"Bros": Angry with Gays.
Those naughty Gays keep ignoring the scoldings of the LGBTQXYZ elites with their internalized neo-homophobia.
LGBTQXYZ anger at the naughty Gays.
The LGBTQXYZ elites lecture Gays, the queer theorists lecture Gays, others lecture Gays and Gays ignore them.
Gays continue to work out at gyms, they look at hot guys at what the elites stigmatize as “thirst traps.” Worse yet in the eyes of the LGBTQXYZ social workers, Gays sometimes strive to be hot. Most Gays refuse to have sex with transmen and speak frankly and without delusions and say things like I want a “real” man. They don’t listen to lectures about the body positivity movement and don’t find a morbidly obese men attractive. Gays continue to diet and be concerned about being in shape despite the ideology of Lookism.
Gays continue to have sexual desires that are asserted to be retrograde and not date femboys despite various lectures. They are denounced because they find certain types of guys hot, and they are denounced because they don’t find other types of guys hot.
Gays continue to be cautious in dating Bi guys based on the folk experience of the Gay community.
Gays continue to push back on groups colonizing their spaces.
Gays don’t always align themselves with the latest political line of the Stonewall (LGBTQXYZ) Democrats of the self-defined progressives. They insist on thinking for themselves despite all the browbeating and endless use of the phrase “cis white gays.”
Many Gays don’t like the word “queer,” a term imposed by certain elites and see themselves as Gays or homosexuals, but not necessarily a part of the ever-expanding LGBTQQIP2SAA or other initialisms, even if they might have sympathies for these other letters.
Gays continue to pursue sexual liberation and sexual satisfaction regardless of what the LGBTQXYZ social workers might think, regardless of whether it embarrasses the LGBTQXYZ and what Respectability Gays might think. They develop sexual and cultural new forms such as being pups with these leather pup masks which cause apoplexy with some Gays. There is talk of banning Leather from Pride parades, but the LGBTQXYZ establishment realizes that would cause a revolt, but they have settled for banning throwing out condemns and push a “family friendly” Pride event to repress Gay sexual liberation.
There are Gays who aren’t getting married or at least forming monogamous relationships, instead they are still having open relationships and even threesomes. Gays are supposed to be getting married, adopting kids, and going to PTA meetings and Gay are instead going to circuit parties and using hook up apps.
The LGBTQXYZ have these “studies,” often published in “journals,” with hefty Author Publishing Charges (APC), that is where you pay a hefty sum to be published, and after spending all this money, Gays still don’t care. Or it is in “journals” where the peer-review is their like-minded ideological academic clique.
The biggest crime, in the eyes of the LGBTQXYZ elites, is that Gays are simply ignoring them. Despite the LGBTQXYZ self-imagined cultural, moral and social superiority the Gays ignore them or recognize how the LGBTQXYZ is morally the elect. It infuriates them.
The anger is real, the denunciations of Gays usually as “cis gays” or “cis white gays,” sometimes with murderous suggestions, is endless on social media.
This anger sizzles in the movie “Bros.”
A Caution against distractions
There are things that are immediately apparent in the movie that alienate, but I am concerned that obvious will distract people from seeing the less obvious, but more powerful negative and toxic elements in the movie.
I always thing what is most deadly is what isn’t recognized as what it is and so it slips into our minds unfiltered, uninterrogated, unresisted.
Thus, my plan will be to talk about some of the obvious things later and focus on the major anti-Gay themes first.
Those Boring, stupid, idiot Gays
In “Bros” when Gays do have muscles, Bobby Lieber (Played by Eichner), calls them boring, stupid or idiots. At the circuit party (10:15-11:45) the men with muscles are asserted to have boring sex. Later Bobby calls them “boring ripped idiots with no opinions.” At the picnic scene where some muscular guys are playing football (43:00 – 44:40), he calls them “meat-head idiots.)
