Huffington Post Article: ‘Gaycism’ and The New Normal: The ‘Hot’ Trend on TV Is Bigotry!!!
Nico Lang
Co-Creator and Co-Editor, In Our Words
In recent months, there’s been a lot of chatter on the interwebs about this thing called “gaycism” on the TV. As defined by Lauren Bans of GQ, gaycism is “the wrongheaded idea that having gay characters gives you carte blanche to cut PC corners elsewhere.” In her example, Bans cites shows like Modern Familyand freshman comedy Partners as emblematic of this trend. Modern Family is an Emmy-juggernaut, a critical darling and a much-lauded champion of LGBT characterization on TV, but that progressivism comes at the expense of Gloria, the lone woman of color. Sofia Vergara is a terrific comedienne and kills in the role, but the brunt of her jokes revolve around her flimsy command of the English language. Gloria’s B-story FOR AN ENTIRE EPISODE dealt with her use of malapropisms, like “doggy dog world” and “don’t give me an old tomato,” because being foreign is her whole purpose on the show. Oh, and having boobs.
Although Modern Family has gotten away with Charlie Chan-ing South American women (so fiery! yelling!) for three seasons, Two Broke Girls came under fire earlier this year for the same stuff. But the difference between the two is that Modern Family is racist like that friend you have who wears Native American prints from Urban Outfitters until you say something about it and then they apologize and never do it again. You know they mean well, and “flesh colored” band-aids provewhite privilege is hard to spot sometimes. However, Two Broke Girls is like your white gay friend who thinks he’s entitled to say whatever he pleases because he’s been oppressed, so he’s allowed to oppress other people and call it being an “equal opportunity offender.” He’s earned the right to be a racist, insensitive asshole, because I guess he asked Audre Lorde and she said it was okay?
For example, look at Michael Patrick King. For the queers in the audience, we know MPK as the man who brought us Sex and the City, a series notably gaycist with its Lena Dunham-esque exclusion of anyone not white, except for the groundbreaking depiction of Miranda’s sexy fling with a chocolatey black man. However, King recently upped the gaycist ante with Two Broke Girls, a show the New Yorker referred to as “so racist it is less offensive than baffling.” The show reduces black men to sweet ol’ jive-talkers, Eastern Europeans to crazed sex hounds and Asian Americans to Long Duk Dong and “Yellow Panic” stereotypes. On the latter, Andrew Ti of “Yo, Is That Racist?” notes, “It’s distressingly easy to imagine the writers sitting around and listing off every single ching-chong stereotype, ultimately deciding with some sorrow that a Fu Manchu mustache would be impractical for budget reasons.”
And when Michael Patrick King was asked about it a panel for Two Broke Girls earlier this year, was he like your friend who vowed never to shop at Urban Outfitters again? Nope. He was like your friend that then buys a bunch of Native American print underwear afterward and then dances half-naked on a coffee table bragging about how edgy he is — because he’s, like, pushing boundaries or whatever. In defense of being a racist douche, King eloquently summed up the problem with a heaping helping of white gay male privilege, “I’m gay! I’m putting in gay stereotypes every week! I don’t find it offensive, any of this. I find it comic to take everybody down, which is what we are doing.”
Into this controversy steps The New Normal, the new Ryan Murphy show about two gay men who decide to raise a baby together, a show that marries Murphy’s trademark tonal inconsistency “with more gay jokes and regular old racism than Gallagher’s stand-up act.” All of Murphy’s shows have huge problems, and Glee has faced heavy criticism for not only being super racist, but also for being super transphobic, which was recently kiiiind of rectified by introducing the character of Unique, a young trans* woman of color. However, as the Cracked article on the show argues, the real problem is that everyone is a “something” on the show, and all the characters conform to broad caricatures, “like the awkward Jew with the afro, the black girl who always sings the big gospel notes, the gay kid with the great fashion sense, the overachieving Asian [and] the fiery, underprivileged Latina.” Although you could argue that in high school, everyone conforms to a stereotype, Cracked‘s Ian Fortey notes the Michael Patrick King logic behind that rationalization: “Glee’s producers think that by shoving their parade of characters and their intense stereotypes in your face, rather than having them be subtle, it’s cool, because they’re acknowledged.”
