It’s not clear what drove people to see The Wedding Ringer this weekend, besides a sincere lack of recreational opportunity and a budding interest in masochism. The film, which the A.V. Club called a “100-minute gay joke masquerading as a buddy comedy,” and which my grandma labeled “very good,” is a story grounded in sexual panic and gay hysteria. There’s prison rape jokes, blowjob jokes, and — surprise! — a flamboyant wedding planner. Still, as the Supreme Court moves to address gay marriage, The Wedding Ringer (despite bad intentions) raises good questions: It’s 2015. How are we still making gay jokes? Why do we make them? Are all gay jokes bad? But what if they involve James Franco?
For many of us, gay jokes were our first introduction to gay sexuality. I first heard the word when I was nine and my forever enemy, Jared Schultze, joked that our English teacher was gay. “What’s that mean?” I asked Jared. “He’s a guy who likes other guys. Like a loser!” As hard as it was to trust the judgment of a child who carried around a New Kids on the Block tote bag “like a winner,” the message was clear: Gay people were bad people, gross people, loser people. They were social deadbeats, negative Klout points, and excellent source material.
There are hundreds of stand-up comedians who continue to make these jokes, and thousands of Jared Schultzes who infect Facebook feeds everywhere. The punch line is almost always an iteration of the same anxiety: “He’s gay. You’re gay. I’m gay. Wait I’m not gay. I’M NOT GAY RIGHT?!” Sometimes, simply saying the word “gay” is enough to give the joke its arc. A brief history of comedy from the last five years/ten minutes reveals that even some of our smartest, most progressive comedians aren’t above this kind of humor. In 2011, Tracy Morgan announced that he would “stab” his son to “death” if he ever spoke to him in a “gay voice.” At James Franco’s Comedy Central roast, around 26 gay jokes were told, and in Chris Rock’s Top Five, a gay man is hilariously sodomized with hot sauce (!) as “punishment.” (Although anything with hot sauce is automatically delicious — even, potentially, an anus).
Still, I’d like to think it’s theoretically possible to tell a not-horrible gay joke in the same way it’s hypothetically conceivable to tell a not-terrible rape joke. GPS is key. Rape jokes directed at rape victims are infinitely ugly. Rape jokes directed at rapists? Sometimes okay. As Tina Fey and Amy Poehler showed us at the recent Golden Globes, tough jokes can be told. The subject of the joke matters just as much as its context. So it’s scientifically possible to tell a great gay joke when the target isn’t someone’s sexual preference but their sexual bully living inside, or outside, their community. (Word of advice: Most gay jokes fail. Most rape jokes drown. Side effects of telling these jokes may include: actually nothing. You’ll probably get a special on Comedy Central.)
Gay comedians are probably the best equipped to tell gay jokes, because — wait for this logic — they’re gay. Claudia Cogan, a queer Brooklyn-based comedian, does a great bit about not being “gay enough” for Brooklyn’s queer community. “They all have, like, MFAs in lesbianism,” she argues, “and I have an Associates in putting a finger in a hole.” As someone who identifies as a Brooklyn-based lesbian and was once dumped for “not being radical enough” (I was a social worker, so, you know, Satan), her words resonate. Gay jokes like these work because they move upwards, not downwards; criticize bad behaviors, not bad sexualities; employ real details, not fictional types. There are countless other queer comedians out there doing this work, using insider information to attack entrenched fingerbang hierarchies.
Not-gay people can theoretically tell good-gay jokes, although chances of succeeding are slim. The reasons are as emotional as they are logistic: How can you tell a joke about a community you’re not a member of? What’s there to talk about when you have no idea what’s going on? I can’t imagine what it would be like if I attempted to tell a “straight” joke. “So penises … They go into vaginas, amiright? Ever notice how men like women and women like men? Like, sexually. That’s crazy! You guys have been great.” Real comedy lies in specific details learned from experience. When you’re outside a group, and socially higher than that group, you’re watching from a distance, making it that much harder to examine things close-up.
Sure, there have been empathetic outside observers who’ve been able to tell successful gay jokes — like Aziz Ansari and you know, the other one. For the James Franco roast, Aziz challenged his fellow comedians to examine their stale subtexts: “So many gay jokes tonight … Apparently, if you’re clean, well-dressed and mildly cultured, you’re super gay now. Is that why the rest of you guys are so aggressively fat and dirty?” In just three lines, Aziz accomplished two flips: a critique of homophobia, and a reversal of a stereotype. The media applauded Aziz for being the one comedian that night who didn’t tell a gay joke, but the truth was slightly different. Aziz did tell a gay joke. A good gay joke. It’s why we didn’t notice it.
Right now, there are at least ten kids across America who are learning about what it means to be gay from their nice, well-meaning parents. I hate those children (perhaps unfairly), but it’s still nice to see the historical shift. More and more queer comedians are coming out (Wanda Sykes, Cameron Esposito) and attacking more and more bullies. Gay jokes involve three of the things people fear most: sex, love, and difference. They’ll probably never go away, but I’d like to believe that they will get better.
Heather Dockray is a writer and storyteller living in Brooklyn, NY. You can see more of Heather’s work at heatherdockray.com, follow her on twitter @Wear_a_helmet, and email her at dockrayheather@gmail.com if you aren’t from Moveon.org.
