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The Function of the 'Fag' in movies filled with hunky men
Written August 2005
One feature that seems to become a mainstay of movies that are packed with hunky men is a prominently placed 'fag' character. I use this word intentionally, to describe the derisive and exclusionary ways in which these characters are invariably portrayed in these movies. I will talk specifically about the remake of The Longest Yard, Con Air, and Wedding Crashers in this essay.
If you have a movie like The Longest Yard, in which not a minute passes without some muscular, macho guy--often in a snug guards' uniform--it can cause a trace of gay panic in its intended audience, the 14 to 34-year-old male. What is the target audience to think about as they see all these big, muscular guys--in a prison, by the way, legendary location of homosexual anal sex--with barely any women in sight? What are they supposed to feel as they see professional wrestler Bill Goldberg nearly nude, and the discussion turns to how big his penis is? And how he would use it on a guard, but he "wants to hurt him, not kill him?"
And, some part of the audience's mind asks itself, WHY did they want to come sit and watch these big macho guys cavort around in uniforms or states of undress anyway? WHY did they want to see this movie, where the excitement of the movie is all about just how very big, and hot, and mean, and strong, and rough, and nasty the guys are? And how they solve their differences by snarling and fighting and wrestling with each other, in either tight prison uniforms or tight footbal uniforms or tight guard uniforms?
Sound pretty gay to you? That's because it is. And the average 14 to 34-year-old male knows it. And if they think the movie is even slightly gay, they will stay far away [witness the fate of Alexander]. It is incumbent on the movie, therefore, to find a way to make it NOT GAY--or watch the young men that will amount to the vast majority of its audience stay away. And the easiest way to do this is to place a FAG where he can't easily be missed.
These fags are invariably so outrageously charicatured that they serve as comic relief--and that laughter serves to deflect any nascent homoerotic twinges the audience might feel. This allows the male audience member a great deal more psychological space to enjoy the hunky guys, as they can point to the fag onscreen and say: "See, HE is the fag, NOT ME."
The Longest Yard remake is packed with fags, theoretically in proportion to the sheer amount of muscular guys in the film, and the degree of admiration the film's point of view--and subsequently that of the audience--has for them. The first one appears in the opening scene. He is a decorator [natch!] at a party, who immediately expresses his desperate attraction for Adam Sandler's former pro football character. This decorator is sent into paroxysms of lust when Sandler crashes his girlfriend's car in a drunk driving accident. We don't see the decorator again, but it is not long after Sandler arrives in jail that a gaggle of fags [a mere three of them, above] appears, predominantly African-American, and all outrageously sissified drag queens. They are present throughout the rest of the movie, preening in lust over the football team, spelling out "dick" in one of their cheerleading routines, and generally just queening all over themselves. We are never told what these characters did to wind up in jail, they just appear because the story needs fags-and apprently needs about six of 'em.
Later in the movie, it is considered the height of mortification when one of the inmates is discovered to have been visiting one of the fags in secret. Toward the end, one of the guards, who has secretly been given estrogen in place of his steroids, begins truly turning into someone's stereotype of a woman; his nipples become tender, he wants to share and cry with his teammates, and by the end he has donned women's clothes and in gleefully dancing with the fag cheerleaders.
There is just one fag character in Con Air, but he is so abominably treated that he makes up for the difference. The movie concerns a plane transporting what we are told are the most dangerous criminals in the United States, meaning we're going to be treated to a lot of big, mean, macho men and the guards who keep them in line. Once more we have the prison milieu, which, as everyone knows, MEANS butt-fucking. The fag in this film, named in the credits as "Sally can't dance," appears on the plane out of nowhere, not introduced like the majority of the other criminals on the plane. Again we are never told what he did to get there, which is even more incongrous, since he is on a plane full of the U.S.'s most dangerous criminals. He huffs "Men!" when it is revealed that one of the prisoners has stolen his white women's sunglasses. When the plane lands, rather than search for food or provisions, his first priority is ransacking a deserted house [as disco, the theme music of the fag, plays on the soundtrack] until he finds a woman's dress. He wears the dress for the remainder of the movie, which finds him later dancing like a stripper in front of all the men. When the hero confronts him at the end, the fag is defeated with a slap [in sharp contrast to the punching and extreme violence that occurs everywhere else in the film]. He shrieks and cowers upon being slapped. At the end, he emerges from a crashed plane to see a bunch of cops gathered round and stops, hand effeminately held over his open mouth [above].
These characters have to be off-the-chart effeminate in order both to be laughable ninnies, and also to be as little as possible like anyone who might be in the movie audience. This allows the straight male audience member to classify the fag character as someone completely alien to themselves. The movie is, in a sense, saying "THAT'S what fags are like; they're prancing little sissies constantly oogling men, and regardless of what a schlub you are, YOU are not like that at all." This allows the males in the audience more space to process the homoerotic attraction, or at least quell the anxiety, they might subconsciously feel upon watching the movie, because the film is going out of its way to assure them that they are in no way like the faggots they are seeing onscreen.
One can clearly see this dynamic operating in movies filled with macho guys like the ones mentioned above, but I was surprised to see the same thing going on in the randy comedy Wedding Crashers. In the film there is a sniveling, socially maladjusted fag [above, far right] who is berated by his father and takes refuge in art. He has greasy hair, wears dark, inappropriate clothes, and seems angry and bitter. One night he sneaks into the Vince Vaughn character's room and tells him that he interpreted a passing glance as evidence that "something happened between them." He takes off his clothes and gets into bed with Vince, who happens to be tied up. He has painted a picture depicting Vince cavorting nude in a forest. When his father comes into the room, the nude fag character hides in the closet, threatening numerous times to come out and expose "their love" to his father.
It puzzled me why this should be in the movie [aside from the common perception that effeminate gays are just downright hilarious in their very existence], but then it occurred to me that the point of the view of the movie holds its stars Vaughan and Owen Wilson to be terribly attractive, and yet its makers also know that there will be a lot of men in the audience. Therefore the same principle works; any degree of homoerotic attraction to either of the leads that a male in the audience might feel can be deflected because they are nothing like the sniveling faggot onscreen. "HE is attracted to Vince Vaughan, and anyone can plainly see what a fag he is. I am not like that, so I can have whatever feelings I want about Vince Vaughan and still not be a homo."
I do not mean to imply that the screenwriters are sitting there masterminding all of this-I think by this time fags are just so inherently "funny" that they just seem "right" in the fabric of these movies. Their presence also serves to beef up the masculinity of the straight male characters. And I certainly do not mean to imply the self-serving notion that all straight men are really sitting there lusting for big hunky guys.
What I am saying is that the presence of a large amount of hyper-masculine muscle men in a film CAN make a straight male--especially one in the 14 to 34-year-old demographic--feel distinctly uncomfortable, and that discomfort can translate into lower box office. To thwart this, these films deploy outrageously sterotyped gay characters in order to offer their straight audience a laugh at the expense of this other, outsider group.
Because if we're all here laughing at the fags, we couldn't possibly be fags ourselves, right?
RELATED ESSAY:
300: THE STRAIGHTENING OF THE SPARTANS offers an excellent case study of this theory in practice.
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