So, when I hear people claiming (as they are) that the joke would be like saying, "that's so jew" or "that's so negro," I think they're missing the point by several nautical miles. Kids have used "gay" jokingly, to mean cheesy or unmanly or uncool or even to pointedly signify "actually not at all homosexual" for a long. These dilemmas intrigue me - like the ongoing arguments about what, exactly, the Banksy opening of "The Simpsons" was satirizing - because it's a matter of figuring out what the funny part is supposed to have been. All we know from the trailer is that the meeting gets Vaughn and James the job.
#The gay test joke movie#
And making that work as comedy would require handling it as it might be done on "The Daily Show" or "The Colbert Report" or a Judd Apatow movie or "The Office" (BBC or NBC) - which would be to either: 1) acknowledge the offensiveness while the teller remains clueless that he's said anything untoward or 2) let the teller realize he's offended others in the room and uncomfortably try to squirm his way out of it or 3) make the teller try to explain why he thinks he's said something incredibly witty, when he clearly hasn't.
It's unclear from the trailer what the joke is supposed to convey about Vaughn's character, but his excruciating explanation just points up that he knows he needs to clarify what he means. (Not unlike gay activists' reclaiming of the word "queer" in earlier decades.)īut that was a long time ago, and all that's left now - especially in the trailer for "The Dilemma" - is the residue of scorn. There was a time when it could be used with a sense of postmodern irony as a non sequitur or outrageously mixed metaphor, as when a friend of mine, stuck in gridlock, exclaimed: "Traffic is so gay!" The obvious inappropriateness undermined the notion that "gay" could be used as a legitimate insult. I thought that "gay" as a kind of half-mock slur, with no direct reference to sexuality, ran its course in the 1990s. As for the lame movie "joke," it struck me as gratuitously mean-spirited and dated and unfunny, but not shocking. I find those things shocking and ugly and offensive. And then there's New York Republican gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino announcing, "I don't want brainwashed into thinking that homosexuality is an equally valid and successful option. No word on whether it will remain in the movie, which opens in January.Īs Matt Singer observed at IFC.com, "Howard and his marketing team are as much guilty of bad timing as bad taste." The rash of recent suicides by teenagers who've been harassed for being gay has made the use of "gay" as an insult especially galling, even among those who might otherwise think it's "all in good fun" or something like that. I mean, not homosexual, but my-parents-are-chaperoning-the-dance gay."ĬNN anchor Anderson Cooper reportedly went on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" and said he was "shocked" that Universal "thought that it was OK to put that in a preview for the movie to get people to go and see it." Universal responded by quickly pulling the scene from the trailer. Vaughn's character is speaking to some automotive businessmen (is this a follow-up to Howard's "Gung-Ho"?) and says: "Electric cars are gay. I saw the trailer in front of " The Social Network," October 1.