My headline didn’t have to be so incendiary, but you know… got to farm that engagement.
I could be talking out of my ass here, but this is my personal opinion. I don’t like it when movies and television make gay characters super-gay. Like take Agatha All Along. The character of “mmf” is clearly gay. He has a lilt, an effeminate quality, lack of strength. I mean, yes, those kinds of people exist, but there seems to be a disproportionate amount of them in TV than in real life.
This sounds like I’m being homophobic. I’m not. I have no strong feelings about homosexuals in media. What I have strong feelings about is that these characters are all the same. Their only personality trait is being gay. Their only purpose in the story is to be gay so they can be either comic relief or virtue-signals from the company.
Doesn’t it reinforce the stereotype that all gays are limp-wristed lilt-voiced poncies? Because here’s the thing–that kind of gayness is just over the top ridiculous. Some people are like that, sure, but I’ve never met them. Every gay man I’ve ever interacted with just acts like a regular person. I wouldn’t be able to tell he was gay unless he kissed me. Gaydar is no longer a thing.
They wear plaid, they have beards, they don’t have beards, they build tables, they’re dirty, they like NASCAR.
Ian McKellen doesn’t act that way. Rock Hudson wasn’t like that. Tim Cook, Pete Buttigieg, Victor Garber, Sam Smith, Frank Ocean, Tiger King, Wentworth Miller, Noah Schnapp, Kristian Nairn, Michael Sam, Tom Hardy, the cowboys from Brokeback Mountain, the guy from ParaNorman. And I don’t know what’s going on with Samuel L. Jackson’s character in The Kingsmen, but I don’t like it (in terms of using gay = anti-masculine = villainy).
And then there are celebrities who are straight but get mistaken for gay. Like Zac Efron, Andrew Garfield, Johnny Galecki. So the reciprocal is true too. No one can tell someone’s sexuality by how they act. Humans are complex. Sometimes people don’t know if they’re gay until their forties.
Gay people aren’t clowns. Masculinity is a spectrum, and it’s not indicative of one’s sexuality. Stop making your characters stereotypes. Stop making them one-note pianos, especially when A) we’ve heard that note over and over and over again B) it’s offensive.