At the circuit party Bobby says Gays are stupid (9:30-9:45). There is a dialog of how Gay people are stupid between Aaron, who is the interest of Bobby in this movie, and Bobby. The following is the dialog:
(14:10) Aaron states that gay guys are so stupid, after the camera shows a Gay person dancing with fans:
Aaron: “Gay guys are so stupid.”
Bobby: “Oh, my God, I know. Gay guys are usually, like, the absolute smartest or, like, the dumbest people I’ve ever met. We’ve been smart enough to brand ourselves as being smart and clever.”
Aaron: “I’ve hooked up with guys, and afterwards I’ll make a joke or I’ll say something sarcastic and the guy does not understand that I’m making a joke. Literally does not understand satire.”
Bobby: “I know. And straight people think we’re all smart, but a lot of these guys are dumb as shit.”
Aaron: “Yes. Our little secret.”
And then they click their drinks together in agreement.
(15:06) Bobby repeats this when he searches for Aaron who had suddenly disappeared to a friend on the dance floor, asking about what Bobby and Aaron were talking about, and Bobby replies, “Just about how a lot of gay guys are secretly incredibly stupid.”
The reality is that the barriers for socialization across class, educational, racial, religious and ethnic lines is much less than in straight society and Gays often meet people, socialize with people, date people, and have sex with people across those lines. There is a real fluidity in Gay society. Gays flow into urban centers to have more opportunities to exist as Gay people resulting in mixing of people from different geographical areas. Gays are less inhibited by sexual roles. Gays often socialize in spaces away from family and straight society and their communities of origin and are freer to experiment with different ways of existing. Gays exist everywhere globally, and so as people travel or as travelers arrive, Gays are socializing with persons from other nations and cultures. Even casual observation shows that the Gay community is cosmopolitan with cultural currents circulating globally. Within us are all the peoples of the earth. The Gay community has a special intelligence deriving from its fluidity across the divisions of straight society It is not stupid.
It is Eichner’s elitism which prevents him from seeing the special intelligences of the Gay community and to condemn them as stupid.
In the movie, Aaron is evidently a well-compensated lawyer in a prestigious office who writes wills and legal documents for estate planning. (21:05 – 22:20) We first see him in a scene where a client, who evidently is educated, has been able to accumulate an estate, and who choses, because he is alone, to donate his estate to the singer Cher, even though Aaron suggests this decision is not wise. Why the subject of charities doesn’t come up, is because Eichner’s plot is sort of hacked.
One purpose of this scene is to reinforce the idea that Gays are really stupid.
Bobby, in disapproval in his comments about Aarons cultural tastes, such as Garth Brooks, and lack of what is supposed to be a commonly known Gay cultural knowledge, like Mariah Carey, is annoying. There is probably some ingroup cultural knowledge of certain subgroups in the Gay community, but joking about not being a member of this ingroup has become tiresome, worn out and exclusionary. Bobby jokes about it as a failing and again to point out how Aaron is a lesser Gay person.
What is odd about this episode in the movie, is that a secretary interrupts this meeting to tell Aaron that “Mrs. Bailey died,” and the client declares loudly that Aaron’s job is depressing.
This is a good example of how Eichner’s story line is crudely constructed and fails. Why would a secretary need to interrupt a lawyer’s meeting to tell him that someone for whom they wrote a will died? Aaron doesn’t stop the meeting. Was he expected to rush to the hospital to use defibrillators in one more attempt on Mrs. Bailey?
The whole episode of Aaron at this job is to establish that his job is boring, which Aaron states in an after-sex scene later in the movie as “depressing” and “so fucking boring.” (48:45-49:10)
A lawyer who does wills and estate planning for people would be in the thick of multigenerational life and the passage of generations. Wills and estate planning take a person into the heart of people’s personal life. There are provisions for relatives and children, and the provisions reveal which person in the family is in favor or who can be trusted with money or will be provided with some fund. The web of relatives is revealed. A broad scope of life would be in an estate lawyer’s view. The real challenge would be that though you were a part of many fascinating stories of different families, you wouldn’t be able to discuss any of them.
