DeGeneres speaks at Penn

Actress and comedienne Ellen DeGeneres spoke to a full house in the Zellerbach Auditorium last night as Connaissance's featured spring speaker and did exactly what her speech's theme -- "Ellen DeGeneres: Speaking Honestly" -- suggested. DeGeneres stepped onstage to a standing ovation at 8 p.m. and began her 2 1/4-hour show on a light note that would not last throughout the rest of the show. "I have a dream," she said, "and in that dream I'm usually naked and in Mexico, playing racquetball." She warmed up the crowd with a few quips about speaking honestly, confessing with tongue deeply in cheek that "this is not my real hair color." However, DeGeneres then focused in on homosexuality, both as it related to her own personal experiences and to her larger desires to change American society's perception and treatment of gays and lesbians. To that end, she took an uncharacteristically serious tone as she reached the end of her first 15 minutes, saying, "There is so much hatred and lack of compassion and judgment, it's frightening." Before stepping away from the podium and opening what would become an extensive, nearly two-hour-long question-and-answer session, DeGeneres commented on recent incidents of gay bashing across the country, expressing her frustration and anger. "It's about love," she said. "We want to be allowed to love who we want to love and why should you say we can't?" DeGeneres encouraged the audience, which included both students and members of the larger Philadelphia community, to fight against discrimination and name calling. "You need to say something and you need to stop it when you hear it," she said. "'Nigger' is not OK, 'faggot' is not OK." She then expressed her concern over newspaper advertisements and other efforts by what she referred to as the "religious right -- or the religious wrong, as I like to call them." She was especially disturbed by full page advertisements depicting people who say they were formerly gay, or "ex-gay," and have become straight, encouraging others to do the same. "We don't take out ads of ex-straights and there are a lot more of them," DeGeneres joked. During the question-and-answer session, DeGeneres accepted praise from many audience members who said that her sitcom, Ellen, made a difference in their lives as the first prime-time television show to feature an openly gay leading character. Not all audience members were so complimentary. One male student, who identified himself as "a Christian," said that while he appreciated DeGeneres' efforts to curb hate and violence, he was "kind of hurt" when she talked about the people in the ads because, "I feel like you hated them right back." Though DeGeneres continued to interject humor whenever possible, the evening took a definitively somber turn. And by the last half-hour of the event -- which ran at least an hour past the planned time frame -- audience members in the back of the house began trooping steadily out the back doors of the auditorium, leaving noticeable gaps in the seating. "Don't you leave!" yelled DeGeneres, in a jest that brought a ripple of laughs. But for students who came to the show expecting a light evening of DeGeneres' humor, the levity that such comments brought was not enough. "I was disappointed because I wish that she had made us laugh," Nursing senior Zena Lobell said. And College junior Katherine Sosnoff said she felt DeGeneres was unfairly criticized by audience members. "It was just a shame that Ellen was in the position of defending herself so much," Sosnoff said. Despite some students' disappointment that the show took on a more serious tone than anticipated, Connaissance Co-Director Dara Gruen, a College senior, said she was "incredibly pleased" with the event even though "some people left" toward the end of the evening.

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