Similarly, The New Normal announces its offensive stereotypes as if it were shouting them through one of Sue Sylvester’s bullhorns. TNN has already caught a lot of flack for its “lesbian problem,” as it reduces all lesbians to “ugly men” with “gingerbread man bodies,” but this is pretty much the tip of one big problematic, racist iceberg. In one greatmoment for the history of gay characters, main gay Bryan (Andrew Rannells) refers to vaginas as “tarantula faces,” with the implication that gay men think vaginas are icky and gross. Elsewhere, he prances around a lot, listens to Lady Gaga, talks about dressing his baby up in Marc Jacobs clothes and does lots of other stereotypically “gay things.” This is not progress. This is pretty much the same crap that shows like In Living Color (see: their “Men on Film” sketches) used to pull, except now the “Equal Opportunity Offenders” are on “our team” (aka. Team Queer). As a self-proclaimed “femme,” I know there’s nothing wrong with being effeminate, but nothing about Murphy’s characterization of femme males feels particularly nuanced.
The problem is that instead of writing actual characters, Murphy falls back on tired tropes, showing his writing hasn’t evolved out of high school cafeteria labels. On top of Bravo Gay Bryan and his Butch Gay partner (Justin Bartha, who gets to watch football and do “dude stuff”), we have a Precocious Child (Bebe Wood), a Single Mom With Big Dreams (Georgia King), a Sassy Black Woman (Nene Leakes) and a Homophobic, Racist Grandma (Ellen Barkin, who deserves so much better). Some of these stereotypes are harmless, but Leakes’ and Barkin’s characters make my brain hurt, as they seem to be taken from deleted scenes from Crash. Barkin’s Nana exists in some Paul Haggis-ian alternate universe where people can just shout racist invective all the time, in place of actual conversation. And in The New Normal, the people around them just shrug it off or laugh at them dismissively. Because old people are so old, amiright?
Nana has a lot of people to offend, and like Andrew Ti, I can picture her crossing off a Glenn-Beck-created checklist for every episode. Jews? Check. Gays? Check. African-Americans? DOUBLE CHECK. To give Nana a lot to complain about, Ryan Murphy casts Real Housewife Nene Leakes to be the embodiment of every single stereotype about black women this side of an Aunt Jemima bottle. Leakes plays Bryan’s assistant, and in her first scene, she discusses stealing her boss’ credit card to buy new shoes, ones (of course!) covered in rhinestone bling.
When’s she’s not stealing, Leakes has a constant “mhmm” expression on her face, as if she spontaneously developed a case of Lana Del Rey lips. She serves no other purpose on the show except to be loud and to and validate Bryan and David — in the same way that most TV shows and films use people of color solely as vehicles for white narratives. General, non-gay-specific racism is nothing new in the media. Non-whites are always relegated to supporting roles where they are acted and commented upon by the white characters (e.g. Bryan and Nana), but rarely get their own agency or the ability to write their own narratives. (Both of the creators of The New Normal are white.) After all the criticism The Help received for similar issues, I’m surprised this ever made it past NBC’s people. I know the struggling network is desperate for anyone to take it to the prom, and Ryan Murphy is SO HOT right now, but this is just pathetic.
All of this overt stereotyping makes it particularly hypocritical when Leakes calls out K-Mart Sue Sylvester for being racist, asking Nana to take her “dirty, racist mind back to the South.” I couldn’t believe that the pot dared to call the kettle African-American, until I realized that the problem was that Murphy and Ali Adler (his out lesbian co-creator) don’t see any problem with Leakes’ character. TV sitcom writers don’t necessarily have to care about white privilege or how stereotyping perpetuates a system of systemic injustice, as they are more concerned with putting on a show and getting viewers. Murphy and Adler will do whatever is necessary to get laughs, even if that means offending people, because pushing buttons is part of comedy! Haven’t you seenBrickleberry?