Think about any work that it is intellectually challenging and you are working on problems and solving them and it isn’t boring to you. When it is financially rewarding also, you are really lucky.
Wills and estate planning are really important for Gays. His job could be really interesting if he did pro bono wills for Gays who couldn’t afford lawyers and did presentations on wills and planning to the LGBTQ+. This has always been a vital need in the Gay community. Even with Gay marriage, there is still the case where both partners die and money can go to homophobic relatives without good estate planning.
With such pro-bono work, Aaron would be in the midst of the sea of Gay life which wouldn’t be boring.
It isn’t explained is why Aaron would end up in a job that he considered boring. Did Aaron just throw darts with wearing a blindfold to select his profession? What was his motivation to undertake the strenuous effort to learn his profession?
What Eichner considers a non-boring job, is making chocolates. Aaron explains he was really interested in making chocolates when he was a kid and thought it was “faggy” and Aaron shares this with Bobby, to show that he wasn’t “some boring schlub.” The plot line is set up for Aaron to give up a well-paying job to be a chocolatier.
Though it is interesting to see fancy chocolates made on a show, making a living from producing expensive chocolates is producing thousands of chocolates day after day in a fiercely competitive environment with not high barriers to new competitors.
It has been a very tired cliché theme of following your dreams, but the reality is that Aaron already had a great job, and in real life the chances of success as a chocolatier would be similar to that of becoming a professional basketball player, a star in Hollywood, or a famous musician. The market for expensive chocolates is rather small and it is already well-served.
Aaron had a job which was vital to society and changes to making expensive chocolates which is nice, but not vital. Hobbies are fun, but producing chocolates enough to make a living is probably about managing a food business and “boring” stuff like the delivery of food stuffs, their storage, health inspections, staffs hiring and management, equipment, accounting and managing finances. It won’t be designing pretty chocolates all the time.
Being a “chocolatier” is actually about selling social status rather than chocolate. Hence the ribbons, and cute boxes, and maybe a bag with a label to let people know they have purchased a high end expensive chocolate. “Chocolatier” instead of chocolate maker is part of selling of class status. Aaron has given up a good productive useful job to pander to those who want to purchase class status.
However, the story about Aaron making chocolates rather than being a lawyer is really about Bobby saving Aaron from being “boring,” from being in a fallen Gay state. Aaron was lost, but with Bobby he has been saved, hallelujah.
This episode is about the movie’s ongoing theme of Gays being idiotic, stupid, and boring, establishing that they are in fallen state and could be saved if they only listen to the LGBTQXYZ instead of being stupid and idiotic.
This theme really shows the contempt of Eichner for Gay people. Nearly most Gays are not earning a living by means of cultural production, but instead have a wide range of jobs in the national economy at all levels and struggle along with the rest of humanity. They have those persons that they love and are loved by others. They pursue their needs and have hopes and dreams. They come from a great variety of circumstances and try to make a life for themselves often in the face of hostility. Many feel a sense of accomplishment in their jobs. They may not know as many pop cultural references as Eichner, but they are frequently generous of heart and caring. The engineer which keeps the bread factory running putting bread on our table, the plumber who shows up and restores the plumbing, the driver who brings goods to us, the people in factories producing paints, vehicles, and material goods, those selling groceries are just the great “boring” masses to Eichner. Eichner’s is devoid of sympathy for the great breath of Gays.
Bobby endlessly uses pop cultural references which might be entertaining, but are not so entertaining when you realize it is part of him asserting his elite status.
Eichner’s elitism is just massive and it is condescending towards most of the Gays and yet he was surprised that his “boring” Gays didn’t want to watch his movie. One of the frequent angry comments about the movie by Gays is that it is parochial and elitist.
