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Dec 17, 2021

Dicktown: Come for the Gay Subtext, But Beware of the Homophobia

 


A show called Dicktown (2020) will obviously draw my interest, although here "dick" probably means "jerk" or "private detective," not "penis." 

 It's a buddy comedy featuring Detective Purfoy and his hired muscle, Hunch, solving "teenage crimes."  So there might be some gay characters or subtexts.  I started watching Episode 2, "The Mystery of the Maybe Boyfriend," because the icon featured a half-naked guy.

Scene 1:   Purfoy and Hunch browsing in a video store called Needle and Head. Which is the hired muscle?  They're equally un-muscular and un-attractive.

They're looking for Gymkata, "the most badass movie ever made."  Also Quest for Fire, because of Rae Dawn Chong's breasts. Why does Purfoy have to demonstrate that he's heterosexual in the third friggin line of the friggin series?  Why are the writers so insistent that we don't "misread" the guys as gay?  

Their friend Meg complains that she's been screwing a guy, but they made eye contact during sex, so now they may be dating!  She wants to hire them to find out whether he thinks they are dating, so she can decide whether or not to reveal that she thinks they're dating.  Got that?  It's a teenage problem, all right.

Scene 2: Fowler's, a retro soda shop. To make sure he understands what Meg means, Purfoy looks up "dating" on Urban Dictionary, and of course gets a weird sex act.  They then interrogate Kurt (not the hunk on the icon), who says that he and Meg are indeed dating.  Case closed!  That was fast.

Nope, turns out that he's not actually Kurt and he's not actually dating Meg, he just says he is for some reason.  When Meg arrives, she leads them through the stock room to a secret door to a retro-1970s disco, where the real Kurt works as a "topless dancer."

Purfoy: "I'd deconstruct that text.  No homo."

I'm out.  I just want to research who created this  "Aren't gay people awful?" monstrosity.

There are two Homophobes in Charge.  David Rees is apparently some sort of comedian, with appearances on several talk shows.  This is his first writing/ producing/ acting credit.  

John Hodgman's biography on IMDB emphasizes that he's heterosexual -- don't even think about suggesting that he might be...you know.  He has a number of acting credits: Married (of course),  The Venture Brothers, The Tick, Adventure Time, Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts, Ducktales.  

But some of those shows have gay characters.  How did he stand it?  I guess as long as there weren't any gay people actually in the room during the taping, he didn't mind.

3 comments:

  1. The big skinny guy does walk around nekkid for a bit. No Dicktown of course.

    ReplyDelete
  2. It's called Dicktown because the town's actual name is Richardtown. In addition, you should have finished that episode, it was only about 5 minutes left. If you had, you would have seen an alphabet soup bowl of queer kids. There was no subtext, it was explicit.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'll bet that they started with Dicktown, and then backtracked to Richardtown. An alphabet soup bowl? Like kids floating around in a bowl of soup?

      Delete

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