Bros??? really???

[kindkit]

I saw the trailer for Bros, the upcoming gay rom-com from Billy Eichner. It's here if you want to see it.

I found it incredibly alienating. The target audience is prosperous white cis gay men, which in itself is fine, I guess, but the movie seems to be only for them. I was particularly put off by the body fascism (one character repeatedly demands "ass pics" of potential hookups, and there's a scene where White Guy 1--the love interest, I think?--calls White Guy 2--the protagonist?--"frail" for not being as muscular as he is. White Guy 2 is not actually frail by any normal standard.) Also by the fact that the 2 Black characters we see in the trailer both seem to be in the role of "sassy Black friend whose only purpose is to cheer on the main characters, sassily." Also by the fact that the characters are all roughly rom-com age (early to mid 30s) or younger.

Maybe the actual movie is better than the trailer. (I'm not sure it could be worse.)

But is it weird that Our Flag Means Death, despite having straight cis men in the two starring roles and another one as showrunner, feels more genuinely queer to me than Bros does? It has poor people and fat people and people who are or become disabled, and Black and brown people and a nonbinary person, and people with wrinkles and graying hair, and a whole fucking rainbow of queer desire that's not just about whether someone's in the gym every day to maintain his perfect ass and 5% body fat.

Also it has pirates, and I continue to prefer genre fiction over contemporary realistic fiction. But that's not the only thing about OFMD that speaks to me much more than Bros does.

Finally: ugh, that name, whose idea was that?????

Comments

[sovay]

and a whole fucking rainbow of queer desire that's not just about whether someone's in the gym every day to maintain his perfect ass and 5% body fat.

I mean, that sounds much more attractive to me.

(I hope the film is better than its trailer, but still.)

[kindkit]

I hope so too! I don't want to dislike what sounds like a laudable movie in other respects, e.g. all the cast and many of the crew being queer.

But I do have a particular loathing of the fatphobia and body policing that is such a big part of cis white gay male culture. It's so toxic.

[sovay]

I don't want to dislike what sounds like a laudable movie in other respects, e.g. all the cast and many of the crew being queer.

It is laudable! But if it is being made by people who come out of that culture of the perfect ass, it may still have too high a toxicity buy-in to be worth your (and if your comments are a statistically significant sampling, many other people's) time. And that will suck, but who needs more body policing, wherever you get it from?

[aurumcalendula]

Yeah, I agree (and like I haven't even properly seen OFMD yet, since comedies tend to hit my embarrassment squick).

[kindkit]

For what it's worth, I found that OFMD very rarely activated my own intense embarrassment squick. YMMV, of course. What made the difference for me is that the show is kind towards its characters, even or perhaps especially when they're being weird. It's not cruel and it doesn't punch down.

There's one scene that does still get me a bit, but it's a villain (sort of--it's complicated) cruelly mocking a couple of other characters and accidentally telling on himself in the process. The context makes it easier to cope with, for me, than most cringe comedy.

[marginalia]

I'm also not loving that Bros is getting all this breathless coverage while Fire Island (which tbh will probably have a lot of similar issues, but has an Asian-American cast & creatives) is getting ignored. Or maybe I'm just not seeing it.

[kindkit]

I think I've seen one ad for Fire Island, but quite a lot about Bros, so that makes two of us.

[hannah]

I know I saw the trailer and felt saddened and a little nauseated at the lack of body diversity. Or hair. Or wrinkles. It's all dolls. It's not helped that it's shot in such a flat style or color palette, either.

[kindkit]

Or that the trailer is so desperately unfunny. I dunno, maybe the trailer is worse than the film--it wouldn't be the first time. But I don't hold out a lot of hope.

[vilakins]

The variety in Flag makes me love it, and its characters, even more. I often find American shows are full of plastic people I sometimes can't even tell apart.

[kindkit]

Exactly--there's not a single character in OFMD who is "hot" by the standards of US media. Ed/Taika comes closest, but even he has the body of a middle-aged man in good shape, rather than of someone who has starved and trained for months to bring his body fat percentage down. And I love it! So many characters with a variety of body types who are presented as desirable.

[sovay]

Ed/Taika comes closest, but even he has the body of a middle-aged man in good shape, rather than of someone who has starved and trained for months to bring his body fat percentage down.

This show sounds frankly miraculous.

[vilakins]

Jim also comes close to standard beauty too, but transcends it. I might admire beauty because of sheer aesthetics, but it's the unusual and fascinatingly different that grabs me.

In Star Trek Discovery there's an occasional character called Jett Reno AKA the Grumpy Engineer who is middle-aged and very not-plastic, and isn't in it anywhere near enough. I loved her from the moment I saw her. (Image here: https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Jett_Reno). Sadly they've written out my favourite regular, vibrant and geeky Tilly (https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Sylvia_Tilly) and don't have enough of the two young non-binary characters Adira and Grey (or is it Gray?) to quite make up for it. Tilly was vibrant and geeky and wonderful, but I have high hopes for Adira and Grey.

On the new Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, the pilot is Erica Ortegas (https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Erica_Ortegas) who lights up the screen every time she's on; I can't take my eyes off her. I adore her whole quirky androgynous look. I'm so glad that real people are getting into some US TV, even if not as main characters.

I can tell country of origin on TV without the sound on by the look of actors: plastic and perfect is US and a bit less so, Canada. Real people like those in any street is the UK, and about halfway in between is us and Australia.