Besides making numerous pop cultural references, Bobby lets you know about his elite status through distain for popular culture with having announcements for “Hallheart” television shows, clearly intended to be a satire on Hallmark feel good television shows. There is the “Holly Poly Christmas,” and the bisexual “Christmas With Either.” Perhaps these were merely meant as jokes. However, this is what the public wants to watch and when Gays have been included in popular shows it has a great benefit in terms of public acceptance of Gays. We can feel smart and roll our eyes at their saccharine nature, but they have a positive benefit.
One verbal practice that runs through the movie is that when Bobby has something good to say it is about “queers.” When has something bad to say, it is about “Gays.”
Bobby always talks about Gays in general in general being one way and representing Gays as a monolith and the entire community failing. For example, it isn’t the Gays at the party, or Circuit party Gays failing, it is Gays in general. Even if it was about Circuit party Gays, likely they aren’t two-dimensional cartoon characters.
Gay people are still having lots of sex.
Much of the movie is about how Gay sexual liberation is bad. The depiction of hookup apps is bleak and the sex is portrayed by those using them as passionless, unpleasurable and something insects might do, and anti-erotic.
The reality is that on the apps you meet people, you talk, sometimes you start relationships. As for the claim that there is this whole subculture of Gays not wanting relationships, the reality is that Gays are interested in having relationships. Sometimes they aren’t interested in having them right away. In other cases, a lot of Gays have been convinced that a relationship has to not be open and they don’t feel they are ready for that.
Three and four-some sex is also shown as bleak. Guys that work out are supposed to all be using steroids and using each other for gratification without interest in each other as persons. In one four-some a guy was excluded. Why he didn’t just leave or why he was invited in the first place isn’t explained.
Other directors have given a very different portrayal of open couples. In, “Parts of the Heart,” an Indonesian film, about the life of a Gay man from 10 to 40, has an episode where he and his lover decide to have three-some and the hilarious misadventure of them trying to find a third person online. It ends up that they realize the person who they want is their good close Gay friend, and who agrees and the result is portrayed as a joyous thing and them all very happy.
https://www.filmdoo.com/films/parts-of-the-heart/
There is an episode where Aaron and Bobby have a realization that open relationships are bad and in opposition to them having a relationship. The portrayal isn’t that open relationships are bad for them, but that open relationships are generally bad for everyone.
The movie has a constant drumbeat that happy Gay life is monogamously coupled Gay life. When Aaron and Bobby finally become a couple, (1:04:15 – 1:05:10) and kiss, the song in the background is “Love and Affection,” with the lyric, “make love with affection.”
Afterwards Aaron and Bobby have sex which is passionate and gratifying, in opposition to the sex they were having from hookup apps or 3-somes which wasn’t gratifying or passionate and anti-erotic.
Other alternatives to monogamous couples are ridiculed by Eichner. (7:40) In an early episode two of his friends announce that they have added to their relationship and are in what they call a throuple. The movie ridicules the idea by having one member of the throuple calling his grandmother to explain that in very graphic sexual terms that they are having sex with a third person as part of a relationship. The episode is unhinged.
Couples when they form don’t call parents and grandparents that they are having sex in very graphic terms. If you told someone that you were in a throuple, if they understood what a throuple was, they would know that it involves sexual relations.
Perhaps Eichner thought this was zany or wild and crazy and would be humorous or make the movie interesting, or makes him cutting edge, but it comes across as cringe-worthy, perhaps implying that throuples are weird.
Throuples for Gays doesn’t involve a sexual binary and the members of a Gay throuple are of the same sex. Though there are three, it isn’t polygamy or polyandry. Strategically it offers the opportunity of improving the emotional and material security of the three persons. There are three jobs, and the loss of one isn’t as severe an income loss as when there are two jobs and one is lost. Expenses for a house or rent can be divided further. As a team they can do more. If one person gets sick there are two to care for the person. When they get old, the time spent by the last surviving member alone will be on average likely half that of a couple, and only one-third of the throuple will be left alone as opposed to one-half of a couple. However, for Eichner it is just another non-monogamous thing Gays do and can be played for laughs.