In response to that reasoning, Lindy West writes:
This fetishization of not censoring yourself, of being an ‘equal-opportunity offender,’ is bizarre and bad for comedy. When did ‘not censoring yourself’ become a good thing? We censor ourselves all the time, because we are not entitled, sociopathic fucks. Your girlfriend is censoring herself when she says she’s okay with you playing Xbox all day. In a way, comedy is censoring yourself–comedy is picking the right words to say to make people laugh. A comic who doesn’t censor himself is just a dude yelling. And being an ‘equal opportunity offender’–as in, ‘It’s okay, because Daniel Tosh makes fun of ALL people: women, men, AIDS victims, dead babies, gay guys, blah blah blah’–falls apart when you remember (as so many of us are forced to all the time) that all people are not in equal positions of power.
To Murphy and co., it’s not being racist, it’s being politically incorrect, which Debra Dickersonargues is often the same thing:
The rhetorical cul-de-sac where white hate went–in goes racism, out comes political incorrectness. Use of this phrase is a tactic designed to derail discourse by disguising racism as defiance of far-left, pseudo-Communist attempts at enforcing behavior and speech codes. However, vicious, brainless, knee-jerk, or crudely racist a sentiment may be, once it is repackaged as merely ‘un-PC’ it become heroic, brave, free-thinking, and best of all, victimized.
And that sense of victimization is exactly what makes the gaycism in The New Normal so troubling, because it makes the show feel entitled to being offensive. Shock humor is the only type of humor The New Normal knows, and it insists on shoving it down our throats, like when Nana thanks a young Asian girl for “helping build the railroads” and offhandedly remarks that “when [she] was in school, they learned about presidents that owned people like [Barack Obama].” Shows likeSouth Park and Louie do a good job of using racially charged and politically incorrect humor as a way of critiquing societal and systemic norms, rather than indirectly supporting that oppression through just mindlessly regurgitating stereotypes. In contrast, nothing about Nana’s statements subverts the status quo, and the laughter only derives from the fact that Nana is saying the things we aren’t supposed to or allowed to say. She’s just being “real” and “honest,” like a second-rate Archie Bunker.
However, in the case of Bunker, the jokes were on him, as the show served as a critique of the conservative ideologies that made him racist, and Bunker’s punchlines only served to show what a xenophobic jerk he was. The New Normal doesn’t do that, and in fact, they have Bryan and Nana bond over both being Asian racist, so everyone’s racist and it’s okay. Because Murphy doesn’t know when to quit, the show’s fourth episode, “Obama Mama,” has Bryan and David then reflect on their racism — when they realize that they have no black friends. Because I guess having black friends makes you not racist, they try to get some to fix the problem. Spoiler: They don’t actually make any. However, they are nice to an interracial family for approximately two seconds, which istotally the same thing as challenging societally constructed racial biases. As Barney taught us, fleeting recognition of existence = friendship = post-racial society. Racism solved. Not only does this skirting of the issue uphold the show’s racial status quo, but it also centers on a false notion: Mel Gibson starred in four Lethal Weapons with Danny Glover and look how he turned out.
Remember hipster racism? This is that turned up to 11, like Murphy throwing a big blackface partyon TV and saying its okay because it’s “ironic.” However, the biggest problem with pointing this out is that people often don’t realize that ironic racism is still just racism. And what actually makes the show’s racism so doubly troubling is that the act of being systemically oppressed should make people more aware of the ways in which they have the ability to marginalize others, because they have experienced the same thing themselves. The New Normal is even ABOUT that marginalization, specifically the discrimination Bryan and David (or “Bravid”) face for being two men who want to raise a child. Although the show is on the surface purely entertainment, Murphy has an explicitly political agenda, one he announces at almost every turn, the same way he did when he made bullying a major storyline in Season 2 of Glee. The message in TNN is that all families are normal, which (although problematic) comes from a good place and is necessary in a political climate where even some in the LGBTQ community, like Rupert Everett, think two men can’t raise a child together.
