A couple of things caught my attention recently. The Bert and Ernie thing was brought up. Also India repealed Section 377, which was a relic from British rule that criminalised gay sex. As per history repeating, there's also been stirring within my own country, Singapore, to repeal a similar law, following India's. But I'm not going to go into detail on the latter topic, not today at least.
So to provide some context, Singapore I'd say, has a very mixed population when it comes to being very Asian-conservative, and also at the same time the opposite end as well. As for the mentioned 377A law, there is strong support for both repealing and keeping the law. I personally still feel that generally, the population leans towards the more conservative side with regards to most things. And with that, Singapore is also known to have quite some censorship, especially when it comes to the media. More specifically, entertainment media like movies can have sensitive scenes cut out to meet certain ratings, and might be more stringent than most countries.
From my view, mainstream media has generally avoided "taboo" topics with a 10ft pole. However, more recently have I started to notice such topics being strewn into local TV dramas, sometimes subtly, sometimes just plain out. While it wasn't uncommon that there were shows with cases of husbands two-timing, not long back did I notice the first case of polyamory being portrayed. To save a Google search, it means a person is able to love more than one person at a time. The drama clearly painted out a husband two-timing in the traditional fashion, but unlike the usual, there was a subtle struggle that was shown whereby the husband showed that he really couldn't bear to part with either of his loved. It wasn't going to be another one of those "ditch the vixen and go back to wife" plot. It dragged out long and painted the pain and dilemma the guy was facing, perhaps trying to make it more obvious that this case was different. As to be expected of the setting being in a monogamous society, the guy was eventually left with neither of them and suffered badly, with no inkling as to why he loved two people and not being able to make a choice. For a different drama I watched today, well, they basically had a trans female character, thrown out by her father and was late to see him on his death bed since she thought he had no longer recognised her as his own. This one was plain out in the open, and dang did I regret not watching this episode on screen with my conservative parents and wondering what their reactions might be lol.
Well yea that's two examples of my observation of mainstream media here slowly progressing and increasing exposure to different topics. The polyamory one especially might be too subtle to pick up on for most viewers. Heck maybe I'm reading too much into the show but it seemed very clear to me. Overall I'd say I'm pleasantly surprised. And no I don't recall seeing any gay couples on dramas so far; that'd be way too obvious and perhaps triggering to a good portion of the population lol. But yea, happy with the exploration of topics!
So if anyone would like to share how media in your country or other countries have portrayed such similar topics, that'll be cool too.