Brian Kinney

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Brian Kinney
First appearance	Season 1, Episode 1
Last appearance	Season 5, Episode 13
Created by	Ron Cowen Daniel Lipman
Portrayed by	Gale Harold
Episode count	82
UK counterpart	Stuart Alan Jones (Aidan Gillen)
Information
Gender	Male
Age	29 (Season 1) 34 (Season 5)
Occupation	Advertising executive and partner (Ryder, Vanguard), CEO (Kinnetik)
Family	Joan Kinney (mother) Jack Kinney (father) Claire Kinney (sister)
Significant other(s)	Justin Taylor (boyfriend)
Children	Gus Peterson-Marcus

Brian Kinney is a fictional character from the American Showtime television series Queer As Folk, a drama about the lives of a group of gay men and women living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.^[1] The character was portrayed by American actor Gale Harold during the show's five year run. Brian is based on the character Stuart Alan Jones of Russell T Davies' original British series of the same name.^[2] Handsome and masculine, Brian is a successful advertising executive who owns a lavish Pittsburgh loft and leads a glamorous and self-indulgent lifestyle. He is portrayed as sexually promiscuous,^[3] narcissistic,^[4] arrogant,^[5] amoral,^[2] and emotionally absent,^[2] and completely rejects heteronormative social mores, within which he includes love and relationships.^[6] Despite these characteristics, Brian is worshipped by the gay men of the fictional Liberty Avenue and serves as the show's antihero.^[4] Brian's romantic relationship with young artist Justin Taylor is central to the character's development throughout the series, as well as his relationship with best friend Michael Novotny.

Critical opinion on the character differs. He has been described as "the ultimate gay hero," but has also stirred up much controversy within the LGBT community due to what many gay viewers saw as perpetuation of "negative stereotypes about gay men." In November 2007, Brian was voted the 'Most Popular Gay Television Character' of all time by AfterEllen's sister site, AfterElton.^[5][7]

Contents 1 Background 2 Overview 3 Reception 4 In popular culture and other media 5 References

[edit] Background

Brian, throughout the series, "redefines promiscuity" and can usually be found in the back room of the popular gay club Babylon. Brian's biggest fear is to lose his youth and beauty. His best friend, Michael, often tells him: "You will always be young, and you will always be beautiful. You're Brian Kinney, for fuck's sake!" Lindsay, a sister-like figure to Brian, sometimes fondly calls him 'Peter', in reference to Peter Pan, the boy who never grows old; He calls her 'Wendy' in return. Brian came from a broken home with an abusive alcoholic father and an overly-devout mother, and as a result he developed a cold personality, and he fears becoming "a shitty father" to his son. In one episode, Emmett Honeycutt's elderly boyfriend George Shickle describes Brian as "the love child of James Dean and Ayn Rand."

Despite Brian's seemingly uncaring and amoral nature, he is shown as loving his friends and will often make great sacrifices for them, even though he won't admit it. He plans a wedding for Lindsay and Melanie after theirs falls apart, and gives up his parental rights to his young son Gus, so that Melanie and Lindsay will reunite in the first season. He pushes Michael away, so that he will go back to his boyfriend. He helps his young lover Justin recover after a bashing at his senior prom, which Brian attended to please Justin. He gives up his job and money to beat the anti-gay, candidate for mayor, Jim Stockwell, and is willing to give up his loft and nightclub to be with Justin in the final episodes.

[edit] Overview

In the pilot, Brian Kinney takes 17-year-old Justin Taylor home after spotting him on a street corner outside of the gay nightclub Babylon. He proceeds to take Justin home and take his virginity. In the same episode, his son, Gus, is born to a lesbian couple - Lindsey and Melanie. Because of the simultaneousness of these two pivotal events, Brian often associates Gus with Justin, referring to both as "sonny boy." During the first season, his relationship with Justin is unclear. Brian hates the idea of couples but breaks his own rules for Justin, unable to resist the pull he feels towards him. He takes care of him in different ways: letting him move into his loft after Justin's kicked out of his parents' home, going after him to NYC after he runs away, advising him on school situations -- thus over and over, disproving his own verbal declarations of not wanting him around through his actions.

