Benji Boyd, Sophomore
The LGBTQ community did not need the movie Bros.
When I first heard about this movie, I completely misjudged it. I assumed, based on the trailer, the movie poster, and the title, that this was going to be the kind of gay movie that a straight person with ‘dark humor’ would write: sure the stereotypical jokes would be funny, but you kind of wonder how many thirteen year olds in the audience are taking them to heart.
As it turns out, I was wrong. While Bros is directed by a straight man, the cast is entirely LGBTQ, including stars Billy Eichner and Luke Macafarlane. From the moment the movie gets going, gay jokes are the main dialogue. However, instead of relying on stereotypes formed from the outside, the humor in Bros is centered around genuine LGBTQ problems, issues, and elements of life.
The truth, that some writers and directors don’t seem to understand, is that queer audiences do like to see themselves made fun of on screen, but only when they’re laughing alongside the gay writers instead of being laughed at by the straight audience. Bros does a great job simultaneously representing real queer issues as well as poking fun at the stereotypes that can certainly sometimes be true.
The problem with these types of jokes is that they don’t always appeal to a straight audience who doesn’t know when to laugh. However, one of my personal favorite things about this movie is how they dealt with that issue with surprising self awareness. Billy Eichner’s character, Bobby, brings up the issue of straight people finding him ‘too gay’ multiple times throughout the movie. Being seen as ‘too much’ has been formative to his queer experience, as it is to many real-life queer people who feel like there isn’t room for them to be themselves in their day to day lives. Making space for oneself is a major theme in the movie, as well as a preemptive response to critiques who might claim the movie is ‘too gay.’
On the flip side, another recurring joke throughout the movie is how much the view on gay people has changed in recent years. If this movie came out twenty or even ten years ago, it would look very different. Nowadays, there’s nothing sensational about a romantic movie about two gay men. In fact, some people might even be a little too comfortable with it.
In one scene (no spoilers for the plot, only jokes), the main characters have gone to a theater that is showing a film with a gay romance, and a straight woman comments that she loves watching movies about gay men. She goes on, sharing her view of gay relationships as inherentley exotic and different than straight ones, making the real gay men present uncomfortable. I hope that this scene didn’t fly over the heads of every straight person who went to see Bros because “gay things are so cute,” or “boy-love” is their favorite genre. Believe it or not, gay relationships aren’t purely there for your viewing pleasure.
At this point you may be thinking, ‘Wait. So this review is saying that straight people can’t watch Bros?”
Not at all. I think that Bros was conceptualized and cast to make a movie that both gay and straight people can enjoy, with jokes that cater to the gay experience. That means that straight people might not relate to or find everything funny in the same way, but neither will every gay person. Comedies have to rely on stereotypes to reach a broader audience, and sexuality usually doesn’t determine which jokes an individual will find funny.
So if this movie is so great at gay humor, why did I say the LGBTQ community didn’t need it? A lot of times, people will say that a movie was ‘unnecessary’ when it simply didn’t give off the political message it was expected to. Let me rephrase. Do I think that the LGBTQ community needed this movie to be its knight in shining armor, a pioneer to lay the trail to a glorious future full of gay rom-coms? Do I think this movie was the first to do what it did? Do I think that this movie has taken the first step in the homosexual cinematic revolution? No. Did the LGBTQ community want this movie? Yeah!
It was the reviews of this movie calling it the “first gay rom-com” that misled me. This type of sensationalization is exactly what the movie stands against. We’ve moved past the point where we need big revolutionary films to change the heart of America. Of course, there are still people who are genuinely offended by gay representation on the big screen, but they’re the minority now. The world wants queer relationships to be normalized, but it’s hard to act like something is normal when it’s still being advertised as new and risque. The LGBTQ community did not need the movie Bros, just like straight people did not need the million heterosexual romcoms that came before it. But we wanted it. We need gay representation, but we don’t need to keep pretending that every creator to give it to us is some revolutionary. So can we stop acting like Bros threw the first brick at Stonewall, and just let it be a romantic comedy? Because that’s what we need. More gay laughter.