As the gay parenting is the central subject matter of the show (rather than a supporting storyline, like in Modern Family), The New Normal is (whether I like it or not) a landmark show, and how Murphy defines “the new normal” will matter to same-gender parents everywhere. This isn’t one of Murphy’s haunted house yarns; this is people’s actual lives that Murphy is representing. As Spider-Man’s uncle once said, with that “power comes responsibility,” and like David and Bryan, same-gender parents want their children to grow up in a better, more inclusive world for all people, no matter their color or preference. In the third episode where, after being gay bashed in an outlet mall, Bryan tells David he doesn’t want to raise a child in a world where people so openly discriminate against each other. If Bravid ever have that child, I only hope that Ryan Murphy heeds that wish. Their baby deserves better.
Note: An earlier version of this post was featured on In Our Words, a Chicago-based online salon covering all things queer, and was updated to take the newest episode into account. You can find the original here.
Out Magazine Interview: NFL Stud Chris Kluwe Talks Same Sex Marriage, Gay Rights, & Football Career.
Chris Kluwe: Kick Ass
10.2.2012
BY CYD ZEIGLER
Photography by David Bowman
“Your insults can’t be the standard fuck, shit, bitch — it has to be something that sticks in people’s minds,” says Chris Kluwe, the Minnesota Vikings punter, explaining how to craft a devastating letter to someone whose views you hold reprehensible. “Generally the way you do that is to take a swear word—usually a part of someone’s anatomy — and attach it to something else that it normally wouldn’t go with. When you come up with a good one, you’ll know you have it because you’ll just start giggling to yourself.”
For example, “lustful cockmonster.”
On September 7, you could sense the howls of laughter reverberating across the Internet after Kluwe’sexcoriating letter to Maryland state delegate Emmett C. Burns Jr. was published on the sports fansite Deadspin and quickly went viral. A week earlier, in a letter brimming with self-importance, Burns had told the Baltimore Ravens to “order” linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo to cease advocating for same-sex marriage. Kluwe’s response was a master class in how to take down a pompous and wrong-headed ass.
“I find it inconceivable that you are an elected official of Maryland’s state government,” Kluwe’s letter started, reasonably enough. “Your vitriolic hatred and bigotry make me ashamed and disgusted to think that you are in any way responsible for shaping policy at any level.” Kluwe then went on to dismantle Burns’s position, point by point, culminating in a crescendo of wit and impishness — and that now-fabled coinage. It’s worth running the penultimate paragraph in full, if only because it does such a good job of clarifying the issues:
“I can assure you that gay people getting married will have zero effect on your life. They won’t come into your house and steal your children. They won’t magically turn you into a lustful cockmonster. They won’t even overthrow the government in an orgy of hedonistic debauchery because all of a sudden they have the same legal rights as the other 90 percent of our population — rights like Social Security benefits, child care tax credits, Family and Medical Leave to take care of loved ones, and COBRA healthcare for spouses and children. You know what having these rights will make gays? Full-fledged American citizens just like everyone else, with the freedom to pursue happiness and all that entails. Do the civil-rights struggles of the past 200 years mean absolutely nothing to you?”
Oh, he also called Burns a “narcissistic fromunda stain” — which is just showing off.
With all the attention on Kluwe’s letter, it’s easy to forget that he was, in turn, inspired by another football player, the Ravens’s Ayanbadejo, busy fighting his own corner in Baltimore. In November, voters in both Minnesota and Maryland will be faced with marriage-equality ballot initiatives, so the high-profile stance of Kluwe and Ayanbadejo could have real and profound consequences. The positions of both men not only reflect how quickly opinion is shifting, but also spotlight the need to check our own preconceptions of the sports world as inherently intolerant and homophobic.