After witnessing Justin's prom bashing, Brian is traumatized. No one - except Jennifer Taylor - knows that Brian stands secret vigil outside Justin's hospital room every night for weeks. Upon Justin's release from the hospital, Jennifer Taylor bars Brian from seeing Justin but later asks him to 'take' her son, because Brian is the only one he trusts. During the second season, Brian helps Justin recover, both physically and emotionally. Justin confronts Brian by asking if the reason he is still living with Brian is because he feels guilty. Brian says that guilt was the reason he took Justin in, but its not the reason he wants him to stay. To restrict Brian's promiscuity and protect himself, Justin sets some rules. Justin later breaks the rules with the more romantic Ethan, and Brian tells Justin to decide who he wants to be with. Brian is hurt when Justin leaves him to be with Ethan, but will not admit it. Despite his outwardly-detached nature, Brian's loneliness is evident in the beginning of the third season.

During the third season, Brian's success as an advertising executive comes into opposition with his beliefs when he is asked to head up a conservative, anti-gay mayoral candidate's campaign. Though he is initially instrumental in the candidate's rise, he eventually, with Justin, destabilizes the campaign, using his own money to pay for ads. Because of this, Brian loses his job. However, in the fourth season, he founds his own company, Kinnetik. He battles testicular cancer, especially tough because of his narcissism. After beating cancer and completing a bike ride from Toronto to Pittsburgh, Brian reevaluates his life, deciding to take a more active role in his son's life and asking Justin to move back in.

In the fifth season, Justin moves out, frustrated at Brian's inability to form a committed relationship. After a bomb goes off at Babylon, which Brian owns by this season, Brian admits his love for Justin and mends his relationship with his best friend, Michael. Brian proposes to Justin but later tells Justin that he should go to New York to pursue a promising art career. They spend one last night, knowing that even though they are separating, they still love each other. Brian shows Justin that he has kept the wedding rings as a symbol of hope that they will have the chance to be together again. The series ends with Michael and Brian dancing in the ruins of Babylon which transforms to show it restored as they dance with all their friends, except Justin.

[edit] Reception

Sexually irresistible, beautifully turned out, and highly successful, Brian has nonetheless been an extremely controversial character in the LGBT community. Some people feel that he represents the community poorly, embodying a promiscuity and an inability to grow up that are negative stereotypes among the larger community. This conflict is represented within the series as Brian's ongoing antagonism with Pittsburgh's Gay and Lesbian Center. Others regard Brian as the most moral character on the show, and one of the most morally uncompromising characters on television.

Heterosexual women and lesbians have often embraced the character more than gay men. Brian's admirers tend to see him as a larger than life icon. The scholar and critic Camille Paglia, reviewing the premiere episode on the website Salon.com, said she enjoyed the show "principally because of the glamorous performance by Gale Harold of cruel-as-ice Brian, who looks like Donatello's David all grown up."

Brian has also been singled out for praise from a liberationist point of view by Paul Robinson, the Richard W. Lyman Professor in the Humanities at Stanford University. In his book "Queer Wars" (University of Chicago Press, 2005), Professor Robinson writes of the character at length, describing him as "someone who has completely liberated himself from the repressive conventions of heterosexuality and whose utter contempt for straight society makes him the ultimate gay hero."

Readers of the internet site AfterElton.com voted Brian Kinney in 2007 "The Most Popular Gay Character of All Time."^[8]

[edit] In popular culture and other media

Brian's popularity was such that the famous "Brian bracelet" - a simple woven bracelet with cowrie shells which became identified with the character - emerged as a totem in the gay community. One of the contestants on the gay dating reality series Boy Meets Boy was seen wearing one.

[edit] References

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