The movie has the assimilationist message that you need to be a monogamous couple and the movie ends with Aaron and Bobby arguing over adopting kids and being truly happy.
The movie is to instruct the naughty Gays that they should stop doing naughty things, like 3-somes, working out at the gym, going after hot guys, trying to be hot themselves, and having lots of sex; that they should listen to their elite betters, who aren’t boring, and not like the “idiotic” “stupid” naughty Gays; who manifest their idiocy and stupidity when they don’t listen and act upon the lectures, scoldings, of the LGBTQXYZ to settle down, get married, adopt kids, and stop embarrassing the LGBTQXYZ establishment and ask forgiveness for the sins of the “cis” Gays.
The Parents’ Visit
This whole episode is somewhat bizarre, but shows how self-righteous and self-centered the character Bobby is, and how much the character wants to act out dramas of being some type of hero.
When people come to visit your city, you usually focus on what is of interest to them, and for example if it was their first visit to New York City the focus would be on major attractions, perhaps you know of some special things of interest, and what is of their interest. If they like art deco a person might make sure the Chrysler building was in the tour, and if public sculpture was of interest, a person would visit prominent outdoor sculptures and perhaps some art museums. As a Gay person living in NYC, the author would work in a few items of Gay interest along the way, because being a major metropolis with a visible Gay community, it would be reasonable they would want to know about the Gay community there along with other minority communities and places like NYC Chinatown.
Bobby gives a tour of queer New York exclusively. If that was what was requested, that would be fine. However, the reality is that it is likely that going to NYC was a great expense for Aaron’s parents, and it was not something they can do often. The tour should have been about their interests without omission of Gay NYC, but the tour was all about “queers” and Bobby being some self-imagined hero.
At the dinner table, it easily could be a discussion about how children need to know about the existence of Gays, and young Gays needing to understand themselves, and about bullying, how his parents made it clear that he was accepted and that they were comfortable with him being Gay, and not discussing “seven flaccid penises” while they are eating. Bobby could just say, that his parents included a very graphic Gay play. People do have sensitivities, there are some subjects I don’t particularly want to discuss at a meal.
Browbeating people doesn’t work. People climb up stairs, they don’t leap from the floor to the next floor. Also, this was supposed to be a chance to meet the parents, not conduct an ideological indoctrination cell. It is supposed to be dinner, not a re-education camp. Though Aaron is uncomfortable with Bobby’s talking, Bobby feels he can make unilateral decisions regarding their relationship.
Bobby tells Aaron’s parents that Aaron hates his job. This represents a contempt for Aaron in making decisions about his own life and what he would like to disclose, but when you imagine yourself to be the morally elect, you do things like that.
The movie however, has Aaron apologize to Bobby for complaining about Bobby’s behavior at the meal. Aaron is supposed to feel that Bobby is an uplifting person to know. Aaron has a lot going for him in terms of desirability. Besides being physically very desirable, is a nice person who cares about people’s feeling. Bobby on the other hand is the type of Gay person most Gays would run from.
Though this episode might lead one to believe that Bobby is sex positive, the movie as a whole makes it clear it is something you can talk about, but it should be done within the confines of monogamous relationships, somewhat similar to the views of the Southern Baptist Church, excepting it is homosexual sex.
This episode is, perhaps unintendedly representative of the LGBTQXYZ establishment’s attitudes towards Gays which is, you are to listen and accept our intensive indoctrination without complaint and to hell with what concerns or interests or feelings you might have. It is for your own good.
The LGBTQXYZ establishment is like Oliver Cromwell and his Rule of the Saints.
It also represents a practice of the LGBTQXYZ individuals competitively trying to be more radical to demonstrate they are more or most advanced in opinion. For you out there who want to be even more righteous your account will have to have eight or more flaccid penises.
