Anybody watch this on Comedy Central? It’s a “parody” (ripoff) of Queer Eye in which four straight men transform a gay guy into a “straight man” for a day. The first ep involved turning a high-end department store buyer into a meat plant worker for a day. The “Flab Four” as the straight guys are called did such straight-enforcing activities as shopping at Salvation Army, target shooting with movie quotes, since apparently straight men can’t shoot guns without quoting “Die Hard” or “Pulp Fiction,” and redecorating the guy’s apartment with beer signs and plastic pig statues. The payoff was that after his day in the meat plant (working alongside two of the straight guys) the meatpackers were asked to guess which one of the three was gay. Two out of the three who guessed got it wrong.
I have sort of mixed feelings about the show politically. It does play on gay stereotypes which I’m not overly fond of but ultimately it makes way more fun of straight guys than gay guys. From a humor standpoint the first ep was funny but I don’t know that a steady diet of it would interest me. The show’ll probably end up in the “I’ll watch it if I remember it and there’s nothing better on” pile.
I don’t get it. You have mixed feelings about this show “playing on gay stereotypes” when you post regularly to discuss THE show that plays on gay stereotypes?
I watched some of it. It was on in the background while I was doing other things.
Can you expand on how the show played on gay stereotypes? If it did (and I’m not saying it didn’t - I wasn’t giving the show my full attention), it didn’t do it anymore than Queer Eye does.
I’ll record the rerun on ReplayTV and probably give the show another whirl next week.
Interesting show. I heard second-hand that only three episodes were filmed, so it’s not going to be around too long.
I think this show has the potential to be really funny, but the ‘flab four’ were awfully uncharismatic, even if they were supposed to be portraying your average slobs.
I’m with Airman Doors on this one. Any show that makes light of gay stereotypes must eventually invalidate them (that’s the punch line). Shows like that eventually show us that there is very little difference between “gay” and “straight”, and it’s a lesson we could all use a few more times. When we’ve gotten rid of phrases like “straight-acting”, “throws like a girl”, and “talks like he’s white” then we can really say there’s no more homophobia, sexism, or racism left. Until then, more power to them.
Can we get a show called “Cultural Clue for the Clueless You” and do all sorts of wacky combos? Like a Jew and an Arab have to live in each others’ lives for a week, or maybe a white southern “redneck” and an Asian New England tech geek.
Queer Eye trades on gay stereotypes only in that gay guys have greater style and wit than straight guys. The choices straight guys make (their grooming, wardrobes, and decor) are mocked, but the thrust of the show is not to change the straight guys but to make them better husbands and boyfriends. The show often ends with a proposal and the gay guys cheer on the straight guy to get the girl.
The Comedy Central show, OTOH, denigrates gay men and effectively says that being gay is wrong and that only straight, working class men are “real men.” The gay man is not made over to be a better person; instead, his persoanlity is covered over by a disguise to make him more “acceptable” to the lstraight world. Good manners, a taste for the arts, good grooming are all derided as pansified traits that no real man has. It may be played for comedy, but I still find it insulting.
I watched it and thought it was funny. It works as a parody of Queer Eye, and as such is a one joke show. So I can’t see it catching on as a series, but if it makes enough people unhappy because it promotes the wrong message, it might have a chance.
My favorite scene was the movie -script -shouting -shooting gallery episode because after the straight guys screamed “Go ahead, make my day…” macho quotes, the gay guy screamed, “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn!” before shooting off a round of ammo.
Two other points - the “subject” appeared to be an excellent bowler - he bowled a strike first time out. His original apartment was to die for - hope the beer signs and plaid go away pronto when the shoot’s over.
Queer Eye isn’t about “let’s turn the straight guy into a gay guy.” It’s about taking someone without much style and giving him the building blocks. That the style-less guys are straight and the gurus are gay is just the hook upon which the show is hung. You could do the same show with any combination of gay and straight or male and female (see for example “What Not To Wear” which in Britain is hosted by two women and mostly makes over women and in America is hosted by a man and a woman and makes over people of both sexes) but it wouldn’t have the hook.
Straight Plan, though, is much more explicit in its formula of “let’s take this gay guy and teach him hoe not to act gay and how to act straight.” The humor is based on the stereotype. Whereas Carson would offer up an outfit because it hangs properly or is appropriate for a particular environment, the straight Fashion Guy picks clothes because they make the wearer “look straight.” Ted cooks things not because it’s what the gays are eating, whereas the straight Food Guy (although there isn’t specifically a food guy I don’t think) says to eat things because that’s how straight guys eat. And so on.
