A reader told me that The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder, on the Disney Channel, had gay characters, so I looked it up: there's a swishy gay stereotype named Michael (who was apparently less swishy and straight in the original series), and a pair of gay dads played by Zachary Quinto and Billy Porter. They appear in three episodes in Season 1 and two in Season 2, not a lot of representation, but something. I watched their first appearance, Season 1, Episode 4:
Scene 1: Dad Oscar is helping his friend Felix celebrate his "half birthday" with "Snackland": each ride "based on a delicious treat" that Oscar's company will produce. This has nothing to do with Felix's birthday -- Oscar just wanted a co-signer on a loan -- so he is incensed, and digs his way out of the house.
Scene 2: In a mansion, teenage Penny and her friends, including the swishy gay kid, are watching a tv show where viewers send in videos. Friend LaCienega sent in "Disinfect Me with Your Love" (a COVID reference?). They all pile on the "likes" so she can win the prize: a Pink Concert.
Ok, if's Felix's mansion. Oscar comes to the door to beg for the co-sign. Felix continues to refuse. They discuss Felix's wife Sunset, who just got a promotion to detective, and a new, hot male partner, Barry (he just moved to town). She descends the staircase, all sultry and sexy; Oscar's jaw drops to the floor. Hasn't he seen her before?
The doorbell rings. It's Partner Barry, blond, square-jawed, in a sparkly purple tuxedo, Oscar figures that a hot, muscular detective must have a high FICA score, so he buddies up to him, hoping to get a co-sign.
Scene 3: The kids have piled on the likes to over 7,000, but LaCienega's competitor gets 2.3 billion! So they won't be able to attend the Pink Concert (Is that singer still a thing? I remember Will talking about her on Will and Grace years ago).
Small world -- Barry happens to be Maya's father (Maya is focus character Penny's friend). He happens to be working security at the concert, and offers to get them in, with back stage passes. Felix is overcome with jealousy. Don't they hire security guards, not cops, for private events? Especially not a detective, who is involved in crime investigation.
Scene 4: The concert. Pink is a grunge kid with an eye patch, singing "Disinfect Me with Your Love." I thought LaCienega made it up. The fans all dress in pink and wear eye patches -- including Maya's father Randall, a chubby black guy. She introduces him to the gang.
"Wait!" one of the friends, Dijonay, exclaims. "I thought Maya's father was Barry." Penny buttons her lip, and she stares at Barry, then Randall, then Barry, then Randall, and finally, with a look of utter shock, figures it out. Randall and Barry's daughter Maya is disgusted; a kid with two dads hasn't been shocking since her dads were kids themselves.
Scene 5: The concert over, the dads gather their kids and head for the door (there are two kids, Maya and KG, who is probably a boy). Dijonay videos them. Penny yells at her. "I'm just trying to get an understanding." "Well, don't out them on social media!' Strikes me that they are pretty much out already.
But she social medias anyway, and the comments range from rainbow heart emojis to "No one cares" to "Weird!" to "I can't be friends with Maya anymore."
Scene 6: Maya and KG walk down the hallway, being in the spotlight and hating it. They're now spokespersons for gay rights, social justice warriors, victims of child abuse, and sinful deviants. Every gay kid thinks that they are best buds, and every hater has a new target. Mean kids call the boy a "double daddy boy."
Penny is incensed: "Why does it matter if they got two Dads?" But her friends all say that their parents think it's "weird," and don't want them hanging out with the pariahs. Even the gay kid's parents?
At lunch, Penny and Michael the Gay Kid go over to console them: "Don't let the haters bother you. You should be happy to have two dads. Some kids don't even have one. Or a mother, either." This does not console the kids: they're adopted. They lost their birth parents. They get up and walk away.
Scene 7: At home, Oscar (Penny's father) yells that he doesn't want her hanging out with the kids, either. His wife and mother yell at him for being homophobic. I keep hoping that it's a tease, he's actually angry with the couple for an unrelated reason. Maybe he'll be redeemed later?
Scene 8: Breakfast. No one is speaking to Oscar, not even the dog. So he goes to the bank for his loan appointment. Yep, you guessed it: the loan officer is Randall, one of the dads. Oscar has never met him before, but hopes that he'll get special consideration because they're both black.
Looking at the application, Randall realizes that they are neighbors: "My husband and I just moved to town. We bought the Webb House." HUSB AND? He recoils in disgust, and tries to run screaming from the room, but has to restrain himself because Randall has approved the application.
