Chris Guest's Treatment of Homosexuals in his Mockumentaries - C/D

It's more in the characterization like:

neurotic yuppies
eccentric ventriloquist/bait fly salesman
woman with racy sexual history
man with two left feet and buckteeth
and a flamboyant mary!

it seems a little lazy, easy.

Every character in Best In Show had an abnormal quirk but taking Scott for example, Scott's quirk/abnormality was a affirmation of really trite gay stereotypes.

I guess it's just me. Thanks for participating.

Casuistry wrote: Yeah, my main problem with Guffman was that it seemed like the actors/writers hated (& felt superior to) all the characters

I see what you're saying, but I wouldn't say they hated them. The characters certainly weren't exceptionally smart or worldly, but I think there was real affection for them...especially at the end, when Guffman doesn't arrive. And, instead of making the play a fiasco and making the performers incompetent (well, relatively), they have them pulling it off successfully and receiving warm applause.

Nobody's pointed out yet that Corky was actually closeted and pretended to have a wife ("I buy all her clothes") and so not all of
the humor was simply about him being gay, but about him trying to hide it and other people being clueless (remember the dentist's wife, who pointed out that nobody's seen Corky's wife, yet doesn't make the connection). The only one who really sniffs him out is the mechanic's father, oddly enough.

In A Mighty Wind, when towards the beginning Harry Shearer's character hugs Michael McKean a little too enthusiastically, I thought "Okay, enough, people." But no, I'm wrong, he's not gay...he's transsexual. They really tried too hard with that gag, and it wasn't funny. But I'm certain that they were thinking, "Okay, the last two movies had gay people, so we need to do something else this time." Considering Wind was the least funny of the three (or four, if you count This is Spinal Tap), I think they need to rethink some things. That said, the song "Potato's in the Paddy Wagon" deserves some kind of award for being unbelievably catchy and ridiculous (and irresistible).

But all of them seem to have a gay sensibility that goes deeper than simply having gay characters. Spinal Tap, in particular, is one bitchy little film. We'll call it the pierced nephew of All About Eve.

The other thing is that the character work in these films is very nuanced. I mean, everything you need to know about Corky is in the shot of the ashtray with the stubs of barely smoked cigarettes. A brilliant detail. Even though Corky is a gay stereotype, there's no moment that screams, "GET IT, CUZ HE'S GAY??"

michael mckean & the other dude are the funniest shit in best in show

that & parker posey pet store freakout

Scott's line, "she looks like a cocktail waitress on an oil rig" = classic.

hahaha

It is always funny to say that to your woman when she makes an effort to look nice.

CG often did a stock lisping queen on the National Lampoon Radio Hour circa 1974.... On that show they did a brilliant bit of macho Hollywood stars -- Lee Marvin, Eastwood, Newman etc -- calling each other "girlfriend" and being real ssssssssibilant. That's all there is to it, but it's funnier than any of his movies.

comedy is a mirror

Michael Koresky on Guffman's theatre queen:

Anxiety-ridden, given to prima donna fits, cursed with a maniacal need to impress, and not particularly sharp, Corky St. Clair is nevertheless generally sweet-souled and impossible to hate. How we feel about him and how we fear the film might want us to feel about him has been one of the main sources of tension around Waiting for Guffman since its release more than 20 years ago. Corky is undoubtedly a gay stereotype; he minces and lisps, he dresses flamboyantly and talks expressively (if rarely succinctly or intelligently), and he goes into sleepy-eyed reverie when he mentions wearing chaps or buying pantsuits for his wife “Bonnie,” whom no one in town has ever seen. In these ways, Guffman fits a little too snugly into a debasing tradition of stock homosexual caricature—in which male effeminacy is depicted as inherent funny—stretching back to vaudevillians like Gene Malin (a major mover-and-shaker of the “Pansy Craze” in Jazz Age New York) and Hollywood Golden Age supporting actors like Franklin Pangborn to swishy characters like Roger De Bris in The Producers (1968) or Blaine Edwards and Antoine Merriweather in In Living Color’s “Men on Film” skits (1990-1994). At the same time, these figures of gay minstrelsy have been frequently studied and enjoyed by gay viewers (this one included), revealing the double-bind of representation: that their visibility and unapologetic forthrightness as effeminate men somehow counteracts the potentially dangerous offenses. Of course, a major difference between, say, Harvey Fierstein’s arms-flailing best-supporting-nelly act in Independence Day (1996) and Corky’s own freak-outs (“I’m gonna go home and I’m gonna bite my pillow!”) is that Fierstein is an out queer actor owning his own identity, however clichéd, while Guest is an ostensibly straight actor gussied up in gay drag.

https://www.filmcomment.com/blog/queer-now-then-1997/

Mainstream (US) comedy is as homophobic as fuck, always

well i don't find the Guffman character to particularly be an example of that; plenty of Corkys around, at least 20+ years ago

There’s a whole series of tensions in Guffman that the pansiness sits on top of. Is Corky closeted to himself, or just to the town? It’s plausible that some of the townsfolk think it’s politer to not question it and just treat him as he asks to be treated*. We’ve all known ppl who are OBVIOUSLY gay as heck, but actually aren’t (and am-dram is reliably a place this type finds community). Is it sad that Corky has created a false “real” life that everyone in his real real life of making pretend accepts, or is it just another way in which he’s making theatricality part of his everyday existence, and he gets real fulfilment from it? Like the push/pull between whether Corky is too afraid to go to the big smoke & flop, and whether he loves the town & ppl so much that that is better than being (say) a working costume assistant off-Broadway.

*its definitely a repeated gag that ppl don’t suspect gayness, but it’s part of the overall lol/aw factor of them being rubes: the condescension is aimed more at the townsfolk than Corky, though Guest (& Levy) is always having a bet each way on sympathising deeply with the characters.

Anyway no matter who is the butt of the joke (ans. everyone) and whether or not there’s homophobia in the flick (ans. a bit), I saw this film 20 years ago and just typed this on my phone in a bar, whereas I saw Mascots this year and can’t remember a thing about it.

xpost!

Also IF Corky is closeted and sad about it, the film is not belittling him for this: the main supertext of the movie is that every character in the troupe is there bcz it gives them a way to let other parts of themselves show that their daily lives in the town don’t allow for.