Atlanta: A gay kiss, nine penises, and I'm still depressed

 

While researching something else, I found a post on Decider: "Atlanta Showed So Many Penises Last Night."  It was Episode 2. 9.  "North of the Border."  

I watched part of an episode when it first premiered, but was turned off by the homophobic slurs and the constant discussion of which bitches were good and bad in bed.  

 

It stars Donald Glover as Earn, manager for the famous rapper Paper Boi, played by Brian Tyree Henry, below.

LaKeith Stanfield plays Darius, his wacky buddy prone to making existential comments on the human condition.

Wait -- why are Darius and Earn kissing?  

Nope, they're not gay.  In a Season 4 episode, they're looking for a special pair of shoes offered only by the Shoe Man.  His price: he wants to see them kiss for 10 seconds.  Earn is horrified by the idea, but Darius figures they could stand 10 seconds of humiliation for a good cause.

Viewers, mostly homophobic black men, expressed disgust: "We watch the show so we don't have to have our stomach turned by that homo shit, and you go and shove this down our throats!  Sick, man!" Some suspected a genocidal plot to turn black man gay so they wouldn't be able to perform with their ladies, so no future generations.  

They might not be happy to discover that Brian Tyree Henry played the first out gay superhero in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the other two have played gay characters, and Donald Glover is "not into labels" in describing his own sexual identity. Atlanta just happens to be homophobic because it's about the rap subculture.

On to the naked guys:

In this Season 2 episode, Paper Boi has agreed to perform on a college campus.  I fast-forwarded through the previous scenes, which seemed to involved arguing, sex with a lady, more arguing, and a road trip.

The naked guys after the break

We see the guys in a fraternity house, sitting under a huge Confederate flag, with naked pledges with bags on their head lined up in the back.  It's just a coincidence that the rap concert is taking place during Pledge Week, but still, there's definitely a reflection of lynching going on.

The head frat guy, Preston (Tim Johnson), offers to show them their gun collection: "A lot of our alumni are in the NRA, and send us guns."  Uh-oh.   Darius wants to see, so they lead him to another room. Uh-oh.

Preston tells Earn and Paper Boi, "You're my favorite rappers."  He likes all the classics, and snap music.  To demonstrate, he plays "Laffy Taffy" on his phone, and makes the pledges dance along: 

"Shake that Laffy Taffy.  You so thick, I stay so hard, you can s*k me for a long time."

The song is about a girl, so the naked guys are being feminized.

He's got to go give the pledge a mud bath, so they march out.  

Earn and Paper Boi laugh: "Tonight was some bullshit, man."  Then they return to their problems with various bitches, and I get depressed. 

Showrunner Donald Glover, who doesn't believe in labels, is trying very hard to present the male body as an object of humiliation and even violence. Why is it so wrong to find the male body desirable?

See also: The Naked Thugs: Danny McBride thinks we won't like these dicks

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