At that moment, the husband appears: Barry the Detective! "AHH! Two of them!" Oscar shrieks. We don't hear the rest of his thoughts, but they're probably on the lines of "What if they start doing gay stuff right here in the office? What if they...ugh....kiss?"
They do kiss, and Oscar's head explodes. They notice, and stare as he struggles to get out of them room without fainting from homophobic terror.. Of course, Randall rejects the loan application.
I'm fast-forwarding to Oscar's redemption. I'm sure he becomes more tolerant in the end, but this is literally making me sick to my stomach.
Scene 9: A housewarming party. Everyone is dancing and having fun. Oscar comes in, deer-in-headlights skittish. Felix from Scene 2 "loves" the pair because it means that Barry will not be hitting on his wife. This makes Oscar's head explode.
Daughter Penny suggests that he try seeing through her eyes, instead of falling prey to his prejudices. So his eyes shatter, and are replaced by Penny, and he sees two guys dancing together. Wait -- they're just two guys? Nothing to be afraid of? The end.
My Grade: This was way too retro. Lots of children's tv shows have kids with two dads -- heck, even Sesame Street did -- and it's always matter-of-fact, no big deal, not eliciting a single double-take or comment. The reaction of the kids, of the parents, and especially of Oscar remind me of a "very special episode" of a 1980s sitcom. And I didn't understand Oscar's redemption at all: he saw the two guys through Penny's eyes? D
Well considering that the target audience is mostly black viewers just like the first series, I'm actually not surprised that Oscar reacted that way. Yes it's dated, but that kind of homophobic reaction is still kind of par for the course in mostly black circles. I'm speaking mainly from my perspective as a gay black person. For that reason, when it comes to plots with the subject being queerness, a lot of modern black film and television come across as something from the 90s and 00s. You may have noticed that when you reviewed "Family Reunion" and "The Upshaws". I'm not saying black people are any more homophobic than any other community. It's just that when it comes to masculinity, straight men (and sometimes women and queer men) within the community tend to be quite insecure, and any male that's the slightest bit less masculine let alone feminine, is seen as an affront to them. Combine that with the heavy religiosity of our communities, some people would express homophobia in a way that feels like you just step out of a time machine.
ReplyDeleteGood point. Of course, neither of the guys are particularly feminine, but I guess the association of gay-feminine stands. I wonder why Oscar has no problem with his daughter hanging out with a femme gay kid. Maybe it's the "couple" part that bothers him, with the awareness that the two guys are probably having sex.
DeleteYep. It's one thing if you're gay or bi in itself, but if you're with another male (even if you're just dating), the idea of a man having sex with another man repulses them to the core. Of course this is general across the board for any community, as well as applying this repulsion to women in same-sex relationships to an extent. But this is also why the idea of a boy or a girl expressing any form of same-sex attraction is so taboo. No matter how chaste and puppy love it all is, homophobes would automatically think of sex when it comes to same-sex attraction. They can think of all the complexities of relationships when it comes to male-female courtship (treating it as default of course), but somehow cannot and will not apply the same complexities to same-sex courtship. They think it's all sex.
DeleteThat's why it's common to have gay dads, but rare to have gay kids on these programs, and the gay kids who exist generally just act as bffs and fashion consultants. If they started dating, viewers would assume that they were having sex.
DeleteI should also note that when it comes to the queer kid taboo, you'll also notice that "allies" would likely also express some repulsion as well, disguising it with "they're too young" to have a crush on the same gender. With underage boys, straight men would rather they have crushes on or even have sex with adult women than have simple puppy love crushes on boys their own age. It's a disgusting double standard and they know it and don't care.
DeleteI don't know about too young. Most of the revulsion seems to be aimed at the usual suspects (incest, major age difference, that sort of thing).
DeleteEarly gay icons often failed to observe these taboos, which is where you get things like Tarzan and Boy, Batman and Robin among gay icons, even though the intended relationship is father and son.
Of course, straight women fetishize this sort of thing these days, hence slash fiction. (And sometimes bi women, Devin Grayson.)
Just read a tumblr post about her writing, and... yikes.
DeleteShe does good writing at Marvel Comics. And there was her writing with the Harper family.
DeleteBut, a survivor of CSA, she really has issues with normalizing it.
You CAN queer the bats, of course, but you're looking at the teams they're on for potential partners: Jericho and Arsenal for the original Robin, Superboy for the third. Or now the Batman of Pakistan (Yeah, Batman is an international chain now.) is gay and has a sort of history; Bruce kissed him once to distract and shock him during a contest.
I do have to wonder where Inheritance came from tho. Flash fans are just glad Barry Allen was dead at the time.