Is it social criticism or just a hostile attack on Gays?
There is a genre which some social customs are satirized. It might be argued “Bros” is social criticism. Likely Billy Eichner thinks it is social criticism. However, “Bros,” is better seen as a condemnation of Gays. Bobby is always condemning Gays in general even though the story is set in a narrow segment of Gays in NYC. Regarding that narrow segment, he is hostile, and using gross generalizations and stereotypes seeks to abolish their existence. The redemption of Bobby and Aaron in the movie is when they reject their previous social venues and ways of living and become like a straight couple.
The Museum – retrograde approach to LGBT history
The LGBTQIA+ museum was based on ideas which even in the 1980s were considered retrograde. Did Eichner even consult with anyone what would be a useful museum?
Historical lists of Gays in history have a history in themselves. This is a useful paper regarding this.
https://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/phrj/article/view/8130/7997
But as the article points out, they have problems as being useful for history though they have some validity for promoting popular interest in the Gay community and have done so for some time. They are easy for non-scholars to grasp. But they aren’t very educational about LGBTQ+ history. That is the process of history. The lists don’t focus on who was active in movements for justice for the LGBTQ+, nor the historical process and events in the development of history regarding the LGBTQ+. A simple posted list somewhere in a museum, or a folding flyer would suffice for this, and even this might not be good, since it might be misunderstood as a productive avenue to learn about history.
These lists are perhaps not as useful as the author stated. Sometimes these lists have served as legitimization of closetedness. These figures were great, but very cleverly hiding in the closet, and great despite being closeted, and we closeted Gays are clever like them. An acid tongue, told me in the 1980s, “It is a bunch of gays tittering about Baroness Cuntworthy going to a secret Gay party in the 19th century.” [I considered rephrasing this quote, but it really would lose its acidity and I don’t bowlderize history.]
For a museum, having a display in which we learn Eleanor Roosevelt was a Lesbian is questionable. Was she known as a Lesbian in her time? No. Did she do anything for Lesbians? No. She is a popular historical figure and for those who are her admirers, they might adjust their views on Lesbianism if those views are negative. Or a Lesbian might get a feeling of self-worth. However, for a museum, such a display wouldn’t be informative of Lesbian history.
In 2022, unlike the early and mid-20th century, who is still trying to use popular persons in history, to plead for our rights, or consider this teaching about Gay history? Evidently Eichner does.
However, it might be useful to have figures in history that actually fought for the rights of Lesbians or were culturally important figures for Lesbians. Perhaps Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein or Audre Lorde, or the Lesbian couple Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon who were important leaders in the early movement in the 1950s and who be a better choice than Eleanor. Or there could be an exhibit on how Lesbians were represented in the media and movies.
Historical displays depicting important struggles and events in Lesbian and Gay history and the history of the struggle of the other letters would be educational.
Gay lists also suffer from a problem described in the book, “How to Do the History of Homosexuality,” referenced in a paper by Jay Collay, referenced in the link given previously:
Consequently, the desire to identify with the potential for greatness that has shaped the ‘great man’ structure of history is further compounded within queer history’s sphere. At the end of the nineteenth century, white, European upper-class men of leisure who had the resources to undertake historical searches
most often found themselves accumulating more examples of white European upper-class men of leisure. As these lists are passed down, through repetition, they are transmitted through a cycle of curators and re-curators hungry for good presentations of people they can resonate with in the pages of official history written by power.
This imaginary museum of the movie wants us to know Lincoln was bisexual. James Buchanan was homosexual according to straight historian James Loewen, writing when the press was talking about Obama being the first Gay president. Though we were co-editors for a book, I resisted in explaining how flawed his writing was. The article was little noticed since the homosexuality of James Buchanan has little importance in history and practically no importance to Gay history.
The Hall of Bisexuals which was just displays of persons in history who happened to be bisexual and who have straight approval, wouldn’t be as useful as a historical exhibit of the rise of the concept of bisexuality and people who struggled for the human rights of bisexuals, about when did B get added to the initialism, and popular attitudes about bisexuals.
