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.)

[aurumcalendula]

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

[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.

[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.

[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.