“I’ve always relished breaking that stereotype of the dumb jock athlete because while I enjoyed athletics growing up, I also enjoyed reading and video games, and athletic sport is not what defines me as a person,” says Kluwe. “I think as more and more generations start rising through the NFL, a lot of these kids see that it’s OK to be something other than an athlete.”
ESPN radio sportscaster, Jared Max, who came out in 2011, agrees, pointing out that the lifespan of an NFL player is much shorter than most other sports, generating faster turnover. “I strongly believe that goodness is contagious and that others will jump on board as the younger generation begins to populate the NFL,” he says, with some justification given a recent poll by Outsports.com, which identified 28 current NFL players who’ve expressed support for gay rights. For Max, players like Kluwe and Ayanbadejo deserve comparison to earlier taboo-busters like Branch Rickey, who broke through Major League Baseball’s color barrier by signing Jackie Robinson to the Dodgers in 1945.
But for Kluwe, taking a stand on gay rights is as instinctual as planting his foot into a ball. “It’s all about the Golden Rule,” he says. “Treat other people as you want to be treated. It’s that simple. It’s something that needs to be spoken about, and it’s something I can do while fulfilling my job as a football player.”
Growing up in Los Alamitos, Calif., 20 miles south of Los Angeles, Kluwe’s parents preached to their son a mantra of tolerance with a profanity-free lexicon. Neither stuck at the time. As a tween, gay slurs peppered his speech with the same heedlessness as his peers. “Unfortunately, as kids, sometimes you don’t understand what your words can mean because you’re not emotionally mature enough yet,” he says. “As you grow up and start learning about the world, you realize, Hey, some of this stuff is hurtful; I would not want to be treated that way. That’s part of maturing.”
Kluwe’s voracious appetite for reading was also instrumental. He displays an old-fashioned ability to quote Voltaire or Ralph Waldo Emerson and reads so much sci-fi and fantasy that he jokes that Barnes & Noble can’t keep up. On his active Twitter account, he’ll solicit suggestions for his book list. A recent post reads, “This Vonnegut guy, I like the cut of his jib.” A few hours later, he’d already updated it: “Damn. Slaughterhouse 5 makes me want to simultaneously punch and hug the entire human race. The same stupid cycle over and over.”
It’s easy to trace Kluwe, the outspoken gay rights advocate, through his childhood obsessions with gaming and sci-fi. The thrust and parry of video-game discussion boards, he says, helped to hone his debating skills; his love of books expanded his vocabulary. At the same time, his immersion into the worlds of Terry Pratchett and Iain M. Banks — two of his favorite writers — has merely served to accentuate the flaws and injustices of the real world.
“It’s definitely influenced the way I think,” he admits. “You look at all the sci-fi utopias, and, pretty much in every single one, the basic underlying philosophy is that people treat each other the way they want to be treated and there’s freedom to be who you are. What brings these utopias crashing down is the fact that one group tries to take control of another, and I think that’s very applicable to any sort of human or civil rights campaign.”
It’s no surprise that Kluwe is an avid fan of the role-playing game World of Warcraft (his avatar is a troll called Loate), so much so that his Twitter handle is @ChrisWarcraft. Among the things he loves most about such games are the parallels they offer to our culture’s battle over freedom. In World of Warcraft, he becomes a champion against evil oppressive forces. Losing isn’t an option.
While World of Warcraft forums don’t allow much space for dissecting Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, Kluwe carved a space for himself by learning how to push the right buttons to get into other gamers’ heads. “I’ve found one of the most devastating ways to get a point across was to mix factual information with clever insults,” he says. “I’ve had a lot of training on how to get people riled up.”
Gayblackcanada 