted a handful of same-sex kisses throughout eight seasons of the show.
It seems neither interracial relationships nor same-sex relationships are beyond Hollywood's Guess Who's Coming to Dinnerera quite yet.
- Yours, etc,
ANNA MacCARTHY, Rathgar Road, Dublin 6.