This almost sounds like you’re saying it’s OK to stereotype as long as it’s in your favor. I’m sure you’re not saying that, though. Are you?
With the caveat of not having seen the episode in its entirety, I didn’t think that’s what they were getting at. The phrase ‘straight men’ as opposed to ‘real men’ or just plain ‘men’ was used repeatedly. The object of the show was to see if a (very) stereotypical gay man could pass for a (very) stereotypical straight man once.
If anything, I saw Straight Plan as a dig on straight men (The Flab Four, anyone?) than anything.
No, not at all. I’m just saying that the stereotyping is more the unspoken assumption of the show, but clearly not really believed in by any of the participants. The idea that all gay men are inherently more stylish than all striaght men is one I have railed against many times.
Otto, the “hook”, as you say it, of Queer Eye is a play on one of the most notorious stereotypes I can think of.
Male clothiers and hairdressers are regularly portrayed as gay, and so they makers of Queer Eye used that stereotype for laughs. The fact that gobear has to say that he “rails against that idea” just confirms the stereotype upon which the show is based.
I’m still confused. What makes one stereotype acceptable and the other not acceptable?
Because as I already said, the stereotype isn’t the point of Queer Eye. Despite the name, the isn’t about gayness at all, but about makeover tips that allmen, gay and straight alike, can use to improve their lives. It’a about being clean, having style, and feeling good about yourself. You’ll note that the gay guys never tryo to transform the straight man; instead, they form their advice around the striaght guy’s intersts and goals.
Straight Plan, OTOH, desires to squash any trace of gayness about its test victim. Instead of enhancing him, they humilate him by making him try to pass as a working class stiff, because then and only then can he be a “real man.”
There’a a gigantic difference between improving a man’s life and crushing his identity.
That sounds remarkably like some rationalizing to me. QE might very well give tips that all men can use, but that’s not the premise of the show, is it? The premise isn’t that a group of tasteful, fashionable men are doing makeovers on people who need it, but rather that the fabulous gay men are rescuing those pathetic straight slobs from their filth and tackiness. That’s why the Fab Five never make over a gay guy and help him become a better boyfriend, and why the straight guys (at least on the episodes I’ve seen) are always filthy, clueless pigs.
It’s partly about the makeovers, but it’s also quite a bit about the stereotypes. After all, the fabulous/slovenly dichotomy is what sets QE apart from other makeover shows, what gives it its cache. Stereotypes are the ultimate selling point of QE, and to pretend otherwise is to stick your head in the sand while you’ve got your fingers in your ears singing “la la la, I can’t hear you.”
I don’t know how to explain it any differently than I already have. The Fab Five don’t have to be gay for the show to work. The “Flab Four” have to be straight for the show to work. Queer Eye isn’t premised on “how to teach straight men to be or act gay.” Straight Plan is premised on “how to teach gay men to be or act straight.”
An irony to me is that having grown up in back-of-beyond Alabama, I like most of the gay guys I know from rural background knew how to kill & dress deer, snare rabbits, could tell you which worm to use for which fish and where to find them, and could shoot the eye out of a turkey-buzzard at 300 yards long before we knew how to find vintage glassware. Many of the gay guys I know would MUCH rather go to a college football game or a rodeo than to an opera or musical (Atlanta has several gay sports bars, soccer teams and country music bars, in fact). My gay friends include guys who’ve worked jobs in construction, served with distinction in the Marines and in law enforcement while otoh none of them, even the nelliest, are what I’d term effete or squeamish. (If you grow up nellie in the deep South, you learn to fight pretty quick.) That’s the main reason these stereotypes irritate me, but I’m not really offended as it’s a comedy program and no more meant to represent the whole of gay culture than the Bernie Mac show is meant to be representative of all blacks.
Then why isn’t it called Five Men with Discriminating Tastes who Happened to be Gay Eye for the Straight Guy? I submit Queer Eye would not work if the Fab Five weren’t gay. I don’t even think they would have gotten a meeting with the network president (or with whomever people peddling shows meet - VP of New Programming, maybe?).
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Then why isn’t it called Five Men with Discriminating Tastes who Happened to be Gay Eye for the Straight Guy? I submit Queer Eye would not work if the Fab Five weren’t gay.
I have to agree because of if they weren’t gay, the entire subtext of the show would be missing. And that’s the tension that’s generated when the Fab Five touches, share beds, makes double entendre’s, undresses etc. the straight guy. There’s this whole “will he or won’t he” tension about how much intimacy the straight guy can tolerate.
The Flab Five picked up on that. The entire bit with the straight guy inviting the gay guy to share a bed with him was a take off on the QE sexual innuendo.