Nothing is more troubling than reading those who cover the world of entertainment advocating in favor of speech restrictions. Film School Rejects is an above average film site with above average writers, but stuff like this is just neo-fascism and outright anti-intellectual nonsense:
While the nation pondered its dense history of homophobic bullying after a string of gay youth suicides starting popping up on the front pages, the trailer for the Ron Howard “comedy” The Dilemma was released with a “gay = stupid” joke as its lead. What would otherwise pass by as an unexamined passive slam against an already-maligned group became no longer acceptable.
The line was unintelligibly defended by Howard, Vince Vaughn, and numerous web commentators who think that a joke too lazy and immature for anybody over 13 to find funny is the same thing as South Park-style take-no-prisoners satire. It’s lazy comedy, and the reaction to it is further evidence that we as a culture have shifted from our Eddie Murphy Delirious days: homophobes, not homosexuals, are now the subject of derisive humor. As The Kids Are All Right and Modern Family have shown, you can have great comedy about homosexuals without making fun of homosexuality.
And where exactly will the local burning of the “Blazing Saddles” and “Birdcage” DVDs take place? How about at the free needle and condom exchange where we turn in our incandescent light bulbs and Happy Meal toys?
If making fun of homosexuality is now off limits, what’s next? Christianity? Conservatism? Southerners? Caucasians? Men? Dads? Fundamentalists? I think not. I think what we have here is a short but exclusive bus that parks in a Satire Free Zone.
Sorry, but you can’t inoculate a particular thing or person or group from satire and/or ridicule unless you’re in favor of inoculating everyone under the same premise. In the case of our gay friends, the absurd premise appears to be that who we are is off limits to humor. You can have a gay character in a sitcom but you can’t mock the gayness.
Okay. Fine. Un-American, unconstitutional, immoral, but fine. So how exactly will this slippery-slope of new rules work for the rest of us?
Southerners are stereotyped and ridiculed and mocked everyday in popular entertainment culture, which is no different than mocking someone’s sexuality. After all, targeting identity is targeting identity. And yes, Big Hollywood is the first to fight back when we see our side taking a pop culture beating. But there’s a big difference between fighting back; which is nothing more than being a part of the debate, and demanding it stop altogether; which is a declarative call for stifling debate and free speech.
The Trojan Horse for this latest PC-fascism push is this whole bullying meme. No one hates a bully more than I, but in this case it’s Film School Rejects and their leftist ilk doing the bullying; commanding from some phony moral high ground that those of us who don’t shut up as commanded are in some way responsible for these tragic suicides. Newsflash…
What attracts bullies is and always will be one thing: weakness. And if you want to prove you’re weak, a good way to start is with the whine of, don’t make fun of me.
The only people I would inoculate from ridicule are those who are unable to fight back. Trig Palin, for instance, and others similarly handicapped. But all this PC energy is instead being used to protect those who recent history has shown are more than capable when it comes to standing up for and defending themselves. You would think the gay community would be more insulted by those insisting they need some kind of unique sticks-and-stones protections than some dumb joke about electric cars.
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