Homophobic?


Can we talk about this? "Musical theatre disease is the gayest disease ever." The flamboyant, effeminate snapping gang blowing kisses to Carlson. "Don't tell me this is about a girl! That is so gay!" Granted, the last one is clearly meant to be hypocritical from a guy we're not supposed to sympathize with, but the other two are just insults for the sake of being insults. "Isn't it funny? Gay guys are obviously the only people who like musical theatre and the only people who like musical theatre are obviously gay guys!" It turned me off immediately and made the rest of the short hard to enjoy.

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I'm sorry they came off as insults to you - they weren't at all intended that way, and this is the first time anyone's ever mentioned anything like this to us (the opposite, actually, we've had gay people thank us for making fun of the stereotypes, rather than indulging them, which was what we were intending). The intention was to make fun of the stereotypes about musicals and one of them that I've always thought was stupid is that musicals are only for women and gay guys. And also that all gay men love musicals. "Gay guys are obviously the only people who like musical theatre and the only people who like musical theatre are obviously gay guys!" is exactly the attitude we were making fun of. We agree with you, it's a dumb attitude and not true at all. 2 of the 4 of us at Mildly Fearsome Films are straight males, and we both love musicals. Beyond that, there were a number of gay people in our crew and cast (including one of our two lead producers, who is one of the 4 members of Mildly Fearsome Films) and none of them had any issues with those jokes (if they had, we wouldn't have done them), because, as I said, we were making fun of how stupid those attitudes are, and the way some people use "gay" to mean "stupid." We're not down with that, and so we made fun of it. I'm sorry to hear it came off differently to you and ruined the rest of the film for you. If you ever watch it again, I hope things play differently.

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Thank you for the response! A response from one of the filmmakers is the last thing I expected, especially a response as respectful and patient as yours!

Knowing that the jokes were meant to make fun of stereotypes certainly makes them easier to take. They might have just been so over-the-top that I couldn't differentiate them from real insults made be real jerks. Sorry for jumping to conclusions, but thank you for taking the time to explain where you were coming from.

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