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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   36583 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 24, 2022

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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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