People in the past behaved differently. In the English-speaking world, men who were friends would walk hand in hand. The French would kiss both cheeks when awarding medals or see persons in greeting. What is considered Gay in our particular parochial little space in history, in the West, in the 20th and 21st century isn’t the basis to judge all of history and all of human behavior.
It might indeed be that this figure or that figure was Gay or Bisexual or Lesbian, often due to the fact that they were really closeted, we will never really know, and it isn’t homophobia to question it.
When you are uncritical in your claims you lose credibility in all of your claims.
The appropriation of Stonewall, the historic founding event of the modern Gay movement, for trans is a serious historical falsification and a serious aggression against the Gay community to deny Gays their history and further imply that Gays owe their rights to trans extremists. It reminds the author of the Anglo-Israelite movement.
A Vicious hate for gays.
In the movie, Bobby feels entitled to be really nasty to any Gay. There was commentary about how Gays were nasty towards Gays in the 1970s because of internalized homophobia.
At the circuit party the movie focuses on a dancer who is waving fans and shouting “Yas, live your lives, queens!” after which the camera switches to Aaron saying, “Gays are so stupid.” This Gay person is supposed to be the stupid Gay because he is the stereotype “disco queen” who are stigmatized as being stupid and shallow and not just a person having some fun dancing and partying. This guy dancing with the fans is stupid because he is at a circuit party and waving fans instead of having a proper LGBTQXYZ approved life.
Actually, the admonition “Live your life, queens,” is good advice and all too often Gays have to be questioned, “When are you going to start living your life?” when they constrain their lives to the expectations of straight people. Of course, Gays deciding to live their lives aren’t going to be listening to the admonitions of the LGBTQXYZ to curb their behavior.
What is disturbing is that when he goes to track down Aaron who has walked off, the same Gay person with the fans is shown before with a beaming smile makes a friendly approach and asks Bobby, “Why aren’t you dancing.” (15:32) This is an occasion for Bobby to really attack the Gay person, “I am dancing, okay?” but he isn’t dancing at all. Continuing Bobby says, “What do you want me to do, the fucking Nutcracker Suite?” This belief that you can just lash out at other Gays indiscriminately has been the noted behavior of self-hating Gays going back to the 1970s. There is no reflection in the movie that he treated this guy viciously, because this guy is seen in the movie as one of the “bad” Gays, and therefore can be treated viciously. This episode shows the hostility that Bobby has towards all the Gays there. What was this Gay person’s crime, but to be one of the lessor order of Gays impeding for a few seconds Bobby’s path to go lash into Aaron.
Summary
The movie did very poorly at the box office despite Rotten Tomatoes 88% plus rating. Many Gays rightfully saw it as the conceit of a small elite in East and West Coast Gay enclaves dismissive of Gays elsewhere. The unrelieved angry self-righteousness of Bobby really annoyed people.
The movie’s constant scolding of Gay people may not have been consciously recognized, but at some level the contempt for Gay people was felt.
Billy Eichner response to the poor box office performance of the movie by blaming it on homophobia in American society is really self-serving, given that there are and have been successful Gay movies and additionally it is no longer that significant that a show has a Gay character, Eichner’s blaming homophobia is ridiculous and self-serving.
It is a good thing is that it flopped at the box office and the investors in the movie lost a lot. Billy Eichner will be less likely to be funded for a new movie, and investors will be less likely to want to fund another attempt at making another version of, “The Eternal Gay.”
One of the refreshing things about Japanese Gay culture is that it exists in a society not permeated with Protestant guilt. In 1966 the brilliant Gay poet, Mutsuo Takahashi wrote, “You dirty ones, do dirtier things.” I think I will hunt up a copy and read it and also re-read Takahashi’s “Ode,” to spiritually cleanse myself of Eichner’s long scold.
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