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I’m not homophobic in any way, but I’m not interested in this movie because I’m just…not gay.
Other movie genres I’m not interested in: marvel movies, children’s movies (although I repeat myself, HA!), movies where old people get their groove back, sports drama movies (except Rudy), slasher/gore movies, anime…I don’t know I’m sure there are many others. My point is that while I don’t have any problem with gay people, I’m not gay myself and won’t seek out gay media in the same way I don’t seek out gay bars.
If a friend invited me to go see this movie, I would go, but again I don’t think then would because I’m not in the target audience.
Target audience for this movie is about 10% of the total population, or about 5% since only men. Meaning this movie if Herero would have done about $200M in sales.
Target a tiny audience and get a tiny box office. Simple as.
Surely the target audience must have been imagined to be primarily fujoshi-adjacent straight women, and not gay men?
Well it missed that audience as well... straight women want the gay experience catered to their tastes, they want a nicholas sparks novel or rom-com where they get to drool over both leads, and it feels slightly taboo. Brokeback Mountain hit this audience perfectly.
They don't want a movie named after a frat term of endeerment and that conotes jock humour... There is stuff like that but that's usually compromise fair like American Pie, Neighbors, etc. that Exists to straddle the line of mixed company where several straight friends might be together and female tastes won't dominate.
They alienated the female audience with "Bros" and male audiences with "Gay"
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I think activists would still loudly declare you homophobic. Being straight is OK, but your inability to move past the gayness and enjoy the movie is problematic. It's unacceptable to go around saying, "I like straight romcoms but not gay romcoms" for the same reasons one can't say, "I like cis-women but not trans-women."
We should distinguish media made about X from media made for X. If a niche piece of media is made for say, black people, I could envision "cultural appropriation" complaints if too many white people start enjoying it. OTOH, blackwashing batman isn't about making media for black people, it's about making media about black people, for everyone (mostly white people) to watch.
Back to Bros, this movie is about gays, but is for everyone. It's alright if the only way a straight person to enjoy this is to mentally replace the characters with ones that appeal to them. Indeed, maybe audiences already do that when watching straight romcoms (maybe you don't like their hair color?). But watching a relationship between two men is probably too weird and distracting that people probably find it difficult to make the mental substitutions (probably for me, too).
I think when it comes to charges of "homophobia" the only time you're ever allowed to treat gay and straight differently is in matters of orientation, which is to say, you wouldn't date a gay person if you're straight. Even then, you'd probably have to phrase it pretty carefully.
Is he actually saying that he likes straight but not gay romcoms? I read him as apathetic to the genre, with BROS giving no reason to buck the trend.
I don’t think “activists” would label the latter stance as homophobic...
Yeah. I don't like romcoms, so I'm not going to go see one, and I'm particularly not going to go see one where I'm lectured about how I have to go see it or else I'm an -ist or a -phobe.
Hm, avoid spending time and money to be bored out of my skull watching a movie that doesn't appeal to me and wouldn't appeal to me if it had straight male and female leads, all for the low, low cost of being called a homophobe? I'll take that bargain!
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Probably worse than that, since I think generally LGB is estimated at 3-5% of the population, so it’s really more like…2.5% on the high end?
I’m aware that a higher % of people engage in same-sex behaviors (but i think still less than 10%) but it isn’t a core part of their identity, ergo, not likely to be motivated in particular to watch this.
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