Blind Prophecy

Rant Of The Day

So have you seen the previews for Without a Paddle? Much as I love Seth Green, I’m going to have to skip this one. Like so many other so-called comedies geared toward the teen audience, it plays on “gay panic” for laughs.

“Gay panic” is a phrase coined by defense lawyers trying to get their clients out of, essentially, hate crimes against GLBT people. The basic idea is that when a straight person is presented with something queer, they can have irrational attacks of fear causing them to act in ways they normally wouldn’t.

The phrase came into popular usage a few years ago when a Jenny Jones guest shot and killed a neighbor who’d confessed his secret crush on the air. The murderer’s lawyers argued that the killer was so embarrassed and frightened of homosexuality, that he was basically insane and should be treated appropriately.

Matthew Shepard’s killers tried a variation of the same defense (arguing that McKinney had been involved in rape-like gay experiences in the past, triggering him to act “savagely” with Shepard). Cases involving the murder of transgender individuals use this all the time (i.e. when he discovered that she was biologically male, he went insane). Recently, the Atlanta DA spoke out harshly against this trend when it was brought up in a murder trial he was involved with.

In Without A Paddle the movie plays on a less deadly version of “gay panic” – having the guys freak out about physical closeness, preys on Deliverance-based fears of being raped by hill folk, and the fact that Seth Green’s character loves the song “Do You Really Want To hurt Me?” becomes a big deal.

Other teen movies are just as bad. Harold and Kumar… plays on this a bit, as did Eurotrip. Often these movies show homophobia as something to laugh at. “See how dumb these guys are for being freaked out by anything gay…” Think of the “Take one for the team” scene of American Pie 2.

My problem with these movies is even while they set up this situation to make fun of the homophobic behaviors, they normalize it. And when it turns deadly, lawyers offensively suggest that any red-blooded hetero might be excused his reaction because “well, you know that gay people make us all uncomfortable.”

Bullshit. Being uncomfortable with the queer community is no excuse to be a jack-ass, much less an excuse to rape, beat, hurt or murder. It’s as offensive as the old arguments that killing people of color wasn’t murder because they weren’t really people.

But Without A Paddle and dozens of other teen comedies tell us that it’s normal to experience gay panic. It’s not. Well, okay, maybe it is common, but it’s never acceptable. If you can’t handle being exposed to gay people, situations or flirtation – grow up.

Filed under: livejournal by Jere Keys