benevolent kitten overlord

danharmon:

Community’s episode “Advanced Gay” had a very simple, fast moving story about fathers and sons - particularly the relationship between Pierce Hawthorne, established homophobe, and his father, whom, it turns out, is all the more homophobic.

A conflict arises between the two that is not…

I just finished the season 3 Community episode “Advanced Gay” and was really disappointed. Idk, I am generally really loving this show but I’m consistently underwhelmed with how it handles LGBT issues in general. I know we’re all just supposed to understand that Pierce is a racist, homophobic piece of shit, but when he tells a racist joke there are PoC in the group who call him on it and their friends back him up… the only person who seems to get agitated regularly when Pierce is a total homophobe is Britta, and let me remind you that she’s the straight girl who just wanted to be friends with a lesbian because it was ~the right thing to do. And then there’s the Dean, who behaves flamboyantly, hits on men, and cross-dresses, but he’s obviously just this one-note character that we’re all supposed to laugh at. I feel like the show pretty regularly seems to put two men together in vaguely “gay” situations and plays it for laughs - oh, doesn’t this make us all uncomfortable??

This episode was gross. They used stereotypical gay men as background props to help the douchiest douche in the show come to terms with his daddy issues. Annie LITERALLY said the phrase “lady man” re: the transvestite in the music video. I have so many friends who watch shows consciously who are REALLY into this show and I was surprised that somehow this had never come up (not just this episode, but the consistent weird attitude towards queer people on the show). I found the above non-apology by the show creator when I googled to see if I could find anyone else talking about it, but “community” and “lgbt” aren’t actually bringing up that many helpful responses, haha.